My Mom's Basement - EPISODE 165 - JOEY JANELA

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

AEW's Joey Janela joins Robbie in the Basement ahead of Full Gear to discuss his favorite matches, the worst bumps he's ever taken, the insane rise of GCW - a company he is a pillar of - and more! 3Chi: Use code MMB at checkout to receive 5% off at 3Chi.com Bearbottom: Get $5 off your first order at bearbottom.com/BASEMENT Rothy's: Go to Rothy's.com/BASEMENT to see what the hype is all about Subscribe to My Mom's Basement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIeZ96PqdsJYQ7DFLRx6MHw My Mom's Basement Merchandise: https://store.barstoolsports.com/collections/my-moms-basement Intro Music: “Basement Noise” by All Time Low Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/basement-noise/1499013757?i=1499013968 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/3Aq9W9BBCjsFOQqcYyO6IA?si=d9d0f74cf54a48deYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey, My Mom's Basement listeners. You can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Just stupid boys making basement noise in the basement, noise in the basement. Just stupid boys making basement noise in the basement. Yeah, yeah. Hello and welcome to My Mom's Basement presented by 3C and Barstool Sports. Today I have a special wrestling episode for you. This is an interview with the bad boy joey janela ahead of aew's

full gear pay-per-view i cannot wait for this pay-per-view i am looking forward to it tremendously i've got ufc and aew on the same night got my man max holloway in the main event of the ufc show and then obviously i'm pulling for adam page i everyone is. I think this is one of the best long-term storytelling examples we've seen in forever that we have here, the Kenny Omega, Adam Page story. So I can't wait for what could be the culmination of it on Saturday night. If you're listening to this on release day, it will be tomorrow night on pay-per-view. So look forward to that and look forward to this joey janela interview but first let me tell you about 3g it is the industry leader in delta 8 thc products

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at 3chi.com. Shop for Delta-8 vapes, gummies, tinctures, oils, everything at their website is 5% off with the promo code MMB. Again, 3chi.com. That's the number three, chi.com, promo code MMB. All right, welcome back to my mom's basement. It is Robbie Fox, and I am here with the bad boy himself, Joey Janela. How you doing? What's up, man? I've been trying to do this for a while. Well, we did this years ago.

Did we do this? We did an interview like four years ago. I was looking back. I think it's over four years ago. It was like after the roof bump and we were trying to promote the first spring break. It wasn't in person. It was like, I think it was either a phone call or a Zoom. Oh, wow. I don't even remember. It was a long time ago. Wow. Maybe too many bumps since then. Well, yeah, I know. Every time, we end up in the same place a couple times when I'm pissed drunk and I'm like, all right, he's over here.

I'm like, let's do a drunken interview somewhere. We have been in the same place a couple times. I forget what it was. This Saturday was UFC 268 at the Garden. Yes. The last place, it might have been a concert. I think we were at a concert together. I believe so. I think we were at a concert together. I believe so.

I think so. I think it was like maybe a blank show or something. It was a weird, it was some concert. I forget what it was. But you were at UFC 268 Saturday. I saw you tweeting all about it.

Are you a big UFC fan? I used to be bigger. Yeah. But I do, for some reason, I have like a weird UFC hookup. Like a of them, where I can go to any UFC event. I can just hit people up. If I'm free, go to UFC.

It's pretty sick. That was a sick card on Saturday that you got to see. It was the best one I've ever been to. Yeah, I think it was the best one I've ever been to. That Chandler-Gaethje fight was the best fight I've ever seen in person that reminded me of uh the days of of Hendo yeah having wars yeah around like uh man it was a war it was it was awesome I did an interview with Moxley last week before the card and I was asking him like what he's looking forward to because he's a big MMA fan and he brought up Gaethje right away and he's like I feel like yeah he's like I to because he's a big MMA fan. Oh, yeah, yeah. And he brought up Gaethje right away, and he's like, I feel like – That's his favorite fighter. Yeah, he's like, I feel like Moxley is kind of like the embodiment,

