Chris Van Vliet caught up with Sammy Guevara t0 talk to the young signee about what his thoughts are being a part of the Wednesday Night Wars between AEW and NXT, why he incorporated Pandas into his persona and getting contacted by AEW with a job offer. Quotes and full video interview are below:
On The Wednesday Night Wars
“That made me laugh so much because at Double or Nothing, when Moxley came down and started beating everybody up maybe it was when he was standing on the chip and it was over with, I was standing next to Kylie Rae and we’re just watching it and I’m like ‘Isn’t this crazy? We’re a part of this’ and then she’s like ‘Yeah, this is F’n nuts.’ I don’t know, man, to be a fan and say I want to do this and to be doing it and then to now be in one of the biggest companies right now and they’re about to go head-to-head with friggin WWE/NXT whatever, it’s wild. Another example for nothing is impossible.”
On Finding Out About His Match Against Cody on TNT
“That’s one thing about me, I don’t want to know anything ahead of time, because then I’ll just end up saying it. I like being surprised as everyone else. So when I woke up in the morning and saw that I was like ‘Ok, cool, this is wild to be the first AEW one-on-one match and now the first one on TV’, am I dreaming? Pinch me, you know what I’m saying?”
Why pandas are part of his gimmick:
“It’s my favorite animal, favorite animal, so I just kind of incorporate things that I like into my wrestling. Like my old theme song, “I am Jesus”, is from one of my favorite movies which is ‘Get him to the Greek.’ There was a lot of fake songs they made for that movie and “I am Jesus” is one of them. I was like ‘I want this to be my theme song!’ So I come out to TripleMania with that song. Pandas are chill, right? They eat bamboo, they’re just chilling but they’re a bear, so if you mess with it, it’s going to kill you. I feel like, that’s me. I’m a chill dude but get in the ring with me, I’m not a chill dude no more.”
On Why He Started His YouTube Channel
“Originally, a lot of promoters in the Texas scene, they would never give you your matches. Or if they do it takes a year and I kind of understood in this social media age that you need content out there for people to see you. You’re not going to be seen just in your city being local town hero, you’ve got to be seen all over the world. So I started bringing my camera to shows and just getting anyone to record my match and I’d upload that.”
On Wrestlers He Looked Up To
“Growing up it was Rey Mysterio and I got to wrestle him two times. For me, growing up everyone was like ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do this, you’re too small.’ When I started watching wrestling it was 2005 or 06 whatever and then 10 years later in 2016, I wrestled Rey Mysterio and so it was like no one can tell me anything anymore, I wrestled my idol basically Rey so I feel like there is nothing nobody can’t do.”
On Being Contacted By AEW
“I was in Japan, I can tell you that story without telling you his name. So, the press conference happened, right? And I saw all the people that were there and I was like ‘Damn, I feel like they are going to reach out to me.’ They hadn’t yet, I had one conversation with one of the members of the upper tier guys at a show and he asked me what I was doing mid-January and I was like ‘Oh, I’m going to be in Japan.’ Mid-January was the first press conference, this is back in October before that. And so, I think he was going to ask me to be there but I was in Japan so we just dropped it and started talking about something else. I didn’t think about it until later. So I’m in Japan, that happens and I go to sleep. I wake up in the morning and I get a DM on Twitter and it’s like ‘What’s your contract status?’”
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