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JD McDonagh On His CRAZY Injury, Judgement Day, Finn Balor, RKO Off The Cage, Tag Team Titles

in LATEST EPISODES on March 13, 2025 March 13, 2025

JD McDonagh (@jd_mcdonagh) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet to discuss the scary bump he took on Raw, how he was able to finish the match and the injuries he sustained, his recovery and when he hopes to return to the ring, how he went from wrestling in Ireland to signing with WWE, joining The Judgment Day, becoming Tag Team Champion with his mentor Finn Balor, taking an RKO from the top of the cage at Survivor Series WarGames 2023 and more!

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On how he is feeling right now:

“Time heals all. I wasn’t like this the first week or two after but I’m feeling a lot better now. [I’m feeling] pretty good. My lungs are good. My ribs are good. I’m just kind of waiting for the bones to knit back together before they clear me.”

On the scary announce table landing:

“I guess it was in the planning stage really. I needed to be on that side of the ring for something that was going to come up later on. So I said, I’ll just do it on the announce table side. I’ve done it on that side before, but whatever happened on this one, I just was maybe a foot too far forward or a foot too far back and wiped out.”

On his immediate thoughts after the accident:

“In that moment I was just thinking, when’s the next breath gonna come? I knew that I didn’t hit my head that hard, because I knew I’d missed a spot in the match and I knew what was coming up next. So I knew I wasn’t unconscious or anything like that, and then I don’t know, it was like an out-of-body experience, listening to Michael Cole with the concern in his voice. I’ve heard him all through the years being like we got to get a medic down here, and then all of a sudden you’re lying at his feet and he’s saying it about you.”

On getting back into the match:

“Everything goes really slow in moments like that. I wasn’t thinking I gotta get through this match. It was just okay, what’s next? Can I do that? Let’s do it. So I wiggled my fingers and toes and I was like, okay, I can do that. I got a breath back. I can probably stand up. So I stood up and got back in there.”

On if he knew how bad the injury was at that point:

“I thought it was maybe cracked ribs. I could feel my ribs on this side were like rice krispies under my skin, they’re definitely messed up. I couldn’t get a full lung full of air but I just thought that was because I was winded from hitting the table. Then the adrenaline kicked in and I was okay, I can do this. I can get back in there and do my part in the match. I didn’t want to leave the guys, especially because it was one of the first few weeks that we were on Netflix. Everyone’s excited about it, huge audience watching you for the Tag Team Titles, War Raiders’ first defense, yeah, I didn’t want to [quit]. If I can stand up and keep participating, then I’m gonna.”

On not wanting to quit the match:

“The thought of stopping didn’t even enter my mind. The referee came down, and he asked me what city we were in and what date it was. I told him that I’m okay and I told him where we were and what we were doing. I said, ‘Tell Dom that I’m okay and I just need a minute.’ He passed the message on, and then the ref actually got a lot of heat for it online, Shawn Bennett. But as far as him doing his job he can only do or relay the message of what I’m telling them and I told him I was good to go. One of the WWE docs came out in the ad break. She checked me over, and I knew if she touched my ribs she wouldn’t let me back in there. So she’d thankfully asked me about my head and my neck rather than my ribs. And there was a spot coming up in the match where I was needed so I was like, I gotta go.”

On what was going through his mind when he got back in the match:

“Just what’s the next thing? Okay, it’s a big back body drop. Not ideal. But the one thing that I did change in the match, and Dom is going to kill me for telling this story. The finishing stretch that we talked about. I said it would be cool if we could do 619, you tag me in, I’ll do a 450, I’ll bounce off and I’ll tag you in, you hit the Frog Splash. It’ll be like our super finisher. We’re super late in the match now so I have no energy left whatsoever, no air left. I tried to say to him, ‘I can’t do the 450.’ He didn’t hear me. He’s taken off for the 619 Please, God, just let him go up for the Frog Splash. He hit the 619 he runs across to me no, no! He tagged me in. So the one modification I made was I knew I’d really hurt myself if I did the 450 and I’ve done that moonsalt probably 10,000 times, and I knew I could kind of protect myself a little. And Ivar is a big guy, big landing pad. So I thought this is gonna be the last big move that I do. I’ll make it a good one, and get out of here.”

On after the match:

“So we got back behind, not even to the curtain. I had my arms over Dom and Carlito coming up the aisle way, and that was really hurting me. But I couldn’t take my hands off them or I would have fallen down. I didn’t want to fall down in Gorilla because there was loads of people waiting to go out to the next match, and you don’t want to sell for anybody in the office. So I just lay down on the other side of the curtain, thinking that I was out of the eyeline of people, but I was in view of the fans. They caught a photo of my feet sticking out into the entrance way they said JD has just collapsed backstage. But I just had to lie down and catch my breath. It wasn’t a full collapse.”

On the possibility it could have been his last match:

“No, I don’t [think about that] because I understand the risks that we take being a wrestler. I’ve been doing this for 22 years now, 23 years in September. So I know. I have seen people wiping out and losing their careers. I know that’s something that you gamble with every time you go through the curtain, but if you were thinking about it often, I think you’d psych yourself out.”

On his current road to recovery:

“I’ve been in the gym. I was doing skipping and really low impact cardio for a couple of weeks, and now I’ve kind of progressed in doing Pilates and other non-impactful. So I haven’t taken a bump yet. That’ll be the next step. Get back in the ring, hit the ropes. See if that hurts. Take a bump. See if that hurts.”

On when he hopes to be back:

“I’d love to be back yesterday. I’m so bored sitting at home watching the guys traveling around, I’m so jealous. They’re going to Europe this week. They’re doing Madison Square Garden on Monday, and then jetting off to Europe. So if I could be back, I’d be back right now. Hopefully, I’m going to put a time frame on it and say within a month I hope to be back, that’s what I’m working towards. So whether that happens or not, whether the WWE docs align, that we’ll see.”

On how he became a part of Judgment Day:

“I was just told when I came up to the main roster we’re gonna have you brush off Judgment Day, and that’ll be the way that we introduce you, and we’ll see what way the fans take it. There was the link there between me and Finn that we could work with, but I don’t think there was [a plan of] we’re bringing JD from NXT, and we’ve got this spot in Judgment Day for him. I think it was just kind of that was the in for me. I had good chemistry with most of the group, all of the group really, to be honest, and it just seemed like a good fit. And I ended up getting inducted by Priest.”

On the European wrestling style:

“I think we focus more on the actual mechanics of wrestling and manipulating body parts and we all know what it’s like to be in a real fight and to move somebody around. I had never cut a promo in my first 10-12 years of wrestling. I was just a guy on the card, just in one-off, individual singles matches. I didn’t need to learn how to tell a story until I was doing LGT in my 13th, 14th year of wrestling. I didn’t need to. It was just about having a wrestling match, an exhibition. That’s just the style of wrestling, certainly in Ireland and probably across the UK and Europe as well. There was less showmanship.”

On if WWE may have not been possible:

“Definitely, yeah. WWE was always the dream end goal. But I wanted to finance my life through wrestling. I didn’t want to ever get a real job, whatever form that took. I finally get my break and it all came through just sticking to the plan. Just keep on going. Keep on trying to have the best match on the card. See where it takes you. I don’t think too far ahead.”

On getting to WWE:

“So NXT UK opened up in late 2016 and we had the UK tournament in January 2017. In my WWE debut I split Danny Burch’s head open at the finish. I gave him a super kick and he fell and hit his head off the canvas. Bust himself open, and I was pulling him out. We were just about to go to the finish. I pulled him out by the ankle and the ref saw the pool of blood, and I saw the pool of blood, and the ref goes stay down or pin him. This is the finish, you gotta go home. I said, Okay, stay down. And I pinned him as hard as I could. And the ref goes, one, two, and he kicked out, and the ref counted three. The place booed, was the worst possible debut that you’ve ever seen. I came backstage, I was like, Oh my God I’m never gonna wrestle here again, waited all my life for this. But yeah, it is always worse in your own head. Danny was super cool about it. Everybody else was super cool about it. We moved on.”

On what happened next:

“I just moved up through the ranks of everywhere I’ve been. I came in NXT UK with that start, and I was like okay I gotta prove myself now that I’m not this heavy-handed, clumsy guy. I gotta put together a body of work here that people will take notice of. Then I kind of worked my way up through the ranks of NXT UK, until I was doing my events with Ilja Dragunov for the UK title. Then the opportunity to go over to America, I won the Cruiserweight title a week after NXT TakeOver Blackpool, I had a really good one with Tyler Bate. I remember off the back of that loss, that was the match that they decided we can do something with this guy. They brought me over to Houston for Worlds Collide, and I won the Cruiserweight title. That was January 2020, and my career was about to take off. And then COVID happened, and I was sidelined for about nine months.”

On winning the Tag Team Championships with Finn Balor:

“I said to you earlier WWE was the goal. But if you had to put a gun to my head when I was 14 years old and said, What’s your ultimate fantasy dream in wrestling? I would have said, win the Tag Titles with Finn. Honestly, so I looked up to him a lot because obviously the age difference. He’s 9-10 years older than me, and he’s lit the way for me in a lot of ways, showing me that it is possible. I felt kind of for a long time I was chasing him, trying to catch up to him. He did Japan, so I did Japan a few years later. He made it to America, and it took me a little while but I made it to America, and then for it all to kind of culminate with being his partner and lifting the Tag Team Titles together. It was super hard for me. I feel like, if I talk about it for too long, I’ll get emotional. It was so, so fulfilling and such a full circle moment for me on him training me. He felt the same way about it.”

On the RKO from the top of the WarGames cage:

“Yeah, that was my idea. My first idea was I was going to moonsault off the cage and they said, No you can’t do that. Charlotte’s gonna do that. I said, Okay, well then in that case, I have a slightly more dangerous suggestion. I said super RKO, and they asked do you think you can do it safely? I’d have to eyeball it. I’d have to get up there onto the cage and see the height and see, but I reckon I could. When we were coming through, when I was 12 or 13, you’re just a kid, you learn how to bump and hit a crash mat or whatever. We used to have a game where we would try and jump from ascending heights and put our hands behind our back and just take the flat crash mat. So you’d start standing, might go to the bottom rope, the second rope, the top rope, we’d be like pushing each other and daring each other to go higher and higher. At the end of it, I was jumping off a ladder in the ring onto the crash mat on the floor, and hooking my hands behind my back. So honestly, it felt like that when I was up there on the cage just about to do it, and Randy’s walking over. He’s eyeing me up and stuff. I thought about all those bumps that I took, I was okay. Just do it like that. Just put your hands behind your back and leave your head out there for something for him to grab and, yeah, thank God it came off great.”

On if Randy Orton knew it could be done safely:

“We got a crash mat out the night before. I hate blowing up the secrets in wrestling but we got a crash night out, he stood at the end of it, I got up on the cage and just jumped off. He eyeballed and he goes, I got you. I bet you do. All right, let’s do it tomorrow. The lights are on.”

On changing his name:

“They’re not too happy with you having your birth name as your wrestling. I kept it as close to home as possible. McDonagh is my mother’s maiden name, and then JD is Jordan Devlin.”

On if R-Truth has made him break character:

“He’s come close, especially on the live events. I’ll try and keep it together as much as I can on camera. I’m better than Priest at it. Priest was cracking up every single week.”

On how his lung was repaired:

“So they take a tube that’s about the diameter of your little finger, they poke a hole in between your ribs, and they stab it into your chest cavity, because the lung had come away from the chest cavity and collapsed, they need to suck all the blood and air that’s leaking from your lung in your chest cavity out so that your lung can expand and stick back to the wall of your chest. So I was on this suction pump pulling all the blood and air out for a day, obviously shallow breaths, like half lung fulls, and then they change it to a different machine with a lower form of suction, so there’s less suction, helping my lungs stay inflated. They’re saying if it would stay up. Did that for another day, and then they took me off the machine, took the tubes out, and my lungs stayed inflated and stayed stuck to my chest cavity. So they let me go home [from hospital]. I was blessed by the way. We were in Atlanta, Georgia, the next state up from Florida. If I had been in Colorado, I’d still be driving home because I couldn’t fly. My lung would have popped.”

What is JD McDonagh grateful for?

“That I stuck it out, my parents and my wife.”

Scott Steiner On Steiner Math, Bron Breakker, “He’s Fat” Promo, Big Poppa Pump, Hall Of Fame

in LATEST EPISODES on March 11, 2025 March 11, 2025

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Scott Steiner (@ScottSteiner) is a retired professional wrestler and WWE Hall of Famer. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet to discuss his careers in WWE, WCW and TNA, his insane body transformation when he embarked on his solo career, the inspiration for Big Poppa Pump and his signature chainmail, his iconic Steiner Math and “He’s Fat” promos in TNA, if Bron Breakker was ever going to use the Steiner name, a foot injury he is still dealing with to this day, his son signing a WWE NIL deal and more!

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On his son being signed to a WWE NIL deal:

“That came about because they saw it on ESPN, he had two games. One he outran them for 85 yards and scored a touchdown and ESPN picked it up. Of course, they had a side-by-side of me and him, and yeah it took off. And then that’s when they start to get interested.”

On if both of his sons could be in WWE at some point:

“I’m not sure. They both loved it when they were kids and when I wrestled. All sudden when I stopped they really didn’t pay attention to it too much. So I don’t know. Well, the thing that came about with Brock, because Brock, Brandon and Bronson [Bron Breakker], and there’s a couple other guys get in sometimes, sometimes Brandon’s basketball friends or Bronson’s other guys at wrestling, they’ll play video games. So with Brock talking to Bronson all the time, and of course he’s on a trajectory that’s unbelievable. So he talks to Bronson, talks to Brock, then one thing led to another and he got the bug. He went out. He wanted to do it. There’s not a better time to be wrestling, because there’s two [promotions]. WWE is doing phenomenal. Then you guys at AEW, so it’s always good to have competition. So I never really wanted them to go on the wrestling, but I let them do what they want to do.”

On if Bron Breakker was ever considered to use the Steiner name:

“Well they never shied away from that because he introduced us at the Hall of Fame. So for whatever reason they used Bron Breakker, but they know he’s a Steiner, so I think Brock would probably use a Steiner name. I’m not sure if it would be Brock, but it would be Steiner.”

On his image transformation when he went solo:

“They didn’t realize it was me the next day, because we wrestled at the pay-per-view when I turned on my brother. Then that morning I went to a salon. It was in California, and that’s when I bleached [my hair]. When I came to the building, nobody [recognized me]. It took them a while for people to recognize me, even announcers didn’t really click until, yes, I looked totally different. Which was the exact thing that I wanted to happen. I didn’t want anybody to think that I was still Scott Steiner of the Steiner brothers.”

On the inspiration for Big Poppa Pump:

“Well, it first started like it was two different personalities. When I first came out of college, I was a college kid, happy-go-lucky. But when you’re in wrestling for a while, things change. Setbacks, people keep you down, politics, you get p*ssed off. So at that point, when I turned into Big Poppa Pump I was very pissed off and people could just kind of tell that in my interviews. Because I was tired of the bullsh*t of professional wrestling, things that happened behind closed doors. You don’t really know what’s going on. Luckily, I had some guys in the back doors that told me what was going on most of the time, but a lot of times I didn’t know. That was a real thing back then the older guys keeping the younger guys down. When I said that I got beat in my first match after turning heel, the call was made by Hulk Hogan to have me beat. So the reason I knew that because somebody that was in the vicinity of talking to him. So it might piss me off, but you can overcome wins and losses. People can see your personality and what you do on camera. Wins and losses, you can overcome them. But when another wrestler decides he’s going to decide who wins, it is bullsh*t.”

Why do you think Hogan did that?

“He’s a motherf*cker. There’s no other way I can say it, he’s a piece of sh*t. We did a Nitro in Buffalo and I knew who I had to wrestle, per se. But ten minutes before the show went on air at ten to eight I didn’t know if it was going to happen or not. We had to wait until Hogan got to the building and say, clear it. Yeah, you could do what they had written down.”

On if he is still not good with Hulk Hogan present day:

“What am I gonna do now? But I don’t forget. There’s a reason why he got booed in California, all this stuff that came out with him, racist comments. Now you would never found that out if it wasn’t recorded behind closed doors. So I think a lot of people realize the perception, or the perception that WWE or WCW wanted of Hulk Hogan was not really him. The racist comment. Hogan and Savage. I was good friends with Savage, so I knew all the stories and he used to tell me all the stuff. Then of course the one time he tried to put me in jail. I was facing serious time. I could have been in jail for 15 years.”

What for?

“Well, I found out the bullsh*t he was doing in TNA. So when I left, I let it be known that the next time I see him I would slap the sh*t out of him. But I hadn’t seen him for like a year, then I had met his wife backstage, it was in San Jose for the WrestleMania. It was this platinum blond that was looking at me. But finally, I kind of remember meeting [her]. I was still wasn’t sure. So went up to her and said, ‘Are you Hulk Hogan’s wife?’ And she said, Yeah. At that point he was going to induct Savage into the Hall of Fame, which was bullsh*t. So I told her that. I told her he was a piece of sh*t for that whole situation, and I was going to slap the sh*t out of him. I said that, nobody heard me. It was very low-key, and I didn’t raise my voice or anything. Grabbed my bags and left. Well, she called Hogan. He came to the airport, and then he called the San Jose Police Department saying that I slapped her and I threatened to kill him. Well that’s terroristic threats and aggravated assault. So I got a call from the San Jose Police Department. It was on TMZ and stuff. And luckily it happened at the airport because there were so many cameras. Otherwise it would have been her and him against me. So that would have been a tough case in court. But since it was on camera, I told them don’t bother me anymore. It’s on camera, they stopped.”

On the origin of the chainmail:

“Well, I had the two girls walk out with me, and I went to a strip bar to find them some nice, sexy lingerie stuff, so they could walk out with me. And I saw that the chain mail in a case. I thought sh*t I gotta have that, and I wore it ever since.”

On his entrance with a tiger:

“Well, it just so happened that weekend we wrestled a few house shows before the Nitro and the guy showed up. So I asked him if he wanted to go to Nitro, which was good for him. He owned a bunch of animals. A lot of them were saved, so I asked him to come. I had to clear it through different channels but they finally gave it to him. Backstage there is a 2,000-pound animal, and Rey Mysterio was wearing zebra print overhauls, and he squat down. That cat was like that. That actually made the guy really nervous, because he said, please don’t do that again, because if he attacks you, I can’t stop him. So yeah, I noticed it got tense for a little bit. But then we did a walk-through before the show, which was a little bit different, because during the show air shot up. I think it moved a little bit, he felt the power, because it shocked him a little bit. He moved a little bit, and I was right next to him, so he moved me and it was like damn, that’s a powerful animal.”

On the Ric Flair shoot promo on WCW:

“Well it was the bullsh*t that was going on. It was something I thought of and I did [have a live mic]. Yeah, they tried to fire me for that, J.J. Dillon. [How did you not get fired?] Because it was bullsh*t. nWo went out there and attacked anybody they wanted every night. So I was pretty much staying with the standard of what the nWo did and the stuff they were trying to say, it was so in touch with my character. But then I got a lawyer, so then they tried to suspend me, which they couldn’t suspend me either. So nothing happened.”

On becoming more muscular:

“Well, I didn’t get a whole lot bigger. I just got cut. I mean, I got ripped. When I first got in wrestling being big was what it was all about, like The Road Warriors. I remember Hawk was doing a wrestling match against Lex Luger. I remember the line he said, cuts are for kids, which is what everybody thought, being as big as you could. But when I turned into Big Poppa Pump I had back problems too. So I had to get lighter, and I just got leaned out. Yeah I got more cut.”

On why he didn’t immediately move to WWE after WCW closed down:

“I was under contract. It was me, Goldberg, I think Nash and Hall were still under contract, so why would I leave? Because they were giving out lower contracts at the time. So it made no sense to me. I mean, they had called me up, and I had a number in mind they had to pay me, because they wanted me. Johnny Ace was calling me, ‘Hey, we got you wrestling with you and Austin against Scott Hall and Kevin Nash.’ Dangled that carrot. I said, ‘Yeah, all right, just pay me what I wanted.’ I don’t know, could have been bullsh*t, it could not been. But, then one other time in the summertime, we call it back, and that’s when WWE was getting into movies. Oh, you want to be a movie star, right? It’s like, I really don’t care. Just pay me what I what I asked for, and finally came about in October, November.”

On his foot injury:

“I wrestled one night in Tennessee, and the next morning I wrestled in Knoxville, woke up and it was like that. They said I hit that peroneal nerve, it’s called Drop Foot. But to this day I still will trip for the last, 20 25, years. I won’t fall, but I’ll stumble, because this foot is still dead and it still drags, it’s like that. I am trying to move it. I could do that right there. I can’t bring it up. So most of the time I wear a brace, sometimes I don’t. If I’m traveling, I’ll wear a brace.”

On the Steiner Math promo:

“No, I just thought about it. I knew maybe an hour before I start thinking about it, they told me I had to do an interview. I come from a highly educated university, so it just made sense. All the numbers made sense. And actually, there’s a Harvard professor, I don’t know, because everything you read on Twitter is 100% true, right? So he checked the numbers said, yeah, they added up. So I’ll take that Twitter feed.”

On if he thought it would be so memorable:

“I had no idea. I’m appreciative of the fans that still remember it. So yeah, and it turned out to be that people still talk about it to this day.”

On the “He’s fat” promo:

“Oh yeah, he’s fat, fat ass. I do cameos and, like a lot of times the guys will be like, ‘Can you please call my buddy a fat ass? He’s getting married and tell him you’re going to steal his wife.’ So the last one I did, he says, ‘Man, I’ve been working out. I think I’m in great shape, but I quit working out for a little bit. I need a pep talk. Can you call me a fat ass now?’ People still love that.”

On Bully Ray:

“I had lot of good time being down there with Bubba. And he did not like to be called fat, of course. So when he told me please don’t do that of course I’m gonna do it. So I remember, when I announced where he was from the state of obesity. Look at his face, he was [mad] but I could honestly say he’s probably laughing inside, because me and Bubba had some good times doing interviews down there. But it was being mean in a humorous way, and making it come out like you’re pissed off and being a prick.”

On the siren in his entrance:

“It was just something I came up with, was me and one of one of my wife’s friends she knew from back in Buffalo or Rochester. His name was Ben Zeblin. He did music, still does in New York, and I collaborated with him. We came up with that entrance music, which is why I could still use it to this day, because I own that.”

What is Scott Steiner grateful for:

“My wife and 2 kids.”

Will Ospreay On Signing With AEW, 5-Star Matches, Triple H’s Comments, MJF, Bryan Danielson

in LATEST EPISODES on March 6, 2025 March 6, 2025

Will Ospreay (@WillOspreay) is a professional wrestler currently signed to AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet to discuss his past year in All Elite Wrestling which included matches against Bryan Danielson, Konosuke Takeshita and Swerve Strickland, having 48 five-star or higher matches from Dave Meltzer, some of his most painful bumps in wrestling, if he has ever thought about permanently moving to the United States, Triple H’s comments about being afraid of the grind and his response, if he has thought about slowing down in the ring, his go-to Nando’s order and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde

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On if he has thought about permanently relocating to the United States:

“Thought about it, because me and the Mrs. went to Disney World with the kid a little while ago, and was really fun. We done two weeks out in Orlando, it was all right. I don’t think I would live in Orlando just because, I don’t know, it would grate on me a little bit, but it’s crossed our minds. But I will be honest with you, I just like living in England. I love my country. I love just sitting there. I mean, it’s in shambles right now, be honest with you, but I still love it. I love seeing me Mom, I like seeing me Dad, like seeing my granddad. Now, my nan passed away, unfortunately, but yeah, I just love seeing my family. I love my country. I love Nando’s as well. It’s too good.”

What’s your order at Nando’s?

“Oh, mate, it’s two butterfly chickens medium, peri chips, creamy mash. If you’re not feeling mash corn on the cob, two Perinase dips and a bottomless drink.”

On if not moving to the United States was a factor in joining AEW:

“Absolutely yeah. Like, the offers were night and day as well. The whole idea for me was I wanted to make money from this and I wanted to have the most amount of time with my family. Although three days out of the week I would be wrestling, I get Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with my kid. Obviously when there’s a PPV it doesn’t [happen], but I get that time with my kid. [If] he’s not at school I get to do whatever I want with him. We play video games, we go out and we’d go on a mad hike. So for me, that’s way more important. I just didn’t want to do the move. That’s it. For me, I believe in what AEW is doing. I believe in the style. I believe in the genre. I believe it is actually the best wrestling in North America right now. I just want to drive that home. I want to be the guy so I want to just keep doing what I’m doing out here and just hope we can just keep freaking putting out these classic shows, man. The recent Dynamites and Collisions have been f*cking stellar.”

On the last year in AEW:

“I’ve enjoyed it. I feel like I didn’t realize the heights that I could reach here. It’s just been like a crazy little ride and I feel like there’s so much that I have done and I’ve experienced and I’ve not really digested it really well. There’s things that I have digested. But I just love the environment. I do love the work ethic that I’m putting in and there’s something about getting your gym bag and going to the gym, and actually putting your gym shoes on and doing it. For me there’s something about that when I have my little bag and I’ve got me backpack, and I get on the airport, and when I get here, there’s a little drive, and there’s a little work ethic that comes out of me. I’ve got a mission, and I really want to stick to it, and I want to keep driving home. How much AEW is the best wrestling here. I’ve just got that mad work ethic right now.”

What’s the mission for you?

“I mean, for me, it’s All In. I think that’s the one where I like, there’s 40,000 seats. That’s the biggest show that AEW does in North America. I really want to drive it home. I really want to put 40,000 seats in there. I don’t know what the metric is, and I honestly have no idea what we have to do that. But I’m making myself available and I live in England, I’m making myself constantly available. So if I need to go down to Arlington, I’m more than happy to go down. I want to go do the schools. I want to go do the news reports. I want to go do everything. Because I feel like my passion comes out when I talk about AEW. I flipping love it. I love what I’m doing. It’s completely changed my life, dude. Everything about my life has changed since we last spoke as well, and it’s been a crazy ride where I’m just super grateful. This is meant to be our big show. It’s All In for a reason. We’re going all in for this one. So I want all hands on deck, and I really want to persuade all of our punters and all of our fans to come over to Arlington on that day and celebrate with us. What was the highest one that have done in North America was the 20,000 in Grand Slam? So that’s 20,000 on the east. Then we had The Forum, and that was like, 15, 16,000 in there. Then you had North Carolina, which is 16,000. So it’s possible, but you have to make it easy for these people to travel. You have to make it accessible for these people to do this stuff. And I just believe in it. I want everyone to come down and celebrate.”

On his dream All In match:

“I want to be the main event. I want it. The reason why I want it is because I think they trust me, and I think the fans trust me with what the presentation and what the look of AEW should be. I think that says a lot, because I’ve never had that trust. Even when I had it in Japan, it wasn’t like they would give me Kobe and Osaka, those type of shows where there’s 4,000 5,000 people, that’s something that we can draw in. But ever since I’ve walked in here, I’ve come in with a great attitude of my whole mission is to build a team. I feel like whatever was going on in AEW before I got there I’ve helped out with trying to get everyone on the same page. It’s hard for me to put into words sometimes, but the only thing that I can say is I think the audience trusts me, and I won’t break that trust.”

On if he still gets nervous before matches:

“The Bryan Danielson one I got real nervous on. That was a super crazy moment. I could not believe this was even happening to be honest with you. Because when I first got there and I done the Takeshita match, and then it was like straight afterwards, oh yeah we’re going to do an angle with you and Bryan. I went already? So we had that. There’s a moment where I’m standing there opposite him and it’s just before the bell rings, we’re standing there looking at one another. He’s got this big smile on his face, and I just couldn’t help but look around as being like man, there’s 7,000 people in here. I thought for the life of me I would have been just a kid in Japan for the rest of my life. I thought that was that was going to be me, and then just to stand there and look at him and just be like, Oh my God, here it is. I said, ‘Sir this is going to be a pleasure.’ Then we backed up, the bell rang and I was just like, let’s go. I’ve never felt more like I finally did it. When Bryan and Kenny stood in the ring, the bell rung and the f*cking place stood up. I always wanted to be one of those guys. And at that moment I was like oh sh*t, I finally did it. I’m one of those guys now.”

On if he is thinking about life after wrestling:

“Yeah, of course I am. I always think about it. [You’re in your prime right now] Yeah, you always got to think. I’ve got a bunch of houses that I’m looking at now to do the real estate side of things. But more importantly, I always think this is great, but one of these days I do want to have a normal life. Imagine just me knocking on your door, Royal Mail outfit, f*cking van over there. Didn’t you used to be Will Ospreay? Yeah, I’d love that. It’s great. But right now, the focus is being the best wrestler in the world, performing at the peak levels.”

On if he thinks he is the best wrestler in the world:

“Yeah, of course not. I’m confident in my abilities, and I’m confident with my audience. Does that make me the best? I don’t know. Because I feel like the best is now so widely spread. Are you the guy that draws the most? Are you the guy that shifts the most merch? Are you best bell to bell? And I’ll just go I’m the best. I was out with my kid watching Cirque du Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall, and a guy came up and he takes a photo with me. Then Harry goes, Why does that happen all the time? I was just like, I don’t know how to explain it to him, because he’s six, and I have the mental capacity of a six-year-old. So I went, you know I do wrestling. He’s like, Yeah. I said I’m like the best. That’s the only way I could put it.”

On how he wrestles in his 30s:

“I can’t do the stuff that I used to do when I was 27. I can barely do a shooting star press now. I can still do it, but it takes a lot for me to do it, and it takes a lot of a build-up to do it. The body has locked up a little bit so then I had to adapt to my style.”

On his conversation with Chris Jericho:

“Yeah, he called me up. I’d done something stupid, I f*cked my neck up back in 2018 I’ve never been the same since then. It was against Marty. We did a Spanish Fly my f*cking head at the apron, but my neck contorted underneath me, and I just felt everything like a shot go down my arm. It was horrendous and I’ve never been the same since. But then the month after me and Kushida wrestling, and we did a DDT off the apron to the floor and I was fine. I was absolutely fine. I controlled my body on the landing, but it looked horrendous. Jericho got on the phone to me. It was just like, hey, look flipping hell, please don’t die. You gotta look after yourself, pick your bumps. You don’t need to be doing that type of stuff all the time. And that hit and I appreciated it, because especially at that time, Jericho only would pop over to New Japan every now and again. So the fact that he took his time out to be like, hey look, Rocky gave me your number I want to have a chat, let’s talk. Every time I’ve been around Chris, he’s always giving me great advice. Even being here, there’s promo things that I would do, and he went, Oh, who told you to do that? And I’d say this person told me he went, don’t do that because of this reason. And when he explains it to me off, yeah, of course. So, he’s been a real good hand to have backstage. And anytime I go, What do you think of this? He’s great in his honesty.”

Has it made you slow down:

“I mean, yeah, for sure. Because I want people to digest what they’re seeing, because I still do those stupid bumps, like the tombstone off the apron on the stairs. That was kind of silly. Yeah, looked great and everyone reacted, which it happens. But I also now plan those spots where I go, and this is where everyone f*cking complains about AEW. I do it because, personally, it’s like I just want to do it. I’m not like, f*cking kicking out and firing up and sh*t like that. I’m like, f*cking rolling my shoulder off and if people are popping off about it, sweet.”

On fans not being as critical about it happening in WWE:

“No. But then if I’ve had gone there, they’d be f*cking w*nking into f*cking tissues over me. But it’s the same. That’s why you have to separate it, otherwise you drive yourself insane. I think if you have something, my wrestling is my passion, it’s my job, most importantly. But if you have something that you’re passionate about, you really don’t care about what people are saying who have never impacted your career in your entire life. None of those people, once upon a time, they were big hits that anyone that’s ever complained about AEW like the grifters or whatever they’re called. I don’t know if that’s the right term. That’s what everyone says. But even if they say something, it’s like they’re not impacting our show. We’re the second most profitable wrestling company of all time. That’s not talked about enough, and everyone wants to dig on it. I get it, there’s things that we could generally improve on and I think it’s fair to listen to some criticism. But for me, I don’t lose sleep over anyone trying to tell me how to wrestle. Because now, look at me. I’m a f*cking idiot. I know I am, but I’ve carved out this little lane for myself. I was destined to be someone that either worked in McDonald’s or pushed trolleys at Tescos. But because I grafted at this, and because I learned the trade over in England and over in Japan, and my enthusiasm, my passion comes over here, I don’t let things like, oh this is sh*t. Why? Because it’s sh*t. Well, that’s not fair. If you give me criticism and you give me points that I can work on, then I’ll try my best to work on it. I’m not going to get it right away, but I think that’s the stuff that people need to speak more about.”

On Triple H’s comments and people believing they were about Will Ospreay:

“He was [talking about me]. I’ve got people that I won’t throw under the bus, saying, Yeah, it was about me. I’m not taking it personally like, Oh, that hurt my feelings. It’s just kind of like, all right, you take a jab at me, I’ll take one back. There’s nothing horrible about it. I don’t hate the guy. I’ve never met him. How can I hate someone that I’ve never even met? [Have you even talked to him?] No, I’ve never spoken to him, I got an agency talk to everyone. I’ve told everybody about my situation and why I want to remain in the UK, which is why that kind of hurt me a little bit, but not to the point where it keeps me up at night. I was like, Okay, you took a jab at me, I’ll take one back, and then that’s it. We’re done. Then someone was at this show that I was doing some stuff for Pro Wrestling Eve, and they do this thing called the Multiverse Rumble, and everybody dresses up as characters, and somebody dresses up as Triple H. I walked in here and I looked, I went I’ve got to do it now, haven’t I? [Why’d you have to do it?] Because it’s funny and if anyone doesn’t think it’s funny, then I can’t tell you what your humor is, but my humor is, this is hilarious. I’m going to do it.”

On narrowly missing out on a possible CM Punk match:

“Yeah, just narrowly missed it. But it is what it is, no issues with him on my side of things, I hope he’s doing well. [That could have been a magic match]. It could have been, but things happen and like things transpire. For me, I’ve never had an issue with him. He’s always been lovely to me.”

On the gruesome brainbuster in the Takeshita match:

“On the top of my glute, and then my pelvis. Because everyone thought it was just a scrape, it wasn’t. because those ropes are steel f*cking cable. So it hit my ass and put it back. Oh, mate. It was horrible. But I remember Tony being, you don’t have to wrestle next week. No, mate. I’m good.”

On how much longer he intends to wrestle:

“I don’t like thinking of it. I think I will one day just disappear. I will just go, Ah, this is me. I won’t have anything really. [You won’t have a final match?] Oh no, of course I will. But then that was the day I will grab the microphone on live TV and say the C word, and then just drop the mic, ruin this and then I’ll just go be a postman somewhere. Like that big Sting retirement, where everyone’s like coming out and like cupping their hands, tears in their eyes, and I just grab the microphone and go ‘c*nt!’ That’s the way I want to go out.”

What is Will Opsreay grateful for?

“Family, AEW and all the support.”

AJ Styles On Retiring Soon, His Phenomenal Career in WWE & TNA, The Undertaker, John Cena

in LATEST EPISODES on March 4, 2025 March 4, 2025

AJ Styles (@AJStylesOrg) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at the DDPY Performance Center in Atlanta, GA to discuss his legendary wrestling career, saying no to WWE in 2001, his legendary matches in TNA, why he hated working in the six-sided ring, his shocking Royal Rumble debut that the cameras missed, being The Undertaker’s final opponent, the John Cena retirement tour, coming back from a near career-ending injury, when he thinks his in-ring career will end and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow is our doubts of today.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

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On getting injured in his TV return match:

“I knew I’d broke it. Because if you’ve broken it before, same foot, I was like I broke it again, and I’m pissed because now I know how long it’s gonna take to get back. But again, little did I know it was much worse than a break.”

What was worse about it?

“Because it’s tendons, and my doctor, who is also my friend, was like do not look this up. I’m like I’m gonna look this up, and it’s a career-ending injury. It happens in car wrecks and in professional football mostly, that’s usually when it happens. And in football, of course, it’s one of those things depending how severe it is. I was literally by the skin of my teeth able to [come back], they were like we can have surgery, we could do surgery on your foot and it will heal faster, but there could be complications as you get older. We don’t know. We don’t have to have surgery, let’s try to do some therapy and get it back to where it is. Lucky for me I was able to get that therapy that I needed. Wasn’t easy. It sucked. It’s so crazy that you have to learn how to walk again to a certain extent, like how did I forget how to run? Little things like that. Because I was in a boot for six weeks, then I got six weeks in therapy, trying to figure this thing out. It’ll mess with you.”

On not losing a step when he came back:

“I think it’s one of those things where I’m so afraid of losing a step I’m doing everything I can to make sure it doesn’t look like I’ve lost the step. But it took a toll on me. Because I go out there and I got two gears, all or nothing. Is that one gear? I don’t know. But the fact that, yeah, I’m gonna go in there and I’m gonna give it my all. And then after the adrenaline wears off, I was like now it’s sore a little bit. So you might catch me limping afterwards until I get used to this foot, stretching it out, all those tendons and stuff like that. But so far so good.”

On if he thought this was the end of his career:

“I was like this is it. How am I going to recover again? I was like this might be it, and it sucked. Because like you said, I just came back. I was not hurt previously after I wrestled Cody in an “I Quit” match. I was not hurt during that time. So I’m sitting at home going okay, guys, okay. Then, hey, we’re going to bring you back in Nashville. It’s going to be great. Hurt myself, yeah I was p*ssed. I was mad. It may look like I was acting. I was not.”

On if there was a point where he felt like wrestling might not work out:

“I don’t know. I feel like things happen pretty quickly. I mean, I got in the ring way before I was supposed to because I could do flips. A month into training I was already in the ring. That’s way dumb. But the opportunity to learn from guys in the ring while you’re wrestling is the best way to learn, and you better learn quick or nobody’s going to want to wrestle you. So I was a sponge. Anytime someone told me something, they only had to tell me once. I was going to make sure that I remembered it, and it just kind of took off from there. Then we had a kind of developmental with WCW. First time I met Bob Sapp. He came in and became friends with him because he was doing his thing for WCW, and a lot of the other guys were there from WCW. So while they were watching their guys, they were able to see Air Paris and myself wrestling, having decent matches and doing some crazy stuff, and that’s how we got our opportunity in WCW.”

What was the first big break for you?

“I think that was it. That was the first big break. I was like wow, I get a chance to wrestle. Before that, I’d done extra stuff in WCW, but it was that chance to get in there and do it in the WCW ring in Baltimore, as a matter of fact, they gave us a trial in Baltimore, Air Paris and myself. Kind of busted out the shooting star to the floor in that match and other things that I’m sure I’d hate watching now. I started in 99 by 2001 I was in WCW, that’s kind of quick. So I was at the right place, the right time, the right guys watching.”

