“Ravenous” Randy Myers has long been regarded as one of Canada’s top professional wrestlers. Throughout his 20-year career, the reigning DEFY World Champion has earned rave reviews for both his in-ring work and incredible character work, with his skill even earning him an opportunity with World Wrestling Entertainment in 2009.
Recently, the Weirdo Hero joined ume to discuss his opportunity with WWE and how it fell through within a few months.
On his WWE opportunity:
“I’d gone down in 2009 for a tryout. They were doing these tryouts where if you paid I think it was $1,000 and flew yourself down to Florida, they would have a look at you. I think it was 72 people in that camp.
It was funny, because actually, Hannibal was in that camp, too. So, he was my first Matrats match, my first Stampede Wrestling match, and then I had a match with him in front of WWE talent agents, so, weird.”
“So, I went down to Florida in 2009 expecting nothing. It was the first time WWE had ever seen me. I just wanted to kind of know what they were looking for in a wrestler and kind of learn how to train their style. To find out where I was lacking, basically. They had us doing promos every day, and Dusty Rhodes was there encouraging us or having us do promos for him. One day, we all cut our promos, and he went up and he pulled me out of the crowd to cut a second promo. It was on the fl. We all had time to pre-rehearse our promos, and at that time they were very ‘rhymey’, so they were very line-for-line-for-line, this word needed to rhyme with this word, so they were very orchestrated. But, then I went up and I cut a promo from the heart. He seemed to enjoy it and kind of put it over in front of the rest of the class. I was kind of – I still am – blown away by that fact, because it’s freakin’ Dusty Rhodes!”
“The promo was basically about how there (were) a lot of people who want to be professional wrestlers for the fame or for the sex or the riches or whatever, but I wanted to be a role model, and how I had seen a kid singing Rey Mysterio’s theme song, even though nobody knows the lyrics to Rey Mysterio’s theme song except for this kid at the top of his lungs at a wrestling show, and how one day, that’s what I would hope to be, is to have my song sung like that. So, Dusty said he really like the promo.”
“Then, time went by, class ended, nothing came of it. I was waiting for my performance review, which was supposed to come in three weeks. I waited three weeks, I waited four weeks, I waited five weeks, I waited six. Nothing came. I’m like ‘okay?’ I got a phone call, and they offered me a job. They wanted me to come down on a developmental contract. Again, I didn’t expect anything from this, so I was blown away. I finished up my Alberta bookings, made a big stink about how I was going to WWE, how your hometown hero is going to WWE.”
“I ended up being pretty stressed out by it. Like I said, I’ve always dealt with mental health issues. At that point, I was not dealing with them. I was hiding them behind drugs, I was hiding them behind marijuana and just kind of escaping. Then, when I was very nervous, I had impostor syndrome, like ‘how the heck am I going to be what they want me to be? There’s no way I’m going to go down there and deliver. I’m going to f**k this up, I’m going to blow it all.’ My anxiety was lying its head off to me, and convincing me of things that weren’t necessarily true. You don’t know until you see it, right? My anxiety was trying to be a fortune teller, and I don’t know if I believe in fortune-tellers at the best of time, let alone my anxiety.”
“Like I said, I was still smoking pot. I told my dad. My father was estranged from me when I was young. So, I’d gone to him and told him, like, ‘Dad! I’m going to WWE! My dreams are coming true!’ And he wasn’t that interested. I think part of me was wanting him telling me ‘you did it, son! You did it! I’m finally proud of you!’ When that didn’t come, I think that added to my anxiety or depression and all these things. Like I said, I didn’t stop smoking pot. I was addicted. Then, when the time came around for the drug test, when they gave me the call, I quit then. It was like 10 days before, but it still popped in my system. They called me and told me that it was all over.”
“That was probably a two-month run between them trying to work on getting me VISA’s, and flying me down for the drug test, and putting me up in a beautiful place, and renting me a nice car and all of these things, and then me getting the call that it wasn’t going to end up going through. I was crushed.”
Rebounding from not signing with WWE:
“I think the way that I stumbled into wrestling, or come to wrestling, was almost like a parachute for me at that point. Wrestling had become, like I said, therapy. So, when I needed therapy from having my heart broken in high school, I went to wrestling.
Now, I had my heart broken by myself. I don’t blame anyone but myself, I went to wrestling again. It took a while, and it was hard to kind of man up – I don’t like that word. Let’s not use that. Let’s bootstrap it up! Let’s pick up them bootstraps, and go out in front of that audience. I had to make that decision: Is there too much shame in coming back? So, I came back, and the fans were really appreciative and awesome to me. If I hadn’t gone back to wrestling, I don’t know where I’d be now. It would have made me go back to that bad place. Wrestling has helped me so much over the years, and is so cathartic that if I didn’t have wrestling, I don’t know whether it would have saved me from wrestling.
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Please credit Spencer Love/Love Wrestling with any transcriptions used.
