By Sean Radican, Torch columnist

RADICAN’S DVD REVIEW SERIES
INTERVIEWS WITH A HERO: THE CHRIS HERO STORY (DELUXE EDITION)
RELEASED BY SMART MARK VIDEO
BY SEAN RADICAN, TORCH COLUMNIST

“Interviews with a Hero: The Chris Hero Story” is one of the longest interviews with a top independent wrestler to date. Hero is an interesting character in wrestling. He spent a long amount of time on the independent scene and was one of those guys back in the time when ROH was running hot that never got a shot in the company.

Hero’s story is deeper than that though. He’s someone that has resisted getting in the proper shape in the past and doing the necessary things it would take to get him to the next level and up until the last few years, it was in doubt he would get a WWE contract.

Hero’s main promotion for many years was IWA-MS, which was run by the polarizing Ian Rotten. So many people that ended up making a name for themselves in ROH and elsewhere passed through IWA-MS. IWA-MS ran shows. The first disc interview on the set took place in 2003 with Hero mostly talking about his early days as a wrestler working under the Wifebeater gimmick, which got him heat from Dave Prazak. Hero claims Prazak thought he was a back yard wrestler and trashed him on internet message boards for his gimmick. Hero claims the gimmick came not from a hateful place, but from the white sleeveless shirt he wore to the ring.

The production on the 2003 interview is rough, but it’s interesting to listen to Hero talk about working in IWA-MS and his early aspirations to wrestle overseas. The main players Hero was associated with during that time were Colt Cabana and C.M. Punk. They wrestled nearly every week in IWA-MS during the time the 2003 interview took place. Hero and Punk engaged in a long feud and Hero discusses about how Ian Rotten gave them a platform on which to work and he considers him a father figure.

The 2011 interview covers all of the major feds Hero has wrestled in. Rob Naylor, who currently works in WWE developmental, conducts the interview and in general does a good job of guiding Hero through each fed that he worked in.

Hero talks more in-depth about his time in IWA-MS to start the second interview. The discussion about his feud with Punk is fascinating to listen to and will likely make you want to seek out their matches that Hero discusses if you’ve never seen them before.

Punk and Hero’s relationship began to fracture while they were still wrestling in IWA-MS. Hero talks about the dynamic of their friendship and why Punk began to grate on him. Hero does a good job of telling his side of all of the stories on this release and his story about what happened between him and Punk is fascinating to listen to.

Hero seems to have gotten himself involved in a lot of bad conflicts throughout his career with both the wrestlers and promoters he’s worked with and that theme begins with Hero discussing the conflict between him and Punk, which eventually went away.

The discussion of Hero’s time in CHIKARA is interesting as well. Hero moved to the east coast and ended up running the CHIKARA wrestling school with Mike Quackenbush for several years. Hero gives a lot of insight into what it was like to work with Quackenbush, who runs CHIKARA to this day. Hero talks in-depth about Quackenbush’s personality and quirks.

Hero’s discussion of the faults of CHIKARA and dealing with Quackenbush from his perspective are some of the best parts of this interview. Hero talks about Quackenbush putting his students in gimmicks that don’t allow them to grow as performers outside of the CHIKARA universe. He says the wrestlers have talent, but most of them don’t push Quackenbush to let them work in other promotions. Hero bluntly says that Quackenbush does what is best for himself and CHIKARA when it comes to how he handles talent, but that doesn’t seem to be a fair assessment given that in recent years CHIKARA talent has mixed in with several promotions most notably DGUSA and ROH.

Hero also talks about the events that led to his departure from CHIKARA after he sent some inappropriate texts to the girlfriend of one of his students at the wrestling school. Hero says he admits to making a mistake, but he feels that the situation was overblown because from what he could tell, not many students felt uncomfortable working with him as Quackenbush had claimed when Hero had a meeting with him about the incident.

One of the most hilarious parts of the DVD comes during the time when Naylor and Hero discuss Hero’s time in CZW. Hero spends 20 minutes burying Justice Pain. The details aren’t worth spoiling, but this is a burial for the ages and is entertaining to listen to even if you don’t know who Justice Pain is.

