Karl Fredericks Explains Why He Was Originally Hesitant About Co-Curating PRODUCE Show

Karl Fredericks discusses his upcoming PRODUCE event.

Fredericks will co-produce PRODUCE Volume 5 on Monday, October 12. Outside of Fredericks himself, the card currently features names like Nyla Rose, Janai Kai, Jonathan Gresham, Lio Rush, Lee Moriarty, and The Blade.

During a new interview with Fightful Overbooked’s Jeremy Lambert and SP3, Fredericks explained why he was originally hesitant about the idea of co-producing a show.

“I was originally a little bit hesitant and nervous in my head on the phone call when the idea was presented to me. I have a very active brain, so even as I speak, there’s 300 thoughts going all at once. In my head, the first thing I’m thinking of is like, I gotta be careful or I want to be careful because at the same time that I’m getting this opportunity, I’m still restarting my career and trying to step away not from my culture by any means, but just the type of stuff I was doing, which was an overall theme. This is a themed show, but before I could even finish processing those thoughts of like, ‘Oh shit, should I do this?’ Talking to him, I wasn’t fully aware of how they were doing the co-producing of the shows and everything. I know Rocky’s already doing one and after they’re getting off the call with me, they’ve gotta talk to Rocky. I see the War Dogs are going one, okay, this is just a cool collaboration.”

Continuing on, Fredericks highlighted some of the top names that will be featured on the card.

“It’s just a cool opportunity. There’s a couple of younger indigenous talent or guys on the indies that I’ve been — like Pat Sawyer, I’ve been talking to him for a few years on Instagram. It was cool for him to send out love and support what I was doing in NXT as Eddy Thorpe, so we just started our relationship there. There was a couple people that I had already had in mind, but for me it was more so like, I remember asking Pat [to] send me a handful of people that you think I should look at, there’s a couple I was already looking at. I knew right away that they’re were trying to get Nyla on the card, so as soon as we got her on the card, that was 100% an easy and obvious one. Just making sure at the very least that we get some people some spotlight on a card that they otherwise might not be on and also with talent that they might not come across. PRODUCE has — these shows are crazy. The card itself, take the indigenous talent out and the skoden out of this and look at the matchups. The two stacked tag matches, Jonathan Gresham and Lio Rush, Fred Rosser’s on the card, EFFY’s on the card. It’s also people that I haven’t seen in a few years as well, but I used to see a lot. We did that whole NJPW STRONG thing with Fred and that was really cool when he came in, especially with that locker room at the time.”

Fredericks thought that it was important for the show to not feel like “indigenous championship wrestling”.

“For me, I didn’t want it to be like one night only, indigenous championship wrestling type of feel. All these things, they eased my worries very easily with that first conversation. They did all the heavy lifting as far as creative and putting these crazy matches together. I’m curating and sending him talent, hey look at this person. Dante Chen and Javi, 100%, those guys were me as well.”

When it comes to the pressure of the event, Karl Fredericks welcomes it, saying that the stakes are exciting.

“On Indigenous People’s Day, I get to go out and do what I love most. For me, I’m not a monolith for all Indigenous people. So for every person on that card and all the non Indigenous people, these things mean different things to different people. Those younger talent, guys like Pat that are getting on this card, not only is he celebrating as well but he’s also like, I gotta show out. There’s that pressure of like, here’s a good opportunity. For me, it’s also like the pressure of, they came to me for this and I’m somewhat the face of this event. I’ve gotta go out and show why and why it was me instead of someone else or why we’re doing it in the first place. It’s exciting, those stakes are good. For me, it’s 100% I get to go wrestle and we’re doing an after party.”

Fans can check out Karl Fredericks’ full interview with Fightful Overbooked in the video linked at the top of this article.

PRODUCE Wrestling returns to MyAEW PPV on October 12 in Brooklyn, NY with their Season 2 premiere, SKODEN, co-produced by Karl Fredericks on the occasion of Indigenous People’s Day. Fans can pre-order PRODUCE Season 2 in its entirety on MyAEW.com for 50% off using the code PRODUCESeason2.