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Peter Rosenberg (@RosenbergRadio) is a broadcaster and WWE panelist. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Indianapolis, IN to discuss his journey from ESPN to WWE, previously interviewing Vince McMahon about getting a job at WWE, why Bobby Heenan is his number one manager in wrestling, if Randy Savage is the GOAT, who could be John Cena’s final opponent, his hip hop Mount Rushmore, and more!
On his first wrestling interview:
“I was still in DC, hustling and radio in 2005 ish, and I had a show at a talk station. Howard Stern was on in the morning, and I was doing nights, then eventually I got mid-days, and they said can we bring wrestling people to your show? They asked me if I wanted to interview Taz and Michael Cole, who were the voices of SmackDown. At that time, I’m not watching wrestling. I know who they both are, but I’m just not really in anymore. […] During the Attitude Era, I started college in 97, so there were kids on my hall who were watching the Monday Night Wars. I would peek in, and I still felt a connection to it, but I was just so into my hip hop stuff at that point, all I was thinking about was interviewing artists, getting the new records, doing my college radio show, being outside. So I was always tangentially aware, but not involved. So when 05 comes, at that point, I’m fully lapsed. So Taz and Cole came on my show, and I remember it being a somewhat contentious interview. This was the Michael Cole era. If you go back and watch Cole stuff in 03, 04, 05, when him and Taz had a lot of edge, particularly when they were not doing SmackDown. That is the Cole I got when he came to the ring. He was ready to go. And they were dealing with an era when people were kind of to your point, not really giving them proper interviews.”
On the Ruthless Aggression Era:
“You watch a random episode of SmackDown or Raw from that era, and segment by segment, the people you’re seeing are just like wait, hold on, it’s young Randy Orton that they’re cutting to a backstage. Then it’s Hogan. Everyone’s there together at one time. I think one day we’ll see memes online like, did you know there was a time when this happened. So it is an iconic era in that way.”
On competition in wrestling:
“Listen, every show is not going to be the greatest show of all time, but the PLEs are these days really, really good. I would say the same thing about AEW, week to week, you can have your complaints, but when the pay-per-views come around, I mean, you might have to take NoDoz to complete it, but it’s filled with matches that you’re like, Well, I want to wake up the next day and watch the rest. I want to see all of these matches. So you have two companies both doing really great Premium Live Events. It’s a pretty glorious time. I didn’t think we’d ever have competition again. So the fact that there’s now, and I understand competition is a whatever word, because WWE is just in a different stratosphere, cool, but that’s not how I think about things. I think about competition, just in what it means for those of us who earn a salary in wrestling, and if you earn a salary in wrestling, another company that puts on a good product, existing is awesome.
On interviewing Vince McMahon and asking for a job:
WNo, [it didn’t help me get a job], not whatsoever. It was a really interesting lesson, because I love that clip, and every once in a while, it’ll go a little bit viral, because it’s like a cool moment to see someone kind of shooting their shot and then look where they are now. Totally inspirational to even myself to see, it reminds me of stuff. But at the same time, the real behind-the-scenes was I took it seriously, and this shows how different the company was then. I tried to reach out to different people to make it happen at that time. I don’t even remember exactly who shot me down, but someone was very matter-of-fact, do not do that, don’t show up here.”
You showed up?
“No, I was going to and then when I reached out to someone who I either was connected to or found a way to, was very much like, no, don’t do that. And it’s interesting. Who knows what would have happened had I shown up one day to Titan Towers and said, ‘No, Vince McMahon asked me to come up here. Can someone at least ask him?’ Who knows? Because he is a grab-the-brass-ring kind of guy, and that was me shooting my shot. I just thought at the time, when am I ever getting a chance to talk to Vince McMahon? It happened one other time. I interviewed him two times, very briefly at events in New York. So, no, it did not lead to that at all. It came. The opportunities came because of other great people years later.”
On how he got the job with WWE:
“I just celebrated 10 years at ESPN. So 2015 16, ish, whenever. Jonathan Coachman started, he brought back doing those SportsCenter off-the-ropes segments where he started leaning back into his wrestling thing, and as I understand it, kind of convinced ESPN, who at that time were kind of wrestling averse, but convinced people hey, there’s something here. Let’s start covering the big events. So Coach started doing that. Coach and I did a radio show together. I don’t know if we did a whole show together, though I think we may have. And at this point in time, they were kind of figuring out where they were gonna put me. I was sort of hot at the moment, and they were like, We really like him, Where’s he gonna go? And I was doing different things locally in New York. I was just doing different things, Coach and I ended up meeting. He knew what a wrestling fan I was. We immediately hit it off and talked wrestling. So when he went to go to Sports Center at WrestleMania, I believe in New Orleans at that time, he says to me, cuz I’m already there at that point, I’m already going to Mania every year. I’m doing Cheap Heat live. I’m doing all my indie wrestling stuff on my own podcast interviews. I have a relationship with the company where they’re giving me talent. I was also one of the first people, Sam [Roberts] and I were on radio row in those very early days. Radio Row was much smaller and Busted Open would be there. It was very early days. Now it looks that way, at least. So Coach says, ‘If you want to come with me, I’ll get you a pass. You can just come with me to all the WrestleMania stuff.’ And I was like, okay, that’s awesome. So he got me one of the passes for the weekend, and I just kind of tagged along. So I went to the Hall of Fame with him. They did stuff there. I did a couple of segments with him on the desk. I don’t even know if it ever got used. I know me and him interviewed Snoop Dogg. So I’m doing ESPN stuff, and at one point on at WrestleMania, I’m standing off to the side watching him do a SportsCenter break, and a guy strikes up a conversation with me, his name was Chris Chambers. Chambers just starts asking me about what I do. I’m like, ‘Well, I do Hot 97 in the morning, and now I’m at ESPN, but I’ve really love doing wrestling, and I would love to do WWE, is kind of my dream, blah blah blah…’ I definitely had said this before, but Chris Chambers, anyone who’s watching from the company knows how important he is. Chambers was a big deal at this company. He is one of the quietest, kept most important TV guys we had, just like you have Adam Panucci. There are these characters in WWE who don’t get the big [recognition]. Everyone knew Kevin Dunn, but there are obviously other people who were really important. And Chambers came from Sports TV, had a really great eye for stuff. Famously, or at least famously to me, came up with the scratch design of the WWF Attitude logo. He’s the man.
So he’s looking at me, and for the first time, it clicked for him like I always hoped it would. He’s like, ‘Wait, you’re on Hot 97 and you’re on ESPN, and you want to be with us? You should give me a call.’ He just sort of was like, seems like a reasonable thing to do. I hit him up the next couple of weeks, didn’t hear back from him. I waited like a month. Hit him up again. He’s like, ‘My bad, swamped post WrestleMania. Let’s set a call. ‘Then we set a call, and he’s like, ‘What do you think about joining our kickoff shows?’ He’s got two things for me. They’re thinking about doing a thing on kickoff shows where we bring in someone to be like a guest analyst. Meanwhile, Sam is having a separate conversation about the same thing through Michael Cole. I don’t speak for Sam, but I’m pretty sure through Cole. So Chambers says I want to talk about that. And we also have a show idea for you to maybe host, which turned out to be the show, Bring it to the Table, which we did for a season, me Graves and JBL, which was a ball. When I go back and watch it every once in a while, now it still exists, I think it’s up on Peacock. It was a pretty cool show that we did. We were straddling the line, but within WWE programming, it was cool stuff. And he said, ‘So what do you think about coming and doing that?’ I was like Yeah, dude, and that was it. I was a Chris Chambers guy, and then Chambers moved on and was doing different stuff, and then retired from the company in the last couple years, and plays a lot of golf in Florida now. But shout out to Chris Chambers. He’s my dude. And shout out to Coach, because without Coach asking me to come along for that journey, yeah, I never would have ended up here.”
On Bobby Heenan being his number one manager:
Y”es, he is. I say that like feeling Paul Heyman’s eyes glaring at me. But Paul is something different altogether. It’s not quite fair to Bobby to put Paul in the same category. Paul has become this thing that is so much bigger than manager. I mean, he’s not a manager, he’s an Oracle, he’s an Advocate, he’s a Wise Man. He’s all those things. But he specifically chose I’m going to be bigger than manager, which he is. Obviously, behind the scenes in every way and ECW, his legacy is just unmatched. But as far as managers go, oh yeah, it’s Bobby number one with a bullet. I mean, Jimmy is incredible too, by the way, and I absolutely adore Jimmy Hart, who sometimes can end up in the shadow when we have these conversations. But Jimmy was such a heat magnet also, and did so many things well. So I love Jimmy, but yeah, for me, Bobby was my guy. Before he passed, I got a moment at WrestleCon to pour my heart out to him. He wasn’t communicative at the time. So I don’t know, you know, I know he received it, because I know that for him, his issue at that time was he just couldn’t communicate back. Obviously, his brain was fully intact. But I got a moment, and it was when I just started with the company to go up to him and just thank him for everything and tell him how much he affected my entire journey and how great that I thought that he was, and I ended up writing his obituary for ESPN.com. I just adored him. I didn’t know him, and I’m sure he was a handful in a million different ways. It certainly seems that way from a distance. But yeah, he was the man, dude, the talent put in that frame, he could have done so many things.”
