Many wrestling fans talk about the redemption story that a man like Cody Rhodes is on right now with All Elite Wrestling after being woefully underused in WWE, but IMPACT world champion Sami Callihan is crafting one of his own.

After failing to attain the spot he worked for in NXT, the now-leader of oVe put together a body of work all over the world that has now led to him leading IMPACT soaring in current the wrestling boom.

IMPACT Sami Callihan has become one of the most talked-about names in wrestling

At Hard to Kill on January 12, Callihan will defend his IMPACT world title against Tessa Blanchard in the main event. It’s going to be the first time a major wrestling promotion has main evented a pay-per-view with a man and a woman battling over a world title.

Ahead of his date with history, Callihan spoke to talkSPORT to discuss how IMPACT Wrestling has separated itself from the market, working with Blanchard, that baseball bat shot on Eddie Edwards and so much more.

Hi Sami! It really feels like IMPACT has turned a corner in recent months. I was a TNA fan at the turn of the decade, but I turned off and tuned out after a few years. What do you attribute to getting the buzz back again?

IMPACT Wrestling is good right now. As much haters as we have, it’s one of the best weekly wrestling shows on the planet right now. I think this year has been a big year for IMPACT as far as getting that nasty taste out of the fan’s mouth from the Dixie-era goes. What people don’t realise is, when the new regime of Scott D’Amore, Don Callis etc took over, things don’t happen overnight. It took a while and a lot of hard work to get to where we are now and now over the past two years, we’ve completely changed the face of IMPACT Wrestling.

I was a huge IMPACT fan when I was younger, it was one of the companies I wanted to work for when I got into wrestling. I used to order every Wednesday pay-per-view and I really thought IMPACT Wrestling was going to be that company to go toe-to-toe with WWE. But the management from the Dixie-era and the Hogan/Bischoff-era really hurt that company and a lot of people tuned out at that time.

So what separates IMPACT from the multitude of other wrestling companies today?

People were screaming for an Attitude Era-like company to come back and I feel like IMPACT Wrestling is the closest thing to it. We’re the only company right now that isn’t afraid to offend people, to try new things, we’re not afraid to push the envelope and give you an edgy product and we’re not going to apologise for every single thing like a lot of the other companies. The other companies, if they see the internet wrestling community is upset, they just want to apologise about it instead of actually staying the course and giving people and alternative.

IMPACT Sami Callihan defeated Brian Cage to become world champion

You seem to be in your element lately, what’s the creative collaboration like in IMPACT?

Maybe a little too much freedom [laughs[. But, no, I think IMPACT Wrestling has been great with me about giving me the ball and letting me be the character I want to be. I think the proofs in the pudding. I became one of the most talked about wrestlers of all 2018 and 2019 and I think it’s only going to grow from here.

One thing that really got your name back on my radar after NXT was the infamous baseball bat moment with Eddie Edwards.

Yeah, IMPACT didn’t apologise for it. Accidents happen in pro wrestling and it’s really funny that people like to judge me on that one moment even though I haven’t hurt anyone in my entire wrestling career, but that one moment put IMPACT back in the mainstream and it changed mine and Eddie Edwards’ career for the better. Now, Eddie Edwards doesn’t have to be looked at as a Dean Malenko-style wrestler anymore, he’ll go out of his comfort zone and do something different and I think we’re seeing the best version of Eddie Edwards we’ve ever seen at this point because he gets to be a different Eddie Edwards. He’s not held up to that same ‘oh, Eddie Edwards has to be the best technical wrestler in the world’ so much. Now he can go out and do something different for once and it changed both of us for the better.

Can you enlighten us as to what happened backstage straight after it transpired in the ring?

That’s something that will stay with me forever, but that’s something that will stay between me, Eddie Edwards and IMPACT Wrestling. But, we jumped on it, it got me on TMZ and it made me one of the most controversial wrestlers of the last 10 years.

IMPACT Sami Callihan accidentally hit Eddie Edwards in the face with a baseball bat

Your feud with Tessa Blanchard is certainly capturing the imagination of many right now. The whole dynamic is interesting, but do you think that as far as women vs men go, it’s important who the woman is? In this instance, Tessa seems a fantastic fit.

Well, I think it could have been done with a lot of different women because right now in 2019, I feel like women wrestlers are better than they’ve ever been. It’s time. People want equality, but then when you give them equality, they bitch and scream about that too. IMPACT is the first company to step up and I’m a big proponent of intergender wrestling not necessarily being deemed intergender wrestling, just professional wrestling. If you look at my company The Wrestling `Revolver, I rarely book woman versus woman matches.

It’s nearly always intergender wrestling because I think in a day and age where people want equality, it needs to happen in wrestling and it’s time for the women to step up and be top draws of professional wrestling. IMPACT is at the forefront of that and I think in the next five or ten years you’ll see the other companies follow suit.

The other thing about this angle with Tessa is, it’s not about men versus women, per se. She believes she’s the best.

I may not like Tessa Blanchard, but she is a hell of a professional wrestler at the end of the day. The thing that people get wrong is, this angle isn’t built off misogynistic insults. It’s not built on a man and a woman. I truly believe we built this angle on the reason I don’t like Tessa Blanchard is she’s apart of this new generation that just feels entitled to everything. I don’t hate her because she’s a woman. I hate her because she’s a spoilt brat. I have to wrestle her like I have everyone else for the past three years.

IMPACT Sami Callihan and Tessa Blanchard are making history

Many fans may have seen you as Solomon Crowe in NXT. What made you back yourself and leave?