the pro wrestling embodiment of Justin Gaethje. So seeing that fight was like, well, yeah, if you're going for that, that's fucking chaos and madness. I hope he was able to watch it. I wrote a tweet. I said I hope he was able to watch it because that was a sick fight. I know he would have been amped up to watch that one. Yeah. I just hope he was able to watch it because that was a sick fight yeah I know he would have been amped up to watch that one so yeah I just hope he was able to watch it yeah absolutely so like I said this is the second time I've interviewed you the first time was so long

ago I was promoting the first spring break which I went to and I've been to been to the first three spring breaks I don't really yeah yeah yeah I would love Joey Janela's spring break it's like a Wrestlemania weekend I have to hit it. It kind of kicks off the weekend for me. The first one that you ever put on, 2017, was that – did it go smoothly or was that like chaotic or like – it was the first event you promoted, right? Yeah. It absolutely went smoother than we ever thought it would. So –

Because as a fan, it was great. It was like a blast. It was a party. Yeah, it was awesome. It was one of my favorite nights of my life. Yeah. Because I never felt that rewarded after something, just pulling something off like that.

They were offered like a slot, like bread, and it was offered like a midnight slot at the the what is it wrestle con it was a wrestle con it was like the um wrestle yeah yeah yeah yeah deal and they were like how can we make this work and i just did that roof bump i had a lot of buzz on the independence uh i was i was uh were you feuding with leo at that point yet or not yet yeah Yeah, yeah. Yeah, CZW? Yeah, we were. Leo at that point, that was right before he left. But, yeah, we were in the midst of, like, a two-year deal there. But they were like, how can we make this midnight slot work?

They said, well, let's do a Joey Janela party. Yeah. They hit me up about it. I said, let's call it Joey Janela Spring Break. And it just worked. It was like booked for the internet almost, like for wrestling Twitter. You had Glacier, you had Marty Jannetty, you had all of these stars who were like, Dan Severn, yeah. Yeah, we were like, as soon as it was like, let's do it.

Let's hit up Ken Shamrock, I said. I said, let's have Ken Shamrock wrestle Matt Riddle. And so we hit up Shamrock. He wanted like an arm and a leg. So we hit up Dan Severn who didn't want much and didn't want to fly. He wanted to drive from Michigan to. Really? Yeah, he said he refused to fly.

He drove from Michigan to. Orlando, right? Yeah. And it was perfect. And that's kind of the seeds that were planted right there in that match for Bloodsport as well so

the GCW tree kind of stems from that and the roof bump a lot of people I was talking to you before we went on a lot of people think I have like a stake or I'm a booker at GCW or I have like a stake or I'm a booker at GCW

or I have money involved. That's not really the case. I'm just like a pillar of the company, and it's just grown so large now. It's crazy to see the last like four years, what it's become at this point. Like how do you think that happened? Was it the social media stuff? Was it the roster like how does a company because 2015 was GCW's like the rebranding and all of that right how does it it make it this day and age it seems so hard for a new promotion to come out out of

nowhere and and become what it has become we had a rough year last year everyone did pandemic of course but they were consistent and ran still yeah found places to run bi-monthly and stuff and do the social distancing and you had a social distancing match which was hysterical match which uh is is apparently the stuff of lore in japan apparently really suzuki and he's like i know you uh and then he's trying to tell me like something and then he's like uh social distance the social distance match like holy shit this is suzuki telling you that that's so funny he said he loved it and uh so that was like that was like the week that the pandemic kind of just like started engulfing the news. Yeah.

And we all thought we were going to die because there's like clips on Twitter of mass graves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that. In Iraq or something, or Iran. And we're like, wow, this is bad. I think we're all gonna die because we did like a gcw show the week before in philadelphia which was full capacity this is before restrictions and then the restrictions happened the next week so we did the benefit show for indie wrestling yeah we're like how do we do this let's do a social distancing match. How?

So the whole night before, we did – it's like two – it was two days of studio tapings at a bar in Philly. No fans. So the night before, I usually don't. I'm not really an edible guy or a marijuana guy. Really? But I ate a few edibles. Nice. And then just came up with the whole match. Got to the building and then got Jimmy and we just kind of, all right, let's do this.