The section of the interview discussing PWG isn’t bad, but it would have been interesting to hear more of Hero’s thoughts on the promotion and matches he’s been involved in. There’s a fantastic story that Hero tells about Low Ki burying him in the locker room after Hero was trying to get his heat back as a face during his long reign as PWG Champion.

Hero talks about the problems he was having keeping his heat as a face because as he continued to be a variety of challengers, the fans were more excited to see his challengers than him continuing to successfully defend the PWG Championship. This all leads to some hilarious stories about Low Ki and none of it will surprise you if you know anything about Ki’s reputation on the independent scene.

Hero made the ROH-CZW feud with his promos and that feud is discussed in-depth during the ROH portion of the interview. Hero talks about how he was one of the wrestlers that people wanted to see in ROH, but had never gotten into the company. Hero talks about building his match by posting blogs online leading into his shot against ROH Champion Bryan Danielson. This took place during the time when the company was handing out open contracts and he was taking on all comers. The discussion on the ROH-CZW feud is really interesting and Hero talks about some of the ideas he came up with for the feud.

The ROH section is overall satisfying and Hero talks about teaming with Claudio Castagnoli after the ROH-CZW feud ended. He doesn’t say much about what it was like to work with former ROH booker Gabe Sapolsky and there are were some incidents where Gabe went to bat for him when upper management wanted to get rid of him.

One of the better parts of the ROH portion of the interview is Hero talking about the things that motivated him to finally get in shape, which is one of the things that held him back from making the next step throughout his career.

When Adam Pearce took over as booker, Hero found himself on the bad side of both Pearce and then ROH owner Cary Silkin. Hero was tipped off that it was likely he was going to be out of a job and there weren’t many other options on the independent scene left for him that provided regular work other than ROH.

Hero ended up getting motivated to train before going to wrestle for NOAH during this period. He worked on trying new things in the ring while training with Misawa in the NOAH dojo, but also changed his gear and began the transformation that eventually ended with him wearing trunks with no shirt. Hero ended up coming back and having some really good matches in the company, which earned him his spot back in the company.

One of the things that would have been interesting to hear about from Hero’s perspective is why he never got a run as the ROH World Champion. He had a great run with Castagnoli when they were put back together as a team facing a variety of tag teams from ROH and teams that were brought in from TNA, but Hero never got a big run on top of ROH as a singles wrestler even though he had a lot of good singles matches before he was put back together with Castagnoli.

Hero’s discussion of the deaths of his friends J.C. Baily and Larry Sweeney were hard to listen to. Baily and Sweeney had different stories, but both were heartbreaking. Hero talks about Sweeney throughout the interview, but the section where he talks about the events leading to Sweeney committing suicide are heartbreaking.

The last thing covered on the interview is Hero’s time wrestling in Japan primarily for NOAH. The primary thing discussed is Misawa’s death in the ring, which Hero witnessed in person. Hero runs down the details of what went wrong in the match and the condition of Misawa’s neck leading up to him dying after taking a suplex. It’s difficult to hear Hero discuss the incident and how the NOAH tour had to continue after Misawa died.

Hero’s interview is one of the best interviews I’ve seen, especially if you’re a fan of independent wrestling. This interview was filmed during the summer of 2011 during the time when word got out that Hero was going to sign with WWE developmental. Of course, that took much longer than anyone expected, but Hero is now wrestling as Kassius Ohno in WWE developmental. If anything, it seemed like Hero could do another interview talking about more of his time in the major independent promotions and cover even more ground, but this release was so in-depth that it’s hard to complain about that.

Hero is well-spoken and admits to making a lot of mistakes. He’s also engaging, which goes a long way in making this multi-disc set fly by when you’re watching him talk in-depth about so many figures in wrestling. The match selection isn’t as good as it could have been given the library of matches Smart Mark Video has available, but the matches that are included in the deluxe edition of this set are enjoyable to watch. I highly recommend picking up this release as soon as possible.

You can purchase this release at SmartMarkVideo.com

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