Image Credit: Twitter @solomonster

Jason Solomon talks to Chris Van Vliet from his home in New York City. He talks about why he started his podcast “Solomonster Sounds Off”, how it grew to be one of the most popular wrestling podcasts in the world, his first memories of wrestling, being an Orange Cassidy doppelgänger, the lessons he learned from his late mother and father, doing commentary for House of Glory with JDfromNY206, his love for the 1992 Royal Rumble, his favorite match of all time and more!

On being compared to Orange Cassidy:

“I don’t think I look like him and I don’t know how it got started. But it has taken on a life of its own though. Maybe he was doing a backyard wrestling league when he was younger, but one of the news sites had a screen shot of him when he was younger. When I saw that screenshot, it stopped me in my tracks. It looked exactly like me at that age. I tried to meet him on the Jericho cruise, but he chickened out. So I call him Cowardly Cassidy now.”

On starting his podcast and advice to others:

“The first year was 2007. I predate Joe Rogan, I wish I had those numbers though. Back then they were called audio shows, not podcasts. A friend of mine runs the website SEScoops. At the time, my thought was it was nice to have an aggregate site, but I thought it would be better to have an audio update. I pitched it to him to do one of these every week and he loved it. It’s harder to start a podcast because everyone has a podcast these days. It’s hard to build an audience, but I was lucky. I had people coming to this website, so there was a foot in the door there.”

“If someone wants to start a podcast, they need to do it because they love it, not just for the money. It took me about 4 or 5 years before I started to see financial success from it.”

On his day job:

“I work in PR, and I have for 16 years. Originally I was going to be in broadcast journalism. I wanted to be Mean Gene or Vince McMahon. I was midway through that field, working at my college radio station. I wanted to be the first person to bring a wrestling show to that radio station. I never had the chance though, but they wanted to offer me a rock and roll show. I didn’t want to do that and it got to a point where I questioned whether I wanted to do this. After talking to someone in my journalism class, I switched from journalism to PR and I found it more interesting. So I have stuck with that ever since.”

On doing commentary for House of Glory Wrestling

“It was being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people. I am friendly with JD, who does the play by play for HOG. He does a tremendous job. He asked me to come down to the show because they were trying something. It was pitched as something similar to WWE Kick-off show. I’m wearing a grey suit in the middle of August. There is no air conditioning and I am sweating through. So we did the panel, and I thought I was just going to take a seat and watch the show. What actually happened was someone asked if I would be interested in doing one of the matches. It happened to be an Impact Championship match with Austin Aires as the champion. From there it just snowballed.”

On the impact of COVID and utilizing video content:

“Weirdly March and April last year were some of my best months. I was preparing for everything to go down, the only question is by how much? People listen in the gym, but they are closed for example. I was preparing myself for the worst. I wasn’t doing a lot of video stuff until May last year. I felt like such a dinosaur, my shows were just my audio over an image. The video was such a game changer, there’s this hunger for that kind of content.”

On the time he almost died:

“It was me being a klutz. We were staying in a house and my room was outside. The door was a sliding door. I thought it was open, it was not, and the door shattered. There was this pool of blood I am bleeding heavily. We are in the middle of Columbia and I have no idea where the nearest hospital is. Eventually we make it and I’m in the waiting room and there is a pool of blood forming under the wheelchair. There was no major artery damage but there was enough blood loss that it could have been fatal. When they stitched me up, there was still glass in my knee. So when I got home, I had to have surgery to remove that. The worst thing was I had no excuse for that, it wasn’t like I was drunk.”

On his love of the 1992 Royal Rumble:

“For a whole variety of reasons, it can’t be topped. Everything about it just can’t be replicated. For the first time, the title was on the line. Then there’s the star power. The commentary is amazing too, Bobby Heenan had his best night ever during that match.”

On lessons learned from his late parents:

“I don’t think it was one particular lesson. Their main goal was to raise someone that was respectful of other people. I think the biggest thing from my mums side was if there’s something you want to do, then do it. She loved the podcast, fans would come up to her because of it. My favourite podcast episode ever was the Mother’s Day episode where she was on.”

On 3 things he is grateful for:

“My friends, the success of the show and my health.”

Jason Solomon can be found on Twitter here.

Full audio can be found here:

Video version can be found here: