Brody King On Which New ROH Signee Will Become "A Mega Superstar", Transitioning Out Of The Indies
After debuting in Ring of Honor in December, Brody King has been enjoying his time in a new organization. King was recently a guest on our WINCLY podcast and spoke to Wrestling Inc. managing editor Nick Hausman about his future with the company.
Alongside Mart Scurll and PCO, King is a member of the faction Villain Enterprises. He believes ROH has a ton of talented superstars that he'd like to share the ring with, but he particularly pointed to Bandido as someone who has a bright future. Bandido also signed with the company in December and is considered one of the hottest acts in the wrestling business.
"Absolutely, I think Bandido is gonna be a mega superstar one day. He had his first breakout year and now he's already one of the hottest talents in the world and he hasn't even chipped away at what he can be," King said. "He's 23 years old, he's in insane shape, and he's an incredibly nice human and is so talented. The stuff that he can do is absolutely mind-blowing."
As far as working for ROH, King said he enjoys the amount of freedom the superstars are given. Even though he's adjusting to a bit more structure, he enjoys the fact that the company puts their confidence in their talent to come up with a good product.
"It's awesome. I would just say there's probably more direction, you kind of know exactly what they want, but at the same time they're not very strict on what they want," he said. "They believe in their talent and they believe that we will give them the best product that we can, so they give us an outline of what they would like to see and they trust us to execute it, and so far it's worked out well."
In addition to his wrestling career King also makes a living as a lighting designer, something he's been doing for over a decade. His schedule allows him to pick and choose when he wants to work, which is very accommodating to his other job.
"I've never been known not to be busy all the time. My wife definitely has to be like, 'Alright, this week, you gotta just hang out with me and do nothing,' and my skin starts to crawl because I always have to do something... I do set-lighting for movies and TV, I've been a Local 728 Union member for about 13 years now," he said. "I have a very flexible schedule there, I can come and go as I please. So when I'm in town and I have the available days I'll go and work if I want to or need to, and if not then I just don't. But it's pretty much the dream job to have with wrestling, and it's a great career. It's afforded me a really comfortable life, I've been able to provide for my family and that's all I can really ask for."
Prior to joining ROH, King made his name in Pro Wrestling Guerilla. He revealed that he still plans to compete in PWG when his schedule permits. Living in Los Angeles makes it easy for him to perform with the company when he can.
"It's part of our contract that basically PWG is the only other indie that we're allowed to do in North America," he said. "That's always cool because it's 20 minutes from my house, I'm very fortunate to live in Los Angeles where PWG is, so it's not a huge inconvenience to fly across the country or anything like that. But PWG was definitely the promotion that kind of put me in the spotlight of a lot of people's eyes and gave me a platform to really shine last year."
With Ring of Honor's upcoming G1 Supercard with New Japan Pro Wrestling at Madison Square Garden on April 6, King was asked about which NJPW superstars he'd be interesting in going up against. King named a few superstars but said he'd be open to facing anyone on the entire NJPW roster.
"I have so many. I would love to have a match against (Tomohiro) Ishii, I would love to have a match against (Hirooki) Goto. If we were in a tag team, EVIL and SANADA are obviously huge names I would love to get in the ring with," he said. "Honestly, anybody from the New Japan roster I would love to get in the ring with."
Closer on the horizon for King is Ring of Honor's Road to G1 Supercard tour, which begins on Jan. 24 in Dallas, Texas. He and PCO are going to be competing in Tag Wars, which is a tag team tournament where the winner gets a title shot at ROH's anniversary show against The Briscoes. King said he like Villain Enterprises' chances to come out on top.
"There's a lot of names in the Tag Wars, The Kingdom is in the Tag Wars, (Jonathan) Gresham and Jay Lethal. I think the Best Friends maybe are in the Tag Wars, but it doesn't matter," he said. "If you've seen either PCO or I in the ring, so far in Ring of Honor we've been a pretty dominant force and I don't think that's gonna slow down anytime soon."
You can listen to Wrestling Inc's full WINCLY interview with Brody King in the embedded audio player below. Subscribe to Wrestling Inc. Audio on iTunes to get our latest podcasts as soon as they become available: