PCO Shoots On Signing With ROH Over AEW, All Out's Backstage Fight & More - Exclusive Interview

In his more than 30-year pro wrestling career, Carl Joseph Yvon Ouellet, better known as Pierre Carl Ouellet or PCO, has worked for pretty much everyone. While he is the resident monster in Impact Wrestling at the moment, some fans may remember him better as one-half of The Quebecers in WWF during the early 1990s. The Mountie-themed grapplers went on to become three-time WWF Tag Team Champions before being re-packaged as the dastardly one-eyed pirate Jean-Pierre LaFitte. As LaFitte, he committed one of the most heinous acts in all of pro wrestling history: He stole Bret Hart's jacket and sunglasses! This led to the two men engaging in a three-month feud that culminated at WWF In Your House 3, when Hart made LaFitte tap to his signature Sharpshooter submission hold.

In the years after, Ouellet would wrestle for WCW, ECW and even the NWA before retiring in 2011. Shortly before 2018, however, Ouellet quietly started wrestling again on the indies before not-so-quietly reinventing himself once more as "The French Frankenstein," PCO. Ouellet's latest iteration sees him presented as an unstoppable monster who can only be contained by his creator, D Destro. The two men have released various insane viral videos together that see PCO doing everything from catching car batteries to having sharp-tipped darts thrown at his body. The change in gimmick led to Ouellet signing with Ring of Honor in 2018 and eventually becoming the ROH World Heavyweight Champion when he defeated Rush at ROH Final Battle 2019. 

Ring of Honor released all of their talent from their contracts in 2021. In the time since, PCO has signed with Impact and ROH has been acquired by AEW President Tony Khan.

I gotta start with Matt Taven saying that you got some broken ribs right now. I saw, I think, that one of your representatives has already kind of weighed in on this, but how are you feeling, PCO, right now?

I'm feeling great, feeling great. And not being human, it's a bunch of things. So it's just things that just happens here and there, so I don't really pay attention to it.

So are your ribs broken or no?

Well, yeah, they were kind of damaged, but everything's good.

How you are still able to soak up the amount of pain that you endure, PCO? You work in a very violent style. How are you still able to do what you do after all these years? 

I just love it. I just love the game. I just love doing what I do, and I've always been like that. I mean, it was always about anything for the fans, just to make them happy. Just, I don't know. It's such a drive when you do something, and it's just something that you love to do. It's hard to explain, basically, it's just there. It's there. So after all those years, for me, I feel like I got 10, 15 years in front of me, so it's not that long that I want to go, but that's how I feel. As far as my body feels, my body feels like 100%.

You're pretty good friends with The Young Bucks, are you not? I know that in the past, before All In, I distinctively remember asking Matt Jackson, 'Who on the indies would you like to see here at All In?' And you were the man that he said at the time. So I didn't know if you want to talk a little bit about your relationship with The Young Bucks.

When AEW started, I was so confused because I was talking to Marty on one side, which was ROH, and I was talking with Cody and The Bucks on the other side, but thinking in my mind that they were all together, they were all going to do AEW together, or they're all going to stay in ROH or whatever. So I was talking to both sides before I knew that, okay, now I've got to pick one side. Just weird. I remember texting with Cody and saying, "Hey, Marty just texted me two days ago. I just told them everything." So it's like, okay. So they weren't talking to each other. So I was not aware of that, because I knew they were such great friends. So I never in my mind thought that maybe Marty was not going to follow, was not going to go to AEW.

And then when I had to pick side for me, ROH was the one, because I went with kind of security, so to speak, because I didn't know Tony, I didn't know how much time he would be willing to invest. I didn't have a TV deal back then. They had a few pay-per-views lined out. All In was the first one they did. Then they had the Double or Nothing coming up for Vegas. And then they could offer a money deal and things like that, but you didn't know how long it was going to last. And then you look on the other side, ROH was there for 20 years. So you're like, okay. So at that time, at that point, which was 2018, 2019, I had to make the best decision for myself. And I thought that going with ROH, because Sinclair was behind that, because they had 216 TV stations, and they were talking about going live, and, I mean, competing live show every week.

And to be fair, Ring of Honor would be in a very different place had the pandemic not hit. I know that Ring of Honor was really poised to make some big moves, and just that the chips did not fall their way due to what was going on.

Yeah, it was a great company. So yeah, I was talking to all of those guys, and I had good relationship, good conversations with all of them, and felt like I was wanted there and I was appreciated by them ... I liked all of them, too. So it's just the way, like you said, just the way that chips landed. It was just like a sure done deal one side and a sure done deal on the other side, but not the one where the future was ... We don't know the future, but it ended up AEW became so much bigger than ROH.

