On Monday Mailbag with Mike Chioda, the longtime referee talked about how he became a part of AEW again as he was able to referee the Adam Cole vs Samoa Joe match at Double or Nothing.
“Let me tell you how that all came together. I was on a cruise with my wife. We were sitting there on the second day on the cruise and I got a call from Dean Malenko,” Chioda said.
“He said, ‘We came up with a good plan. Everybody liked it. We want to bring you as a special guest referee for the Owen Hart tournament match.’ He said, ‘Did you know Owen?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I knew him very well.’”
“I sent some pictures to him with the one in Israel with 1-2-3 Kid and Tonka in Israel and a couple other pictures. So he wanted me to be the ref and I said, ‘Oh man, that would be great.’ He said, ‘We’d like you to come in and do the match and maybe do the other tournament match’, but there’s a size difference on that. They didn’t want anybody like me being six foot tall.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription