DEJ Experience District Ask the Experience: Origins of the audio, favorite John Tenta gimmick Apr 15, 2008 - 1:17:52 PM

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VIP Forum member TheTrayvor asks: How did the three of you come to be audio pioneers? Was there a tryout? A call back? Practice? Did you guys come from column writing? I want to know the origins of the greatest audio combination in the history of wrestling audios.

Dusty's answer: The answer involves the exchanging of money and handshakes. I can’t really say any more than that.

Jeremy's answer: I’ll take the serious road on this answer. Way back before there were the number of audio shows available at the PWTorch VIP site, there was a call out to all of The Specialists asking if they would be interested in doing a podcast/audio show. At the same time I had the idea to do one back when James Guttman had his Tuesday thing going, but nothing had come of it. So James Caldwell put the word out about doing different shows with him as the host. As fate would have it Dusty and I never received this e-mail. Apparently all of his e-mails he had ever sent me were either lost in cyberspace or went straight to my junk mail folder that gets emptied without checking.

In the meantime Dusty, who I had known through the board and e-mail for about a year decided we could team up and do our own thing. When I presented this to Wade he was good with it and we were off and running. Dusty and I go back to PWTorch "Lounge" days and had a good rapport, so the show should have been good.

Well, the content of the show was fine, but damn the audio quality was a disaster. They were frankly unlistenable and generated a good amount of people calling for us to be axed. We soldiered on and finally got the audio quality fixed and we were off and running. Eric joined the fold when he and Eric were both at WrestleMania in Chicago and we had him on as a special “in perspective” guest. Eric was also a former Lounge writer and overall swell guy I had never met or talked to other than message board posts.

Eric was supposed to be a one-time guest, but he was so good we had to have him back. It was supposed to be a monthly thing, but somehow it became weekly. Eric’s addition gave us a different dynamic that we were missing. His braze attitude freed us up a bit to cut more jokes and rail against things we didn’t like. This was the missing piece we needed at the beginning of the show.

Kevin came along when we needed some sorry sap to dictate the show. It was suggested by some listeners that a text edition would be a fun read as well and it could possibly lead to more people listening. Since no sane person wants this type of job, Kevin offered and he has become entrenched behind the scenes. He is responsible for a lot of the web content we do as well as filling in from time to time (time to time being once a year).

The idea that we are going on year three of this fiasco is hilarious. We are hardly pioneers. I liken us to the red-headed kids sitting at the kids table in Wade’s mansions basement who get served through a small slit in the mansions foundation. In all honesty, we have been able to keep doing this by having the talents of Dusty and Eric combined with the leeching of me. It is an easy job really. You set the table for the other two and you sit back praying the recording is coming out okay. I could go on but really it all hinges on those two.

Eric's answer: Here's a tidbit I don't even think Dusty knows: When other people started recording audio shows for the Torch, I wanted to start recording one with Dusty. I just never got around to pitching the idea to him. Jeremy beat me to the punch, and the two of them began capturing magic in a bottle. Sure, the magic was of a garbled, warbly quality, but I liked their writing and respected their opinions, so I kept listening. As Jeremy alluded to, he and I had never really talked outside of informal "conversations" through the Lounge (good times, good times), but Dusty and I talked more often than most family members do. Since I had that "in," and since I attended WrestleMania 22 in Chicago as well as one of that weekend's Ring of Honor shows, I was asked (I think; I'm pretty sure I didn't just barge in) to be a guest on the show. Since my potty mouth didn't get the show taken off the virtual air, I stuck around like herpes. Sorry, thanks, and you're welcome!

Kevin's wacky answer: Thanks for including me in the question. No one ever asks the manager how he put the band together. If it weren't for me, there would be no DEJ Audio Experience. My long affliation with Jeremy has been documented, but the other two pieces of the puzzle haven't been discussed.

