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Maven (@mavenhuffman) is a YouTuber and retired professional wrestler best known for his time in WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at INSIGHT Live in Las Vegas to discuss the success of his YouTube channel, getting ribbed by Fit Finlay, if there are any plans for a 1 million subscribers celebration, whether he is still in the 2002 Royal Rumble, taking a bump on thumbtacks, who was the worst guest on his YouTube channel, possibly coming out of retirement to wrestle Chris Sharp, answering questions from the audience, and more!

Can we settle this once and for all? Are you still in the 2002 Royal Rumble?

“Evidently. I’ve always been under the impression that that was a mistake, and that once the WWE, once the top brass, once management found out, oh gosh, Maven was not officially eliminated. Their answer was to have me face Jericho the following week. Happy accident, it worked out. It’s something that I still get asked to this day. Yes, I’m still in the damn Royal Rumble. I ain’t gonna win, though.”

At what point throughout the day, 2002 Royal Rumble, did it go from, ‘They’re pranking me, there’s no way I’m actually eliminating Undertaker, that’s funny’, to ‘Oh, they’re serious about this!’

“I think when I saw the seriousness on Taker’s face. He’s walking me through and spoon-feeding me what I’m gonna have to do to find success for that night, and then I’m like, holy cow, the way The Undertaker and the way Shane McMahon are reacting, no one’s going to remember Hunter wins this Rumble. People are only going to remember this spot if we pull it off. But then that became a big if. Because what happens if I miss that drop kick? Taker and I aren’t starting a wrestling match. My whole career revolved around hitting that one drop kick. And I’m glad that I was in there with Taker. I probably bugged him like a little lost puppy looking for a belly rub the entire day. My career was made from one man and one drop kick.”

Can you put into words how much YouTube has changed your life and your career?

“I promise, not more than you love you guys. Here’s why. I get emotional about this. Years ago, five years ago, I was getting up every morning at 6 am, rushing to take my dogs out, getting on a 6:36 train, two hours to work, working all day, two hours to get home, getting home at 7:30. I knew I had something, but I just didn’t know how to get that something out. When we started the YouTube channel, there were no promises. Zach didn’t he didn’t tell me, ‘Yeah, this is going to be X amount and we’re going to make X amount of dollars, or this is going to get this many views.’ He just said, ‘Let’s take a chance.’ And now man, I don’t do a damn thing during the day I don’t want to do now, and that is because of you guys. Thank you. I don’t know if I deserve it, but I’ll damn take it.” 

How many times did you get color in your career? How many of them were you giving yourself color? How many was you getting color the hard way? 

“Well, the match I had with Undertaker, the hardcore match. I got hard wayed. True story, he hits me, or something happens with a trash can lid and it cuts the top of my head, and I’m laying on the ground on SmackDown, looking up at Undertaker, and he’s so good, he looks down at me, and he’s in character, and he’s like, ‘That’s what you get!’ I’m like, What did I do wrong? Because I’m bleeding, we didn’t call for it, but, gosh, they had me get in color in OVW on week 2, just wrestling, yeah, you gotta love it. I can’t give you how many times, I just know that every time I had to get color, I remember thinking it wasn’t as bad afterwards as I thought it was going to be going into it. Adrenaline takes over and you really don’t feel it, as weird as that sounds.”

You shared a video of the most painful moment in the ring was this match with Viscera. What was so painful about this?

“Might have been a little prideful pain. Yeah, big Vis, he was just a good dude. Does anybody know offhand how much viscera weighed? He’s 500, he’s a quarter ton. And when he sits down on your chest, it hurts. Again, wrestling culture, if you can rib someone, you’re gonna do it. I think he was ribbing me a tiny bit that night. He was Yoko-ing me a little bit that night.”

Do you feel like because of the way you came in? You’re the guy on the MTV show. You win Tough Enough. Is it just ribs for the first six months? Is it ribs for the first year? You have to win over the boys?

