The legendary Lord William Regal recently joined WhatCulture for a conversation about all things pro-wrestling, including what Regal thinks of top AEW superstar MJF, a man he has been keeping his eye on for quite some time. Highlights from the interview are below.
Says he’s a huge MJF fan and is happy that he’s found success in AEW:
I think he’s [MJF] fantastic. I’m a huge fan. I was getting to know him very early on his career and then things went a bit [left] for me for a couple of years in 2018. I had pretty much a year off, a part from a couple of months and a lot of it’s come out a bit recently but a lot of things went on and I was out of the game for quite a bit and then he went on his way and made a name for himself and I was just glad when I saw him, that he had came to AEW because I knew back when I met him that it was something special about him and we’d spent time together and I had him send me a few things and actually at one point because I knew there was something special. With a lot of people — I’ve learned to read people and I can read them quicker than they wish they could.
Recalls MJF sending him tapes and later telling MJF to just go out and make a name for himself:
After a while, he was sending me stuff and I said, ‘Look, don’t send me anymore. Go out and prove it, go out and show it’ because he was too young to get hired by WWE at the time. Tyler Bate changed that theme because he was 19 but it was the U.K. thing. They didn’t like to hire anybody under 20-something because of getting rental cars and different things, right? It was just mature — or whatever. Whatever the reasons were, that was — and he wasn’t that age so I said — I sent him a thing whereas I would — ‘Look, I know how good you are. Go and sort yourself out,’ hoping it would kick him up the backside. Well, it did.
How there’s very few people who want to be actual villains in wrestling:
There’s very few people [who] want to be actual villains in this job. He wants to be a villain and be a real villain and that’s, you know, when I had the chapter, there’s many parts of my career, you give me the chance when I was a real villain, I was a real villain and people didn’t like me and I could go from comedy to that in a second but it didn’t matter because people truly didn’t like me. But I had to work on that. Well he’s got this magic thing that he’s worked on and found his spot on. When you see people like that, I have nothing but — I love it because I have nothing but admiration for their — it takes a lot of guts to do that, to really go out there and not — because you put yourself on the line. Even in this day in age, if you’re willing to offend people or take it to another level, there’s not many people who really go there, right? And he’s gone there and I’m a big fan so, I hope and I know he’s gonna do incredible things so good for him.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)
