Beyond the Ring: Inside the Twisted Universe of Deathmatch Legend Mad Man Pondo!

A Severed Cinema Interview with Mad Man Pondo by Jay Creepy

Long time readers of Severed Cinema will more than likely be aware that I am a Deathmatch Wrestling enthusiast. I have been addicted to the gorier more brutal side of wrestling since seeing blood-caked wrestlers like Bruiser Brody and Abdullah the Butcher in the ring on TV when I was a child. It wasn’t known as Deathmatch Wrestling back then, more a hardcore style. Deathmatches have grown over the decades — new promotions spring up everywhere in many countries. Workers can travel place to place, risk their bodies among glass, barbed wire, all kinds of sharp things, and bleed. There is a close brother ‘n’ sisterhood in the circles of Deathmatch combat warriors, a warmth shared with the audiences that spiritually goes back to the good ol’ days of rasslin’ territories.

Mad Man Pondo is a living icon and legend. He’s been around a very long time and has done so much. Interviewing him has been a long-term project I planned some time ago, and finally it has happened. Of course, the question is, why pick Pondo? Well, this is Severed Cinema and Mad Man Pondo is a pure horror fanatic. He has also appeared in a few films, most notably he was seen a lot in 2001 Maniacs (more info on that to follow).

The following interview, recorded via Facebook messenger audio, covers a lot of horror and rasslin’ stuff. It would help as a reader to know some things about the wrestling culture in general, but if you don’t, I’ve added a few notes here and there to guide, however if I’ve missed a few, just ask Dr Google.

Now then, you absolute maniac you, how are you today?

I’m doing good today. No complaints whatsoever.

I’ve read and reviewed your book a couple of years ago (read review of Memoirs of a Madman here), and I reckon this interview may just have a few more folks seek it out afterwards. For those who haven’t read anything about you, what’s your style in wrestling?

I do the hardcore Deathmatch style.

How long have you been wrestling now, over thirty years or so?

Thirty-four-years. It’ll be thirty-five on June 24^th (this year).

What was it like first time in front of a crowd?

My first time in front of a crowd some people get really, really nervous but I was not. I was so ready, so amped up. So, so ready to do this that I wasn’t nervous. I was ready to go. I wrestled the Avalanche who later became Melvin Penrod Junior, one half of the USWA champions, but he was The Avalanche then. Yeah, I was ready to go! (Creepy note: not to be confused with John Tenta aka Avalanche who later became Earthquake in the WWF of course).

When you first began you were just an ordinary wrestler, what made you change to and embrace the hardcore deathmatch style?

When I started out, you’re right, it was straight up professional wrestling, but I wanted more. I knew that staying in the same narrative, doing the same wrestling wasn’t going to help anybody get their name out there. My dream was never WWF or WCW, it was always Japan. And me and a bunch of friends would rent the In Your House Pay Per Views, but we wouldn’t really pay much attention to the pay per views but at the end of the night I’d always throw in — we’d call them “bloody tapes” at the time cause Deathmatch wasn’t even a word, I’d throw in a bloody Deathmatch VCR tape and all eyes were on the screen, It was like “Oh shit, this is it! This is what I should do here.”

Your other big love is horror, of course. What’s your earliest memories of horror?

In my hometown in Illinois, on Channel 11 they always had midnight chiller thriller. Y’ know they always played horror movies at night which at the time wasn’t what horror movies is today. It was the Frankensteins, Day of the Triffids, Squirm, y’ know stuff like that. I was always attracted to horror more than any other genre of movie.

When and why did it become a passion?

Horror was a passion from childhood — Frankenstein, Wolfman, Dracula, Bride of Frankenstein, Invisible Man, Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, I watched them all the time. Of course, Godzilla movies — I was huge into Godzilla movies, every time a Godzilla movie would come on, I’d always be in front of the TV. My personal favourite back then was Godzilla Vs. King Kong. But yeah, man, horror was where it was at from childhood. I can’t explain why.

I can’t either. I started as a kid, Dracula with Bela, Dawn of the Dead, Hammer stuff. It gets you, gets you really deep. Away from rasslin you’re known for your role in 2001 Maniacs, how did that come about?

