Kevin Gill recently appeared as a guest on the Tru Heel Heat Wrestling podcast for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the interview, the Game Changer Wrestling (GCW) star spoke about how ECW nearly had a video game deal with Rockstar games, why the deal fell through, the pushback he received from Rockstar about it and more.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On how video games was a nice transition for him: “Video games was a nice transition because it definitely paid a lot better than independent music did.. So just through a series of events, I ended up meeting with Sam Houser, who was the founder of Rockstar Games.. It turned out through some of his past lives working at different companies, he was involved in producing that Onita VHS documentary that came out in Japan years ago.. We kind of just hit it off. A short time later, he asked me to join the company. I was happy to do so.”
On putting together ECW’s deal with Rockstar games: “I would say I have no regrets and I got to work with so many great things there that opened up other doors for me. The way the game came about, I had actually put together a deal for Rockstar Games to do the ECW video game. Like I had put together a deal with Paul Heyman. We had a series of meetings. One weekend, I rented a van and brought the whole Rockstar Games team, like a 15 passenger van and brought everyone down to the ECW arena in Philly to see it in person.. I was like you guys have to see it.. Then also in my mind, be comfortable and fully understand every fucking thing that’s happening. You can’t pretend, ‘oh I didn’t know there was gonna be blood.’ A video game takes so many years to develop and cost so much to develop.”
On the pushback he received from Rockstar games: “We had the contract signed from ECW and we were about to issue the check and the check then makes it because we didn’t sign the deal yet. Like we returned this signed deal and the check and that locks the deal. So he’s finally like, ‘if this was your million dollars right now, would you sign this check and send it to Paul?’ And I’m like ‘if it was my only million dollars’. Because let’s be honest, if you’re on the pool of $15 million, it’s a good million dollar bet.. He’s just like ‘if it’s your only million dollars right now, would you bet everything you have that ECW will be here in 18 to 36 months when this game comes out?’ I was like ‘it breaks my heart to say it, but you know what I mean? I can’t, if literally like in this context, I couldn’t take that bet, you know what I mean? He’s like ‘I really appreciate that, that takes a real man to do that’. Then he had me rip up the contracts, not in a bad way, but in a symbolic way.
On how he does have regrets not getting the game to happen: “It’s crazy, it’s sad because I really wish I did. Sometimes I think about it like, well say I didn’t put the business first and would have put myself first, I would have chosen to just do the game. I still would have two years of experience, working with all those guys and who knows what would have come of it, with ECW’s financial situation and stuff. I always choose what’s best for all, or what’s best for the business. I sometimes wonder if I would have just done that, maybe ECW still would of went the same way, maybe the game would have been whatever, but I might have made a career changing relationships and moves that would have changed everything, I don’t know.”
Check out the complete Kevin Gill interview from the Tru Heel Heat Wrestling podcast via the YouTube video embedded below. H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes.