On his favourite wrestler:
“So this is a battle in my heart, no pun intended, because the first two wrestlers that I essentially fell in love with were Bret and Savage. Bret was the first wrestler who without any understanding of why he was good. I just knew he was good. That’s how good Bret was as a wrestler that, like, as an eight, nine-year-old, I was like, I don’t even know what makes a good wrestler, but everything he does looks awesome. The pink and black was awesome.”
On Randy Savage:
“Savage to me, in some ways, I think gets left out of the GOAT conversation too often. I think Savage was just brilliant. From the second he arrived in WWF, because obviously I hadn’t seen him prior to that, to me, he was brand new when he got there. From the second he got there, immediate impact, like just grabbed everyone’s attention, everyone hated him, and then everyone loved him. When you go back, what makes Macho Man the perfect wrestler was that good guy, I give him 100 as a good guy, as a baby face, awesome. As a heel, clearly 100, there’s maybe nobody better. He was so easy to hate from a wrestling style standpoint, big guy, little guy. Put him in the ring with Ricky Steamboat, who’s not a little guy, but on the smaller side relative to the biggest guys, him and Steamboat have an absolute classic. Put him in the ring with Andre, you know, no problem, gold. You could put him in with anyone and everyone looks good. In the ring, to me, he’s perfect. On the mic, obviously, I wouldn’t give him 100 on the mic, because when you look back as funny and, you know, animated as the promos are, I guess they didn’t always make a lot of sense. But when he was locked in and trying to deliver a message, completely there.”
On when the modern day resurgence in wrestling began:
“It feels like the pinnacle of it all hitting, there was a combination of Roman and Paul coming together and the bloodline being born as a storyline. I’m gonna give it a combo of three things. That story, the return of Cody Rhodes, and Nick Khan truly taking the place that he’s taken, because you can’t remove, as company shill as that sounds like, you can’t remove the business moves that have now been made over the last several years in talking about why this thing is the hottest it’s ever been. Because we’re here right now in Indy, and I get to work for ESPN here and WWE this weekend. That is Nick Khan. I don’t think there’s another person to point to as to why you have the biggest sports broadcast agent in the world coming over to WWE with every relationship that he’s already built. So all of those things factor in. But Roman becoming Roman Reigns because that’s the truth. The truth is the second that camera panned over and we saw Paul Heyman, and this is what makes wrestling the greatest art form on planet Earth, is that the second that camera pans over to Paul Heyman, all of a sudden, Roman Reigns is different.”
On who could be John Cena’s final opponent:
“Because we’ve talked about all the people who make sense, and a name that just hasn’t gotten mentioned very much, it’s super unlikely, and I’m probably reaching here, but when you think about what they represented a certain time, the last Saturday Night’s Main Event happens to be in DC, if you hear this [plays Batista’s theme].”
I believe Batista when he says he’s retired:
“So I think you’re right, and I think he meant that, and I respect that. I personally as a fan, and who cares what we think, it’s about what he wants in his life. But I’m selfish, and I’m a fan. I’m not satisfied with the editing. I would love to see Batista one more time. I think there’s more. I just think there’s one more story to be told.”
On his hip hop Mount Rushmore:
“So do I start with like a true, true old school, literally, Grand Master Kaz or Curtis Blow? Llike a true early days, if they don’t start, maybe nothing ever happens. I think you probably can’t do that, because there’s so many greats that have come later, right? So I think then you put position one Rakim, and Rakim is by no means the first, but he is the one who truly took it to a next level for the first time. And by the way, there are other arguments to be had there, and I recognize them. We could have it with Run DMC or [Big Daddy] Kane, or there are a lot of people there. Yeah. I feel comfortable putting Rakim in one seat.”
What is Peter Rosenberg grateful for:
“My daughter, my wife and to God.”
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