Indie sensation Dan “The Dad” recently joined Fightful’s On The Spotlight program to discuss his viral video from AEW Dark, where he pulled a Dad Prank on The Embassy’s Toa Liona, a spot that Liona was not very appreciative of due to the “severity” of the move. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
On pulling a Dad joke on Toa Liona on AEW Dark:
It’s my first incident being accused of being an unsafe worker, but I think Toa is okay. I did reach out to him to make sure to apologize for working stiff on Dark. I think he’s alright, he won the Six-Man Tag Team Championships, so he’s having a better week. He got his comeuppance on me if you saw the whole match, you saw he squished me in the corner. He’s okay, he’s a good guy.
Says he’s been using the joke for years:
That was early on. A lot of this came with be with Alpha-1 Wrestling in Ontario, which is a place that was run by Ethan Page at the time and he would bring a lot of great talents. It was a four-way or six-way match of some sort, maybe my third or fourth time even trying the character out. I pitched it to Rickey Shane Page, ‘what if I said you have something on your shirt and flick your nose.’ He laughed so hard at the pitching of the spot and was like, ‘You know what, let’s give it a try.’ Then it worked and became a staple of what I do and find different creative ways to find something on someone’s shirt and make them look foolish. It was very early on, one of the first dad jokes or dad things to incorporate into almost every match that I’ve done.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)