The two guys that were filming the Juggalo Championship Wrestling (Creepy Note: JCW is a promotion owned and run by the Insane Clown Posse) noticed I was always wearing horror movie t-shirts, so they asked me if I wanted to be in a horror movie — without missing a beat I said, “Hell yeah I do!” And that’s how it came about. Then I waited one month, two months, almost a year and a half and they gave me a call and said to be in Georgia, it’s time to film that horror movie. That was 2001 Maniacs.

I read in your book that you were tipped off to try and be in as many scenes as possible.

So again, the two guys that got me into the movie, Roy Knyrim and Pat Tantalo, they told me, “No matter what.” I mean, they looked at my schedule, there were days I was supposed to be there, days I wasn’t, they said, “Hey man, get dressed every day and go down there on the set.” They were more worried about me making $48 a day. I was more worried about being in this horror movie as much as I could be. So, they said, “Get dressed every day, go down to the set and hang around. they’ll use ya!” Sure, enough it worked.

Then at the end of it, the director and editor were watching the dailies — that’s what they call what they watch every day, but they didn’t watch them until after. And they called the two guys that got me in the movie and said, “What’s up with your boy? He’s in this scene, and this scene…” So yeah, that’s how I made it into everything.

What’s Robert Englund like?

Robert Englund was an awesome human being. He would sit at the table with me and the other cast members. He would just tell stories or talk about upcoming movie events. He was just incredible. Even after the movie was filmed, and I’m talking last year, I was at a horror convention he told a whole bunch of people he wanted to talk to me. So, people kept telling me, “Hey, Robert Englund wants to talk to you!” So, I went over and his line was huge, like down two halls, all the way out of the building. I’m like, “I’m not waiting in that line!” I left and walked around the convention some more. Finally, Joe Hopkins and Gaitor McCallister come along, I said, “I’m not waiting in that line.” They’re like, “Nope, he said get to where he is, he’ll see ya, he’ll call ya over.”

I walked over there; he had more security than everyone. I’m like, “I know Robert, he wants to talk to me,” Security is like, “I know Robert too, he wants to talk to me, whatever! Go back” So Robert left his table and made security separate. He said, “I know who this is, this is Mad Man Pondo. If he wants to talk to me, he can talk to me!” So, what he wanted to tell me, he asked if I had a hook up in Hong Kong because the Hong Kong 2001 Maniacs poster has me more emphasised than Robert and Lin Shaye, they’re like a couple of shadows, then you see me in colour. I wish I could find one somewhere.

Hell yeah, I’ve seen pics of that, you look like the main character, man. Other films you’ve been in, to be honest, I haven’t seen Shadows in the Woods or The Zombie Movie. What’s the deal with those two? I know you play a zombie golfer in the latter.

Shadows in the Woods was a guy who brought me in for an autograph signing, and right there in the video store he was running, we shot a scene. Nothing big, just me and a brother arguing back and forth. I didn’t get killed. That was the only scene I was in.

The Zombie Movie had a lot of potential. From what I understand, all of the footage is ruined and gone somewhere, so you’ll probably never see The Zombie Movie, but I do have pictures from it if you want to see them (Creepy note: included in this interview).

I see so, there are many Horror Con pics with you and millions of legendary horror folks. Who’s been the most memorable three so far?

I just met Michael C. Hall of Dexter, that was awesome. I met Marilyn Manson through Billy Corgan, that has to be in my top three somewhere. I met Hulk Hogan at his bar, he said my name twice on the mic so that was awesome. Getting to meet Gunnar Hanson, Leatherface. Here’s a story: I was waiting in Kane Hodder’s line at a convention, it was really long. When I got there, he looks up at me, without missing a beat he says, “Pondo, right?” I was like, “Holy shit! How do you know me?” He pulled his sleeves up, he had Hatchetman sweatbands on his wrists (Creepy note: an Insane Clown Posse thing). He said, “I’m a Juggalo, man.”

You have a wonderful obsession with taking photos. You’ve captured so many people forever who have since passed away. Have you always been a keen pic grabber?

