Vampiro On Why TripleMania Shouldn’t Happen This Year, Praises Pentagon Jr, Why He Keeps Wrestling

Vampiro discussed his continuing to wrestle despite his injuries, why TripleMania shouldn’t happen this year and more in a new interview with POST Wrestling’s Andrew Thompson, which is in promotion of his new documentary Nail in the Coffin. (Check out our review of the documentary here.) Andrew sent along some quotes from the interview which you can check out below, along with the full video:

On why he has continued to wrestle after all of the injuries he has sustained: “I hate to use this analogy but, addiction, you kinda gravitate to that stuff. If it’s alcohol, they still go to bars, they have that one drink or if you’re consuming other substances you kinda gravitate towards that crowd, so being that it’s been something that I’ve done for so many years, I think what I discovered [was] it was an addiction that I didn’t know I had. It wasn’t one thing. It was, ‘This is all I know. This is what I’ve been doing for 38 years, I’m addicted to, this is where I believe I need to be’ even though I didn’t understand what I was doing there still. So that was kind of a conflict thing but I think the business, the politics, all the bad things, we could talk about that for six months. It doesn’t mean anything, it did then but I do believe what I love doing more than anything else in the world is the entertainment part, the entrance. That coming out of the curtain and that moment with the fans, that three-to-four minutes, that’s what I miss the most. That’s what I’m striving to do in other projects so yeah, that’s the tough part.”

On Pentagon Jr. and why he doesn’t deserve any credit for what Pentagon has accomplished: “I pride myself on not taking credit for any of that. I don’t like veteran wrestlers who say, ‘In my day’ or, ‘It’s because he wrestled with me and that’s why he’s famous’ or, ‘I opened the door for him.’ It’s not true. I was helped when I was younger by a lot of guys that had been around a long time when I was guided, and that’s what we do, it’s our job. That’s my responsibility. We work on the same show and if the character I’m portraying in that storyline is gonna elevate you where you can go out and make a better living for yourself and your family, God bless it and go for it. I’m not responsible. He’s talented and charismatic on his own. It just so happens that the match that they say boosted him was with me. I’d like to say because of my experience, I was not only able to come out stronger than I was going in but also elevated another person so I hope younger wrestlers see that when you do get to that point in your career, your responsibility to the fans and to this industry is to pass the torch because it doesn’t belong to me or any other veteran. It belongs to the fans and the fans deserve the best and if what you have can help somebody continue to give the best product then that’s your responsibility. You don’t get a pat on the back for that. So I won’t take credit is what I’m trying to get at.”

On Triplemania 2020 being postponed and why it shouldn’t happen this year: “I don’t see it. There’s too much money involved to do that event and they rely heavily on sponsors for that. That’s one thing. The date has already passed, that’s another thing, fan safety. Even if you put on an event like that, I think it would backfire because the fans would go, but 90 percent of them would look down on it because you’re not playing on the team. The world needs to get better first so I’m pretty sure — I actually think it’s good the fans have a rest from seeing the same old guys doing the same old things. The guys are gonna come back reinvigorated, I believe it’s a good break and you’ll have the chance to reset everything and you come up with new graphics, new looks, new music, new storylines and just come back stronger with a new version of the product. I think it’s actually going to be better. If they rushed it and did an event this year just because of their ego, I believe that would be more detrimental than it would be positive for sure.”