I quit NXT because I wasn’t complacent. I wasn’t happy just collecting a paycheck and just being a toy on the shelf. I saw myself as a top guy, I had to go out and prove it and I’ve done just that. As soon as I got there, they wanted to change everything about me and I knew it wouldn’t work. I could have sucked it up probably been on RAW or SmackDown right now, but I’m not complacent to be the third or fourth guy, I want to be the top guy and I’ve been able to do that, I’ve proven that a normal white kid from Ohio can be the face of a company when that’s not the norm, because I connect with people.

Was it hard to have your voice heard in WWE then? Seems like you’re being heard a lot in IMPACT.

IMPACT Wrestling is probably the only company where our bosses are right there backstage at all times. If we have a grievance, we can talk to them right there and then. They aren’t afraid to try anything right now and I really believe that’s what has helped us stand out.

Where do you see IMPACT in this latest wrestling boom? And, it is a boom despite what people say about ratings.

I know a lot of older generation fans are like ‘Oh, the ratings are down for wrestling, no one is watching wrestling!’ – that’s not true at all. I don’t believe ratings even matter anymore because with today’s wrestling boom, people watch wrestling differently. People don’t watch television like they used to. I very rarely sit down and watch television, because anything I want to watch I can watch on YouTube or a streaming service.

I can watch it when I want to watch it without commercials. I don’t have to be home at 9pm to watch wrestling, I can watch it whenever I want to. I think right now, if you look at YouTube, wrestling, in general, is the most-watched thing on YouTube. YouTube is the new television in my opinion and that’s what’s making the new boom.

As for where we fit, I think we just have to stay the course with what we’re doing. We’re the first wrestling company to let Joey Ryan be Joey Ryan. People may hate or love Joey Ryan, but at the end of the day, he’s one of the biggest stars in wrestling. Everything he does gets views. I think it’s time in professionally wrestling for people to stop taking things too seriously. I hate the term ‘this isn’t wrestling, that’s not wrestling’ – no. Wrestling is subjective. Wrestling is flavours of ice cream. It can be anything we want it to be.

For people to get outraged and say something isn’t wrestling when in 1998 The Undertaker was striking people with lightening bolts, it’s like… that’s how I look at wrestling. Wrestling is Game of Thrones. Wrestling is melodrama. Wrestling is Marvel versus Capcom. Wrestling can be whatever we want it to be. You can watch NXT or AEW and get that style, you can watch NWA and get that throwback style, you can watch IMPACT and get the true alternative or oriental wrestling – there’s wrestling for everyone out there.

Speaking of Joey Ryan, a man who took the dick flip recently is Ken Shamrock, a legitimately scary man in his prime and I’m going to assume now! What’s it like having him around?

Having a guy like Ken Shamrock around is priceless. He’s in the best shape of his career right now! He may not be the greatest professional wrestler but he brings eyes on the product. Having a guy that was successful during the most successful period of wrestling ever is, like I said, priceless.

If we dial it back a second, what kind of wrestling fan were you growing up? Who influenced you?

I wanted to get my hands on as much wrestling as I could growing up. I used to watch WCW and NWA before the Monday Night Wars because that’s what you could get where I was from. After that, I became a bit of tape trader to watch as much wrestling as I could and as I got older, I loved Mick Foley and Terry Funk. In my opinion, Terry Funk is the greatest professional wrestler to ever live, because he was the most versatile of all-time.

He could go out and be a bad-ass, he could go out and do comedy, he could go out and do deathmatches and that’s what I really tried to mould myself after, a guy like him or Mick Foley. They weren’t just deathmatch wrestlers. They could do deathmatches, but at the same point, they always told compelling stories that would succeed in any storyline you put them in and I wanted to be that guy.

WWE Mick Foley and Terry Funk in WWE

Have you met them both?

I’ve met them both and Mick Foley has been a great mentor towards me. Anytime I’ve got to chat with him he’s been more than helpful. Last year, the reason I do the pulling piledriver as my finisher is because Foley gave me that move. That’s something he handed down to me. That’s one of the greatest things that’s happened to me in professional wrestling and that’s why I still call it the Cactus Driver ’97.

Every time I met Terry Funk, he was one of the most approachable wrestlers of all-time. Being an absolute legend, he could have been a d*ckhead. Being as old as he is, he could have been a d*ckhead, but he was always more than helpful. I remember the first time I met him was before I went to WWE and he gave me advice when he really didn’t have to do that. He didn’t know me from a grain of rice. He truly is everything that I aspire to be in professional wrestling. Two of my biggest dads in professional wrestling as Tommy Dreamer and Billy Gunn, too. Still to this day, if I need to talk about anything in wrestling, I go to them.

So, finally, talk to us about Hard to Kill. What can people expect from this historic event?

I’m pretty sure we’re going to win Match of the Year for IMPACT Wrestling in 2019, so getting a chance to do that again on a pay-per-view scale at this magnitude, something like this is only going to come around once in a lifetime. This truly is a once in a lifetime matchup. Male versus female in the main event of a pay-per-view going for a world championship for the first time. You can’t ask for more. You want different? IMPACT is giving you different.

And that card is stacked when you really think about it. Me versus Tesse for the title, Moose versus Rhino in a clash of generations, you have Ken Shamrock versus my righthand man Madman Fulton (Sawyer Fulton of SAniTy in NXT) and people may have saw what he did in NXT, but I don’t think they really understand what that man is capable of and I truly believe in the next five to ten years he’ll be one of the most talked about wrestlers on the planet.