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MLW star Logan Creed recently joined Spencer Love of the Conversations With Love podcast to discuss a variety of topics, including working with Court Bauer, his decision to sign with MLW, his role in the Dead by Midnight series, his time working with the Dynasty and more. The full transcript can be found below, as well as links to the full audio interview.
WCSN: http://wincolumnsports.ca/conversations-with-love-87-a-conversation-with-logan-creed/
Podbean: https://backbreakermedia.podbean.com/mf/play/id0ws3/Logan_Creed_CWL_FINAL_Edit_8d6uf.m4a
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-win-column-sports-network/id962607803?i=1000479386373
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56DivrfiiSM
How he’s handling the COVID-19 pandemic
Spencer Love: “Logan Creed joining me on the show for the very first time, and man, we were talking before this (and) I’m super excited to have you on the show. Not just because of the fact that I think you’re a terrific professional wrestler in your own right, but working for Major League Wrestling (and) really getting the chance to experience watching you wrestle week after week after week for the first time has been so cool for me man, so (I’m) really excited to dig in to your life and dig in to professional wrestling, but obviously, let’s dig into this boring time everyone’s going through! How’re you keeping during the COVID pandemic?
Logan Creed: “I’ve actually been staying pretty busy. I’ve got a 15-month old son who keeps me running right now, and it’s funny, because it’s kind of a double-edged sword. I miss being on the road, and I definitely miss wrestling, but I’ve got to spend a lot of quality time with him. So, I’m thankful for that. It was a blessing in disguise, because I would have missed his first steps and a lot of the things that would have happened when I was on the road, so it was nice. It’s nice to be home. I’m ready to get back on the road. I think he and I are both ready for a break from one another, but it’s been good. I’ve just been staying busy and just staying focussed on the future, y’know? Coming out with new ideas and watching and learning - there’s always something to do, even when you’re not in the ring. You can still be preparing for that next match and the next show.
His early days in professional wrestling
SL: “Now, it’s a phrase I’ll use semi-ironically here, but you’re pretty much a road warrior in and of yourself, right? From what I’ve seen as far as your career before Major League Wrestling, you were pretty well everywhere as far as the United States goes. Like I was telling you, we’re a Canadian based podcast (and) I know you were starting out in Georgia: was that maybe a necessity of the independent scene there? Or, what were your early days in professional wrestling?
LC: “My early - it’s funny, because I’ve been doing this for a really long time. I started back in 2005, so I’ve been around for a long time, but I really wasn’t known for 10 of those years. I was a collegiate wrestler in college. That’s actually how I was introduced to independent wrestling. I was a wrestling fan growing up, loved it, watched it my whole life, but I was completely unaware that there was an independent wrestling scene. We would watch NWA Wildside at a friend of mine’s house back when it was on TV, like, on the local TV station in Georgia."
SL: “Cool, man! What drew you guys to the NWA, sorry to cut you off, but it’s not to say anything against the promotion, but it’s not very often you hear someone say they started off with the NWA.”
LC: “It was ran by Bill Behrens, and AJ Styles, actually, that’s where he got his start was NWA WIldside. At that time, that was kind of the end-all, be-all promotion in Georgia. But, like I said, I just thought these guys were, like, developmental guys that were eventually going to be on TV, which obviously a lot of them were. But, I didn’t know that there was shows that ran 15 miles from my house. So, I’m wrestling in college, and I meet a professor who actually ran one of these independent shows. So, he saw me in the gym, and he, y’know, he approached me and obviously he saw my size, and he’s like ‘man, have you ever thought about wrestling, professional wrestling?’ And I was like ‘yeah, my whole life!’ And so he’s like ‘you should come train,’ and I was like ‘what? Where?!’ And so he tells me, and I go and start training. That’s kind of where I got my start. But, at the time, social media wasn’t what it is now. You didn’t have the ability to - everything wasn’t out there yet. It was still very much a close-knit group of guys, and to get into different promotions, even the smaller ones, you had to know somebody, and it wasn’t just a matter of shooting an email with a match. You had to send a VHS tape of the match and hope somebody actually watched it, you know what I mean? So, it was tough, and I was still in school so I was bouncing in-and-out of it. I was doing shows sporadically once a month for probably two or three years. It just - I wanted to do it, but I hadn’t committed to it because there was just so much else going on in life, and I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, you know what I mean? So, that went on for years, and I actually got out of it completely probably from 2007 to 2012. I wasn’t doing it at all, and I guess it was around 2012/2013 that it kind of popped back up. An opportunity presented itself, and a guy was like ‘hey, you should come do this show. It’s in your hometown,’ and so I did, and that was the moment I think where I was like ‘you know what? This is what I was supposed to be doing. This is what I was supposed to do.’