It's a wild match. It's so much fun to watch. It's on Twitter. You can go watch it. Around YouTube, yeah. It's like, believe it or not, it might be the most viral thing i've ever done because how it was on every news show in japan and talk show and stuff like great sasuke was just sending me clips of the social distancing match i'll like every he would every time he would just send it to

me which is pretty wild insane great sas yeah. Great Sasuke said it to me. Anything on social media, but that was it, man. It was fun, but then that whole year was just bad for everyone. It was bad for me. That was like I just, the year before, I just signed to AEW. I was on such a hot streak with these matches. Some huge ones, yeah. Kenny, Mox.

Yep. We did the Cracker Barrel match. Yeah. TV just started. I had a great match with Kenny on TV as well. Just a normal 10-minute match. And then just that November, my back kind of got jacked up, and I wasn't feeling too good in the ring anymore because I obviously killed myself at the start of AEW pretty bad.

And then the pandemic happened, and then, you know, that was it. Like, I was unmotivated. Like, I'm not an athlete like these guys. I can't go out there without a crowd. I have to have a crowd. I have to have that adrenaline. And so I was just like, all right. So I kind of just, I hate to say it.

I kind of half-assed the whole year because it was like I was unmotivated. I was depressed. I started to eat a lot. I got fatter and progressively worse, and I looked worse and worse. I've had some good matches during the pandemic, but it wasn't, like, pre-pandemic. Now we're getting back to— I was going to say, was it crowds coming back and you're, like, immediately, like, you snap back into it? Yeah, it's like crowds coming back.

I'm under a three-year deal. My contract's up in May. You know, I really have to step it up. And I felt like I have in the last couple months, especially on just having killer matches on Dark. And just the arena's coming back. It really helped me. And I feel like we got something right now with AEW.

So I'm crossing my fingers in hope that things are going in an upward trajectory because the whole pandemic was just, I know for everyone it was brutal, but for me it was the worst. That's tough to hear, yeah. You mentioned all those big matches you had at the beginning of AEW. Do you have a favorite match of all time from AEW that you've been in? Probably me and Mox. Yeah?

Because that was his first match. I wanted, for years, just being in that CZW Philadelphia fan culture, the fans always like, dream match, Joey Janela, Jon Moxley. So when I found out he got released, I went on, or his contract was expiring. Coming to an end, yeah, yeah, yeah. I went on Twitter and I said, I want to wrestle Jon Moxley. Apparently, people over there weren't too happy about the tweet, and they contacted someone and I had to take down the tweet.

I was like, oh, okay, because it might be a little bit tampering issue there so then two weeks later he was gone and they they hit me up they're like we want to do something with you and noxley on pay-per-view and i made a bet I'm like, all right, let's do it. It was just such a surreal moment. Like, just, like, that building, like, people, like, little people know that that's the building that the NWO formed. Yeah, your big WCW guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was like, not only am I wrestling in that building, but I'm wrestling in the main event of a pay-per-view against

Jon Moxley, who has the most buzz right now in the wrestling business at that time. It was surreal. I felt like I was in, when I came out, just the way the lighting was, I felt like I was in some kind of movie.

The fans almost looked CGI to me like this is this is bizarre but it just like also like the greatest picture of my career like when i'm washed up at and and six years old in a wheelchair doing randy the ram signing in bumblefuck new jersey at the convention there's gonna be that eight by ten of me dropping the elbow off the ladder. Of course, yeah. But, you know, that's then, and now we just got to, you know, I got to move on from that, you know. It was a great moment.

It was a great few months in my life, in my career. So I always look back and remember that. remember that yeah folks i want to tell you about bare bottom clothing they are on a mission to make the most comfortable made to last menswear around while giving back to the communities where their clothing is made i mean comfy season is here so you might as well stock your closet with comfort without paying the insane markups you see at other big box brands. This stuff is some of my favorite stuff in my entire wardrobe. I say it all the time, but bare bottom clothing is actually what I travel in, like the sweatpants, the t-shirts, the hoodies even. I love

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Go to barebottomclothing.com slash basement right now. That's B-E-A-R like the animal, bottomclothing.com slash basement and you. That's B E A R like the animal bottomclothing.com slash basement. And you will get $5 off your first order. You mentioned the roof bump. You mentioned some brutal bumps that you took that like hurt your body. What was the worst from perspective of like pain, the immediate pain you felt after a bump? Because there are some crazy ones on Twitter. The roof bump wasn't bad at all, to be honest. That was like, Zandig was very smart. He's a formative construction company, so he was very smart with that bump to put it in the back of a pickup truck because he knew the... The bounce, almost, the give?