After Jeremy moved to South Carolina, I happened to take a trip to Wisconsin with my brother and ran into a drunken Giebink drowning his sorrows after his Badgers lost to Ohio State. He was mumbling incoherently about the game being the biggest lose of his life since the second Ultimate Warrior died. After talking for a while longer, I got him in contact with Jeremy in the following weeks to get the ball rolling.

As for Eric, it's a little known fact that he was a roadie for Slipknot. When they came to Columbus for a show, I talked to him backstage after having my head split open by an obese crown surfer. Eric said, "I was wearing a crimson mask like Ric Flair," so we talked about wrestling as the concert wrapped up. I put him in contact with the other two several months later to form the DEJ Audio Experience.

* * *

VIP Forum member tommyg asks: Which was your favorite John Tenta gimmick? My favorite was the time when he became the Shark, got his tiger tattoo changed to a great white shark, and then he came out and said that he wasn't a fish.

Dusty's answer: The first thing I should point out, while on the topic of John Tenta, is how commendable it is that no matter what the promotion he was wrestling for, no matter what gimmick or name he was given at the time, he was steadfast in his pursuit of the goal of ending Hulkamania. For that alone, Tenta should be celebrated as a true legend of professional wrestling, with parades and statues in his honor. Now on to business. Anyone who answers “Golga” to this question does not deserve to be taken seriously about anything that he says ever, for the rest of his life. Since I don’t need to answer Golga in order for that rule to apply to me, I am going to say Earthquake. People fear earthquakes. Sharks are cute and cuddly.

Eric's answer: First things first, we should all fondly remember John Tenta, because by all accounts I've heard, he was a great guy who left us too soon. Tenta was involved in a lot of junk: There was the "I'm not a fish, I'm not an avalanche, I'm a man, I'm John Tenta" promo; there was the pole match against Big Bubba Rogers where the only person involved in the contest who could conceivably climb the pole was Jimmy Hart; and of course, there was Golga, a gimmick so shameful it deserved a full head mask but so shameless that it inspired about 1,300 imposters on the independent scene. But as Earthquake - by far my favorite John Tenta gimmick - he got to squash the second Ultimate Warrior (Barry Windham) during a pushup contest between Warrior and Dino Bravo; he got to sit on Hulk Hogan during the Brother Love show and send Hogan to Hollywood to film "Suburban Commando"; and he turned Damien into snake burgers on Prime Time Wrestling. Plus, he was a huge, scary, unkempt behemoth (unkempt, especially in comparison to Typhoon and his neatly trimmed beard) with a disgusting blue singlet, a scowl that would burn a hole through your innermost soul, and a strange ability to strike fear in a young child's heart despite his big bottom and silly skullet. No matter how you slice it, Earthquake was the man. (For as much as an earthquake can be a man. Not a fish.)

Jeremy's answer: I am going in the obvious direction and choosing Earthquake. Seeing him come out of the stands and turn heel, as a kid, was great. When he squashed Damien in front of Jake’s eyes it brought out a visceral reaction. He was never the most muscular guy, but he did come off as a legit tough guy. His finisher was different and it took some years for me to actually realize it was terrible. Running the ropes for momentum only to slow down before the butt splash is hilarious now, but it doesn’t affect my memories. It may also have something to do with the fact that all of my friends hated him and gave me endless noise about the Natural Disasters. He still stood out when saddled with Tugboat. Where Tugboat was not believable as Typhoon, Tenta was still the same badass look fat guy in the ring. Oh, and a quick thank you to you, sir. I had sufficiently removed all of my memories of the Shark from my mind until you had to bring them up to the front again. How embarrassing for him. I am sure collecting those paychecks sure was not embarrassing, though.

Kevin's answer: Let's pretend the question is "Which is your most memeorable John Tenta gimmick?" so that I can go with Earthquake just because of his stellar relationship with Typhoon. When else can a team's name, the Natural Disasters, describe them on so many different levels? They were a disaster to any semblance of an in-ring workrate, to my eyes, and the gimmick was such a disaster that I decided to stop watching wrestling for several years solely because of them. (Editor's note: Sad face.)

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