Show: Wrestling Epicenter
Guest: David Sahadi
Date: 03/23/2026
Yor Host: James Walsh

David Sahadi is a successful TV producer who was responsible for some of the most iconic vignettes, promos, and commercials in WWE and TNA Wrestling history. Now working for Real American Freestyle, Sahadi decided to sit down with James Walsh for round two after having joined us the first time a few months back. While Sahadi, complimented host James Walsh on his interview style by saying, "I like talking to you. You make it easy!" the act of talking to James wasn't entirely selfless... There is a book to promote, after all!

David Shadi's latest book is called Backstage Pass. It is an interesting look at life behind the camera in the fast paced world of professional sports, especially professional wrestling. Complete with stories about all the top stars in pro wrestling history including Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Steve Austin, and beyond, this read is a must have for all true smart marks who want to know a little bit more about the pro wrestling game beyond what we see on our TV screens. Interviewer James Walsh has called it the "best inside baseball, um, er, inside wrestling book I've read in years." That seems to be the shared opinion of most reviewers as well!

The book is available on Amazon and at your favorite book retailer. And, don't forget to check out Real American Freestyle Wrestling on FOX Nation!

For more great interviews like this, visit www.WrestlingEpicenter.com! The full interview, including the original Sahadi interview and over 900 other interviews are available on our site right now free of charge. Read, listen, watch all your favorites from our catalog. And, check out our store! Buy something so we can keep producing new exclusive content just like this!

NOTE: While some of the highlights are transcribed below, there is a wealth of other content in this interview that you can hear on the entire interview. So, if you love what you read, you'll want to hear it all and so much more!

DAVID SAHADI:

On one of his favorite vignettes:
David Sahadi: "Here's one for you. And, this is not in the book! But, it was some of my best work... Some of my most creative work. Adam Copeland... Edge! When Edge was going to debut, they wanted me to do his vignette. What they wanted was him, with candle lights, reading poetry kind of in a Jim Morrison style. We did it in my apartment in New York City... I didn't feel it at all. Like, not at all, James. He didn't have the kind of voice to where he seemed like a wordsmith. He didn't come off like a Jim Morrison type character, he was almost too good looking. We had the candle light, and I just didn't feel it. So, I was like, the old expression, lets make chicken salad out of chicken shit kind of thing. So, I was like, "Lets go and film you outside." It was cold out. So, I gave him my long leather trenchcoat. He was taller than me, though. So, if you see it, it kind of jsut goes down to his knees. (laughs) Anyway, we filmed him, mostly from behind, coming out of the subway and presented it like he was this mysterious guy. And, I was cutting this together and trying to use his poetry voice lines and I said, "F that" and got this female voice artist and I forget the exact line, it was like, "Do you really know me" or something like that. So, you didn't hear him speak, you had that extra level of mystery. If you had heard him speak, him reading poetry, I don't think his character would have ever really taken off. It might have been dead on arrival! But, that was one of the best work of my career, of my early career especially. I was using the V roll, had a female voice over and the voice over didn't say very much... I kept it up to interperetation to keep the mystique. I don't see that very much anymore as well. It is almost like it is the same "cut and paste" formula for the past 15 years."
James Walsh (interviewer): "You think you know me!"
David Sahadi: "Yes! That's it! Man, just as you said it, I saw the video package with the blue and red lights... Mostly blue! Yes!"

On the Steve Austin promo he shot that brought the shattering glass to Austin's persona:
"It was during a World Series game in 1996 and I remember I was mad because I'm a Yankees fan. We lost that game so it didn't matter. But, Austin came in and myself and Chris shot him doing a promo and it was horrible. I mean, it was horrible, James. After about 15 minutes, we said, "Steve, could you give us a few minutes?" Chris said to me, "We should have written something for him." I was like, "I know!" So, we started writing stuff for him right there on the spot. So we wrote down, "Bret Hart, pink tights and sparklers." And, we said, "Stone Cold, say his name 3 times." "Bret Hart! BRET HART! BRET Hart! Pink tights and sparklers! Pink tights and sparklers! Pink tights and sparklers. What a load of shit!" We recorded him 3 times, 3 takes of each line, and we overlapped them. We didn't want to do a bunch of different shots but it became a bunch of different shots because we shot the lines 3 times and overlapped and we mixed it in with some footage of some Doverman Pinchers (dogs) that we stole froma video game... It was over 20 years ago so I don't think we can get sued for it now. But, if we do, I don't care. They have very good lawyers, they make a lot of money, and they cut up my dad's legends check. So, forget about them. (laughs) Anyway, it aired and Steve Austin was like, "Oh my God, this is great! I don't remember the dogs even being there!" We were like, "There weren't any dogs there. We got that from a video game." And, if you didn't finish a case of Cores Light during the shoot you might remember the dogs. (laughs) I didn't say that... I was thinking it, though! Anyway, those one liners mixed with Jim Johnston's music and adding the glass breaking which became part of his theme song, I think that promo made Steve Austin a better performer behind the microphone. I really do."

On what made some of his commercials different:
"Emotion is the word that Vince always used about the matches but I tried to get emotion into everything I did. One of the commercials I did that I like was the one where Brock Lesnar F5's the shark, it was a Summerslam commercial. A lot of the commercials now run down the card but they don't really appeal to the casual fan. But, something like the Brock commercial could appeal to the casual fan who might not know much about the show but be intrigued by the spot."

On if he ever felt TNA could have been competition to WWE:
"I knew we could be a very viable alternative to them especially in 2009 because we were doing 1.5, 2 million viewers every week with guys like AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Kurt Angle, and others every week. I think that was, number wise, when we had the best chance to be a viable number two. In 2010 when we tried to restart the Monday Night Wars and put Impact on Monday against RAW, I knew it wouldn't work. The reason I knew it wouldn't work is because if you put the shows side by side, the WWE was still in major NBA basketball arenas and we were in front of 500, 600 people on a sound stage. Even though we had stars, and Hulk Hogan had come in and that carried a lot of weight to it, if you put the shows side by side you could tell that one company had a much larger crowd than the other."

On what was TNA's best run:
"I think creatively, 2012 was our best time period. That doesn't mean we were doing the best numbers. That doesn't mean we had the biggest crowds or that we were drawing the most money. But, the whole show in 2012, being live every week, I think that was our best time in TNA."

On the way TNA Impact on AMC looked in its debut:
"I still have a lot of friends that work at TNA but I was very disappointed. It looked bad. And, it was not set up right. The show is called Total Nonstop Action and they started with a video, then they had AJ Styles come out and introduce the show which was nice but they kind of let peple know that AJ was going to be there so it wasn't as big of a surprise... Then, they did another video. There wasn't enough action for the new audience they could have reached. And, it looked small. I really believe they used a 14 foot ring. I was told it was a 16 foot ring but to me, it looked like it was probably really only a 14 foot ring. It is a shame. As I said, I have a lot of friends that still work there and I spent a lot of years there but the way the debut show looked? I didn't like it."