Peter Avalon On Training David Arquette, Finding Out Arquette Was Wrestling Nick Gage
"Pretty" Peter Avalon was on a recent episode of the AEW Unrestricted podcast with Aubrey Edwards and Tony Schiavone. Avalon helped train David Arquette as Arquette attempted to get back into the wrestling world to reform his image. Avalon recalled what his reaction was when Arquette contacted him.
"I've been working with the United Wrestling Network for my entire career, pretty much, and for a while, I was running their wrestle center, their training school. I got a phone call from David Arquette," Avalon recalled. "Somebody had given him my number and he gave me a call. He was interested in training. He actually left me a voicemail, and I thought it was a rib at first.
"He was just so casual. 'Hey, this is David Arquette.' I was like, 'Oh, okay, this is silly.' I called him, and then we set something up and he would drive out to my school in Oxnard, which is about hour and a half away from Hollywood. So he was making the drive to train a couple times, and then he was like, 'I'm committed to doing this for his documentary and everything that came out,' so he bought a ring, put it in his backyard and I was training him at his house for a while.
"I'd go there once, twice, three times a week, depending on when he wanted to train. We got him healthy. We got him to shape, and I think I trained him solid. Championship Wrestling From Hollywood, one of their biggest shows, we ran at the Irvine Improv, and the headlining match was me vs. him, which was really, really cool, sold out show, was dope."
Arquette's comeback journey took a bad turn after a deathmatch against Nick Gage where he was critically injured. Schiavone asked Avalon if he advised Arquette against doing the match against Gage.
"Funny story, I'm a little bummed that I didn't get asked about it, just as a little quip about anything," Avalon admitted. "He asked me to train that week before it. I couldn't do it, and I don't know why. I couldn't make my schedule work with his schedule, and when he messaged me about it saying, 'Hey, I have a match coming up, and I want to train for it.' I said, 'No problem.' He told me it was a hardcore match, and I thought, okay, what's a couple chairs and cookie sheets and maybe a table?
"I didn't realize it was this f**king deathmatch with Nick Gage, get your throat sliced because I probably would have been like, '(back up noise) Let's talk.' Maybe I could have gone and had your back too bro. F**king s**t man, mud show. It was terrifying and then training him again after that, he's got this little scar now. It's like, bro-ther."
Avalon also had an opportunity to train with WWE Hall of Famer "Rowdy" Roddy Piper. He discussed how that came together, and he revealed his one regret about the experience.
"That was a one-off thing, random luck. I think Piper was gonna do a show or something," Avalon recalled. "He had some kind of involvement and his son was also involved with us, so he did a one off thing with the Championship Wrestling From Hollywood show, and he was in town. He was picked up by another wrestler, Jared 1:20, and he calls me up and he says, 'Hey, man, you want to come come roll around? Roddy's looking for a ring and just wants to get in there.' I lived in Rancho Cucamonga at the time. I drove down to Sherman Oaks in traffic.
"It was an hour and a half to get there, and it was just the three of us, and Roddy Piper's giving pretty much a seminar to me and this guy Evan, Jared 1:20. The stuff Roddy was saying pretty much just re-invented the way I thought and saw wrestling because it was all based on just energy, and presence, and your eyes and working the room, and we did not get very physical in there. If anything, we circled a little bit and maybe locked up, and that's about it. And it was just all how he worked the room, and how he was able to channel energy and control energy, and it was like, damn, dude.
"The examples he was using was like you could work an entire room with your eyes, and he's working the room, an empty room, the exact way he would work Madison Square Garden or something like that to get all these people to really lean forward, and sink in and buy into what he's selling. I have one thing I wish I did. We were in the zone, and we were circling and we got each other's space. He was like, 'Just kind of feel it. Just kind of feel it. Feel it out, feel it out,' and I could feel his energy. I could feel it. I was like, I know what he's talking.
"I know what he's talking about, and we started slowly circling, slowly getting closer, looking at each other in the eyes. We're in it, we're in it, and then he slaps the s**t of me, and it pulled me out of it. I just remember like, wack, oh, boy. I didn't know how to react. Looking back now, I wish I just slapped the s**t out of him back because I know he probably would have loved it. In the moment, I was so blown back. 'What just happened? I just got slapped by Piper. Oh s**t,' and then he's like, 'Are you okay?' I was like, 'S**t, I pulled him out of the moment.' So that's my one thing I wish I did is that I wished I just slapped the s**t out of him back when we were face to face."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit AEW Unrestricted with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.