Frank Shamrock was a recent guest on The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling podcast and talked about his relationship with his brother, working with Mauro Ranallo, and more. Here are the highlights they sent along:
Is pro wrestling tougher than MMA:
“Totally. I was contracted to do pro wrestling, but when I did the numbers and I’m going to do 150 shows or performances, and you are on this grind of performing and it is really challenging physically and is really challenging spiritually and all those things make it challenging. When I weighed those things I thought I could fight three times a year and make a couple million dollars or I can work two hundred dates a year and make the same amount of money and that makes no sense whatsoever. Why wouldn’t I work three dates or two dates a year? So it just became a value proposition for me and watching my brother go through it, it is a lot harder than people think. Just like what Mauro was doing, you have to commit your whole life with every day and every meal and everything is about the show and the performance, the event, and the storylines and getting yourself to the next date to keep it going and that is real work and I never could commit to that.”
Relationship with brother Ken Shamrock:
“It’s the same. We’ve healed each other I hope and opened a good door for a relationship but now we are all old and retired and have little to talk about with the old days. I think we’ve kind of just settled down and are growing into each other.”
Seeing Mauro Ranallo return to commentating following his WWE separation:
“It was fantastic. Working with Mauro makes the color commentator job extremely easy because he is just so good. That part of it was really good and Mauro, besides being one of my very close friends, he is also my client so we manage his brand and his business as well so we saw him through the whole WWE thing. At the end of the day, it is just that Mauro is very special and extremely talented and he needs the right platform to shine and to be himself. He’s a fighter. You kind of get out of the way and let him do his thing and it wasn’t working for him at WWE so he decided to move on and do more and different stuff. His desire is to call every combat sport and secure a legacy of being that guy that can do everything and currently he is the only guy that can do everything and is doing everything.”
Leaving the supposed WWE “bullying culture”:
“I don’t know if it is so much culture as it is just different folks. Where Mauro is super intense and super focused and to him that is the most important thing and that doesn’t have the same value over there. As it is in other companies, they may be interested in messages and other brands but it really is just different people. I love what WWE does. The storytelling, the messaging and how they impact the world with their product. I don’t see Mauro straying far from wrestling itself because that is how he got started and is his first love and it goes for every work environment that you want to be treated well and want to be acknowledged and you want to shine at what you do and the machine over there is not built for that, the machine is built differently. Wrong mechanic, wrong machine.”
With the link of JBL to the Mauro Situation, who would win in a fight between Frank Shamock and JBL:
“Oh my gosh. I would pretty much beat up everybody in the world. I think JBL is a sweet old guy so I think unlike most people I still train every day, I still work out every day and I would smash 99.9% of the other male humans on the planet.”
His appearance beside Mickey Rourke at WrestleMania 25:
“That was my first WrestleMania and to go in as Mickey’s strong man. Mickey was like: ‘Listen if anyone tries anything I want you to knock some people out.’ I’m thinking, ‘okay Mickey but I think we are going to a wrestling show but I’m down.’ He is such a dear friend of mine still and it was a really important moment to him and I was just happy to be there plus it was my first WrestleMania. What an experience sitting front row and having the whole thing of flying on Vince’s jet and doing the Hollywood experience of WrestleMania, it was pretty special.”
For more, check out the full interview at The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling podcast.
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