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Josh Alexander Is A Free Agent! TNA, 5 Star Matches, Will Ospreay, Breaking His Neck, C4 Piledriver
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Josh Alexander (@Walking_Weapon) is a professional wrestler currently signed to TNA Wrestling. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to talk about his decision to become a free agent in February, where he might sign next, his feud with Moose that featured a very short title reign, being the longest reigning TNA World Champion in history, his 5-star TNA match against Will Ospreay, nearly stepping away from wrestling altogether after suffering a broken neck and more!
Quote I'm thinking about: "You can do anything, but not everything. Focus."
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"February 15 I’ll be a free agent. I mean, TNA announced they extended me, picked up my year extension on February 14 last year. So yeah, heading into free agency for the first time. [I’m] equal parts nervous, equal parts excited. Obviously, there's the one end of the spectrum where you're like, nothing might come of this. You have to be realistic. I have kids, I have a wife, I have a house I pay for and stuff like that. I can just do wrestling because I love it, because that's all I've ever really done. That's what kind of what's led me through this business the entire time, just getting fulfillment out of it is the most important part to me. As long as I get to do it at some level, I'm happy. I do indies, still to this day, where get tons of fulfillment, very happy to do it. And that might be it. I might just be doing Indies. Might be back doing construction to feed my family and stuff like that. But every so often you gotta bet on yourself. Five years ago it was Santana, one of my very good friends, and he was finishing up with TNA, at the time Impact Wrestling, we had an indie date, and he actually debuted the next night, but I didn't know that. He never told me anything like that. So we're just chilling out of the hotel. It's just like, what made you want to leave or really look at it as an option because he's very happy at Impact, they were very successful, obviously. And he was like, we just didn't know what more we could do. We've held these Tag Team Championships this many times. We've had this many amazing matches with this tag team and this tag team. It's just like, every once in a while you got to think about what's coming next and what's going to excite you. Because he kind of alluded to the fact that he hadn't been excited in quite some time. And I was just like, man, that really hits. Because now I'm thinking about my own thing. I'm just like, I've done so much in TNA over the six years. I'm very grateful for it. Because opportunities are the one thing wrestlers need, and TNA has given me tons of countless opportunities to prove myself and show what I can do, but I've also done everything and worked with the bulk of the talent that's in that company right now. So it's just all about what's going to get me excited beyond this point?"
"That's the big question mark because I don't know what the next step is. I've been ragged on in the past for saying I never had the dream of main eventing WrestleMania. And I know Hunter himself has had the quote being like, if you don't want to be the top guy here, then you're in the wrong business. It's not that I don't want to be the top guy, or don't think I have the ability to be the top guy or anything like that, it was just never my childhood dream. Because I honestly never thought anything that I'm doing or have done was even possible. So this is all this amazing trip I've been on the entire time, and it's just been setting little goals along the way, like you said. I want to win this Ontario indie promotions World Championship too. I want to get paid a certain amount to wrestle too. I want that contract to kind of validate all this work and all this travel. Running cars into the ground for little and no money to drive to Chicago and back, and one night make it back for work the next day and stuff like that, and then you achieve that contract, and all this other stuff I've been able to do. Now I'm sitting here going, what could I possibly do next that's going to be the next step, and it's just like, I need to grow my name. I feel like I've established myself as a top guy in TNA, and whatever might be next after that. I mean, I'll find out, and then I'll set those other goals."
"I'm looking at everywhere right now, like. Both my sons are wrestling nuts, especially my six year old. So, Monday is Raw, Tuesday is NXT, Wednesday is Dynamite, Thursday is Impact. I'm watching everything with my kids all week long, which is awesome, because I get to share this passion with them, but at the same time I'm watching the product, looking at NXT being like, man me and Ethan could tag up and we can face that tag team, that'd be awesome. I'd really love to have a match with Pete Dunne or Gunther, the list goes on, Then you watch Dynamite, and I'm just like, man, I've torn it up with Will and Takeshita in the past, I would sure love to do that on a bigger stage. And one bucket list thing I might have, a wrestler that's stil out there wrestling that I would really love to get a chance to wrestle is Edge. He's in AEW, you know what I mean? And there's Japan, Shingo is the one guy on my bucket list, this is doable. I'm gonna make this happen. Him and Ishii were neck and neck, and I made the Ishii match happen. Shingo is the other one. So I just look at the landscape of it, where I can go and where the talent is I want to work with everybody's kind of stacked, roster-wise. To be able to tell stories and stuff like that with these people, the options are all open."
"Probably just personal fulfillment and a bunch of things go into that. Like, I love wrestling. I love the actual act of wrestling. You give me 20 minutes on TV or pay-per-view, I'll go out there and I'll do everything I can to make magic happen. So where the opportunities come, that's probably the most important part. Obviously money plays a factor. Like I said, two sons, a wife. I need to upgrade where we're living, because my kids are only getting bigger and more crazy."
"I remember the phone conversation, and as I was speaking I was like, Oh, this all sounds great. Yeah, no problem. Cool. All this stuff. And you hang up the phone, part of me was like, Damn, I really wish, it wasn't like this, because I think I can do some really good stuff, but I didn't see the forest from the trees."
"I would be lying if I said there wasn't a small part of me that was just like, man it'd be cool if you didn't do the Moose thing and I could just show what I can do, because you never know if that's going to come back to. I didn't know that I was going to go on to beat Moose at Rebellion six or seven months later. I'm sure management kind of had an idea to see how it would get over. But anything can happen in wrestling, I could have gotten hurt, Moose could have gotten hurt, and then that match would never have happened. Or anything could have happened that didn't make it transpire. But luckily, everything does happen for a reason, and we got there eventually. I remember the day I got to my hotel room in Sam's Town, and I checked Twitter and people are posting clips of the match and saying all these great things, and then they're just hammering TNA for this terrible booking decision. ‘We're back to the Vince Russo era’, all this stuff, and I'm just reading just like this is kind of nice, because I guess they wanted me to be champion."
