Mance Warner On Asking For His MLW Release, Learning From Jake Crist & Others In IWA Mid-South

In a recent interview on the Wrestling Inc. Daily, Mance Warner discussed asking for his MLW release, learning from Jake Crist and others in IWA-Mid South, and much more. Here are some of the highlights:

Mance Warner on asking for his MLW release: “Well, I think people have seen that before on the dirt sheets out there. Old Mancer did ask for his release from MLW, but you’ve seen that on dirt sheets, and that’s kind of where we’re at right now. It is what it is. Where I’m going to be and what I’m going to be doing, I’m always going to be at GCW [and] IWA Mid-South. I’ll be there this weekend, but with all the shows being canceled, and now we don’t really know if things are shutting down again. There’s a vaccine coming out, [but] we don’t know when everything’s going to come back. So for right now, I know I got Game Changer Wrestling going on. I got a IWA Mid-South show coming up this weekend, but after that, I got no idea what’s going on.”

On working in IWA Mid-South: “I started going to IWA Mid-South when I was first starting, so I was three months in, and I started going there because anyone that knows anything about independent pro wrestling knows IWA Mid-South is the place that you go and make a name and you learn because there’s so many people there.When I was there, you had Chris Hero coming back all the time. Tracy Smothers would be there every week. I’d sit with him in the corner, and he would just, knowledge man. He’d give you knowledge. So sitting with him and Mitch Ryder, Ian, there’s all the people there every week.

“The time period when I was going there every single week, you had all them guys. I credit that to getting me to where I kind of got to because you learn so quick. You’re in front of the same crowd on Thursday and Saturday. You can’t do the same s–t. You got to learn how to mix stuff up. I always joke around, it’s one of the last territories because it’s people coming in and the stories there. The people there have seen everything, so you got to give them something different, and if you can’t, you gonna have to go somewhere else because they’re going to tear you up in that ring.”

On learning from Jake Crist: “The knowledge that he has man, he’s one of those guys where me and him will joke around about nowadays a lot of people just calling a bunch of stuff. Every time, from the first time I ever worked with him, we don’t. We just go out and work. So we’ll go out there for 15 – 20 minutes, and we’re just going out there and reacting to what the crowd wants. For me it’s cool because you learn so much more on the fly out there in front of people where you’re just reacting. You don’t have time to sit there and think and go, ‘I got to do this s–t. I gotta do this bulls–t.’

“So he’s one of those guys. He’s been wrestling forever too. I remember him telling me stories about how he was in high school going to HWA (Heartland Wrestling Association) out there in Ohio. Then HWA, WWE were bringing in people there when WCW closed down. He’s seen so much. He’s been everywhere. He’s done everything. He was at Combat Zone Wrestling, Impact [and] every place you can think of. I remember watching him at a damn Ring of Honor show back in the day. So it’s just cool s–t to be in there with the guys that I grew up watching on bootleg tapes where you get them on the internet, and then all of a sudden you’re getting to work with these guys. He’s the f–king man.”