This past Monday on the Voice of Wrestling show with Chris Cash and Nick P, Ed Ferrara and Melissa Coates were the featured guests. Ferrara discussed his recent whereabouts, the open letter he wrote to Jim Ross, negativity within the wrestling business and it's effect on the product as a whole, the Death of WCW book, and much more. Ed also agreed that if 200 emails of fan requests were forwarded to him, then he would exclusively join the TotalWrestling.net forums and answer fan-submitted questions on a regular basis. Simply email Chris at VoiceofWrestling@aol.com with "Ed Ferrara" in the subject box and a brief message and he'll forward them directly to Ed. Also, be sure to tune in live this Monday evening from 7-9 EST as Voice of Wrestling invites Lex Luger on to the show LIVE for a very rare, revealing interview!
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"Now that I got cleared at the Methadone Clinic," Ferrara jokingly starts the interview after Chris asked him what he's been up to, "I moved to Chicago a few years ago. It will be three years in April and I've been doing a lot of teaching...comedy writing and sitcom writing. It's a blast and that's what I was doing all those years before I first went to work for the WWF. Now..I'm full-time at Columbia College in Chicago, I'm in the TV department there and I also teach class at the University of Chicago in sitcom writing".
Chris mentions that Ed was a very controversial figure at one point and asks if the listeners can expect some of those same comments he's always been known for, but although he's out of the wrestling business completely and it would make sense, he really just doesn't see the need to feed the negativity anymore. "There's so much negativity in the business and around the business," he explains, "and what it came down to was...like when we (Ed and Vince Russo) did the Ultimate Insiders DVD, one of the things that we talked about was we wanted to be truthful, we didn't really want to pull punches, but we also did not want to bury anybody because again, there's so much negativity, why feed into that?"
Ferrara continues with why he doesn't wish to bury anyone: "You've got an entire business that's based on a work, that's based on a lie, and what does that breed? It breeds more lies, it breeds more negativity, because everybody is lying to everybody about everybody else in an attempt to try and climb their way just a little bit closer to the top of the heap. I just had no desire, and I still have no desire to be apart of that. If people want to bury me and talk negatively about me which they have in the past, that's fine. That's their prerogative. But you know what, I don't have any axes to grind with anybody. I don't have any vendettas, any grudges against anybody and I've moved on. I'm out of this business".
VOW listeners didn't know Ferrara was actually in the chat room during the show, but an insult made in the chat was brought up for Ferrara to respond do about his involvement in WCW's demise. "First of all, I'm flattered that anybody would think that I had 'that' much stroke to actually kill WCW," he begins, "that's probably the nicest thing anybody's said to me all day. My response to that is...let me babble a little bit. I never read Death of WCW, had no desire to read it...I picked up the book in the book store and I flipped to the back of it and I wanted to see what the sources were. Don't bury me on the number here, but there were like 10 sources cited for the entire book and one of which was an Internet interview with Mike Awesome. If that's one-tenth of your case for the definitive death of WCW, you're basing it on real flimsy evidence". Funny thing is that the Awesome interview he referred to is one Chris Cash conducted with Awesome back in 2003.
Discussion changed to his recent "Open Letter" to Jim Ross and Ferrara reiterated that everything he wrote was true. He read about what happened on the 'net because he doesn't follow the product on television anymore, but still keeps up with the business as often as he can online. He read about the Mike Goldberg situation and understood that the writing was on the wall for Ross to be out. "I read what they had did on the air that week when they fired J.R. and I was like 'No, I've got to see this,'" Ed said, "and I watched it online when they had posted the footage...it was just the simple matter of the fact that he does not deserve to have that be the last memory of him." Ferrara explained that it was a sensitive spot for him because of the Oklahoma angle he had participated in. "I had a lot of problems with that when I did it and I never was proud of it, but what I wrote in that letter was the absolute truth".
After the letter had been posted, someone emailed him with Jim's email address, so he immediately sent it to him personally. "Within an hour, I hadn't gotten a response from him," Ed explained, "and basically we were emailing each other back and forth for a couple of days. I called him like two days later, we spoke on the phone...he was just such a class act, such a stand-up guy. He could have just basically wrote me and told me to go screw myself, but he didn't". Ferrara explained that Ross told him that everything was forgiven a long time ago and basically blamed it on the wrestling business. "It meant the world to me to be back on speaking terms with him and to be able to finally put that in the background".
Nick asked Ed whether his feelings had changed now that it seems like WWE is scrambling to come up with something and turn this into an angle and Ferrara thought it showed just how "out of touch" they are with their audience. "That's the old 'even a stop clock is right twice a day' style of booking," he began, "we made this mistake, people are reacting to it, let's jump on it. Well, that's great, but you can't run a company based on that. You've got to have a sound plan and it seems to me that their sound plan was that nobody would miss J.R., we can get rid of him. The fact that they underestimated the effect that this one man has on the product..that he is the voice, and the face, and the heart, and the soul of that company and he has been for years". One other point Ferrara brought up, in agreement with Nick, was how no matter how WWE tries to spin this, it's still a demotion for Ross if he's going to be relegated to WWE Unlimited.
Ed also discussed with Chris and Nick TNA's current product and offered his opinion on what they could do in their position right now, plus he elaborated on the Ross situation and what Jim had told him his thoughts were on the WWE angle. You can listen to the interview and the rest of the show at the links listed above, plus email Chris Cash at VOICEOFWRESTLING@AOL.COM with the "Ed Ferrara" in the subject box, attached with a brief message, to bring Ed into the TotalWrestling.net forums. Ferrera has agreed to answer fan-submitted questions in the message boards if 200 people requested him. Chris will forward all emails directly to Ed, so make sure you send them in as soon as possible after tuning into the show. Don't forget, this Monday night from 7-9 EST on the Voice of Wrestling, Lex Luger will join the show for a rare, revealing interview about his latest whereabouts and future plans.
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