Fresh of WrestleKingdom 9, CBS Radio DC’s Chad Dukes Wrestling Show interviewed Bullet Club member Luke Gallows on our show Wednesday night. Gallows talked at length about a number of topics including: WrestleKingdom 9, being a star in Japan as opposed to America, his tag partner Machine Gun Karl Anderson, his wife Amber O’Neal , his run with Aces & Eights, CM Punk, the recent controversy over the Styles Clash, Finn Balor, and more in an in-depth 25 minute interview.
The following are some interview highlights:
On being a star in Japan:
“In Japan, traditionally, whether you’re a baseball player, a musician, a baseball player, a pro wrestler, which thank god it’s very popular right now, you get kinda special treatment. These sponsors, these businessmen, I guess it’s kind of a status thing for them to take us out. So we get to eat in five-star restaurants all night long, we get to eat as much as we want, drink as much as we want, which is good sometimes, bad others. It’s a change in lifestyle, it really is.
Over there they wanna buy the stuff off our backs. So I literally wear different gear to the ring every single night and then these collectors are waiting at the hotel to buy my stinky tights.”
On the Aces & Eights group:
“As evidenced by my career, I’m a bit of a faction man. That was just a really neat, I really dug the vibe of it. I thought got to be myself a little bit for the first time, which translated into what I think became the Bullet Club success for me and stuff. I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but Mike Knox is probably my very best friend in wrestling, best friend since we laid eyes on each other. He’s my dude and getting to do that and be on TV with him, actually at one point there was talk of making us more of a TV tag team and running us for the tag belts and stuff, which never came to fruition.
It was a great group of guys. Devon, I’m completely fond of him, we became friends. D-Lo Brown, he’s my boy as well. Just the whole thing, Garrett, Wes, no matter what you think of those guys in-ring or otherwise, it was a great group of guys, we had each other’s backs, we were friends outside the ring, and anytime you do that- it’s kinda like at WWE, Mercury, CM Punk, and I as the Straight Edge Society- anytime that you have that with guys, like we have in the Bullet Club now, it translates, people get it. It has a real feeling because it is real.”
On the end of the Straight Edge Society:
“I felt like in 2010 when the Straight Edge Society ended that it was a shame because we had some real momentum. We came into Summer Slam 2010 and whatever mistakes Serena Deeb made, I don’t know, I can’t care to comment on, she got fired and [Joey Mercury] tore his pec in that match we had with Big Show. So it was kinda like the Straight Edge Society imploded in one night, so we never got to finish the storyline which I always thought was a shame.”
On CM Punk’s UFC move:
“The UFC move shocked me. I knew some of the other entertainment stuff he was doing, I knew he was training his ass off, I knew he was a huge fan of it, so I kinda had an inkling. And then he announced it or they announced it, whatever, and I texted him and said, ‘Holy Crap dude, congratulations, I had no idea.’ I just talked to him in Japan, I know he’s training his butt off in Milwaukee and he’s really digging that. I hope for all the best for him.”
On Joey Mercury:
“If there was ever a guy who knew this business from the inside out and could teach it to other people and knew how to convey it, it was Joey. I was in my mid-20s when Straight Edge thing was going, 25, 26 years old. Who better to stand on the ring apron and tag with, who better to second out to a match CM Punk. Joey and I tagged on six or seven overseas tours, we tagged on all the house shows, and I just think the world of both [Joey Mercury & CM Punk] as in-ring performers, as entertainers, and as people.
Getting to be with those guys it was kinda like going to medical school after college or something.”
On Finn Balor:
“He’s a guy who can go, he has a charisma, not so much a charisma but he has mystique. And I think that when mystique’s gone, like now in a lot of cases, that it hurts. But if you look at like a Bray Wyatt, and there’s mystique there, I love him, huge fan of him, he’s a friend of mine, and I love what he’s doing and what they’ve done with him. And I think that Devitt, if they can capture him just right, he’s gonna be able to captivate an audience and be a major league, big fight feel superstar in that company.”
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
