Aron Stevens, known to many fans as Damien Sandow from his WWE days, recently sat down with VIBE 105.5FM in Toronto where he opened about many aspects of his professional wrestling career. Check out the highlights of the conversation below.
On WWE’s demanding travel schedule:
You have a day-and-a-half home. Your plane lands at 11:30 on a Wednesday. You know, you’ve been up since 5am, you catch your flight, you do your laundry. Then Friday, you get up six in the morning, catching a flight, three house shows, then you do two TV shows, and then you do it again. Pretty much no time at home. It’s funny because I hear now how the schedule is and I’m like “oh my God”, but this is pre-pandemic too. That schedule is nothing compared to before for what they did and what they expected from us.
On being a WWE Superstar during the holiday season:
The day after Christmas we’d leave and we’d get home New Years, which was a very lucrative loop which was cool. People were getting time off like “oh, I need some time off.” We would never think about doing that, ever think about doing that. I think you know that with some guys, WWE is more lenient, but I never ever ever got any special treatment from the office or anything like that. Nobody ever made an exception in my case and they would with some guys, but that’s what they do and it’s like that in any business. This isn’t just ‘oh, evil WWE.’ No, it’s just sometimes some people get breaks, sometimes other people don’t, that’s it. They compensated me for it and life goes on.
On his first day training at Killer Kowalski’s:
I was 16 at the time and I remember Killer Kowalski or Walter as he was known to his students and people that knew him. He taught me how to lock up, it was outside the ring in front of a mirror, I’ll never forget that. He taught me a hammerlock and all that. First day, I got to go into the ring which was pretty cool and that was a big deal. And then of course some of the older guys they thought “who’s this kid going into the ring the first day?” cause I guess that wasn’t a thing back then. And you know, it was interesting, I took my bumps and bruises and I wasn’t in any danger, but the older students, they roughed me up a little bit, but it was you know, it made you tougher and I don’t know if wrestling is like that nowadays. I can say I don’t think it is but I haven’t seen when people are breaking in and things like that cause I don’t hang around wrestlers that much. That was my personal experience with it and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Let me just clarify, there was no like hazing or anything like that, it was just okay, this kid wants to be in a man’s world and you know what it is, they didn’t want to make any exceptions for me. It wasn’t like that. It was just like “okay, you’re with us, let’s make sure you know how to be here” and this and that.
On working with Billy Corgan in NWA:
Amazing. I think Billy is somebody who is very much in tune with the public and at the same time, he is an artist first and foremost and I’ve always approached wrestling like that. You know, a lot of guys would be like “oh, let me just go out there and do my match” like no, this is performance art. This is one hundred percent performance art and it’s funny him and I we’re very much on the same page in terms of character development. It’s been a very very positive experience and an honor to work with him.
The full interview is available on YouTube and you can watch that below.
