Mike Bailey Jokes That He Might’ve Disrespected Michael Oku By Putting French TV Host In A Half Crab

Mike Bailey had a great time in France.

AEW visited the country for the Grand Slam France event on Tuesday, October 6. If you ask Mike Bailey, this was a huge step towards pushing wrestling into mainstream culture in France.

“I think it’s very fascinating to see how pro wrestling is captured by the media lens all over the world,
right? Pro wrestling is ingrained in American culture as it is for many, many other countries, but France is
still a few years behind. Pro Wrestling is evolving, I think bringing AEW and Grand Slam to the Adidas
Arena is a huge step in pushing pro wrestling to the mainstream in France, but sometimes they just feel
like, ‘Our audience, if we just talk about it, they might not know what it is, so we kind of have to show
them.'” Bailey told Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp in a new interview.

Continuing on, Bailey talked about putting a submission hold on a television host during his media tour before the show.

“I think just asking a pro wrestler to put the host in a hold might not be the best idea. But I have been doing this for 20 years. I have been put in similar situations many, many times and I think that the half crab— which might be disrespectful to Michael Oku because he is the master of the half crab and I was kind of relatively on his turf, right? He’s English but still, Europe. But I think it was a much smarter hold than a high elbow guillotine or an open hand slap to do to a news presenter. This is the thing, he’s not gonna fight his way out of it. Not only do I have a fantastic half crab, but I have an even better straight ankle lock. So once that locked in, I have full control of him. Also when I’m sitting on his lower back, he’s not going to be able to wriggle himself out. So I can sit there comfortably as long as I want which was a big part of my plan.”

Elsewhere in the interview, ‘Speedball’ talked about his Prestige Wrestling match with Mustafa Ali. Check out his full comments by clicking here.