It’s been a minute since Calgary saw VIKTOR, but the former WWE Superstar is set to return to Alberta for the first time in nearly a decade. On Friday, March 7th, VIKTOR joins Love Pro Wrestling for PRESS START, the promotion’s debut in the iconic city of Calgary. VIKTOR joins Blair Pacheco of the Grainmaker Wrestling Podcast to discuss his start with Stampede Wrestling, run as the longest-reigning NXT Tag Team Champion in history, and his impending return to Alberta to face Michael Richard Blais.
QUOTES
Growing up on Stampede Wrestling:
“It was pretty huge, actually, I’d say. When I was a kid – I was born in Edmonton, but I was only there until I was about five. Five or six years old is when my parents moved, and we moved north to Grande Prairie, Alberta, a small town up north there. My neighbours were super into WWF wrestling at the time, so I learned about it right away. I was watching that Saturday mornings, and then Sunday afternoon, we’d get Stampede Wrestling all the time. I’d see such a huge difference in the two shows, but I really loved Stampede Wrestling. Then, one of my dad’s friends used to always go, because Stampede used to come up and travel to Grande Prairie, Alberta when I was a kid. I got to see a few shows live when I was very young. I can’t remember if I was in – I think grade two kind of thing was the first show I went to. Guys like Chris Benoit were on that show. I don’t think Owen was still working back-and-forth back back then, but there were all the Hart brothers. I remember seeing Bad Company there at the first show. Jason the Terrible, Davey Boy Smith at the time was there. It was all super influential on me. I was into wrestling from a very young age, and exposed to it very young.”
NXT Tag Team Championship Reign:
“It was very frustrating, honestly, but to say that is kind of pigeonholing it. Even to explain how the system was working, and how things fell into place. The one thing, it never felt how it looked to me and Konnor, that’s for sure, in comparison to how things came about on TV. Behind the scenes, we weren’t favourites by any means. Bill DeMott spent a lot of time pushing for us, and working with us. I don’t think we were favourites, and we never felt like we didn’t have something to prove every time we went out at the time. In retrospect, to me, that was really good, because I think I work really well under that pressure, unfortunately. Creatively, it just kind of went with however they wanted it to go. We would just kind of do what they wanted to do. Once they jumped on board with both me and Konnor being in Ascension, and everything started to roll – like, even the day we won the titles, the way it was presented to us was honestly terrible. There wasn’t anything nice about it that day, and to go into it is kind of a long story. It was kind of a thing of like, nobody believed in us. We were kind of given an ultimatum. But, like I said, I always felt like that ultimatum was always on the table, no matter what. By the time the end of that reign came about, and we started doing that stuff with Finn and KENTA, it was kind of a relief feeling, because by then there finally seemed to be some trust and faith in what we were capable of doing, and that type of thing. It was a big change in that aspect.”
INTERVIEW
SOCIALS
Instagram: @vik_the_spacelord
Twitter: @VikTheSpacelord
