In the Barrie Advance, Ken Kennedy recently spoke on what he’s learned about the wrestling world.

“I learned pretty early on that the best characters are those that are just extensions of your personality. You take your own personality and you turn the volume all the way up. So I spent time really finding out who I was as a person and as a wrestler and what I could and could not do, and just really fine-tuning all that stuff,” said Kennedy.

As for how he became attracted to the WWE, Kennedy said:

“I fell in love with the character (Stone Cold Steve Austin), and I watched every week religiously, just to see that character, and sure enough sooner or later, I got hooked into all the other story lines that were going on. And I realized that I’d been missing this for a long time.

As mentioned on WWE RAW this week, Mr. Kennedy will be making his return to the show next week.

The preview on WWE.com notes that Kennedy will be looking to exact revenge on somebody for losing the Money in the Bank Ladder Match at WrestleMania XXIV. According to company’s official website, the storyline reason for Kennedy being out of action for a few weeks is that he just “fully recovered” from the Money in the Bank Match.

Who do you wanna see Kennedy feud with next?

Sorry, guys, WWE Divas can’t dominate every inch of our photo gallery.

Sometimes, we’ve gotta dedicate space to an up and coming superstar. For example, we present Ken Kennedy…

Here’s a look and a listen at the theme music for a trio of WWE superstars.

Chris Jericho:

Ken Kennedy:

Beth Phoenix:

Within WWE circles, the feeling on Mr. Kennedy is that his current program with Shawn Michaels is a “sink or swim” opportunity for him.

If he doesn’t rise to the occasion during this feud with HBK, Kennedy will likely be relegated to mid-card status for the foreseeable future.

According to one source, the rising WWE star is listening to everyone backstage for advice on how to improve in the ring. Kennedy is said to have little confidence in his own instincts as a performer, which might explain why he’s often trying new things and different finishers in his matches lately.

In an article by Mike Mooneyham for The Post and Courier, Mr. Kennedy says the following about drugs in WWE:

“Change is always good in any business. This company has changed a lot since I got here. Things are a lot different in the locker room. The atmosphere is a lot different. It’s much different than it was 20 years ago.”

Kennedy also doesn’t condone drug use, but thinks it’s acceptable in moderation:

“I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this and it’s not the most popular answer with everybody, but a lot of the guys who have passed away come from that era when this business was a rock-star atmosphere. These guys lived like rock stars and they partied like rock stars. They did all the drugs. I’m not condoning drug use - anything in moderation is OK - but these guys went to the absolute extremes.

It’s no wonder when you mix steroids with recreational drugs and alcohol … the combination of those three is a deadly cocktail. They’re experiencing heart problems and all kinds of other stuff. A lot of those guys are flat broke because of it.”

Ken Kennedy recently spoke with Fighting Spirit Magazine from the UK. Here are highlights from the conversation...

FSM: So how long are you over here – anything in particular you plan on doing before heading back to the States?
Ken Kennedy: I’m here for a couple more days. We’re gonna go ride the Eye tomorrow and I’m going to check out the Star Wars Exhibition, too. I’m really not the world’s biggest Star Wars fan, but enough to see it while I’m here.

FSM: Good plan! We spoke to Austin Aries a while back – you guys broke into the business together, right? You were wrestling in the Minneapolis area along with Shawn Daivari.
KK: [Completely distracted, reading the magazine, before stopping and looking up.] Oh, he told you about us breaking in? Yeah, wow. I worked a lot in Chicago, Wisconsin, various other places. So… [Flicks pages, dramatically] whereabouts is the Mr. Kennedy article?

FSM: Well, we’re working on it – that’s why we’re here now! [Kennedy flips to the article, ‘Steroid Society’.] Ah. You’re probably not going to like that one.
KK: What – what the f**k is this? [Begins examining the article.] You’ve got a picture of Bobby Lashley with a bottle of f**king steroids next to him. [Laughs, wryly.] He’s never tested positive for steroids.

FSM: Well, there was the liver thing last year. [Lashley was among three WWE wrestlers discovered, through the Wellness Policy, to have elevated liver enzymes – often a telltale sign of oral steroid use.] This is a really tough time for the business and we’ve worked really hard to try to be objective, to try to make sure that the public understands what’s going on. Because ultimately, there’s a reason that people are looking into this – there’s a reason that Congress has got involved with wrestling again.

We appreciate that you’re in a difficult position, but do you think that any good is going to come out of this? On the one level, of course wrestling doesn’t want anyone interfering in its business, but in terms of helping the guys do you think this might have a positive effect?
KK: Really, the only thing that I would like to see come out of this, the only thing that I would really like to see that would be different, is that we get a little more time off. That’s it.

The Sun in the UK has a new podcast interview up with WWE’s Mr. Kennedy where he admits to steroid use and how the company’s wellness policy got him to stop:

“I don’t take steroids, but I have taken steroids in the past. I never took a lot, but when I was working the independent scene I was trying everything I could. I never took massive amounts of steroids and do you know why I stopped taking them? Because of the Wellness Policy. Because I knew that having a job with the WWE was way more important than the 10 pounds of extra muscle that the steroids gave me.”

Ken Kennedy posted the following message on his official site:

Please GOD, I’m just BEGGING for someone who has actually wrestled in a WWE ring in the past decade besides Jericho, Bret Hart, John Cena, and Ted Dibiase to come forward on one of these shows and tell the world what’s really going on. For these goofs, like Lanny Poffo? Ultimate Warrior? and Marc Mero???!! to repeatedly act as “experts” and “wrestler advocates” on the current situation is like having a frustrated ex-jock who rode the pine bench throughout his high school sports career give advice to Brett Favre on how to improve his game!

It’s ridiculous, insane, and it really makes me sick that these so called reporters like Bill O’Reilly, Nancy Grace, and Geraldo Rivera, call upon these silly bastards who are bitter and frustrated that their careers have ended to represent the WWE which of course makes all of us look like a bunch of babbling idiots who are all addicted to steroids, drugs, alcohol, etc.

THINGS ARE MUCH DIFFERENT THAN THEY WERE FIVE OR TEN OR TWENTY YEARS AGO! Most of the “expert”, frustrated ex-wrestlers that they’ve had on the show came from an era where everyone wrestled every day and then went out and partied like rock stars until dawn, drinking copious amounts of alcohol, smoking cigarettes and marijuana, snorting cocaine, taking fistfuls of pills, and injecting massive amounts of steroids. They would take pills to go to sleep, snort coke or take speed to get up and do this day after day after day!

This would not be even remotely tolerated in today’s environment. We have a strict drug policy in place. The WWE’s wellness program was designed and instituted by the same doctor who implemented the NFL and the NBA’s substance abuse programs. Contrary to what somebody recently said on one of these “tabloid” shows the WWE’s allowed levels are exactly the same as the NFL. (Someone, I can’t recall exactly who said it, said that the WWE allowed a 10:1 Testosterone to Epitestosterone level, which is false. We have a 4:1 level exactly like the NFL and the NBA.) In fact, I knew of someone who took an over the counter supplement from GNC which he didn’t know was on the banned list, which caused him to have an elevated testosterone level.

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