Elgin Shoot Interview
Postby WHG » Thu Oct 23, 2014 9:10 pm
I'm really torn about posting this. First, I love the fact that Elgin has likely been checking this site since the video was released and has seen no commentary about it at all...meaning that nobody on the board bought it or at least felt the need to comment on it.
Secondly, I'm exposing myself as a sucker for buying this...and I'm really not proud that I spent $10 to hear what he had to say. But I know there's some interest in it on the board, so I wanted to post a summary of sorts and also give some of the highlights and information that he brings to light.
Overall impression: Elgin has said on Twitter that he didn't want to come off as angry or bitter. He consciously maintains a very calm tone, seems to have a repetitive agenda (a lot of it is him repeating the same phrases over and over as he answers different questions about his beliefs, attitude and motivations). My opinion is he in fact does come off as angry and bitter just based on what he's saying about the company and the people in it, though. More than that, he comes off as entitled and takes very little responsibility for anything that has happened to him at any point in his career. He also contradicts himself a fair amount.
As for how ROH comes off, I think he believes this is a big bombshell that will make him sympathetic and people will see how horrible they are. Meanwhile, although some mistakes were likely made and promises not kept, I think the company actually comes off much better than you'd expect. In fairness to Elgin, he compliments Koff and Delirious about a lot (but buries Delirious repeatedly for other stuff). In general, though, he's like the guy at work who complains about your company and the whole time you're wondering why they put up with him.
As a shoot interview, its okay. He goes into more detail than I expected, but its not like he has any great or funny stories.
Notes/comments from the interview:
- His issues started in the Cornette Era. He says at one point he was told by someone that the plan was for him to get the belt from Steen, which "I knew was bullshit" (the real plan was for Jay to win it). He "saw through the bullshit" and "was just worried about myself from then on."
- Booking plans are kept hush-hush because of dirt-sheet leaks. His belief (not sure) was that when Jay Briscoe won the belt the first time, their plan all along was to strip him and do a tournament.
- One repetitive theme was taking shots at ROH booking. He disagreed with the idea of Cole turning heel after winning the title (didn't think it made sense
why turn when you just won the title?). He said Cole is really talented for his age and he agreed with giving him the belt, but didn't think they handled things around it very well.
- As a match, he was happy with the 3-way at Final Battle. He thinks that Jay should've taken the pin and start the Cole/Elgin program from there. Said he "was smart enough" to put himself in a spot in that match to get the fans back on his side because he'd been cold because of the booking since his Davey match.
[I knew from comments hes made elsewhere just how incredible he thinks his Davey match was. Its pretty clear the feedback he got from that match made a big impact on how he views himself.]
- His "feelings were hurt" about the fact that they didn't do more for him after the match with Davey. Cornette & Delirious were applauding and bowing to him when he got to the back...that told him he was valuable, but they were reluctant to give him more to show him he was valuable. Said they did finally promise to pay for his work Visa (which he didn't have at that point because neither he nor the company thought they should be the ones to have to pay for it) and give him a raise. He said they promised that on the spot in the back after the match. Time dragged on and they didn't do either of those things & dodged talking to him about it repeatedly. Eventually (Summer of 2012) he threatened to leave to make them follow through. Said they tried to just pay for the Visa ($2,500ish) and not give him the raise, but they eventually caved when he said he wouldnt be at the next TV.
- On follow up, he admitted at that point that he was one of the higher paid guys on the roster already (not the same $ as the top guys, but ahead of where the others he started with were)...and that he had a clause in his contract where he'd get a raise every 6 mos, but he was expecting more based on how he was performing and what they promised him.
- Cornette loved his in-ring work, but Elgin wasn't happy with what they told him to be (not selling
always pushing forward). That got in his head and is the reason he's been no-selling all over the world since. Now feels like he's free to wrestle how he wants and believes he's been better the last month. Said he wanted too much to be what they wanted him to be. Said he wasn't the type of performer that he liked as a kid (Michaels, Steamboat, etc...). [Essentially, he's blaming ROH for everyone's criticism of his work the last couple years.]
- His best promo work wasn't getting out there because they didn't like them. Hed cut a promo and theyd tell him to redo it. Thinks his promo leading up to Jay Briscoe in Toronto was a better example of what he wanted to be because he had stopped caring what other people thought. [Anyone think that one was better than anything else hed done?]
