Steve Maclin has a ton of respect for his on-screen adversary.
After being released by WWE on February 4, 2021, Steve Maclin found a home in IMPACT Wrestling, debuting for the company that June. He has yet to be pinned or submitted, though has a few blemishes on his record thanks to Trey Miguel.
The two men first faced off on a July episode of BTI where they fought to a double count-out. Since then, they've not wrestled one-on-one, but rather in two triple threat matches where Trey Miguel won and defended the X Division Title by pinning El Phantasmo and Laredo Kid, respectively. That's all about to end, however, as Maclin is set to face Trey on January 8 at IMPACT Hard To Kill for the X Division Championship.
Speaking with Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp, Maclin gave props to Miguel by saying the following:
I give kudos to my opponent coming January at Hard to Kill with Trey. He’s such a good talent. He’s one of those guys in the ring that can do anything. I think our styles mesh very well. We get it. We get each other. We don’t have to talk much. It’s a very yin and yang. We just gel. He’s one of those opponents that I’ve been in the ring with now, ‘Alright, cool. I can work with him anywhere and it would be a good match.’
Maclin has been a fan of the X Division for over 15 years now and says that it reminded him of the WCW Cruiserweight Division, which was the only reason he'd ever tune into Nitro.
"Same. 2005-2006 timeframe when I was getting into high school, that’s when it blew up and you’re like, ‘Holy shit.’ At that time it reminded me of the WCW cruiserweight division during the Attitude Era during the Monday night wars. Only time I tuned in to WCW was for the cruiserweights and then I would flip over to watch Austin an hour later," Maclin said.
As for the double count-out result on BTI, Maclin acknowledges that they went into the bout wanting to show the front office that this was a matchup that needed to be revised in the future on a bigger platform.
"We went into that match wanting the office to know this is a match you need to do somewhere down the road," Maclin began by saying. "I knew my talents, He knew his talents. It was one of those things where once we got done we were like, ‘Holy shit, this was awesome,’ and it was simple. It was so easy to put together and we had other ideas and we took them away. We just dumbed it down a little bit. They said, ‘Well, we gotta keep you strong, we gotta keep him strong, we don’t know where everything’s going yet. So how do we make this work?’ Daivari was a big part of that when he was a producer there. He came up with the idea of doing the double count out the way we did because we had a different idea. I forget what we had. But his idea was better. It just worked better. ‘Oh, okay, cool That makes sense. Thank you.’ That’s where a producer comes in handy. They think producers squash a match. They’re there to help. You go to your producer for help and camera shots. It was one of those things where it just worked. Trey and I got done and this was simple pro wrestling. I think that’s one of the things missing now. I think a lot of people are starting to see that. Pro wrestling is starting to come back. It’s not the entertainment aspect. It’s dumbing it down. You’re not killing each other every night and you’re building to something bigger."
With the rematch set for Hard To Kill, Maclin shared his excitement about sinking his teeth into a long-term story, though did admit that it is frustrating filming multiple weeks of TV at a time and not always knowing where the story is and what's airing from week-to-week.
"That’s, again, communication and knowing—and I’m not giving away all the secrets—but I know ahead of time where we’re going. I ask, ‘Where we going?’ so that when we do these matches or how I am with someone else in the ring, like with the Laredo Kid, ‘Alright, cool. How can I think down the line of where the story is going?’ That’s the one thing I’ve been wanting to sink my teeth into for so long and I finally have that opportunity now. It’s so much fun for me, but at the same time I hate that we’re not a weekly basis. We’re so many weeks out and I’m sitting here going, ‘What’s happening this week? I have to hit up creative. What’s airing this week?’ Just so I can tweet this or go along with the storyline and that’s the one thing I base off of everything is telling that good story that fans can sink their teeth into. Whether we steal the show at Hard to Kill—‘cause that card is, from top to bottom, insane. Alright, shit. It’s making everybody up their game more. It’s like, ‘Alright, here we go. Where are we going to be on the card? Where are we going to be? How much time do we have? What is the story we’re going to try to tell? Whether this is the finish or somewhere else.’ That’s the fun part," Maclin said.
Fightful will have live coverage of the event as well as a post-show review on Saturday, January 8, 2022.
