“Heels” star Stephen Amell recently announced that he’ll be in attendance at AEW Dynamite: Grand Slam. At the show, he’ll likely reunite with Cody Rhodes, someone he has a lot of history with, both in wrestling and outside of it. The two stars memorably clashed in a tag team match at WWE SummerSlam 2015, but they joined forces two years later when Amell became an honorary member of the Bullet Club. They then teamed up with their stablemates Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks in a star-studded tag team match at ROH Survival of the Fittest 2017.
During a recent appearance on Talk Is Jericho, Amell looked back on his memorable ventures into the wrestling world. He contrasted his match in Ring of Honor to his WWE in-ring debut by noting that, in ROH, they didn’t have a strict limit on the length of the bout. Amell noted that they had a lot of freedom last night, as the competitors got to do whatever they wanted. He then described how, when he went for an RKO, he “jacked up” his neck so badly that he temporarily lost his hearing.
“I really wanted to be present for it, and go in for quick bursts and then come out,” said Amell. “Because as a amateur in this, and as a newbie, you blow up anytime you go into the ring. You just blow up because you forget to breathe and you get all stiff, and I just really wanted to be present.
“And I couldn’t be because the first thing that I did was get in the ring, and I threw an RKO on either Chris Daniels or Frankie Kazarian. And I had never done an RKO before, let alone learn how to properly take a flat back bump. And I jacked my neck up so bad that I couldn’t even hear anything for the rest of the match.”
In hindsight, Amell stated that his experience with ROH was “great” before he reflected on, as of this writing, his last offical outing as a wrestler. Amell competed in his first singles match against Christopher Daniels at the groundbreaking All In event in 2018. On the podcast, Amell thanked Daniels for taking care of him because he “blew up” to the point that he asked Daniels to end the match only a few minutes after it started.
“God bless Christopher Daniels for taking care of me in that match,” said Amell. “We had the whole thing planned out, I could probably recite it right now off-hand, but I wanna say two, three minutes into the match, after sort of the initial onslaught, I blew up to the point where I couldn’t get a breath. I said to him, I said, ‘Take me home, let’s go home.’ I can’t, I can’t remember a thing. And he said, ‘Shut the f—- up. I’ll take care of you.”
Amell was somewhat critical of this bout because he wishes he slowed down, particularly during the memorable spot where he crashed through a table. He described how, before his first televised, Triple H emphasized the importance of taking it slow, and Amell learned this message the hard way at All In.
“It’s so frustrating to go back and watch that match,” said Amell. “I did the big table spot where I set up the table, and I jump through and I miss. And I just think about, I could have taken 45 seconds between him landing on the table, me climbing the ropes, me looking out across the arena, all that stuff. I didn’t do that. I thought I was going super slow. [But] rom the moment he gets on the table, I’ve climbed the ropes and crashed through the table in like four-and-a-half seconds, including my time in the air.
“And I just think back to before I went out at SummerSlam, just think back to Hunter, Triple H coming up to me and going, ‘If you think you’re going too fast, just slow down. If you think you’re going too slow, slow down more. And when you’re absolutely positive that you’re going way too slow, slow it way f——— down.’ And it’s such great advice and I didn’t listen to it at all.”
In recent interviews, Amell has expressed that he thinks he could take some of his past experiences as a wrestler, combined with what he has learned through his work on “Heels,” and showcase some improvement compared to his previous outings. Time will tell whether he steps into a ring outside of the Duffy Wrestling League featured on the STARZ series.