On how close he came to joining WWE in 2001:

“I don’t think it was close at all. [Did they offer you a developmental deal?] So it was after WCW went under. I’d been under contract with WCW for five months. Johnny Ace calls me and said, ‘WWE is not picking up your contract’, and it freaking broke me. So I went and felt sorry for myself for about a good week. And then I was like, Alright, here we go. I’m trying to think how quickly it happened. I want to say that at that moment, I believe the NWA was having their 53rd anniversary, and I believe that was in Petersburg, Florida. Anyway, somewhere down in Florida, and some Japanese guys are going to be down there. I was like, I’m going to go down there, I’m going to wrestle, they’re going to want me. I’m going to go to Japan to wrestle. That’s how I’m going to make it back. I went down there. I wrestled Christopher Daniels for the first time, first time we met, first time we wrestled, and we were just connected, it was perfect. Our timing was the same and Christopher Daniels at that time was if you can’t have a good match with him, you might as well quit. And we gelled so well. After that match, I really started traveling a lot. But I think during that time of doing indies and traveling a lot, I want to say that’s when I was offered [a contract]. I did two dark matches for WWE and I was offered a contract for $500 a week to move to Cincinnati. I’m sure you’ve heard this story before, but I was like wait, so I have to move to Cincinnati and I’ll make $500 a week? The same amount of money I was making at my bottled water job. And I’m gonna have to pay a lot more taxes on that $500 than I’m making now. I’m just thinking all this stuff. My wife can’t move with me. She’s in college about to finish, she’s going to be a teacher. I was like this just doesn’t sound right. And I believed in my heart that I was making the right decision and I even told Johnny as much as I’d love to come up there and train I just could not have my wife move in with their parents. I didn’t think that was right. My job is to take care of her, not the other way around. I mean, I said no to a developmental that’s never promised. HWA was the developmental back then. But you know what? Not only was it the best decision, because TNA would happen shortly after that in 2002, but HWA stopped being a developmental for them shortly after that as well. So I am guaranteed to not have made it through that cut. I wouldn’t have made it, and I wasn’t a big guy. What did I have to offer? There were no smaller guys that did anything in WWE that time. So I think it worked out pretty good based on what happened.”

On the TNA six-sided ring:

“The six-sided ring was different. It made us different. It sucked as a ring. I didn’t realize how rough it was on my body until we got back to a squared ring and I was like oh my God. I forgot that these are much better to bump on the actual mat, because it’s pillars under the six-sided ring, so you can move them in and out. Where in a squared ring, it’s in the middle, that bounce, whatever you might get. You could take a bump right on that pillar, so you can imagine that hurts. There was a point in time where we were overseas, we were in England and it was a big show, Kurt and I were wrestling, and he was going to give me the belly to belly off the top. I remember taking that. I go I’m never taking that again. Don’t ask me Kurt, it’s killing me. And then of course we get the squared ring he’s like Hey, do you mind? I’m like, Oh, okay. He gave it to me in a squared ring and I was like, Oh. I landed and it was like nothing compared to what it was. I was like, Oh, I can take that. Right then and there, as pissed off as I was about going to a squared ring and abandoning the six-sided ring, it was at that moment I go, I’m okay with the squared ring now. But when you saw TNA and you saw a six-sided ring, you knew that was TNA. No one was doing that, maybe in Mexico, but we made it who we were. I think they lost their identity to a certain extent when they went to just a regular ring, just like everybody else.”

On the TNA Unbreakable triple threat with Samoa Joe and Christopher Daniels:

“Because we’ve wrestled each other so much, not necessarily in triple threats, but we wrestled each other. We know each other very well. It could have been better. We went home way earlier than we were supposed to. We got mixed up in a spot. Joe did something. I was like, Wait, are we supposed to be going here? Nope, bam. We did it anyway. So we ad-libbed a good 10 minutes of that match. All that at the end is totally ad-libbed. Thank God we knew each other so well, because we could just communicate and get to where we needed to be. So it could have been really good. It was just good.”

On when was the last time he did a Spiral Tap:

“That’s a good question. I don’t know. Maybe Matt Hardy, when him and I wrestled in TNA. Maybe it was Bubba. I can’t remember. Yeah, I’ve lost it. It’s a different kind of flip. It’s not the same. Even when I watch other guys do it, I still don’t do it like them. So yeah, they like to twist themselves over when they’re coming off. I don’t want a twist. I want a peak and then turn. So it’s a little bit different. So there’s a stalling involved to make it look beautiful and then go. But I’ve kind of lost it.”

On if he was approached by WWE while in TNA:

“No one ever really said anything to me, but I’ll tell you, there was an instance. It was a big meeting. Dixie came out and basically said something to the fact of, if you don’t want to be here, we’ll let you go. At that moment, I looked over at Christian to see what he was going to do. This was 2008, 09, 10? I don’t know, somewhere around there. But I was watching him because I looked up to Christian, he’s amazing too. This guy is a ring general, for sure. I was watching him to see if he got up, because if he had gotten up, I would gotten up too. Hopefully he would have gotten me in the WWE or something.”

On why so many people left TNA at once:

“They hired Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff. I believe Eric was trying to do the right thing, to see where we’re at as far as getting more eyes on us that we’re growing. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out the way it was supposed to. We lost a lot of money. I think I was kind of pissed at Hogan at the time, because I was like, why doesn’t he talk about TNA? Why is he not helping us? He’s not advertising at all. He never talked about TNA. I was pissed, but I now realize I think he was embarrassed. It was embarrassing to him to talk about that, so he didn’t. I think Dixie was trying to do some things, and it was just they keep butting heads, so it just kind of fell apart, and when it fell apart, they lost a lot of money. When they lost a lot of money, they expected me to take a pay cut. My contract was up.”

On his TNA Mount Rushmore:

“I’m biased though, because I’m gonna put my guys on there, the guys that I had unbelievable [matches with]. Christopher Daniels, Samoa Joe. I think a lot of people would say Kurt because he was there for a long time. A lot of people don’t know he was in TNA longer than he was in WWE. I would throw Frankie Kazarian in that conversation too. Low Ki was unbelievable, there’s so many. James Storm, Chris Harris, they were a big part of the growth. […] Elix Skipper, Beer Money. There’s so many guys that made such a big difference. It’s hard to put a Mount Rushmore together, because everybody has their moment and how they got there and how much they meant to TNA.”

On his Royal Rumble debut not being picked up by the cameras:

“You know what was such a cool moment, though. You guys made so much noise that the folks at home were like, what is it? Who is it? So it was kind of cool that it worked out that way. But yeah, that was such an unbelievable moment.”

On getting in great shape:

“Everybody thinks I bulked up. I lost weight. I was not any heavier than I was before, but fasting is a big part of my diet as well. I’d done a three-day fast, just water. I’d done that maybe a week before I came back so I was shredded. I literally just got through doing a six-day fast, just water. That sucked too. But again, anything worth doing is hard. All you got to do is sit in that cold plunge. That’s all you gotta do is sit down. All you gotta do in a sauna is just sit there. All you gotta do is not eat and drink water, these things are easy to do, or they should be, but we’re addicted to so many different, lifestyles of being easy and nice. You know what the worst time to get the cold plunge is? Is when you’re comfortable. It’s perfect outside, it’s perfect inside. Oh, it’s great. And then you get the cold plunge like. But if you can get used to being uncomfortable, it’s not that hard to be uncomfortable.”

On if he might wrestle John Cena on the retirement tour:

“I don’t know. I don’t make those decisions. I would love to have it, for sure, it’d be fun. Honestly, I think that there’s something about, I can’t explain it, why him and I gel so well together. I don’t know what it is, because we’re definitely not the same in any kind of way. It just works. The first time I got in the ring with him it was like, Wow, dude, that was cool. So, yeah, I would love the opportunity to work with Cena again.”

On his WrestleMania match against Shane McMahon:

“Well, it wasn’t that he was pitching [crazy moments], he just wanted to perfect it, whatever we were doing he wanted to make sure it was spot on every time and you got to respect that. That’s what I want. And then be able to bounce some stuff off of him, the guy could fight for real. So we were able to put a little bit of that stuff that he knew, a little bit of jiu-jitsu that he’s taken and make it work. It was really a fun match, really unexpected, I think for fans to see us have such a good match together.”

On if he has thought about how much longer he will wrestle:

“I’ve thought about it a lot, much more than I should have. I should have known what I was doing by now. But it’s so hard because you enjoy it so much and I enjoy being around my friends. Don’t get me wrong, I love being at home, but the opportunity to see them and see them doing well, seeing them smile, and seeing them grow. Some of these guys like Roman for instance, his selling is on a different level. Jey Uso, Jimmy Uso, all these guys, they stepped up. If Roman stepped up, they stepped up with him. I just thought that was so impressive that they do that, and seeing them grow into these amazing Superstars. Gunther losing all that weight to get to where he’s at now as the Heavyweight Champion, it’s freaking awesome. Cody, seeing where he’s at and what he had to go through to get to where he was at, and what he’s doing now is at that position, he’s the guy. He puts the work in. It’s really cool to see those guys hustle as much as they are and beat themselves up as much as they have, and still do well. I like seeing that.”

On not wrestling in his 50s:

“That’s correct. I keep saying that. I’ve said this and said this, but I will not wrestle at 50, I promise you that.”

On coming back with his old theme song:

“It was my call to change it [when I turned heel] too. Because as a bad guy I thought my song was a little too cool. Everybody loves that song. I love the song, but that’s not who I was trying to be. I wanted you to not like me, that you despised me. I thought well if I change the song up, people are going to hate it, perfect. Then when I know I was coming back and I’m going to be the good guy again, I was like I want my old music back. And nobody said anything. They were like, yep, that’s fine. So yeah, that was my decision.”

On if he has a final opponent in mind:

“Nope, no opponent in mind. An idea that I will not share with you that I thought if I could get Undertaker to get in the ring with me, that I wanted to do. But there’s an idea there that I think kind of sums up who AJ Styles is, and we’ll see if it happens. You’ll know it if it does.”

What is AJ Styles grateful for:

“The relationship I have with God, family and that I have the best job on the planet.”

Lex Luger On Possibly Walking Again, Working With DDP, Hall Of Fame, Sting

in LATEST EPISODES on February 27, 2025 February 27, 2025

Lex Luger (@GenuineLexLuger) is a retired professional wrestler who previously competed in WWE and WCW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at the DDPY Performance Center in Atlanta, GA to discuss working with Diamond Dallas Page to increase his mobility, the accident that left him paralyzed, slamming Yokozuna on the USS Intrepid, his shock debut on the first episode of WCW Nitro, beating Hulk Hogan to become WCW World Champion, the tragic passing of Miss Elizabeth, what his current relationship is like with WWE, if a Hall of Fame induction could happen soon and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.” Stephen Covey

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On where his journey with DDP began:

“We’ve been obviously friends for years through wrestling. But the latest journey started when I had taken a lot of falls and I always wanted to get the most out of what I felt the good Lord gave me as far as recovering from my injury and function. I’m what Shepherd Center called like a one percenter, they’re a world-class spinal cord rehab center. I spent two years there back in 08-09 after my spinal cord injury, they called me a high-functioning quadriplegic. I have a cervical injury, which makes me a quadriplegic. Paraplegic is waist down, quadriplegic is neck down. So all I am supposed to be able to do is move my head and shoulders and need 24-hour care for the rest of my life, bathe, fed, clothed, and round-the-clock, care. I lived independently and I was able to walk out of Shepherd initially. I was pushing the envelope on my ability and mobility and balance. I started taking a lot of falls, and it got to the point where they felt I was endangering [my health]. My neurologist at Shepherd, Dr Bilski, told me, ‘Lex, you’re one of our miracles, but if you keep on falling like that you have to wear a helmet, elbow pads and knee pads like a skateboarder, or you’re gonna have to use some mobility devices like a walker and a chair for safety and balance, because we don’t want you back in here with a head injury.’ Which they also specialize in. Because you’ve already been here for a spinal cord injury, we do not want you back in here with a head injury. So I said, okay, and I started using the mobility devices, but I kept on pushing the envelope and walking. I was taking some really bad falls, a miracle I didn’t really have a bad injury. So they finally convinced me to use the chair and walker more, and I had to admit defeat when we got back together here recently, I got scared. It’s hard to admit for us guys, but I got scared of some of the falls and what they told me could happen. I started sitting too much, like anybody else, and not walking enough. If you don’t use it, you lose it, and I pretty much lost all mobility. My quality of life had dropped dramatically. I saw DDP back at Sting’s retirement match that we both were able to go to, which was awesome. I just said, ‘Hey, D. You think we could do maybe a little bit of work on getting a little more movement? I’m pretty much in this chair full time, I’m having trouble just doing everyday stuff and brushing my teeth and to shower, my quality of life’s dropped quite a bit, my energy levels, everything.’ You know DDP, all you got to do is tell him that he goes, ‘Brother, I’ve been waiting for you to come to me on this.’ So we went to work, and we made amazing progress that we were going to reveal to everybody for his incredible partner, Steve and him are documenting, kind of filming it and the progress, and it’s going to be pretty cool. I’m real excited and thankful for what he’s doing with me. Our friendship was always there, but our friendship is growing. So he’s a special guy.”

On what’s been the biggest change since working with DDP:

“Well, everything from being able to stand up and brush my teeth instead of being over the sink trying to. There’s things we take for granted, getting off of my chair into the shower. In the morning, you’re showering, you’re going to the bathroom, you brush your teeth. When you’re sitting it’s challenging and even to safely get from your chair to a toilet or anything. So just everyday functional stuff. I heat my coffee up in the morning, I could stand up and put it in the microwave now, I couldn’t do that. I was trying to reach, I was spilling coffee everywhere. So, things you think about. When I go to the grocery store now. I had to wait and my grocery store guys would know me. They see me pull up and they bring me out the power cart. Now I can get the power cart myself with stuff. So, I mean everything. I can shop again. I can go through my day with you. My quality of life and my function has increased dramatically. So it’s amazing.”

On how this would not be possible a few years ago:

“I had gotten scared and discouraged with the walking and all the falls I was taking, so I had really pulled back and was pretty much relegated and come to the terms that maybe I’m just going to be in the wheelchair the rest of my life. So I was gonna make the best of that, but still to have this gift by working with DDP, and a gift from God, I think to be able to get this increased mobility again is very exciting.”

On the accident that left him paralysed:

“I’m headed to San Francisco for an appearance. I had to get in that one last heavy workout and shower and run to the airport for an overnight red-eye flight from Atlanta into Frisco. I get in at like midnight or something. So I got in a heavy shoulder trap and neck workout, which they say may have been a factor, might not. So that was my last heavy workout ever. I was on the airplane, I was talking to somebody next to me and my head turned right after that workout. I turned my head back. This is just my theory. The neurologists aren’t sure that this had anything to do with it, but I kind of feel like it did, and they think it might have. I turned my head back to the front and I had this burning, stabbing pain between my shoulder blades. But football, wrestling, we get aches and pains, little pinched nerves all the time. So I go, man that didn’t feel good, that didn’t feel right. I got to the hotel, I checked in, and I woke up, I’m not sure what time it was. It was just pre-dawn, and I had the worst burning, stabbing pain in my lower neck, shoulder blade area, unbelievable. It was so bad. I’m a side sleeper. I was on my side towards the nightstand, and I was trying to get to a phone, so I figured maybe I’d get to the phone like a seal hit it with my nose. I didn’t know. I was in so much pain. I fell off the bed down to the floor. When I was on the bed, I actually felt like I was in those old metal diver suits you see, metal helmet from back in the mid-1900s. I felt like I was in one of those suits and there’s magnets pulling me from underneath, almost through the mattress. I didn’t know what being paralysed felt like. So I can move my head and shoulders, but that threw me off the bed. Now am up against the nightstand, my chin down to my chest, and I didn’t know this either. When you have a cervical high spinal cord it affects your breathing, which didn’t help my breathing. My breathing was already compromised, so I thought I was gonna suffocate. So now I’m up against the nightstand. I can’t move. I feel like I’m being pulled by magnets through the floor now, and I feel like I’m suffering. I thought that was it. And I tell people this, the Lord came into that room, proverbs three, five and six. I was a brand new believer. I didn’t even know I had a verse memorized in the Bible. But Proverbs, three, five and six, trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not upon your own understanding. Acknowledge me in all your ways, and I’ll make your path straight. It was so calming when I felt like God was actually almost speaking to me. I didn’t hear a voice or anything, but that resonated so much to me that my breathing calmed down, my heart rate and I laid there probably for hours until they came for my appearance. When I didn’t answer my door they had to knock my door down. I locked my door. I put the extra lock on my door, which I don’t normally do.”

On what happened next:

“I couldn’t scream because my breathing was compromised. I can’t believe the guy heard me. He knocked on the door. I’m like, help. But they knew when I didn’t open the door and it was locked, I had to be in there. So that’s when they called 911 they came in and bashed my door down. And who’s there? Let’s go full circle back, DDP, who’s there out in Frisco for the appearance was there as well. DDP comes into the room and he convinces me. The medics had picked me up off the floor and sat me in a chair. I’m paralyzed in a chair, and I’m like, No, I’m okay. I think I’m dehydrated maybe. He [DDP] looks at me and says, ‘You gotta go the hospital. You gotta go with these guys, man, this ain’t dehydration, bro.’ So they took me downstairs. The medics were big wrestling fans, a guy and a girl. They looked at each other, I’m laying there. I can’t move up, but I’m listening to them. They go, where do we take him? They’re naming these hospitals, and they go Stanford, which is like almost an hour from the airport. The guy goes, ‘Oh man, we might get fired if we do that, but let’s do it.’ They drove me all the way to Stanford, which is a world-class medical facility. They were unbelievable. Ran every test you could possibly do. Once again, getting back to your original question, I’ve given you a really long answer. But they said it could have been the workout. We saw a little bit of stenosis, nothing from your wrestling and football career that necessarily made this happen. We see this in people all the time that never did sports or any high collision stuff. We put it in a category, kind of like a category we don’t know what you have or what cause of transverse myelitis, swelling of the spinal cord, massive swelling from C5 down to T5 and that’s lights out from there down. That’s it for the rest of your life. Because when they were telling me my prognosis a few weeks later, when I got to Atlanta, which was an unbelievable story, how I got to Atlanta, there weren’t any planes to get me there. I got to Atlanta and Shepherd Center, which is a world-class facility right here in Atlanta where I was living at the time. Which was a miracle. They put me in room 316, John 316. I go I must be in the right place. The two nurses were Grace and Hope. When I came into the room the name tags. I’m like, Oh my gosh.”

On if he hadn’t found God before the accident:

“Sting said that I would have committed suicide. My best friend. Because if you hadn’t been a believer before that happened. He goes, the old Lex, Second Corinthians five said we’re a brand new creation in Christ. So I’m a brand new creation. He said, If you hadn’t been born again at that point, everything was about you, your body, your workouts. You would have ended it.”

On The Total Package:

“Well, that was a heck of a nickname Dusty Rhodes gave me, The American Dream. I was in the back and he goes, ‘I want you to be the brains and the brawn and the beauty, because I want you to have the look, the brains. I want you to be the total package, baby.’ So he came up with that nickname. He came up with the finish the torture rack, because he thought it showed my body and my abs. It wasn’t an easy finish to execute on a lot of guys, but it turned out to be a really good finish for me. So yeah, he said, ‘I want you to just be the total package.’ And of course, I had mentoring from Nature Boy Ric Flair on that early on, as far as that persona. A lot of people said back then the old Lex took to that pretty easily as far as thinking he was the total package. Eric Bischoff, who and I become really good friends. People thought we hated each other, but we love each other now. Eric Bischoff said, ‘Lex thought he was the sh*t, and he made people believe him. He may have not been the greatest interviewer or worker in the ring, but Lex had an aura about him that he just thought his you know what didn’t stink. And he goes that came across on camera and in front of people, he said he believed he was the total package.’ And I did.”

