Brad Williams (@funnybrad) is a stand-up comedian, actor and massive wrestling fan. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his love of comedy and wrestling and why the two work so well together, if he is taller than Hornswoggle, making jokes about wrestlers on The Jericho Cruise, his issues with Peter Dinklage, possibly wrestling a match, the viral spot between Omos and Micro Man, dressing up as Scott Steiner, and more!
Maybe you’re El Grande Americano?
“You never know. No, with this forehead, a mask couldn’t even fit over this thing. Although that would be so funny. El Grande Americano is a dwarf, but yes, this is one of the non-wrestler episodes, so no doubt, huge crash in the ratings, huge dip.”
But anybody who has been on the Jericho Cruise knows that you love wrestling?
“Yes, I’m a mark, as they say, and it’s been really cool doing the Jericho Cruise. I’m now the official comedian of the Jericho Cruise. I am the director of laughs of the Chris Jericho Rock and Wrestling Rager at Sea. I book the comedians. So if you ever see a show at the Jericho Cruise that sucks, blame me. But so far, they haven’t, because it’s been really fantastic. There’s so many comics that are really big wrestling fans, and I think it’s because comedians look at wrestling, and we get it. It’s performance art, and it’s playing an elevated version of yourself. It’s playing a character, and we can see that some wrestlers are actually good on the mic, which pisses me off so much when a wrestler is good on the mic. So I’m like, you don’t get all the skills. Nic Nemeth, he’s good. His brother Ryan is good, but in a completely different way.”
When wrestlers do comedy it works:
“What Toni Storm is doing right now in AEW is brilliant. It’s great comedy, calling people slop tarts and tits up. It’s awesome. I love it because sometimes wrestling fans get so into wrestling that it becomes this sacred cow that cannot be silly or funny or whatever. No, wrestling is supposed to be silly. Wrestling is supposed to be fun. Once we got past the 70s and 80s, where it’s hard to believe that at one point in our country, people were still like, ‘No, they’re fighting. That guy legit hates that guy, and they are legit fighting.’ Once we found out that it is predetermined, I think that opened up the world. You could have your grapplers, you could have your street fighters, but then you could also have your Orange Cassidy’s. You could have your Iguana man’s. You could have your very silly people. You could have Santino with the freaking Cobra. You can do that, and it’s silly. And we all just acknowledge because if you take away The Undertaker’s mystique, it’s silly. He’s a zombie. He throws lightning. There’s fire that he can summon, he’s got way too much eyeshadow on. He looks like a My Chemical Romance fan going through a midlife crisis. But then it’s because it’s The Undertaker, that’s like, okay, but it’s the Undertaker. I went slight Vince mode there. But wrestling is supposed to be fun. Wrestling is supposed to be silly and it’s performative. And that’s one of the reasons why I love it.”
Give me your Mount Rushmore of comedy wrestlers:
“Well, if I’m doing it, it’s more like a molehill. So Brad Williams’ Molehill Rushmore of comedy wrestlers. All right, you got to put The Rock on there. Had so many funny moments, so many. I would put Santino on there just with all the mispronunciations of everybody’s name. I would put mutual friend Chris Jericho on there, not known for being a comedic wrestler, because he’s so good at everything else. He made clicking a pen be threatening! R-Truth, for him saying that John Cena was his favorite wrestler as a child, as a childhood hero, and R-Truth is three years older than John Cena or whatever he is. It’s a basic joke, but it’s so good. I got one more. This will make a lot of people mad, but I love Orange Cassidy. He made it work, and he’s done so many good things, and I will usually laugh at some point. When he and Sting did the back and forth, and Sting said yes to it, which I found out later was improvised.
Because one thing you find out in wrestling, and it’s true in comedy too, is you have to commit fully to the bit. You cannot second-guess. You cannot be like, I’m not sure about this. I know Jericho has talked about the pen, where he would tell the wrestlers, you have to sell the pen. Think about the time when Mick Foley came out and he just got beaten up by Triple H as Mankind. And now he reveals that now he’s Cactus Jack and Triple H acts like Mick Foley just shot his brother in the ring, he just throws his hair. No, not Cactus Jack! Anything but the same guy I beat last night. Wrestling, inherently, if you break it down, it’s kind of dumb, but it’s just so much fun when you actually go for that, and you get fully into it, and you believe it, because that kind of stuff isn’t going to happen in real life. I can’t be about to fight a guy and be like, ‘You know what? You beat Brad Williams, but now you face Half Pint!'”
