Jax Dane‘s run with IMPACT Wrestling was enjoyable overall, but he says he could never get comfortable with being billed as a war veteran during his tenure.
Jax Dane was a recent guest on The Shining Wizards Wrestling Podcast and the former NWA Champion looked back on his brief tenure with IMPACT Wrestling in 2017. Before his current run in the NWA, Dane worked for IMPACT Wrestling under the name ‘Wilcox’ as one-half of the team called ‘Veterans Of War’. VOW debuted in April of 2017, and Dane explained why he understands it was a character on television, but initially struggled with being called a war veteran in other instances.
“[My IMPACT run] was cool man, but where I really, really struggled with that, and it took a lot of convincing from Abyss and Jeff Jarrett and Crimson—they had me billed as a former soldier. And I come from a military family. Both my uncles served in the military, and I have a lot of close friends that are military, whether it be marines or army, what have you. And I didn’t serve. So, they had me billed as a former soldier right, and I really struggled with being comfortable with that. Not so much with the role on TV, because that’s one thing. But when you do the meet and greets or you do the independent shows and you have fans and former soldiers thanking you for service and you know that you didn’t serve, even though you’re playing a role, man, that turned my stomach. It did.
“No fault to IMPACT whatsoever. Because they were justified in where they were on that decision. Just for me, I never did get comfortable being billed as a former soldier. I have too much respect for the military and what goes on. Crimson really had to talk me through being ok with that. Outside of that caveat, to the time we spent at IMPACT, I had a great time. Those guys there, LAX, Ortiz and Santana. Fantastic dudes to work with. Homicide was there in some form or fashion. Low Ki was there. You go down the list of the dudes that were there, man, it was a lot of fun to be there. Eddie Kingston was around, so my time at IMPACT was fantastic, except for being billed as a former soldier. And that’s just something I wasn’t comfortable portraying and it was hard to do, man.”
After leaving the company, Dane and Crimson debuted in Ohio Valley Wrestling as “War Kings” in 2018. The pair would win the OVW Southern Tag Team Champions in August of that year.