LC: “So, about six years ago I would say is when I was like ‘you know what? I’ve done all these other things, this is the only thing that makes me happy. I want to do this.’ That’s when it really started growing for me and I really started kind of to spread my wings and fly a little bit and get out. Then, it became I was doing it every week and not just sporadically.”
How he differentiates himself as a big man in professional wrestling
SL: “I’ve heard you mention in previous interviews before, you know, you loved Sting. I mentioned the Road Warriors earlier semi-ironically, this is why, because you loved them growing up. It’s pretty interesting to me that, like, not only did you pick guys who were, again, obviously incredible pro wrestlers, but (were) bigger guys who were able to really differentiate themselves and I think that there maybe is a bit of a stereotype or a bit of a typecasting on guys that are 6’8, 6’9, 7 feet as a guy like yourself is. Outside of doing the face paint and sort of the stuff on that side, how do you differentiate yourself as a big guy?”
LC: “I think, and I’ve said this in podcasts before, early on the one thing that used to just irritate me so much was I wasn’t - they didn’t want me to do certain things. It was almost like they were cutting off a whole part of myself, and things I knew I could do, but I wasn’t allowed to, and if I did, I was almost scolded for it. It would hurt me instead of help me.”
SL: “Yeah, you were told you were not to move fast or something like that in an interview one time, which is the weirdest s**t to me.”
LC: “Yeah! I wasn’t supposed to move fast, y’know, don’t take a lot of bumps in a match, which now I understand, but it was still, it was just so - this is boring. Even at the time, when I was so green and really untrained, I knew that what I was doing wasn’t good, and it frustrated me. But, I didn’t have that guidance, because nobody around me at the time - I was the biggest guy around this area, the area that I was wrestling. There was nobody else my size. So, they were teaching me the only thing they knew, and that was that ‘you’re the big guy, you don’t fall down. You just do this, you just kick and punch and throw people, and, you know, that’s it.’”
SL: “So, was that an MLW thing, or am I jumping ahead a little bit in saying that that’s really what sparked this sort of not renaissance, but really the biggest part of your career thus far? Or, was there maybe somebody or something earlier on that sparked where you’re like, ‘no, f**k you, I’m going fast!’”
LC: “No, I think that happened well before MLW. That happened, like I said, about six years ago when I really started to find my stride. I figured out how to do everything they wanted with everything I wanted to do, too. You know what I mean? I figured out how I could be that guy, how I could be that monster that they wanted me to be but still do all these things that I knew I could do just at the right moment. And, it’s funny, because if you’ve seen the documentary they did with ‘Taker recently, I thought it was so cool what he said because it is the exact same thing that I figured out. He would go out and he’s slow and methodical, but he had those moments of just bursts (of) energy, where it’s like ‘Woah, s**t, what did he just do?’ And that’s what clicked with me was that ‘okay, I can do this, because when I do THIS is when all their mouths are going to drop open. They’re gonna go ‘oh my god, how did he do that?’”
SL: “Yeah, man, and I think it’s needed for every professional wrestler, but I think it is a lot more necessary in big guys to have that ability to differentiate (themselves). People talk about the ‘80s with such a negative slant on it, and I don’t think it’s necessarily right, but you do look at bigger guys who weren’t necessarily the fastest, and it does get a bit of a bad reputation. Like I said man, watching you wrestle, watching what you’ve been doing for Major League Wrestling over the last little bit, it’s a hell of a pleasure to watch, man. What do you think has really allowed you to click with Major League Wrestling?
LC: “I think just in my short time with the company, it’s crazy how quick that I felt like I fit in, you know what I mean? Like, I really felt like they knew what they were doing when they found me, and they saw that I was a piece of that puzzle. They often refer to themselves as the renegades of professional wrestling. You’ve got such a group of talent who, a lot of which have been looked over or passed over for other companies and didn’t get that opportunity, but then they came there and they’ve shined and they’ve become stars. I really feel like that’s kind of the same story that I had. That I was kind of stuck in the south-east, and was passed over and looked over a lot of times and didn’t get some of the opportunities that I felt like I should have, and then all of a sudden here comes MLW out of the blue. I was very unfamiliar with the company myself when we started talking. I had reached out to them, I did send in a resume, but other than that I was pretty unfamiliar. I knew who they were and I knew what they did, but that was about the extent of it.”
