"Simon Diamond" Pat Kenney, Missy Hyatt, & Jimmy Hart

Submitted By James Walsh on 12/02/05

First, rejoice and celebrate the Christmas season with your friend James. Then, welcome some guests to the party as your friend bring you "The Mouth of the South" Jimmy Hart, "The First Lady of Wrestling" Missy Hyatt, and "Simon Diamond" Pat Kenny in brand new interviews recorded exclusively for this Christmas special! Be it politically incorrect or not, TII wishes all our listeners a Merry Christmas with this free show that you can download and listen to now at www.theinteractiveinterview.com. :: Listen in Streaming Media :: Download to Desktop NOTE: This and all interviews are in Real Audio format. If you do not have a Real Player, you can download one free by clicking here. It's free and is a relatively small download. JIMMY HART, MISSY HYATT, & "SIMON DIAMOND" PAT KENNEY -- The show opens with a little Christmas Eve/ Sarajevo by the Trans Siberian Orchestra. Sting leads in the "Mouth of the South" Jimmy Hart! -- Jimmy is doing fantastic. He is excited about the release of his book "Mouth of the South, The Jimmy Hart Story" which you can buy off Amazon.com by going to this address. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1550225952/qid=1103878556/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/102-0995065-3764904. -- In addition to Jimmy's book, there is a film in the works that will feature footage of Jimmy then and now and will feature people like Andy Kaufman and Hulk Hogan as well. James mentions that this is a good concept and that Jake Roberts was planning on doing something along those lines instead of a book because he feels nobody can tell the story of his life in text the way he can in words. -- Jimmy says he loves being with TNA. He praises Jerry Jarrett as one of his first wrestling bosses. Jimmy mentions how glad he is to see TNA get on Fox Sports Net and mentions that he was part of bringing TNA to Fox and to Universal Studios at Sound Stage 21. -- The TNA "Impact Zone" is not the same venue that WCW used for their World Wide tapings. WCW used Sound Stage 22 and TNA is at Sound Stage 21. But, Jimmy says they are very similar. -- "I'm not at the gorilla or in the tuck in the first place! So, that is what was so bizarre," said Jimmy when asked about the "Macho Man" Randy Savage demands of Jimmy not being in either of the above mentioned places during any of his appearances. Jimmy says the whole thing became laughable and the guys backstage made jokes when Jimmy would walk by saying, "We have to put in our contracts that Jimmy can't be in the truck or on the head sets." And, Jimmy also feels it is laughable because Randy ended up leaving the company a week later. -- Jimmy says you are judged by the company you keep and you tend to stand by your friends and be on their side in an argument with someone else. Well, Jimmy is friends with both Hulk and Randy so he was caught in the middle. -- Jimmy says the confrontation between Hulk and Randy backstage at Victory Road was not at all heated or violent. He feels Hogan doesn't have enough time in a day to get involved in a physical or intense confrontation. -- Jimmy says his music career was somewhat successful as he was a part of the Gentrys but mentions that he'd never have been involved in professional wrestling if his music career was extremely successful. But, he had a lot of fun doing the music for wrestling and goes on to mention "Sexy Boy," the Shawn Michaels theme as one of his favorite works. -- Jimmy is stepping back into the ring on December 26 for Memphis Wrestling as he teams with Jerry Lawler one last time to face Cory Maclin and the WWE's Eugene. You can watch a replay of this event by going to Jerry Lawler's web site, www.KingLawler.com. -- Jimmy is going to release a home video collection of the XWF shows they ran in late 2001 mixed with some backstage footage and such so keep an eye out for that in the near future. Also, check out Jimmy's book in book stores everywhere and at Amazon.com! -- The show rolls along as "Police Stop My Car," a spoof of "Felis Navidad" is played. Hey, we promised you a Christmas Jam, did we not? -- Missy Hyatt is then welcomed to the show. She quickly mentions that it is not only Christmas time but it just was Hanukkah time. James apologizes for being "politically incorrect." -- James mentions that the new web site, www.MissyHyattandFrancineTV.com , is finally up and running. Missy laughs and says not to say "finally." Missy said they felt they needed to find the right guy to do the site and not just anybody. James agrees saying, "It has to be perfect, yes?" -- Missy feels males will find the pictures hot and females will enjoy the site also by checking out the videos. She feels the videos are a lot of fun because now it is Francine and her being themselves and goofing off backstage at shows. She also mentions that she sneaks up and has video of Francine going to the bathroom and when she just woke up in the morning. She feels the video section allows people to see them in a light they've never seen before. -- Missy is loving what she is doing with the Funks for Bang TV. She says fans can check out info about Bang TV by going to www.Dory-Funk.com. -- Missy has not seen the "Rise and Fall of ECW" release. James mentions being surprised that Francine is not even mentioned in the release. Missy seems