Matty said he's from the Northwest part of the United States.
He got into wrestling heavily at the tail end of ‘96. Started out as a loyal WCW fan/hater of WWF, but he switched over to WWF upon watching the RAW after WrestleMania XIV with his brother.
That's when he started to buy the toys. His first BCA custom was a Surfer Sting using a Series 3 Sid figure. He said he made hundreds and hundreds of customs in the late ‘90s.
He's been involved with making wrestling art for years. Comic books like X-Men #1 were a huge influence on him and a driving factor in his becoming an artist. Cyclops was his favorite to draw. His older brother was also an artist growing up, and naturally, he looked up to him.
He would mainly do sketches. No writing. He's done more kids' stuff in recent years. In high school, his best friend was a huge Undertaker fan, so he remembers them going to buy all three or four cover variants of the Undertaker comic book. He remembers also getting the Mankind comic that came after that.
He went to college for Graphic Design and has worked in that field for 20 years. He works at a sign shop now. There's not a whole lot of creative outlets designing signs for other businesses, but he has done a lot of freelance stuff that appeals to his interests (comics, wrestling).
Advancements in 3D modeling and rendering amaze him. He would love to be more proficient in those areas.
He co-created a mascot for the local comic convention – a superhero cat – and has done a couple of toys and the package design for it.
His grandpa was a big garage sale guy, buying him bunches of LJNs and Hasbros, but all of those stayed at his grandparent’s house. There was a dartboard in the toy room and he remembers throwing darts at the LJN figures with his brother and cousins. “Whenever you go over to grandpa and grandma’s house, they’ve got the old wrestling toys," he says, "but I was for sure a much bigger collector of the BCAs and had hundreds and hundreds of them at the time.”
He got out of wrestling after his kids were born, and as a result, he missed the mid-2000s to the late 2010s. To him, the figures didn't have the same charm that they had in the '90s.
He was first approached to work on the BCW line by
3Lephant (Naptown Icon) (Jack of FC). Matty is a huge Macho Man Randy Savage fan, with 30-some figures from all different companies. A couple of years back, he was laying in bed at three in the morning thinking about Macho Man toys, and the thought came to him that there wasn’t a BCA Macho Man because Savage missed out on that time frame by a couple of years. Then he started to wonder what would it have been like if Savage had a BCA figure. As soon as Matty got off work, he drew a BCA Macho Man on his computer and posted it online. He said it got a couple of likes back then. It was "nice little fun art," according to him.
http://instagram.com/p/CCpBE-tp1JJ
Late June/early July of this year he got a message from Jack saying “Hey, here’s what I want to do. I saw your Macho Man drawing. Can you do that for me? I’ve got this list of names that I want to do.” And at first, Matty didn’t believe him, but then Jack told Matty he was working with Chella. Once Matty realized the partnership was legit and he slowly started working on the project, it hit him that this was going to happen. "Now I’m seeing pictures of these prototypes of toys. It’s like, okay, this thing that I drew is now going to be a toy, so it’s been a six-month process, but we’re actually getting close,” he said.
He's never done anything on this scale. Nothing that’s near and dear to his heart that he can go back and revisit things and do a nice homage to his childhood.
He said he was kind of given free reign by Jack and Charles (from Chella), just knowing his design and customizing background, and his familiarity with the lines.
He definitely was looking at a lot of pictures of the Series 1 cards for inspiration while designing the BCW packaging. It just kind of happened the day he was starting to work on the packaging, he had gone to a toy show and bought a Series 3 Bret Hart mint on card. He happened to have that on his desk while he was working, so he kind of pulled stuff from there. By now, everyone has seen their logo for the line and it definitely plays with the color scheme of some of the older stuff, so there’s bits and pieces of different things, but there’s also a modern updated look to it.
His favorite Jakks BCA packaging was Series 7 – the dual-layer, diamond plate background with the rectangular bubble. He likened it to a call back to Series 1 and 2's packaging with the rectangular bubble and picture insert on the sides. He says that stood out to him in the stores.
His favorite Jakks BCA figure, or one of them at least, was the 2 Tuff Series 3 Owen Hart in his NOD attire. He wasn’t much of a fan of the Series 6 deco version, but he liked Danger Owen in the yellow and black.
One Jakks BCA head sculpt that is unforgettable to him is the S.T.O.M.P. Series 2/Live Wire Series 1 Stone Cold. He said some of the Jakks BCA head sculpts were "a little much." Something about the neck on that one looked nightmarish on a regular BCA body, but not so bad on the S.T.O.M.P. figure.
He was a big Triple H guy growing up. Even named his oldest son Hunter. Triple H and The Rock were "his guys."
The interviewer, Pablo, mentions names that could have been made as BCAs if TTL hadn't happened, starting off with Kurt Angle and Chris Jericho. Some of those earlier rejected TTL sculpts, like Shawn Stasiak/MEAT, Babyface Stephanie McMahon, and British Bulldog in jeans. When the BCA line first started, Pablo thought we should have gotten The Smoking Gunns, and he wished there were BCA figures of jobbers like The Goon, Salvatore Sincere, and TL Hopper.
Matty's response: “I don’t know, maybe we can right some of these wrongs. Who knows. We’ll see who wants to buy some of these figures.”
Pablo also wants a Rick Bognar as Fake Razor Ramon.
Matty's response: “That would be something.”
Matty says there are two series that have been confirmed, as far as he knows/has heard from Jack. He’s done the artwork for the complete Series 1, so he knows who all are locked in for that, and he thinks he’s started a few Series 2, but he doesn’t know if he’s been given the complete list yet. Jack says he’s got the complete list for Series 2.
