Justncredible818 from www.MondayNightMayhem.com sent along the following:
Mike was welcomed to The Monday Night Mayhem airwaves by The Big Mosh, Blade, & "The Chairman Of The Board" Todd Vincent, as part of the kickoff of the all-new fall season of "Your Home Of Wrestling Radio" for his first post-WWE interview. Blade started things off by asking one of the most-frequently asked questions from the members of The Mayhem Nation, which goes back to Mike’s first night with World Wrestling Entertainment, at The 2008 WWE Royal Rumble at Madison Square Garden. Just who is "Jeff Harvey?" Adamle wished to inform The Mayhem’s listening audience & wrestling fans across the globe the simple truth that he does indeed know that it is "Jeff Hardy" & not "Jeff Harvey." Mike was very candid about his debut with the company at "The World’s Most-Famous Arena," and looks back on the night with as a learning experience. "You’re exactly right about that. I have no excuse except to say that was my first night I was on the air, and I have a good friend Mike Harvey, and I was talking to him prior to that…and thus, the maloprompt. But then there were a lot of maloprompts after that…"
As many fans of the WWE product are already aware of, Adamle left World Wrestling Entertainment after just one year, one that unfortunately saw more disappointment than critical success. Many hardcore fans of professional wrestling & sports-entertainment did not take him seriously, and even some talent took him to task…sometimes on the air. Was Adamle’s departure mutual, or was it more one-sided, whether it be him or the WWE? "I think it was a matter of them seeing my career as far as it could go with WWE. I wasn’t quite sure what they brought me in for. I know that JR (Jim Ross) was an icon for the WWE & an icon in broadcasting professional wrestling over the years, and I heard through the grapevine that he was getting older and they wanted a young guy, but I wasn’t quite sure that exactly was it. They then put on ECW. Covering play-by-play for professional wrestling is a completely different animal than getting ready for a college sports broadcast. I had asked them once they had decided that’s what they wanted me to do is for my sake send me down to Tampa (Florida Championship Wrestling), and let me call matches till I’m blue in the face, until it rolled off my tongue. It didn’t, and I suffered a little bit, I’ll be honest, on the air, and I got a lot of criticism from ECW fans, but you take it in stride. And eventually by just being man enough to get all the boos, they start liking you, and I think Vince took advantage of this guy who’s a ‘bumblehead’ so they made me the ‘bumblehead of ECW,’ and a guy who was prone to make mistakes, and I went along with the gag."
"The Chairman Of The Board" Todd Vincent asked Mike if Vince McMahon or those in the back fed him wrong lines in his headset (as has been reported over the years with Tazz & Mick Foley) to increase the "bumblehead character" that they portrayed as Adamle. "They tried to feed you lines, and I kinda went along with it. I actually liked it (playing the lovable dunderhead) and I grew to enjoy the ECW people." He continued, "A couple of times they had me walk off, which was not my idea. The first time I walked off, left Taz in a lurch, and the following week, I came out made an apology & said that I couldn’t stand off the heckling that was going on behind me. And I actually got accepted, the responses for me kinda changed, and I went from kinda a heel to a babyface announcer. Just the whole experience, I wish I had to do it again because now I know some things about how it all works and I’m not sure I’ll ever get another chance but I got nothing but great things and memories from the WWE." The big question: Would he want another chance to go back? "I’d go in a heartbeat. If you’re any kind of athlete, you’ve been knocked down not once, not twice but hundreds of times and you get out of the game when you don’t want to get off the canvas anymore. So I got knocked down to the canvas a couple of times, but I wanna get up, and I’ll too throw a few punches again. My greatest regret is that I was never able to get in the ring. I wanted to be chokeslammed a couple of times."
Continue reading on page two …
