A conversation with Jennifer McGee

Zack Heydorn talks with Jennifer McGee, author of the new book "Fight Forever: The Ballad of Kevin and Sami" from Hybrid Shoot.

Jennifer McGee is the author of Fight Forever: The Ballad of Kevin and Sami from Hybrid Shoot and she graciously took time to chat about the book, pro wrestling, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, and much more. You can check out an excerpt from the interview below and the full interview on YouTube.

Zack Heydorn: I know you haven't held the book yet because you're in Japan, but how does it feel to have this out in the in the wild?

Jennifer McGee: I've been researching it kind of casually for about a decade now, and it's only a couple of years ago that Jonathan Snowden got in touch with me and said, would you be willing to make that into a book? So, it's been a long, long, long process, but then it kind of went fairly quickly at the end, because I had done so much research beforehand, without even really meaning to — just because I wanted to know more.

ZH: What was the precipice of you starting to research this particular rivalry (between Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens? Was it one thing that you? What made you start pulling at the thread?

JM: Well, you know, most people assume that I have been along for the whole ride, starting from their days in Quebec as Kevin Steen and El Generico, but I have not. I actually had been a casual kind of wrestling fan for a while, and then I picked up the WWE Network in about 2014.

And because NXT was on the network, I started watching NXT and fell in love with Sami. He was in the middle of his road to redemption story on his way to winning the title. And at the time, I didn't even know who El Generico was. I saw people talking about him here and there and I was like, yeah, that's fine. Wonder who that is. No idea. I think by the time Kevin showed up, I knew who El Generico was, but I didn’t for a long time, and it was when Kevin debuted and came out and celebrated with Sammy, and then immediately — six minutes and 42 seconds later, attacked him, threw him down, and challenged him for the title. And I could immediately tell that there was years and years and years of history behind them. And I said, that's it. That's my thing. I'm going to watch every match and every promo these two guys were ever in. And at the time, I was like, it's going to be a big challenge, but it can't be more than 10 or 15 matches, right? You know, maybe I can hunt down all 10 matches they were in before this one. And then I went and looked on Cagematch and went, oh, oh, no, no. This is, this is a much bigger project than I thought it was, but it wasn’t too late. I had sworn an oath and I had to follow through on it.

ZH: How did you hook up with Hybrid Shoot and Jonathan Snowden?

JM: Well, it came about mostly because of Jonathan Snowden’s wife, Christina, who follows me on Twitter and apparently suggested to Jonathan that he get in touch with me and pitch a book and say you've written a bunch of stuff already (on the topic) — why don't you kind of make it into more of an official book. And at the time, I have to confess, I was like, oh, that's a great idea. Maybe I'll do that sometime. And I did not follow up on it very quickly, because I just couldn't really wrap my head around the idea of actually writing a book. And so some time went by and it was when Kevin and Sami started The Bloodline story — when Sami started getting involved in The Bloodline and Kevin was saying, they're not your friends. You shouldn't be in The Bloodline. I looked at that and I said, oh, that's leading to them winning the tag titles together, almost certainly. And then I was like, I have to actually start writing this book. And by then I was way behind, so I didn't finish it until well after they won the tag team titles. But, that was what finally got me to realize, no, you need to actually write this. It isn't going to write itself. You have to start actually focusing on writing it. I just couldn't get my head around the idea of writing a book. It seemed bizarre to me.

ZH: How did that process go for you once you started writing? Did you just organize up and figure out, okay, this is the path I want to take?

JM: I'm a very, very linear writer. I tend to start at the beginning and go to the end. And so in some ways, that makes it very simple. In other ways, part of the reason I got jammed up was that I would be like, oh, now I have to go research this. I didn't really have the ability to skip to another part, so I struggled with that a little bit. I tend to be very linear in how I approach it and so now and then I would get stalled out and do too much research.

ZH: What was the most surprising thing to you about writing the book?