“Here’s what I think it was. I think it was, we’re going to see if we can run you out. We’re going to find out. Do you love the business, do you respect the business, or are you going to easily be ran out of the business? Because wrestling is tough. It’s hard to be on the road, it’s hard to be in pain, it’s hard to be away from your family, and if you don’t have just something on the inside that makes you be able to be okay with living uncomfortable, be okay with pain, you’re not gonna last. It’s just the WWE’s way and wrestlers’ way of just mixing out the people that think they want to be there, as opposed to the people who truly want to make a go of it. There were countless, muscled-up guys that would come in, roided out freaks, look phenomenal, that thought they wanted to wrestle, and they would put them in the ring. You find out really quickly, when someone’s in there for six minutes, you’re making them just move, then they’re gasping for air, you find out really quickly who wants to wrestle and who doesn’t.” 

So after winning Tough Enough, what’s the match where you felt like, I finally feel like a wrestler.

“It was years. It wasn’t immediate. I did a couple of house shows, a couple of weeks of house shows with Bob Holly. I did three weeks, Orton did eight, and after every match with Bob, he’s back behind the curtain waiting for me to bitch, and every time I went back there, I said] ‘Thank you. Is there anything I can do better?’ That’s the way to get the respect of the boys. Because I have no doubt in my mind, they sent him out, ‘See what the kid’s got.’ And if you complain, that’s not the job for you. If you can get through Bob Holly, okay, that’s one rung of the ladder that you’ve climbed. That’s one step of just not being the Tough Enough kid. Okay, maybe that was when I saw okay, I belong.”

You taking the thumbtacks is your most viewed video. It has almost 6 million views. I gotta ask you, you took the thumbtack bump at the end of the video. Why’d you do it with a shirt on? 

“You want the honest answer? Because I’m about 15 years too old to be going on a bunch of cycles to be taking my shirt off for anybody anymore. But I knew, and when we were talking about the thumbtacks, Zach said it kind of as a joke. He was like, ‘Yeah, the video would just do better if you took the thumbtack bump.’ I said, ‘Well, if you can find a ring, I’ll do it.’ I’m thinking there’s no way he’s gonna find a ring. 30 minutes later, text me, I got a ring. I got people that are gonna let us do it. And at that point, I’m like, sh*t. But that’s another one that it wasn’t as bad as I [thought]. I built it up into my head. I mean, it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was gonna be.” 

How did the thumbtacks compare to the staple in the head? You took a staple gun right to the forehead:

“The thumbtacks hurt worse in the shower later that night, because I went back to our Airbnb, I took a thing of alcohol in my shower, and I dumped it down the back, my back, and I felt every thumbtack. Whereas the staple was just [once]. So the thumbtacks hurt worse later.”

So since you asked me who my worst guest was, and I said it was MJF. I gotta ask you, Maven, who’s the worst guest that you’ve had on the channel? 

“All right, the word worse isn’t what I mean here. We did a video with Enzo, it was a great video. We actually filmed the video with Enzo the same day we did the video with Justin Credible. So, yeah, we started our day off with Enzo, then drove two hours, met with Justin, did the video with him, and then was done. By the time we got back from filming with Justin, at the end of the night, I’m dropping Zach off at the Airbnb, just a long day, tired, but still better than getting up at six and getting on a train, I’ll still take it over that. I get a text from Enzo, and he asks, ‘Hey, man, remember when we were talking about this? Can we not put it in the video?’ It just sucked, because we’re not going to do half of anything. Zach and I talked, and we were just like, if we can’t, it’s the one thing people would have wanted in the video, and to not add that we chose not to put the video out. I would have loved to have put the video with Enzo out. That video is sitting in our vault doing nothing, and it’s all because of a text. His text wasn’t sure. I mean, it was substantial, giving reasons as to why he didn’t want it out. He even put something in there, like, legally, and I don’t want to have to go the legal route. It wasn’t worth it. I wanted the Enzo video out, but at the end of the day, if he didn’t want it out, that’s not the hill I’m dying on.”

What is Maven grateful for?

“The fans, opportunity and family.”

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