Prince Nana made an appearance on a recent edition of Busted Open Radio to discuss a wide range of topics. Here are the highlights:
Cary Silkin’s influence on the ROH talent:
“I don’t know where Cary Silkin popped up and he was a fan. He was a huge fan of mine. I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know what his purpose was,” Prince Nana began. “I’m a pretty open guy when it comes to listening to my fans and listening to my followers, so he was one of the people I was listening to. We were friends for like two years before I realized that he was the owner of Ring of Honor. Ever since then, we’ve had a relationship. Cary is like a father figure, not only to me, but to almost all of the top wrestlers in the business today like Adam Cole, The Young Bucks, Claudio Castagnoli, and I can go on with the list forever.”
The development of The Embassy:
“Rest in peace to Jimmy Rave. Jimmy Rave was a big part of The Embassy and a big part of the development of The Embassy. At that point, you have to remember, I was already like 10 years deep going through a little bit in the wrestling business,” Prince Nana shared.
“In 1999 or 2000, I had my first dark match with WWE, and my second one the year, then Japan after that. So I had a lot of big time experience also in the ring. Creating The Embassy with people like Jimmy Rave, Xavier, and Jade Chung wouldn’t have been possible without those guys. Each and everyone of them had a select story to tell. Jade had her story. Jimmy had his story. Xavier had his story,” he continued.
“The way the name, The Embassy, came up was very spontaneous. Gabe (Sapolsky) was the one that ran the show. We had a good relationship at that time and we still do. The day I came up with The Embassy gimmick, or the day that I knew I would be management on a full time basis, I remember right before going through the curtain with Xavier, Gabe came up to me saying, and he knew I was really good with the creative stuff, he said, ‘Hey Nana. What do you think we should call your faction?’ I was playing around with this in my head for the longest time and I said, ‘The Embassy.’ He said, ‘All right, Bobby (Cruise), this is what it is.’ When Bobby announced it, it just sounded so beautiful, especially in relation to me being a part of the Ashanti Kingdom in Ghana West Africa, which a lot of people try to question, but if you ask me the question, I’m going to give you the answer. So yeah, that’s where The Embassy comes from.”
