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Johnny TV & Taya Valkyrie on AEW, Being Married In Wrestling, Viral Moments, Lucha Underground
John Hennigan (@therealmorrison) & Taya Valkyrie (@thetayavalkyrie) are professional wrestlers signed to AEW. John is also known by his ring name Johnny TV in AEW as well as John Morrison, Johnny Nitro, Johnny Impact, Johnny Mundo and others. They join Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to talk about the season finale of their show "Johnny Loves Taya" on the AEW YouTube channel, how they pitched the original idea to Tony Khan, signing with AEW, their memories of working in Lucha Underground, their matches against each other, how Johnny came up with his move Starship Pain, the iconic ladder moonsault at WrestleMania 24, Joey Mercury's brutal ladder accident, whether they would wrestle each other again and much more!
Watch "Johnny Loves Taya" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6Lp7UyDzXA&list=PLILTWWX_AIJTbkLzCpEnHudFu1HZuTIvT
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Johnny TV: “This is a three-person collaboration. A friend of ours Justin Donaldson has been shooting, directing, editing, and supervising posts doing so much work, but we collaborate together on the stories and say, after we leave here, we have one day to finish all that we need for episode 10 It’s mostly done.”
Taya Valkyrie: “Yeah, so we’re gonna do some professional shoots and some different things later today. But yeah, it’s never ending. But we’re almost done, the season finale is coming out. And it’s just been like so much work and a labour of love. I just feel like, we are so much more layered than just pro wrestlers, and it’s been an opportunity for us to showcase how creative and how different we can be than some other pro wrestlers or different stories that you see about couples and stuff like that.”
Johnny TV: “Do you know any other pro wrestlers who would buy a skateboard, cut it in half, put on the trucks and then ratchet a llama on a stick to it so they could ride it down a hill.”
Taya: “First of all, it’s not a reality show. It’s romcom scripted. Fully scripted. I think that when we came up with the idea, it was because we were finally getting put together in AEW. And we were trying to find a way to introduce us again to that audience because even though a lot of people might know us from Lucha Underground, from Impact, from AAA, from everything else we’ve done, we are very aware that like a lot of the AEW audience might have to be reintroduced to us or like get to know us again.”
Johnny TV: “The beauty of it is because it lives online you have the time and creative autonomy to put out what you want. If it’s a segment on Dynamite, Collision, Rampage, or something like that, there’s not enough time and there’s not enough like real estate on those shows. So if you really want to get into the nitty gritty of our relationship, and also it’s heightened because we are nuts.”
Taya: “We really are such creative perfectionists and we both have so many ideas. So we wanted to make sure that whatever we were putting out there is genuine to us. And makes sense and is funny and different and makes people think. Whenever you’re putting your art out there for the world to see, there’s gonna be people that get it and there’s gonna be people that don’t get it. But we just were very competent, and the concept and everything and like we started shooting it in November But we shot the finale in February, like, you know, it’s been a neverending labour of love.”
Taya: “I think it’s really helped to remind people of who we are, establish us again as characters together, I think it positively influenced the way that people perceive us when we were doing our angle with Dalton Castle and everything like that. And moving forward, we hope to be able to create a second season and we hope to continue doing this because we’ve added a lot of fun.”
Johnny TV: “I think that’s the main thing, it’s really fun for us to do we get to do it together. It’s like, for work, technically. But it’s a really fun way to spend time together.”
Taya: “We hope that, ideally, if the network wants to give us a 30-minute sitcom, that’d be great. I’m gonna reach for the stars here.”
Johnny TV: “I would agree, and I think that Taya is an extremely natural actor. Her process and my process are so different. She just nails it on the first day. And then I want the script overnight, and I want to read it and make notes and have like little motivations and secrets and all that.”
Taya: “But that’s how we are with promos, too. But also to be fair, I know who Taya is better than anybody else. So when I’m being Taya on the show or being Taya in a promo backstage or whatever it is, I know exactly how I want to be in that moment. And if I was trying a different character, maybe it would be different. But yeah, I feel like I just am able to, even though Taya on Johnny loves Taya, and Taya in a promo about The Boys being eaten by bears with Dalton Castle are completely different versions of me. They’re still the same. If that makes sense. I don’t know.”
