MUST READ – William Regal Candidly Opens Up About His Side Of MJF Story

AEW

AEW’s Blackpool Combat Club coach William Regal has opened up about his side of the story MJF told on last week’s October 18 AEW Dynamite.

MJF recalled an email that Regal had sent to him after a WWE tryout when he was 19, and painted the picture that Regal had incompassionately crushed his dreams.

MJF is a master at blurring the lines between shoot and work, so a lot of people have been pondering how much truth there really is to what he said and, more importantly, the way he presented it.

Regal countered on the night by basically saying that he did it for MJF’s own good and it lit a fire underneath him, but the legendary Brit opened up a lot further on the latest edition of his Gentleman Villain podcast.

Regal said:

“There are things that he seems to have… he’s taken something that he’s seen and not read it, or not taken on board, or forgotten what came previous – the previous encounters we had before – and he’s let that eat him up for seven years.

“There was a lot going on at the time, a lot going on in my life, but I took time to spend time with him, but he’s forgotten that. He was 19 and in a different world. Since being a teenager, I’ve had the right people telling me what I was doing right and wrong.

“If you’re 19 years of age and you’re getting a lot of information… I was introduced to MJF, he was put on my radar by Matt Striker. I took extra time. I saw how special MJF was.

“I never called him ‘kid’. I’ve never talked down to anybody. I never say that anybody… I’ve always had an incredible structure, I can’t support any of the people enough. If I had to second guess myself, I always had someone to go to who were brilliant at this.

“It’s a different world now, everybody has got an opinion and there’s too many voices. If you’re lucky enough to get someone who knows what they’re doing and not full of their own nonsense and not a ‘back in my day’ kind of person and just tells you how it is, you’re very fortunate.

“Find me any other person… when I was doing my job in WWE, have them tell you I didn’t give them all of my time or sent them an email that wasn’t helpful to them. If you can find me one other person or that they can say they had a bad experience with me when I was doing my job.”

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Regal went on to add:

“He was put on my radar. I saw how incredibly talented he was. I spent time with him… backstage at WWE. I spent time with him and other extras. I knew he was 19 and I told him to keep in touch.

“After two emails, I’ve already told you you’re 19, I can’t hire you at the moment, go make a name for yourself and I’ve given you all these things to work on. Being a really good microphone guy… he was good. Matt Striker said this lad is really good. When he sent that third email with basically the same thing I’ve already seen… everyone who I’ve ever met or took in I’ve done stuff for.

“Daniel Bryan (Bryan Danielson), I made a call and he went and spent four years in England, living in not the most comfortable accommodation. Daniel (Cash) Wheeler of FTR, same thing. Other people same thing. I’ve already told the lad, twice, send me an email, but you don’t need to send me another one. So, sending me another one, I’ve got 200 or more people trying to get a job and the people I’m already dealing with, you’re just taking up my time now.

“He even said that, I believe, he sent me two emails and I told him not to send me anymore. Why send me another one! I told you, listen lad, don’t send me anymore, make a name for yourself which he did, he did all the things whoever taught him and got himself into the position. But, he sent me a third one on a day where I’m probably 50 emails in for people I wish I could get an opportunity for.

“I’ve already told him he’s got an opportunity and he just needed to make a name for himself. No different than Sami Zayn had to get himself over on the indies, Kevin Owens, anybody who has been associated with me has had to go out and do the hard work.”

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Regal further blistered MJF for sending that third email, saying:

“I’m as nice as can be, whenever I’m not being horrible William Regal sometimes. I’ve told him, he even said that, he doesn’t need to send me anymore, that tells me he’s not listening. So he sent me another one.

“If you want to get on in this business you’ve got to, number one, listen and be coachable. He can say he’s 19, I grew up in England, you’re not a kid at 19. I was married at 18, I bought a house at 18. I had to get into this job when you couldn’t go to a wrestling school.

“I’m laughing because ‘oh, right, you went to a wrestling school for 12 weeks’, I’m so sorry for you.

“When I had to leave, when there was no way to get into this job, I lived in a little tiny room, in a little tiny bed, for just under two years with water dripping on the bed in winter, freezing cold and truly crying myself to sleep because I was getting beaten up on regularly.

“You’re not a kid at 19, if you are, maybe you’ve had too easy of a bringing up, maybe he’s a bit too soft. I don’t care what this younger generation think.”

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Regal continued to get even more riled up, stating that he was now speaking as Darren, his real name, adding:

“This is Darren now, not William Regal. I’m getting mad now. This has bothered me that him in his mind… first of all, it’s bothered me but it hasn’t bothered me. What I said was real the other day. If all it took was for you to get an extra email that I’ve told you not to send me to get you this fired up to be this good at what you’re doing, job done. It’s sad that you have let that be a problem for you for seven years.

“He doesn’t remember this but it’s common knowledge now, not long after we met, I had two bleeds on the brain. WWE kept me isolated from everything, stopped emails coming in, they were incredibly brilliant to me.

“There were a lot of people – Ricky Starks, Sammy Guevara – that went on the missing list for some time. You don’t hear them moaning about me. He’s took something… and made it into something else.

“At 19, I don’t consider you a kid. If you are, you’ve had too much of a sheltered life. At 19, that’s showing you that… if one email can get you upset and it fires you up… imagine him turning up at WWE’s PC and he’s got to do five days a week and he’s going to get told off a bit or things not working out his way. Things have worked out for him. He should be thankful that in seven years things have worked out for him.”

