Recently, Daniel Johnson of TheWrestlingVoice.com conducted an interview with Shirley Doe of Indy wrestling fame. In it, he talked about his career in the business as a wrestler and trainer, as well as his thoughts on Ring Of Honor, ECW, WWE, and TNA. Below are some of the highlights of the interview:
Daniel Johnson: As a veteran of wrestling’s independent scene since the 1990s, how do you feel wrestling’s independent scene has changed since you first joined it?
Shirley Doe: It’s a lot easier to get in now. You had to basically know people and it was almost like a fraternity. I’m sure it was even more like that before I started & you had to kind of know someone to get trained and [it was] usually a year or two years before you even got in the ring and now it’s a lot different. The other thing too is size is completely different. When I broke in, I was the smallest guy in the area and now I’m like one of the bigger guys, it’s kind of weird.
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Daniel Johnson: On the IWC promotion’s official website, iwcwrestling.com, it mentions that you defended the IWC Heavyweight title in Japan making it an official world title. How important do you feel it is that a promotion’s top belt be officially recognized as a world title?
Shirley Doe: I think it’s really important. I think a lot of people just say, “Oh, it’s a world title,” and you know it only gets defended in one or two cities and I think it was really nice. I’m a big fan of the old PWI days where things had to be verified and all this stupid stuff and it was just kind of cool. Especially that you know I got to be the person to take the belt to Japan, which was like a dream, and be over there and work and use the title. I actually had a good match with it. I think it’s a really important thing.
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Daniel Johnson: Prior to your tour of the country, how did you first learn about the wrestling scene in Japan?
Shirley Doe: I saw Dynamite work Tiger Mask here again on WWF and on the TV. I was just like, “Wow!” I had never seen [it]. At the time, Jimmy Snuka was considered a big high flyer and seeing the complete different style because Tiger Mask, the first [one] Sayama, did such a weird mix of blending British style, Lucha, Japanese style, and shoot style into one thing. So seeing that when you’re like ten years old is kind of mind-blowing so after that, I’ve been into it ever since.
Daniel Johnson: In your Japan diaries, you briefly compliment Curry Man and “American Dragon” Bryan Danielson. Recently, Bryan Danielson lost the Ring of Honor World Heavyweight Title. Have you ever thought about competing for Ring of Honor?
Shirley Doe: No, I don’t think I’d fit in at all there. They’re more like great wrestlers to me and less about emotion and I’m not a great wrestler per se, but I’m really good about getting people into matches and getting people mad at me and that’s what I think is missing in wrestling. So I’m happy to do what I do for IWC. I kind of like being there.
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Daniel Johnson: In 2002, you wrestled against Sterling James Keenan at an IWC event entitled December To Dismember. This year the reformed ECW put on a show also entitled December To Dismember? What was your opinion of that show?
Shirley Doe: I didn’t watch it. The only stuff I’ve watched of ECW is the TV show a couple of times because I have a lot of friends there and generally I get mad about halfway through it and I’m like, “You know, I’m not going to watch it.” It’s just hard for me to watch. I said before that I didn’t watch a lot of American wrestling, but Norm the IWC owner, a few other wrestlers, and me used to drive from Pittsburg to Philly, which is about four hours, for every ECW show so I have like a major affinity for ECW. To see kind of what it is now, I’d just rather it stay dead and not come back. I was there for a lot of the bigger things that happened, sitting there watching it as a fan and then now that I know what I know about wrestling on the business end, being forced to watch it…it’s hard to watch.
Daniel Johnson: Going back to ECW, like IWC, it was also based out of Pennsylvania. Did you ever have any interest or try to participate in any ECW events when the original incarnation of it was around?
Shirley Doe: Yeah, I don’t think so. It’s funny because I talked to a few people about it before and if in another two or three years, I might have been halfway decent enough to get into there and it would have been kind of cool to get into there and see what is happening. The hard part for me in wrestling is that I have a full time job and that I’m a writer for a major ad agency in Pittsburg so it’s kind of hard for to ever take any money from wrestling. Do you know what I mean? Like get to the leave where it’s like, “Well we’ll give you twenty-five thousand a year or we’ll give you forty thousand a year to start” and I’m like I already make twice that you know and I support my family and stuff on my real job. So to me, if anybody ever offered me a great deal (but I’m not good enough to ever get a great deal), I’m pretty comfortable in wrestling where I am at now; where I’m like pretty high up in the company I work for, work for a few Indy’s, go to Japan twice a year…that’s kind of as busy as it’s probably going to get for me. It would have been cool. I’ve gotten to wrestle almost everybody from ECW multiple times. Like Balls, Sandman, Dreamer; everybody except Sabu so a pretty good run of guys from the mainstay ECW guys.
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Daniel Johnson: Balls Mahoney, who you have spoken of highly in the past, worked with you in the IWC, and defeated you one occasion for the IWC Heavyweight Championship, is currently in the reformed ECW. What is your opinion of his role in the reformed ECW thus far?
