Johnny TV recently appeared as a guest on the INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet podcast for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the discussion the AEW star spoke about feeling underutilized by the promotion. He also spoke at length about losing a recent hair match.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On feeling underutilized in AEW: “I gotta admit, the match did feel fantastic. That hair match, I feel like, was one of the best matches I’ve had in years. Was the first time in a while that I felt like me again. Kind of feeling unfulfilled, basically. Not just me, a lot of people in wrestling. But for me right now, in AEW, I feel underutilized. Can’t blame anyone, that’s just how wrestling promotions work. There’s only enough TV time for a certain amount of people. Those people at AEW, we’ve coined the term the island. Those people are on the island, so to speak. I don’t feel like I’m on the island with Tony or AEW right now. So because of that, I feel like I’m doing like 10-20% of what I’m capable of, storytelling-wise, wrestling-wise, in the ring. With CMLL, I’m on their island, and so I got to do everything that I could, and it was cool.”
“I gotta admit, the match did feel fantastic. That hair match, I feel like, was one of the best matches I’ve had in years. Was the first time in a while that I felt like me again. Kind of feeling unfulfilled, basically. Not just me, a lot of people in wrestling. But for me right now, in AEW, I feel underutilized. Can’t blame anyone, that’s just how wrestling promotions work. There’s only enough TV time for a certain amount of people. Those people at AEW, we’ve coined the term the island. Those people are on the island, so to speak. I don’t feel like I’m on the island with Tony or AEW right now. So because of that, I feel like I’m doing like 10-20% of what I’m capable of, storytelling-wise, wrestling-wise, in the ring. With CMLL, I’m on their island, and so I got to do everything that I could, and it was cool,”
On if he had been thinking for a while about shaving his head: “A little bit. Honestly, my acting coach [Hank] has been on me for years about shaving my head. I had a bunch of missed calls when I got back from Mexico. It’s all him going, ‘Hey, you got to take some photos. You could go out for cop roles, soldier rules, all kinds of stuff. The world is your oyster now, come on.’ Thanks, Hank. He doesn’t have social so one of those comments wasn’t his, but he’s excited.”
On when he finally got to look in the mirror and see what it looked like: “So as soon as I come back from the match, honestly, Mexico City is like a mile and a half above sea level. My hands are on my knees, looking down for like 30 seconds before I find a mirror and Whoa! A couple of things, a few days prior, actually, three days prior to this match, I came back to LA and I had to shoot a bunch of projects because I was shaving my head, continuity-wise, I had to finish up a bunch of stuff that had just kind of been on the to-do list. So two days before the match, I was doing a Bat in the Sun superpower beat down video playing Casey Jones and fighting foot soldiers. There’s this one part where I kept choking this guy with a pay phone cord, ‘You got a collect call from pain 101!’ But the pay phone was a prop, and it kept falling and gashing me in the head. There was one time I got gashed there and I started bleeding a little bit, which doesn’t really matter, because if you have hair, you can’t see it. But I was thinking about that before the hair vs. hair match, I was like, I wonder if I have those marks from the pay phone fight scene on my head, and then I wonder if all those times Sabu hit me in the head with chairs, or a kendo stick to the head from Sheamus, or something, I just never noticed they have a gnarly scar. When you look in the mirror, I was like yep, I guess I was right about the pay phone marks, because I am kind of cut up. Either that or the barber character in CMLL. She shaved me pretty quickly without a guard on the razor.”
On what Taya thinks of this: “She was one of the first people to say I think John looks amazing, which, I mean, probably the most important perspective to me of anyone in the world. Wife, she’s cool with it. All right, I’m fine with it.”