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Regal expanded on the process of scouting talent and how that relates to the MJF situation, as well as his health issues at the time, saying:

“There are thousands of wrestlers out there that would beg, cut their arms off, to have the opportunities that he’s got, just the position, never mind getting paid at 26, and I still know those people. Matt (Koon, Regal’s podcast co-host), we had a conversation earlier today, you asked if someone could have my information. I can’t help anybody, nor have I got the time on my time off.

“Because what he would do, because I know him, he would have sent matches and I don’t just sit and watch a match if someone sends me something. I don’t just sit and watch the match, I don’t just gloss over something, it’s… the opinions I’ve learned 39 years.

“There are people, and MJF is one of them, he could have shown you stuff that I’ve sent to him or talked to him about, maybe it was good the stuff he was sending me. I’ve sent emails, reams of stuff of things to people. I did that last summer, there was 150 people, I cleared my entire lists. I kept lists because I wanted to be able to, ‘I think they’re good, they’re a good extra’. It’s a lot of responsibility.

“So when I’ve told him don’t send me any more emails after two, you’re set, lad – it’s because you’re good.

“Then I get the head injury, then I come back for two months, but I don’t really see anybody. I do a couple of NXTs and do one PWG which I struggled through because my legs were swelling and I felt really bad. I talked to a lot of people that day because I watched all the matches because I’m doing it for other people there.

“hen a few weeks later, I find out I’ve got to have a major heart operation and have six months to live and then I was out until 2019 and he’s complaining about an email. Then I come back to work at WrestleMania in 2019 and I don’t hear from him.

“He seems to think the world revolves around him. It’s entitlement, that’s what it is. I’ve got a job to do, I’ve got hundreds of people who work here already but people who want a job here. That’s every other wrestler in the world at the time.

“We had NXT UK and everybody in the UK was trying to get a job there and I’ve got NXT. I was the only person doing that job. It was only when Samoa Joe started working with us, which was over a year ago, that I said, ‘Can you take some of this load off me?’ because I can sit most days 8-10 hours watching other people’s matches filmed on whatever camera so I can try to help because if I don’t, who’s going to do that for them?

“I don’t think people realise how much I used to put into that job, my health went into that job. And it’s paid off for a lot of people. People will tell you how I got that job.

“How come he’s the only one in this entire industry who’s got a gripe about that? Perhaps he’s just a prick, an entitled prick who needs to grow up a bit. And, that’s what he needs, I don’t care how good he is if he is still whining and moaning about that, good for him.”

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William Regal went on to discuss how he believes MJF has had it easy in wrestling, and in life in general, as well as mentioning a comment from Jon Moxley. Regal said:

“I’m going to tell you straight, the other day, there was Jon Moxley and a couple of the older crew, asking, ‘How would he have coped years ago? How would he have got through any of that if an email has got him wound up?’ It doesn’t matter how talented he is. This job is a hard job, and if you think you’re going to get wrapped up in cotton wool, tough.

“He’s got himself into a position where he’s main-eventing pay-per-views, god help him if he had to go through any actual real-life like most independent wrestlers. I was saying to him ‘good job’, you’ve managed to, at 26, you’re getting incredible paydays and all this praise, but it’s nonsense, you’ve had it as easy as you can possibly have it. In his head, he probably thinks he’s got it real hard, but what’s he done?

“That’s how incredibly talented he is. I told him that in the second email and the third email, he read it out. You’re set, you’re good, you haven’t got to worry. He made himself very well know in MLW and then he gets hired by AEW. I was just coming back into the game in 2019 and trying to take care of a lot of things, sorting out NXT as I’d been away for a year, and he just never came back into my world, otherwise I would have hired him.

“If that’s what it took to get him there, one email of me telling him to not send me another email. Perhaps the man is just a prick or an arsehole. What’s sad about it is instead of saying ‘that was a good thing’, he’s bothered and I’m just laughing in his face.

“I’m sure there’s a lot of people who haven’t met him who don’t like him who have never met him because they’ve had to hustle and really really work hard. He’s got natural ability and talent, if he wants to make it up in his head that he’s had to work hard to get to where he is, good for him – has he bollocks had to work hard!

“If he wants to think he has, come at 10 o’clock next Dynamite and come and just train with us lot. I guarantee I train harder than him now, I don’t care how he looks cosmetically, conditioning-wise I bet he can’t keep up with me. It’s not a knock on him. He’s brilliant at what he does. I do hard stuff. He will be doing his weight training, but if he can keep up with me just doing the stuff I do. Then get in the ring with us and maybe I’lll stick his head up his backside a few times, then he might realise he had it easy.

“He said something the other night that was disturbing to me, that if he actually got to that point over an email, then maybe… he takes all these shortcuts that he takes and he’s just naturally talented.

“I’m 54, and I’ve lived a hell of a life, everybody in our group has got through this in a different way, nearly everyone in AEW has struggled more than he has, not to get to the level he’s got to – he’s got to an incredible level because of natural ability, but there’s something not right if an email was what it took to fire him up.

“Let him go to the New Japan Dojo, and see how he likes that, don’t matter how much natural ability you’ve got, go get battered about and dragged about for a year and made do a thousand squats and talked down to.”

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Regal also added a bit more reasoning behind why WWE signed other talents and passed on MJF, which you can read at this link.

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• william regal
• mjf
• AEW
• wwe

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