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. 

There are few professional wrestling factions in the industry today that are as talked-about as the Dynasty. Since their debut just over a year ago, the group has gone on to hold nearly every championship in Major League Wrestling and consistently produced some of the most entertaining segments of each episode of MLW: Fusion.

One of the staple members of the Dynasty is the Most Marketable Man in Professional Wrestling, Richard Holliday. Holliday recently joined me to discuss working with the Dynasty, as well as his feelings on working with Alexander Hammerstone and Maxwell Jacob Friedman specifically.

Working with Alex Hammerstone as a member of the Dynasty:

SL: “You’ve brought him up a couple of times, I’ve brought him a couple times, Alex Hammerstone. Obviously, a huge part not only of the Dynasty, but of Major League Wrestling as a whole. Now, what’s working with him been like in your personal experience? When I spoke with him, it was interesting for me to hear (that) he said that he felt when you first started out with Major League Wrestling and with the Dynasty, you really weren’t getting a fair shake. You really had to go out and make your own opportunity of it. Do you think that’s a fair assessment or something you’d agree with?”

RH: “Yeah, I would agree with that. I think – like I said, I think the expectations for when I was signed were low. I think they – maybe they just looked at me and said ‘hey, this is a guy who looks good, and I’ve never really heard him talk or anything like that, but he looks good. Maybe this is a chance where we find something, a diamond in the rough.’ And, in the beginning, that’s kind of what it was. They didn’t really know what they had. To Hammerstone’s point, in the beginning, it was very much focussed on Maxwell (Jacob Friedman) and Hammer. People, consumers, management, they didn’t really know where I fit into this equation, and I kind of had to put it out there for myself and take some chances and do things to make myself stand out, and soon that’s exactly what happened.”

SL: “How do you think you sort of took that opportunity? Was there something that you had to consciously sit down and say ‘look, this is what I need to work on,’ or, did a lot of it come naturally with working with guys like Hammer and MJF like you previously mentioned?”

RH: “Well, you know, getting to know Hammerstone and really bonding with him, he really pushed me to be better and want more. We would talk, and he’d say ‘hey man, listen. I know what you can do, you’ve just gotta do it. Take it.’ That’s kind of the mentality that he always has in his individual work. He’s a guy who takes extraordinary pride in the way that he is presented and the way that people recognize him, and that’s vastly important in being successful in professional wrestling. He kind of gave me that push, that little quality I needed to say ‘hey, you know what? I do have the skillset, I’m gonna take it to the next level, and we’re gonna make this Dynasty thing the best thing that it possibly can,’ because if it’s gonna be three of us, it has to be three of us. It can’t be two and somebody else. It has to be all three cohesively working.

RH: “Add Maxwell in the same breath. He’s somebody that he marches to the beat of his own drum, and it really is a beautiful thing what he does. Both of them have pushed me and helped me to be who I am.”

How he feels MJF’s departure will affect the Dynasty:

RH: “Well, it’s an opportunity for us to prove that we can still survive, and we can thrive. Maybe ‘survive’ isn’t even a good word, because thrive is really what we want to do. The Dynasty – what me, Maxwell, and Hammer made the Dynasty – is we made it a brand. We made it something bigger than just three guys. People just talk about the Dynasty. How many people do you see on social media saying ‘Dynasty, bro!’ Like, it’s become something within pop culture almost, and now it’s our job, it’s my job, it’s Hammer’s job, and it’s Gino’s job to make sure that we take the Dynasty to another level. I hand-picked Gino to be in the Dynasty. I felt like we needed the Latin demographic to be targeted, and I don’t think that anybody can represent it better than him. I think consumers are looking – it’s very eerily similar to the original Dynasty, where people were looking at Hammer and Max and saying ‘alright, these guys are going to carry it, let’s see what this Richard guy can do.’ Now, it’s like ‘Richard and Hammer are going to carry it, let’s see what this Gino guy can do.’ Is it sink-or-swim for Gino? Potentially, but I know he’s gonna swim.”

How previous sports experience impacts the Dynasty’s team mentality

SL: “I love that you mentioned earlier that the three of you guys really saw yourselves as equals, and the need to see yourselves as equals. How much of that comes from playing team sports and playing football when you were in high school and that sort of stuff? Is it a bit of a team mentality? I’ve never stepped in the ring, man, (and) I don’t claim to know anything about that, but wrestling seems like it’s a very individualistic sport.”

RH: “It is. It really, really is. It’s an ‘I wanna be number one, and whoever’s number two, good for you’ kind of industry. I think that’s what makes the Dynasty so unique in that sense, is that Maxwell on his own has that mentality, Hammerstone on his own has that mentality, and, newsflash, myself on my own, I have that mentality as well. But, when you’re – when the opportunity to do something like that is presented to you, well then it’s like ‘alright, hey guys, listen. On our own, we’re going to be great. But, together, this could be something that could really, really change the game.’ Do I think sports have that – I know I can speak to myself. I know that, for sure, one-hundred percent, my career in sports – you know, I played NCAA football, and I know Maxwell was quite the football player as well. Hammerstone’s just a natural athlete, so yeah, I think that teamwork mentality plays into it subconsciously. I don’t think it’s something that’s surface-level where we recognize that and we relate to that, but I think subconsciously it’s there.”

The Dynasty’s goals in the near future:

RH: “There’s several things that we can do as a brand and as a unit to take ourselves to the next level, but it’s all progression. It’s all-natural progression. I think the Heavyweight Championship within the Dynasty would be a welcome addition. The Tag Team Championships should be back within the Dynasty. Maybe that’s something that either – two of the three of us can take on. Could be Hammer and Gino, could be myself and Gino, could be myself and Hammer. The Caribbean Championship becoming legitimized, I think that would be something that would obviously take the Dynasty to the next level, the fact that we could just do that. After that, at that point, we might as well just name the company to Dynasty League Wrestling, because that’s what it’s going to be.”

