David Arquette Names WWE Hall Of Famer Who's Had An Issue With His Return To Wrestling
Former WCW World Heavyweight Champion David Arquette recently made his return to professional wrestling on the independent circuit. On the debut episode of The WINCLY, Arquette spoke to Wrestling Inc. managing editor Nick Hausman about his return, wrestlers provoking him and more.
Arquette's championship win is largely cited as the straw that broke the camel's back that led to WCW going out of business, but that hasn't stopped him from giving pro wrestling another try. Arquette said he never really aspired to be a pro wrestler, but like most wrestling fans he took part in some backyard wrestling when he was a child.
"I never really saw myself as a wrestler, Arquette said. "But we did set up mattresses, we'd do little backyard stuff, I learned the figure-four leg lock from Ric Flair just by watching it and trying it on my friends forever when I was a kid, but I never thought of doing it professionally."
When asked what made him want to return to the ring, Arquette reveled that he was tired of wrestlers throwing jabs at him. At this point, his name is synonymous with disaster in the world of pro wrestling, so he's trying to change that narrative.
"A lot of people had started attacking me online, like [James] Ellsworth came out," he said. "Whenever certain things would happen, my name would come back up, like, 'This is a worse idea than making David Arquette the champion.' I started just getting sick of that. Then there were individual wrestlers that kind of started trolling me in a way."
Arquette went on to say that since he's announced his return to wrestling, other wrestlers have even threatened him with real-life fights as opposed to wrestling matches.
"If somebody wants to fight we can fight, but we're not gonna call it a wrestling match. I really dislike bullies, and there are a lot of bullies in wrestling," he said. When asked if he received opposition from anyone in particular, Arquette named Bully Ray as someone who isn't happy about his return to pro wrestling. "I think Bully Ray, Bubba Ray, isn't too thrilled. I called in to his podcast just because they put the number up on Twitter and I couldn't sleep and it was early in the morning. So I called in to his podcast and we has a little contentious podcast moment."
Arquette also discussed his friendship with indie wrestler RJ City. Arquette wrestled against City in his first match since returning, and then they formed a tag team together.
"I met RJ through one of my friends... He lives in Toronto, so he's always queuing me in on the indie stuff going on in Toronto" Arquette said. "He was telling me about the different people he liked up there and he mentioned RJ City and how he's really funny. And I was like, 'Who is this guy singing and doing show tunes?'"
City hosted a talk show and Arquette joined him as a guest during WrestleMania weekend. He said City has aspirations of becoming a more prominent talk show host so he's helping him with that. Arquette was able to earn City's respect when he wrestled with three broken ribs, so they became tag team partners.
You can listen to the first episode of the WINCLY podcast below, which includes the full interview with Cage, a WWE Super Show-Down preview with Sports Illustrated's Justin Barrasso, a clip from this week's Impact Wrestling media call with Eddie Edwards and Moose, an in-depth interview with David Arquette and a look back at what was learned from All In with Barrasso. You can subscribe to our audio channel on iTunes. Please rate us and leave a comment.