Why he signed with MLW
SL: “So was it just that instant comfortability? Or, what was the differentiating factor for you?”
LC: “For MLW? I saw an opportunity to grow as a wrestler. At the time, actually, when we were, we started negotiating a contract, I was offered a WWE tryout, and I turned it down because I wanted that opportunity to go with MLW. I love the underdog factor. I’m a hustler. I’ve always been a hustler, and here’s a company that’s growing and building something, and I’m like ‘man, here’s where I can go really dig in and create, and they’re going to want me to create,’ and I was absolutely right. Everything is so hands-on. Everybody’s involved with everything that’s going on, and it’s not just me telling you what to do, it’s ‘hey, what do you think? Here’s what we think,’ and it’s - you’re growing stuff together. I was 100% right in that decision, because that’s what I wanted. I wanted to go somewhere where I could keep developing as a wrestler. I knew that I wasn’t at the peak. I had just started getting there when this happened, so I wasn’t ready to go to the retirement home of wrestling. I saw the opportunity to go outside. You know, they’ve got the relationship with Mexico in AAA, they’ve got the relationship in Japan, and they’re constantly, y’know, every week Court’s got a new TV deal working in another country. These are people that are seeing us and they’re watching and they’re becoming fans. I love that aspect of the underdog company that’s just grinding and building something on their own.”
Court Bauer
SL: “You answered my next question for me, but even just seeing on the business side of things how hard Court Bauer works, I’ve never had the opportunity to speak to him personally but just as an outsider, dude, it’s cool as s**t to see the stuff you guys are doing. Whether it’s going down and doing the Super Series or even the stuff that’s gone on, y’know, since filming has ended and the stuff you guys are doing in the pandemic. You mention the TV deal, how does that feel to be part of an organization that really is the only one not really just surviving, but thriving at this point?”
LC: “That’s the word right there is thriving. We’re not all just sitting around waiting to see what happens, y’know, and I’m speaking for everyone, and I’m not even sure where everyone is, but I can see that they’re doing it. Everyone’s involved and pitching ideas and stuff to do. You can see it. It’s out there. And I’m in constant contact as well, and we’re working on stuff, and there’s stuff that’s going to be coming out soon that I’ll be involved with. It’s constant back-and-forth. If I’ve got an idea, I don’t hesitate to send it, because there’s not going to be a negative reaction. It’s never going to be a negative response.”
SL: “Well, yeah. Nobody can be mad at you for an idea.”
LC: “Right! Even out of a bad idea, it gets people’s thought process rolling. It’s brainstorming, and that’s what I love is that there is no bad idea. I haven’t had a bad idea yet. We just start building on it.”
How Austin Theory changed his perspective on wrestling
SL: “I wanna just backtrack a little bit on it because you mentioned you had the tryout offer (and) you got the offer from Major League Wrestling, but all of this is happening at a time that you had said that you were close from taking a step back from pro wrestling. You mentioned it before, I know it was with 411 Mania, but it was so cool for me to hear even how much it meant for you and just the passion you had behind that, so maybe just the story around that.”
LC: “Yeah, so, 2019 - and I can go a little bit deeper in this story because I have touched on it before - but 2019 was such a great year for me as a wrestler. And not just about the in-ring work, but just the relationships that I was building outside the ring with some of the brothers in the business. I started training with Austin Theory, who I’m sure if you watch WWE now, you know the name, but he and I started travelling together. He’s a kid, man, his whole outlook on life is such a positive - it’s contagious. I’ll tell people often, I’m like ‘if you’re around him, and you don’t like him, it’s because you can’t handle the positive influence that he has.’ Just, you can’t handle that energy.
SL: “That’s wonderful to hear, man.”
