There’s no doubt that Major League Wrestling features some of the most talented individuals in the professional wrestling business, whether it be in-ring workers, agents, producers or managers. One individual that checks all of those boxes and more is Josef Samael, the leader of CONTRA Unit and a veteran of over 20+ years in the industry.

Samael recently joined me to discuss a variety of topics, including CONTRA Unit’s feud with LA Park and specifically his work with Salina de la Renta.

Working with Salina de la Renta

SL: “I bring up the LA Park match and that feud specifically because, in relation to you, I absolutely loved the work that you did with Salina de la Renta. You’ve mentioned her as a student of the game, you’ve brought her up a number of times in previous interviews. What’s it been like to work with her in the capacity you have?

JS: “It’s been very positive. She is somebody that – she’s special. You have these pieces of talent, and, you know, there’s just certain pieces of talent that are just special. She’s incredibly gifted. She’s very young. I believe she’s 22, 23, I mean, maybe 24. I think she’s 22 or (23). But to have the, not so much the knowledge of the business, but the wherewithal. Just – she does the right things without nobody teaching her, you know what I mean? She’s just he’s just natural. She’s very gifted. You know, there’s this old saying in wrestling that you have to believe your own bullshit excuse my language.”

SL: “No worries, you got the explicit rating on podcasts, were fine.”

JS: “She believes what she does, much like myself. There’s something to be said about somebody that can talk in this business. A lot of your money is made with your mouth. Being able to talk in this business is something that – I like to think I can and a lot of people like to say that I can – and it’s something that I think is one of the greatest tools. The matches are always whatever, you know, the finishes I think have to be extraordinary. But it’s the build-up to a match, the talking to people into the arena that I think is just such (an) important tool in our business, and she’s got it in spades. She is – and that comes with believing your own bullshit is the confidence. A lot of times you see people talking and you can see the gears turning. You could see the wheels turning, rather, you understand that they have memorized something. And it just really – for me, personally, it takes me completely out of the story. I like to have points and understand kind of where I’m going, and I like to speak as frankly and as naturally as possible. Salina’s just somebody that delivers promos and lines in just a confident way that every single time I see it, I buy it, and I believe it and if I was a paying fan, I would definitely be paying to see her. Whether it’s her getting beat, whether it’s whatever it is, but she’s somebody that definitely he convinces me 10 out of 10 times.”

JS: “I have nothing but high praise for her. She’s a wonderful piece of talent and I’m really excited to see where she goes from here. Not meaning other places! Not meaning other places, I mean how her character develops because she’s so good now, we can only imagine her in her 30s and 40s and what type of a character she’s going to be. It took me a lot longer to develop into something because I was more involved in the actual wrestling. I always had a good promo and this and that, but I never really had somebody put me through the paces and I never did the reps to where I had TV early on, I would cut promos, whatever, but she’s got so much time put into her, just like I do now. So we’re able to go through the reps now. I wasn’t able to go through the reps as early as she has, so I’m really, really interested to see her in a decade from now. She’s gonna be even more phenomenal.”

Please credit Spencer Love/Love Wrestling with any transcriptions used. 

There’s no hyperbole behind the statement that Josef Samael is one of professional wrestling’s brightest minds. Over the course of his 20+ year career, the CONTRA Unit leader has had a hand in the development of some of professional wrestling’s top stars, and that’s only continued since signing with Major League Wrestling in 2018.

Samael recently joined me to discuss a wide variety of topics, including his love of working with the likes of Alexander Hammerstone and MLW Heavyweight Champion Jacob Fatu.

Working with Alexander Hammerstone

SL: “I really liked the point you made there on the psychology because I think it’s something that applies really, really well to two individuals you’ve brought up in the past in Jacob Fatou and Alex Hammerstone. Now, obviously, with the two it’s very obvious the relationship that you guys have as far as pro wrestling goes, but maybe take me a little bit into the relationship you have with the both of them and what made them sort of stand out as people you really wanted to take on as a mentoree.”