Is that your alter ego?
“All right, I’m not gonna lie, Half Pint was what I would always put myself as a create a wrestler. I always did half pint, and I would always give myself like Big Show move sets, just because I thought it was hilarious.”
Was your create a wrestler small?
“Of course, yes! But the problem was that they couldn’t make them small enough. I stopped playing wrestling video games at SmackDown: Here Comes the Pain. Which arguably is the best one ever. But the create a wrestler had Rey Mysterio height, and that’s the shortest it could go. I need to go lower!”
Who’s taller? You or Hornswoggle.
“All right. This is a debate which I hate saying this because I hate giving Hornswoggle any credit for anything. I feel bad saying another dwarf was funny, because it’s like we’re Highlanders. There can be only one. So Hornswoggle, I would say, is probably an inch taller than me. But because of his spinal surgeries, I think he’s back down to my level. There’s a video online of one of the greatest moments of my life, of me getting in the ring with Hornswoggle, the dream match, not a match, but the dream run-in happened on the Jericho Cruise. We stood eye to eye, which is the only person, literally, I could stand eye to eye with, and it was an awesome moment. Whenever I would go on the Jericho Cruise, people would ask me to get in the ring. I’m like, No, I’m not gonna get in the ring. These guys are trained. I’m not trained. But when Hornswoggle was booked on the Jericho Cruise, and I was on the Jericho Cruise, I’m like, okay, Chris, I know what you’re doing, and it’s working, because it’s gonna happen. We saw each other in the check-in line to go on the boat, and we immediately started chirping at each other, and we saw the crowd reaction of everyone just going, what the f*ck? Two dwarves are gonna fight? Two dwarves are gonna fight! I don’t know what happens when two dwarves fight. Do portals open up? Do rainbows fly out of the ring? Gold Coins get showered from the sky? I have no idea what happens. And we saw people really get into it. So then we had to do this thing, because, you know, people have pulled back the curtain on this podcast many times, me and Dylan are friends. I love the guy.”
At the core, comedy and wrestling have one thing in common, storytelling.
“It’s just storytelling. Yes, when you see two wrestlers fight, you haven’t been to a situation like that. You haven’t had a guy do that to you or backstab you, but you’ve had a greater theme happen that relates, like, Stone Cold and Vince. You all had a boss you hated. I doubt many of you poured cement into your boss’s Corvette, but you wanted to. So that relates. I’m a little person, not my whole crowd is in dwarves. But the stories I’m telling, they relate to, they identify with. You know, when I talk about my wife, when I talk about my kid, when I’m doing that kind of stuff, people out there have wives and kids and spouses that annoy them sometimes too.”
Do you have some ideas in your notes app for when you’re gonna roast wrestlers on the cruise this year?
“Yes, so that’s one thing I do. One thing I do every time is I roast the wrestlers. Because when else is a guy my size gonna walk up to a guy like Wardlow and make fun of him to his face. The roasting started accidentally. I didn’t know I was going to do it, and then it just became a thing, because it was me and SCU and we were all talking in the back. Frankie Kazarian and Christopher Daniels Scorpio Sky. Scorpio mentions casually, just in conversation. He’s like, ‘Yeah, I was kind of nervous coming on this boat, because I don’t know how to swim.’ I went, Okay, put that in the back. Go on stage that night for the comedy show and I talk about how Scorpio Sky can’t swim. ‘Really, you can’t swim? You could do a springboard somersault, Hurricanrana inside of a steel cage, no problem. But this move is too hard? This is too hard for you to do?’ And that got a big laugh. And when I did that, I was like, okay, so then it just became a part of it where every time I get up there. No one’s gotten mad at me directly, but guys I’ve mentioned, like, ‘Yeah, I let that one slide.’ It’s kind of their warning shot of like, Hey, that was fun. Don’t really do that again. But for the most part, the wrestlers have been amazing. They really like it. You could always make fun of The Gunns. You make any kind of Nepo baby jokes you want to them, they’re fantastic. The fact their dad still looks better than they do and he’s 30 years older, they’re awesome. I love them, they are so much fun. But then sometimes, all right, so the one when I can get a holy sh*t chant on a joke. So this one was last year. I did Will Ospreay earlier. ‘If Will Ospreay is here and not on TV, then what is Dave Meltzer jerking off to this week?’ That was fun. This was the one that got a holy sh*t chant where I said, ‘I actually stopped watching AEW for quite a while, because, let’s face it, AEW is being run by an egomaniac wrestling mark who nobody likes, and they’re all afraid to call him out on his bullsh*t. But enough about CM Punk.’ So it’s fun. If Punk were here right now, I would say that joke to his face. To me, that’s the rule, you have to be able to say it to their face, because then if you do it and they’re not there, which I did, but I would say that joke to his face, and if he had a problem with it, whatever. But it’s all in good fun.”