Taya: “I want people to just have fun with it and not overthink it and not, try to analyse it because it is that. It’s campy. It’s John and I, it’s our characters.”
Johnny TV: “I think based on the fact that we really care about each other. I mean, really, obviously, but in the show the two characters really care about each other. And if you’re watching the show, and you can tell that the two characters just hate each other. It’s not fun to watch.”
Johnny TV: “I think because Johnny Elite, The Elite is a group already this established. And I think Johnny Elite was like, Tony’s first idea. And then when I came back, and I’m not signed full time. It doesn’t make full sense to have a Johnny Elite and a group called The Elite. Hence Johnny TV. Like we mentioned last time TV is perfect because it’s ambiguous. It could stand for anything.”
Johnny TV: “I kind of like this fake name thing because it’s almost like I’m somewhere else in the ring. Whereas John Hennigan, I could play that, but it wouldn’t necessarily have to be me just like an actor playing a role in a movie. But the Johnny TV thing just spurs a whole bunch of ideas. Like what if I suddenly come out of the TV? What if that TV is off and suddenly it comes on and I am cutting a promo? There’s all kinds of just fun like puns and things that go along with Johnny TV.”
Johnny TV: “He does not want to have a bad wrestling match. Because he really respects and is a fan of the business. And he’s got all that entertainment background so he knows how to entertain. To me, I think he’s the most high profile humble and deserving star, celebrity guest that wrestling has had.”
Johnny TV: “So basically, like my finish originally was a corkscrew off the top. And even in my 20s It started just taking a lot out of me like, that’s a lot of impact on your knees, your elbows. And then I realised I could hit like RVD’s split leg with a twist. And it looks cool because it’s fast. But if you think about like, you’re basically three to four feet lower. And that’s much less like speed and force on the landing. I came up with basically to save my knees.”
Johnny TV: “If you watch that clip close, we both took the ladder. I’m a little taller than Joey. And he was leaned over and the ladder hit me on the chin. And I went out one side of the ring and he went up this way. I didn’t see what happened to him. I thought my jaw was broken. I’d never been hit that hard in my life. And I was on the floor holding my jaw. And just like quietly I’m trying to decide if I was hurt or injured. If you are injured, then you’re like, done match over. If you’re hurt, you’re like, I can go, I can finish this. So a minute or two goes by, it’s almost time for me and Joey had run back in the ring. And I crawled over and I was like, where’s Joey? And I looked up the ramp and just saw this trail of blood. And like, like the trainer’s escorting him out and thinking to myself, like, oh, we have a lot of stuff left. And then I just kind of ran in and tried to do my best to do what we’re both supposed to do as a tag team by myself. And then, man, that night was rough. Like we were in the hospital about six hours. He stitched his cartilage. They reset his bone, his orbital, and then they stitched his skin on top of his stitched cartilage Yeah. I think that’s the gnarliest ladder accident I’ve seen to this day.”
Taya: “I mean, I’ve been very lucky in my 13, 14 years of wrestling like that knock on wood. Having my nose broken sucked. I mean, I’ve been kicked and dropped and all sorts of things like, you know, especially like some people aren’t there to catch you when you’re diving to the outside. I’ve had several of those. I’ve had several you know, different people kick me in the head that weren’t supposed to kick me like that. I’ve been powered bombed multiple times by Brian Cage that sucked.”
Johnny TV: “In AEW it’s tricky, because they’re not big on inter-gender violence. I’d love to beat the crap out Taya [laughs]. Because, you know, treating each other equally, to punch each other and kick each other in the face.”
Taya: “We’ve done it before. We’ve had two matches against each other. We’ve also tagged together against each other. We’re talking about performance, or this is not Come on, guys. Yeah, like this is wrestling. I mean, he’s the best wrestler in the world in my opinion. And of course, I want to wrestle the best wrestler in the world. So I would love to have a match against him.”
Taya: “Our marriage, optimism and family.”
Johnny TV: “Daddy’s little boy, Mommy’s boy Presley and The first lady of slam town.”
