Former Ring Of Honor World Champion PCO recently spoke with Spencer Love of the Conversations With Love podcast and discussed how his career could have changed if he had won the WWF Championship when he wrestled for the company years ago as well as helping Ring of Honor grow as a promotion.
Below are highlights of that interview, which can be found on WCSN, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
Credit Spencer Love of the WCSN for the transcriptions used.
If he feels he’s accomplished his goal of growing ROH as a promotion:
"Yeah, I think the pandemic kinda stopped the process a little bit, but I think - I did some major, major like podcasts, talk shows, major talk shows with over 1.5 million viewers. I was invited - I was the last guests of the night. I was like the main event of the show. I think I did put Ring of Honor's name on every lips. Everybody that was watching and everybody was waiting for a big Championship match at the Bell Center (in) Montreal, and I had all the journalists and newspaper guys and columnists waiting for it, and everybody, they were saying all the same things, you know, '(if) you defend the title in Montreal, we're selling out the Bell Center. So that would have been like an All In for Ring of Honor, Part Two. It would have been insane."
How his career would have changed had he won the WWF Title:
"I think it would have been great. I think I would have shown that I can - I already had shown that I could be a main event, you know, when I did the match against Jacques, and I think they had big plans for Diesel. Diesel will tell you himself like he's not the greatest worker, but he's got other attributes that make him the guy that he was. Yeah, exactly, and I think Vince saw a lot of potential in himself, in Kevin, and with a reason because he became quite big eventually, but at the time when he was Big Daddy Diesel, Big Daddy Cool, he wasn't getting over that much at first, you know, he did get over with nWo, the Outsiders, all that really got over super big. But, the first run with the title was not that great, and I feel that I deserved a chance. But, on my side, it was just I was really young, like it was like 26, 27. It's quite young to be in a big organization like that and to deal with things where you've never dealt (with) at such a high level. It's just, you know, coming from Puerto Rico where I was wrestling Carlos Colon in front of 250 people and wrestling in Germany in front of 3-4,000 people where it didn't really matter who was that over or not because we're probably all on the same payoff almost. When you're in (a) big league like WWF, you know it's all there, you're on top, the merch goes up. The money is different if you're main-event, because I had paychecks as a main event and I had paychecks when I was opening cards at one point in between characters because at the end of the run when Jacques retired, I stayed for a little while and I was helping guys starting up like Bob Holly. Guys that would start and I would put them over because they would be like a half of a tag team, you know, on opening matches.”
If he felt fulfilled as a WWF Tag Team Champion:
“It was a stepping stone for me. It was just the beginning of the whole thing. My plan was to, yeah, like to be like Bret a little bit, or to follow a spat, sort of. Going from the World Tag Team Champions to the Intercontinental Champion to the world title. I wouldn't mind in order to get into the world title picture right away, which I did against Diesel a few times and things like that. My name had been put there to go against Bob Backlund, also, at the Montreal stadium against Backlund for the title (and was) supposed to win it for a short period of time. That didn't - that plan didn't go through. Jacques and Vince fell apart on that because Jacques wanted to go to the stadium. That was right after the Jaques Rougeau retirement match where I wrestled him.”
