James Mitchell Says WWE Called Him to Manage Jack Swagger Before Going With Dutch Mantel

James Mitchell talking about the rumors he blew his hand off with a fireball in ECW:

“I didn’t blow my hand off. When throwing fire became part of the crazy Mikey Whipwreck gimmick, normally people would just grab a piece of flash paper which is nitrocellulose, highly flammable and dangerous by the way, roll it up, and stick a lighter to it and just throw it. Well, I found a magician's tool. It was like a ring around your finger, and on your hand here, it looked like a shell casing or something for a 44 Magnum or something, about that size, and it had a glow plug on the back of it. So you're supposed to put a sheet of flash paper, like eight by 10. You're supposed to tear little pieces of it off and it'll poof, throw a little fireball out."

"We just kept putting more and more over the weeks and months that I had this thing and there's going to be a pay-per-view in Chicago. It's gonna be a big deal. So I said, 'Let's just see if we can fit an entire sheet in.' I had gotten almost an entire sheet in, like three-quarters of the way full. We were shooting it off backstage and was like, 'Wow, this is an amazing fireball. So much better than what a magician does.' We tested it a few times backstage. The deal was when they came through the curtain, I was gonna stick my hand between them and shoot a big fireball. Well, I had a toothbrush and I was packing it, trying to pack this piece of paper in to it like Davy Crockett packing a Musket or Flintlock, and I guess my hand hit that glow plug and the toothbrush was in it, therefore, instead of it going out, it became a bomb or grenade. It's made out of copper, co it exploded, bang. Everybody was kind of deaf for a second because you heard that beep in the air from the explosion."

"I looked down at my hand and the story's been told a million times. I looked at Mikey and I went, 'Mikey, f*ck. This isn't good.' My hand just looked like it was torn up. Something was wrong with it, but it wasn't bleeding yet for, I don't know, a 10-count or something. Then suddenly, it started like a sprinkler. It was squirting out all over the place. I lost the tip of my finger. My hand was completely blown open, so once the blood started going to it, you know, I knew something wrong had happened, obviously."

"I went to go to the sink. Sandman was there drunk as usual holding court, and all the blood is squirting out. He's seen Mikey and myself bring various gimmicks over the last few months and he goes, 'Oh, that's the best gimmick yet.' He thought I had fake blood squirting out of my hand. I went to the sink to run water over it and I'm in shock, you know, and I noticed that my coat suit jacket was blown open. At first I thought, 'Oh sh*t. I got to buy another suit', and then I looked at my black shirt underneath, and because it's black, you couldn't see blood. I felt it. It was wet, I touched it and my finger went into my abdomen, I don't know, two knuckles deep. At that point, I about fainted."

"I went to the hospital. They had to do skin and nerve grafts on my hand, so for a couple months, my hand looked like Leatherface's mask. It looked like a quilt of just nasty stitches and black dead skin. They had to pull a nerve out of my arm to connect it to my index finger because actually, my hand was stuck. My hand, whatever it did to the nerves in my hand, my middle finger was stuck up and the rest of them were down. So they bandaged me up. What they were worried about was not my hand. They said that we can deal with, but basically they said it was like I got shot in the stomach with a small caliber handgun. They said, 'We're just going to bandage your hand up and we've got to go in there and do surgery and get all the shrapnel out of your gut.'"

"So I was in the hospital about a week, and you know, eventually they did go back and do the things I told you about with the surgery. So I mean, even to this day, water can hit this big skin graft or something if it's raining, and it screwed up the circuitry to my nerves, so like, I can touch this here and it'll like make my toes wiggle and things like that. So it was a pretty serious injury, and God, it was a hell of a time. I was worried for the longest time that my legacy was going to be just some guy blew his hand up, but yeah, it got all over the internet that I blew three fingers off."

"I think even on ECW TV, the FBI came out with scissors and said that they cut my fingers off, because nobody really knew what had happened. When I was back there, I don't know if you ever saw this because it was like the week after, they were trying to film footage of the paramedics. EMTs ,whatever you call them, dealing with me trying to, you know, before I got in the ambulance, and they were cursing the camera people out and the camera people were trying to get the footage. I don't know if I was stupid or in shock or drunk or combination of both, but I was going 'Oh no, no. Get this on camera. Get it on camera.' The EMT's kept saying, 'You're in shock. You need to calm down and you're going to die.' I guess when you're in shock, you don't know you're in shock. Your body numbs you, Your blood pressure and everything's through the roof, and I guess in the back of my mind is thinking, 'Well if I'm going to die, at least I'll go out on camera.' So there was that.”

On ideas WWE pitched for him over the years:

"Back in the 90s. Kevin Kelly called. I mean, I was sending him tapes back then, especially after I went to Smoky Mountain Wrestling because then I had TV quality, broadcast quality tapes to send instead of something filmed in a flea market. Kevin Kelly called me once like in '93. I don't even know what his job was. He called to let me know he's looking at my tape. Bruce Prichard called me one time like '95 or '94 to look at the tape. He said, 'We're gonna go look at this' and then I never heard from him again."

"Then the beginning of 2012, until the beginning of 2013, I think it was, a member of the creative team called me and asked me if I'd be interested in coming in there, and at that point, had been sitting home doing nothing. This was after I left TNA/IMPACT. I was like, 'Of course, yeah, I'm ready to go.' He said, 'Make me a tape. Just talk about something generic. We got an idea.' Fast forward, he was talking about maybe bringing me into SummerSlam or something like that. I can't remember. He called me back and he said, 'Did you watch SummerSlam?' I said, 'No, because I don't watch wrestling that I'm not involved in.' So turns out Lord Tensai is who they were gonna put me with. He used to be Prince Albert, or that's who he had pitched, I guess, and they didn't go with it. Then he said, 'Hold on. We've got another idea.' There were like three or four phone calls over the course of a year where I would go, 'Hey, they've got an idea for me.' I go buy drinks for everybody and I wait on the call."

"Then the next time I got one of those calls, he said, 'Hey, did you watch the show last night because the guy we were going to bring you in needed a fresh coat of paint.' It turned out to be Jack Swagger, but they went with a Dutch Mantell to do the, 'We The People' thing. I wouldn't have fit. I couldn't do what Dutch did. That's kind of getting into a political thing and whatnot, but if you're going to be good at a character, you have to find some piece of it in yourself, you know, something you resonate with, and particularly at that point in my life, I did not give a tinker's damn about politics. I tuned politics out of my head for like eight or 10 years, and Dutch did a hell of a job. I would have never been able to do anything with that and if they had brought me there, it would have been a failure.”

On AEW contacting him to be the priest for the Kip Sabian - Penelope Ford wedding:

"Chris Daniels called me out of nowhere. I was in Daytona doing a karaoke show. Jacksonville is three hours from there or something. He just called me and said, 'Can you be here tomorrow?' I said, 'Tomorrow?' you know, because I was booked in Daytona to do my show for a couple of days. My wife was with me. I just said, 'Look, drive me to Jacksonville. You come back. You cover the show then you pick me up in the morning.’ Yeah, it was funny because again, I don't watch any wrestling I'm not involved in. I knew the old school guys, but all the new guys, I didn't know any of them, so I had no idea who Kip and Penelope were. It was funny. It was kind of thrown together. I mean, it was a great experience. It was great seeing all the old dudes like Jake and Arn and Sting that I hadn't seen in forever. First Class operation. They paid me real well. I mean, everything was smooth sailing there.but I never got a call back, so it is what it is."

This interview is exclusive to WrestlingNews.co. If you use these quotes, please include a link back to this page.