On slamming Yokozuna on USS Intrepid:

“It was a great moment, for sure. I was actually petrified by the time I got on the Intrepid. Because they flew me on a helicopter, and I had only been on a helicopter ride once before in my life. I’m not scared of heights or anything, but I had this ex-Vietnam combat pilot flying the helicopter in, and we were there with no belts on, nothing, this helicopter with open doors. He was tilting and showing off on the way and I’m holding on for dear life. Then I go to the ring and they threw Bobby at me. I didn’t know Bobby was going to meet me. He was my heel manager as a narcissist. So Bobby comes up to me and I’m like, Hey Bobby. As I’m walking to the ring with Yokozuna, Bobby goes, ‘Push me.’ I go what? He goes, ‘Push me, you stupid SOB.’ I shoved him because I didn’t know Bobby was gonna meet me part way down, trying to stop me from going to the ring. But I then I got in the ring, and I cowboy boots so I had no footing. So I get nose and nose with Yoko, and we go nose and nose. We’re supposed to be trash-talking, but I’m telling Yoko we can’t do it. I was panicking. I got no footing. Yoko actually was a cool as ice Samoan. We call him the dancing bear. He was so agile for a guy at 600 pounds. He looks at me and goes ‘No problem, brother. Just get a wide stance, I’ll do the rest.’ People go you look so excited afterwards, did you know you were going to slam him? I go, Well, I was hoping. We did a walk through, but I’ve never slammed him. They didn’t want me in the walk through to hurt Yoko. I go hurt Yoko? What about me? I’m going to get double hernia trying to slam the guy. But we did it live first time in that ring, so I was really nervous. With no footing. Yoko just pushed himself around me. I had to help turn him and that ain’t easy, so I played a part. But I tell people I was so excited afterwards, even though I knew I was supposed to slam because I was so happy it came off. I go, Yoko basically slammed himself. He was that agile. He flipped himself off of me by getting a wide stance. Unbelievable athlete. One of the best big men ever. He doesn’t get credit for one of the best.”

On the Lex Express:

“My family was upset about the A&E special, they made it look like I didn’t enjoy myself. We had a great time on that tour. It was judiciously edited by Bruce Prichard to make it look like Lex wasn’t the guy and he didn’t have a good time. They took excerpts on that A&E and made it look like I was heeling on people during the tour, and I wasn’t upset, just spicing it up. I said they’re just throwing some stuff in there to tell their story. So it didn’t bother me at all that they put that stuff in there. For instance, they would show me acting like I didn’t get a suite at the hotel, and I was making a big thing at the desk. I was joking around with the camera guys and the desk people, but they made it look [different] on the A&E. You could portray something that I was throwing a hissy fit because I didn’t get a suite at the hotel, which was not what happened, but that’s what it looked like on the A&E. But I was laughing. I thought it was funny, so yeah, but they actually did a really good job on that.”

On Royal Rumble 1994:

“Bret tries to credit me. I credit Bret, the Excellence of Execution, because all I had to do was catch him and go backwards over the top rope, which is not fun. I didn’t even do a lot of backwards over the top rope kind of stuff, but I trusted Bret because he had to tuck my head and everything. Because when you go backwards on top rope, you gotta for safety tuck your head and everything. So Bret cross-bodied me and took us out, and then, man, he spider monkied me. He pulled me in and pulled my head in and they said Vince jumped out of his chair in the back. Because we walked through it however we’re going to do it. Bang, bang, bang, cross body, out. Vince goes, ‘Try to hit the floor at the same time, we’ll touch it up afterwards so we’re both at the same time.’ They even did it in slow-mo. What a miracle that you couldn’t tell in the slow motion who hit first. But Bret pulled me in so tight the way we hit the apron with me going backwards, and from there to the floor Bret just got us both level, and even we both hit it at the exact same time. That’s when Vince jumped out of his chair. Wow, oh my gosh. They nailed it.”

On what the plan was with co-winners of the Royal Rumble:

“There wasn’t really. Even SummerSlam, they go what a lame finish. You didn’t beat Yoko after that big tour. I go that was never the plan. Vince was such a fan of the Garden. That was his dad’s place. That was his place. He always stood at the curtain watching the match at The Garden to see the response of the crowd towards new talent. They don’t call it the Mecca for nothing, and that was Vince’s place and his dad’s place. So Vince and I had a very good relationship. He said, ‘If I put the belt on you, it’ll be at the Garden at WrestleMania 10. That’s going to be a big pay-per-view. And if I do, because I’m not saying you are…’ I go, ‘Well, I’m not asking you to promise me anything.’ He goes, ‘I’m not.’ So I was never promised the belt, and if it was it was going to WrestleMania 10. He went with Bret, which is a great choice. Bret’s a great champion. We had Yoko and Bret now wrestling for a title at WrestleMania 10. But I didn’t feel jilted or I’d been lied to it all because they never told me I was gonna be the champion. And I always, once again, go to what Eric [Bischoff] said, ‘Lex always thought he was the you know what.’ I didn’t have a problem with winning or losing or I always felt, no matter what, even when I walked out first on the Monday night wars and went from WWF at the time. Eric lowballed me and offered me almost nothing. I said, You know what? I’ll come in and I’ll become a big star for him, and he’ll take care of me. Which Eric did. I never lacked confidence. That was part of my persona.”

On being presented as the next Hulk Hogan:

“People say Vince wanted to be the next Hulk Hogan, which also was not Vince’s plan. Vince always knew that there was only gonna be one Hulk Hogan. He always wanted a merchandise selling babyface so I became the guy. But Vince always knew that the red and yellow, say your prayers and take your vitamins and all that, there’s only gonna be one Hulk Hogan. He didn’t want me to be another Hulk Hogan knockoff. He wanted me to be Lex Luger the babyface. Vince was actually very patriotic kind of guy. He wanted me to be the red, white and blue champion and sell a bunch of merch. He ended up going with Bret as the World Champion. But I always felt that if I stayed at WWE I was determined that I was going to get another shot at the title someday and be their world champion. So if I stayed there and Vince and I were trying to work it out. When I went to Nitro, that was a last-minute thing between Sting and Eric Bischoff that came out on a random phone call with Sting because of our friendship. I wasn’t under contract anymore, and we were trying to work it out on a handshake. I was going to stay at WWE. I had no plan on leaving.”

On his shock WCW arrival on the first Nitro:

“They kept it a big secret and all that. But we had no idea Nitro and the Monday Night War was going to get so big. Sting told me we’re going to do a Monday night show. I’m like, ‘Good luck with that. Up against Raw?’ That was my attitude. But okay. WCW was always a distant second kind of at that point. Yeah, we try harder, but we’re number two, the old car rental ads and stuff back in the day. So yeah, we didn’t know. We had no idea it was going to actually overtake them in ratings and stuff. My gosh, who would have thunk? So I had no idea. That moment when I walked out there, they had to actually pull me off the tapes we had already done for the shows for WWE. I was very uncomfortable because of my good relationship with Vince I couldn’t tell him I was going to do that. That was Eric’s one stipulation. I went home with my wife I go ‘Peg, he [Bischoff] wants me to leave, but Eric wants me to give no notice. Just show up on Nitro.’ I heard rumors that Vince was watching with his wife, and Linda turned to him, ‘If you ever bring that guy back…’ Because Vince always would forgive and bring guys back when people thought was impossible. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I heard that rumor that Linda was almost angry with me at that because Vince and I had such a good relationship, I didn’t even give notice. I walked out of Nitro.”

On why he was not a part of WWE after the WCW buyout:

“I was under contract. From the penthouse outhouse to the jailhouse. I had too much time and money on my hands. I had almost three years of guaranteed contract with Time Warner for a lot of money, and Vince couldn’t touch me. I would have had to give up three years of guaranteed money.”

On if he could have come to WWE later on and the passing of Miss Elizabeth:

“After that, everything happened. I got messed up on the wine and women, I had too much time and money on my hands. Got messed up on drugs and alcohol, and had a period where I was a complete train wreck. The tragic passing of Elizabeth. Obviously people go, ‘Well, he killed Elizabeth.’ Well, I didn’t kill her. But was I a contributing factor to the lifestyle I was living and her being around me all the time and she overdosed? Absolutely.”

Do you take responsibility for what happened to her?

“Absolutely. Sure, there’s always collateral damage to lifestyles like that, and she was part of it. So absolutely. Sadly.”

Was that rock bottom for you?

“You’d think it was, but that led me to more depression where I felt completely unlovable. I was never going to be able to be a part of wrestling again after that happened. Instead of, I hate to admit it, who I was back then. Instead of being so grieving over the loss of Liz, I was grieving over what this would do to me and my career, almost more so. I hate to admit it. Back then when I was done in wrestling and my fitness nutrition quest after wrestling, I was going to be a big fitness nutrition guy to have my own nutrition company and exercise. Well, no one’s going to want that for me now. So I went into massive depression, darkness, did more drugs, more alcohol. It wasn’t until at that point where I dug such a deep, dark hole, I always thought I could somehow work or be smart enough to get out of it. I knew I was at the bottom of a pond with no light, and there was no way to the top, and I was drowning in darkness. And that’s when I turned to God. I knew there’s no way I get out of this. So God, if you’re really real, you have to get me out of this, because I’m done.”

On fans still holding Elizabeth’s death against Lex Luger:

“No doubt, and I totally understand, I do, yeah. I get it. She was a beloved character, Liz, and I’ll always be tied as part of what happened with her. And I get that I have haters out there. I understand where they’re coming from. I get it.”

On not being in the WWE Hall of Fame:

“Well, people say that good things come to those who wait, always hopeful. If not, I still feel I had a great career. There’s a lot of deserving guys other than me who still aren’t in as well. So yeah, it would be a huge honor though, if and when it happens.”

On why he doesn’t think he has been inducted:

“I don’t know what criteria they do, because there’s a lot of other guys too that should have been in. I don’t know if it was me personally or anything with Vince at all. I’m not sure about that. Only they can answer that.”

On how his relationship with WWE has changed:

“I think they waited and observed that I was a different guy now, and I felt that they learned to maybe trust who I was, that this wasn’t some temporary thing, this is the new Lex Luger, this is the direction he’s headed with his life. So I’m thankful. But they’ve been a real blessing in every way, including financially. You know, they gave me new merch and gave me what the guys call mailbox money. So I am very thankful for them welcoming back into the family and making me a part of WWE. Obviously, the Hall of Fame would be the whipped cream and cherry on top for sure. If I never get in the Hall of Fame, I feel like I had a great career. That won’t change it, but it would obviously be a huge honor. Definitely the creme de la creme, for sure.”

What is Lex Luger grateful for:

“The good Lord, my friends and my family.”

Will Sasso Does Impressions Of Jesse Ventura, Scott Hall, Macho Man, Triple H, Ric Flair & MORE!

in LATEST EPISODES on February 25, 2025 February 25, 2025

https://cvvtix.com – Tickets are on sale now for INSIGHT LIVE in Toronto & Las Vegas with VIP Meet & Greet!

Will Sasso (@willsasso) is an actor and comedian. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss performing his Jesse Ventura impression in front of the WWE Hall of Famer, how he perfects his impressions, his thoughts on celebrities in wrestling including IShowSpeed and Logan Paul, at the Raw on Netflix premiere, wrestling Bret Hart in WCW and he does impressions of Andre The Giant, Triple H, British Bulldog, Ric Flair and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.” – Suzy Kassem

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On how Jesse Ventura is unaware of Will Sasso’s impression:

“[Impersonates Jesse Ventura] Because I live in the Baja six months out of the year. And you know that, Chris, I don’t have TV. Why would I watch American TV there? We have satellite. I have solar. I’m four miles from pavement out there, and I can’t watch American news. But I tell you what I can do. I can put my hand into a whale shark’s mouth in a lagoon. They love having their gums scratched, and you look into their eyes and they’re intelligent. That’s why I don’t know who Will Sasso is, or whatever a name only a proctologist could love. I’ll be down in the Baja riding my electric bike. I charge my electric bike, and then I ride out and I get mangoes and I bring them back to the house. Of course, I always see large birds and I think they’re drones. I’m afraid of drones because if you say the wrong thing about the government and then you go picking mangoes, you’ll see an American drone. You can tell, they’re huge. And I’m like, That’s not a tropical bird of any kind. That’s not even a raven or a crow. That’s a big drone coming to kill me. So no, I don’t watch the American news.”

On showing Jesse Ventura his Jesse Ventura impression:

“I remember him going, ‘Hello Will.’ Which was like, it is one of those things where I’m like, I actually truly revere Jesse Ventura, I love that guy and it’s like, I don’t want to break his balls on. So when he’s like, ‘Hello Will.’ I’m like, let me get this Hackney bullsh*t out and try not to f*cking offend him. And, yeah, ‘Hi, hello, me. How am I doing?’ And then it was, were you in the studio going, let’s wrap it up. Because he’s not gonna go zoom, back and forth with you.”

On honing in his impressions:

“I don’t. If I can do it, I do it. Sometimes I can’t stop doing it. And then you’re like, that’s what I mean by annoying my wife. If we’re just doing anything like [impersonates Randy Savage] Shopping for throw pillows. It’s a Saturday afternoon. Yeah, you might want to do something with your time. Household projects, maybe catch a Lakers game. No way! My wife wants to shop for throw pillows. We’re going to reformation hardware, yeah. A little more expensive than some of the other stores. Not bad if you want to get a couch, yeah sexual couch, you’re going to want to invest some money, dear, aren’t you? Yeah, but throw pillows. Let’s go to Target. No, I don’t want to go to Target. Let’s go to reformation hardware.”

On wrestling Bret Hart in WCW:

“In my opinion, the greatest in-ring performer of all time. Or let’s call it like it is, the greatest pro wrestler of all time. I’ve said this about that match that Bret could have a match with a 300-pound bag of rice, which he did on that night. For those who don’t know what the hell we’re talking about, when I was on this television program Mad TV we concocted this feud that happened between Bret and I over a year or two from two different seasons. He gets mad at me, he attacks me. It was all cooked up and then all of a sudden, it turns into a wrestling storyline where I’m going to be [in a match] It is an homage, sort of, to the Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler thing. Bret was so game, and it was great. But Bret is also so old school that it’s like, we’re doing the match fly to Tampa, A couple of my buddies flew out to see it, because they’re like, we’re not going to miss this. We go out to a bar the night before, and we’re all in the same car, along with Brian Hart, no relation, writer, executive producer at Mad TV, also a huge wrestling fan, made this whole thing happen. It was Brian who was like, let’s get Bret on the show, I got a sketch for him, what if we did this? Brian was the guy behind this whole thing. We go into this bar and the night before, and Bret’s like, Okay, I’m gonna go in first, and then you guys can come in later. And my buddy’s like, no, we want to go in with you. Okay, so you guys and Brian, you come in with me, and then we’ll just wait a half hour and then come in and don’t sit near me. I was like, come on, we gotta [do this]? He’s like, no, no, no, the match is tomorrow. So we kayfabed it. I go into this bar that is also where Bret Hart is so people were coming up to me who are following this thing. I’m on TV, I’m on entertainment magazine outlets going, No I’m gonna sue the f*cking guy. He attacked me on Mad TV. I’m talking to Access Hollywood going I’m suing him. It looked legit. He hit me with a chair. He goes How hard Should I hit you with the chair? And in order so that it would look gnarly on TV, I said to the excellence of execution, go ahead Bret, hit me as hard as you can. You can’t hurt me. Because I really wanted him to hit me. I had raised welts on my back for like, a couple of weeks. [It wasn’t a steel chair]. It was like a steel framed with plastic. So it was probably better than getting hit with a real steel chair. But there was still a lot of apparatus there to raise and split your skin, and then I had an alligator pad on my knee and leg, and he starts wailing on my knee, and then he puts me in the Sharpshooter, and I’m screaming. Bret never hurt anybody. Taking a thing to your back, even that was a surface thing and I pissed him off, so he did it. And then we get to this thing, and cut to me in a bar with people going, you know, who’s right over there? Bret Hart’s over there. I’m like, no, what? Oh, holy sh*t. Then we got a match the next day. Come on, we’re doing this. We’re doing the thing. But crazy for him to be like yeah that sounds cool, let’s do it!”

On IShowSpeed being an entrant in the Royal Rumble:

“They did it right because he got his just desserts for stepping in the ring, and that’s what it should be. If someone comes into the ring, it should be [they get beat up].”

On The Bret Hart match:

“So our thing is here’s this big, goofy guy from Mad TV who’s had this problem with Bret Hart. Now it’s getting settled in the ring. You’ve got Tony Schiavone, Mike Tenay, and the greatest of all time Bobby Heenan, which that alone, having Bobby Heenan call [my match], just unbelievable. Someone was like, well maybe Will Sasso had some experience with wrestling, perhaps in high school. What do you mean? We’re not detailing his high school wrestling career. He’s in there with The Excellence of Execution. They’re just calling what they are calling. But I bet in the back of their heads they’re like, Man, I hope he doesn’t get a move on Bret. This is dumb. So Bret just kind of beats the sh*t out of me the whole time. And Brian wanted him to. He’s like, maybe you just even take a chair like, Oh, is he gonna hit him with a f*cking chair now? Now he just puts the chair in the middle of the ring and drinks a bottle of water. I’m like, I love that. I might have even said it on the program here, so sorry if you’ve already heard this, but we go out there in the afternoon. He goes, Well, let’s just go feel the ring out. He gave me a Russian Leg Sweep and then I went and took the ropes. I think we talked about this. I took the ropes the wrong way and I was like, f*ck. It’s like that elevator cable from WCW. La Parka can jump off it. I go, okay. He’s like, you know, you’ll figure it out. You’ve watched this shit. I’m like, exactly I’ve watched this shit. What are you talking about? I haven’t been in there.”

On Logan Paul:

“He’s built for it. He’s such a natural heel. But also, you look at him, all the stuff he’s ever done, you just remember as a kid on Vine he’s jumping out of windows in college. He’s already, like a beefy, athletic acrobatic dude. It’s shocking to see the stuff that he can do. He’s got that new finisher that looks crazy. To me, that’s one of the coolest, weird things. You can’t even call it a crossover because he’s legit a professional wrestler. He’s a guy who’s like, I’m gonna do this. But also, the bulk of his sort of work, his existence right now is Impaulsive. So he does his show. It hasn’t gotten in the way of that, it’s made it better. He’s a savant at it, and not for nothing, they say he’s training with Shawn Michaels. So to have Shawn Michaels go here’s how you do a kip up, kid.”

What is Will Sasso grateful for?

“My wife, the new program that I am working on and the people I get to work with.”

Road Dogg Compares The Attitude Era & Triple H Era, DX, Smackdown, R-Truth

in LATEST EPISODES on February 20, 2025 February 20, 2025

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Oh you didn’t know?! Road Dogg (@BrianRDJames) is a retired professional wrestler and WWE Hall of Famer. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Indianapolis to discuss his WWE and TNA careers as a wrestler, what his role is now behind the scenes in WWE, the biggest differences between The Attitude Era and the current era, being a part of D-Generation X and invading WCW with a tank, the dumpster segment with Cactus Jack and Chainsaw Charlie, his partnership with K-Kwik [R-Truth], why he thought CM Punk hated him, his battles with addiction, being the head writer of SmackDown, the storyline he pushed that never went through and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” — James Baldwin

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On looking back at his career:

“I’ve been there for a minute as far as realizing, man, I achieved a dream that millions and millions of people dream. I had a leg up, and I know that’s not fair to everybody, but I pray I carried the name even though I didn’t have the name Armstrong on my jersey. I pray I did the family well in representing it. But I also feel like I just stood on my own two feet too, and that feels really good. Well, I’ll tell you what I did when I did my podcast for a minute after WWE fired me for the fourth time [laughs]. I learned that DX was only like a 18 month run, it was not this great [long run]. You know what I mean? The Attitude Era was like a meteor that flew by, and it flew by really fast. I thought it was like a five-year deal. No, in 16-18 months DX was split up and then put back together again. It is all so crazy how fast it happened and how high it went.”

On why his podcast ended:

“So once they hired me back, it was kind of the task that I was tasked with, which demanded more time of me. It just demanded that I be on and last year, especially, some things up and down throughout. But I was on the road last year. I made every television show. I made every PLE, I was in the office. I was on live events. I was moving last year. This year, so far in the first quarter, just doing more content creating, and a lot of opportunities coming up for all these different platforms that are purchasing live action content. So we got the LFG that you probably saw on A&E plugged.”

