Mark Briscoe Recalls His AEW Debut Following Jay’s Passing, Diamante On Her Humble Beginnings

In a recent appearance on the “Talk is Jericho” podcast, Mark Briscoe reflected on his AEW debut on the January 25th episode of Dynamite, a few days after the passing of his brother Jay.

It was the first time a Briscoe was allowed on AEW TV, as both Jay and Mark were banned previously due to an edict from Warner Bros. Discovery. Mark said,

“It was cool. Jay passed on January 17. January 18 was my birthday. One week later, January 25, was Jay’s birthday. To me, that’s one of those things where, Jay had such guilt that we never made it to TV. He thought it was his fault. It’s so weird that, the first night, it was his birthday. It was like his gift to me. His gift to us. He wanted us to know how strong he was in his faith and his perspective, and his thoughts on God and eternity. I know that he was not afraid to die. He didn’t want to leave any of us, especially his kids and family, he would never want to leave them without him, but I know that he did not fear death. I, even more so than my mom or a lot of other people that were so close to him, me and him spent more time riding the road and had that connection where we had that same mindset, the same brain. Here we are, on his birthday, a week after he passed, [Speaking as Jay], ‘Here you go. Go head, baby. Do we what we do.’ I told everybody, ‘If I went and balled up in a corner and cried and was sad and couldn’t function, Jaymin would do whatever he could do in his afterlife to hawk my ass in the ring.’ [Speaking as Jay,] ‘What the hell are you doing? Come on, dawg.’ For that to happen and the timing that it happened, ‘Well, this is the next step. I’m carrying on. I’m carrying on for me and him. Let’s role with it.’ Until there is an obvious sign of obvious indication that this isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing, let’s keep rocking and rolling.”

On a recent episode of the AEW Unrestricted podcast, Diamante spoke about keeping the secret that KC Navarro is her brother and recalled how she began her wrestling career.

You can check out some highlights from the interview below:

On keeping KC Navarro as her brother a secret: “Yeah, that’s my little brother. He didn’t want it out there because he’s like look ‘I don’t really want to be in your shadow. We can start telling people once I get bigger so I’m not ‘riding your coattails’’ Kid is a workhorse. He inspires me. His passion for this business. The lid doesn’t stop. He’s talking on his phone all day. He’s talking to a mirror all day. He’s cutting promos on Instagram live. He’s talking to his fans. He doesn’t stop. He eats, lives, and breathes professional wrestling, and having him around, we talk everyday. We FaceTime every day. He makes sure that I’m in the gym. I make sure he’s not skipping leg day and he’s eating like, you know because guys like to workout the upper body, but they forget about the foundation. I make sure he’s not skipping leg day. I make sure he’s eating his meals and not just chicken nuggets so he gets big, but yeah, he’s the best little brother that I could have ever asked for.”

On how she got started in wrestling: “Like we all are, right? Always a huge fan. So, I lived with my grandma. So, my mom and my daddy got divorced, sad story. Then I went to go live with my grandmother for two or three years, and my grandmother at the time was raising my cousin, who was going through — he had bone marrow cancer and one of his legs got amputated. He was in and out of the hospital. She cared for him a lot, so he was like my hero growing up because he had 30% chance of living and he made it through. He beat chemo. He beat cancer and made a full recovery, and literally, he had one leg, but he was the fastest kid that I know. He didn’t let anything slow him down. He kicked ass and he kind of always had his way. It was me, my sister, my cousin, and my mom in a one-bedroom on bunk beds. So, yeah we were crammed in there. It was just one TV, so he decided what was on the TV and he would always put wrestling on. One day I was just like… I can’t even remember what I saw, but I just remember being captivated and being so angry at the heels, at the bad guys in wrestling. I’m like, ‘Oh they’re so evil. I want them to get their ass kicked.’ I was just captivated by the sport and the drama, and the storylines. Fast forward a couple of years, I was still watching wrestling in high school and I was like ‘Man, I gotta be the only one who still watches wrestling. Like, who else watches wrestling still, right?’

One day I’m in high school — having lunch just in the courtyard, and I remember hearing a group of people talking about the Monday Night RAW that just happened. I kind of just invited myself in the conversation, and those close group of people became my friends, and it turns out that they had this own little backyard fed called ETW, Extreme Teen Wrestling, and I was like, ‘You guys have what?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah, we have our own little backyard fed.’ Mind you, I had no idea what the concept of their backyard fed was. So, I was like I gotta check this out. My mom was pretty strict about making sure after school everyday i went home on the bus. I can’t miss the bus because she paid for the bus, right? So, my friends were inviting me for weeks and for months and I’m like yeah I’ll go one day. One day, after school, one of my best guy friends is standing there and he’s like ‘You’ve been telling me for weeks, and you still haven’t come.’ I go, you know what, I’ll go today. Pick up the phone call my mom say “Hey mom, I’m not gonna get on the bus today, but I’m just letting you know, okay? I’m gonna go to my friends house because they have a backyard wrestling thing. It’s totally fine. No worries, I’ll be home later.’ All I can hear is ‘You better get on that bus.’ I got to my friends house, and some of them were part of the production class where you film the morning news and stuff like that. So, they had camera equipment. Yeah, so they borrowed camera equipment from school, and they were cutting promos. There was production at this backyard fed. I just joined them I think I ran at somebody gave them a crossbody and I was like wow and something tingled inside of me. I was like, ‘Oh man, this is something I definitely what I gotta do. I know what I want now in life.”

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