The bounce, the suspension of the truck would kind of bounce like a wrestling ring. Yeah. And he was right. Yeah. The worst part of that was obviously the bar wrestling ring. Yeah. And he was right. Yeah. The worst part of that was obviously the barbed wire. You cut your thumb, right? Yeah. Obviously the worst part of it was like the barbed wire in the bottom of the truck

for no reason that no one could see. He haggled in that and the glass flying in the air and like crashing down. Like it shattered and then came back down onto you, right? Yeah, it was like a mouthful of glass. Oh my god. I've taken so many crazy bumps, I can't like... Like the one wing angel onto the chair looked like it was the most painful thing in the world.

Was it? No, the thing with the open chair spots, I know how to like Kenny obviously is a pro, he knows how to put me in. Yeah, yeah. But the when I how to like kenny obviously he's a pro he knows how to put me yeah yeah but the when i flip i do like uh sometimes i i stop doing it because i know in the future i'm going to be feeling it and at the moment it's like you do a front flip off the top rope through the chair oh yeah yeah yeah i just know how to hit them now so it's really it looks gnarly every time it looks crazy i'm pretty but i can't it has to be

something very very stupid it's probably not even a big bump really it's probably something i'm trying to think you've got the big ones that like the barstool account posts constantly because i think someone like gave us the rights to one of those videos once it's that it's you jumping off the football season the field goal right yeah yeah every football season you guys it went up a couple weeks ago and I it was constantly tagged yeah yeah yeah four days but I don't know man this is a hard one trying to think blowing out my knee was probably the worst pain because I do right away. How did you do that? I had a match with Psychosis, the real Psychosis of WCW fame of Mexico.

And it was just a show at Asbury Park. And he was too far on a crosswalk. Convention Center? No, it was at the House of Independence. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The House of Independence where we used to run. And I went for a crossbody, and he kind of was too far, and I had to really gun it. And the floor is covered in beer and concrete, so it's slippery.

So as soon as I landed, I couldn't plant, and my knee just shifted. And you could tell right in the video I landed, I couldn't plant. My knee just shifted. You could tell right in the video. The video is brutal. I knew I was done. I couldn't. The pressure in my leg. It felt like my leg was dislocated at the kneecap. That's probably like, it's not as painful as this thing.

It's just a strange feeling where you know like you're absolutely. You're done, yeah. Like your whole leg goes numb. Like and it feels unstable. It's like one of the worst. That's fucking crazy. All right. Rise of GCW though.

Like we were talking about. More positive things. Like not injuries. It's crazy. And you got a show coming up at the Hammerstein Ballroom. January 23rd. I can't wait. This is my favorite. I've said a show coming up at the Hammerstein Ballroom. January 23rd. I can't wait. This is my favorite, I've said for years, my favorite venue in the world for wrestling.

Like, I've been to some Ring of Honor shows there. I wish I could have gone to the legendary ECW, like, one-night stand show. I wish. Like, those crowds are just something special. Combine that with GCW. Combine that with the momentum, the Moxleys, the Cardonas of the world. This is going to be huge. It's big.

It's big for indie wrestling. It's big for GCW. It's big for everyone that's killed themselves for that company. The promo video that you guys put out was awesome. Perfect. Giancarlo, he's like the absolute WWE. We all know how many people they've been releasing and how people have been saying, like, this person shouldn't have been at the top of the list,

top of the pecking order. He, they should have let him do what he does because he's a he's a genius uh he's like basically he basically came up with or basically he he's responsible for a lot of bad boy he's responsible for a lot of mjf yeah people don't realize that that he's that that smart like with his vignettes and yeah his character did he do your old vignettes and his character stuff. Did he do your old vignettes where you're digging up the VHS tape? That was him. That was him, yeah.

