Zak Zodiac recently appeared as a guest on the Irish Wrestling podcast for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the discussion, Zak reflected on his three-on-one match against Paul “Big Show” Wight at a WWE event in Liverpool in 2011.
“Funny story, that was a tryout and I absolutely smashed it,” he said. “I know it sounds big headed but, I’m in the ring, they kept me in the ring and you had people like Goldust, Fit Finlay, Arn Anderson was ringside and they just kept me in, and it was like next one you can work with Zak, next one you can work with Zak. So I don’t know if they wanted to blow me up or they appreciated my volume of work but I was in there a long time.”
He continued, “They sent me to do my promo, I did it in one take. So the final step was to give me a match and PJ Black (Justin Gabriel) came to me and wanted to me to work a dark match and my agent came to me and said they wanna do a 3 on 1 with The Big Show which is gonna be featured on TV and you should do that. I asked could I do both and they were like no. So my agent said, get on TV, I don’t care if its a squash match, this is where we get you seen.”
He would go on to recall putting the match together ahead of time with Arn Anderson and Big Show.
“So we’re putting the match together and Arn Anderson says to Big Show, this kids strikes are phenomenal, we wanna make it look like they’ve got a chance so let this kid kick you in the head,” he said. “Show said to me this is a one time, make sure you kick me, and I bloody well did. I remember his ear popping out, and I know I potatoed him because the first chop he gave me afterwards, he wanted to rip my heart out.”
Zak continued, “But yeah, I remember taking the chop, selling the chokeslam and thinking this is everything I wanted it to be and I remember staring at the celling and saying I don’t care if I’m the jobber for 29 years this is where I wanna be. I got really good feedback after, Big Show was very nice and every time he sees me he is always pleasant. I honestly thought I was gonna get signed, but guess what? I didn’t have the body, I didn’t look like a star. I should have done then what I’ve done now.”
Check out the complete interview via the YouTube player embedded below.