- Was told by the interviewer that people had told him that Elgin often looked miserable being at shows. He admitted that was true, but then said it was only ROH shows that he was miserable at. Cited the lack of clear understanding of the direction for the reason for that. Said he wanted to know where things were going and never had a clear answer to that.
- Didn't like how many times he put his foot in his mouth or looked "like an ass" in promos because he said something (winning the title, etc...) that ended up not being true. [This is really a big contradiction because he's saying that he didn't like that they didn't tell him where they were going, but got pissed when they would tell him and then plans would change. Seems like he's looking for an unrealistic ideal in a wrestling company. Even WWE constantly changes plans, and they dont have the roster & control challenges that ROH does.]
- He pitched the mullet shaving angle in Sept of 2013...they just kept pushing him off that the timing wasn't right. Was glad they finally got to use it before BITW.
- Believes Delirious lied to him about NJPW. A mutual friend (not an ROH guy) of Elgin and Tiger Hitori called Elgin to tell him that Hitori told him he LOVED Cole and Elgin and wanted to use them. This call happened between the Toronto & NJPW shows. Later, Elgin asked Delirious about who was going and he told him he hadn't had a chance to talk to them (NJPW) about who was going over yet. Then 3 days later the list was announced. Elgin sees that as Delirious lying to him because he didnt think there was any way those discussions hadnt already happened.
- Thinks the fact that he'd have had to miss TV (as World Champion) is the reason they didn't let him go to Japan (but theyve never discussed why he wasnt chosen or couldnt go). Said he'd have been fine with it, but didnt like that he was lied to. Regardless, he was very happy for the guys who went and said he was the first to congratulate them because it means so much to him he knows how important it was to them.
- When asked, he admitted to telling ROH that if he didn't get a run with the title, he'd leave. Cited the idea of him "lying to fans" in promos by telling them he was going to win it. Felt like that was hurting both him and ROH if he stayed and never got the title.
- Was told in March 2014 that he was going to win the title in Nashville at the first PPV. Original plan was for him to win at SCOH...but then the NJPW shows came up and it was moved to there (because those would be bigger shows)...then the PPV came up, so they pushed it back to BITW. He was fine with it because that all made sense to him.
- Asked if he had the support of the locker room when he won the title: "It was 40/60, with 60% being not behind me." Said it used to be "us vs. the World" in the old days of ROH, but it's been "us vs. us" basically since he arrived in the locker room. A lot of this stems from him feeling like not enough guys reached out to him while he was stuck in Canada. He'd supported guys through some of their difficult times and doesn't feel like anyone returned the favor. Said Truth Martini, Jimmy Jacobs, and Kyle O'Reilly did reach out to him to check with him, but nobody else (and he knew all of them before). Thinks that maybe they didn't because they thought he was mad about everything that happened, but he perceived it as them seeing it as an open spot for them at the top.
- Oddly interjected some praise for Koff, saying: some people think its talent vs. management in ROH and its really not. Says Joe Koff wants ROH to succeed and be a force in wrestling. Thinks people have the wrong idea about him.
- Said he knew the day before he lost the belt that he was losing because they e-mailed the match to him without a finish. When he asked what the finish was, they said "we'll talk tomorrow." Told him when he showed up at the building that he was dropping it.
- When asked what he thought the reason was that they took the belt off him, he said I know the reason
its because I lost to Trevor Lee in PWG Led into a big discussion on that. Said that while Cole was champion he and Adam were sitting in an office with the booker, who was telling Cole, "You have to be protected as Champion everywhere you go. The only place I don't care about is PWG."
- Hinted strongly at feeling like there was a double standard with him and Cole in general. Said that although "someone" got to wrestle a female while he was Champion, he was told not to wrestle Selezyia around the same time (the inconsistency here is that Cole wrestled Candice in PWG, but I think Elgin was booked to wrestle Selez at AAW, so that actually IS consistent with what he said Delirious told him about PWG being different). He also said that "someone" was allowed to lose the PWG title while being ROH champion and that was apparently fine, but for some reason him losing there wasnt okay.
- Elgin admitted on follow-up that when he won the title he was sat down and told to "keep yourself protected" elsewhere and that PWG was never discussed (he was still going on what he heard about PWG being different during Cole's reign). BOLA was never discussed and neither he nor Delirious asked each other how BOLA was going to go. PWG assumed it was fine because Cole had just lost and never had any issues there.
