During a recent appearance on “The Smoke Show” podcast, Taz shared his thoughts on HOOK’s journey as a wrestler and his assessment of his son’s development thus far.

HOOK has been part of AEW since 2020 and has held the FTW championship thrice.

Taz said, “It shocked me, bro. This was maybe three and a half years ago. It shocked me because he was an amazing lacrosse player in high school and college. We thought, like a lot of lacrosse guys, they go into the business world, they go into Wall Street, and he was a business major and all that. This was during the pandemic, so there was that lull where nothing was happening. So he didn’t want to sit in a cubicle in Manhattan. He’s more creative and athletic, and when he said it to me, it shocked me. The wife too. We were really surprised. We said, well, you grew up in the business, you understand the industry. He’s our only son. When he was little…in my house, I have a mat, and he was always, he played Judo and wrestled everything, so he understood the physicality part. But it shocked me that he wanted to be in the business. I’m like, well, if you’re gonna do it, you gotta go full throttle, and you gotta get trained properly. I’m so banged up, I couldn’t train him, so we sent him to Atlanta and he trained with Cody Rhodes and QT Marshall at the Nightmare Factory. He kind of got homegrown trained within the AEW system. But yeah, it shocked me when he wanted to be in the business. But I’m proud of him, he’s kicking a*s.”

During a recent interview with Renee Paquette, The Hurt Syndicate’s MVP provided his perspective on former AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland, stating that Swerve “still has some maturing to do.” 

You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:

On Swerve Strickland: “I like Swerve Strickland. I’ve wrestled Swerve Strickland. I’ve watched him grow and evolve since he was a skinny kid doing flips for no reason. Through the years I’ve watched him grow and evolve. I’ve watched him mature, and when we first decided that we were going to put our unit together, he was that fourth person that I wanted.”

On Swerve’s problem: “Swerve has a problem though, and that he still has some maturing to do, and he still doesn’t understand the business, and I think that’s the problem with a lot of the younger talent. They’re caught up in ‘this is my art, this is my passion.’ It’s a business, it’s about money, at the end of the day. There’s no feelings and emotions, it’s about money.”