surprised to hear this and says, "Francine IS the Queen of Extreme." -- Missy says the real rise of ECW came from Eastern Championship Wrestling and the mind behind it, Eddie Gilbert. She says it was Eddie and Terry who brought hardcore wrestling from Japan to the United States. -- As for the fall of ECW, "it was Paul who killed it." James seems surprised that Missy said this and asks if she is going on record as saying this. Missy says she will is going on record saying this because Paul let everybody down in order to go work for the WWE which has always been his "wet dream." -- "He sacrificed everybody. Everybody's job, the whole company just to get a space on WWE TV. I love Paul E. to death but, he did." -- Missy says she considers Paul like a little brother. She mentions begging Eddie to let Paul to come and work for him. From there he followed them to WCW and then the whole ECW situation went down. -- "The company may have gone bankrupt but Paul E. didn't." She feels Paul wrote checks for himself but not for Sabu or others. -- Missy once again plugs the site and mentions a new feature. Monday nights at 11 p.m. you can chat live with Francine on the site and on Sunday afternoon, you can chat with Missy as well. Check out www.MissyHyattandFrancineTV.com. I've been there, seen it, and trust me. It is worth the small entrance fee! -- To be politically correct, James and Dan spin Adam Sandler's "Hanukkah Song." -- "Simon Diamond" Pat Kenney joins James and Daniel next. -- Pat felt Turning Point was a home run. He feels at this important stage of TNA, they need to hit home runs all the time. -- His match at Turning Point, himself and Johnny B. Badd against The New York Connection, went well in Pat's opinion. He does say, though, that it was not built up very much. James then asks if it was supposed to be a 6-person-tag as some reported and he said he heard that rumor but it was always presented to him as a tag. -- As for the main event "Six Sides of Steel" match, Pat was amazed by the match. Watching the moves they did, all he could say was "not me!" -- Pat dislocated his shoulder 3 times in the span of 3 years while he was playing college sports. Back then, the warthogs surgery wasn't as advanced as it is now. So, through the effects of those injuries, his college baseball days were over. -- Pat then tells the story of how he got involved in wrestling through a contact at Pepsi Cola. He explains how he has always been a big wrestling fan so he gave it a shot. His trainer told him to prepare for life after wrestling so he finished college and then sank his teeth into being a professional wrestler. -- Pat talks at length about getting in the business and working for Jim Ketner and ECWA which lead to PCW. He mentions the PCW crew was an impressive bunch with Reckless Youth, Billy Kidman, Crowbar, Ace Darling, Edge, Christian, and a collection of other young stars that went on to hit it big. -- Early in ECW, Pat worked with Dick Hurts in an angle he enjoyed. The night he was to work with Tommy Dreamer at a house show, which is known to b a test to see if you will get a push, Dick "had a problem." So, Dick tearing up the locker room certainly didn't help him and as such, Tommy gave Pat two options. Either a singles match with Swinger or teaming with Swinger against two guys Dusty Rhodes is training. Pat chose the latter because he knew Dusty Rhodes would critique it and he valued Dusty's opinion and loved one of Dusty's rivals, Tully Blanchard. "It just clicked," said Pat and now he still considers Swinger one of his best friends in the business. He considers himself lucky to have made such good friends in the business. -- Pat feels the Rise and fall of ECW is perhaps the best WWE home video release in years. He feels it is fairly accurate but they left a few things out. -- Pat feels there were a few reasons for the fall of ECW. For one, TNN which goes without saying. The other reason is Paul stopped creating new stars. He feels that is because Paul is a very "hands on" person and didn't want to delegate authority. So, when ECW had TNN, they also had the Hardcore TV in many major markets. Paul found himself having to handle 2 hours of TV a week and was a "control freak" which hurt the creative process. -- Pat feels Paul brought a lot of stars to America. He mentions Benoit, Guerrero, Taz, and several others that Paul introduced to America and made valuable stars. He goes on to say that wrestling is a star oriented business and you need to find the guys who will get ratings, sell merchandise, and accumulate buy rates. So, as Taz, Raven, The Sandman, The Dudley Boys, and others left the company, Paul didn't build new stars to take their place. The luxury that sports teams has, in Pat's opinion, is the fact that the fans discover the next big star by team loyalty. He mentions a line of stars from the Yankees though the years as to the chain of stars that followed thanks to the franchise loyalty. Wrestling, though, doesn't have that to rely upon and as such new stars must be created. James mentions how after Hogan, Vince made Bret. After Bret, Vince made Stone Cold, and so forth. Pat agrees. -- The show then runs to a brief commercial break. The show returns to a twisted Christmas parody of "Holly Jolly Christmas" called "Horny Porny Christmas." -- Still with "Simon Diamond" Pat Kenney, Daniel asks his thoughts on the short-lived