You also recently introduced us to Little Poppa Pump on The Jericho Cruise:
“Another crazy story. So Little Poppa Pump, it’s the last match, again, where oftentimes it just descends into chaos. Scott Steiner had been on the cruise, and he had done some podcasts, done some autograph signings, and they wanted him to do this run-in at the end. Right near when it was about to go he’s like, ‘I’m tired. I’m gonna go to bed.’ So Scott Steiner goes to bed, and now they’re like, Okay, what are we gonna do? And then Jericho texted me, ‘Where are you right now?’ Where I was last year, buddy. I’m on the side of the ring. He goes, get back here. So I run to the back, and he goes, ‘Hey, Steiner is out for the main, so we were thinking about you doing a run-in at the end.’ And I go, ‘Wait, Steiner’s out? How much time do we have?’ And he’s like, maybe 10-15 minutes. I’m like, I got this. So I run down to my room, and I don’t know why I brought this with me. I have a fan who, every time I go to a city in Ohio where he lives, he makes me art that is just soda pop tabs that put together like chain mail. He’s made me vests. He’s made me wrist things. It’s an amazing talent. It’s ridiculous. Also, I never asked for it. It’s not like I’m on stage going, if only I had a pop tab vest. No, he just brings them to me. He asked me one year, he goes, ‘Can I make anything for you? I just bring you sh*t. Is there anything you want?’ I’m a wrestling fan, so I go, ‘Oh, let’s do the Steiner chain mail.’ I sent him some photos. He’s like, Okay, I could do that. He made it for me, and I brought it on the Jericho Cruise. There was no plan. I just had it. I think I did a signing with it on, because all the wrestlers always do autograph signings. I tried to flex the whole time, but that didn’t work. That’s hard to do. But I had it with me. So I run, and I grab this chain mail armor, throw it on, get some sunglasses, take off my shirt. It’s Little Poppa Pump. And thankfully, the wrestlers were really cool. I did a step suplex and then I did What’s up headbutt as Steiner, which was just fun. But yeah, Little Poppa Pump was a character, but the fact that it was Scott Steiner that walked out and that I had the outfit, so it’s like we planned it.”
Do you have the same disdain for Peter Dinklage that Hornswoggle does?
“Yes! Yes, I do. That is where Hornswoggle and I will absolutely be on the same page. That is where the Mega Powers will collide and we will unite as a tag team over our disdain for Peter Dinklage. Now, I have disdain for Peter Dinklage for a couple of reasons. Is this a shoot? Let’s go! First of all, I have disdain for Dinklage because he’s really freaking talented. He’s really amazing. He’s a really great actor, pure jealousy. If they made a movie and called The Brad Williams Story, it would be starring Peter Dinklage. All right, let’s be honest. The guy gets everything. But the real disdain comes for the same reason why Hornswoggle doesn’t like him is that he came out and was really angry that the live-action Snow White movie was going to use real dwarf actors, and he thought that was offensive. If someone else gets work, that’s really offensive to him, and it’s not to his cultural standards of what a dwarf should do to be a respected member of this business. Now I get it, Dinklage, you went on Saturday Night Live and instructed all the writers not to make any dwarf jokes. I know you did that for a fact, because I know several writers on that show. And that’s fine. That’s your preference. He made a stand and said, I’m not going to take offensive dwarf roles, or so he thought. Because I remember Dinklage that you were in a movie called Tiptoes. And Tiptoes is the most offensive movie to little people ever made. This is where in the podcast you will run the preview for Tiptoes, because it looks like a Saturday Night Live sketch. When you watch it, you’re like there’s no way that’s real. Now, you’re like, Tiptoes is probably a nothing movie. Nobody’s in it, right? Wrong! It stars Matthew McConaughey, Kate Beckinsale Patricia Arquette, Peter Dinklage, and in the role of a lifetime, which the narrator says in the preview, he goes, …And in the role of a lifetime, Gary Oldman.’ Because Gary Oldman plays a dwarf. Now you’re thinking, okay, yeah, you were like, they probably did some CGI stuff, right? Nope. They got Gary on his knees, put some shoes down there. They tied his arms back so his arms would be shorter. Doesn’t look like a little person at all, and he’s a dwarf in the film. Yeah, it’s the most offensive movie to little people ever made. Dinklage has an accent in the movie, which doesn’t make any sense because it switches three times throughout. It starts off, he’s like, ‘I’m from Brussels…’ and it’s like French. And later, I don’t know what it is, it just changes. There’s a fight scene between Gary Oldman as a dwarf and a guy who’s having sex with his girlfriend. His girlfriend in the film is played by Bridget The Midget, the porn star. Yep, she’s in that movie as well. It’s bonkers, they ignore all laws of genetics, and the movie is horrible. And Dinklage has been in that film. So my point is, you can’t be in Tiptoes, the worst movie, also shout out to David Alan Greer, who’s in the film. You can’t be in Tiptoes, the most offensive movie little people ever made, and then come out and try to take work from dwarf actors and say you can’t play the role of a dwarf because it’s considered offensive to you. That’s where me and Hornswoggle agreed.”
