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The following interview was conducted with Jay & Mark Briscoe on May 30th, 2002.
Question: What are you favorite places to work now?
Jay: Well, I love to work for ROH, of course. ROH has the best talent roster anywhere in the country. NWA Wildside is another great place to work. The atmosphere down there is just so amazing. I recently started in PWF and that was really fun, because Corino and Dimension are so cool. I just walked into the last PWF show, not expecting to work, but they put me on the card anyway. I'm looking forward to working with Mikey and QWA, and MCW has always kind of been like a home to me.
Mark: I love going down to Wildside. Like Jay said, the atmosphere is so amazing. All the guys down there are cool and none of them have big heads in the back. It's a hell of a ride down to Georgia but it's worth it. MCW has always been a really cool place to work. In the back it feels like the guys are brothers or something. Everyone is real close. Mark and Dan are awesome too. JCW is another. We just started in JCW, but it was real fun. I'm sure that if I am asked this question in a few months, Ring of Honor and PWF would be on the list as well.
Question: Jay, what has been your favorite match in ROH and why?
Answer: My favorite match in ROH has been my match with Spanky on 3/30 (videotape of this match on The Round Robin Challenge is available now for immediate shipping at RFVideo.com or by calling 215-891-9404). Because we were on late in the show we had a longer match and had more time to show what we could do. I try to be a critic, rather than a fan of my matches and there was definitely room for improvement, but I felt like we both really got over with the fans and we got the crowd back into the show after the unfortunate situation that happened with Chris Marvel and Paul London in the previous match. The fact that Spanky was bleeding all over the place added to the match and I think we both started getting more into it as the match went on.
Question: Who has influenced your style?
Jay: I like to focus more on matwork/chain wrestling than big, flashy moves. Steve Regal has always been one of my favorites, along with Dean Malenko. Those two are very technical and underrated I think. Chris Benoit is another, because I feel my style is starting to shift more towards his style than anybody else's.
Mark: Shawn Michaels. I always have loved Shawn ever since he was part of the Midnight Rockers with Marty Janetty. I try to incorporate as much "Shawn Michaels" into myself and my matches as possible. Shawn has always been the funnest wrestler to watch and at the same time he always had great matches. The way he would put his body on the line every show was great. Shawn was the perfect mix of technical wrestling, high flying, and showmanship. My style has also been influenced by the New Japan juniors of the early and mid 90s like Naoki Sano, Great Sasuke and of course Jushin Lyger.
Question: How do you divide your time between wrestling, school and other sports?
Jay: It's not that hard now, I graduate on June 7th and football was the only sport I played. I try to go train at least three times every week, which is easy, since I don't have a job right now. But it was really tough when I first started. I was 16, and I would get up at 6:00 every day and go to school, then go straight to football practice. Every other weeknight, we would leave football practice early and drive two hours to Wilmington, Delaware to train with Jim Kettner and get home sometime after midnight. I loved it though and was very grateful for the opportunity because Jim was the only one who would let us train at his school because of our ages. If it wasn't for him, we would just now be starting.
Mark: I think it's fun really. Football and wrestling compliment each other. Football practice helps me get in shape for wrestling matches and training in the ring keeps me in shape for football. School is just what I do during the day when I'm not practicing for wrestling or football. At first I didn't know how we were going to make it. When football practice ended at about 5:00-5:30 I'd be ready to get some rest, but we had to jump in the truck and be in Wilmington by 7 to train for a few more hours. Now it's not so hard since we train at a place less than a half hour away and we can go when ever.
Question: Your parents were involved in an interview segment backstage at the last ROH show, what is it like working with your parents?
Jay: To be honest, the first time my mom did a run-in on Kevin Kelly at an ECWA show, it was fun, then CZW started over doing it and it just got stupid. I never told anybody, because I didn't want my mom to get mad, but she'll probably kill me after reading this anyway. I had started to feel like a momma's boy, and yes I am only 18, but me and my brother like to be known as the Briscoe Brothers, not the Briscoe Family. No offense, but my parents aren't trained workers. However, I thought my parents were used wisely at the last ROH, because they didn't actually get into the ring. They come to all of the ROH shows anyway and most everybody knows them, so why not put them in an angle? Just don't let them in the ring every other show.
Mark: It depends. The interview at Ring of Honor was fine. I had no problem with that at all, but when a promoter puts mom or dad in the ring I think it's stupid, unnecessary and makes me and Jay look bad. It's just embarrassing, not that they do a bad job or anything, but who the hell wants their mom in the ring with them?
Question: Do you two have any kind of a sibling rivalry?
Jay: Yes we do. We are always competing at everything, whether it be wrestling, football, girls, videogames, gym class, whatever. We're always around each other and we're always trying to outdo the other one. When we were younger we use to get into some serious fist fights, but we have since outgrown that.
