Sports Illustrated recently conducted a great interview with Josh Barnett ahead of Game Changer Wrestling and Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport 2. The stacked card will be a pay-per-view event on FITE and was originally headlined by Barnett vs. Moxley before the latter had to pull out due to injury. In the interview, Barnett talks about Moxley, producing the show, and his dream wrestling match.
Check out highlights below:
How he got involved with Bloodsport:
I’ve always wanted to put something together that would follow up on my own vision and philosophy of professional wrestling. I saw the first Bloodsport event [in 2018, which was promoted as “Matt Riddle’s Bloodsport”] and thought it was very interesting.
[GCW owner] Brett [Lauderdale] called me after Matt went to the WWE, and I was absolutely down to get involved—but I wanted to produce the event, have my hands in it, and I wanted to put my raison d’être for wrestling in it. So we linked up, and the first show we did together this past April did fantastically well. While I always do believe very confidently in what it is I’m going to put out there in the world of wrestling, you never know until it lives and breathes. The first one was a big success, a sell-out, trended number three on Twitter, and people were really fired up. We’ve seemed to roll some of that enthusiasm into this next one, and that’s a great start.
On Jon Moxley pulling out:
It was a real shame to lose Moxley for this event. We worked hard to promote it, and we were both very, very excited to go out there and lock horns. But MRSA is nothing to take lightly. I wish him the healthiest and speediest recovery, and I look forward to creating that match down the line. But we are a talented group.
We’ve got people coming from Japan like Ikuhisa Minowa, we’ve got national level judo players from Canada like Anthony Carrelli [longtime WWE star Santino Marella]. It’s also about finding the right matchup and giving consideration to finding the right matchup people want to see. I knew with Dickinson, it was a no-brainer. He’s going to bring the fight to me and you’re going to see two war machines go straight at it on the mat.
His dream wrestling match:
A guy like Jake Hager [former WWE star Jack Swagger] could be great. This will never happen, but I would love to get my buddy Bobby Lashley involved in something like this. He would shine like nobody’s business. Moving forward, we’re going to do what we can do and try to build the best that we can from a global perspective. I have very deep connections to people in Japan and I’m always trying to find a way to bring in those guys and gals to compete in my ring. We did that last time with Hideki Suzuki, who people were completely new to in the States but in my opinion is the most underrated professional wrestler in all of Japan.
Check out the full interview for plenty more from Barnett including his thoughts on Khabib Nurmagomedov.
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