Mike Bennett On Returning To ROH Following WWE Release

Matt Taven and Mike Bennett of The OGK made their returns to The Wrestling Inc. Daily podcast to chat about Bennett's ROH return as well as the unflattering sides of parenthood. Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman asked Bennett why it took him so long to help out Taven as he nearly got a dart thrown at him by Vincent.

"I'm fashionably late. It's how you have to do things," Bennett said. "I couldn't get the electrician to turn the lights off quick enough. I gotta be the superhero, so Vincent can't just be talking to him, and then I make the save. I need to make the save when he's in peril.

"I will back this up. Mike is always late," Taven added. "It was right on brand for Mike in general, but also, Vincent, he's not the brightest bulb in the world anyway, so he's looking around wondering what the hell's going on. So I wasn't too concerned. Once the light show started going off, I knew this moron would be defective."

Bennett has opened up on The Wrestling Inc. Daily before about how things in WWE did not go well for him. When asked what returning to ROH felt to him, he compared it to Christmas morning.

"It felt like home if that makes any sense," Bennett expressed. It felt comfortable. It felt normal. I became a pro wrestler because I love pro wrestling, and there was a time in my career where having matches and getting in the ring, you got excited about it. It was like Christmas morning. You couldn't wait for it, and [to be] brutally honest, for the last three years, I lost that feeling completely. I wasn't excited about work. I wasn't excited about matches because they were micromanaged.

"They were so picked apart. You weren't creatively fulfilled. I never got excited about wrestling, and I would say this match with Vinny was the first time I've genuinely been excited about getting into a ring. I was genuinely excited. I couldn't wait for every aspect of it because I knew I was going to get to be myself again in a company that I wanted to be in, and I just felt like myself again. I felt like it was Christmas morning all over again."

Hausman asked if Bennett was feeling well after his physical match against Vincent. Bennett admitted that he always has some aches and pains, but he noted that the worst part is playing with his kids who do not care if he just wrestled a physical match.

"I'm never feeling okay," Bennett stated. "It's one of those things where you just kind of get used to it. My neck is stiff. The best part is though when you get to get the crap kicked out of you, and then you go home, and then you have to pick up a two year old and you have to pick up a 10 month old, who don't really care if you've been dropped on your head or your neck. So I actually think I get beat up more by them after matches than I do in the middle of a match."

Bennett talking about his kids led Hausman to ask if Taven could imagine himself with children. While Taven expressed his love and support for his friends Mike and Maria, he admitted that hearing about Mike's stories about his kids has him wary of wanting kids of his own.

"I can barely keep myself in line," Taven admitted. "When Mike talks about going home, it sounds like a nightmare to me. I love the family. Trust me, I love Maria, but the fact that he has to wake up some mornings feeling like the Cryptkeeper after wrestling, and the thought of a child jumping on me while I'm feeling like that, it's just something I don't know if I ever want to experience. I have a 90-pound golden retriever. So he's my fur baby. So that's about the extent of fatherhood that Matt Taven's willing to go, maybe ever, probably ever. I say most likely."

Bennett added that "you haven't lived" until you see your child with a diaper full of poop. That led to the three to talk about their personal stories of dealing with poop.

"You haven't lived though, until you're woken up in the morning by your two-year-old, who comes in with her diaper off that's full of poop going, 'Daddy, I poo-pooed,'" Bennett told Taven. "You haven't quite lived, until you've experienced that."

"I have to pick up my dog's poop with a bag," Taven replied. "It's not too far off. I'll take that instead of someone telling me that they have poop in their hand.

"I dog sat the other day, and I went to pick up the dog's poop," Hausman recalled. "One finger must have just been outside the bag, and when I put it down, I looked out. I saw all this bright yellow dog poop. I had to walk down the cold Chicago alley, like, 'Don't touch yourself. Don't touch anything, just keep your hand so you get to a sink.' It's gross.

"Well, you're from a cold environment," Taven noted. "Up in Boston, you pick up your dog's poop, and I didn't know this interview is mostly going to be about poop, but let's do it. When you pick up your dog's poop and the warmth makes it feel like, 'Oh no, is there a hole in this bag. Did I just grab on to just a chunk of poop?' So these are the things that I go through with my fur baby fatherhood, but I just don't want to move on to human form."

The OGK (Matt Taven & Mike Bennett) will face Vincent and Bateman at ROH Final Battle on Friday December 18th. For more information please visit www.ROHWrestling.com. Taven and Bennett's full interview aired as part of a recent episode of our podcast, The Wrestling Inc. Daily. Subscribe to get the latest episodes as soon as it's released Monday – Friday afternoon by clicking here.