We already know that Southpaw Regional Wrestling is the best thing WWE has done in years. (But that’s only assuming it isn’t the greatest thing the company has ever done, which it very well may be.) We’ve bought the shirts, we’ve pined for more episodes, we’ve written fantasy booking for entire Southpaw pay-per-views, and we’ve fallen hopelessly in love with Lance Catamaran, Chett Chetterfield, Big Bartholomew, and the rest.
The biggest blood feud at the center of Southpaw, of course, is the legendary rivalry between Tex Ferguson and Chad 2 Badd, played by Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, respectively. Many fans assumed Southpaw was the natural extension of Gallows’ “Grizzled Young Vet” character, Sex Ferguson, which has been around for years. But it appears that’s not the case!
It also appears as though these Southpaw shoots were just as freewheeling, hilarious, and insane as the final, glorious product. On episode 130 of Sam Roberts’ Wrestling Podcast, Gallows and Anderson went in-depth on the whole Southpaw experience, and they revealed that their parts were completely off the dome, including those great Freddie Blassie and Bad News Allen name-drops. (Transcript via Wrestling Inc.)
“I would like to think that they saw my Sex Ferguson stuff on YouTube and that’s where it came from, but I don’t know.” Gallows continued, “they came up to us like a month or two into being here and started talking about this and I was like, ‘hold up – this is right up my alley. We have to do this!’ And then, it took a long time to actually do it.”
Gallows remembered, “We got there and they were like, ‘Hey, we kind of want you guys to do this’ and I was like, we’re very agreeable, very easy-to-work-with brothers, but we were like, ‘Nope, we have to do it our own way. We have to do it off the top of our heads. It’ll make it so much cooler.'”
Anderson reflected, “I think we knew Southpaw was going to be good because there [were] no scripts, man. I think we’re better off the fly anyway.”
Another bit of information: that warehouse they filmed their scenes in was freezing cold, and Chad 2 Badd was “shoot miserable the entire time.” Method acting!
This is all great, of course, and the more we have WWE Superstars talking about Southpaw, the greater the likelihood that we’ll someday receive more Southpaw, which is honestly the only pro wrestling I ever want to watch anymore, period.
