Ring Of Honor's Frankie Kazarian Talks Death Before Dishonor, 'Being The Elite,' All In And More

Four titles will be on the line Friday night in Las Vegas at Ring of Honor’s Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view event. The Addiction’s Frankie Kazarian and Christopher Daniels will fight for one of those championships when they challenge The Briscoes for the ROH World Tag Team Championships.

Winning the belts would be nothing new for Kazarian and Daniels. They’ve held them twice before together, and the long-time tag team even had the six-man tag team titles along with Scorpio Sky before losing them to The Kingdom in May.

“Every time you win a title, especially in a company like Ring of Honor, it’s always significant and always means a great deal,” Kazarian said in an interview with International Business Times. “The Briscoes, we haven’t had a great track record against them and they’re the most decorated tag team in the history of the company. We’re not only fighting for the titles, we’re fighting for our jobs pretty much in Ring of Honor, so we have a lot on the line, as do they. Every time we’re in there with those guys it’s a war. It’s a dogfight and I expect this to be nothing less. One thing we have on our side right now is we have a lot of momentum, and I think we’re gonna carry that into Las Vegas. I think we’re gonna bring the fight a little more than Mark and Jay will.”

Kazarian and Daniels have been a tag team for nearly seven years, first forming in TNA and later wrestling together in ROH. The two wrestlers had long, successful singles careers before joining forces, and they’ve fought for individual titles in recent years. Daniels won his first-ever ROH World Championship in March of last year, and Kazarian fought for the ROH Television Championship during Daniels’ title run.

“We knew if we formed a team it would work, simply based on our chemistry as opponents and our chemistry as best friends and guys that had traveled up and down the road together for many years,” Kazarian told IBT. “We both think a lot alike in terms of how wrestling matches could be good and could be better and creatively we’re both very similar. We knew that if given the opportunity to be a tag team in TNA at the time, we could certainly do something. And we did. We became the best tag team there and we carried that over to ROH, and here we are seven years later.”

“I think you’re always gonna see some version of Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian as a team. Yes, we may still have singles runs left in us and yes we might go off and do things as individuals, but that team is pretty rock solid and always gonna be there.”

While Kazarian and Daniels have traditionally been heels, they are always among the most entertaining acts for whatever promotion they are wrestling. The line between heel and babyface is certainly blurred these days more than ever. It’s something former ROH World Champion Cody Rhodes has been vocal about, and Kazarian recognizes it, as well.

“As far as Chris and I go, especially in TNA, we started as Bad Influence and we were doing a lot of really entertaining vignettes, and doing some really entertaining stuff on the mic that people were supposed to hate but ended up liking because we were entertaining in our delivery. But when we got out there in a ring against our opponents we turned it on and we were booed, which was our job because we were heels at the time,” Kazarian said. “But in Ring of Honor and certainly independently, it’s tough to fight City Hall. If you go out there and the people are going to cheer you no matter what you do, you ride that wave. One thing I’ve learned is you react to the crowd. You listen to the crowd. And if they’re cheering us as a team, I’m not gonna go out there and take time to flip off everybody and piss off everybody because that’s not what they’re feeling.”

Kazarian is never more entertaining than when he appears on “Being The Elite,” The Young Bucks’ YouTube series with weekly episodes that consistently draw well over 200,000 views. He’s become a staple of the show, alongside SoCal Uncensored stablemates Daniels and Scorpio Sky, as they trash every town they visit in a delightfully cruel manner.

Most of “Being The Elite” focuses on storylines within Bullet Club, but the segments that feature SoCal Uncensored are often one of the show’s highlights.

“They kind of built organically. It just started as us burying a town, and when you go back and watch the first town it’s really kind of subdued. Now we’re going to destinations to bury the town,” said Kazarian. “We put a little more thought into it in terms of that, but the actual dialogue is just us riffing. It’s just us coming up with stuff on the fly.”

“When we’re filming those, we do these in the middle of the day, and these are tourist attractions, most of them. We’re not just going around to random spots. We’re going to destinations. And there are people there and they see these three guys and one guy filming and we’re yelling and we’re talking about how bad this place is behind us. We’ve got some strange looks. We’ve had people that were kind of concerned, some people that kind of got angry at us. But that’s all part of the fun. And it’s awesome that we go out there and can bury someone’s town and they love us for it. I love it. I’m riding that wave.”

With Kazarian’s role on “Being The Elite” and the success he’s had as an independent wrestler, it only made sense for him to be a part of All In. The independent wrestling show run by The Young Bucks and Cody sold out in less than a half hour with an attendance of 11,236 people on Sept. 1.

Kazarian had a role in two matches on the show. He teamed up with Scorpio Sky to defeat The Briscoes and later was in Daniels’ corner when he wrestled Stephen Amell. After the show, Kazarian called it the proudest moment of his career.

“It was honestly the best event I’ve ever been a part of in my career, and 20 years in it’s strange that I’m saying that. I didn’t really have a whole lot to compare it to. I remember leaving that building that night and thinking, ‘When else did I have this feeling of elation in my career?’” Kazarian said to IBT.

“I’ve been thinking on much smaller levels like when I won my first world title on the indies and Killer Kowalski was there to see it. In a way that was equally as cool. And the first-ever proper pay-per-view for Impact Wrestling in 2004. But those were blips on the radar compared to All In. It was such a cool evening. The whole weekend. Every fan was there just to have fun and celebrate professional wrestling and celebrate it outside of the spectrum of WWE. And the event itself was remarkable. Every match was exciting, and it was a variety show. There was something for everybody.”

ROH Death Before Dishonor airs live from the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas Friday at 9 p.m. EDT on cable and satellite PPV providers, as well as through FITE TV. It will stream free for Honor Club VIP members and at 50 percent off for Honor Club standard members.