Reported by Adam Martin of WrestleView.com
On Wednesday, May 3, 2006 at 2:24 PM EST

John Lowry sent in the following recap:

Petey Williams talks Lockdown, extreme highspots, taking TNA on the road and more on The Steel Cage

TNA X-Division superstar and Team Canada captain Petey Williams was the guest Tuesday night on the Steel Cage on the Wrestling Radio Network. Jonathan Hayes was without the services of co-host Paul Szmal, who was out on assignment checking out the Smackdown taping in Cincinnati, so he jumped right in with the questions to Petey:

Who were some of your favorite wrestlers growing up?

"I started watching when I was very young, 5 or 6. I was a Hulkamaniac growing up, who wasn't? But as I got older and smarter I became a Bret Hart fan. Being from Canada, he was a hero to all of us."

Within six months of being in TNA you won the X-Division championship. What was it like winning and realizing the company had confidence in you as champion?

"It was weird when I showed up that day and found out they wanted to put the title on me, as I had had only maybe one singles match in TNA up to that point. So just for TNA to give me the ball and run with it, especially as the company was moving from weekly to monthly PPVs, I was happy they had the confidence in me and I don't think I let them down."

TNA has been doing their show in Orlando for some time now. Do you feel that the Orlando crowd is getting so used to the action that it's harder to get them to pop and maybe it's time to take the show out to other cities?

"Yeah I do. The main thing hurting us is the financial situation, as when you go on the road you have to hire a crew and right now our lighting and camera crews are all local from the Orlando area. But with taping three shows at a time, yeah it would be great. I mean, that's our plan, we want to get on the road. The merchandise sales would go up, as would the crowd response... because they'd only see TNA every once in awhile. That would come off great on TV and probably help our ratings. It would help the business entirely."

The X-scape match at Lockdown... how hard is to put on an X-Division style match in a cage when you have not two or three guys but six guys?

"It's really hard, I'm not going to lie to you, just because if you get hit with a big move and want to get out of the way you can take a breather outside the ring, but you can't do that in a cage match. It gets really clustered in there."

Speaking of getting out of the way, what was the deal with everybody getting out of the way when Chase Stevens went for that shooting star press from the top of the cage?

"Well, Chase is a big guy... he probably was the biggest guy in that match, and none of us was enthusiastic about him wanting to go for the move. I remember telling him that we'd try to catch him, but at his size he would probably cut through us like butter. But he said he could land it so we said ok, and we put our arms up... and well, you know what happened."

Looking overall at Lockdown, the extreme highspots like the Chase Stevens shooting star press, the Christian Cage frog splash from the top of the cage, the AJ Styles/James Storm spot on top of the Lethal Lockdown cage, in which AJ admitted in an interview that the top of the cage was starting to fall apart and he and James were both worried it would give way, leading to a 'Foley bump' through the cage to the ring. Is it getting to a point where someone in TNA needs to step in say 'hold on' before someone gets seriously hurt or crippled for life?

"Yeah, I do, but when you look at Lockdown you have eight cage matches there, and they (the fans) are expecting something huge out of this. So it's like, do we not give the fans anything and have people say it was an ok pay-per-view, or do we try to give the fans everything we can and have people say it was a great pay-per-view! We're in a tough situation as the company is really trying to grow and give everything we can, and we have to be able to compete and do something different. But I mean, you won't see me on top of the cage or on top of the lights and jump through a table. That's not me."

The current X-Division champion is Samoa Joe, and of course you yourself are a former X-Division Champ. Do you think we might see a Samoa Joe/Petey Williams match in the future?

"Probably not, but I hope so. I would like to wrestle Joe. Back in the internet days of Impact, Eric Young and myself wrestled Joe and Christopher Daniels in a tag match in which we won. Now it was Daniels who was pinned and not Joe, but I consider myself 1-0 against Joe. So yeah I would like to wrestle him, as he's gone through pretty much everyone in the X-Division... except me. But who knows?"

Over the last year we've seen guys come in to TNA from the WWE, along with arrivals like Sting and Scott Steiner. What's the reaction like from guys in the locker room who've been with TNA since the beginning or for the better part of its existence? Is there some resentment?

"I don't think so. I think it's good in that they are household names and a lot of people have heard of guys like Lex Luger, Buff Bagwell and Rick Steiner and maybe haven't heard of guys like Roderick Strong, Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin or whatever. I think it's good to get people to watch, but I don't think basing the company around them is. What's cool nowadays with teenagers in our demographic is they want to see athletic guys in their 20s. But when it comes down to it, I don't care who they bring in or have as champion, as long as it brings viewers in and makes the company more profitable, then I'm along for the ride."

You can listen to the entire 30-minute interview with TNA superstar Petey Williams at the Steel Cage site at the Wrestling Radio Network or at the Steel Cage's MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/the_steel_cage.