On WWE LFG:

“I’d love to talk about that for a second if you don’t mind. So LFG, let’s f*** go, and I’ve edited myself. But it’s four coaches, they each have four individuals underneath them, and the coaches are The Undertaker, Bubba Dudley, Mickey James and Booker T. So this is literally at the ground level of these people learning to become professional wrestlers, sports entertainers and they got Undertaker teaching them how to do it. It’s the most access that I’ve ever seen given, because it’s uncomfortable for me, an old rassler, to give this much access to the public. But man, we are giving away the farm. It’s eye opening for me to sit back there and watch every episode and hear Bubba Dudley talk to some young talent, and I think to myself I was lucky, I had my family to do that for me. But holy mackerel, to have Bubba Dudley, one half of the most decorated tag team in the history of professional wrestling, The Undertaker, Mickey James, Booker T. You’re sitting under the Learning Tree of these people, and you’re in the infancy of your career. I get goosebumps talking about it, because it really is super exciting to see. You get to know The Undertaker as a dude just talking to another dude about wrestling. So it’s so cool, and the access is so unlimited that A&E’s got a hit on their hand. I can guarantee you that.”

On if WWE is giving too much away to the fans in the modern era:

“I’ve asked that same question to myself a million times, because it rubs you the wrong way as soon as you hear oh wait, we’re gonna say that. You’re gonna let that cat out of the bag, and it’s the finish, or whatever we’re going to talk about at the end of the day. I think the people, the WWE Universe, wrestling fans, they know what we’re doing. They know what’s up, and I think they’re okay with us not insulting their intelligence, but also not just go, ‘Here’s how you make a blade.’ We don’t do that anymore anyway. But I don’t think they mind us keeping some things to ourselves, but they don’t want their intelligence insulted.”

On if he saw the creativity in Triple H 25 years ago:

“So no would be the quick answer. However, I never saw him as my boss, but I saw him as he was going to be somebody in the wrestling world, because I saw how he thought. We worked, a bunch of you have probably seen Brian Armstrong versus Terra Ryzing 100 times on WCW. I knew then, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing in there and he was thoughtful putting stuff together in his head and I was like, Yeah, let’s do that. So yeah, I knew he was gonna be somebody and be something just because of the way looked and the way carried himself, and like I said, his brain.”

On what his current role is in WWE:

“So really, I’m still in charge of creative of live events. But now we have scaled live events back. Domestically, especially this coming year, we’re going to find out where our sweet spot is, but a lot of overseas live events coming up this year, there’s huge money there. The business side of things right now is so far beyond what they have ever been before, even Attitude, all that stuff is just putting shame what the business is doing now with Hunter at the Helmsley [laughs]. I know, I’m sorry. I’m a granddad.”

On the difference between The Attitude Era and today:

“I think the talent to be quite honest with you. The talent is a different animal, man. So I’ll tell you this quick story, and I’ve told it a million times, but when Edge and Christian came in, I used to scoff at them because they were on time and healthy and limber. They were doing exactly what a person in their line of work should be doing. I was still a party animal, so I scoffed at them and thought [differently]. Well now that’s what the athlete is, because that’s what the athlete has to be. You have to be that dedicated to your body and to this field and all that to be that. I would have never made it today. I mean, look at me. For the love of Pete, all these guys we just saw, Carmelo Hayes, and they’re all chiseled out of brick. They look like Greek Gods.”

On how he became self-aware:

“Sobriety. I’ve been sober 15 years now. I did it to save my life because when I got sober, I was just done. I was done living, literally. I wanted to kill myself, but I was scared my kids are going to find me with my brains blown out in the lawn mower shed. That really went through my mind a lot, 100 times, literally 100 times. But because it was, I was on a vicious cycle of wake up and do drugs and wake up and do drugs and wake up and do drugs and it was like oh God, I don’t want to live this way anymore. This ain’t how my mom and dad raised me.”

Did you see a way out?

“No, I didn’t know that there was one. And at that point I thought, well, one of these handfuls of pills is going to kill me and when is that going to happen? So look, I don’t know what happened. Finally, I was just with my brother. We were on a drive. We came from a show. I was hammered on Xanax, he just talked to me, and I just cried and broke down. I wasn’t working for this company, but the next day I called this company, and a certain lady I knew to call, and I called her, I was in rehab the next day, and that was 15 years ago. But even then, one of my biggest fears today is not being self-aware. That’s probably my biggest fear. I know I’m not. I say things and people will go [groans]. I just feel like I’m not fully self aware. Man, I want to be. I don’t want to be I want to know my motives. I want to question my motives. I question my motives. I’ll be honest with you about something. I questioned my motives about doing this interview. Because I said, why do I want to do it? You called me and I jumped at it. I was excited, and I told you earlier off screen, it’s for me, it’s for my ego. It’s to talk about how cool I was for a minute. Let me be back in front of the camera for a second. So I had to sit there and think about is that the right thing for me? This is where I ended up. I said, Well, what’s wrong with that? I’m not the guy that needs my name at the credits at the end of the show. If I contribute somehow, and the show’s cool, cool. But this was a moment from I’m enamored by you and your stardom and how far you’ve come and what you’re doing. So I thought, man, he asked me to sit down with him, I’m honored, but I’m also in it for selfish reasons, to try to stay relevant, for no reason at all.”

On R-Truth wanting Road Dogg to induct him into the Hall of Fame:

“I would be more than honored. I love him. I got some people in my life that I love, and he’s one of them. [That guy could wrestle for another 20 years]. Oh yeah, because he doesn’t have to do anything. That’s the magic and look, that’s what we do. That’s what we talked about earlier. People want to know the trick, they do, but they still like to be surprised. They still like to see an Easter Egg, or have to think to follow the story, and that’s what’s Hunter’s giving them. Hunter’s giving them good stuff, good wrestling. Oh, my Lord, it’s been a minute since we’ve had good wrestling that’s watchable, and three hours of it? Holy crap. And you’re three hours in, and you go okay, yeah, I did that. I remember three-hour Raws that I couldn’t make an hour into. I feel like you do too, but those don’t happen anymore.”

On if he had to mend some fences upon his WWE return:

“So it wasn’t hard at all. After I went there to TNA, and we were the Voodoo Kin Mafia, I said horrible things about him and Shawn and the whole deal. For one thing, I don’t think they ever watched or saw it. I don’t think they cared, because the front runner doesn’t look back. So I don’t think they really cared, but it literally was a conversation that happened when I came back. He literally sat me down and said, What was all that crap? I said Hey man, I was high. I was just trying to make a living, and that was the truth. I wasn’t going to fight nobody. I’m not going to go fight somebody, but we were supposed to meet him at the Alamo.”

On the fact that the door could have been closed:

“100%. Again, I commend his [Triple H], I don’t know how to say level-headedness in any other way, but he can look past that superficial nothingness because it was nothing and nothing became of it. He sees value in me and said, ‘Hey, do you want to come back?’ This was the conversation we had when I came back after I guess 2011. ‘Hey, do you want to come back and make some fun TV like we used to do in DX?’ And I said, Hell yeah, I want to. And he goes, Okay. And there it was just off and running. Me and him were the kind of the guys behind all the backstage stuff of DX. Chyna would chime in too because she’s hilarious. X-Pac and Billy were always there and on point. But it was when we were setting it up and how the camera was going to come in here, it was always just me and him talk, shooting the breeze and doing it. So it was natural for him to make that call and go, Hey, you want to do that again, and yeah, I do, it’s a blast.”

On why he thought him and CM Punk hated each other for 10 years:

“Because in my head I hated him, and I thought he hated me too. Yeah, a lot of stuff [happened], I went down back and forth and good times and bad times, but yeah, I just thought [he hated me]. So then the first time I saw him when he came back here, he stood up and he hugged me, and it broke my ice immediately. It also hit me right then, Hey Brian, he hadn’t thought a thing about you. It doesn’t matter what he thinks about me anyway, and I damn sure don’t matter. Doesn’t matter what I think about him. He realized that. I was here at 55 and holding on to that, and I was holding on to nothing. There was nothing there. There was no bad feelings. I don’t know. It was weird. And he’s a different dude today. I told him not long ago at live events and stuff. Hey, I really appreciate your attitude. And he said, Well, that’s the first time anybody’s ever said that to me. Well, I mean it from the bottom of my heart, because he’s a different dude. Me and him butted heads. He butted heads with a lot of people. He says what he means, he means what he says. He don’t mind if it ruffles your feathers. I kind of respect it.”

On the dumpster angle with Cactus Jack and Chainsaw Charlie:

“That was a great day and a great time. If you go back and watch that, it got so heated and real after the push down. I remember Bradshaw always beating me up for some reason, reaching over people and hitting us and stuff. It got crazy in a frenetic way that helped the situation. Yeah, it got real for a second. And it kind of felt real even to us for a second. Because all the talent came around, and we didn’t talk about that, we didn’t rehearse that. So all of a sudden, everybody’s coming, and people are [upset]. Like I said, it’s 40 guys out there who are idiots.”

On how they rehearsed the segment:

“We didn’t rehearse with them in the dumpster, but we rehearsed with Vince in the dumpster. Yep, that’s a true story, and I’ll say this about him. He would never ask anybody to do something that he wouldn’t do himself. That’s the truth. Look, there were boxes and padding in there, and they drilled handles in there so they could hold it. We did the top down so the top wouldn’t open, so their hand wouldn’t go out or nothing. We made it as safe as possible. But then two humans just got pushed off the off the edge. And it wasn’t a huge drop, but it’s far enough to where you’re gonna hit, you’re in a crash.”

On if he instantly realised it was special being in DX:

“No, I knew that they thought we were special. I knew that obviously, there was Shawn’s back injury and how do we carry on from here? I knew that they thought highly enough about us that we were the answer and we weren’t a substitution. We were the answer to carry it on until he’s better. That was the whole thinking, and that made me feel real good. So I knew that because those two in particular, Hunter and Shawn, thought that to ask it of us that we were going to be taken care of. When I say that I mean creatively we’re gonna get looked after. When you have the landscape of a show in front of you, not everybody gets looked after. That’s just a fact of the business and how much time you have. A three hour show will help, but you’re going to get some mid stories that in a two hour show you wouldn’t get to. So I soon learned oh okay, they’re all in on us. But at the time that made me even more cocky. It made me even more arrogant, because I again, said damn right you think we’re great. Acceptance and perspective are the two most important things in the world to me, because if I can accept whatever happens, then I’m fine with it. I’m not going to kick against the bricks if I can accept it. And then you accept that whatever just happened and put it in the proper perspective. It’s like the apostle Paul preaching in prison in biblical terms. Holy Mackerel he was in jail, but he was his perspective was such that he could still preach a positive message. So that’s perspective, if I can keep my mind in the right space, I’ll be all right today.”

On the WCW invasion:

“There was little direction, to be quite honest with you. It was literally running gun. We had done that when I was the Roadie with real Double J. We did that in Brentwood after the OJ Simpson trial, me and Jeff and Vince Russo went out there, and you take a camera and you run and gun. It’s not legal and it’s not morally right, but we had fun with it. And again, there’s no direction, just you’ll hear Bruce Pritchard come by and go, come on, get in the van. We’d all run and get in the van. But it was great. It was guerrilla warfare. [The police grabbed me] a couple of times, and I had weed in my pocket. Just crazy stuff like that where you just go like, man, what were we doing and what were we thinking? But it was stuff that wins wars. That’s what it was and it worked. It was guerrilla warfare, and it worked.”

On a storyline he pushed that never went through:

“I’ll tell you this, and I’d love to have a conversation with you about it. It worked out exactly how it was supposed to work out, but I was wrong. I wanted Big E to win the title at Kofi Mania. I thought Big E was the guy, and a guy on my writing team who now writes for NXT said, ‘You’re wrong boss. You’re wrong. It’s Kofi.’ And I didn’t realize that Kofi had such a personal connection with the fan base. I was just looking for who’s the next guy and I didn’t think oh, the guy’s sitting right here. I was trying to make this guy over here and, yeah, never been so happy to be wrong though. What a moment. You can go back in time and fuss about what happened the next week or the next year or whatever. Who cares? Kofi won the title at WrestleMania, and nobody can ever take that away. Big E had his moment. It was gonna come around, just it wasn’t time yet. I saw something that it was there. It just wasn’t time yet. The timing was Kofi. It was Kofi time and have I never been so happy to be wrong and couldn’t be more happy for the guy it happened for too. If I was writing again, we’d do it one more time, because I think it would work again. I 100% think it would work again.”

On sudden creative changes:

“That’s the WrestleMania that broke me, that kind of broke my spirit and was the kind of one where I went home after that. There was a lot of all that leading up to it, a lot of talk about I’d been writing the show for a while, and it had been successful and not successful and successful. We were in a good place with it. But the times they were a changing and I felt a little less like it was my show, and when I fought for it I always lost. It was just one of those things where I said, Yeah, I’m done fighting this fight. It was really fun at first. I feel like I had a lot of creative freedom at first. I don’t know if you remember, but that first Backlash when Dean Ambrose was the SmackDown Champion, and it was, and it was Heath Slater and Rhino were the Tag Team Champions. It was a fun little wrestling show, a little two-hour fun wrestling show that was gaining some traction, and then it just felt like it drew the attention of everybody, then everybody wanted to play, and the sandbox that was mine was not mine anymore. That’s hard. I knew it wasn’t my show. I know the deal. But if I’m the head writer and this is my creative that I’d like to close the show ending like this, on the build-up to that Kofi Mania, I’d like to end it like this, and I don’t get good reasons why we not doing that. And again, me maybe being cocky and narcissistic. I think I know better than everybody. But here’s the truth about me, and this is cocky and narcissistic. I’m good at this wrestling crap. I’m not good at the physical aspects of it, but I’m good at putting it together. I’m good at thinking about what will get good reactions. I’m good at it. I know what I come up with for this segment, for this show, is gonna work. I know that for a fact. What you come up with the show, I don’t know if it’s gonna work. I can watch it work and go like, Damn dude, good. That was awesome. It worked, but I didn’t know it was gonna work because it wasn’t mine. But because I know how to go out there and make the people talk about me for a second, or get their attention and keep it for a minute I feel like I can do the same here, and I wasn’t being given that opportunity at the end. And so it was frustrating. It was creatively frustrating. And I think that’s the maybe creatively frustrating should be the era of that, because I’m sure I wasn’t alone in that.”

What is Road Dogg grateful for?

“Family, God and sobriety.”

Ludwig Kaiser On Gunther, Dating Tiffany Stratton, Giovanni Vinci, WWE Goals, Bash In Berlin

in LATEST EPISODES on February 18, 2025 February 18, 2025

Ludwig Kaiser (@WWE_Kaiser) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Indianapolis, IN to discuss his journey from the German independent scene to the WWE main roster and how at one point it looked to be impossible, his partnership with and past matches against Gunther, his insane body transformation, being part of Imperium with his tag team partner Giovanni Vinci, wrestling in Berlin but not being a part of the WWE Bash in Berlin card, his recent matches against Bron Breakker and Sheamus, if he sees a breakout run coming soon, a possible babyface run, Tiffany Stratton winning the Women’s Championship and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller

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On when momentum started to build in 2024:

“Man it’s hard to say, just because like you said, a lot of stuff happened last year and it was a little bit of an up and down as well. I’ve been in the company for so long already, it feels like everything that I ever did or accomplished I really had to work hard for. Nothing was given to me and I think that definitely one of the major moments was basically right in the beginning of the year, the first few weeks, the match against Kofi Kingston. Giovanni Vinci was hurt couple of weeks back. The thing with the drop kick to the head and all of a sudden he was out. Yeah, the way this business works, right? All of a sudden you’re in that spot, and you get that chance that you haven’t really gotten before. So I was told very, very firmly, very directly what they wanted to see that night. I think it was a little bit of a test as well because they wanted a side that they haven’t seen from Ludwig Kaiser so far and a side that comes very naturally to me that I love to show but it was never time. It was just never that spot to really do that. And as soon as I did it the first night it worked, everybody saw it and I think that night definitely, right in the beginning of the year, was an important one.”

On what direction he was given for his mean streak:

“Obviously, when we first came in the focus was heavily on Gunther. To me, I hold pride in not only being a good professional wrestler but a good professional, and that also means to know your spot. I always try to add something to the act without taking anything away, that was always my goal. The tools that I have and that I can work with very well are perfect for what we do here for the main roster, and I found that out pretty quickly. So I found my ways just to make myself valuable, make the act better within the way I was given, or as good as I could.”

On how he got to WWE:

“The story that I’ve heard is that WWE was looking for a German wrestler, and they scheduled a tour through Germany to look at talent, go through all the different wrestling schools and stuff. And apparently Mr. William Regal, who I’m always going to be grateful for, saw my name on the list, he knew my dad, and they saw my picture. They saw everything, he pointed out me and said cancel the tour, we’ll take him. I was one of the guys. I never had to do a tryout, because I was supposed to do one, but two weeks, three weeks before I blew my knee out. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to say that. I’m not sure if I ever said that. But yeah, I got injured and I had to cancel the tryout. So obviously I’m in the match already, I thought Oh my God, this is over. Because when I first started this, I never thought I would go to WWE. It was not my big goal to be like okay, I gotta go to WWE or otherwise this is all for nothing. No, I wanted to do my dad proud. I wanted to be a professional wrestler. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to do all of that.”

On if he thought WWE might not be possible:

“I think so, yeah. Because back in the day when I first grew up in wrestling, it was very, very tough. Honestly, before Hunter had that vision and opened up that door for us, none of us, not Gunther, not myself, not Pete Dunne, all those guys, Finn Balor, I don’t think we would be here today. So without Hunter, without men like William Regal, men like Dave Taylor, Robbie Brookside, Fit Finlay, all those guys who paved that way for us European talent. I’ll always be grateful for that, definitely. Because without them, I don’t think we would be here.”

On his body transformation:

“I’ve been working hard. It’s every time in my career when I felt like I’m standing still here and I have to do something, because there’s only so many things that are in your hands, there’s only so many things you control in our line of work. My thing was always, I gotta make sure all my stuff is on point 11 out of 10. So yeah, I was looking at myself and thought what else can you do? I’m working out a lot, I go in the ring a lot and at this point, it was the diet that I could have worked on a little bit. I think I gotta say too, at that point when I lost that much weight, I really tried to bulk as well and I really tried to get as many calories in, because I worked out hard and stuff. But then yeah, I think 18 weeks with the reverse diet. The reverse diet is basically not going back to the calories that you used to eat, because you slowly, slowly, slowly go down a little bit. You cut the carbs here a little bit, you cut the calories a little bit. Then you lose weight and when you’re at the point where you are happy with the body fat percentage can slowly go up again. Because your body is so empty, basically, it sucks all the nutrients up so good and juices everything perfectly. But if you all of a sudden, of course, starve your body for so many weeks and then go back with 5,000 calories every day, then obviously that’s not going to be good. Everything slowly up, slowly down. Don’t shock your body like that. And yeah, that worked very, very well for me I gotta say. [Did you work with a nutritionist for that?] I did. A guy from Germany. He used to wrestle as well. I’ve known for a long time, and he’s really good at that. So he helped me out. He helped Gunther out. He helped a bunch of the guys out.”

On how he met Tiffany Stratton:

“In the PC basically. We knew of each other. Obviously, I’ve been there for a while, and, yeah, she got my attention a little bit. I would lie if I said I wouldn’t have noticed her. I think we kind of played the same game a little bit. We’re very similar in a lot of ways. We are both pretty stubborn, or we can be pretty stubborn I think. And I think nobody wanted to make the first step, really. But then yeah, coincidences, I was out with a couple of friends, and she was there as well. It was her birthday weekend, she sat down, and then I don’t know how it went, but somehow we got to that, hey, why don’t we go on a date?”

On Tiffany Stratton winning the Women’s Championship:

“It was awesome. I actually flew in because it was a huge, huge moment. Obviously, I was there for her NXT Championship win back then, so I really wanted to be there as well. We have such an amazing product, especially now. But the only thing that really doesn’t do justice is the reaction and the way things sound when you’re actually there live. That moment when she actually turned on Nia was crazy. You had to be there in order to understand that that was really a huge moment. Really doesn’t do it justice on TV. But yeah, it was amazing. I’m so happy for her because I’ve been there for the lows, I’ve been there for the highs. I’ve seen it all very up close, and she created something there. She’s doing amazing.”