Shirley Doe: I got to hang out with him; I can’t say. [Laughs] No, just kidding. You know he has a job, I’m happy that he’s making money and the thing that’s funny is the guys in ECW that the WWE would probably say have bad looks or aren’t in WWE style are the guys that end up getting over the best. I mean, Balls and Sandman…all they have to do is walk out and people get into them. So I’m just happy that people get a chance to see them and that they’re making some money.
Daniel Johnson: In addition to IWC, you have also worked for several other promotions such as Mega Championship Wrestling and Violent Championship Wrestling. What are the benefits of working for more than one independent promotion?
Shirley Doe: You always have options. So if you’re like, “I really don’t feel like working here anymore,” you can say, “Well, I’m going to be working every other weekend,” so it’s nice. I just worked for MCW last weekend. I’m not speaking about any one promotion here so nobody gets mad when they read it, but a lot of times when you work smaller promotions, it kind of reminds you, “Hey wow, it’s really cool that you know IWC draws 500 people a show, 600 people a show,” and you know how organized the locker room is when you go to other shows and people are writing with a marker on a piece of paper. You know, here are the matches, like, “Okay, great; Nobody planned anything out.” So it’s kind of nice to get a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Its fun to travel too; you get to see all sorts of small cities. [Laughs] It’s really not that great. The thing about wrestling is I always think that people always think, “Oh, it’s so romantic. You know, you guys get to travel all the time.” But when everybody else is out at bars at 2:00 in the morning on a Saturday, you know we’re in our car. We don’t even know where we’re at and we have four more hours to get home. It’s not that romantic.
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Daniel Johnson: This is kind of a hypothetical question. If you were offered contracts tomorrow by the WWE and TNA of equal value, would you accept either? If so, which one? If not, why not?
Shirley Doe: If it was more than I currently make at my current job, yeah, I definitely would. I probably would go with WWE just because they seem to have a pretty good farm system and I have a couple of friends down there that are doing pretty well and enjoy it. TNA’s cool and it seems to be growing, but it seems for every few steps forward they take, there’s about 20 steps back, booking-wise. So that kind of would freak me out I mean, but it would be nice either way.
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Daniel Johnson: Entrances are often based on the gimmick that a wrestler is using. Are there any gimmicks that have yet to be performed by a wrestler that you would like to see performed? If so what is this gimmick or gimmicks?
Shirley Doe: Nah, it’s funny because I was just talking about that with my students the other day, but not a lot of people really do gimmicks today, especially on the Indy scene and I kind of would like to see more people overall think of gimmicks. I saw a kid last weekend do a gimmick where he was a ’50s greaser, which I thought was kind of funny because who would think of doing that on the Indys? So I thought that was kind of cool. But you know a lot of people just want to be Steve Austin now. You know they just want to be themselves and come out with a t-shirt on. I tend to at least go the extra mile and not be myself or totally myself when I’m out there.
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Daniel Johnson: On your official website, www.shirleydoe.com, some of the last words that you have in your bio are, “If you hate me, I’ve done my job. Too many heels want the fans to applaud them for their fancy moves.” What do you think the best techniques are that wrestlers can use to keep heels, heels and faces, faces?
Shirley Doe: I think Christopher Daniels is awesome at that whenever you see him work as a heel because his moves are just amazingly graceful. And I think the thing that’s cool is just the way he carries himself after he does it. It’s the look in his face that says, “I can do this and you can’t.” I think that’s really cool. So many people whenever they come back after a match, whenever they want to ask you how their match is you know, they say, “How’s my match?” I’m like, “It’s okay. You know you really didn’t do anything with the crowd,” and they’re like, “Yeah, but did you hear them cheer when I did this move,” and I’m like, “You’re a bad guy. You’re a heel. You shouldn’t care if they cheer or not for a big move. If they did, then you took away from what the faces should be doing in the match.”
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Daniel Johnson: Who do you think was the best overall used wrestler in the wrestling industry in 2006?
Shirley Doe: I don’t know. I think they were doing something cool with Punk at first in ECW of what I saw, but I saw something he did with Bob Holly the other night, you know where they had some submission set or something. I think, once they start making someone look stupid, then it’s bad. I think Joe in TNA, from what I’ve read…they’ve done a decent job with him. I wouldn’t have had him lose to Kurt Angle, even though it’s Kurt Angle, right away, but what do I know?
Daniel Johnson: Kind of on the opposite side of this, are there any wrestlers you’d like to see utilized more?
Shirley Doe: I don’t know. It’s really hard because I’m not like the best person to ask about American guys. I’d like to see Hero get a job working for a big fed. I think that would be cool. I’m glad Claudio is going to Deep South or something pretty soon. Wherever he does end up, I think that’s great because he’s really good.
