NWA Television champion Elija “Pope” Burke was the latest guest on the Wrestling’s Cool podcast to discuss a number of different topics, including WWE’s Samoa Joe on commentary, the support he received after winning the title, and a conversation he had with Sting in TNA. Highlights are below.
On Samoa Joe on Raw commentary and how he thinks Vince McMahon is telling him to turn it up:
Especially the guys [commentators sound alike], outside of Samoa Joe who’s, ‘I gotta talk like this now because Vince [McMahon] is in my ear! What is he gonna do!?’ And you know Vince is in his ear I guess because first, Samoa Joe was just Samoa Joe. ‘Oh good move there,’ blah, blah, blah but now if you listen to Samoa Joe on Raw, he’s amped up a lot now and that’s because Vince is in his ear saying, ‘Come on Joe! Give me some more! Give me some more!
Says he spoke with the icon Sting about heading to WWE:
Elijah Burke was on WrestleMania and there are legends who have made this business what it is and they never had that moment. That’s why I was so happy for Steve [Borden], a.k.a. Sting. That’s why I was so happy for Sting. I remember us talking in TNA and every year when he was re-signing that contract I was there, he was saying, ‘Ah, they want me to come up there to WWE.’ I’m like, ‘Bro look, Steve, you got to do this. Like you have to –’ and he would just, he was so reluctant but I’m like, ‘You gotta do this bro.
Says he got a lot of support after he won the NWA Television champion:
Well ole’ Zicky [Dice]. Well, I’ll tell you what, it was a very good moment, a good feeling to walk away with the NWA Television Title, especially because of what that title means to me and the history of professional wrestling. But that good — you might be over there going, ‘Wait, just a good moment?’ Yeah, it was a very good moment but that good moment became great. It became great when I got back to the hotel room and I saw the adulation and the joy and just the overall support that I was receiving from around the world and it was just so much that it became overwhelming. It was so much that it just blew me away and I have a great following that I’ve amassed over 17 years but when that championship happened, the change happened, when Pope walked out the victor, oh man, there were so many people hitting Pope up. I’ll just talk about Twitter specifically right now. It was so many people flooding the inbox that Twitter contacted me and asked me do I want them to control it and start filtering the messages because it was just that many. So that’s when the moment became really great. That’s when it sat in, that’s when I realized, ‘Okay, this is something here’ and I’m just so happy for all of my supporters, all of my followers, the congregation as I call them, Da Pope’s Point of Viewers. I’m more happy for them, all of those people who have supported me over the years and they’ve known I was supposed to be a champion in ECW, I was supposed to be a champion in TNA, so they don’t have to worry about saying ‘if’ or what should’ve happened because all of that just made this moment that more sweeter.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)