They bought ROH.

Yeah, exactly.

What do you think about what Tony Khan's done with Ring of Honor? I mean, it's only been a couple shows ... obviously you're a former Ring of Honor World Champion. I don't know if you'd be interested in rejoining that brand in any way, down the road.

Well, I've read things and I don't know if it's all true. There's so many websites that aren't real, or news that, we read them because they're on our screen, or laptop up or whatever, but they're not accurate. But I don't know, maybe something might happen. I don't know if Impact's going to do a switch of talents with Ring of Honor ... I haven't heard it from anyone, though. It's not a sure source, which is kind of weird too, because I think once the guys are going from one side to the other, it's easier for one or the other promoter to negotiate their own deal with one of the boys unless the contract is solid and signed with the other company. But yeah, it's ... very interesting. I don't know. But honestly, I'm super, super happy with the way things are going with Impact Wrestling. I love all the producers, and all the executives, from top to bottom. Super great, super good. No drama so far. It's so weird, when people are asking what's the difference between now and then, or back then and now. You can tell the business doesn't change. At one point or another, something pops out.

The reason I asked you about The Bucks and all this is because I know you have some familiarity with everybody that's involved with the biggest story of pro wrestling right now. So from your end, I don't know if you watched what Punk said at All Out media scrum or just read what he said, but what's your reaction when you see CM Punk go out there and say what he said after AEW All Out?

Well the thing is, there's a lot of information missing for me. If you're not there on a day-to-day basis and you don't see someone react on a day-to-day, or on a moment-to-moment, you don't know his attitude whatsoever, because we're on the outside. I've met Punk a few times, maybe 10 times. He's not one of my friends, so I don't know him personally. So I don't know how he's feeling, what he's going through, what the promises were, and what happened, what doesn't happen, because that's the thing with this business. And the bigger the stakes, the bigger the stages, the bigger everything is, the more problems you're going to have. So I remember even saying that he was always the king of the jungle, and there's a reason for that, because he knew he had to deal with a lot of problems and things like that.

Do you think Punk handled it the right way by airing his grievances, and calling out The Bucks, and the EVPs and Hangman Page?

I think he's old enough, he's got enough experience to know what's right and what's wrong. If you ask me how I would handle this situation, I would probably handle it in a different way. But that's me. That's the way I am. For me, in front of a camera, that's not where I like to speak out my problems, and to wash my dirty laundry in front of cameras or a microphone. I mean, it's good for the show. It creates those moments where, jeez, is that real? Was it something to spike up the interest of the pay-per-view, whatever, or if it's just personal? It's pretty damn crazy.

And it sounds like it got crazier, because then backstage it sounds like a giant brawl broke out where everybody was biting and punching each other. You've been in this business more than a cup of coffee.

I've been through those things, too. I've done it. I've been there, I've done that. So that's why I speak with experience right here. The way I've handled my things in the past, way in the past, with The Kliq, with Sean and Diesel, and it was some bad blood at that time. It was pretty bad. And if I had to redo it again, it wouldn't be like that. It would be, and first of all, sometimes you've just got to be tough mentally. You've just got to tough it up. You've just got to go through the situation.

And look at me now. With times, everything change. And probably me and Kevin Nash are super good buddies right now. I wouldn't say best friends, but every time we see each other, man, we're having fun. We went out a few times together in the past after that, and we had great nights, good fun, and good evenings, and supper, whatever. And at one point I couldn't stand him. And the reason is there's so much build up in between everybody that gets to your head, too. So you need to have a clear head ... Yeah, it's a lot, man. I know, I kind of feel where everybody's at, and it's not a good situation.

So what's your advice to everybody here? Like you say, you've been through this. All these guys just leave their blood on the line, now where do you go from here? What is your advice to everybody in this situation?

Well, at that time I left, I left because there's two ways you can look at it. You could either leave, but if you have a little bit of an ego it's hard. It's hard to stay there and to face the same problem day after day ... And something goes well for one and it doesn't go well for the other one. And someone gets pushed and doesn't get pushed ... I'm talking about someone has a good direction for his career, the other one doesn't have a good direction for his career, and then it becomes harder.

Becomes even harder, because you start to think, well whatever, I don't do this, I don't do that. I'm pretty loyal to this company. And then sometimes you feel like, okay, that doesn't count anymore. I mean, that's the way you think. That's the process of thinking. It's not always true the way you think. It's not the reality. But you start to put things in your mind that affect your judgment and then creates that hate, or that heat with the other person. So I mean, to me it must have been, like I said, we are on the outside, but it cannot be something that just popped out three, four days ago. I mean, it's got to be maybe something back from ROH days or something like that. 

It would seem this has been bubbling for a while. Punk, he goes back to when Hangman Page made the comment about how there was issues in the locker room with Punk, and that seems to have been where the wheels started kind of spinning there. So I agree. I don't think this just kind of came out of nowhere. But it's changed the dynamic. It's going to be very different. It's going to be a very different company on the other side of this, that's for sure.

I think that they're going to have to make decisions no matter what. I mean, I don't know what's going to be the outcome, but I think one way or another it's going to be hard. And I personally, if I was in charge, it's going to be hard to keep everybody happy.

Well let's talk a little bit about you, PCO ... [What are] your thoughts on the work that Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens are doing, because I guess you were the third man in their first match. What does this all mean?

Yeah, no, we had a great match, which was a three-way match back in the IWS, which was probably one of the three of us, one of, all of us, the greatest match that we probably had. Not just the three of us, but as far as the trio, probably a top 10 match for the three of us depending on anybody you wrestle with, with two other guys. I mean, it was just one of those nights where everything clicked. It was just on point. The story was good, all the craziness of the match, and how the weight went, the crowd's on fire. So it was just one of those 'best of' match.

Did you see in them what everybody's getting to see now? I mean, these two guys have arguably become two of the best of their generation.

Yeah, they were labeled as big prospects, young. Kevin was labeled as one of the biggest prospects. He was only 14. And Rami, maybe, around when he was 18, 19. He was probably the guy with the most potential in IWS. And Kevin, from the get-go when he was young, because he was so athletic and he was doing things that no one else could do. But he had it, too. He had, I mean, as far as the way to walk to the ring and the whole presence. So he had it in himself. So he was really meant to do that. But he didn't have it easy. It took him 13 or 14 years to make it.

So I think at one point, and it's always like that. Sometimes something goes quick, fast. That's the first two, three years, and everybody thinks, oh, he's going to be the next world champion. He's going to be with WWE or whatever. And then there're those years where you have to put in the work. Where you had to go from Montreal to Jersey, or Philly or the Northeast coast, and just drive his car every weekend, and just pay his dues big time there for so many years, and all across the states. And so it was not easy for him. It was not easy for him, it was not easy for Rami. He didn't have it handed on a silver plate. They really worked for it. They were labeled as future top prospects, but it didn't come that easy.

So obviously, they're over in WWE. There was a big change in WWE. Vince McMahon stepped down, new regime in place there with Hunter taking over creative and other new management up top ... Does this change your relationship with WWE? Do you think that new people in charge improves your ability to maybe go in and make an appearance, walk through the Forbidden Door, do something like that over there or no?

Yeah, I think so. I think so. I don't think I had a bad relationship with Vince, but I think new blood, and guys like Paul, Triple H, I mean, other than I had my altercation with his best buddies at the time, I remember when he came in the WWE from WCW ... We rode together, we did a bunch of shows where we shared a car, and then we were on the road together for almost two, three weeks, almost a month. And it was tough coming in a WWF dressing room back then, and coming from the other company, and I really helped him out a lot. But I don't think he owes me anything. That's not why I'm saying that. But to just say, even though I was not on good terms with other guys, he would always say hi to me, and was always polite to me, and would shake hands, and always got along with him. And I think he's doing a tremendous job right now.

So it's just hard for me to believe that Vince is really out of the whole equation. I mean, somehow it's impossible to me, but it's possible that maybe he said to Triple H, I'm going to hand you all the cards, you play everything that you want and if you succeed, you succeed, and if you fail then you fail. We'll see what we do. So I think he gave him a great opportunity to do good. So that's the way I see it. But I don't see Vince not being involved in the process. Maybe for first time of his life he's not active, but he's involved. He knows what's going on. I think he knows what's going on, and he knows, and I'm sure that Paul told him, I'm going to bring back those guys, and those guys, and I want to do this and I want to do that. And then probably went and said, 'Okay, fine. Just do everything that you would do if I wasn't there just to see how it's going to go, and we'll see from there.'

In conversations I've had with you in the past, you had mentioned how the big dream match for you is you really wanted to have a feud with The Undertaker.

Yep.

Yeah, and it just doesn't seem like that's going to happen anymore.

I don't think so, but there's so many other great legend matches could be possible, or just good matches that could be possible, too ... For me, if it was well played, I think Sting is another good one. 

Oh?

Yeah. And maybe Jericho. It depends how everything turns out and everything plays out. But I'm sure there's a huge, huge match somewhere out there.