On Ludwig Kaiser’s moment coming soon:

“I think that it’s definitely there. We’re moving towards it 100%. Being in the biggest and best company in the world when it comes to professional wrestling also means that you are facing the biggest and best competition in the world. That’s just how it is, and I’m not afraid of that. I’ve never been afraid of that. I’ve been wrestling for 10 years before I made it here and I restarted my career. I went all the way down to the first step of the ladder again, and climbed all the way up there. I did everything again, and to me, it is head down and work hard.”

On a possible babyface run:

“I never say never. I do believe that I that I can work babyface. I actually think that I could be a good babyface. I have a good babyface run in me. When I was in Germany and I was a babyface I was never the 100% of the crowd is on my side babyface. I was always very polarizing, either people really hated me or they really liked me. Most of the times the kids and the women like me and the men hated my guts. There was a time in wXw where I was supposed to be that babyface runner up, and they hated it. It was like 80% against 20% really killing me out there. But yeah, I do think I got it in me. First of all though, I gotta knock this heel thing out. Be natural and be happy who I am, because it comes obviously much more naturally.”

On if he sees an onscreen partnership with Tiffany Stratton happening:

“I don’t know. Obviously that’s something that would have to happen organically. I wouldn’t want to just to do that. Obviously we work in the same company, and that possibility is given. But I also like to keep my private life private, you know what I mean? I’m a little old school when it comes to that. But definitely when it comes to work I think we could do some great stuff. We could bring the Mixed Match Challenge back.”

On not being on the Bash in Berlin card:

“I did fight for it. I did. There were conversations about it, and it wasn’t really clear if it would happen or not. But again, it’s tough, man. It’s a PLE. We have so much stuff. If you look at the card that night, it is almost impossible to even get on there. So much star power. And again, we have the greatest superstars in the world. When I look at that card, I understand why I wasn’t on that card that night, but I damn well know I will be. I will 100% be. Because Germany showed out that night, and it’s a great market for the company, and, yeah it’s my first time there with WWE really. There’s a lot of shows to come, and a lot of opportunities, and I can definitely promise you, Ludwig Kaiser is going to use all those.”

What is Ludwig Kaiser grateful for?

“Family, my friends and my life.”

Michelle McCool On Marrying The Undertaker, LayCool, Mickie James, Hall Of Fame

in LATEST EPISODES on February 13, 2025 February 13, 2025

https://cvvtix.com – Tickets are on sale now for INSIGHT LIVE in Toronto & Las Vegas with VIP Meet & Greet!

Michelle McCool (@McCoolMichelleL) is a retired professional wrestler known for her time in WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Austin, TX to discuss getting into the WWE by entering the Diva Search, being a part of the Divas Era and having to fight for airtime, the controversial “Piggy James” segments with Mickie James, forming a tag team with Layla and the broken Women’s Championship, how she first met The Undertaker and started dating, her surprise entry in the 2023 Women’s Royal Rumble, if she thinks a Hall of Fame induction will happen one day and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Every man has two lives, and the second starts when he realizes he has just one.” – Confucius

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On still being able to go in the ring:

“I feel like I could, my mind tells me I can. Sometimes I’m like I can’t believe it’s been 20 years, which is crazy to say, but I am 44 now. But I do feel like I could, I mean, at least for a very short amount of time.”

On being a surprise entrant in the 2023 Royal Rumble:

“Yeah, that was fun. That was interesting. I’ve told the story before. They called me on very short notice. I think it was eight, nine days. Asked me if I wanted to do it, and I was like, Oh shoot. I mean, yes, I’ll work out. But I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times, ring shape is a whole different ball game. I think I was in for a few minutes. I think at one point, it’s kind of in a corner with it was either Piper or Naomi. I was like give me a second y’all, I’m tired. But, yeah, that was super fun. I knew I was going to be there with the kids watching, and my dad was there, and it was something different. I mean, they said I could wrestle in my sweatpants and Uggs. I should have been doing it my entire career. I was like I am in. Honestly, it was a thing where Mark and I talked, our daughter was kind of struggling, she’s a perfectionist, and if she can’t do something on the first try, she gets so mad. So it was a kind of a lesson. I said, You know what? I’m just gonna let her know this is something that mommy is kind of a little bit terrified to do on such short notice. I don’t know if I’m ready to do it, but you know what, we can be scared and brave at the same time and go out and do it. So it was kind of a lesson I was trying to build in for her. Don’t really know that she got that, she’s just loves WWE period. Not even sure she was cheering for me. But that was part of the reasoning as well.”

On her daughter wanting to wrestle:

“She has been obsessed as long as I can remember. I mean, she was probably three or four watching something. Even Mark turned to me. He’s like, Oh no, she gets it. She asked this question, like, why would they do that? Or this doesn’t make sense or wow, that looked really good. And we’re like, oh gosh, she gets it. She loves it.”

On being recognised at airports:

“Oh my gosh, they’re awful. I joke that I’m married and so I could wear whatever heels I wanted to, and occasional security jumps at the airport. People recognizing we were traveling on the road all the time. But man, it’s crazy. People just don’t have boundaries. It’s like, you appreciate and love the fans. You hear it from even the superstars today, but when you’re getting chased or followed and your kids are around, especially, it’s just like, Dude, come on.”

On being discovered by WWE:

“Not until honest to goodness I got the call for the Diva Search, because I come from such a small town in Florida, and it’s kind of one of those deals where nobody ever leaves. There have been some great athletes that have come out of that town, but everybody just kind of comes back, and you just always think that’s just what you do. So I never really thought, hey, this is what I’m going to do. But in 2004 when they had the Diva Search, I was watching it, and a friend said, there’s your chance, but you won’t do it. I was like, Oh, I hate being told that I won’t or I can’t. Also hate failing. So I’m not going to tell you I’m trying, but I did. I filled out the papers. I went to this local park, had a friend take pictures, didn’t tell him what for, sent them in and I got a call. I was too nervous to answer it at the time, I was actually with my parents, so I just sent it the voicemail. Got the voicemail that they were asking me to come. And I was like this can’t be true. So called him back and went to New York, this huge cattle call, and everybody had these portfolios that their agents are sent. I’m like, Oh my gosh. I don’t even know what fake eyelashes are. I have these pictures I took in the park, where am I right now?”

On if it could have been a career:

“I still was like not that it wouldn’t or couldn’t, because I trusted in my abilities, but it just seemed too far-fetched. It just seemed like, oh, here it is. This is fun. But especially after I got cut, I didn’t think I was gonna get called back to go train at Deep South. So while it was within reach, I don’t know that I ever thought, can this really happen to me? Little me from Palatka, Florida, this teeny, tiny town nobody’s heard of. But here we are.”

On developing her character:

“Well, it took a while. I think if you watched the first several years of my career, I wasn’t super comfortable speaking on the microphone or doing promos. But once I realized you’ve got nothing [to lose], I mean, you have everything to lose, yes, but the more comfortable you can go out there and just act as if nobody’s there, it becomes a lot easier. And when Layla and I got paired together game over, we just had fun.”

On fighting for airtime and having short matches:

“That was the hard part during my era. When you hear about the Attitude Era, you hear about the Divas era, which we were kind of like a forgotten era. We were kind of like the in between, which for a while I was frustrated with that, but then I was like, there’s nothing we did all we could with what we had, and I’m grateful for that, but it was hard to tell a story. They started giving Layla and I more and more time, which was nice, more and more freedom, which was nice, also led to a lot of other people not liking that, because that’s the wrestling business, which made that difficult as well, because you have to have somebody to work. But it was hard. It was a struggle.”

On being in the first women’s tables match:

“I was proud of that Tables match. It was not only the first, it was fun. Earlier in the day we were walking up the ramp, and I remember somebody saying you know, the table is fine, it’s gonna break. There’s two of them, right? There’s Layla and Michelle, yeah, no problem. That sucker did not break. Table would not put us over. They didn’t like us either. So we hit and I’m like, oh gosh. Now look back up, Natty, climb back up. And it couldn’t have turned off better with her going back up for the second time. But yeah, that was a big moment.”

On having to re-do matches:

“There was one point where Victoria and I had a match. We came backstage, getting changed, and they came back and said, Hey, y’all need to come back out and do your match again. We’re like, What do you mean come back out and do our match again? They’re like, your punches and kicks look better than the guys. We’re like, Wait a minute. We have to go redo our match because our punches look too good? That doesn’t sound like an us problem. Chris Jericho at the time, he stood up for us, and he said if the guy’s punches don’t look as good, that is not the girl’s fault. That’s not their fault. Regardless, we had to go out there and re-do our match, and there was a period of about three or four weeks that girls couldn’t punch or kick.”

On the Piggy James storyline:

“I give credit to this day, and I said this to somebody the other day, and I said it to her. But the whole Piggy James storyline, me at heart hated it, just because of what it was. You’re bullying somebody, supposedly that they’re supposedly overweight, and that has never been me. Every week I’d go up to her, ‘Mickie, I’m so sorry. This is what they want us to say.’ Complete professional. Not once did she try to change things, which often girls did. Not once. She’s like, ‘No, it’s good. It’s cool.’ She knew that took two to tango. She knew what her role was. She knew what our role was, and she really, I think, put us on the map with that storyline.”

On where the pitch came from:

“I don’t remember the original pitch. A lot of times back then, things started with personal digs at somebody, or maybe somebody got in trouble and they wanted to make fun. I don’t know what it was, but it just came out of the blue. Layla and I were stupid. We acted dumb together, we said silly things, we had a lot of fun. But when that storyline came about, I was like oh, this is just mean. But it did get us over and I give all the credit in the world to Mickie for that. She easily could have said, ‘Guys, this is too much, too far, I’m not doing it.’ She was already over, but she didn’t [object]. She knew how the business worked, and it got her more over, and she helped us.”

On the split Women’s Championship:

“That was, I want to say that was Batista’s idea. We were backstage, and he’s like, Well, what If y’all cut it in half like the best friend necklaces? Our minds went there, and we’re like, that’d be great. And I don’t think anybody else thought it was a great idea. Like, come on, guys, that was fun. Yeah, that was fun.”

On retiring from wrestling:

“I don’t think I told anybody other than Mark and Layla. She knew it was coming. I wanted to enjoy it. It was hard because we were still fighting for that last match, or that last build-up to the last match, and it just, I don’t know if I ever got true closure, because it’s like I didn’t really want to leave, but I didn’t want to hate something I loved my entire life and still love to this day. So it was a tough decision, but I had to just try to find the good. Always try to find the good. I have some very dear friends to this day that I take from the business.”

On dating The Undertaker affecting things professionally:

“I just know that I wasn’t the only one dating guys around there and I definitely didn’t see that from anybody else. [Did it feel personal?] Not so much personal to me, but because he is the top [guy], he is the benchmark for everybody. So I think people looked at that differently, he has whatever pull he wants is what people think. You can ask him, and I actually am so stubborn, I don’t ever need any type of help to fight any battle, to fight a storyline, to pitch a storyline, I can look in the mirror and just say that’s never happened. Now, there was one time a little incident happened with a guy, and I had to beg him not to say something, even though this guy was calling Mark and wanting to talk to him and apologize and everything else, which he didn’t answer. He may sweat it out for several weeks, it’s good now. I was good, totally fine now, but I mean, just point being that’s my nature, that’s my character, that’s how I’ve always been my entire life to a fault. I don’t need help from anybody. I can figure this out. I can chuck them through and get something done. But, you know, there were writers that literally threw up their papers. ‘If she wasn’t the Undertaker’s girlfriend…’ I will turn my cheek a million times, but also stand up for myself. And there are a few times I can remember, like a handful, where I’d already talked to somebody earlier in the day and they had treated me one way. And then, of course, they see me and Mark together, and I have to say, Guess what? I didn’t change from 10 minutes ago. So treat me the same way you treated me when he wasn’t standing here.”

On a possible Hall of Fame induction:

“I don’t know. I get that question all the time. I mean, it would be an honor. I don’t know, not my call. Don’t even whose call it is, but I have no idea. I would hope Laycool would go in, and everybody always asks. I mean, that would be an honor to go in as Michelle McCool, obviously. But think Laycool is what put Michelle McCool really on the map. And I’ll never take that for granted, but she just disassociated from wrestling for quite some time, and I respected that. Would I give anything to have a LayCool reunion at a Rumble? Yeah.”

On knowing The Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak would end:

“I did. I think he told me early in the afternoon, when they made that decision I was hot. Why? That doesn’t make sense! And of course, he’s like his business. That’s his call. I knew that it had been pitched that Edge break the streak years prior. But Adam said No, there’s no rhyme or reason that I need to break The Streak, that The Streak needs to be broken, that I want to have any part of that. And he didn’t mad respect, but, yeah, not a good night.”

What is Michelle McCool grateful for?

“My health, for family and for nature.”

Carlito On Bad Bunny, Backlash Return, Beating John Cena In His WWE Debut, Judgement Day

in LATEST EPISODES on February 11, 2025 February 11, 2025

https://cvvtix.com – Tickets are on sale now for INSIGHT LIVE in Toronto & Las Vegas with VIP Meet & Greet!

Carlito (@Litocolon279) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at the first-ever INSIGHT LIVE in Indianapolis, IN to discuss the vignettes that built up to his WWE debut, beating John Cena in his first-ever match, the infamous John Cena stabbing storyline, sharing the ring with Roddy Piper and Steve Austin at WrestleMania, how the Backstabber became his finisher, returning to the company at Backlash in Puerto Rico, being a part of The Judgment Day, the right technique to spit an apple and more! Plus, Carlito takes questions from the audience.

Quote I’m thinking about: “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
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On what he was told his gimmick would be:

“They said the gimmick would be just he’s a cool kind of laid-back guy. That’s all they gave me. Well, it’s kind of how it is with wrestling. They’ll give you certain guidelines or whatever. Then it’s up to you to kind of make that character, or end up not making that character.”

On the apple spitting technique:

“There’s actually a technique of spitting that people haven’t realized. You have to get the right amount of chew, because if you don’t chew it enough, when you spit it at someone, it’ll just be like big blocks and it’ll fall off. If you chew it too much, then it just gets too gooey and it won’t spray enough. But if you get it just right the way I do, you get that nice spray that just sticks all over their face and gets in the shirt and their hair. Lovely.”

On not being proud of some apple spits:

“There’s a couple that I’m ashamed, not ashamed of, but there’s a couple of people, especially some females that I remember. Maybe that’s why there’s no vignettes, because I look a lot of them now and nowadays you’re like, Oh, we couldn’t get away with that nowadays. The one I did with Maria, you guys know, right? That one wouldn’t fly today. And for those who don’t know, you’ll look it up somewhere. But, yeah, that wouldn’t fly these days.”

On his storylines with Trish Stratus and Torrie Wilson:

“The thing was that I felt it was a contradiction to what the Carlito character is. Because if think about it, he was always talking about being cool and whatever but he was actually not cool. And then he is always the type of guy that brags about getting all these girls, but then women can’t stand him. Then all of a sudden they start putting him with women. It’s like well you kind of just throwing the whole Carlito thing away. He’s the guy that talks a lot of s***. But people understand Carlito is a heel. He’s likable but he’s a heel at heart. He’s not a good guy. I don’t see what redeemable qualities he has. I know people seem to love him, whatever. But that’s the problem. They thought, Oh, the people like him. Yeah, they like him. But they like him because he’s a certain way, and he’s a bad guy. There’s nothing good about Carlito.”

On the pop he got at Backlash 2023:

“I wasn’t [surprised], just because they’d been wanting to see me back with WWE for years, Something that they always wanted. It was like a perfect storm being in Puerto Rico, a big pay-per-view in Puerto Rico and the world’s biggest star with Bad Bunny. Everybody was kind of hoping that I would show up.”

On when his music hit:

“Well, they didn’t hit it right. Because it starts with the spit and ‘I split the face…’ It just went straight to my music. But luckily people still knew it was my music, and got the reaction it did.”

On his return at the 2021 Royal Rumble with no fans:

“It’s like Mania, it’s one of the big events, it is tradition. When I returned there wasn’t a live crowd. It was the big screens or whatever. So now I kind of just enjoy seeing that big crowd, and it’s a unique experience. It’s a big thing. I was not signed. It was like a one-off. I did one and then went back to doing my thing. I did the Raw after that.”

On Carlito’s Cabana:

“I think my first month that I started I got injured. I dislocated my left shoulder, so they wanted to keep me on TV somehow. So they just thought, Okay, we’ll do a talking segment with him. And then was great for me, because I could just go out there and act the fool, which is perfect for me. I don’t mind that at all. There was no plan, just something to keep you on TV. Well because I was just about a month in, I just beaten Cena. So they didn’t want that to go to waste, I guess.”

On beating John Cena in his debut match:

“It was great. I first thought that Cena had pranked me because as soon as I got there he was the nicest guy to me. Went over everything with me, one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. Then we get in the ring, the bell rang, and he kicked me in the stomach so hard, that’s like, oh, okay I see what’s going on here. But that’s just the way he worked. And I think that’s what he said. He’s a strong boy, he hits hard.”

On the backstage segment with Ric Flair:

“I get a lot of flack for it. Apparently he was shooting on me or something. People around me were like Oh, you didn’t feel it? I didn’t see it that way but okay. But I mean, yeah, it was cool. It was cool because I tagged with him for a little bit too. So it was cool having a storyline with and I just saw him.”

On how much longer he hopes to wrestle:

“For a little bit, yeah. I still feel like I have a little bit left in the tank. Undisputed champ? That’s a long way away, we’ll see. I think I got a few more years in me. Not many, but a few.

Would you wrestle into your 50s?

“That’s probably not gonna happen. No. Probably not. Mentally, I think. But my body’s probably [no going to make it]. I’ve been dealing with some injuries so not bumping has helped. But, yeah, like I said, there’s still a little bit left in the tank.”

On being in the ring with Roddy Piper and Steve Austin at WrestleMania 21:

“That was one of those moments you could say that, okay, I’m in here with Piper who I’d known since I was a little kid. And then Austin, I never really met him but of course I knew of him, how big it was. So I knew it was a cool little spot even, because I still couldn’t wrestle. I still can’t wrestle now [laughs], but back then I couldn’t actually wrestle because I had that shoulder issue. So it was cool to have a nice little spot at WrestleMania 21 with two of the biggest stars of all time.”

On what it was like being out there with Piper and Austin:

“I didn’t get nervous, It was one of the things like I can hang with these people. So I never got nervous about having to wrestle Shawn Michaels or something, I’d show that I could hang with them. I didn’t get nervous or whatever. I’m gonna show him that I can hang with him.”

On how the backstabber became his finisher:

“That’s back to John Cena again. I remember I used to do that move, and he said man, that’s a finisher. You should do it as a finisher. I was like, Yeah, but the guy lands on top of me and I’m taking his weight. I mean, if I got to do this, luckily I don’t win a lot, so I don’t have to worry about that. But it was his idea. ‘You should do it as a finisher.’ All right, I’ll try it out. And then, yeah, so thanks to him that I stuck with it.”

On the stabbing John Cena storyline:

“I don’t know what the official story is nowadays, they changed it over the years. Apparently, I was at the club and he got stabbed. I don’t think it was me that stabbed him, or my my buddy Jesus. I don’t think it was Jesus, or maybe it was, I don’t know. All I know is it wasn’t me. I think somebody at the club [did it]. Luckily, he made a movie during that time too. So we’re lucky he didn’t get stabbed that badly.”

What is Carlito grateful for?

“My health, my family and all the fans.”

Penta On His WWE Debut, Rey Mysterio, Dream Opponents, Cero Miedo

in LATEST EPISODES on February 7, 2025 February 7, 2025

https://cvvtix.com – Tickets are on sale now for INSIGHT LIVE in Toronto & Las Vegas with VIP Meet & Greet!