JM: It was very surprising to discover that I could do it. I've written a lot. Sure, I wrote a PhD thesis. And yet, a book seemed somehow different. You know, it was just kind of shocking to discover that you could bring it together. I ended up reading a lot of books about biography and just how to approach writing something like this, because, as you know, writing wrestling biographies is really weird and different. Yeah, in part, just because so many characters cross paths and then disappear and sometimes come back and sometimes don't. When I was reading your book, actually, I appreciated you would stop and say, here are the major characters in this chapter. Basically, here are the rivals we're going to be talking about. And I thought that's a really good way to do it, because Seth Rollins comes and goes through decades, you know, and I'd have to keep stopping and going, this is Tyler Black. You've seen him before, like a year ago. You're going to see him again in the future. And that was a real challenge. That was a a very different way of writing, because characters just kept coming and going. And I'd have to stop and say, okay, this is Seth Rollins. He's now a heel. Last time you saw him he was a babyface. But now, for reasons complex and that I can't go into here, he's now a heel, sort of things. You know, this character wandered off and did all sorts of stuff, and now he's back.

ZH: What is it about the two of them (Sami and Kevin) and their rivalry that didn't even necessarily spark your interest to write the book, but what connected you to them. Let's start with Sami, because that's the catalyst for all this. What attracted you to him as a as a wrestler and as somebody to to follow where you looked at it and went, whoa, I'm in on this guy.

JM: A big part of the reason he was so appealing to me in NXT is that a lot of when you go back and watch NXT from like, 2014 now it's like, you can see a lot of characters who are just kind of getting the hang of things. Like it's amazing to watch 2014 Sasha Banks, because it feels kind of like a woman doing an okay cosplay of Sasha Banks. She doesn't quite know who Sasha Banks is yet. She's getting there, but Sami is fascinating because the second he shows up, you know that he's got a huge history behind him, like his first gear, he has flags from all the countries that he's wrestled in. When he first shows up and confronts Cesaro, he speaks French and Arabic and English to him. And so you just have this very clear feeling that this is a guy who has existed before this, which is really fascinating, because technically he hadn't, right? There was no Sami Zayn before that. But you really feel the weight of the years in his character in a way that I think other NXT people at that time kind of struggled to have, because they were actually mostly just getting started. And so that really caught me about Sammy right away.

ZH: What about Kevin?

JM: It's interesting, because, not surprisingly, I hated Kevin at first. Well, of course, kind of pretty sincerely, you know, I legitimately was kind of like, clearly, this is a pretty bad person and just because he's so believably bad and he has the ability to connect with audiences in a heelish way that almost perfectly mirrors Sami’s connection in a face way, which makes sense, because they work together so much that I think they became this sort of really well oiled machine together, where he knew exactly how to make Sami the best kind of babyface, and Sammy knew exactly how to make him the best kind of heel. And it wasn't actually, until I saw him wrestle live that he really clicked with me. I went and saw him wrestle live against Neville in the main event in Fort Pierce, Florida. And I don't know, just watching him wrestle, you could just, you can feel it.

ZH: Why do those two guys have such chemistry together?

JM: My theory, and I would love to ask them sometime, but my theory has always been that they have a particularly great partnership, because Kevin is the long term thinker of the two. That he's the person who keeps a character arc in his mind. Who thinks about where our characters have come from and where they're going. And that's his strength. And Sami’s strength is building the actual match to showcase where their character arc is right now. And so they've got the long term vision and the bell to bell ring general strategy in one sort of pairing. I think that makes them kind of unstoppable, because they trust each other's opinions so much, and tend to rely on each other when all of these stories about them arguing are never of them arguing with the other people in the match. They're always arguing with each other. Like the American Wolves. Eddie Edwards remembers just sitting and listening to Sami and Kevin argue for hours up until the moment the bell was about to ring and he and Davey Richards just sat there and listened to them argue. They weren't part of the argument at all. Apparently, in part because Kevin and Sami really trust each other and their opinions more than anybody else. So, they have a tendency, I think, to get into arguments with each other and sometimes not include other people who are in the match. But I think that leads to them really having a good chemistry in how to construct a match.

You can check out the full interview between Zack Heydorn and Jennifer McGee right here.

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