Always, always take the picture. I’ve preached to the younger generation of wrestlers who think it’s being a mark (Creepy note: a mark used to be seen as a derogatory term in rasslin’ circles, simply meaning someone who believes it’s all real — hell when I watch it, it’s real to me in that show cause it’s entertainment, I get absorbed by it all). I don’t care about that mark word, we’re all marks. If we weren’t we wouldn’t be in this business. Too many of our brothers and sisters are dying. I have a picture with Terry Funk and Roddy Piper. Could I do that today? No. I have a picture with Chyna. Could I do that today? No. So yeah, I’m a big picture taker, not just wrestlers but anyone halfway famous.

I agree, I’ve got so many of family and friends, who are gone. Movies wise, my treasured one is me and Sid Haig. Brilliant guy to talk to. Like the best of us, you’re truly a dye in the wool fan of wrestling and horror. I keep seeing you at tournaments and events with different horror t shirts on. Roughly how many do you have?

I have no idea how many horror t-shirts I have (laughs). I have trash bags full of t-shirts upstairs now that I’ve lost weight. Some of them I can wear, some I can’t, but I can’t throw them away in case I get bigger, or smaller. Yeah, probably I have over a hundred.

What’s your fav style of horror movie?

It’s gotta be the slasher movies, I love slasher films. My favourite horror is a movie called, Mother’s Day (see review of Mothers Day here) that Troma put out (Creepy note: there’s a wonderful remake as well) There’s another movie called, Girlhouse that has a serial killer called, Loverboy. Then of course you’ve got your Jasons, Michaels, Freddy, Leatherface. I go even further into that — I go Tallman, Candyman, all the Cenobites, the thing from Tobe Hooper’s, The Funhouse. I’m a big movie fan — all genres. But I think slashers are my favourites.

Okay you’ve been in the ring forever and have experienced a lot of shit in your time. Pain wise, there’s the infamous bed of pencil spot. What’s the full story behind that?

So, the pencil spot was at one of the CZW Tournament of Deaths, and I always want to be remembered anywhere I go. First, I looked at all the weapons, and there was a bed of pencils there, even I looked at it and said, “Holy shit, I aren’t doing that!” But I sat back and watched these wrestlers and they’d be picking things they wanted to do. The one thing everyone kept saying, “Oh shit, we’re not doing that!” was this bed of pencils. About that time, Brain Damage and Necrobutcher were going over their match, an’ Necro is the bravest Deathmatch guy I know, and I seen him look at it, then at Brain Damage and wave his hand in front of it and’ said, “We’re not fucking with that!” an’ I told myself, “Holy shit, that’s what I can do and I’ll be remembered.

Four things I remember out of that whole tournament, one: Necro was the winner; two: Nick Gage got caught on fire; three: a guy named Blood took a bump over the top rope, put his knee down into a shopping cart filled with light tubes and cut it so fucking deep; and four: I remember that pencil spot! I have stopped wrestlers from doing that spot because after I did it, the lead or graphite got down into my blood system and fucked me up for six agonising days. I’ve found out that other wrestlers were going to do it and I’ve caught them right away, I say, “Guys don’t do it, it’s not worth it.”

Have you ever had any other moments in your career when you’ve said to yourself, “Fuck this!”?

Some of the fire spots I didn’t want to do. Some of the fire spots I did not do, just because fire is so unpredictable. The other thing — fuck razor wire! I’m not doing no razor wire ropes, no razor wire boards, none of that shit. I know what razors do to my forehead so I’m not gonna have my whole body laying down in them damn things!

You’ve owned a few promotions in your time and worked at so many. What’s your thoughts on JCW, XPW, CZW, and the various IWAs?

JCW is nothing but fun. It’s always a party. I love going to JCW… XPW, yeah, I didn’t have a good time and I hate working anywhere that I don’t have a good time… CZW, I loved working at CZW. I was the Ironman champ, and there was gonna be this CZW show but I was going to be on tour with ICP (Insane Clown Posse) so I missed that, and it kind of fucked that build up. And Japan, with CZW. Zandig (Creepy Note: original owner of Combat Zone Wrestling) didn’t really want me to be part of the CZW guys, I was kind of thrown in there, so I got a bad rep outta that.

