“The Villain” Marty Scurll sat down with members of the pro wrestling media prior to his huge bout against Kazuchika Okada at last weekend’s ALL IN pay-per-view event in Chicago, IL.
ProWrestling.com’s Mike Killam and Doug Enriquez had the pleasure of being a part of the media panel that interviewed talent prior to ALL IN. You can check out the full audio from Marty’s sit-down in the video above, as well as our transcriptions below.
MARTY ON HIS FRUSTRATION WITH HOW THE JUNIOR HEAVYWEIGHT DIVISION IN NJPW IS SOMETIMES PERCEIVED, AND THE LIMITATIONS OF THE DIVISION:
“In Japan there’s a massive emphasis on junior heavyweight and heavyweight, and that’s kind of been my gripe whilst I’ve been in New Japan. The fact that there is juniors, and for some reason – they’re given a lot of time, and they are celebrated, but I feel like they are looked at as ‘less than’ than the heavyweights. If I’m doing a tag team match and I’m teaming up with Cody, I have to come out to their music because they’re heavyweights and I’m a junior heavyweight. That always kind of pissed me off.”
“In things like MMA and boxing it’s not an issue. The lightweight belts in UFC are main belts just like the heavyweights. It’s not based on the weight limit – that seems like such an old concept now – it’s based on drawing ability and everything else. It’s been a big gripe of mine in New Japan. The matchups as well. I’d love to wrestle [Kota] Ibushi. I’d love to wrestle [Hiroshi] Tanahashi or [Kazuchika] Okada. That can’t happen in New Japan, and so now with this platform of ALL IN that we’ve got talent from all over the world, we can do these kind of dream match scenarios.”
HOW MARTY FEELS ABOUT HIS MATCH WITH OKADA:
“Okada’s one of the greatest wrestlers, probably of all time. He’s had a hell of a run. I don’t think I’ve had as much chance to show what I can do in New Japan, because obviously I’ve been put in a lot of very short multi-man matches, but tonight I get to go in there against one of the best, in front of my crowd, and my audience. It feels like a long time coming for me, and I’m excited. The people think I’ve got no chance, and they’re right to think that, but tonight might be a night I can prove them wrong, and maybe people have some more faith in me after tonight.”
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WHAT IMPACT HAS BEING THE ELITE HAD ON HIS CAREER, AND IN MAKING ‘ALL IN’ HAPPEN IN GENERAL:
“There’s so much good wrestling now. WWE do eleven hours – whatever it is – of programming every week. There’s New Japan, there Ring of Honor, all these great, amazing promotions. G1 happened – I can’t watch all of that, there’s so many good matches, and it gets to the point where good wrestling is just not enough.”
“Me and [the Young Bucks]joke, ‘Man, good wrestling sucks!’ There’s too much! You can’t make that connection with the audience just having good matches. It certainly helps. Back in the day wrestling wasn’t based on how good someone’s matches were, they were based on the characters. We have such a good platform to connect with our audience, in a sense that, every week I get fifteen minutes of relationship-building time with the audience. They get to see me, see what I do, they get to see a joke or whatever it is. I essentially get promo time. If I’m a mid-carder on Raw, I’m not getting that every week. I might get a three-minute match, and that’s it. You can’t connect with someone like that.”
“This is our way to connect with the audience. I’ve had many times, people say, ‘I’m a big fan of you. I’ve never seen you wrestle before, I’ve just seen you on the show.’ So it’s a new way to connect with the audience, and I think people appreciate us putting the effort it. We spend our whole week just trying to think of bits. I feel like my wrestling character and my character [on BTE]is different, because I’m not afraid to be self-deprecating. I’m not afraid to fall on a banana and make an idiot of myself. It entertains people – that was the whole joke in the first place. Maybe I’ll quit The Elite to become a famous singer, just as a joke. And people caught on to it.
“It’s funny because the end of Ring of Honor shows, we always end where we talk to the crowd, and sometimes I’ll sing. We’ll be talking, we haven’t planned anything, we’ll be talking over each other, trying to do bits, and I’m in there thinking, ‘God this sucks! This is awful!’ But then the amount of fans that come up to me or tweet me saying the end of the show was the highlight – the fans like the curtain being drawn back. They’d like to see more of you, and see how you are in real life almost.”
“There’s only so much you can see me wrestle. Only so many times you can see me do Chicken Wings and break fingers. You gotta do more than that. You gotta run your own karaoke concert. Being the Elite is everything, for sure.”
