— Kevin Nash vs. Scott Hall WCW Halloween Havoc • October 25, 1998
— Kevin Nash vs. The Rock SmackDown • March 21, 2002
— Sledgehammer Ladder Match
Triple H vs. Kevin Nash TLC • December 18, 2011
Yesterday you heard from Mani Mohtadi on how WWE reached out to him this year for an interview in the Kliq DVD/Blu-ray documentary. Mani was one of the two fans responsible for capturing video footage of the “Curtain Call” at Madison Square Garden.
The other fan was Jason Cosmides who owned the camcorder that recorded the footage that night, as he shot the entire May 19th, 1996 house show and bootlegged several other live events through 1995 and 1996. Below, Jason shares with us his recollection of attending the MSG show, how WWE found him recently, and his experience of being interviewed.
I would never have went to the May 19th, 1996 show if it wasn’t for Mani. He was my only real wrestling friend at that time and I had another friend that was a closet fan.
The event was on a Sunday night, a school night, so it was a tough sell for my parents to buy into me going, especially with the school year winding down. It wasn’t just a typical house show; it was packed with a bunch of good matches. We have been to some bulls*** house shows at Nassau and MSG where nothing happened and we were still like “wow that was a great show”. What drew us to the May 19th show was the Cage Match with Diesel and Shawn and the return of Warrior. Cage matches were always fun to watch at MSG and Warrior is just an automatic sell. Just for that alone I wanted to tape the show for us. The rest of the card filled up nicely with the tag team title match, Yoko/Vader, Austin match and the Razor/HHH match. The event was great for a house show; it was worth taping all of those matches.
It wasn’t until the end of the cage match when history was really taking place before our eyes. As a fan I knew it was cool seeing these bad guys and good guys being all friends in the ring, but I was saying to myself WTF is going on! My voice that night was shot, that’s why you hear a funny scream – that’s me trying to say “WHAT” but something else came out. I requested they edit that out of the DVD. Time will tell.
I’ve seen our video all over WWE DVDs, Dailymotion and YouTube throughout the years. I always thought it was cool and we finally saw the video posted on WWE.com in 2014. I decided to post a comment at the bottom of it with my name saying that this was our footage, and if anyone wanted to contact us to do so. I checked the day after and I didn’t see the comment, so I thought it was deleted but in fact it did get posted. I never thought I would have heard back from anyone, until I got a LinkedIn message from the WWE producer Kieran asking if I am the Jason Cosmides that recorded the event on May 19th. I was thinking what do they want to ask me, they already had a Monday Night War episode on the Kliq, and they already have the video. So I wrote back and left my number, he called the next day and we spoke.
He asked me if I would be interested in interviewing for an upcoming DVD. I said yes, but that if they interview me about May 19th, they have to interview Mani too, my old wrestling partner from back in the day. I always said to Mani, I got your back if anything ever comes of this video. The issue was that Mani lives in NY, and I relocated to South Florida. I didn’t have any plans to come up to NY anytime soon; it would have been nice if we were both there because Mani and I haven’t seen each other since 1998.
Without that footage from my then VHS-C Cam, what would be out there? A still shot? Imagine if TMZ was around back then, we would have made a small fortune off that video! They had an upcoming SmackDown show in February in Sunrise, FL and they interviewed me there and interviewed Mani in CT. They also asked me for the original, I said I would give it to them (which was on VHS). I wasn’t sure if it would still play after all these years but I did convert the videos to DVD a few years ago. I decided to give WWE all of my bootlegs, starting from June 1995 at Nassau to our last show that I recorded which was August 1996 at MSG.
Leading up to the interview, I was watching some old WWE DVDs to see how they interview. I kind of knew what they were going to ask. I didn’t want to sound like it was just a Q and A. I wanted to add some extra stuff, and give a real insight on why I bootlegged the shows. I have to admit I’m not a great talker, especially during any kind of interview. I heard that Mani’s interview was really good, I was happy to hear that. I knew I couldn’t top his because he knew a lot more about wrestling than I did. Even though I liked knowing the rumors and behind-the-scenes stuff, I was a fan at heart and wanted to watch it as a fan.
