It shouldn't be a shock to learn that a guy who once went by the name Mr. Ass is this comfortable being the centre of attention.
"If I'm in the ring and I see someone sitting there with their arms crossed or with a sour look on their face, I'll leave that ring and sit down right beside them until I get something out of them," pro wrestler Billy Gunn said in a phone interview Thursday.
"Seriously, I do it all the time. Brian hates it," he continued with a laugh.
Brian is Brian James, better known as the Road Dogg from his time with what was then known as the World Wrestling Federation.
Together, as the New Age Outlaws, James and Gunn (real name Monty Sopp) won five WWF tag team titles from 1997-1999 while delivering some of the most memorable Monday night moments in pro wrestling history.
If history is any indicator, they'll probably create at least one more this Monday in Estevan when they reunite to headline the Canadian Wrestling's Elite card at the Wylie Mitchell Hall.
Bell time is 7:30 p.m.
"I appreciate these smaller towns and going to them a lot more than when I first started," said Gunn. "It's more intimate. There's not so many people and you get to have the crowd in it more, and be more personable with everybody.
"When they pay $20 or $30 or $40 for a ticket they don't want to sit and just watch guys wrestling. They want to be entertained. They want to be involved in what's going on."
Call it one of the perks of wrestling for a few hundred fans instead of 20,000.
"At the bigger shows you might engage one or two people like that, but how are you supposed to do that with the entire audience?" Gunn said, without even a hint of irony.
Gunn sounds sincere when he says he is as happy now as when he was ruling Monday Night Raw with James.
He spent over 11 years with the WWF (now World Wrestling Entertainment) and another four-plus with Total Nonstop Action. Gunn and James both took to the independent circuit after their releases from TNA in 2009, sometimes competing separately and other times appearing together.
What Gunn is doing now, for the first time in years, is performing on his own terms, not someone else's. He says he continues to wrestle because he wants to, not because he needs to.
In other words, a reprisal of Mickey Rourke's character from The Wrestler this ain't.
"I don't really think I have a desire to go back there [to the national promotions]," Gunn said. "I've been there and done that. I was there for 14 years and I'm perfectly happy with what I'm doing now. I'm as busy as I want to be and now I can give back to the people who helped get me to where I was."
Gunn also claimed Thursday to wrestle because "I still can," though he had second thoughts about that statement later on.
What the Outlaws are best known for doing, and doing well, is running their mouths.
""We're not typical wrestlers because neither of us knows how to wrestle," Gunn said with a laugh. "We know how to entertain, and maybe throw a couple things in there to make it look like we know how to wrestle.
"It'll just be a great night to come out and relieve some stress, and forget about everything that's going on for a couple of hours."