Mark: Hell yeah. Sometimes I'll think of a move or something and tell Jay and he'll be like "no, let me do that." (laughing). We do have a very big sibling rivalry but we're supportive of each other and that makes it fun. Our rivalry only makes us better because we're always trying to top one another. The good part is that we don't want the other to do anything wrong, we just want to do it better.
Question: What happened between you and CZW?
Jay: I knew this was coming and I'm actually kind of happy it did. I finally get to tell my side of the story and it is a long story. Before I start, I want everybody in CZW to know that I have no heat with any of them and I still consider them my family, but I'm sorry to see that some of the CZW wrestlers and staff no longer feel that way. Anway, ROH had contacted me long before they ran their April 27th show. In fact, I knew about the show before ROH even started and had already agreed to work for them that night. It was just like with ROH, I told them we could never work for them the second weekend of every month cause that is CZW. A couple weeks before the show, John Zandig called and said that he would be running in West Chester on 4/27. We told John that we would not be able to make it, because we had already committed to ROH. So, John then goes and changes the time of the show to 6:00, which really didn't matter anyway, because I was in CZW for over a year and not once did a show start on time. I was wrestling second at ROH anyway so there was no way I was coming to CZW that night. After telling John this, he seemed pretty upset. We didn't want to leave John with nothing, so we talked with Rob (Feinstein) and Gabe (Sapolsky) from ROH and came up with the idea that Mark would go to the CZW show and I would work for ROH. John seemed cool with that at first and even advertised Mark vs. Nick Berk. Then, the very night before the show, Zandig left a message on our answering machine saying that he would not let Mark wrestle for him in West Chester and no other PA shows for that matter. It was because of Mark being underage, even though he had been wrestling as an Outlaw for months and was even supposed to wrestle me at the ECW Arena on April 6th before he got hurt. Frank Talent (PA Commission) and (Rockin') Rebel had already told Mark that he could wrestle anywhere in PA that he wanted, but John "because RF Video revealed Mark's age on their website," said he could no longer work for him. Before I continue, RF Video had no intentions of getting Mark banned in PA, especially since he was going to debut for ROH in a few months. Anyway, after Zandig said that he wouldn't use Mark, we quit and now we are done with CZW. Some of this stuff that I have been reading on the internet about somebody "getting into our ear" is totally bullshit! The bottom line is that John Zandig was jealous because we were working for ROH rather than CZW on 4/27 and that's why we are done with CZW.
Mark: Well Jay covered that pretty good, so I'll just give you my thoughts on CZW and the situation. Just to clear this up, I have no heat with anyone in CZW, not even John. I think he made a poor decision by making us choose ROH or CZW cause that's a no-brainer. All the stuff about people "getting into our ear" is just stupid and untrue. We made the decision to leave by ourselves and quite frankly I'm glad we did.
Question: Jay, you've had the opportunity to work guys like Spanky, Tony Mamaluke and coming up Doug Williams in ROH, do you enjoy wrestling new guys like this more?
Answer: The only way to learn in wrestling is to wrestle people that are better and have more experience than you do. I have been so thankful for the work I have gotten in ROH, because it has helped my improve on my matches and skills. Both Spanky and Mamaluke are both great guys to work with and I learned more working with those two than anybody else I have ever worked in 2+ years. I am really looking forward to wrestling Doug Williams. I saw him in the King of the Indies and he was really good. I think our styles are similar, so it should be fun.
Question: Jay, how do you compare ROH to other places you've worked?
Answer: ROH is by far the best place I have worked for. The shows are really good, because Rob, Gabe, Doug (Gentry) and everyone else have been around the business so long and know how a show should be ran. They don't have wrestlers fresh out of wrestling school jumping off of scaffolds and ladders in the first match! They know what they are doing and you can tell by how successful the shows have been.
Question: Mark, is it frustrating not being able to wrestle in ROH yet?
Answer: Good Lord yes. Sometimes I don't even feel like going just because I know how depressed I'm going to feel after seeing a great show and knowing that I didn't wrestle. But I realize that I just need to be patient and that my time will come. I know that when my time does come that Gabe, Rob and Doug will take care of me and give me great opportunities just like they are doing with Jay.
Question: Mark, how much are you looking forward to your ROH wrestling debut with ROH hits Boston on August 24th?
Answer: Words can't describe it. Ever since the first show I knew that ROH was for real. I think that Ring of Honor is the next big thing in American wrestling and I can't wait to be a part of it. In the mean time I just got to train hard and try to impress everyone on August 24.
Interviewer: Thank you guys.
Jay: Thank you.
Mark: Thank you.