MECW promotion run by John Collins and why it failed. In a word, "money" is Pat's answer. He goes on to explain how wrestling is not an overnight business and mentions the need for the same stars we discussed above. Well, you have to pay to hire those stars plus pay for the TV production and the next thing you know, you're losing money rapidly. -- Pat thought the XWF would have worked. He feels the production was off the charts and that if the backers had stayed with it, it would have had stayed with it, the XWF would have had legs. He then mentions why the backers back out of wrestling promotions so quickly. Making up numbers, Pat says if you spend $1,000,000 on 2 days of TV tapings and you sell $4,000 in merchandise, backers are going to look at the fact that you're $996,000 in the hole and tell you, as James put it, to "take a hike." Pat says it takes years of work to make a wrestling company profitable and points at Vince McMahon as the perfect example of someone had to borrow to the hills to make his money but now that he has, he's a billionaire. -- Financial backing is also why MLW didn't work. -- Pat loved working for MLW, though. He loved the "Extreme Horsemen" angle. As a matter of fact, Pat was told by Paul Heyman that they were going to do a Horsemen style angle with him, Corino, and C. W. Anderson when he initially signed with ECW. So, seeing it come to pass in MLW was a lot of fun for him and he also enjoyed breaking out of that "comedy" character and getting an edge while in MLW. -- The negatives of MLW, in Daniel, James, and Pat's minds, was it looked entirely too much like ECW. Pat said he said the day ECW closed to let it rest in peace. -- James mentions how well he feels the split between "Simon & Swinger" should have been received by the live audience and how the "redneck audience" ruined it by chanting ICP. Pat says he feels it was disheartening but does not blame the regular TNA crowd for it. He says the ICP fans were taking over the Asylum and as such, they only wanted to see ICP. Pat says that was an attempt toreach over to other types of media to attract the ICP audience and turn them into wrestling fans. Again, star oriented business. -- James compares the ICP invasion of the Asylum to if Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley decided to lace up the boots. Simon jumps in by saying if that were to happen, you wouldn't even be able to get near the Asylum because the KISS Army would flood the place. James mentions being a proud member of the KISS Army and Pat says he is as well. He tells a story of buying a 3 album pack of KISS with Hotter than Hell and 2 other albums in there as a kid and it came with a big KISS Army logo sticker which went immediately on his wall and a patch. Pat says he did not have a jean jacket back then but he had a Vikings jacket. So, he had his mom patch the KISS Army logo patch on the arm of the Vikings jacket. James chimes in by saying he struts around town in a jean jacket with all 4 KISS faces on it and the KISS Army logo on the arm as well. Pat laughs and says every day he works out, he wears an Ace Frehley T shirt. -- Daniel puts the conversation back to wrestling and asks about the name change from Simon Diamond to Pat Kenny. Pat simply says, "it's not working." He feels the best way for it to have worked is if they really went all out and pushed the new name heavily which obviously was not going to happen. He mentions doing a fan fest before the pay per view and having 9 out of 10 people ask him to sign their autograph "Simon Diamond." -- Daniel asks what Simon would do if he was booker. Pat says he'd take himself off of TV or at least out of the active roster because bookers that are active either push themselves too hard or too lightly. As for his name, he'd find a way to go back to being Simon Diamond if possible. -- We then roll out with some word associations including Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Vince McMahon, Jasmin St. Claire, The Extreme Horsemen, Johnny Swinger, and a truthful answer to Dawn Marie where Pat admits they are no longer involved but still considers her a good friend and the hardest working female in the business. -- Somehow Daniel, James, and Simon start discussing the NWO and how Hogan was the glue that made it work. Pat says it right, "there was nothing cool about that version of Hogan." He was the flat out heel and did things like wear the blond wig that looked stupid on him just to anger the crowd. Pat says that's called "showing ass." -- James and Pat laugh as they talk about the "politically incorrect" sign off of "Merry Christmas" which both say loud and proud. Lets just hope the ACLU doesn't sue us. -- The show then runs into a metal version of Noel by the Trans Siberian Orchestra as Daniel and James talk about Christmas, the possible upcoming ECW pay per view, the fantastic Christmas "Classic Wrestling" pay per view currently on Events In Demand, and all things wrestling! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night! :: GO BACK TO THE HOME PAGE :: DISCUSS THIS POST ON THE FORUMS! :: BUY WRESTLING DVD'S THROUGH OUR STORE! CLASSIC WRESTLING PPV'S! INDEPENDENT WRESTLING! BEST OF COMPILATIONS! THE DIVAS/WOMEN OF WRESTLING LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN! GET IT ALL ON DVD IN THE EPICENTER EMPORIUM! 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