I recently had the opportunity to speak exclusively with Casino.org US about current TNA World Heavyweight Champion and TNA World Tag Team Champion Nic Nemeth’s perspective on WWE Money in the Bank and potential free-agent signings for TNA.
With WWE Money in the Bank scheduled for October 10, I asked Nic whether the Money in the Bank concept has become stale and who he would like to see join TNA from the pool of available free agents.
We’ve got Money in the Bank around the corner and you of course are a former winner – There’s some people that have been saying that they believe the concept as a whole has run its course and should be actually retired. Do you agree with that?
“I don’t think so. I’m pretty good at being unbiased and stepping back. If I never won Money in the Bank, it would be a huge moment that I would have never had.”
“But the concept is a way in our professional wrestling business to have somebody who maybe you’re not sure as a fan can make it to the mountaintop, or someone that maybe the office isn’t totally behind, to give them an opportunity and see what they can do when given the shot.”
“And, as we’ve all learned, you can cash in and not become champion, that’s a possibility too. There’s so many people when I was making my way through WWE, and this is happening right now too, the crowd loves them – They’re good, they have a great background, pedigree and they’re ready to rock. But the office maybe is not quite ready to pull the trigger on them. This is a way to have it in the world – This is where people truly become underdogs, not someone who loses all the time on TV and he kind of pulled off an upset and got a roll-up or was hanging around. It wasn’t working for 6 months or a year and finally got a match and it was a good one.”
“In this case, something really special can either change someone’s career, have a special moment, or at least give somebody the idea of like, man, I don’t know that the boss likes me. I’m not really used too much. But if I could just get a little momentum, I could show him in a couple of months as the Money in the Bank holder that maybe, just maybe, I deserve a shot at becoming champion. So, that concept, I will never think that it’s a bad thing. But obviously, after 20 years, people can start saying, you know what, maybe it should be every other year. Maybe it should just be one year of guys and one year of girls or something like that. I understand all that and that’s fine. And we have wrestling on 7 days a week. But that concept, I love it, man. It really gives people a shot who never had a chance to just walk in the door and kick it down one more chance to do so.”
Looking at TNA, there’s a few free agents floating around at the moment. If you could pick someone who isn’t necessarily signed to another promotion and bring them into TNA, who would that be?
“There’s someone – Ben Bishop, I’ve been in the ring with now a couple different times and he’s entertaining. He’s a big man. He can do a bunch of different things. And you could put a mask on him and just have him choke slam everybody through the ring and like you’d still be very impressive. So he can do a tonne of different things. But also one of the first matches that I ever had in independent wrestling was after 20 years of WWE. And I believe it was for OTT. I think it was in Ireland. So this is really funny. Man Like DeReiss is someone that I got in the ring with and I didn’t know what his deal was. I saw some clips to know what he was doing, and we put a match together. I came to the ring, I watch him come to the ring, and I’m blown away. I go, wow, I don’t know who this guy is, but we need to get him to TNA somehow. And we had this match and, for never touching before, it was freaking great. It was a great match. He’s a good kid, good listener, smarter than he should be in the ring already. And I was like, damn it. Okay, great. Young kid, charismatic. I came out of that ring and said, I don’t put anybody’s name on my tab by the way, and I said, when I get back to TNA I am absolutely saying we need to hire you right now. Because he just blew my mind.”
“Ben Bishop, over the last year and a half, 2 years, I think I’ve been in the ring with 3 times now, and man, the guy’s good. He’s got it figured out. He’s charismatic. He could do stuff, he’s about 7 feet tall. There’s 2 dudes at totally different height levels that are really entertaining and that matter. What really matters, I think, when looking for someone to hire is potential. Can you coach them? Can they get even better? Can they stand out? And those 2 dudes absolutely crush all those categories for me.”
Nemeth is set to defend the TNA World Heavyweight Championship against Leon Slater at the Bound For Glory pay-per-view on October 11 at the Yuengling Center in Tampa, Florida.