Exclusive: SCU's Frankie Kazarian on playing music with Gutter Candy, favorite bands, Chris Jericho's influence & more

A professional wrestler for over 20 years, Frankie Kazarian started training with WWE Hall Of Famer Killer Kowalski in 1998. While he was signed by WWE in 2005, Kazarian first found international acclaim by joining TNA Wrestling in 2003, winning the company's X Division title the following year.

In the years since Kazarian has held championship gold all over the world, much of which alongside long-time friend Christopher Daniels. Kazarian was one of the first signees of All Elite Wrestling in 2019, as one-third of SCU -- with Daniels and Scorpio Sky -- he was one of AEW's first tag team championship-holders.

Beyond finding success in wrestling, Kazarian has also kept active as a musician. He plays bass in the bands Gutter Candy, which recently played iconic Los Angeles venue The Whisky A Go Go alongside Metalachi, and VexTëmper, which is credited for SCU's theme song.

In the midst of this year's Chris Jericho Rock 'N' Wrestling Rager, I had the pleasure of interviewing Frankie Kazarian just minutes after I spoke with Rubix Kube. Audio of the full chat is below -- as heard on the all-Jericho-Cruise edition of the Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz podcast -- while part of the conversation has been transcribed below exclusively for Sportskeeda.

As pointed out during said podcast, Kazarian is the only person besides Jericho to have performed music on both of Jericho's cruises. After all, he was in the backing band for The Young Bucks' father "Papa Buck" Matthew Lee Massie during the inaugural cruise, and on-stage to sing during the final Rubix Kube performance on Part Deux of the cruise

More on Frankie Kazarian can be found online at www.twitter.com/FrankieKazarian, while Gutter Candy keeps a good presence at www.guttercandyrules.com.

On when he started playing music versus starting his wrestling training:

Frankie Kazarian: I actually started playing bass guitar before I became a wrestler before I began training to be a pro wrestler. I got my first bass guitar when I was 17, 18, right after I graduated high school. My grandfather had given it to me and I basically taught myself how to play it. I played it for a few years, started to get okay, decent at it. I moved to Massachusetts to train to become a pro wrestler. As I got busier with wrestling, bass guitar was the first thing to take a backseat. I always played it but it would be longer increments of time between when I played it. That was 22 years ago.

Now fast forward, several years ago, me and some other buddies who are musicians, we started jamming and I started playing more and more in any free time I had. I ended up joining two bands. I was kind of right back into the music scene. It's kind of something I can do on the side that I'm very passionate about. It's not pro wrestling, but very relatable to pro wrestling. I've tried to enjoy the best of both worlds.

Chris Jericho set the bar for me high in terms of being a top-notch wrestler and a top-notch musician, and he is both of those. I'm like the JV version of Jericho, just trying to keep it alive, man.