Abyss was interviewed by Wrestling Epicenter's Interactive Wrestling Radio recently. You can see highlights below and the full interview at this link.
Punishment Martinez somewhat recently pondering if Abyss would work if he broke in today:
"If you look when I broke in back in 1995, the Attitude Era was coming. ECW was still in a fairly prominent position. That was kind of a thing, man. It was Sabu and Rob Van Dam. Sabu and Jerry Lynn. Just the hardcore style and the grittier presentation. The business just changed a whole lot. It is a more athletic, a truly more athletic style now when you see the stuff that these guys and girls are doing compared to when I started. It has definitely evolved and changed. I think the whole business has changed. 10 or 15 years ago, you never would have seen AJ Styles as the WWE World Champion! You know? 10 of 15 years ago, I don't think the feeling was that you could have a World Champion that was 6'2, 220 pounds. That's completely changed because of the in ring style. I think that is a change in a positive way. I do think selling is something that is less focussed on, I'll say it as nicely as I can, selling is less focussed on than it was in previous years. I don't think that is a good thing. I think the high flying and the acrobatics is an amazing thing as long as the strong element of selling is still incorporated into it. I think I would have done well, still. I think I definitely would have had hurdles compared to the style when I started. Everything is going to evolve and change and wrestling is no different."
On what wrestling is missing:
"The one thing I do think wrestling is missing is I do think wrestling is missing characters. Abyss is a character. The one thing wrestling has to be careful of and the pitfall that it doesn't fall into is it is going completely away from characters. When I got addicted to this business when I was a kid, it was characters if you look back to the 80's and early 90's Everybody, even the opening gys, had characters. I fear it has gone too far to athletic contest versus character. I think that is something the business needs to be careful of."
On Impact working with different promotions like Lucha Underground and ROH:
"That's a cool thing. To me, that is something that may go down in history as one of the most groundbreaking things ever happening. 5, 10 years ago. You would never hear of companies working together! You would never hear of Ring of Honor working with Impact or Lucha Underground working with Impact... Or AAA working with Impact... It is somethng that is a really cool evolution. It is common sense! It is common sense for these companies to work together but I think a lot of egos got in the way over the years and now we can't work with them... Those walls have come down an awful lot. You're seeing it with Impact, we wored with AML yesterday. We worked with Lucha Underground in April. Now there's the Jericho cruise and Impact is working with ROH. The walls are coming down and that's huge, man! The wrestling fans are the winners on that one! They're going to get to see the matches that they never thought they would see! Working together is going to breed more competition and be more profitable for everybody."