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

TJ Wilson was rightfully known as one of the most talented in-ring competitors in the world throughout his time competing inside the squared circle. Whether as a singles competitor or as a member of various factions or tag teams, it seemed as though Wilson could find chemistry with anyone either with him or across the ring from him.

Wilson joined me recently to discuss his love of working with the likes of Cesaro, the New Day, and, of course, the Hart Dynasty throughout his time with WWE. He also talked about his role as a producer for WWE and what it entails in a professional wrestling sense.

On the role of a producer in professional wrestling:

TJ: “So, the role of a producer is to kind of look at the show, kind of give our takes on what we see, and that’ll be prior to the production meeting. Then, we kind of get assigned our matches and our segments, and then we – I like to go and collaborate with talent, and we put together what we see on TV every Monday and Friday. It’s a team effort with everybody. With the talent, with the producers, with the writers, everybody. So, it’s a cool atmosphere that I enjoy backstage.”

How his role has changed with the COVID-19 pandemic:

TJ: “It’s definitely changed a lot of things. Wrestling, at its core, is all about fan and audience participation and fan interaction live in that Arena. Live in that bingo hall, live in that gymnasium, whatever it is, man, I’ve wrestled in all of them. It’s definitely an interesting thing to not have that audience out there, but in this moment, we’re not able to. So, the options are that we either just don’t have shows, or we do and there’s not a fan base present live in the stadium, the crowd. But, it’s definitely different, it’s definitely different.”

TJ: “In terms of changing my role, not really, because I think our talent, and I’m not just saying this, the talent that I work with is so good that I don’t have to – I just have to kind of remind them like ‘hey guys, obviously we don’t have a crowd here, so there’s a tendency to maybe to do things a little quicker, but you gotta just be the pros that you are.’ Our talent are just such pros across the board that it hasn’t been an issue in terms of that for me.”

The differences in preparation between working with a long-time faction like the Hart Dynasty versus working with someone like Cesaro for the first time:

TJ: “Man, that is a great question. That’s awesome. It is true, man, it’s so different. It’s so different. My very first match in July 1995 is teaming with Harry. So, when you fast-forward 15 years, and we win the WWE Tag Team titles together, it’s – obviously, that’s so insanely special, but it’s almost not that foreign. I’ve been wrestling with this guy, either against him or teamed with him, ever since I’d ever been in wrestling.”

SL: “Yeah. Not to bury it, but like, you’ve done it before, y’know?”

TJ: “Yeah. I’ve done so much stuff with him. And, so, it’s funny. I said this on the Bump a couple months ago when they asked me, and I said the difference – a big difference was me. A big difference was me. In 2010, I’m not the performer, I’m not the complete – not that I’m this complete performer, but I’m not as complete a performer in 2010 as I was in 2015. Not even close. So, in 2009, 2010, when I’m first on the main roster and we’re a team? Well, he’d been on the main roster before, but now he’s getting his footing there, like, we’re both kind of finding – and, y’know, along with Nattie as well, we’re both finding our way on the main roster, and we’re doing it together and as a group and collectively. Where, when you fast-forward to 2015, where I’m paired with Cesaro randomly – well, technically December 2014, December 1st we get thrown together on RAW – we’d had a triple-threat match a few weeks prior with Dolph Ziggler. I’d wrestled Cesaro a couple times on some live events, Smackdown, a couple RAW’s I think, NXT, and I had a lot of respect for him, a ton of respect. Not had, have, but I did at that time, too. I think it honestly, it’s on me, and I’m just more of a complete performer myself in 2015 than 2010. But, it just was interesting the chemistry that Cesaro and I had from the beginning.”

If he knew the plan for himself and Cesaro before the partnership ended:

TJ: “No, honestly. If I did, I’d have no problem sharing. I honestly don’t know anything in terms of long-term plans. I know when we lost the titles at Extreme Rules to the New Day in Chicago – which, that’s where I lost my tag titles with Harry as well, so there’s something about that building. No, those are amazing fans, I loved wrestling there, but I apparently can’t hold on to my tag titles there. That day, what I will say, that day I remember Cesaro and I wanted to go meet with Vince because we just wanted to get a grasp on where everything was going, and a lot of people came out of the meeting and they told us that the idea was we would be, we would kind of be the tag team, like the nucleus in the middle, and everybody would kind of work around us, through us. So, I don’t know. At least in April 2015, May, in that area, that was the plan. Those New Day matches were so much fun. Man, when I was home hurt, watching New Day, like how much – especially in like 2015, 2016, 2017, I was like ‘man, I want to be part of this New Day. I was a part of it. I want to be a part of this so bad.’”

TJ: “There was the one time that we (came) back after the 2-out-of-3 falls match in Extreme Rules in Baltimore, and I thought Vince was maybe gonna get mad at something, because he has a very good eye for this, and sometimes, something – you can do a 30-minute match, but something stuck out in his mind at minute six, and he can’t let it go, and you’re gonna hear about it when you get back. I remember we get back, and I thought the match was very good. He’s like ‘y’know, I’m going to have to start charging you guys!’ And I was like ‘oh, man, are we getting fined for something? What’d I do?’ And then, he was talking to New Day, and he was like ‘you guys are having way too much fun wrestling these guys,’ and points to me and Cesaro. I was like ‘yeah. I’ll take it!’”

SL: “That’s a good problem to have!”

TJ: “Yeah, hell yeah. I loved it. I loved every minute of it.”

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