Pablo asks if any names are blowing his mind at the moment.
Matty's response: “Oh yeah, for sure.”
He’s constantly messaging back and forth with Jack throughout the day while he’s at his day job and supposed to be working. Jack will message him updates on who they've signed, and it never gets old for him. “I’ll be like, wow, I didn’t even know that was an option. So yeah, there’s been some big names and one of them I had to message directly the other day because I needed some more information on something so now I’m like, okay, now I’m talking to this person, so, I’ve been connected through Jack and it’s been a lot of fun working through the process," he said.
Pablo said Chella works directly through the wrestlers - for example, Haku asked for changes to the action of his Retro figure, as have other wrestlers asked for changes to theirs, and Chella has been accommodating through that process. He thinks that’s the reason why a lot of these names are happy to work with Chella because they know there is a lot of love and effort and these names are not picked lightly. There’s a strategy behind a lot of these names.
Pablo asks if there are any he’s looking forward to, in regards to Chella.
Matty's response: “Yeah, there’s a few that we had discussed earlier on that was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could get this person?’ And now we do. And it’s like, okay, well that’s probably the one that I’m most excited for. Jack has said many times that working with Chella, he just can’t believe the kind of names they’ve been able to help connect us to, and it’s been a great partnership just to be able to work with them and not only see all the great work they’ve done, but the line continuing to grow and who they’re able to add."
Pablo said even he’s been asked to try to connect some names and he thinks he’s been reasonably successful at it. “Free figures for life” is what Charles from Chella said if he was able to do that for them. Pablo said he does it for the love (but will gladly take Charles up on his offer). The idea that he could get to interview some of these names for the Bone Crushing Wrestlers line is “just beyond mind-blowing” for him.
Matty's response: "It’s been really fun for me with my customizing background as we’re getting these names. Going through my head like, oh, I could use this torso as a reference and piece together what I think would work best. Use that as kind of my starting point, like this is what it should start looking like, and it’s been a lot of fun in that regard using that part of my brain from my childhood to figure out where to start from and make it look like it would fit in with the original line."
He wishes digital camera technology was a little bit better in the late ‘90s, because he has no photographs of anything he made back then. He made a Psychosis with a removable mask that he sold on eBay back then for like $50, and that was a big deal for him.
Matty believes he made the very first Samoa Joe action figure when he was in UPW. Samoa Joe was on a radio show called Wrestling 101 that Matty used to call into all the time, and he built a rapport with Joe and the other co-hosts so much that he was able to send them custom figures he had made of them. He doubts Samoa Joe still has it, but at one time 20 years ago, he had the first Samoa Joe action figure.
Some of Matty's favorite figures in his collection aren't even wrestling at all, they're Golden Girls (he grew up watching the show with his Grandma, who was like Rose), Dick Tracy, Pee Wee Herman, and Planet of the Apes (he has a bust on one shelf).
Macho Man Randy Savage is his favorite wrestler of all time, but he never got to see him wrestle in person because, by the time he got into wrestling, WCW no longer came to his area. His favorite match of Savage's would probably be WMIII vs. Steamboat. He loves Macho's Slim Jim gear. Any of Macho’s looks are iconic to him.
When his oldest son was born, he sold all of his figure collection, and he’s kicking himself now because his son collects wrestling stuff.
Matty said he doesn’t have one particular thing in his wrestling collection that is his favorite.
Pablo said an announcement is coming very soon, then they’ll start doing retrospectives on the careers of the signed talent in future podcasts.
Matty remembers going to an outlet store for KB Toys in the late '90s and finding a bunch of stuff there, including the BCA Raw Is War set with Sunny in pink. That was one of his favorite finds.
He was always captivated by the BCA Off The Mat New Age Outlaws figures. The original 2 Tuff 2 set had puffy faces, but OTM were these narrowly sculpted heads that could not have been done by the same guy who did both in 2 Tuff 2. Pablo thinks 2 Tuff 2 Billy Gunn was meant to be in long tights (pre-DX?).
Matty doesn’t think he started collecting BCAs until Series 4 or so. One BCA part choice that bothered him was using Owen’s head for Jeff Jarrett. He didn't even know about Patriot's head being reused for Blue Blazer until a few years ago.
When he grew up, the one Walmart they had was a half-hour away and he was like 15 years old when Blue Blazer came out, so he had no chance of getting it. One time he did convince his parents to go, and of course, Walmart didn’t have it by then.
On the topic of soft goods for BCAs and some that weren't afforded this luxury, like the New Blackjacks, Matty said Bradshaw "should count himself lucky he was the first to have two figures."
Pablo said the aim of these two shows (with Matty and Jack) was to introduce them to the Chella audience to show that they have the knowledge, love, and passion. This isn’t just a commission. This is like a labor of love. They’re going to be working to bring such a high-quality product. Pablo said he's seen some of the blueprints and prototypes and they’re “mind-blowingly good, but maintaining that BCA feel as well.” Chella does well to capture the essence of them as good as anyone he’s ever seen.
Matty's response: “I’ve been blown away by what I’ve seen so far, and I designed the things and I’m still surprised when I see it, so it’ll be exciting.”
He can be found at
@mattybreeze1984 on Instagram. He said it looks like he hasn’t been drawing much because he’s been working on these figures the last six months and he hasn’t been able to share much of it. He’s pretty much been putting all his work and time into this series.
