Frankie Kazarian on Ultimate X Being Pitched: They Didn’t Have It Set Up Until 10 Minutes Before Doors Opened

Yesterday, TNA World Champion Frankie Kazarian was the latest guest on Insight with Chris Van Vliet. They spoke about a lot of topics and one of those topics was Ultimate X.

Below is what Kazarian had to say about Ultimate X being pitched:

“They pulled us aside, us being myself, Chris Sabin and Michael Shane, and said, ‘We have this idea for a match, like a ladder match without ladders.’ So the original concept was chains going in the form of an X, and the belt is going to hang in the center, and it’s just like this new, innovative match. We’re like, okay. So they’re like, we’re going to fly you in a day early so you can see the structure and kind of get used to it, because they had never been done. So we all got flown into Nashville, and we go down The Asylum, the National Fairgrounds, and they’re still figuring out how to even build it. The original concept they had steel poles inside the ring posts. And they nixed the chain idea, and it was just cable. They finally got it to where, structurally, it looked good. It’s getting late at night now, and they’re like, ‘Alright, who wants to try it?’ I go, ‘I do, I’ll try it.’ I just jump up, grab and start shimmying. I start shimmying, and all four of the posts just go, then all of a sudden, I’m standing on the ground. So now you got a bunch of these engineers, construction guys, scratching their head like crap, and the pay-per-view is the next day. So, you know, uh oh. So they try to do something else. It doesn’t work. Now it’s like, midnight, one o’clock. So it’s like guys, we’ll figure it out. So we get there the next day. Still don’t really have it figured out. Eventually they did the lighting trusses, the four lighting trusses on the corners and that could support the weight and the cable and all that. But they didn’t have it set up until 10 minutes before doors opened. So we had all these ideas, but had no clue if we could pull them off. We did not get to practice, rehearse, nothing, all that stuff that happened was just in our head.”

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