Raven On His Impact Hall of Fame Induction, Advice For Hardcore Wrestlers

Raven was inducted into the Impact Wrestling Hall of Fame last year, and he recently talked about the experience and his advice for hardcore wrestlers. Raven spoke with Wrestling Inc and you can see some highlights below:

On his Impact Hall of Fame induction: “Well, considering they only induct one person a year, I thought it was pretty cool. Also, my ego was a little bit irritated, though, that they hadn’t inducted me sooner. But that’s neither here nor there. No, I’m just kidding. [Laughs] No, but I thought it was nice. I think with TNA, they only try to induct people that deserve it as far as they worked at TNA, you know what I mean? I think if they gave five a year they’d run out of people so quick. Because it’s supposed to be exclusive, the hall of fame.”

On who came up with the idea to have Tommy Dreamer get DDTs: “We both did. We both did. I said, “I’m going to DDT.” He said, “Absolutely.” But as you could see, it was a terrible bump. I took a terrible bump. I’m in dress clothes and dress shirt. It’s on a metal stage. But not that I cared. I just couldn’t bump clean. None of those factors really inhibited me. I just couldn’t bump clean at this age. I hadn’t done it in a long time. And that’s the only bad thing about my finish is you have to take a bump to get it.”

On working as an agent in NWA: “You get like three, four matches. Well, three to five matches, I guess. And you just agent it like anybody at any other company. You help the guys put their match together. You make sure they know their cues and all that. They come up with some ideas. And then you can tell them, “That sucks. Let’s do something else.” I’m kidding. [Laughs] But you throw your two cents in and I try to pass on some knowledge along the way.”

On his advice for talent that work hardcore matches: “Yeah, learning psychology. That’s my biggest problem with hardcore matches, is they usually have no psychology to them. They’re just people hitting each other with weapons back and forth. If you watch my hardcore matches, I’d like to think that they stand out completely uniquely, because mine had a story. The baby face shines, the heel gets heat, baby face makes a comeback. It’s a basic story, but it’s a story. Most hardcore matches [nowadays] are just, “I hit you, you hit me.” And then they just upped the weapon ante. But I always tried to be clever with it and creative.

“To me, one of my favorite things ever was Dreamer and I were working, and we did a double down, but I got up first. And while we were down, Dreamer hung his leg off the apron and Beulah [McGillicutty] taped a frying pan to his shin. And it’s like, “Why is she taping a frying pan to his shin?!” Psychology-wise, instead of standing up tall and doing it, she was creeped down low doing it so nobody could see what she was doing. And then when I go to get up, I pick Dreamer up and he goes to kick me in the gut. I catch his foot and he hits me with the frying pan taped to his ankle. It’s amazing, what a clever spot. That’s the kind of stuff that I live for.

“And unfortunately, most hardcore matches at least … I don’t watch it anymore, so I can’t say now, but I don’t presume that the business has changed much because the business doesn’t really change much unless people force it to. And very few people reinvent the wheel. I kind of feel like I helped reinvent the wheel to an extent in the sense that I had a three-dimensional character and everybody else was a two- dimensional cookie cutter. So to me, that’s what I love about hardcore. When Rhino gored the shopping cart, and I moved, went to gore me, I moved and he gored and hit the inside of the shopping cart. It was brilliant.”