Chris Van Vliet passed along the following.
I wanted to pass along the interview that I did with Simon Gotch at Blueprint Pro Wrestling in Deerfield Beach, FL. He talked about his WWE release, whether or not we would want to return, his thoughts on Aiden English and Rusev Day and went into great detail about Enzo Amore’s rap song.
Highlights:
Enzo Amore’s rap song makes him “an awful human being” and a “monster”:
“Best case scenario, Enzo made a diss rap about a mentally unstable drug addict who needs counseling for both a drug problem and she’s bipolar or whatever mental issue she has. She needs to be seeing a psychiatrist and getting drug counselling. She does not need a diss rap being written about her. That is not going to help her situation. And a decent human being would see that and go ‘You know what? I’m going to distance myself from this. I’m going to move on and do my own thing. This does not define me. This is not who I am. I did not do this.’ They’re going to walk away from it because they’re clean and innocent. His reaction was instead to do the diss record. Which worst case scenario, he did commit the act of rape, he lucked out because unfortunately the reality of criminal proceedings is that they are financial acts. Lack of evidence usually means that they don’t want to spend any more money trying to gather evidence. That it’s not been easy enough to justify the cost and they’re going to move on. This is not uncommon in cases of sexual assault because again, you rarely have any sort of evidence beyond DNA and all that really shows is that a sex act occurred. It does not show whether or not that act was consensual. So it’s just a he said, she said situation unfortunately. So that means worst case scenario, he did a diss track on a woman he raped. So best case scenario he’s an awful human being, worst case scenario he’s a monster.”
Would he want to return to WWE?
“Under different circumstances, yes. It’s hard to predict it. I will say this, unlike some other people that got released recently, I did get wished well in my future endeavors, so there’s always the door open for me to return. My whole thing is I wouldn’t want to go back to do the same thing and to be unhappy. My logic is I can work in an office and be miserable, I don’t need to get beat up and be miserable. I wrestle because it makes me happy, I enjoy doing it. It’s fun for me. So in my mind if were going to go back I’d want to work with the guys I’d want to work with. I’d want to be able to have the matches I want to have.”
Who would he want to feud with if he returned to WWE:
“I would actually want to feud with English. I think that would be a hell of a way to push him as a babyface to be honest. Let him vanquish the ghosts of his past. And having worked with him so much I’m actually aware of what he’s capable of. People don’t know how good he is. He’s super athletic and he can do some really insane stuff but often times he has a more restricted opinion on how he should work. He doesn’t want to do all that much because he doesn’t want to put himself in a position where he has to and he’s going to injure himself because he looks at his career as a long term investment.”
On CM Punk’s UFC career:
“I think he got to do something he wanted to do and he got to do it on the biggest stage that he could do it on. That’s great for him. At the end of the day if he’s proud of his work and he’s proud of what he’s done he has no one to explain it to or apologize to. I could see why people have their opinions on it because he’s in an awkward position. The guy’s been a main eventer at WrestleMania, the guy’s been all over the world, it’s hard to tell him ‘Ok, we’re going to need you to fight in this King of the Cage Tournament in Altoona, PA. And you need to do these for the next 6 years before we decide to give you a fight.’ That’s what a lot of guys in UFC have to do. So it’s hard to do that. It’s hard to get a guy who’s been at that level of notoriety and ask him to step that far back. And they also know as a company that the longer CM Punk’s out of wrestling, the less name value he might have so for the money they’re paying him, you can see why UFC wants to get him on those Pay Per Views and want to get him out there. Even if it’s just to watch him get killed, people will pay attention to it. The reality is Jose Canseco did an MMA bout in Japan and I tracked it down the second I heard about it.”
His thoughts on people disliking him:
“I think a lot of people have a solid opinion on me based on nothing. The reality is that even when I’m honest and open with all of this stuff, they maintain that I must be lying and that’s unfortunate. My thought is I’ll be honest and open with everything that’s going on and that will fix it, but they’re not interested in it being fixed.”