- During the meeting the day of ASE6, he was with 3 ROH officials and "the person" who told him that PWG was different (Delirious) refused to admit that he had ever said that. That really upset Elgin. [He basically said that he called Delirious out for telling him this and he refused to own up to it in front of Joe Koff. He never addresses the possibility that Delirious legitimately doesnt remember that conversation, which seems likely, or that maybe he took the PWG comment out of context considering its likely that they had other discussions with Cole about how to handle himself as champion.]
- That meeting was the first he head that they were upset with him losing to Lee at BOLA. He had no clue going into that day that they were upset about it.
- One of the best things said during this interview: When asked, he admitted that after that meeting where he found out he was losing he moved his gear from the locker room into the hallway at the venue and changed there because he "felt betrayed." [Hahahahahahahah!]
- He then went into other issues with ROH. Signed a new contract in May. Was told he was allowed to keep any dates that he had booked. Later a date came up and they told him he couldn't work it and he said he had booked in back in Feb and they told him he'd be able to keep those. The response he got was "it's not in writing."
- His contract was "exclusive" similar to what the Briscoes and Cole have where he has to get their approval to work any dates outside of ROH. The contract pays him Monthly instead of show-by-show, with a raise over his previous deal. He was happy with the $ he got. Negotiating that was a long process (from Feb to May) but he said the company was good with him and he was happy at the time.
- Part of the contract was renewing his Visa. He had never gotten his Green Card from marriage because you can't leave the US during the process and he had a work Visa anyway. His plan was to extend the work visa until after the holidays when he'd have a stretch where he had no international bookings.
- Hes really upset that people think the Visa situation was something he screwed up. "Somebody within the company who doesn't have a very high standing and isn't a wrestler made a judgement call to get it out there that I messed up (the visa situation). They also made that same call to tell a lot of the wrestlers that it was on me."
- When asked why he thinks the locker room isnt behind him he said he thinks that a lot of the locker room doesn't see him on "their level" as performers and that he didn't deserve his place. The interviewer told him he thinks he's wrong about that. Elgin said "That may be."
- He talked about being difficult in that he pushed for guys he liked to be added to the roster because he wanted to team to be stronger. Fought to have guys put on the roster (Silas Young before, Trevor Lee & Monster Mafia more recently).
- Regarding rumors as to other reasons the belt was taken off him: doesn't believe the company had any issues with him as a draw (evidenced by the fact that they still want him after all this), said they repeatedly told him the baseball thing wasn't an issue. Thinks all of that is "funny" (although he ranted on how people who had issues with the baseball thing were totally wrong in their thinking).
- Visa situation: He told a long, boring, detailed story of the timeline of his Visa mess. [He thinks it paints ROH as the people at fault, but as an outsider it looks like a big mess that both of them weren't exactly on top of things during. Essentially, they wanted to pay for his Green Card instead of a new Visa. He couldn't apply for one until later because you can't leave the country while that's being processed, so they agreed to extend the Visa. Over the summer they pushed him to start his paperwork and said they were working on the extension. Basically he got stopped at the border, told them the whole story and when they went to look for his Visa extension, they couldn't find it. He believes that the person responsible for messing it up is the same person telling people it was his fault.]
It was a long interview (I listened to it first then decided there was actually too much good detail to post, so I went back and typed this while listening). Ill post a recap of the rest of it when I have a chance, but this was the gist of the first hour plus.
As a preview, the best part of the remainder of the interview is that they asked him what itd take to get him to come back (in Kalamazoo) after he got home. He said he sent an e-mail telling them that his 3 weeks in Canada cost him $32,000 between living expenses and lost bookings
and he expected something to be done to replace that (either cash or for them to ease his contract to let him take other bookings)! The interviewer seemed shocked at that number and Elgin said that, although he was staying with his parents groceries are expensive in Canada (said he spent $1,000 on food & supplements his first day) and he had to join a gym, etc
then he added that he was also rolling in the bookings he missed from the European trip in August that they made him cancel as part of that
but still.
He said they told him they'd work it out, but they wouldn't put anything in writing and that he told them he wouldn't be there unless he had something in writing. They posted the article announcing him, he told them to take it down...they didn't, so he did the "I Quit" twitter thing.
WHG
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