LC: “He’s a ball of energy, and he really, really made me start looking at everything different. A lot of times, guys in the business, when things aren’t happening, y’know, it’s really easy to get bitter, it’s really easy to get down on yourself and start making excuses for why stuff isn’t happening. I feel like before I met him, I was kind of at that point. I was really - I was fixin’ to start going down that road of negativity, like ‘well, I’m doing all this stuff, why isn’t this thing happening?’ He was the one, without ever having the conversation where I was like ‘wait. It doesn’t matter, just enjoy the ride. Just get on and work your ass off every single show, and eventually, people are going to see what you’re doing.’ Work your ass off every day in the gym. Work your ass off every opportunity you get to get in the ring. And so, that’s what I started doing. It was such a blessing to be able to meet him and be around him, and everything he benefitted me with in wrestling, I benefitted him with in real life. It was a good trade-off, our friendship.”
Signing with Major League Wrestling
LC: “So, December of 2019, things have been really good. I was the Georgia Wrestler of the Year in 2019, and I started really looking at things, and I’m like ‘okay. Here I am. I’ve reached this point in my career, and what’s next?’ I told my wife, I said ‘it’s time to go to the next level.’ I was like, ‘if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen now.’ And, so, I sat down, I created a resume, put together some of my best work, and I just started sending it out. I would send out as many emails as I could every week, to as many promotions as I could find, including MLW. All of them. Everything. Anything I could get an email address for, I was sending it. And I did it on a weekly basis for probably 4-5 months.”
SL: “Holy s**t.”
LC: “Yeah. And, I didn’t get a response. I probably, maybe, of all the emails I sent, if you put it in a percentage, I probably got a 15% response back.”
SL: “For what it’s worth, you’re doing better than me on interviews.”
LC: “(laughs). But, the beauty of it was, was even though I wasn’t getting the responses, I didn’t care. It never once bothered me. I would actually forget. I just had them set up to re-send, and I would just resend them. It wasn’t like I was sitting there looking at my phone waiting for a response. I’d just send it, and continue doing what I was doing. But, I told her, I was like ‘if something hasn’t happened by August,' because I was turning 35 in August, and I was like ‘if something hasn’t happened by then, I think it’s time for me to figure out what the next step in life is.”
SL: “Life beyond pro wrestling.”
LC: “Right. Because, you know, I’ve got three boys, and their future is just as important to me as my own. If this dream isn’t going to provide for them, then it’s time for me to decide what is going to provide for them. So, that was tough. That was a tough - that was a hard pill to swallow, but the reality was, they are more important to me than anything else. So, let’s see - somewhere around spring, I was offered a role in a movie from Studio 42 out of Atlanta. They were doing a horror film similar to the old days of Tales from the Crypt if you’re familiar with those movies. Remember the old Tales from the Crypt horror movies?”
SL: “That’s the Dead by Midnight movie, right?”
LC: “That’s correct, yes. The Dead by Midnight series, this was the 2nd one. They were looking for a wrestling venue to shoot one of the movies that they were doing, and it just so happened that the venue that they found was the old Wildside building, which is now known as Anarchy, and where I was the champ at the time. So, they come in, and they’re looking around, and they see my picture on the wall, and so they start asking questions. Rick Michaels is like ‘you guys should ask him to do it. He’ll do it. I know he’ll do it!’”
SL: “Hey, this guy looks terrifying!”
LC: “(laughs). So, we started talking, and they offered me the role, and I took it. So, it was literally the first week of filming, which would have been the first week of August. (I’m) sitting in makeup, and I get a text message, or no - I get an email from MSL, and that was when they offered me a contract, and so that’s when negotiations started. I literally - two or three weeks went by - but I literally signed the contract with them on my birthday.”
SL: “Happy birthday!”
LC: “Yeah! I always tell people ‘well, I set a deadline, I shoulda set it for, like, January and maybe it woulda happened sooner!’ If you ever need to know something’s supposed to be, y’know, I don’t think the energies of the world could have given me a better sign than that.”
MLW’s treatment of their stars
SL: “One thing that I’ve loved, y’know, I’ve spoken to you, I’ve spoken to Hammerstone about it actually, and it’s kind of nice for me to hear, just even as a fan, that with most of you guys that have signed with MLW, it’s not a six-month or a ten-month dragged-on thing. It seems like as soon as they figure out that they enjoy having you there and they like what you do, like, here’s what it is for you. It sounds like that’s your experience as well?”
LC: “Oh yeah. It was straight-up. We negotiated a few things and clarified a few things, obviously, but even that process was really easy. There was nothing hard about it, and everybody came to an agreement on everything, and I was happy and they were happy. As soon as the deal was done, they went straight to work on ‘okay, what’re we going to do with you?’ It wasn’t a ‘okay, we got him, we’ll talk to you in six months.’ It was a ‘we got you, here’s what you’re fixing to do.’
SL: “Head to developmental!”
LC: “Even with that, once I (came) in and I met everybody and they got to know me, I think they kind of looked back at some of my work on the independents, they changed their mind. That’s why you see me now, and I am Logan Creed, (it’s) because they saw the potential - they saw something else after they had me. But, they didn’t waste time. They didn’t waste time on the idea they had before. They immediately jumped to ‘I think this is better.’
SL: “You weren’t Emmalina backstage for eight months.”
LC: “Right! It wasn’t bouncing back-and-forth and somebody having a pissing match about what they wanted me to do. It was a straight-up ‘okay, you know what? We were going to do this, but I think we’re going to do this now."
His ring name
SL: “How cool is it for you, I heard you mention it again in that previous interview (with 411 Mania), even just getting the opportunity to be Logan Creed, how much does that mean to you?
LC: “It was awesome. That was the name that I came up with when I came back after the hiatus I took really early on in my career. That was kind of the gimmick I’d come up with during my time off, and I used to talk about, y’know, ‘if I ever wrestle, this is what I’m going to do.’ So, like, it was something I created when I wasn’t even wrestling, and it progressed as I came back into the Heathen, and then everything you see now, it’s grown into that. It’s always evolving, and that’s what’s fun about it is I don’t even know what it may be next. But, that’s the beauty of it, is that it can evolve and become something new.”
His time working with the Dynasty
SL: “I wanted to touch (on it) real quickly there because you brought up your early stages with Major League Wrestling. I’ve spoken to them both previously that are currently with the Dynasty. What was it like for you to work with Hammerstone and Richard Holliday?”
LC: “Y’know, when you’re coming into a company - I remember that message after, y’know, we were done with the contract, and the message I got was ‘alright, well, you’re going to be with Dynasty, and you’re going to be doing this.’ Obviously, my first response was ‘holy s**t! I’m coming into a company, and they’re putting me with the top guys,’ because these are the top guys in the company. MJF, Hammerstone, Holliday, these are guys who are stars, and are going to be stars, and will go on to be even bigger stars. And so, I was super psyched. I was excited about the opportunity, and I think that was one of the things that, when I got there, that they saw how invested I was in doing whatever it took to be what I needed to be. Even if it was different, even if it wasn’t going to be me anymore, I was willing and 100% behind whatever they envisioned it to be because I was going to do it.”
SL: “Now, it’s a bit of a weird one for you, because I’ve never really had the opportunity to ask anybody, but once you leave a group, or a faction, or even just a tag team, how does that change any sort of interactions outside of the professional wrestling sphere so that I don’t tear the curtain back too much on you?”
LC: “It doesn’t change a whole lot. I’m the kind of guy that I’m going to give everybody s**t anyway, so it kind of makes it easier to take jabs, because it looks like it’s a work, y’know? It doesn’t change a whole lot. Obviously, coming into that group, man, those guys have been together so long, they are close-knit. They’re like a family. These guys have been together and doing this for a while now, so it was - I knew I was walking into a situation (like) ‘okay, these guys have been together for a while, and I’m kind of (on) the outside looking in,’ but they - it was a quick relationship, for what it is. It’s the same with everybody in the company. Everybody’s just super easy to work with because everybody’s so motivated to be there and be successful, you know what I mean because they want to see the company grow. When you’re around a bunch of people who have the same goal, the only thing that’s going to happen is that it’s going to keep growing.”
His role as Gutcruncher in the Dead by Midnight series
LC: “So, if you’re a fan of the ‘80s horror-comedy, this is going to be a series that you want to check out. It’s super gory, sometimes humorous, cheesy - Jesus is it cheesy - horror-type film, but it was so much fun to do. That being my first experience, and here I am, y’know, and I didn’t realize, but there’s some bigger-name actors that played in the other movies on this as well. The guy that played Jason Voorhees - listen, people were telling me the names of the people who played in the movie with me, and I’m like ‘oh, yeah, that sounds cool.’ If you’re not a wrestler, I don’t know who you are. I know that’s terrible, but I don’t follow other stuff like other sports. People talk about, like, quarterbacks for football teams, and I’m like ‘oh, yeah!’ And I have no idea who they’re talking about.”
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