INTERVIEW: "White Trash" Johnny Webb

[LucharesuFan619 0]

Just talked to Johnny Webb for about an hour. I recorded the whole thing, only to find that it didn't fucking work and the tape recorder must be broken. So, I'm doing this all from memory, and am going to post stuff as I remember it. I'll write a more formalized recap in the following days, and it'll be posted on several sites.

 

Webb explained that he was very into karate and similar sports and that it was through those interests that he got into wrestling. He saw an ad for the Slammers Wrestling Federation training school and decided to sign up. He was trained mainly by Darren McMillan, better known as Dynamite D, but also interacted regularly with Carlos Torres a.k.a. Hombre de Oro a.k.a Carlito Montana. He also had several matches with "Iron" Mike Earhardt, Tyrone "Tiny" Little, and Jimmie Jaimes, better known respectfully as The Messiah, Cybil, and Homeless Jimmy. As all of the workers who've met him that I've talked to have supported, Verne Langdon - the owner of the SWF - was very old school. He was nothing like Rob Black. There were set dates for shows - every Thursday night (Webb only worked the shows in Bakersfield, CA) - and regardless of whether they fell on a Christmas, Thanksgiving, or other holiday, you had to go, or you'd be fired. It was when McMillan didn't come to a show on Thanksgiving that he was fired by Langdon.

 

Next part coming in several minutes...

[Guest Corino 1000]

The recorder broke? What was wrong with?

[LucharesuFan619 0]

Webb also met Kevin Kleinrock, Patrick Hernandez, and a few other future XPW employees while working at Slammers. Webb - who seemed very down to earth, although very laid back and "casual" at the same time - put over the Slammers schedule as very strict, just like Verne. He had to commute to Bakersfield whenever he worked a show. In Slammers, Webb was very, very tight with Homeless Jimmy and Damien Steele and looking back on the relationship, he equated their friendship to a "clique" of sorts. They were very friendly.

 

Regarding Langdon, Webb remembers that he could look at a student and know in a moment what gimmick he wanted them to portray. He gave Webb the gimmick of Pete "Spider" Malloy, and Webb played Malloy for his entire tenure at Slammers.

 

McMillan, Kleinrock, and Hernandez - along with a couple others - eventually broke away from Slammers in '98 and formed SCCW. Webb and a bunch of other Slammers wrestlers jumped to SCCW, which Webb reminisces ran in very small venues, such as high schools and the like. Around the same time he was working SCCW, Webb also worked a few Impact Wrestling Federation shows, which is where he first met Brian Walthers a.k.a. "Dirty" Dan Hanson, who he formed a tag team called "Trailer Trash" with. I'm hoping to have Walthers contribute some of his memories of teaming with Webb for my upcoming XPW retrospective, although it's not set in stone yet.

 

Webb also met Gary Key a.k.a. TOOL at the IWF, which he remembers he didn't stay with ALL that long, but did work several of their shows. It was in the IWF that Webb met "The Fallen Angel" Christopher Daniels, TOOL, The Ballard Brothers, and other notables.

[LucharesuFan619 0]

The recorder broke? What was wrong with?

Will explain later. Gotta spew out what he said or else I'll forget it all.

 

After SCCW, Webb jumped to the UIWA, and Dan Hanson came along with him, as did Damien Steele, the Crusher/the Skullcrusher (Homeless Jimmy; he also worked in SCCW), and others. Webb first met Kaos, Supreme, and others in UIWA. Webb remembers how there was a lot of heat between the UIWA and XPW, because they both got started around the same time.

 

After working UIWA awhile, Webb jumped to the just beginning XPW, along with Kaos, Supreme, "Phenomenal" Phil Lander (who also worked for UIWA), Kleinrock, D, and Steele. Carlos Torres was one of the only few guys at Slammers who stayed loyal to Langdon and didn't jump to SCCW, so it was only at this time that he left Slammers to join XPW.

 

Webb remembers that XPW went absolutely balls out on advertising and hyping its first show, running TV ads, flyering nearby towns, making a beautiful program and the like. He wrestled Phil on XPW's debut show, and then worked with the late, great Big Dick Dudley twice. He remembers Dudley being a very nice guy, but didn't really say anything more than that, which was a popular trend (he was very nice, and gave extensive answers for some questions and sentence long answers for others).

 

I just realized...I fucking forgot to ask him about Missy Hyatt. God fucking damnit. Screw me. FUCK!!!!!

[HollywoodSpikeJenkins 0]

What about his feud with Messiah? One of the best feuds of early XPW.

[LucharesuFan619 0]

Webb said he enjoyed his series of matches with The Messiah. Regarding his role in the first KOTDM tournament, he said he had worked death matches before and was relatively accustomed to the hardcore stuff, although he did provide some interesting insight about thumb tacks later in the interview, which I'll soon describe.

 

Webb also worked with John Kronus several times. He said that Kronus had "big balls" and personified "craziness." He enjoyed working with him.

 

Webb talked about working with porno star Jessica Darlin. He mentioned that she was nice, but that she really wasn't cut out for wrestling. She was always nervous and really seemed to be - as he put it - "thrust into a new world" very suddenly. She was therefore quite shy. He was very happy that his XPW TV segments with her came out as hilarious as they did, but said that while she was nice, wrestling just wasn't her thing.

 

 

Then came HeatWave...

 

This part of the interview was especially interesting. Webb was at the show. He says that ECW "was expecting us." They flew out Viking Hall's Atlas Security, which - as so many have failed to point out - they didn't have to do...they could've just used the GOA security, but they didn't. Webb says that ECW had a plan going in. He said he had a front row seat with Messiah, Kaos, and others, but that Kris Kloss desparately wanted a front row seat, so he gave up the seat and Kloss said he'd let him sit there later in the night, but never got the chance to offer it up because the incident happened so quickly.

 

He sat several rows up next to Chronic of the Westside NGZ and some others, and remembers that right before the altercation began, he was going to go down to the front row and ask Kloss for his seat back. A security member, though, was right behind him and told him not to even think about getting out of his seat. Once the altercation began, he remembers that he ran outside and found out that Kaos and Messiah had already left, having been whisked away in the limo right when inklings of fighting began to show.

 

He remembers that he ended up outside and cites that several ECW guys grabbed XPW ring crew members and were throwing them up against fences. In an interesting tidbit, he remembers seeing New Jack for the first time standing outside on crutches. He mentions that that was his first runin with New Jack, and there were no problems. He said he didn't remember Jack using the crutches to beat on anyone, as the Original Gangsta later bragged in interviews, but just remembers how the two looked at each other, and made a point that it was his first runin with New Jack, like I said. Fuck, I wish this goddamn tape recorder had worked.

 

Go Funk Yourself was about a week later. He said that Homeless Jimmy was supposed to do a complete back flip and take the Spider German Suplex by going chest first through the table, but that he didn't complete the flip. Webb said he never was concerned about Jimmy and knew he was alright, because "if you knew Jimmy like I did," you knew nothing could hurt him.

 

Webb talked about Terry Funk later in the interview. Funk worked Sabu at GFY. Webb compares Funk's match with Sabu vs. his match with Shane Douglas at Hostile Takeover. He says that at GFY, there was a ton of cameraman backstage to film the guys as they came backstage (none of that footage is on the tape), and remembers that Funk always stayed in camera when he saw such things. He says that Sabu was probably used to having cameras on him a lot, but that Douglas probably wasn't (I know this is confusing). He says that at HTO, there were also a lot of cameras backstage and made it a point to emphathize that this is ONLY HIS opinion, and JUST an opinion...but that he thinks that Douglas may've been overwhelmed by all of the cameras being pointed right in his face when he came backstage and that that's why he and Funk had the altercation. Funk was used to cameras in his face, like Webb mentioned, but he doesn't think Douglas was, but again emphathized that that was only his opinion. He says that Webb and Douglas argued and then started going at it in a "pull apart" brawl, and the wrestlers and crew had to break them up.

 

Back to 2000...actually, that's about it for '00. Onto '01...

 

I really enjoyed his insight about the second KOTDM. In the first round, he worked Nosawa, and said the match ame off really well. This part was very interesting. He said he didn't speak Japanese but that he did speak Spanish, and so did Nosawa, so before the match they were talking in "broken Spanish" and using that to put the match together, since that was their only language commonality. He says the match was very good, and when I asked him about whether he thought it was hard to work with non-American talent or if he thought wrestling was a universal languag, he seemed to pick the latter. He explained that regardless of who you're working with, you're gonna go out there and put a match together, whether it be by laying it out beforehand or improbbing the whole thing. He says you'll figure out a way to "mime your intentions," regardless of what nationality your opponent is.

