The West End Phoenix, the Toronto community newspaper owned and operated by musician/author Dave Bidini, interviewed Anthony (and fellow wrestlers Jody Threat, Gabriel Fuerza and Stratos Fear) about life without wrestling during the pandemic.
“If the question is ‘What have you been doing during the lockdown?’, then the answer is ‘264 podcasts.’ I did my podcast daily last year, from January 1, 2020, every weekday. And I got a cat. That was a third-act decision back in December. At first she would hide, but now, six weeks later, she’s circling me like a shark looking for a scratch, and then smacking me if she doesn’t like the way I’m doing it.
I miss the hell out of wrestling. I’m eager to get back to it. For the social aspect, for the performance. Exercising every ounce of your creativity physically and mentally to get an immediate response from a crowd. Wrestling, at its best, is 1500s Shakespeare. The Globe Theatre was a theatre in the round, they were playing to an audience all around them, and those original performances were not a stately thing, they were not a dignified thing. They were loud and raucous; a lot of heckling and yelling and shouting and cheering. They were exactly what wrestling is now. It’s heroes and villains, it’s the woebegone, it’s chivalry and pure chicanery.
I’m happy as a heel. There’s nothing quite like being completely unfettered in your words and your deeds. I curse a lot. A lot of the times it’s just turning yourself up to 11. I’ve yelled at crowds in the States that they lost the War of 1812 and Canada is better. Once, at the Great Hall, a guy and his kids were heckling me from the balcony and I told him I hoped his kids died of something simple, like a hangnail or the common cold, so that he could live the rest of his life in misery and sorrow knowing that they would still be around if he’d just told them to shut the fuck up while I was talking. It was one of the best nights ever.
My wishes, in order, are vaccination, provincial election and a return to semi-normal. I’d just love to not be spending 2022 in this same fucking apartment 24 hours a day. I know it’s never going to go all the way back; everything is going to have to change. You live through the tornado, then you’re standing in the rubble that used to be your house like, Now I gotta rebuild.”
To read the article in its entirety, visit The West End Phoenix website.