The two IWA Souths… Other than the sore thumb that ran it, it was always family, we always took care of each other, we always had a good time. IWA East Coast, I ran that from 2014 to… I can’t even remember. We always paid every one of our talents. We always had pizzas and soda. I always looked at which promotions didn’t treat me right and did the opposite.

What’s the story behind the other promotion you’ve run?

The other promotion, where no one was denied their money and had a good time — that was the number one rule, everyone has fun at Girlfight. I ran my own girl’s promotion, Girlfight Wrestling. And the reason I started it was to help Sarah Bridges, Crazy Mary Dobson — Sara Logan, Valhalla, whatever you want to call her. We were dating at the time, I wanted to make sure that she was on the right path, and networking with the right people. We always brought in good people for her to wrestle. And then… I dunno, it started to become a bit too much. Billy Starkz was our champion — she still has the belt. She got signed with AEW so it’s pretty much on a hiatus at the moment, and I really don’t have an interest in running another show right now, but who knows?

Hardcore has been around for a long time courtesy of the Funks, Abdullah the Butcher, early Sheepherders and such, but many say it was really Axl and Ian Rotten (Creepy note: Ian Rotten has a lot of enemies and plenty of bad blood. Best look him up on Dr. Google for everything associated with him) who truly brought the blood style to the USA. What’s your thoughts and memories of both Rottens?

Axl Rotten never treated me bad, never had a bad word to say about me. I dunno what he’s said about me in other places. He always treated me with respect, always told me I need to get away from Ian, which I finally did. Last time I met him, Shane Mercer had a benefit for his mom who was in hospital. Ian ran it. I was there working, and Axl pulled me away from everybody and said, “Why are you here?” I told him ’cause of Shane’s mom. He said, “So you’re not working here? Cause this place is only good for drug addicts and spot monkeys. I said no, asked him why he was there, he said, “Drugs!” (Creepy note: Axl overdosed in a McDonalds restroom back in 2016). Axl was such a good dude, he had his demons, but such a good laid-back guy.

Ian… So, you’ve watched all those IWA Mid South matches, no matter how Ian Rotten felt about me, he should have never ran me down in the ring ’cause I gave my body to his promotion. I was one of the reasons people started paying attention to that, ’cause I was just letting Ian kill me in the ring. It just came to the point that I just didn’t want to work there anymore. Then, the last thing he did was get in the ring and say some terrible shit about me.

Ian’s definitely become a sort of hated figure in the underground these days, but, at one point, he was one guy who really gave a lot of future stars their platforms.

Like I said before, IWA Mid South was always family, but the problem was the guy running it every once in a while, would do shady shit. Yes, he did give guys opportunities, but saying things like, “I made Chris Hero, I made CM Punk!” you don’t make somebody, you give someone an opportunity and then they take it for what it is. For years, and I mean years, wrestling fans, wrestlers and wrestling pod casts would ask me to talk bad about Ian Rotten, and I wouldn’t do it because there would be no Mad Man Pondo like there is today without Ian Rotten. Then basically, started talking bad about me, well, fuck it I’m balls deep ready to talk to anybody about this man… and basically karma caught up to him. You can’t be a piece of shit for half your life and not have somebody catch you. So, he’s pretty well dipping and living in what he created for himself.

I’ve seen a pic of you with one of my childhood heroes, Abdullah the Butcher. Did you watch a lot of his stuff when you were a young ‘un?

Abdullah was one of those guys, today if you say, “I wanna see Shlak hit a man in the face with a barbed wire bat,” all you gotta do is search that on the internet and you can find it. (Creepy note: Shlak is a big monster of a wrestler who’s been in a few of my wrestling reviews, plus my review of his latest band The Crippler — I’m Just Going to Let Myself In Album Review). Back then, back in my day, there was nothing like that. There was tape trading and magazines. Abdullah was fluent through magazines, on all of the pages, that’s how I got to know who he was and when Windy City Wrestling brought him in for three shows in a row, there was a couple of times wrestling in St Louis…. one show, there was Bruiser Brody Vs Abdullah the Butcher, and man, I was so excited. It was the main event. I guess all the matches ran too long ’cause Abdullah and Brody got in the ring, got out of the ring, fought to the back, I think I got like three pictures from that match.

