Frankie Kazarian: "Are we doing my Wikipedia page?"
Fightful: Oh, of course.
Kazarian: "I thought we were going to pick like, the Battle of the Bulge and see what I know to be fact or fiction about that."
Fightful: Well hey, maybe you can apply some insight to that. We'll save that for a future show.
WIKI: 6'1", 215 lbs. This is often one that is fudged a little bit in pro wrestling, as many know.
Kazarian: (Maybe) "I am legitimately 6', no problem saying that. And at one time I probably was 215. At my heaviest I was probably 225. Right now I'm under 200 lbs, so I'm a lot leaner than I was. I guess that's a 50/50. I'm not 6'1, but at one time I was 215. But you know in professional wrestling lore, it was always kind of the norm to add an inch or two and about 20 lbs. It's 2017 and we're a little bit more transparent. But I'm legitimately 6', about 190 right now."
WIKI: You made your debut May 15, 1998.
Kazarian: (True) "That is true. That would have been Massachusetts, I did an independent wrestling show at a community college against Freight Train Dan. That is fact."
WIKI: You wrestled your first match after about a month of training.
Kazarian: (True) "Also fact. I started on March 29, 1998, coincidentally the day that Steve Austin won his first title in WWF. I know that because that was at the Boston Arena and I'd just gotten to Boston and started my wrestling training that day at Kowalski's school on the day of WrestleMania 14. So it was about a month of training. I had showed up at the event to help set up the ring, help with security, and do all the stuff that young trainees do, and I was in the middle of taking Polaroid pictures for one Honky Tonk Man when I got a tap on the shoulder telling me that one of the competitor's cars had broken down and he was not going to make it to the show, and I had to take his place. At the time I didn't have gear, all I had was kneepads and wrestling shoes, so one of the old-timers lent me his horrendous purple tie dye tights and so they put me with a manager, thank God, this charismatic manager that really helped me get a lot of heat with the crowd. I went out there with a buddy of mine, Freight Train Dan, and had a very, very passable match for a guy who'd been training a month. I knew I'd already loved it and was obsessed and very passionate about it, but after having my first live match, it was just, you know, there's no stopping after that."
Fightful: What goes through your mind when you're told that? Are you intimidated? Are you ready? How did you feel?
Kazarian: "You know, the thing was I had so little time to prepare I didn't even really have time to get nervous which was a blessing in disguise. If I'd had all day I probably would have completely, you know, just pooped the bed in the ring. I literally was just, I would help set up the ring, set up the whole thing, Honky Tonk Man kind of gave me, 'hey kid, you doing anything?' No, sir. 'Well take pictures for me.' I've told Honky that story, we laugh about it. I was taking pictures, crowd was filing in, got the tap on the shoulder, 'hey, you gotta wrestle,' okay, don't have any gear, here's some gear, put it on, here's your opponent, it was just a whirlwind. It literally happened so quick I didn't have time to get nervous. It was for the best. Just really cool memory, man. I remember that day, 19 years ago, like it was yesterday."
WIKI: The original Bad Influence was actually you and a guy by the name of Josh Galaxy.
Kazarian: (True) "Yeah! Yeah, man. That was a buddy of mine who actually still is one of my best friends, a guy I've known since preschool. A guy that started with me. He also trained at Kowalski's, we both moved out to California. He left earlier than I did. We formed a tag team out here. Came up with the name 'Bad Influence' because one of our other buddies had a girlfriend at the time who forbid him to hang out with him because we were quote, a bad influence on him. Which may be the truth, I don't know. We thought hey, bad influence, great name. That lasted only, you know, several months. He left the business and is now a high school teacher and a family man and a high school baseball coach and a good dude, still one of my best buddies. I had that name in the back of my head for a while and I told myself if I ever get a good substantial tag team going, that's a great name. Of course we went with that."
WIKI: You told Mike Tenay in 2000 in San Diego that he'd end up calling one of your matches.
Kazarian: (True) "That's true, but it wasn't 2000, it was either late '97 or early '98, because I met him, Rey Mysterio, Lee Marshall, and somebody else at a signing and a drawing to win tickets to a Nitro in San Diego and I went down there. So it was late '97 or early '98 that I told him that, that I told him I'd already planned on going to Kowalski's. He was very, very nice, we have ... his parents and grandparents lived in a town two towns over from where I lived, so we had that in common. My parting words to him were, 'hopefully someday you can call one of my matches.' And one of my first days at TNA, I told him that story, he remembered it, and still to this day that always comes up. So yeah, again, 50% true. Just wasn't 2000, it was '97 or early '98."
Fightful: He ended up calling hundreds of your matches.
Kazarian: "He did, I know, not just one. So I got more than my money's worth, yeah."
WIKI: You used to freestyle rap with John Cena and Samoa Joe.
Kazarian: (True) "Yeah! Yeah, man. We used to, in our UPW training days, we would do Tuesday and Thursday training sessions. We'd do that at Santa Ana and Huntington Beach area. It's pretty far from where I lived so a lot of times I would stay the night at Samoa Joe's house. After the training sessions, they would end pretty late. Drove myself and Cena would go get some food or go to Joe's house, and there was always food at Joe's house. It seemed like every hour of the day there was a barbeque going on. So we'd go there, we would do silly battle raps, which John was obviously very good at. Being a heavy metal guy, I did my best. Joe was good at it too. We all just, it was kind of our crew back then. We would talk about stupid stuff from the '80s, and video games, and do silly battle raps. And yeah, it's not like we just finish our training and go to some dark warehouse '8 Mile' style and go battle rap. In addition to other tomfoolery, we would also battle rap. But yeah, that was our crew man."
Vince Russo
EC3
The Pope/Elijah Burke
Chael Sonnen
"The Hurricane" Shane Helms
Muhammad Hassan
Colt Cabana
Jack Swagger
Michael McDonald