JS: “So, Hammerstone I met first. I was promoting shows in Arizona, by way of California. We were doing pretty well, and Hammerstone was a young guy and I look through the lens of old school guy. I don’t like to give anybody anything. I like to make sure that they want it. I like to make sure that the knowledge that I give is used properly. I don’t – I make people work for it, and Hammerstone is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met in professional wrestling, is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met in life. He just is not scared to work. I tested him multiple times, I would say, ‘Hey, you know, you want to spot here. I’ve got a Cruiserweight spot.’ The guy shedded about 25 pounds and got shredded. I manipulated him in ways that were not malicious. I manipulated him in ways to see, you know, how mentally strong he is. A couple times, he wanted stuff a little too early, or he got frustrated, but I always kept beating the drum in the same way. Eventually, he would see on more than one occasion that I was truthful and I was trustworthy, and what I said was right, and it came to fruition. So I really, really took a lot of time with Hammerstone and, you know, learning him and understanding him and testing him. To be quite honest, he’s hit the ball out of the park every single time. He’s somebody that continues to get better. He continues to impress. He continues to shape up his body better, his mind, his psychology. He’s just somebody that if you see, and then you see him six months later, he’s better. He’s also somebody that absorbs knowledge. If you tell him ‘Hey, this….’ he doesn’t go ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.’ He actually applies the knowledge, like, instantly and correctly. So, he’s somebody that I have a lot of fun – he likes to say I’m his mentor. I don’t like to take any credit for him. I’ll always be there to help him, but he is certainly somebody that has helped himself and done the work. Yeah, I’ve given him knowledge. Yeah, here and there I’ve done this and that for him, but others did that for me, too. So I definitely transfer that.”

Working with MLW Heavyweight Champion Jacob Fatu:

JS: “Fatu I saw and Fatu is somebody that when you see for the first time, it’s like, he’s a 300 pounder, and he’s like a 300 pound six-foot-something pile of money. He’s just absolutely phenomenal. I definitely had a few, I wouldn’t say fights, but we didn’t see eye-to-eye when we first met. He wanted something a certain way and I explained to him the way it really is. And he was very young. And then little by little, I earned his trust.”

He’s just somebody that doesn’t have to try. He’s just incredibly, incredibly gifted. He has just probably one of the most naturally gifted guys I’ve ever seen. I mean, on his worst day, he can do better than 98% of the wrestlers out there. He’s just, he’s just incredibly gifted and he’s natural. So Fatu is somebody that I’ve really enjoyed kind of just sanding the corners off of.”

“I think that’s where my talent lies is I’m not somebody that can tell a guy – I could – but I’m not the type of guy that likes to take somebody from a seed. I like a trained guy that has got a little bit of momentum and then I like to show them how to get from the second rung of the ladder to the 10th rung of the ladder. I like to show them how to really, really exploit their talents, how to really, really shine the light on their gifts. A lot of times what hurts talent is they want to do something rather than – it’s like if you’re a duck, and you want to be a tiger, and it’s like, ‘hey, hey, you’re not a tiger, you’re a duck’ or vice versa. ‘Hey, you’re, you’re a tiger, don’t quack anymore,’ you know, and it’s like you’re trying to show these guys. And you really have to show them by them, gaining their trust, and then having them apply things. And then, when it works, live, some of the guys – not all of them, some of the guys and girls, not all of them – a light will come on when it works, and they’ll go ‘oh!’ you know, and those are really the people, the coachable people, the teachable people are the ones that I like to be around because there’s some guys that are just not coachable and they’re incredibly frustrating to be around and (with) Hammerstone and Fatu it’s almost like I got aces up my sleeve. I mean, those guys were gonna be good with or without me, you know what I mean? I just liked I just like to give them a little bit extra so they can get to the finish line a little bit quicker. So, I don’t take too much credit for those guys but I definitely enjoy being on the sidelines coaching them any way I can because they’re amazing. They’re incredible to watch and I am a fan of them.”

