WWE NXT Tag Team Champions The Revival were the recent guests on “The Steve Austin Show” hosted by Steve Austin. You can listen to the entire show at this link and blow are some interview highlights:
On Scott Dawson Being Trained by the Maestro:
I broke in with him in 2004 and he helped me out a lot. He preached to me a lot of the old school style, but I was also trained by George South out of Charlotte, and he comes from the NWA territory, he worked with Flair, he worked with Arn, he worked with Tully, and if I messed up in the ring, or if he even saw me put a match together in the back he would criticize me, beat me down and make sure that I felt like crap because I wasn’t calling it in the ring, so coming from that background it allowed me to think on my own, to think on my feet. Also, ever since I was 3 years old I was a huge wrestling fan. I remember, I can vividly remember Gordon Solie interview with Ric Flair, I lived in Stone Mountain, Georgia. That kind of wrestling is what made me a fan, and there’s a lyric, it’s called, I’m not a walk behinder, I’m a new note finder, and I feel like a lot of guys, they are so entrenched with the product today, and see the reaction that they are getting so it is easy to follow that, and easy to do the same thing, but for me, I want people to remember me being different. So, if I’m doing the stuff that people don’t remember anymore, like from 1984, then the people will remember that match.
On Dash’s Training Background:
I was never officially trained. I came from a really poor family so we couldn’t afford any wrestling training or anything like that, so honestly, I watched wrestling as much as I could, I read the books and read any autobiography that came out just to get a little insight information, I would watch it, I studied it so much that I could get in the ring and not be a danger to anybody, but luckily being from North Carolina, being from the South, we had so many guys like the Rock & Roll [Express] coming around, we had guys like George South coming around that can take you from under their wing, and that can teach you just by watching and listening to the crowd, so I also spent a lot of time at NWA Wildside/Anarchy where AJ Styles is from so I learned a lot of stuff there, and kind of picked it up as I went along, somehow, someway, I made it. I have been working for almost 10 years, so there was a really really small independent federation, like these small crowds, nobody that really had been there like George [South], but they told us that if we had came to the show and set up the ring for them and set up the chairs for them, before the doors open, that we could get in the ring and train, and there was like 3 or 4 of us go in there and set everything up just so we could get that one hour of ring time and eventually they would allow us to start on the shows, and then we just started reaching out to as many bookings as we could get. One of the first out of state bookings that we got was for Wildside. I emailed Bill Behrens and said that I had heard a lot about Wildside, and read a lot about the guys that came through there and said that I wanted to come down and wrestle for you, and he got back to us and said yeah, come on down. That was one of my best learning experiences to just go down there and listen to those guys and watch them. I soaked it all up as much as I could.
On Their Earnings from Working the Independent Scene:
Dawson: I think I was a bit naive because I just loved wrestling so much because I knew it was what I wanted to do, and I knew I had everything going against me. I was not what you would call a body guy, about 5 foot 10, scratching the surface 5 foot 11, so I knew that finding money was going to be hard, but I just wanted to get in the ring and wrestle, then when I knew I had a little bit of value in my work, I was able to ask for a little bit of money, but down in North Carolina, there is no Athletic Commission, there’s nobody governing that state so anybody, any redneck from North Carolina can pick up and get a wrestling ring, and run a pawn shop, a flea market, anything. So, they could hire anybody to work for free so it was a little bit harder in North Carolina to grab some money, but I did whatever I could to earn some of that money.
Dash: I worked a few side jobs at the same time because I knew at the time that wrestling was not going to pay the bills, but I looked at it like an investment on myself. You kind of look at it like as a Doctor. They are going to school for 6 to 8 years and are losing tons of money, tons of debt, but when they finally get that degree, finally get that job, it’s all worth it. So, I figured that I would use that knowledge, use that experience as knowledge that I was getting, so when we got to WWE that would be the final product where we finally get to make money and it would finally pay off for us.
On Their Love of Wrestling at an Early Age:
Dawson: My dad loved Ric Flair, I mean, he was enamored with Ric Flair, so I was always a Ric Flair fan, and I grew up watching the Crocketts. I watched a little WWF, but the blood and the guts of wrestling were the Crocketts for me. I distinctly remember, even as much as I loved the Crocketts and the NWA, but I remember when I wanted to be a wrestler by watching King of the Ring 93 and I watched Bret Hart wrestle 3 of the greatest matches of his entire life, and through those matches, he told an incredible story, like, he went in first with Razor Ramon, his fingers were breaking down, he went into the ring with Mr Perfect, his ribs started breaking down, then went into the ring with Bam Bam Bigelow and with his ribs and fingers taped up, they’re cracked, he goes in the ring with a 300 lb monster and just has heat put all over him, throughout the whole match. He makes some comebacks, but finally in the end of the match, Luna comes in and hits him with a chair, 1,2,3 but then a reverse decision from the ref, they restart the match, victory roll, then I jump up from my couch and I said to my mom that this is what I want to do for a living. All I could think about when I was in school was wrestling, honest to God, I was really good with school, but all I could think about was professional wrestling, that’s it.
Dash: My Grandma was a huge wrestling fan, because Asheville, where I am from, used to be a huge hot bed for professional wrestling, so they would come to the buildings there, they would come to Greensboro and she would go to all of the shows there. She would just have this library of VHS tapes, just unreal how many she had, and whenever I would come over, she would just let me watch it with me and my brothers while making us sweet tea at the same time. My brothers would watch a little bit, but not as much as me; I would totally be entranced by it, and I just never grew out of it. My brothers would watch it, and move on, but to me, the more I watched the more hooked I got. My Grandma probably hit a few people with chairs. She was more into it than I was. When she wasn’t cooking for us she was glued to the television watching wrestling, she would yell at the TV, cursing and getting more pissed off than anybody you can imagine, so I get more into it. I watch her then I started getting upsets too, just watching wrestling through her eyes, she would get me worked up and would get that much more invested into it.
On Some of Their Favorite Tag Teams Growing Up:
Dash: Hollywood Blondes. I hated you guys (referring to Austin) and after a while I loved you guys. I was the ultimate fan. Whenever it was time to flip, I would do it with you, but you guys were one of my favorite tag team’s to watch. The Brain Busters, the Midnight Express and Rock & Roll Express. Midnights and Rock & Roll, my Granny watched more than anything. Even the Steiner Brothers, any team that was around back then, there was something for everybody. Even though I will never be the side of the Road Warriors, they were so fascinating to watch, you can learn from them also.
Dawson: As a kid, I loved the Bulldogs, I loved the Hart Foundation, and of course I was a huge Rock & Roll Express fan. Moving on into the 90’s, even though they weren’t the nicest guys, I loved Harlem Heat. Their teamwork, you can tell they were brothers, but I loved their team work. Fast forwarding to 2016, I got two huge books of DVD’s, because I’m such a huge wrestling nerd, I got a 7 disc bootleg Hollywood Blondes, about 10 discs with Arn & Tully, but my favorite team of all time, there’s no question that my favorite tag team of all time is the Midnight Express with Dennis Condrey and Bobby Eaton. Nobody had better heat, they knew what each other was going to do, and they worked together and made sure that their heat was set and the babyface was going to make a firing comeback and if they somehow, like a babyface slipping on a banana peel, figuratively speaking, the Midnights put the Banana peel there, but if the babyfaces were going to go over, back in that territory, they would make sure that they got enough comeback to get the crowd reaction.
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