Would you have liked to have been a dwarf?
“Yes, literally the role I was born to play, genetically. I would have loved to. I don’t care which one, happy, sleepy, dopey, I’ll be grumpy. I don’t care. By the way, one of the funnier things is whenever I’m out in public and someone is wearing a grumpy t-shirt and they see me, they’re like, Ah, f*ck! That is one of the funnier things that I’ve experienced.”
Has anyone pitched for you to be in a full-on wrestling match?
“I have been in one. Not for any of the major companies. There was a fayre, and they had wrestling at the fayre, and they needed some wrestlers, and they called up a wrestling school where I had taken literally one lesson back in my early 20s. I thought, maybe I’ll give this a shot. I took one lesson, after the one lesson I was like, this hurts. No, I’m out. So respect to everyone who does it. But they called up this wrestling school. ‘Hey, we need some wrestlers, also one of our minis couldn’t make it. Do you guys have a mini?’ That’s code for little guy. They go, yeah, we got one. I had taken one lesson, one lesson! I show up to the fayre pretty much dressed like John Cena, I think I had jorts. They go, this is your opponent, the crazy clown is the guy I’m facing, and he doesn’t speak English, so we have to go back and forth with a translator, and he’s a pro. He’s like, ‘What can you do?’ And I go, nothing! So he’s like, okay, so he plans out a match. I did get a really nasty bump during the match, though, because I was like, let’s do a dive to the outside and I’ll dive, and he’s like I’ll catch you. I dove, he caught me, but then adrenaline, I dove too far, and moved back, caught me, and then took two more steps back, fell, and then my head on the railing, bam. I had a lump. This is a big head. I don’t need it to be any bigger. I won the match on a sunset flip, undefeated, pulled off a hurricanrana during the match. That was fun. But if anyone wants me to get into the ring again. Oh, okay. But the thing is, is I have so much respect for the business. I just watched the WWE Unreal, and they talked about when Jelly Roll was gonna do his match, and shout out to Jelly Roll, friend of mine, good guy, big fan of comedy. He took it seriously, and that’s what I would want to do. If I’m going to do anything now, I’m going to take it seriously. I’ll do a run-in, sure. Run-ins are fun. But if anyone ever wants me to actually go, if you want me and Swoggle to go, all right, I gotta do some training.”
What about you and Omos? Did you see that moment with Omos and Microman?
“That would have to be me, Swoggle, there’s another dwarf wrestler, I think he just retired, but his name is Short Sleeve Samson. We’d have to get all of us in there. We’d have to get dink, mink, pink, stink, all of them. They’d have to all come back, and we’d have to all form up and like a Voltron or like a Power Rangers and like fight him. That’s madness, man. But I would. My phone is open. I love doing things in this business that scare me. I love doing things that I enjoy. So it’s like, if someone wants me to do a wrestling thing, I’ll do a wrestling thing, but I’m not doing the county fayre show again. It’s gonna have to be something where it’s like, I have to tell my wife, like, Hey, I’m gonna go get myself in danger and beat up a little bit.”
What is Brad Williams grateful for?
“The lack of gatekeepers in this space, to anyone who buys a ticket to see live comedy, and that I get along with my family.”
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