Mr. Kennedy: Yeah, definitely. One of those things you don’t think about is the way that sound carries indoors and outdoors. It’s different and that affects the way that the crowd sounds to you. A lot of times we do feed off of that crowd emotion even though I am not necessarily catering to them.
I remember wrestling outdoors in a stadium in New Zealand. It didn’t sound like the crowd was very loud when in fact there were other people sitting in the crowd that were like “I can’t believe how loud that crowd was”. They were insane but you don’t get that. That might affect some guys. It may play head games with some of the guys because like I said, we are so used to feeding off of that crowd emotion. So it is a little harder in an open air stadium.
Eric: Having done so much early in your career and with the potential to do so much more, has anyone in the WWE taken on the role of mentoring you to get to the next level?
Mr. Kennedy: Yeah, I think a lot of guys have. There are so many guys that I’ve looked up to and I can’t honestly nail it down to just one. There are so many guys, from top guys to mid-card guys to guys that are lower on the card. [Steve] Austin for a while, he would call me regularly and say “Hey, I watched you match last night and here is what you did wrong.” And every once in a while, he’ll come down to TV’s and we will talk about stuff and throw out some ideas and stuff.
You know, Undertaker, when I was working with him, Shawn Michaels, Triple H, JBL, these are all types of guys that while they don’t necessarily come to you, but if you go to them and ask of them, they are totally willing to help. They realize that they are not going to be around forever and they want to cultivate the next batch of wrestlers that are going to take over, that they are going to be able to pass that torch to. One of the things is that they are not going to look for those guys, they are going to wait for those guys to go and look for them. I actively take that role.
Eric: Having been on both RAW and SmackDown, do you find that there is a real rivalry between the two brands?
Mr. Kennedy: Yes, but it is definitely a friendly type of rivalry. I probably shouldn’t say friendly, but it is professional. We don’t pull ribs on each other or anything like that, or do anything harshly towards each other. But there definitely is that feeling of my stuff is better than your stuff. I’m on the better show. We just go out there and try to have the best show possible. We all know that we fall under the same umbrella. I do think that the guys in SmackDown think that there show is the best and the guys on ECW think that there show is the best and likewise for the RAW guys.
Eric: A lot of people see you on TV and think that is all the time you spend doing your job. I was wondering if you could walk me through what your schedule looks like today?
Mr. Kennedy: After I get off the phone with you here [note: 9:30 AM], I’m going to have breakfast and get my haircut because I haven’t been able to do that in about two weeks and it is starting to get long. I’ll find a gym, hit the tanning bed and we have to be at the building at 2:00 today. When I get there I usually do some taped interviews for commercials. They’ll usually have some radio spots or television spots or some WWE mobile stuff that I’ll do in front of the camera. And then it’s just trying to figure out what we’re doing tonight for the show and getting that all squared away [note: this show was the episode of RAW that featured RAW Roulette]. And then it is getting ready, getting stretched out, pumped up, get ready to go, go out there, get my thing done in the ring, and then when I come back after the show tonight [which ended at 11:05], I have an autograph signing. I’ll be signing copies of the DVD for the RAW 15th Anniversary. And then I’ll probably go and grab a bite to eat somewhere and then hit the rack by about 2 or 3. And then turn around about three hours later and catch a flight back home.