The day of the interview I worked ’til about noon, and left to the arena. I was nervous and never thought what I did as a 16-17 year old kid I would go on to be talking to WWE about. When I got to the arena I met with another producer, Paul, who walked me backstage and to the interview room. I was there for about 30 minutes, and after a while my anxiety kicked in. I started feeling like I shouldn’t be there. I mean, it was nearly 20 years ago and I did this when I was 17 and in 11th grade! If it was 5 or 10 years after that, maybe I would have felt a little different.
It was cool to be backstage, I saw Goldust walk past me, and I’m sure I saw a few more wrestlers walk past too but I don’t follow the product now. After the interview I was able to see them set up SmackDown. I wanted to take some videos and/or pics there but the producer suggested I shouldn’t, probably just covering his a**, which I understood.
While I was there, I did ask the producer, “so are you guys telling me that you don’t have your own footage of that night? You have the tag team title match footage and the Razor match footage but not the end of the show?” He said that he believes that either it was never recorded by WWE or it was but later destroyed.
Jason Cosmides
Look out for more Kliq match reveals and coverage on WDN all this week!
WWE will officially release “THE KLIQ RULES” on DVD and Blu-ray next month, available in stores across the United States from July 28th. The current scheduled release dates to overseas markets are August 5th to Australia and September 7th to the UK and Europe.
I hope one day Scott Hall and Kevin Nash get solo doc sets. They’ve had long and successful enough careers to warrant having a set done on them individually.
People need not to worry about the lack of Nash’s first run being on here. For as you can see, this is the Kevin Nash stuff. There will be plenty of Diesel matches as well. I am for one looking very forward to this DVD/Blu Ray set!
I think that they could have picked some better matches to showcase Kevin Nash. I would have liked (or like) to see his match against Razor Ramon from Summerslam 1994, along with a tag-team match with Shawn Michaels.
This set looks a bit hit and miss so far, but until the full listing is revealed I will see whether I will buy it straight away.
Nothing from his original WWF run?! Huh. I know he didn’t have many memorable matches, but any of his matches with Bret would be great adds to this set.
That is surprising but he did just get profiled on True Giants. I remember thinking that there wasn’t much they could show from that run back then so for now it’s probably even more so.
Don’t think the match vs. Bret from IYH Rage in a Cage 1996 has been released yet on DVD, that would have been a good choice. They also had a match in early 1994 exclusive to Coliseum Video called Wrestlefest 1994 (great tape btw! which as the awesome Steiners vs. Bret/Owen match) which was a pretty decent match.
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I hope one day Scott Hall and Kevin Nash get solo doc sets. They’ve had long and successful enough careers to warrant having a set done on them individually.
Kevin Nash was the weak link of the Kliq and the poor match choices here prove it. Lucky his buddies in that group could actually wrestle.
Nash selection isn’t great but still buying it. Rock vs Nash looks good but I bet it’ll end in a dq.
People need not to worry about the lack of Nash’s first run being on here. For as you can see, this is the Kevin Nash stuff. There will be plenty of Diesel matches as well. I am for one looking very forward to this DVD/Blu Ray set!
I think that they could have picked some better matches to showcase Kevin Nash. I would have liked (or like) to see his match against Razor Ramon from Summerslam 1994, along with a tag-team match with Shawn Michaels.
This set looks a bit hit and miss so far, but until the full listing is revealed I will see whether I will buy it straight away.
NO WMX LADDER MATCH…. NO BUY!
It was a fantastic match, but it has been on soooooooo many Dvds that it’s actually a turn off for me now.
I like the Nash vs Hall match. Good choice.
Nothing from his original WWF run?! Huh. I know he didn’t have many memorable matches, but any of his matches with Bret would be great adds to this set.
That is surprising but he did just get profiled on True Giants. I remember thinking that there wasn’t much they could show from that run back then so for now it’s probably even more so.
Don’t think the match vs. Bret from IYH Rage in a Cage 1996 has been released yet on DVD, that would have been a good choice. They also had a match in early 1994 exclusive to Coliseum Video called Wrestlefest 1994 (great tape btw! which as the awesome Steiners vs. Bret/Owen match) which was a pretty decent match.
IYH from Feb 1996 was available on DVD in the UK through the Tagged Classics releases.