Kevin Steen: "In Canada, They Call Me MISTER!"

[Llakor 0]

This is one of my occasional tributes to PWI and Liz Hunter. Sharp-eyed readers might have noticed mention in the Official Results for IWS Freedom to Fight of an interview with Kevin Steen. Here it is...

 

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Kevin Steen : “In Canada, they call me Mister”

 

Saturday night is sliding into Sunday morning and the Internet Wrestling Syndicate Champion Kevin Steen, is for once, smiling, “It was a good night tonight. We had a good crowd – we always have hot crowds – but tonight – WOW. And there was - what? Four hundred people out there, maybe more. They told me that we ran out of chairs, Unison brought out couches from the back. We filled those. People were standing. It was great.”

 

“Freedom to Fight is a big deal for us. We’re happy to back in Ville Saint-Laurent – happy to be back at Unison. I’m happy that I defended my IWS title. I had to beat both EXesS and Sexxxy Eddy. Three-way matches are tough: not only do I have to worry about beating two guys, I can’t beat down either guy as much as I would like to. You have to be strategic. If I beat down Eddy too much, EXesS ambushes me with one of his sneaky submissions; if I beat EXesS up the way I can, Eddy tries to pin EXesS and I could lose my belt without getting pinned. In the end, the Commissioner waffled EXesS with a chair, but it didn’t matter – I would have won anyway.”

 

2004 has been a very good year for Kevin Steen.

 

“Hell, Yeah. I won the Extreme Wrestling Revolution title in Quebec. The first and only EWR champion. I won the IWS title. I fought Jerry Lynn in Montreal. I mean he beat me - he’s tricky – but the most important thing is that now I know that I can beat him if I get a second chance. I beat Christopher Daniels, the Fallen Angel, in Quebec City. And I wrestled the most dominant champion in indy wrestling – Ring of Honour champion Samoa Joe – I fought him to a twenty minute draw. Yeah, it’s been a good year. And it’s going to get even better.”

 

“Look at my October. Next week, I defend my EWR title in Quebec City. On October 9th, I’m in Philadelphia wrestling for Combat Zone Wrestling in Viking Hall, the historic ECW arena. I get to introduce Crazy Crusher to the CZW fans and he’s an amazing talent – almost as good as me – and we get to team up to beat El Generico and EXesS, and you know kicking their asses never gets old. The week after that I will be at Ohio Valley Wrestling – the WWE developmental territory – for a try-out in front of the legend James Cornette. In hockey terms, that’s like trying out for the Montreal Canadians farm team in front of Scotty Bowman. October 23rd is Blood, Sweat and Beers right back here at Unison and I’ll be defending my IWS gold. And October ends with me going back to the Rahway Centre in Rahway, New Jersey for Jersey All Pro Wrestling’s show Halloween Hell where I’ll be defending my IWS title against Roderick Strong – the so-called ‘King of the Back-Breakers.’ That’s a good month for anyone.”

 

“And – hey – it’s been good year for the IWS too. Look at tonight. The show was being filmed by Smart Mark Video, the biggest distributour of wrestling videos in North America. They drove 800 miles to film us and they are going to drive 800 miles back to edit the show. They were saying that the show will be released by when Tuesday? Wednesday?”

 

(In fact, Freedom to Fight is available now from Smart Mark Video: http://the-w.com/redirect/http://www.smart...01&cat=&catstr= )

 

“Plus, we have been on television across Canada on Pro Wrestling Superstars for nearly six months now. We’re the first Canadian Wrestling fed to have had our own Pay Per View. It’s been a very good year.”

 

You could say that the IWS and Kevin Steen matured together.

 

“That’s very true. It’s no accident that when people ask, ‘Which IWS show should I pick up first?’ Everyone always says – Un F’N Sanctioned 2003 – My FIRST show. When I wrestled for Jacques Rougeau – and I love Jacques Rougeau, don’t get me wrong – but when I wrestled for him, I was ‘Le Kid’ Kevin Steen. I didn’t want to end up forty years old and still be ‘Le Kid’ Kevin Steen. So, I came to the IWS, and the IWS fans – man they’re the best fans in the world – they got me right away, and they didn’t call me ‘Le Kid’ they called me MISTER, they named me Mister Wrestling.”

 

“The funny thing about going to the States is that everyone down there is asking, ‘Who is this Kevin Steen kid and why does he call himself Mister Wrestling?” Like they are saying, ‘How dare he?’ Shows how stupid the American fans are and how smart the fans are here in Canada. In the U.S. they just see ‘Le Kid’; In Canada they see the man.”

 

You talk about how good the fans in Canada are, but you go out of your way to piss them off.

 

“Sure, but you know what, the fans need me to be bad. I do all the stuff that they wish that they could do. I’m the cool guy that they wish that they could be.”

 

Aren’t you worried about the consequences of your actions?

 

“See, that’s the beauty of it. The IWS is a fed with no consequences, There are no disqualifications, no count outs, the referees are just there to look pretty. Besides, who’s going to stop me? Pierre Carl Ouellet tried – now he’s not sure what decade he’s in. The Green Phantom tried – now he’s sitting at home with a fractured arm. EXesS – don’t make me laugh. El Generico tried to stop me, so I brought in Franky the Mobster and we took El Generico out. No, this belt is staying around my waist for a long time.”

 

(This interview was done backstage after IWS Freedom to Fight, September 25th, 2004.)

 

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[Corey_Lazarus 0]

Is Steen the one that always uses the word "cunt"? I downloaded the promo video for their last show (I think it was Freedom to Fight), and one wrestler who was j-j-j-jakked - © Mike Sanders - kept calling people cunts. It was amusing.

[Llakor 0]

If that was the guy who was spit on by a guy in the mask, it was Franky the Mobster. Kevin was the one who described how the Green Phantom fractured his arm and took credit for it.