Penta (@penta_zero_miedo) is a professional wrestler currently signed with WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Indianapolis, IN to discuss his recent debut match against Chad Gable on WWE Raw and the emotional promo he cut after the match, the positive fan reaction to his debut, the origin of “Cero Miedo” and his mask, being compared to Rey Mysterio, future WWE dream matches, if WWE was always the goal, his matches in Lucha Underground and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Passion is the oxygen of the soul.” — Bill Butler
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[Quotes have been edited for clarity]

On his family being at Raw for his WWE debut:

“Man, it’s like I have mixed feelings and emotions. Because I win the match, my first match in WWE, my family was in the first row, and my little daughter crying. It’s like wow, it’s too much emotion at the same time for me. But when I go back to the locker room, everyone clapped me. I speak with Rey Mysterio and Triple H. It’s for one moment I am thinking I wanted this 20 years ago.”

On if he was concerned fans may not know who he was:

“To be honest. The cero miedo knows only the Lucha move, or the Lucha gimmick. Now it is the lifestyle. Because I know a lot of people in different parts, told me ‘Penta thanks for the cero miedo. I conquered the cancer.’ Different things about how you’ve inspired all this. When I hear this is like, Okay, I know what the responsibility on my shoulders is. I need to improve every day, my body, my mind, my heart, my soul, everything, because I know a lot of people, I inspire a lot of people. Cero miedo, this phrase is like lifestyle, now is the lifestyle I start with me and now everyone.”

On the origin of Cero Miedo:

“The truth is, I love the Corridos. In Mexican music is the Corridos. In Mexico, there are the Los Buitres De Culiacan Sinaloa is the name of the band. And a lot of songs say, ‘Cero miedo mi compa’, in English is like no fear my friend, something like that. But I started [hearing it], okay, I like it. I like it. In my first interview in Triple A in Mexico. I need to do the promo and it is like how do I finish it? ‘Cero miedo!’ Just like my reaction was the ‘Cero miedo!’ Okay. After that, everyone [said to me] ‘Hey, cero miedo!’ is like, okay. I got it. I improved the cero miedo. Just the hands, you know, the T-shirts and everything. But the truth is cero miedo comes from the Corridos in Mexico.”

On if WWE was always the goal:

“Of course. It is the best company in the world.”

On if there were any doubts about getting to WWE:

“No. I never doubted myself, my talent, my energy, my passion for this sport. Yeah, I think this is the best for me to be here.”

On the meaning behind the mask:

“The mask represents, after my culture, represents the dragon for me, it is like my God. The black color is my best color for me, because I think the black is serious, black is more fancy for me. I love it. So this style, ninja style, because I love the ninjas too, it’s like a couple of things about my real personality. This is the mask of Penta. The stars, for the ninjas too. But the most important thing in my mask is the dragons.”

On the first time he saw Rey Mysterio:

“I don’t remember what year, but Rey Mysterio would go to Mexico for a meet and greet. But brother it is five blocks long for the line to see Rey Mysterio in Mexico City. Me and my brother are in the line for two hours, three hours, when somebody say, hey, Rey Mysterio is going to leave. Me and my brother running behind the car. I want a picture with that, with him, but never. My brother is crying in this moment because my brother is six years younger than me. So after that, my brother is crying, ‘Hey, I want to see Rey.’ I say ‘Maybe one day, no worry.’ Because I’m older, no worry. But my first time with Rey Mysterio was, I remember in PWG, in LA, Battle of Los Angeles, the tournament. Konnan came with Rey Mysterio to the show. I remember that I was in the locker room I see Rey. I go Rey! He speaks Spanish too. This is my first time, it was amazing and magic for me. I never forget that.”

On Lucha Underground:

“Lucha Underground was a crazy thing. So, some things there was crazy. For example, my match with Chelsea Green, Iyo Sky, Kairi Sane, Rey Mysterio, Ricochet, Mill Muertes. The most violent was with Vampiro, Ultimo Lucha Cero Miedo. This match was a turning point in my career too, because Vampiro is a legend. Fire, trash can, everything, tables. Was crazy.”

On being compared to Rey Mysterio:

“I have the best answer for that, it is the truth. I don’t want to be the next Rey Mysterio. I want to be the first Penta El Zero Miedo in WWE. Because Rey Mysterio has my respect. Rey Mysterio is the legend, Rey Mysterio is my role model, but I want to be the first Penta because my style is very different. My style in the ring is different to Rey Mysterio’s. Rey Mysterio inspired me, of course. But I don’t wanna say I am like he is.”

On WWE dream matches:

“I have a few names. But the truth is, no matter who is in the ring, no matter what he won, I want to win everything in WWE. John Cena, Punk, Cody, Seth Rollins, The Tribal Chief, Fatu, Bron Breakker. A lot of wrestlers I want for Penta. For example with CM Punk I had one match, he won, I need revenge. The rematch with him, with Cody too. But for me, a special dream match is Penta versus John Cena or Penta versus Finn Balor.”

On his pyro-filled entrance:

“This entrance is 100% a Triple H idea, thank you for that. I feel very special, because the fire for me is very important. I like it. The dragons have a fire. When I feel it behind me, the fires I feel, the power I feel, the more energy [I have]. I wanna destroy somebody there. This is the truth brother. But when I see on the TV my entrance it is like, wow. I feel like a big star. A really big star.”

On if he prefers tag team or singles wrestling:

“I really enjoy both. When I team with my brother it’s very special because he is my real brother. For me, he is the best wrestler in the world. When I am in the corner and my brother is in the ring, I enjoy every move. When he gives me the tag, oh, it’s my turn. But when I am by myself in the ring, Penta is more like Shakespeare. It’s like, okay, this is Shakespeare. I love the crowd. I enjoy both. But if I need to choose something, it’s difficult. I’ll say both.”

On his brother Rey Fenix:

“I love my brother. I love everything about my brother.”

On if they would work together or as singles stars:

“Both is fine for me. I don’t know. [Maybe against each other?] Yeah, a lot of times in Mexico, every weekend, against each other. But now here is different. Now I am focused on myself. Now I am focused on the Royal Rumble. I am focused on WrestleMania. I am focused on everything here. When my brother has the opportunity with me, it’s okay. But now I am focused on myself.”

On the Penta match everyone should watch:

“I have maybe three or four matches. One definitely Penta versus Vampiro. The second one, Penta versus Fenix in Japan and Lucha Bros vs. Young Bucks. The number four, Penta versus Kenny Omega.”

On seeing fans wear his mask in the crowd:

“This was a big surprise for me. Actually last night somebody told me how many masks WWE have sold. It is a big number. I can’t say what the number is, but I can only say it is a big number. I feel so proud. I feel now, in my mind, let’s go. I can’t stop. I need to grow every day.”

On if he was overwhelmed by the positive fan response:

“Yeah, but for me I stay relaxed. I’m staying focused on my career. I stay focused on my new goals, my next goals. So I know social media is talking about me, everyone talking about me or interviewing me. But no, I stay in focus on what is my real target now in WWE, I focus every day. I improve, I say before my body, my spirit, my mind, because I know this is for me to be the big star here in WWE.”

What is Penta grateful for?

“My family, my career and my future.”

Chris Jericho On 6 Years Of AEW, “Please Retire” Chants, MJF, John Cena, Hall Of Fame

in LATEST EPISODES on February 6, 2025 January 28, 2026

https://cvvtix.com – Tickets are on sale now for INSIGHT LIVE in Toronto & Las Vegas with VIP Meet & Greet!

Chris Jericho (@chrisjerichofozzy) is a professional wrestler currently signed with AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his legendary professional wrestling career, how he feels about the state of professional wrestling in the modern era, being in the business for 35 years, his thoughts on the “Please retire” chants from the fans, why competition is good in wrestling, John Cena’s year-long retirement tour and if he has thought about retirement, what he is most proud of since the start of AEW, the catchphrases that worked and those that didn’t, the Dinner Debonair segment with MJF and how it was nearly changed at the last second and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “You only have one life, so you should live it as beautifully as you can.” – Eddie Van Halen

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On being murdered by Art the Clown in Terrifier 3:

“I mean, it was very much a closed, secret script. So what I got, you’re looking at your two pages, there was basically the three or four pages of my scene and that was it. So I didn’t know where it was in the movie. I didn’t know what happened before it or afterwards, but they were really keeping it tight to make sure that none of the detailed plot points got out. So I didn’t know anything about the movie until I saw it in the theater. It’s a hell of a death, it’s pretty cool. Back in the old days they would do a mold of your face with putty or whatever it was. Now they do it with a digital kind of wand, the same way they do action figures in wrestling. So they kind of took a scan of my face and then I get on set, and there’s this bust of my face screaming, but it’s got skin tones, and it like really looks just like me. So we do the scene, and there’s two of them. The faceless chick puts her hand in my mouth and Art the Clown puts his hand here and there’s blood coming out. It’s cut, then they put my rubber face and ripped the jaw off, the skin stretching, and it’s like this looks just like me and I’m standing right off behind the camera watching this going I’m right here guys, this is f*cking terrible. It’s surreal to watch your own face get ripped apart, but that’s just the modern technology. They made it look exactly like me.”

On his extended break from wrestling in the mid-2000s:

“It was weird because it was two and a half years, and I was really burned out on what wrestling was. [It was] 2005 so I’ve been doing it for 15 years. Then around that time we find out that we’re having twins and suddenly, oh my gosh, I need a job. So I did a lot of signings. I did a lot of different stuff. I was working for GTV, if you remember that channel, I can’t remember what the name of the show was, not the Daily Show, something along those lines. I was kind of picking up as many gigs as I could. VH1 was really big at the time, and so I was really hustling. But it was weird, because it’s not like I really missed wrestling. It’s like I really like pizza, but if you have too much pizza, you’re done. You got me a large pizza, you have three pieces, I’m full, and you kind of push it away, and I was really was full on wrestling, shall we say. I didn’t really watch wrestling. I kind of followed along with reading the sheets or reading the internet, but I didn’t watch anything. Once again, kind of gave me a real, new perspective. I studied acting. I was spending a lot of time in LA working on that process of it, doing the groundlings like I said. So I wasn’t wrestling, per se, but I was really working on the skills that I feel made me the biggest I’d ever been at the time in 2008 when I returned. I mean, I returned in 07 but 08 when the suit and tie Jericho came out with the Shawn Michaels feud and The Big Show pairing. The reason why those worked so well is because I had learned a lot about the process of acting and the process of living in the moment, which is basically what improv is, and having both of those skills kind of really honed in helped me a lot from that point forward.”

On how he feels about wrestling now:

“Yeah it’s pretty crazy, 34 years, and listen, I always laugh when people will say do you still love it? If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t do it. I’m not doing it for money at this point. It’s the creative fulfilment, there’s a challenge. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t demand to be on every show every week. My boss books me for shows because of what I bring to the table, and still enjoying it and still really working on how can we make things better, how can we do more storylines, and what can I do this week that was different from last week. So yeah I do love wrestling still, especially now. I think probably from a financial standpoint, as a business, I think wrestling is the biggest it’s ever been. Maybe not from a complete ratings standpoint, but things have changed. Ratings don’t mean as much as they used to, and selling tickets in buildings don’t mean as much as they used to, because there’s so much money in television alone, and that’s never been that way before. It’s just ridiculous amounts of money towards the companies now, because of the popularity and because of the ratings that wrestling draws.”

On how the business has changed:

“It’s interesting. In a lot of ways, fans’ perceptions of what a good match is a little different than it was. I think a lot of people think a good match, the proverbial banger is your five-star, Madison Square Garden, Tokyo Dome main event type of thing, and that’s great. But wrestling is still about reactions, about stories and about good guys and bad guys. So I know 25 years ago, you could do a lot less, and have people think it’s an amazing match. Whereas now you can do the exact same thing, have the crowd react exactly the way they did, but kind of your critics and pundits will say well that was a terrible match. There are a lot more opinions now because of social media and a lot more stock put in those opinions. So you’re having people that watch the show as a fan, maybe they watch every show and that’s amazing. But their opinions still, I mean, even though it’s important, it’s not law, it’s not written from the heavens, and a lot of people entertain that. To me, I still look at it as what does the crowd in the arena do? What kind of a rating did you draw? And not worry so much about critics, because that’s fine. Critics are always critics. The Beatles were hated when they were a band by the time 67 ran around. So you take it all with a grain of salt. I just think now everybody has so much more access and has so much more of a say, and then a lot of people read that and take that say as gospel, and it’s really not.”

Do you read that? Do you pay attention?

“I go through phases. I’m not that guy, ‘I’ll never read the internet.’ Of course I do. You have to have a really thick skin to read the internet, because people are really mean, they’re very mean and they’re very angry. I used to say if you’re gonna read the comments, then you have to take when people say you’re the greatest wrestler that ever lived with as much of a grain of salt as people say f*ck off and die and never be on TV again. Go away. Both are very extreme opinions, one way or the other, but both really don’t mean a lot. So yeah, I don’t read them as much, especially Twitter. I’m done with Twitter, there’s no reason for me to be on that anymore. It’s just so negative and it’s just like why waste your time on it? I mean, there has to be some positivity somewhere. So, yeah, I do read, but not as much as I did, and I definitely don’t put stock in it as much as I used to maybe 15 years ago or 10 years ago or something.”

On the fan perception to The Jericho Vortex:

“It’s funny how I’ve become kind of public enemy number one as a heel, by the way. Isn’t that kind of the idea? Aren’t you supposed to be public enemy number one as a heel? Aren’t you supposed to not like somebody’s character when that character is a heel? Maybe I’m actually smarter than everyone and I’m manipulating people to what I want them to do. ‘Well, f*ck off, just retire already.’ It’s like, okay, doesn’t that make you mad? Because what I look at is the ratings, and nine times out of 10 my segments always go up, and there’s still some of the biggest ones on the show. So that tells me that whatever it is that I’m doing is working. But I do have a target on my back for that, and that’s once again kind of the idea, I am a bad guy on the show. So, yeah it’s public opinion, and it goes in cycles. And when you’ve been in the business as long as I have, especially at the top level, that makes people mad. I always love the concept of the Jericho Vortex and how anybody that works with me gets dragged down. Name one. Name one person that got dragged down from working with me. Maybe afterwards they didn’t go higher, but that’s not up to me. I’m not in charge of booking the entire company. All I can do is influence the storylines that I work on. But everybody that I can think of who worked with me certainly went to a higher level. I did a year with MJF and look where he’s at, Danny Garcia, Sammy Guevara, Daddy Magic last week comes off of commentary and gets a big pop. Who do you think put him in that position? All of those guys. I mean, I think Big Bill and Bryan Keith have grown by leaps and bounds from working here with me. I’m not going to go through the entire cast of characters, but I definitely know what my intentions are, and it’s not to bury anybody. It’s to build as many people as I can and give them experience so they can learn how to start shouldering things on their own.”

On if he chooses his opponents:

“I don’t choose anything. I might have a suggestion, but most of the time it’s Tony coming up with who he wants me to work with. I know for example with Mark Briscoe, both of us wanted to work with each other, and knew we could have some great matches. I loved working with Mark and what a great kind of mini-feud, or I guess it was a feud. It was a couple of months long. So that was something that we both wanted to do and suggested to Tony. But most of the time, I mean, this whole thing that started working with Rated FTR, that was Tony’s idea. So yeah, I still work for my boss, and I have never once as far as I can remember in the six years I’ve been in AEW ever said no to something. I might not like something, but I got to try and do my best to make it work or maybe come up with something that maybe is a better idea as long as the boss likes it. If the boss wants to do he wants to do then that’s my job. So that’s what we do.”

On the “Please Retire” chants:

“I mean, it’s one of those things. When they were really at their peak, of course I’m always thinking. Okay, I can make a t-shirt out of that. I can make a whole angle out of this. But it kind of went away, they kind of stopped. Plus, I was really good at being able to shut people down. Like New York, please retire. I take the mic and say, I know why you want me to retire. Because you want me to go pitch for the New York Yankees so they could possibly win a World Series, but that’s not going to happen. Boo! And then they stop. It’s something that Seinfeld said years ago, or any great stand-up comedian, I’ve got the mic. You can’t heckle somebody when the guy has the louder voice. So, yeah, the please retire was a good one. That was fun.”

Do you take it personally?

“No, I don’t take it personally. Nobody who really knows me that says that stuff. And probably, if I saw them on the street they’d probably say hi. Whenever I do a convention or something like that, my lines are down the street. That’s not from an egotistical standpoint, but I’ve been doing this a long time, and a lot of people have great memories from the different eras that I’ve been in. I’m the Rolling Stones on the Steel Wheel Tour, when all the critics are saying it’s the steel wheelchairs tour, Stones need to retire, they’re done. Well Mick was 47 years old, and that was 1989. I saw him four times last summer at 81 years old and they’re still one of the best bands in the business. So if I’m in kind of my Steel Wheels Rolling Stones period, I told you this last time was on. If I died tomorrow or tonight, there would be a huge like, oh my gosh! But right now it’s not that way, and that’s okay. This is a job where the idea is to elicit emotions, positive, negative, anything in between. When you sign up for it, you have to understand that people are going to respond. Now all of us wish that you could just walk down the street and have people throw a parade for you at all times and throw confetti and will their firstborn sons to you. It’s not that way, especially now. I mean, society has kind of gone the way that they did when I first got to WCW, where they hated all the babyfaces just because you were a babyface. Hated a young Chris Jericho because they loved the nWo. So this blonde-haired, good-looking guy who was like throwing himself in the crowd because he had nothing to do was getting booed out of the building, and now I’m getting booed out of the building or getting chanted at as a bad guy. Isn’t that the point? Please tell me if I’m wrong.”

On John Cena’s year-long retirement tour:

“It’s weird for me. I don’t know if I want that much pomp and circumstance. Obviously, I’m not sure if that’s John’s idea or if it’s the company’s idea. The big retirement match, that’s a lot of pressure, you put a lot of pressure on yourself like Sting with his last one. It was so good, but imagine if it wasn’t. Or imagine like Flair and Shawn, that was a great match. But then Flair was like, I gotta want to come back. So it’s like a rock and roll band, why put that sort of stamp on it? “This is the retirement tour.” And then you decide to come back, or you decide that you don’t want to come back, and it’s not the official retirement tour. So to me, I just kind of go with the flow and see where I am. But once again, I do not have the ego that would demand an official retirement tour or retirement match. But if it’s something that I found to be interesting, that I thought would be good and fun and cool, which is the same way judge everything, then maybe I would do it.”

On competition in wrestling:

“So in the early 70s, Bobby Hall, who was the number one player in the NHL, left to go to the WHA which was an upstart league that paid him $1 million to join their league, which was a phenomenal amount at the time. What happened was all of the players in the NHL got a huge raise to stay because they didn’t want to lose anybody else to the WHA. I know this because my dad was one of them. Ted Irvine went from 35 grand a year to 100 grand a year just because of Bobby Hall and the WHA. So ipso facto, Chris Jericho is the Bobby Hall of wrestling. Because the moment I left to go to AEW, suddenly the entire salary structure changed. For years working in WWE Vince’s magic number was a million dollars a year. Nobody gets more than that, guaranteed. You might make more if you’re working on top and with the pay-per-view bonuses and all that sort, merch and everything like that, but the number on the paper that was the max was a million dollars a year. Now, opening match guys are getting a million dollars a year, and top guys are getting 30, $40 million a year. Not all of them, but a few, 15 million, 20 million. So I don’t think that ever would have happened had there not been AEW to scare the WWE cognizant into paying people more. So that’s good for all of us. It’s good for the guys and once again with all this money that’s being made from the television companies, the companies can afford it. So it’s just good for everyone, good for the fans to have an alternative. And if you’re running a race and someone’s right behind you, breathing down your neck, you run faster. If you’re ahead by 10 lengths, you run slower. That’s just the way it goes. So it’s always good to have high-level competition.”

