By Sean Radican, Torch columnist

RADICAN’S DVD REVIEW SERIES
“THE KEVIN STEEN SHOW WITH MICHAEL ELGIN”
RELEASED BY HIGHSPOTS IN 2013
BY SEAN RADICAN, TORCH COLUMNIST

“The Kevin Steen Show” is a new series of interviews featuring host Kevin Steen discussing wrestling and a variety of topics with other wrestlers. Steen has always proven to be a good interview in the previous shoot interview releases he’s done recently, so it seems a natural fit to have him host interviews with a variety of different independent wrestlers and give viewers a different look at these performers that you might not otherwise get from the standard shoot interview.

Steen’s first guest is Michael Elgin and you can tell right away Steen and Elgin are comfortable talking wrestling together. Elgin’s only previous shoot was released as part of a “best of” compilation by ROH and some of the same territory is covered in this interview, but Steen gets Elgin to open up about his thoughts on his ROH career and they tell some hilarious stories together.

One of the more charming parts of the DVD is the set and co-host. Steen has a homemade “The Kevin Steen Show” sign with a red curtain in back of him. His co-host is Cheeseburger, who most people remember as the guy Charlie Haas appeared to kill on TV. Cheeseburger is a man of few words, but when he does interact with Steen and Elgin, it provides some entertaining exchanges between the three men, especially at the end of the interview when Steen officiates an arm wrestling match between Elgin and Cheeseburger.

At first, it was worrisome that Steen said he was going to conduct the interview based on Wikipedia notes he had printed out from Elgin’s page the night before, but Steen quickly changes gears and tosses the notes aside while mentioning that he’s a fan of Colt Cabana’s “The Art of Wrestling” podcast and wants to have a free flowing conversation with his guest similar to what Cabana does on his podcasts.

Elgin tells a hilarious story to begin the interview about how his mom was a competitive arm wrestler and was close to appearing in the “Over the Top” movie when she got pregnant with Elgin while on vacation in Mexico. Eventually all of this leads into a story that Elgin heard from some patrons at a bar about how another female arm wrestler challenged her to an arm wrestling contest and put her newly won arm wrestling trophy on the line. Needless to say, Elgin’s mother won the contest and was attacked by the woman she defeated only for Elgin’s mom to counter her and throw her head-first into a running juke box.

Elgin talks about getting into wrestling and covers a lot of the same territory that he did on his ROH shoot except he gets into more detail on the same stories. Elgin’s tells one story that comes straight out of the “Only in Wrestling” handbook. One of Elgin’s trainers in Canada taught him to always to make sure he got paid. Elgin tells a story about working a show for that very same trainer, who tried to pay him DVDs and shirts.

One of the funnies exchanges between Steen and Elgin comes when Steen is asking Elgin about his previous nicknames in wrestling. Elgin says he came up with his current name by putting together middle name and his street name. Steen then gives out Elgin’s email, which uses his real name and Elgin asks that only women email the address with naked pictures.

One of the fun things about this interview is that when Steen and Elgin are talking about a certain topic, a graphic will come up with a twitter link, an email address, or a URL pertaining to the topic. There are also some deadpan commentary lines up on the screen as well that add some funny moments to this release such as when Steen mentions that Cheeseburger might not always be the co-host with him on these DVD releases. After Steen mentions that Cheeseburger might not be on all of these releases, a graphic appears that reads “Cheeseburger is a busy man.”

Elgin talks about working with Jim Cornette to come up with a new nickname for his full-time ROH debut in 2010. Elgin says he wishes he had saved the emails from Cornette, which included some horrible suggestions. Eventually Elgin was able to settle on Unbreakable. This leads to Steen having a meltdown while talking about working with Cornette to come up with a new nickname for him when he returned to ROH after losing to El Generico at “Final Battle 2011” with the stipulation being that if he lost he had to leave the company. Steen takes his Gatorade bottle and throws it across the room causing Gatorade to go flying all over the set after saying that Cornette saw his Evil tattoo and wanted to call him Mr. Evil. Steen said he finally came up with Wrestling’s Worst Nightmare. Cornette sounded like he was really difficult to work with for some people when he was booking ROH during this period.

There are also some good stories told involving Steen and Elgin. Elgin began working dark matches in ROH in 2007 and Steen didn’t know who he was. Steen talks about being on instant messenger with someone in Ontario that told him that Elgin and his tag team partner Ash were going to be brought in to feud with the Briscoes. Steen said he was also on instant messenger with Gabe Sapolsky, who was ROH booker at the time and he asked Gabe if they were being brought in to feud with the Briscoes. Steen was upset because at the time, he and Generico were feuding with the Briscoes. Steen says he didn’t care if that made Elgin look bad at the time by telling Gabe that people were saying Elgin was going to be brought in with his partner to feud with the Briscoes because he didn’t know him. By coincidence, Elgin wasn’t used for a long time after Steen talked to Sapolsky, but Elgin jokes that Steen has screwed with him twice in his career with the other time being when Elgin, who didn’t know Steen personally, wrote Steen asking how to get into Dragon Gate in Japan. Steen ended up giving Elgin a fake address to write to in Japan. Steen replies that he got him into PWG and they go back and forth about how Steen still owes him one because he screwed Elgin twice.

There are a lot of good ROH stories from recent years on this release as well with Elgin talking candidly about gaining the trust of the veterans in the locker room and being frustrated with his push after his breakout match with Davey Richards at “Showdown in the Sun: Day 2” during WrestleMania weekend in 2012. Elgin talks candidly about why he was disappointed with his match with Finlay in ROH last year and Steen chimes in as well talking about how he was expecting something different when he got into the ring with Finlay in PWG shortly after Finlay’s first match with Sami Callihan in EVOLVE in 2011 and had a different match than he expected with him.

Elgin also talks in-depth about why he is glad to be out of the House of Truth and talks about how it was difficult to establish his own personality on the mic when he, Martini, and Strong were all trying to get across the same points in their promos. Elgin’s disappointment in how he was booked after his match with Richards last year during WrestleMania weekend isn’t surprising given how much buzz he had coming out of that weekend. Elgin makes some good points about how his feud with Strong was dragged out too long and says it should have climaxed sooner. He does mention that he’s not as grumpy now as he was for portions of last year. It does seem that Elgin is being booked more effectively in ROH now, but he could mean so much more if he weren’t thrown into the S.C.U.M. vs. ROH feud and pushed as more of a top act.

The interview closes with Steen taking a bunch of email and twitter questions from fans. The highlight is when someone asks Elgin if he plays videogames and he talks about getting an Xbox 360 and not using it for anything now except to play DVDs. The look on Steen’s face when he realizes Xbox 360 can play DVDs is priceless.

Overall this was an excellent release. There were some crude stories told and Elgin is dipping throughout the whole interview, but he isn’t shown doing it close up very often, so it’s not like watching Ric Flair’s shoot interview where he was constantly spitting in a cup. Steen did a great job of guiding Elgin through the interview and got some good insight from Elgin on his current run in ROH and his frustrations from last year. I give this release a high recommendation.

You can purchase “The Kevin Steen Show with Michael Elgin” at HIGHSPOTS

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