TNA star Kenny King was recently interviewed on the Talk TNA Podcast. King spoke on a a variety of topics including his first stint in TNA, his exit from Ring Of Honor, working with Jim Cornette, the X-Division and a lot more. Check out the highlights below:
When he decided to be a wrestler: “I guess when I packed my bags and went out for tough enough. Even then I wasn’t so much sold on the wrestling aspect of it as much as I wanted to be on MTV.”
What he took away from Tough Enough: “It was phenomenal. That was the event that single handedly leap frogged me into this industry. You look at it as a reality tv show but I was also able to be trained by some of the best pro wrestlers on the planet, get in a WWE ring by the greats.”
His first run in TNA back in 2005: It was actually one of my Tough Enough mates and we’re still really good friends until this day. She moved to Orlando to work for TNA and I had just moved there. She got my stuff showed it and next thing I know I was being used. The first time I was on TNA tv I was backstage with Raven knocking dudes out. At that time my experience was really important to me because that was the first big thing that happened. It was the transition from Fox Sports to Spike TV. I was probably ready for a bigger opportunity than they gave me but it was great getting that opportunity to work with those kind of guys.
What happened with the end of his ROH run: “Business is business, first and foremost. I still love Ring Of Honor, I love the people there. My friends that are still there that I know, I have nothing but love for those guys. We were all there just trying to make it. When Sinclair came in they wanted us all to sign 18 month deals. I wanted to see how legit they were because everything that glitters isn’t gold so I signed a 12 month deal as oppose to the other. So a year later it’s time to figure out what’s going on and I kind of called it months prior to me leaving. So when it came down to the conversation we had a week before my contract expiring where I expressed my concerns as far as Jim Cornette wanting to sign me to an extension but if you do that your still under contract and I had reservations about what that would mean if I actually would mean if I had a WWE or TNA tryout. I wasn’t trying to screw somebody else over but I wasn’t trying to get screwed over either.
So when I was presented with an actual contract extension to sign, I looked at it like three heads because we just talked about this. I wasn’t going to sign it. So everyone knows what happened after that, I got the opportunity to go wrestle for Impact and I even gave them a call. I think that the reason why it got so out of hand is because Jim Cornette is used to getting one up on people and he feels like I got one up on him.”
Overall thoughts on Jim Cornette: “If you look at his track record he usually self destructs or meltdown with every company that he has and in his position in about a year or two he melts down. Through all his stuff he is a good wrestling mind but eventually enough becomes enough.”
