Brock Anderson was thrown into the deep end during the start of his wrestling career.
Recently, Brock Anderson and CW Anderson were interviewed by WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard. During the interview, Brock Anderson was asked how his time in AEW helped him in his career.
Anderson, son of ‘The Enforcer’ Arn Anderson, had his first match as a professional wrestler in front of a large television audience on the June 18, 2021 episode of AEW Dynamite. Anderson left AEW after his contract expired in October 2023, but says getting a quick start during those pandemic tapings showed him how to prepare for the unexpected.
“Yeah. I think just in the sense of being thrown into… I don’t think a lot of people know that my very first match was on national television,” Anderson noted. “It was that tag match with Cody [Rhodes] against QT [Marshall] and Aaron Solo. That was… I didn’t do any independents or anything because it was Covid. So, that was my first-ever match. So being thrown into the deep end like that. And then simultaneously next… About two-and-a-half years just being in those bright lights, big crowds working for a TV promotion I think helped me tremendously in that respect… It might have been two or three weeks before we went back on the road. I think that was one of the last Covid tapings. And then we hit the road running.”
Brock Anderson on wrestling during the Covid Pandemic and the transition
Brock Anderson also opened up about how AEW was during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“So, even though it was nationally televised, I think if I went out there and it wasn’t Covid and it was a jam-packed house, I’d have peed all over myself. I’d probably have fumbled huge. But having just the crowd out there that was what it was,” he continued. “It was just the boys and the girls out there. The extras that had worked that night or were working later. Cuz, I had to be out there for several matches as well every time it went down. That little bit of noise made the difference. But it wasn’t overwhelming.”
Brock Anderson on the AEW schedule during Covid-19
“Now, Covid was when I got there in February 2021 and it was unique. It was… We would do two tapings back-to-back days and then be off the next week. We would go every two weeks. But, during the day, Cody was still there. And I think he was really pushing for a school of some sort, because we had so many young guys and there was nowhere else to go,” Anderson explained. “There wasn’t indies to go get reps or anything else. They hadn’t had a school in place. so, we would go out to the ring during the day and just roll around. And these guys that had… They didn’t have to. But they would sit around and critique what they saw.”
Anderson credited Rhodes, Jake Roberts, Dustin Rhodes and FTR as some of the names who would give advice to younger talent.
“In that sense, I was very fortunate to be at AEW when I was. Because I was still at least learning rather than sitting home,” Brock Anderson said.
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