There's a lot of talk about New Day's reign being the longest in "modern" WWE history, but they haven't came close to Demolition's 478 day reign.
Ax, Smash and later Crush terrorized the WWE. Seen by some as 'Road Warrior' knockoffs due to their face paint, the team lasted 16 months as champions. In a recent interview with the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling, Smash recalled their legendary reign.
“It went really fast. We were very proud that we could hold them that long and for Vince McMahon to trust us with them was something that we must have done something for him or otherwise he would have taken them off of us but it was pretty wild and we never thought that we would have them that long and it was actually exciting to get rid of them and go for them again because when you have them for so long you kind of want someone else to have them and go against them but overall it was pretty neat," said Smash, real name Barry Darsow.
While New Day's reign is approaching the one-year mark, Smash said that many teams (without naming them) could benefit from having more storytelling in matches. When asked how Demolition would work with teams today, Darsow has an interesting take.
“I think we could probably just after having a few matches with them and teach them exactly how to tell a story out there, I think we could tear the house down. I just don't know if teams could keep up with us. With both Ivan and Nikita Koloff as well as with Bill (Eadie) the whole thing that we did was our endurance. We could wrestle hour matches and I don't think that these guys could go a half hour without having their tongues hanging out and they would have to wait up for us and I am not saying that in a bad way because that is just how we were trained. When me and Ivan were together we wrestled the Rock and Roll Express in one day wrestled three-one hour long broadways. First wrestled an hour on TV on WTBS, we wrestled in Columbus Georgia and that night we wrestled an hour in the Omni. Who in the world wrestles three hours in one day?," he said.
You can check out the full interview at this link. Thanks to Chad and John for the transcription.