MARTY’S THOUGHTS ON THE UPCOMING NJPW TOURNAMENT TO CROWN A NEW IWGP JR. HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION FOLLOWING THE INJURY OF HIROMU TAKAHASHI:
“I think we have time and time again, honestly. Wrestle Kingdom this year, many people argue that our four-way stole the show. The four-way concept, the Japanese fans don’t really understand. Plus, [Will] Ospreay is pretty established there, and I’m not as established. The Japanese audience needs years and years to know the wrestlers. Of course, it was main-evented by Okada and Naito. Not that it’s easy for them, but they’ve got such an amazing relationship with the audience, and to get them involved is very easy. We had a lot of stuff against us, and yet we managed to pull them in and take them on a ride.”
“This tournament is going to be a big deal to me because I lost the [IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship] in my first defense. … If you look at the guys there – Ospreay, he’s had his run with the belt. Kushida, he’s been the champ eight times, or whatever it is. Bushi has his thing in [Los Ingobernables de Japon]. Give me this belt, and give me the chance and opportunity to run with this, make it mean something. Let me take on the best junior heavyweights.”
“There’s so many good juniors all around the world, and I really want to have that opportunity to have that antagonist character as champion in New Japan. I’d really like to have a good run. I really feel I could elevate that title, and take it to new places. There’s no reason why the junior heavyweight title can’t main-event the Tokyo Dome, or be the main belt, or as equal as the heavyweight belt. They have the U.S. title, the Intercontinental title, the NEVER title; what’s the difference? We have our own division, so let’s make it mean something.”
IS THE ‘ALL IN’ MATCH ONE OF THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS OF HIS CAREER?
“This is more than a match. It’s the whole concept, this weekend. The faces of this show have been Cody and the Young Bucks, but really it’s been a whole team effort with the whole BTE crew. We’ve all put in ideas. There’s a lot of creative stuff on the show that I came up with, that’s my brain child. I was a massive advocate for being in Chicago, so you’ve got me to thank for being here, guys!”
“I remember when me and Matt Jackson, on the day when tickets were going on sale, I was like ‘How many do you think we’re going to do?’ I thought on the first day, between 4,000 on the low end and 6,000 on the high end. I thought we would sell out, but eventually. We had an idea if on the day we hadn’t sold out yet, that they would announce it was 9,999 that were sold, and Dave Meltzer bought the last ticket and would sit in the front row. That would have been a great idea.”
“We were so blown away. I think in general it’s such a massive deal in itself, and I’ve always been a massive advocate for trying to provide an alternative product for the fans. I was such a big fan when I was a youngster when we had WWF, WCW and ECW. The monopoly creates rubbish times in wrestling. When McMahon bought all the territories out, and they all died off, it was like – wrestling kind of sucks again. Then WCW and ECW came around it was was like, ‘This is awesome, we like wrestling again!’ And then they bought them out. In that whole period I didn’t even watch wrestling. And now we’ve got something else, and this hopefully is going to be the doors opening for an alternative product. That’s all the fans want. I watch Monday Night Raw and I get bored. They want something else – clearly, with all these tickets sold. I’ve always been a massive advocate for having my creative freedom and satisfaction. If you tell me to do something, I can’t do it. I need to be me. This weekend is probably more important than any match.”
ON RING OF HONOR SELLING OUT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN IN 2019:
“I’ve never been to MSG. It just speaks volumes. There’s that cry for an alternative product. Obviously a big help has been the fact that it’s WrestleMania week. I’m almost kind of annoyed, because I’m almost positive that we would have sold it out without WrestleMania week. Maybe not as quick. I don’t know if they’re even going to make money on this show, but it’s the Ramones. It’s Punk Rock. It’s anti-establishment. Someone different is running MSG. That’s why it sold out. People want to be a part of something that’s special, and new, and unique.”
“I’ve never even been to the building before. I’m sure I’m going to be in a big match. I’m still contracted till then, so I’ll certainly be there. It’s an exciting time. I hope we can go back and do it without piggybacking off someone else, and do it on my own. When I signed with ROH nearly two years ago, I had opportunities to sign a bunch of others places. I wanted to come and break these boundaries, and get this companies in arenas, and on television, and on a network in Europe. Now it’s happening. If enough people believe, you put that in the air and it can happen. Have faith and it can happen.”