And MJF and Neil Rush. There's a large list of people he's... And it's important to point out there's the names in the wrestling industry that aren't the ones in the ring that are actually building people up and making people stars, helping make them stars. I think that Hammerstein one is probably the best one he's done. If you haven't seen it, it's like must watch on Twitter, Instagram, wherever you could find it. It's just so intense.

You can feel the underdog vibe of the company through it, and that final shot of everyone standing there in the middle of the empty Hammerstein is awesome. It was so cool to be there and film that. And, you know, like, believe it or not, that was filmed within maybe 30 minutes. Oh, yeah? I was like, he knew what he was going to do. 30 minutes, we were out of there.

And he put it together for that weekend. And we all watched it. We all teared up. We're like, this is an amazing powerful promo and you know it's just he's just so good at what he does and uh i'm just glad he's back in gcw and uh he he's he's kind of probably almost responsible also part of it for the recent big boom yeah gcw i'm sure yeah don't think he's i think him and brett came up with a whole cardona uh nick gage thing which has been brilliant the belt and yeah the death match king yeah that's a lot of him so kudos to him and uh

it's gonna pay off big time in January at Hammerstein. I don't know when the tickets are. I asked Brad, I said, can I announce on this when the tickets? He's like, he doesn't even know, but we know it's going to be. I'll be there. I promise you. That's like a must-see for me because I haven't been to a show, a wrestling show at Hammerstein in years.

There hasn't been one for years. I've never been to one ever at Hammerstein. He'll be in the middle of it. I've been to concerts there. I've never been to a wrestling show there so it's a special building for that kind of stuff like it's going to be loud it's going to be rowdy that's going to be like kicking off the year in a big bad way for indie wrestling i just say it's going to be also a challenge at the same time because the commission in new york is so strict. And they have, like, a target on GCW. So, you know, you're going to get the plunder, the chairs, the doors,

the ladders, but obviously no blood, no death match stuff. So, yeah, it's going to be a challenge, but it's going to be an awesome challenge. But I'm sure the crowd is going to ride us through that show effortlessly the whole night. So, it's going to be awesome. yeah awesome yeah absolutely big news in shoes rothy's is now selling men's sneakers and men's driving loafers even more big news they just launched premium merino wool shoes for fall merino wool is nature's perfect material soft comfortable machine washable and sustainable it's available in cool colors and classic styles you'll want to wear everywhere. This is perfect for fall. I've seen these.

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had i asked your favorite before do you have one that points out where you're like that was just a disaster sometimes comedians talk about like one time they bombed you know oh uh when i started i had plenty of awful matches yeah i was a kid but how young did you start actually wrestling? Pretty young, right? 16. Recently, I think during the pandemic, there was a match with me and Sonny Kiss versus Miro and Kip. I think it might have been Miro's debut maybe. Early, yeah. Yeah, it was early.

It was just one of those nights. I think everything was going wrong. Nothing clicked, yeah. Nothing clicked. Everything was going wrong. We knew when we all went back. Is that the worst feeling? No, Miro was like, he's a very positive guy.

So he was like, ah, it's fine. It's whatever. I'm sure he can do it many times. I was just like, damn, we really shit the bed there. We really shit the bed. I'm like, damn it. And before that, me and Sonny were doing tag stuff on the arc. We just started doing our thing.

And, you know, it was clicking. It was clicking, but we were trying to find out. We've never really both been in a tag team, so we're trying to figure out the kinks of doing this tag deal. And we had the match with Brody and Colt on TV, which went pretty well. So they put us with Miro and Kip, and everything went wrong. Just out of position. Like, there was one point where we didn't figure out,

like, Kip is supposed to be on all fours outside. Oh, Kip jumped over the guardrail on me. He landed on his head, hit his head on the concrete. I'm like, on camera, I go, are you okay? Are you okay? Like, you're wiped out. He's wiped out. And then the next spot is i'm supposed to run off his back like poetry motion oh yeah muros uh arms in a cross body and uh the positioning's just not right so i tried to leap off the guard rail and the guard

rail's not connected and i just try i just miss and fall. It was just like, that was like, I was like at that moment, I'm like, I hate fucking Penn. Yeah. I hate it. Yeah. I talked to Moxley about that too. He hated it. He was very like, I don't want to wrestle during the Penn.