Please credit Spencer Love/Love Wrestling with any transcriptions used. 

The history of the Stampede Wrestling North American Heavyweight Championship is one full of legendary names like Gene Kiniski, Bret Hart, and Archie “The Stomper” Gouldie. One name that ranks highly on that list is that of TJ Wilson, who held the title twice throughout his time in Stampede Wrestling. Memorably, Wilson won his second title on September 13th, 2006 in a half-time event during a Calgary Stampeders/Winnipeg Blue Bombers game in Calgary.

Wilson recently joined me to discuss his experience wrestling at McMahon Stadium and winning the title at the event.

Winning the Stampede Wrestling North American Heavyweight Championship at McMahon Stadium:

TJ: “Man, that was so crazy! That was so nuts. So, the full – the full, non-disclosure story of that was like, it was supposed to be a tag or something, then they decided it’s me versus Apocalypse. Then, it was supposed to be – for that reason – it was supposed to be a non-title match. It’d be me winning (a) non-title match. Well, now, somewhere along the way, they announced it’s a title match, and they’re like ‘oh, we can’t get out of it,’ and I was like ‘of course you can, but okay!’ Then, they’re like –

SL: “I’ll take it!”

TJ: “They’re like – yeah – they’re like ‘I don’t know, we really don’t want you to lose.’ I said ‘yeah, I get that, but,’ I said, ‘I don’t mind losing.’ They’re like ‘no, no, no, like, you can’t.’ ‘Okay.’ So, we figured it out. Dude, it – again, to the best of my knowledge, I believe that show, that game, sorry, had like 25 or 30,000 tickets sold, something like that for that Stamps game against Winnipeg. Same thing, man – dude, it’s so funny. I’d just come home from England, and I had a tryout. I knew my tryout was the first week of October. So, I come out. That day, I wake up, and it is a crazy storm outside. Crazy. Like, wet snow, yeah, wild man. You can see it on YouTube, it’s like – it’s crazy. I’m slipping all over the ring. I remember they were like ‘hey, you’re going to come out in these jerseys.’ And I was like ‘yo, can I wear these jerseys? This’ll help.’ And they’re like, ‘somebody on our side said no, you have to give them the jersey back.’ I was like ‘oh. Okay.’ Dude, I got a little bit of frostbite on my back. It just was freezing cold out there. It’s – I think like 13,000 people or something (showed) up to the game. That’s how many people didn’t come that already had tickets because it was just a wild storm, man. It was like a, almost a blizzard in September. It was wild. Which is not uncommon for Alberta, but always that first day that it hits, that first day it hits, everyone pretends they’ve never seen snow before.”

SL: “Oh, 100%. I’m certain that like half of those people were on there, they were just driving five kilometers an hour”

TJ: “Exactly, yes. I’ve done many PWA shows at that speed driving up from Calgary to Edmonton.”

Full Match:

Please credit Spencer Love/Love Wrestling with any transcriptions used. 

In the late ’90s and early ’00s, a new generation of Albertan professional wrestling stars emerged and continued to build on the province’s legacy as one of the hottest wrestling markets in the world. One name that was instrumental in the revitalization of the province’s independent wrestling scene was none other than TJ Wilson. Wilson, known through his time in WWE as Tyson Kidd, began his training in Calgary, Alberta, and quickly earned his way into an invitation to the Hart Dungeon.

Wilson joined me recently to discuss the influence of training under Tokyo Joe, working with the rest of the Hart family, and his experiences getting stretched by Hart family patriarch Stu Hart.