"I don't think I was told that exactly, but it was kind of like, we're gonna see where this goes. Because I think it was the next day they were like, you get Suzuki the next day, and then it's gonna be Jonah, and then it's gonna be… They laid out six months of me working with monsters to try to get me over and I was just like, cool. They never said, really 100% we're getting back to Moose. But it was probably two, three months into that, I think after the Jonah match at Hard to Kill, they were like, We're totally doing you and Moose, probably at Rebellion. I took three Tsunamis and three sentons and spit up blood, just like you've seen Seth Rollins doing on Raw recently."
"It kills me every day. I wish I could have lost that title so bad."
"I think there was a good chance Steve Maclin was gonna take it at Rebellion, which was like two weeks or three weeks after I tore my tricep. I think, I think it would have ended up like three days short of a year."
"Somewhat. When I first found out, he was [gone] I teared up. I'm not gonna lie, I was thinking about these last six or five years at the time I had in TNA and everything along the way. When I started, having zero relationship with him other than he was the guy that got me a visa was giving me this opportunity to this point where we developed this relationship of trust, and he coached me along and gave me so much help and put me with the right people to make sure that I was leveling up like my skills along the way from storytelling and promos to in ring, wrestling and stuff like that. Just putting me with these certain people. He didn't have to, but he knew it would benefit me, and then leaving, we ride or die for this guy. The entire locker room, especially with the rebranding of TNA thing happening at the end of BFG, and then it was like the debut of TNA, we were riding high. We just sold out the Palms. These shows were insane. Then it felt like the rug was just pulled out from under you, right? So it's like, how do you react to that? How do you feel about the relationship we built? I was just like I'm losing a mentor, and that sucks, but it's also the wrestling business. So I can't say it's 100% the reason why I'm thinking about free agency, I would have thought of free agency regardless. Scott, when we negotiated my three-year deal that I signed to keep me there up until this February, he told me he was just like, you're either going to be worth so much I can't keep you at the end of this, or I'm going to make sure you get paid to stay here. But you're going to be worth much more, because I know what you're capable of. And that was kind of like the thing we sat on when I signed that deal."
"It's a testament to him, and it's the same thing to a lesser extent with stuff I've been able to do, because people have been like, that was that guy's best match I've ever seen, blah blah. And it's just like, you have to cater to people's strengths. When me and Will are putting the match together, we're on the same wavelength with a lot of stuff, and the realism thing, all this other stuff, and just his formula for how he thinks of wrestling, it neurotic the proper word? He's so like just devil in the details on all this little stuff. But it makes a difference, and it helps when you have this body of work that has gotten you over with the fans, so they're reacting the way they are, because at the end of the day, we are out there for the fans, the more loud and into the match the fans are, the better our match is. You could have the best wrestling match in the world, if nobody's making a peep it ain't that good. To me, that's the measuring stick for wrestling."
"Yeah, I tried to play it off like it wasn't that tough of a decision to make, that I was completely fulfilled with everything, because that's kind of the mindset you have to put yourself in when this might be your reality for the rest of your life. I didn't want to have regrets. The problem being when I came into surgery and he told me I could still wrestle, that's when all the regrets flooded in, and I was just like, You know what? I didn't work hard enough. I got by on my God-given ability and my aptitude for pro wrestling. I wasn't dieting, I wasn't working out the best I could. I wasn't putting the time into the other things that would make me an elite-level wrestler, to a point where I could fit in with the people I was working with. I would work with the Roderick Strongs of the world and these people, and everybody would know, just by the eye test that they're the better wrestler. They just look like a more complete product. I was fine being a big fish in a small pond, and when I came back from my neck surgery after writing that article and stuff like that, that's when all the regrets seeped in. I was just like, I'm not gonna have any regrets this time."
"I don't think I'd be anywhere near where I'm at right now as a 37-year-old man that owns a house and has two kids that make sure that his kids are happy, safe, and all this stuff at all times. I wouldn't have fallen into drinking or addiction, because I've always just learned from my mistakes and my parents and family members that fell into that along the way. I have two step brothers who are now both dead from drugs and alcohol, they went that direction. I find that people either gravitate to going the same way, or they go the opposite. I was lucky that I ran away from it, but without wrestling, I wouldn't have had that work ethic that made me kind of be able to survive over these past like 19 years since I was 18."
"No [I didn’t know about the song]. So I had been ripping apart Joe on Twitter pretty heavy, just trolling him, because I'm the wrestler’s wrestler guy, right? So I'm just like this guy's the complete opposite of me. I'm just going to play into this and lean into it. So making fun of him. He puts up a thing saying NXT has been great, they have me down to the Performance Center training every day. I'm like, You need more training, blah, blah, whatever. And we go into that TVs, and it's before the TVs/ I go up to him and go, so what do you got? And he goes, I don't know. I kind of looked at you, and I was just like, what do I really make fun of him about? There's not much. And I go, Oh, you'll find something, dude, don't worry. I watched it live, I didn't want to know because I wanted to be out there reacting on the spot. With my promos and stuff like that, I find if it's just very off the cuff, rather than predetermined and premeditated, I'm way better at delivery and stuff like that. It's more natural. People enjoy it more. So I watched it live, and I'm just like, holding back like this son of a bitch. [You kept a straight face] Yeah, it was tough. I was biting my lip pretty hard, Kurt Angle from Wish, and that's the line right there. Man, you can do the Walter White thing all day long. That's fine."
"I mean, unless TNA with their WWE relationship work something out."
"Health, family and opportunities."