 

In the tourney's second round, he worked Supreme, who was at the time working an anti-hardcore gimmick. He says that he took an incredibly sick bump in that match, where he got Super Huracarana'd into a pile of thumb tacks. He explains that when you're working with tacks, you don't just fall ONTO them, you fuckin "Slide" over them, and so it's an especially unfavorable experience.

 

I ask him about his match with Nosawa's partner, Kikuzawa, at the show following the KOTDM, and he explains that Nosawa was the one who communicated between the two (the match has yet to see the light of day, although it's said to be decent). He communicated what each was saying they wanted to do before the match and they then went out and used what Nosawa told them, pretty much.

[LucharesuFan619 0]

At the next show, Scene of the Crime, he worked Pogo the Clown, although it was just a short schmoz, with the purpose of having TOOL's manager, Luis Cypher, kidnap Jessica Darlin, and then Webb chased them backstage.

 

Redemption: Kaos vs. Webb. Deathmatch. Webb said he would've liked to have had more time for the match, but that it was still fun.

 

Then comes the complicated part...Damage Inc.

 

Webb says that it was no secret that Messiah and Rob Black didn't get along. They just got to a point where they didn't like each other. He seemed to hesitantly imply a reference to Messiah fucking Lizzy Borden, but I may've just inferred that out of curiosity. At the show, Webb dressed like Black and ran out during the tag match with Black, Sabu, and Lazie. He said that the plan was for him to do the same thing, but with the match featuring Messiah. When Billy left, though, they kept the same booking philosophy and Webb ran out and won the title from Sabu. He didn't really agree with GQ Money's statement that everyone was scrambling the morning of the show to get a video done about Messiah going to heaven, since they knew he had left XPW. Webb says that they knew he left and that they had sufficient time to prepare the video.

 

Webb reminds me that during this time, his knee injury was fucking killing him, an that every single match was a battle. He worked with Sandman and Vampiro the next couple of shows, and said they were cool guys, but didn't go into it more than that, like he tended to do a lot of the time when asked about specific guys. He worked with GQ Money at Free Fall, and said that the match was short and meant to be a joke, and with the Scaffold match later on, nobody gave two shits about the match.

 

At Genocide came the infamous Wargames cage match. He agreed with GQ, saying the match really was unsafe. The cage was terribly built, and when he went to grab Kaos, who was climbing on its ceiling, he ended up breaking a bunch of the cage ceiling. He says that for GQ and Angel, it must've been even scarier, since they were on the fuckin top of the cage and took SICK bumps off of the top of it. He emphathizes how badly built the cage was.

 

I forgot to mention how much Webb loved the match with Nosawa. He says he still puts the tape in every now and then and likes the match. He said that at the moment he were talking, he couldn't think of a match he liked more than it. It was probably his favorite match he's ever been in.

 

His second favorite match was vs. Terry Funk at LOD. He puts over Funk repeatedly, saying that "what you see is what you get." Funk treats everybody the same; it doesn't matter if you're a jobber or a main eventer. He's as nice and as real as they come. He said that he loved the match he had with the Funkster, and best of all, his knee - which had been fucking killing him for the last several months - gave him absolutely no pain in the match, which was a welcomed relief. He said it was an honor to work with Funk and that he treated him very well. He calls the match a "miracle day" because the knee injury didn't bother him, which he had feared it would

 

His last match in XPW was vs. Shane Douglas. He said Douglas winning the title was a long time in the works. Even during Douglas' first run in XPW in 2000, Rob Black wanted to eventually build to him winning the title.

 

Before I forget - I asked him if he was asked to go to Japan for FMW, or if it was only Pogo, Supreme, and Jimmy who were asked. He said he got asked to do many things for XPW, including working the Gathering of the Juggalos 2001, to which he turned down and gave his spot to Kaos.

 

After his match with Douglas, he got knee surgery, which he badly needed because his knee was horrible, even though it didn't bother him during his match vs. Funk. "They cut off a piece of my hamstring" and he therefore now was one old knee and one new knee (the new one being the one he got the surgery on). He hasn't had any problems with the knee since, but when it was hurting him back in '01 and '02, it was REALLY hurting him.