His training with Tokyo Joe:

TJ: “Oh, man. Okay, so, Ross Hart had always stayed in really close contact with Tokyo Joe. Tokyo Joe was wrestling in Montreal, and he was supposed to, he was going – he was doing one of the little excursions that they do in Japan, so he was in Japan, he was wrestling there, and then he (left) for 12-18 months to Montreal. He was wrestling in Montreal, and then, before he went back to Japan, he came to Calgary. He was only supposed to be in Calgary for, like, two weeks, but there was – the ring truck had slid off the road in a bad snowstorm, and then Joe was out there looking at the truck and whatever, and as the tow truck was – a tow truck had come, sorry – a tow truck had come, and as the tow truck’s getting ready to tow the ring truck and get it out of this ditch, another car comes sliding off the highway and it crushed Joe between the ring truck and the car. It totally destroyed both of his legs; one he was able to keep, but they had to amputate the other. So, two weeks turned into Joe living in Calgary for like 40 years.”

TJ: “This guys’ eye for wrestling was unbelievable, so Ross (Hart) always kept close contact with him. At one point he was a scout for a long time with New Japan, and Ross brought him to a Stampede show to kind of point him in my direction. Joe, whether he saw potential in me or not, I don’t know. I know that he can be very tough, he could be very tough and very brutally honest, but maybe even using that to push me. But, I remember he was like ‘ahh, you’re too small, you’re not nothing special, something,’ and I was like ‘what?! Man, no way!’ Now, if you know me, I’m too competitive, so now I’m like ‘okay, I’ll show this guy.’ And so, then, Ross started bringing him to the Dungeon, and then he started training me. I remember him blowing me up, doing all this Japanese training with these Hindu squats and these sumo squats and all this stuff.

Then, we’d wrestle, and he was like – then, I think he started to finally, not finally, he started to see like ‘okay, there is something there,’ but he needed to kind of, like, get deeper. Man, he changed my life in every way, man. Not just in wrestling, but in life. He made me a much tougher person in terms of just knowing that you’re going to have to deal with some stuff.

”

TJ: “It was funny, man. It was literally like, I think it’s Bugs Bunny, it’s like Bugs Bunny where Bugs Bunny – I’m sorry, Wile E. Coyote and the dog, they clock in, and the coyote’s trying to get the sheep and the dog’s beating him up, then they clock out and they’re friends again? Man, that was Joe. That was Joe. We would pick him up for training in the morning, and he’d be so nice from his house to the gym. Once we got to the gym, there was a different Joe, and it was awesome, man. I say this in a loving way. But that Joe, he could be pretty mean, and he was very honest, and he was very serious. And then, the second training was over, we’d go eat, it was this sweet, sweet guy. We’d drive, drop him off, and I just remember Dave Swift and I always being like ‘man.’ The 20 minutes of Joe we get before training and the hour and a half we’d get eating with him after and driving him home was awesome, but that three hours, four hours in the middle, that guy’s tough as hell man. It was literally clocking in and clocking out.

SL: “I love the comparison, man. ‘Morning, Sam.’

TJ: “Yes, exactly! ‘Morning, Sam,’ dude, 100%, I swear, that’s what it was like.”

Training with the Hart Family

TJ: “No, that was Ross and Bruce Hart. They really taught me a lot. Man, the truth is, we kind of had the keys to the kingdom. I had Ross and Bruce Hart training me, they both (are) great guys, never charged me a penny. I mean, I know now I’m really intertwined with the family, but at the time, I’m a 15, 16-year-old kid that’s kind of been around for 5 or 6 years. So, they saw me, they knew me as like a kid, but I’m not related to them, and they didn’t charge me a penny and they didn’t – they helped me so much. Davey would help us a lot, I remember Owen running Teddy and I through a match in the Dungeon.”

SL: “Wow.”

TJ: “Yeah, man. Literally, Bret – there was a period of time where we were training at Bret’s house almost daily. I mean, I’ve had help from everybody, man, but Ross and Bruce were my first real hands-on trainers in terms of – so, we kind of just put our own little match together, and we had help from everybody. I remember Davey watching it over and was like ‘okay.’ It was just a little three-minute match we did at these Rockyford rodeo shows in Rockyford, Alberta.”

