'Big Sexy' Kevin Nash and 'Samoan Submission Machine' Samoa Joe slam into NYC

By Scott A. Rosenberg, amNewYork Associate Editor | scott.rosenberg@am-ny.com

September 5, 2008

Professional wrestler Kevin Nash, aka ÂBig SexyÂ. (Handout photo / September 4, 2008)

It's Tuesday afternoon and the nearly 7-foot tall professional wrestler Kevin Nash is sitting in a hotel suite in Times Square flipping through the channels on the television. He can't find the weather channel.

Nash lives in Florida and he's checking to see if there is a hurricane coming toward his home.

"I told my wife if it's a [category] 4 and it's a 120 miles out, we leave. Period," he says. The grizzled grappler with long, salt-and-pepper hair and matching goatee, starts to recount Hurricane Andrew with specifics that would make a weatherman smile.

"Cause Andrew came across, it was a 49 mph tropical that went to 60 mph when it hit the Bahamas, and that 92 mile run in a day it picked up 99 mph. it was a cat 5 and it buzz sawed. At that point, now you're on [I-95] in a gridlock and everybody dies. I'll take the plane."

Nash, nicknamed "Big Sexy," is a veteran of the biggest wrestling federations around, from the WWE to WCW, and is currently a superstar in the upstart Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, which will be coming to Manhattan on Saturday.

Sitting in the hotel with Nash is the "Samoan Submission Machine" Samoa Joe who, despite his title, is really an affable, down-to-earth kind of guy. His TNA World title belt is nowhere to be seen.

There is a world of difference between Nash and Joe. Nash, 49, has been wrestling for years, grappling against all of the greats, from Bret Hart to Shawn Michaels to Hulk Hogan to TNA star AJ Styles. He's wrestled using a variety of gimmicks, some successful, like the bad-boy bodyguard Diesel, some not so good, like Oz, a hilarious homage to "The Wizard of Oz."

These days the gimmicks are behind him and he wrestles under his own name, though he jokes that even "Kevin Nash" is a character.

"I mean, my hair is actually auburn, and I'm 31 and play 49, so I mean it's not a stretch," he says, deadpan with his deep, gravely voice. "I actually heard that I'm in considerations for a day-time Emmy."

Joe, 29, is a broad man with meaty hands that engulf any handshake. If you see him on television, you'd seem him skulking around the ring or doing an interview where, he admits, he yells a lot. Here in the hotel room, he's pretty low key. Well, as low key as a large Samoan man can be.

Unlike Nash, who came to TNA from the WWE, Joe was in the independent leagues.

"[TNA] gave me a bigger opportunity to do my thing as opposed to doing something that was preset for me," Joe says. "It gave me a lot of leeway and freedom."

At Saturday night's event, Joe will enter the six-sided ring for a "Fatal Four-Way TNA World Heavyweight Championship Match" against former Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle, Booker T and "The Instant Classic" Christian Cage.

Besides the upcoming match, the televised matches, "TNA Impact," Thursdays at 9 p.m. on Spike, and the Pay-Per-View matches, TNA has a new video game, "TNA Impact," coming out from Midway Games, which will afford fans the opportunity to take control of their favorite TNA wrestlers, some making their first digital appearances in the United States, Joe included.

"When we first went [to Midway], we went in with a laundry list of things that wanted to see, how we wanted it to feel, how we wanted it to play," Joe says. "I got to play a version of the game and it came out great. I think wrestling fans, and video game fans will love it."

Nash, who also plays a major role in the story mode part of the game, went out to California to do voice over work for the game, and got a first-hand look at how the game was created, including some of the real minutia of game design.

"They have five guys basically working on the perspiration patterns on the guys, when they got hit, how the perspiration would actually [go]," he says. "The degree of detail is that specific."

Talking to professional wrestlers about a professional wrestling video game invites the question do you play as yourself? And the answer is yes. At least initially.

Joe, a big video game fan, started off playing as himself exclusively, but then switched to other character after getting beaten as himself.

Nash simply delivered another deadpan quip.