And he had some great matches, obviously, but he was like, I'm not into it at all. Some wrestlers were like, yeah, I like the challenge. He was like, nope, I don't like the challenge. I just want fans back. He just, Mosh just, he does his business. That's it. Me, I just, you know, I'm still smoking a lot of cigarettes a day.

That's the bad boy. One of the last of the outlaws that actually smoke cigarettes. We show up in Zubaz the way it is. Yeah, I got travel pants too. For the brand, yeah. You're a good company spokesperson. Yes, great company. The face of the company, yeah.

That's it. Yeah, the pandemic, just like these guys are, AW has like a lot of just freak athlete wrestlers who could do a match in front of no fans for the rest of their career and have just effortlessly do it. I can't. Yeah. But it's just. But you're a different kind of wrestler.

You're a different style. That's why people gravitate towards you, I think, in some ways. It's like you're definitely different than everyone else on the roster in many different ways. For sure. I believe that as well. It's just like it's hard for them to find a spot for me. Yeah. I'm so different from everyone else.

But I think – Do you have like a spot for yourself in your mind like if tony came to you tomorrow and said what do you want to do like of course we're just trying to like so tony tony comes up to me he's like all right now now we got to figure something out i was like for months like we're gonna turn a heel we got a turn a heel we need heels we need heels so I'm like uh okay turn me heel like this sunny kiss tag team obviously we're not doing anything with it right now so just turn me heel obviously I'm I'm business business savvy enough to know how to get over sunny kiss which has worked completely to the the fullest um but he's like let's let's let's turn you heel and then for months i'm like all right let's do it let's do it just never came and then eventually you just pull the trigger uh it was like the last show in jacksonville before we went back on the road. And we did it. It worked.

And so now Tony was like, all right. He loved when me and Penelope were in ACT together. That's why he hired us because we were in ACT. Obviously, in real life, we broke up, and then it just went to hell. We're very cool now. Everything's cool. But he loved that ACT, so he's like, we need to find a new valet for you that

can do the flips. You can distract her after you come in and do it. We had a few people in mind. A lot of just new female, former gymnasts, Olympic gymnasts.

Then And just new female, like former gymnasts, Olympic gymnasts. And then someone said, oh, they have this girl at the Nightmare Factory. She's a pro bodybuilder. She's a former Olympic gymnast. And I was like, all right, let's see the videos. And she looks amazing. And I'm like, okay. She can do all the flips plus she can throw people around i'm like this is this is something that no one's really seen

in the business before so i went right up to tony i showed a video of her doing like a corkscrew moonsault and he's like all right let's bring her to tv this is her fourth week of training wow she's doing corkscrew moonsaults. Yeah, so they're like, where do we do this? I said, you know, let's just do it in the United Center. It's a huge show. I said, let's just have her

come into the United Center and powerbomb someone and do something. People were just kind of like, who is this because no one's ever seen her before yeah but now that's just uh that's clicking uh the act is getting over we just we just need to progress the to the end of the storyline with sunny kiss and then after that we got to figure out i have a spot in my mind. I've talked to Tony about stuff.

But there's so many people in the company right now. There's so many new people coming in. So you have to – I know a lot of people on the internet like, oh, this person's dark, dark, dark. It's like no TV time, you're on dark, you're a jobber. No, there's going to be a lot of people that are going to have to embrace definitely dark and being on a youtube show and whatnot brian danielson's working dark yeah yeah yeah but people are going to have to learn to embrace

that and realize there's only three hours of tv time a week. Yeah. And just to burn it down. And also look at the, like, audience you could reach on YouTube. It's crazy. It's great. It's worldwide. Look at they did the buy-in for the big show recently with Suzuki and Brian on it. That show does millions of views. Yeah.

No, I think it's – I think Dark's great, and I think everyone has stepped it up. Yeah. Since the crowd's come back. There's only a short amount of time before Dynamite or Rampage that we can do the Dark show. It's only like an hour. So you're not having 20-minute matches, but everyone's been embracing it. And, you know, and I've been to shows like WWE shows you go to growing up when they would do Sunday night heat or something before raw starts or velocity before SmackDown, the crowds are hot. They're ready to enjoy wrestling because it's before a show.

It's the first thing that they're saying. So it's like when you watch those, it comes through on YouTube. You could hear the crowds like really getting into these matches on dark and it's awesome. Yeah. The crowds have been awesome. Like I've had two of my best and it's awesome. Yeah, the crowds have been awesome. I've had two of my best matches recently on Dark.

I wrestled Lee Moriarty in Chicago, which was just a great match. And me and Sonny Kiss in Newark, which I politic big time to do the match in Newark because I wanted to see the reaction. In Jersey, right? Yeah, we're both from New Jersey. Yeah. So I wanted to see the polarizing reaction, and I just knew no matter what, whoever was booed, whoever was cheered, that the crowd would be into the match.

Loud into it, yeah. New Jersey people, and they were going crazy. Yeah. Right before he walked through the curtain, the music's hitting. Tony's like, you guys have to shave five minutes off your match. And you're like, fuck. I think we had 11 bell to bell. And he was like, no, you got to shave five minutes off.

So Sonny's like, oh boy. And I was like, all right, we got this. So the match, I think, was like around six minutes. That's crazy because I watched that match, and it doesn't feel like a six-minute match. It's like it's just nonstop action. It's like that Chandler Gaethje round or something, you know? It was wild. It was just nonstop spots and craziness for six minutes straight.

And I think that right there, that might be my favorite moment. Maybe my favorite match at AEW, to be honest. Really? Now that I think about it. Like best moment post-pandemic for you, you think? For sure. Yeah. I just think getting time shaved off.

You know that happens on TV wrestling. On Independence, I can go to any show, GCW, wherever, and they don't give me a time. They say go as long as you want. But AEW, you got to stick to a strict time. Of course, yeah, it's on the schedule. On the schedule because TV is going on. And I think at that point with me and Sonny, I think TV was maybe 25 minutes away. So to get five minutes shaved off is like one of the hardest things, especially if you have all this stuff planned. Like what do you cut?

What do you have to do big time sales? Because we're doing all these crazy, crazy spots. But somehow it just worked. And definitely my favorite moment post-panel, because it's New Jersey Prudential Center. We had that show taken away from us before the pandemic. I know. I was supposed to go to that one. And that was actually the show where me and Sonia were supposed to start tagging.

Oh, really? Yeah, because... It's like full circle then, that you got that match, like in the building you were supposed to start. Yeah, and I got... Kayla did a... We're like, what can we do with her after she did a standing moonsault double stomp with the chair on. Sonny, which got a big reaction, got her over. And Sonny got over with the finish. It was just perfect.

It was absolutely perfect. And now that I think about it, I think it couldn't have gone much better. And for a six-minute match, probably one of the best six-minute matches in the history of wrestling. Hell yeah. Because that's hard to do. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I hope those moments keep rolling.

Joey, thank you for joining me. Hell yeah. I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to that GCW show. Keep an eye on his Twitter, GCW Twitter for when tickets are going on sale and everything. And plug where they find you on social media. You can find me on

no, you won't find me on the Barstool Instagram account because they never tag me. I'll get you tagged next time. Next time. I think this is like the third video, fourth video of mine. But the people that posted just get sent videos from the crowd and the people in the crowd need to be like this is joey janelle i'll message you you know that's how you know that's how i get

the girls slipping the dms of course of course yeah y'all yes see me on barstool yeah yeah yeah the bad boy joey janelle on instagram and it Janela Baby, like a little tiny infant baby, on Twitter. And you can find me on OnlyFans. No, you can't. Not yet. Not until AEW doesn't renew my contract, and I'm like, oh, man, I need money. Yeah, and then the OnlyFans Janela videos will come out. You know, I can't.

I never say never, but not yet, but stay tuned. But, yeah, that's where you can find me. And buy those Hammerstein tickets. Absolutely. I'll be there. I'll be there. You can see me there.