SL: “You love to see, you even put up that clip I think – shit, time’s all blending together at this point, but of yourself and Davey in the Dungeon when you guys were kids. Just stuff like that’s so cool to see, man.”

TJ: “Yeah, see, so that clip is – like, Bruce and Ross are running that practice. That was, I think the date is like October 2000? So, I don’t meet Joe for another year-and-a-half. Or, I’d met him. I’d seen him at Stu’s, but I don’t start training with Joe until about 2002.”

His experiences getting stretched by Stu Hart:

TJ: “Oh, man. Unbelievable. Unimaginable. Oh my god, man. It happened – nah, it didn’t happen too, too often, but when it did, it was like ‘okay, this is gonna suck,’ and it usually involved a film crew, and so you’re like ‘oh my god, I’m getting killed on tape, too, like, this sucks.’ But, it was also an honour, and even I knew that as a kid. I’m trying to think how old I was the first time I got stretched. I might have been 15 or 16 the first time, and there was a TSN special for the Stu Hart birthday show in ’95.”

SL: “That was his 85th show or whatever, correct?”

TJ: “The one – I’m trying to remember what it was. Davey versus Bret is the main event. It’s in December ’95. That’s when I get stretched. So, I’m a 15-year-old kid. I get stretched on some – they were recording something either right before that or right after, and I just happened to be down there, like, cause we were up at the house, and then I got called on to the mat. I just remember being like ‘okay,’ and just trying not to, like, sell anything and it hurt so much, man.

Stu was a master when it came to submission wrestling like that, and he had this almost routine where it’d be like everything just connected to the next. Just when you thought ‘oh, man, I don’t think my shoulder can take anymore,’ and then like, it would stop, and then I would be (in) some hold that puts pressure on your neck. You just were relieved that your shoulder was feeling better. Oh, man. It was awesome, though. I wish I had that knowledge now, how to do – like, I mean, he was, in ’95 man? He was 80 years old! So, it was his 80th birthday show. He was 80 years old, man, and he’s doing that! It was crazy. Unbelievable. And, never past the point! He always knew the point! It was crazy.”

SL: “A very respectful submission artist, for lack of a better way to put it.”

TJ: “At least to 15-year-old me! I remember coming down for practice later on, now I kind of feel like I’m becoming more of a man, and I remember coming down to practice and, same thing, man, you come down to the Dungeon and you see, like, you see they have all this lighting and stuff in the Dungeon, you’re like ‘hold on, this practice is a little different than – what’s going on here?’ And then it’s like ‘yeah, guys, so today, Stu’s – these people are filming this thing on Stu, so Stu’s going to come down and stretch everyone,’ like, ‘oh, man, with an audience now?!’”

TJ: “I remember that practice was like four hours long. Duke (Durrango) loves this story because there was a guy, and he’s a friend of mine, Duke said he never looked at him the same ever again. He literally – his eyes got bugged out, and he ran away.

SL: “Duke told me that one!”

TJ: “He would not let Stu touch him.”

SL: “It’s incredible because he’s the only guys from everybody that I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to that was down in the Dungeon, whether it’s yourself, or Duke, or I spoke to Randy Myers a couple of weeks ago, and they’ve all had a fairly similar experience of ‘it sucks, but it’s a right of passage, and a bit of an honour,’ y’know?

TJ: “Oh, I mean, absolutely an honour, and it is a right of passage, and like, I mean, if you think about it, in the course of a 24-hour day, if Stu Hart put you in some holds for about 20 minutes in a 24-hour day, it’s not the end of the world. It feels like it! In those 20 minutes, it feels like it, but once it lets go, the relief feels so good.”

Please credit Spencer Love/Love Wrestling with any transcriptions used.