 

Little known fact: Webb attended virtually all of the Viking Hall shows. He made it a point to emphathize that everything you saw on XPW TV - whether it was in 2000 or 2002 - was his work, and I can testify that other workers have also said that that's true. He sat in the production truck all night sometimes, just to edit the video. He said that his last show was the NYR 3 doubleshot, and that it was because of the overwhelming hard work his out of the ring job of editing XPW video entailed that he finally had to leave XPW...that, and he and Rob Black didn't get along. He says that a lot of people didn't get along with Rob, but that by NYR, they just couldn't work with each other anymore, and that's why they parted ways. He said that he was incredibly grateful for the opportunities Rob gave him, however.

 

Coming in the next few minutes - returning to wrestling...

[LucharesuFan619 0]

Webb's first match back in a year was with Juantastico vs. The Stepfamily at PCW UltraKlash. I asked him if he knew Gabe (Juantastico) from Slammers, since he trained there, but as I expected, he said he missed Gabe by a few months. Webb left for SCCW with D, Kleinrock, Hernandez, Jimmy, Steele, etc., and that Carlito was the only one who stayed behind, so he was the one who trained Angel and Juantastico, both of whom he says he therefore first met in XPW, not in Slammers.

 

One of the most interesting parts of the interview was Webb's insight about the changes he saw upon returning. He referenced to how XPW would run shows in front of drunk old men who would throw drinks or pennies at you, and that when he returned, the crowds had wisened up. No longer did they boo good wrestling; he said that Dynamite D would be having a great wrestling match in XPW with someone and would be booed like mad, since the fans all wanted blood. Now, the fams respect good wrestling and have learned to appreciate such a thing. I asked him if Aaron Proctor, PCW's owner, called him up about returning, or if Webb made the contact. He said no - he got hooked up with the PCW spot by Mace, PCW's booker. Mace worked as Kaos 1 in SCCW, and that he knew him from there, so he called him up and Mace got him the spot on the PCW show. He trained at the Rev. Pro dojo a lot in order to get off the ring rust that he had. Like I said, his insight about the changes in the fans was very interesting.

 

Before I forget...Webb talked about his "Elvis" gimmick that he adopted once he won the XPW title. He said that the Elvis gimmick was only supposed to be for one show, but it stuck. He used it for several months, although it eventually got boring and he dropped it. He says that he came up with the White Trash gimmick and the Elvis gimmick, and that like anything, both eventually got boring, so he dumped them. Now, he has a new gimmick.

 

He also says that now, he tries to work when shows when he can, and that it's a lot easier than it once was. He doesn't have to commute like he did for Slammers and the fans respect what the wrestlers do, now.

 

His initial impressions on Viking Hall - like so many others, he thought it was a dump, but said that a lot of old ECW fans saw it as more than that. He mentioned how the building has featured many tables be broken and something about a pile of tables that I didn't really understand.

 

Also, Webb confirmed what others have said - most of the late 2001 and early 2002 XPW shows were booked on a fly. He would get to the arena and so would everyone else and they'd be told what they'd be doing that night.

 

Also before I forget...Webb first met a lot of the Revolution Pro guys he knows now when he was in the IWF back in '98/'99.

 

I hope to talk to Webb again, although nothing's set in stone. Post questions you want me to ask him if that happens.

 

A more formalized recap of this interview will be posted soon.

 

This and SO much more will all be revealed later this year, when the biggest retrospective on any indy promotion in US history will be featured...The Roots, The Formation, The Rise, and The Fall of Xtreme Pro Wrestling. Featuring contributions from GQ Money, Johnny Webb, Verne Langdon, Chris Hamrick, Mike Modest, Josh Prohibition, M-Dogg 20, and others. Others I'm in the process of contacting to see if they'll contribute are JR Benson, Vic Grimes, Rob Black, Kevin Kleinrock, Danny Doring, Simon Diamond, and more.

 

Coming soon...part 3 of my interview with GQ Money, exclusive never before seen photos of Kaos, Messiah, Angel, Webb, Jimmy, and others, and so much more, as the fifth anniversary of XPW's debut show approaches. You'll learn shit you never knew happened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thank Webb for his time, and for bearing with my disorganization that was quite evident during the interview...LOL. To keep up with Webb's wrestling endeavors, visit SoCalUncensored.com.

[Guest bort]

good interview, too bad to hear about the whole tape recording thing, right now im watchin the Messiah shoot listening to some of his XPW storys