And now, we were just at Wrestle-cade together. He sat with me for hours, more than he did the other wrestlers. I got nothing bad to say about the legend, Abdullah the Butcher. (Creepy note: Abdullah and Mad Man Pondo also wrestled and shed blood together a couple of times).

Recently you’ve been working a lot with the incredible Necrobutcher. Man, his comeback is the story of the decade to me. I remember his facebook post when he suddenly announced he was going to return to the deathmatches. You’ve both hit Japan a couple of times now. How’s it been for you both?

Necrobutcher is my partner in crime. We been all across America. We were the JCW tag champs. We went to Mexico and Japan of course. I couldn’t think of a better partner. He’s always out to help the younger generation succeed, giving them his little titbits of advice, of what he’s done, what he shouldn’t have done, what he’s glad he did. Like I said before, he’s the bravest Deathmatch guy I’ve ever seen, so it’s nice to be his partner.

What’s the story with Bridget the Midget?

So, I did this thing called, Mad Cal’s Weekend, or something. Mad Cal hosted a Kid Rock ‘n’ Buckcherry concert — there was some big-titted girls back there. That’s where I met Bridget the Midget. We hit it off right away. Of course, we ended up in a hotel that night and we just kept seeing each other. Hey, who am I not to have sex with Bridget the Midget. So, we engaged in sexual activity, and after she got out of jail for stabbing her boyfriend in the leg, we started talking again. She was gonna come here and visit me but, I don’t know, some things happened, we don’t talk anymore. She’s a wonderful person. I wish her luck with everything she does.

I saw you were at a Bodycount show not long ago.

There is this four-day music festival here in Louisville Kentucky called, Louder Than Life, and the stage where I was working (as security) was the two bands I wanted to see. They had Nine Inch Nails — I really wanted to see them. KISS I watched from my stage. So, my stage had Bodycount and Tenacious D. One of the rules was, you cannot turn around and watch the concerts, you gotta be watching the crowds, making sure no one’s crowd surfing, and everyone stays safe. But for Bodycount and Tenacious D, I was like, “Fuck that job!” I would always turn around, I would hand my phone off to someone in front row that way I could take pictures behind me, and that’s how the pic of me and Ice-T whilst he was doing Bodycount was taken. There’s one of me and Tenacious D doing the same thing.

What’s your music of choice?

Y’know my music tastes are kind of sporadic. I really don’t care about music all that much, whatever someone is playing whilst going down the road I’ll listen to. I guess I’m more of a classic rock guy, I’ll stop on a classic rock station. But I’m really fond of Hank III — Hank William Junior’s son — and I paid tickets to go see him seven times in a row. I’d say Hank III is my favourite outta all of them.

It’s been an absolute pleasure and treasure interviewing you, brother, one last question though, who’s Kevin away from wrestling? What do you do in your spare time?

Kevin sits in his apartment a lot. It really sucks. I’m single. I really got no one to spend time with like that (Creepy update: soon after this interview, our man, Pondo met and went Facebook official with a lady — he won’t be in his apartment as much now, hmm?). I got friends here; we go to a lot of movies. We go to WWE and AEW events. I get free tickets for both through Billy Starkz and Daisy. Thank you to both of them. I love amusement parks. I love demolition derbies. Yeah man, I go to a lot of horror movie conventions. People take pictures of me with them at horror conventions. Owners started noticing that, so I get free tickets to conventions now. So yeah, nothing special, just kind of a jack-off in life but I have a good time.

I just want to thank you for your time, man, I appreciate everyone who hasn’t forgotten about me, who still thinks I’m relevant in this business. I’m hoping over there there’s promoters that will read see this interview, or see that other people pay attention to me and maybe I can get back over there, and we can see each other in person and we can do another one of these. But, yeah, thankyou for your time.

Here’s the book all about Man Man Pondo, reviewed by yours truly: