Kirby Mack (a/k/a Stan Stansky) and Stoney Hooker (a/k/a Arthur Rosenberg), who faced Ryback in a Handicap Match on the June 4, 2012 episode of Raw, recalled their WWE experience in an interview with The Do Your J.O.B. Wrestling Hour. Highlights from the interview are as follows:
The process being selected to face Ryback: “Before we got there I got a call from a buddy of mine who runs High Velocity Wrestling who was in contact with the WWE and they called him and said we are looking for 2 guys this time…They wanted Ryback to lift 2 guys…we did our tryout but Ryback wanted the biggest guys to pick up to be impressive so right off the bat he pick 2 guys out of I think Tennessee that were really big and he went through the motions with them to see if he could lift them up, now he was able to lift them up but it was not pretty. It wasn’t good for live tv and that’s what Arn Anderson was saying…so they picked Stoney, and originally they picked another guy named Chase Owens who had been squashed by Ryback a week or two before so Arn looked at him and said didn’t Ryback already beat you up like a week ago on tv and he said yes and thankfully they picked me”
Nerves cutting the promo before the match: “The nerves didn’t kick in until we were about to go live…they gave us the promo at about 3 or 4 o’clock…and we literally rehearsed it till like 8:53 and then we rehearsed it before the commercial break in the ring…it wasn’t so much nerves but the problem with that promo was I think everyone in the back knew the promo before we did…it was tough not learning the promo but learning the promo in unison”
Reaction to the match: “Obviously to us it felt great we had a blast, it was an awesome time. I realize now it’s a PG era and it’s kinda hard to see because if the camera angle but at one point Ryback had actually busted my lip and I was bleeding pretty hard and as I was laying there I’m not thinking PG I’m thinking I’m bleeding on tv I need to get the blood put so people can see it…the referee rolled over to me and was like “Suck that blood up right now! This is PG!” so I had to suck the blood up…we come back after the match and were coming down off this high that we’re on because we just lived our dream essentially…everybody in the back knew we were gonna mess up the promo they expected it, but everyone was very complimentary. The scariest part to me was Triple H came out of the gorilla position, and from what I understand he never comes out of the gorilla pit, he came out and goes “You, you come here!” and IMF like this isn’t good and I’m walking with my head down and he was like “Great f’ing job. Great job!” and I was like oh thank you!”
Other topics include Kirby Mack’s time in Ring of Honor, his infamous match with Jeff Hardy in ROH, working in OMEGA, Matt and Jeff Hardy, Shane Helms, how the Stansky and Rosenberg gimmick have carried on and much more. The audio interview is
avaliable here.