On a catchphrase that didn’t work:

“Razzle Dazzle was one. I thought that would be a great catchphrase, razzle-dazzle. Razzle Dazzle. [When did you try razzle dazzle?] Very smart to know when it’s not working. Maybe I don’t remember the exact year, but once or twice I tried it and did not get the reaction that I thought.”

On the catchphrase he was most surprised by:

“You just made the list. It is one that to this day people still talk about, and you never know what’s gonna get over and what’s not. But to see that one, whereas to this day, people still keep saying ‘Put me on the list.’ Yeah, you just don’t know what’s gonna work. It’s just like being in a band. You don’t know what song is gonna be a hit song, and what songs not. You can put all your your faith into this, and it just doesn’t work. And then you put no faith into that, but you start seeing the signs in the crowd and realizing that people are popping and all these things, and it’s like, wow, you really got something special here. Same with the high guys. It’s like, I stopped doing it because it was getting a babyface reaction. But that’s something you think, and you put it in your cap, and you go from there, people just like to be involved in the show.”

On Dinner Debonair:

“So when we had the idea to do some stuff together, Max and I, which ended up being 366 days. That’s how long that program was, from the first moment to the last moment, which I take great pride in. It was a great year. We did a lot of killer stuff. I think at one point Max had just seen the Elton John movie. He wanted to do some kind of fantasy sequence to maybe Tiny Dancer. I was like well let me see what we can get because I was like, I don’t know if I want to do Tiny Dancer. I’m not sure. Somehow we came up with the idea of doing the wacky singing duo, and somehow Me and My Shadow was involved. I don’t know whose idea that was, but we could get that, we could get that song. So then Tony was like, I don’t want a fantasy sequence, just make it a real sequence. So we’re like okay, and I think it was just we can both sing and dance. Let’s do something stand backish, shall we say? We filmed that, this is another thing about pandemic-era AEW, we filmed all that stuff in hours, which would take weeks if you were doing it on a Hollywood set. I think the Dinner Debonair took us five hours to film with all the dance routine and choreography and all that sort of stuff, learning the choreography and creating the choreography on the spot, all of that stuff. The crazy thing was we did that and we used “Me and My Shadow”, and about two hours before we went to air we got a call that you can’t use this version of “Me and My Shadow.” And it’s like, why? We’ve got the rights to it. The publishers, for some reason had a problem with this one version. Maybe they didn’t like the drummer or the oboe player on the track, whatever it was, ‘If you use this track, we will sue you.’ Two hours before we call this guy Mikey Ruckus, who’s a music guy for AEW, can you do this in an hour? He does it. Then he has to match the music to the finished dance. Then you have to download, you have to load the video into the truck, which means you can’t just take it and put it on. It has to be loaded into the system, which takes time. We literally had that thing loaded and ready literally 15 minutes before it aired, to the point where Tony was like, You guys are gonna have to do this live in Jacksonville, in Daily’s Place, in the ring. How? There’s no dancers, there’s no nothing. So that’s how sometimes, how close things are to being disastrous.”

What is Chris Jericho grateful for?

“My family, that I have been able to travel the world and I have been able to entertain.”

Danhausen: Out Of Character Interview! AEW, Influences, Curses, Conan O’Brien

in LATEST EPISODES on January 30, 2025 January 30, 2025

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Danhausen (@DanhausenAD) is a professional wrestler currently signed to AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his rise in popularity on the independent scene, his debut on AEW Dynamite, cursing William Regal and what happens when someone is cursed, being out of action with a torn pec, not being on TV in 2024, breaking character for interviews, how he comes up with nicknames for wrestlers and more!

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On being recognised out of make-up:

“If it’s a wrestling event, yes. I’ve been actually recognized once at a GNC, this is gonna sound like a lie. I walked in, the guy said hello and I went, hello, then he went, Danhausen! And I went, what? And he goes, I recognize the voice. I was so caught off guard.”

On if he thinks his real voice sounds like Danhausen:

“I don’t. I think there’s hints of it there, especially now. It’s kind of like The Simpsons effect, sort of where Dan Castellaneta sounded much different in the earlier episodes, where he was doing the voice, and now I feel like he probably just sounds more like himself doing the voice. So it’s probably morphed a little bit into just being me. But he’s like, Oh no, I study voice acting, and it was like he knew instantly, it was crazy. I didn’t have a full sentence with him or anything, which is hello, he had to have been a wrestling fan, obviously. But yeah, it was just weird.”

On if he still enjoys being Danhausen:

“I enjoy doing it still, yeah, I feel like it could very easily not be fun or be turned into something that’s a chore, and sometimes it is. Then I just have to remember old jobs that I had and where I go I just have to put on makeup and make someone smile, that’s so much nicer. I don’t want to say nicer, because I used to be a nursing assistant, do 12-hour shifts. They were very hard. Usually they were long. I’ve done 12 days in a row of that stuff, and I try to remember those where I go this is much, much, much more lax and easier, and I don’t have to clean up puke or bodily fluids. So I’m like this is good. That was rewarding, but this is also rewarding.”

On the make-up:

“That came from my dad, because Halloween was very big in our house. He would do my makeup every single year. I’d be a zombie with glass out of my head. But he sent me to school like this, first and second grade, probably third grade he’d do full makeup on me, send me to school and they’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s a it’s a little extreme, don’t you think?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m a zombie, my dad did my makeup.’ But he worked in haunted houses as I was growing up. So he’s super artistic. He’d paint comic book stores and things like that. He painted the Hulk and Spawn and everything on the walls. He’d make my costumes. We did a Kane one year where he took a Jason mask and he painted it and melted it and used like, hot glue and stuff, because I don’t think they were selling Kane masks at the time. So he took a sweat suit and pleather and made me the red and black Kane suit. So there’s a photo of that somewhere. It’s been posted somewhere on Twitter and probably Instagram and everything. But there’s that. There’s the zombie, this Dracula, that slowly just has always been in the back of my head. So that’s always been there of wanting to do that, like the horror character, or including the horror stuff into it, but not knowing how, because it’s usually not great. There’s a few examples where it is, but generally it’s always kind of you’re either the tough guy or you’re the horror character or whatever. So, yeah, that eventually got there.”

On his make-up staying on compared to Sting:

“So I think he uses acrylic, which is like normal painting. I use wolf makeup, which is a theater-based, water-based makeup. I think it’s just a higher quality so it doesn’t come off. But if it’s like sauna hot in the arena or wherever we’re at in the hall or the gym, or wherever I’m at that week it will get sweaty underneath and then the moment someone puts me in a headlock, it’s just off. But only in that section, though, it’s not draining down my face.”

On when the popularity started to build:

“So I was scheduled to wrestle Effy, and that was when he was also getting some notoriety, because we did Florida indies together. When we first started at Fest Wrestling, we wrestled I think, every single show for some reason, which was 2015 or something. But we had Black Label Pro, and we were supposed to have an eight-minute match or something. And they’re like sorry guys, people went long you have, I think it was four minutes. And we’re like, okay, and that’s where I did the teeth for the first time. Because I was like well if I could do this weird stuff that I kind of want to experiment with, Effy is the guy to do that with. So that’s what I did, I used them like thumbtacks for that match and I just poured them out. I think we did a superplex as the finish on the teeth. Yeah I took that four minutes or five minutes, whatever it was, and we got a little bit of buzz off of that, because people were like teeth, that’s weird. Then I just rolled with it and kept putting out stuff and more and more and more. I try to tell this to people who are coming up and who have had some success. I’m like you have to just continue with that momentum no matter what, just roll with it, keep it going up as much as humanly possible because you don’t know when it’s gonna end.”

On debuting in AEW while injured:

“So I was signed with the broken leg. I’d been talking to them a little bit, I would say, within the last week or two before that. Then I showed up because I think I messaged Brody [King], and I was like, ‘Hey, you’re kind of close. I’m just sitting at home with a broken leg, am I able to come just say hello to people?’ And he goes, ‘Wow, I’ll ask.’ I think that was just, yeah, that’s fine. Then just, you know, you go through the motion, you sign up, just so they know who you are and everything. I was there, I think that was the day where Cody asked, and he goes, ‘Hey, are you doing something tonight?’ I’m not dressed as Danhausen at this point. I’m just probably in one of my boots or something. I was like, I mean, I always have my stuff, just in case, but I got a broken leg, and I don’t work here so I don’t know. He goes,’ All right. Well, let me know. We’ll get you something if you’re not.’ I was like, Oh, wow. So I think Cody was going to do something with the Sammy Guevara match, which I think wound up being his last match for the TNT title. So I think they were gonna pull me out on a ladder if the thing with Orange and Adam Cole didn’t happen, he was just gonna figure out a way to get me in his match to get me on and I was like well that’s awesome. But we wound up doing the Adam Cole Orange Cassidy spot, which was similar, but same thing. All that I could really do was I could curse him. I can’t really do anything. I can’t run, I can kind of hobble around.”

On cursing William Regal:

“I wish I had been able to do more with him on screen because he was also a guy I took a lot of my facial expressions from. I don’t know why people don’t [realize]. He’s one of the best comedic wrestlers wherever he was, all of that stuff with Tajiri, he’s just making faces constantly. The match with The Big Show, I see the clip all the time now where he hits him with the brass knuckles and The Big Show falls back and then falls on him, just things like that. He’s a great straight man but he’s also plays a great comedic heel. Same thing with Christian. I remember I was in the gym and Christian walked in. I usually don’t want to bother people, but I was like hey, can I ask you something? You don’t usually, I don’t think, get asked about this specifically, but you are a great comedic heel who also could just win matches. I think that’s the key is you have to be taken seriously when it’s time to be taken seriously. He was Tag Team Champions while he was wearing giant sunglasses and hats and kazoos and doing five second poses. But also he was a legitimate Tag Team Champion at the time, him and Edge. Stone Cold Steve Austin is kind of in that same category, put a tiny cowboy hat on. He’s swimming in milk. Yes, Stone Cold Steve Austin is like a badass wrestler. But also he is swimming in milk and beer and doing comedy things all of the time and it’s amazing. Same thing with The Rock.”

On what connects with him:

“I think just being authentically weird. I throw in these little bits of Conan [O’Brien] and The Simpsons, but I make it my own thing. Pee Wee [Herman] and obviously, there’s some stuff where I just do it. But I think they go, Oh, I liked that as a kid, this guy’s doing all that weird stuff that I liked as a kid. Or it’s very similar so I’m connected to that now. Or the horror movie stuff you got the horror fans, because they go, Oh, his makeup looks like it’s inspired by The Exorcist. Well, it is. So then they go well now I like you. There’s even just stuff where they’ll make connections that aren’t necessarily there, but that’s fine, because they’re connecting to something with me, and that makes them happy.”

On what happens when Danhausen curses someone:

“Hopefully it works. Hopefully they’re superstitious enough to where something happens to work for them. [Have you cursed MJF?] Not on screen, I stole a scarf off screen that was at a comic con. I may have at New York Comic Con done something I don’t think I’ve cursed him though, I agree it probably needs to be done. He does deserve it.”

On how he tore his pec:

“It’s The Ass Boys finishing move, which is the pop up flat liner. When I come down, I landed a little bit more like this, instead of this. So the way that I came down Colton lifts me, and then it’s like a reverse Rock Bottom, for people who don’t maybe know. Austin is a thick boy, his chest is thick. So I don’t know if it’s a combination of me coming down half in a push-up position, but also ricocheting off of Austin while ricocheting off of this side of Colton. So I think it just landed weird, because obviously a bunch of people have taken this move and they’re fine. But yeah, I’d come down and I think I watched it, and it went like this, and then this part snapped off. I didn’t know I tore my pec, because I thought, when you tear your pec it’s like Cody. I didn’t as far as I knew, I had gone to the back, and we thought it was just a shoulder thing, because they tested my strength and all that. They’re like, yeah, it doesn’t seem like you did anything serious to it, because you’re able to do a bunch of presses and pushing, and it was fine. I was like, Oh yeah, I think it just jammed my shoulder. Then the next morning, I woke up, and I think this whole piece was missing, but I hadn’t noticed probably because it was swollen at the time, or something like, from immediately happening. Luckily, that was the finish of the match.”

On not being on AEW TV in 2024:

“I did the Halloween segments. I was like, I want to do something fun for Halloween. I didn’t come back from this probably, I think it was fine in October, but it was still kind of like give it another month. So I was like, well we could air these Halloween 3 style, annoying commercials until I come back and I was like, cool, and then it kind of just didn’t happen. So I think that kind of sucked the air out of the return a little bit, in my opinion, at least for me, it did. It was built for Halloween, and then I could have came back the next week, and I just didn’t. Then it took a little bit more time, and then I think I did come back on Thanksgiving, so it’s like three or four weeks later, but I come out and I want to wrestle. Because I don’t know if non-wrestlers might not know this wrestling hurts, but it also hurts less if you do it more. So your body gets callous to it I guess. So if you’re wrestling once every couple months, or once every other month, or whatever it is, it sucks every single time. It feels like the first time of going to wrestling school, where it’s the worst. Then also your body is more susceptible to getting injured because you’re not used to that weird getting slammed or weird movements or whatever it is. So I’d prefer to wrestle at least once a week, whether it be a dark match or whatever, just let me go out there for the crowd, do something. So that way, if you need before TV, I’m fine, I’m ready to go. Then it’s not like, oh sh*t I haven’t wrestled in three months, all of a sudden, I have to wrestle. I’m not in ring shape anymore. I don’t have a wrestling ring near where I live at all.”

So that’s why you’ve been taking a lot of indie bookings?

“Yes, just keeps me sharp. It keeps me, I don’t wanna say creative, because there is still some creative lull in indies because you’re not doing storylines, generally. So, it is just more so matches. So I have to have my creativity outlet be the promos that I do leading up to those, and then figuring out ways to do the match different, have fun with the crowd and try to make them participate in everything. But yeah, that’s why I do two to three a week so I can stay in ring shape and not, knock on wood, get injured. Because again, it’s like a weird middle ground you have to hit. Because if you’re doing it too much, you’ll probably get injured because your body is getting destroyed. But also, if you don’t do it enough, your body is not used to it, so then it’s more susceptible to getting destroyed.”

On fans wondering if he was still with AEW:

“Well for a long time I was there I just wasn’t doing anything, if you don’t have anything for me, that’s fine, but I feel like we need to find something for me. [So you’d just be backstage?] Not for all of 2024. At some point, there’s you can just stay home. I’m like, okay, cool. That’s great, because I appreciate that, because then I’m not just getting brought out to like, whatever. Then they were letting me do the Indies and doing the conventions and it just helps me again, stay sharp, which is in turn for them. Also, still, I always looked at that as I’m still representing the company in a way, because I’m on these shows. So that’s better than me just not being seen on the show. I’m still at a convention with Sting, or whatever, taking pictures with Sting and posting pictures of Sting, doing that. All I can say was, when people were like, Oh, when you coming back? and I go, I don’t know you should ask. Because the more people are vocal, maybe the more there’s the chance of I got something.”

On breaking character in the last interview:

“It’s like, what are you gonna do? We live in a world, I do it [stay in character] probably more than most people, then every once in a while I think it’s important to do something like this to remind people this is a real person, just every once in a while. I don’t do it constantly. I don’t do it weekly, we did the interview four years ago. I did Conan. Someone was like, why didn’t you do the make-up? Because I’m not blowing that by showing up in makeup and not telling them. Because that’s how that would have had to go. They did a screening process before, which I didn’t know. That’s what it was where I met with one of the producers, and they didn’t tell me what it was for, then they had told me the day before you’re gonna be on Zoom with Conan. I was like well I could show up in character, but also that risks getting kicked off and them going, we didn’t agree to this. This is weird. So I was just like, No, I will just be me, and then hopefully I’ll get another opportunity with him at some point to do a skit or something with Conan.”

On coming up with nicknames for wrestlers:

“Chris Jericho has the Judas song, so he’s Chris Judas. Pepsi Phil, he’s got the Pepsi logo tattooed on him. I think some people call him Phil, and I do. At the time I think it was a thing of you don’t call him Phil. If you don’t know him, don’t call him Phil. And there’s like always Pepsi Phil and I thought it was funny. So as an annoying idiot I’d call him Pepsi Phil. Trying to think of who else there was, obviously The Ass Boys. Billy Ass, that one’s, self-explanatory. That’s his last name. What other names was there? Rock The Dwayne Johnson. Which, I swear, I don’t know it’s in my head. It’s some type of Mandela Effect. I swear someone on the news accidentally called him that. I was at work, and I just happened to [catch it]. I was like did they just call him Rock the Dwayne Johnson on accident on air? I can’t confirm if that actually happened or not, because it was just one of those things that was there and gone. And I was like well I’m gonna call him that.”

On dream matches:

“I think me with I think a six man with me and The Outrunners would be fun. I think I could do something fun with those guys. I would still really, really like for The Ass Boys to fully embrace the ass and team with me. I would love to do something with “Timeless” Toni Storm. I know she’s retired, who knows? I think that would have been a fun because I used to do the 1920s Danhausen black-and-white version for old wrestling. I was like, that could easily just either whether it’s me teaming with someone else to fight her and someone else, or me teaming with her to fight someone. I really, really wish I could have teamed with Darby and Sting. It almost happened. I think there was, like a hint of it, and then it just didn’t.”

What is Danhausen grateful for?

“My wife, my best friends and my family.”

Jordynne Grace On WWE, Leaving TNA, Royal Rumble, Bodybuilding

in LATEST EPISODES on January 28, 2025 January 28, 2025

https://cvvtix.com – Tickets are on sale now for INSIGHT LIVE in Toronto, Las Vegas & Indianapolis with VIP Meet & Greet!

Jordynne Grace (@JordynneGrace) is a professional wrestler previously signed to TNA. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to talk about her time in TNA, why she chose to let her contract expire, being the TNA Knockouts Champion, becoming a free agent, what’s next for her in wrestling, her surprise appearance in the WWE Royal Rumble and follow-up appearances on NXT, her powerlifting records and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.” – Nelson Mandela

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On shifting from powerlifting to bodybuilding workouts:

“Yes, powerlifting was just really hurting my body. Just lifting constant heavy weights all the time really messes with your joints, it turns out, and doing that on top of wrestling is just really difficult, so I just had to kind of nix that all together. [So when did that shift happen?] I want to say 2021 probably, right after the pandemic happened, something like that.”

On getting jacked:

“Well I felt like I had to because I have to stand out somehow, right? This is my messed-up mentality about stuff. I feel like there was nothing unique or special about me. I don’t represent a community. I didn’t look a certain type of way. I was just this chubby white girl and you didn’t see anything when I walked in a room. But I feel like if someone has big arms and they walk into a room, it doesn’t matter if they’re four foot tall, you’re gonna be like, okay, they’re dedicated. They do something.”

On her Royal Rumble appearance:

“Honestly, I expected to come out there and no one was gonna know who I was. It was my first time being in WWE at all, so I didn’t expect people to know who I was. I didn’t know the crossover, what exactly it was between TNA and WWE.”

On first being told about the Royal Rumble:

“The first I ever heard of it was when Scott [D’Amore] called me, literally the week before, and asked if I wanted to do the Rumble like that was any question at all. But that was the first time I ever heard about it and then after that, it just kind of snowballed from there. I thought he was joking. I had just gotten home from the tapings actually, from the TNA tapings. I was like, I just don’t understand why you’re calling to rib me, you could do this over text, I don’t get it. He was like no, they want to use you for the Rumble. And I was just like, it was mind-blowing.”

On her thoughts before entering the Royal Rumble:

“I mean, I don’t want to think about all that, because I was already nervous enough as it is and I wanted to concentrate 100% on my performance. If there was any time to make a statement and to seize an opportunity, that was going to be it. So I knew I had to nail it 100% especially because I was representing TNA. If I do badly, I feel like that reflects negatively on TNA. [You were booked so strong though]. I was, and I had a really cool elimination.”

On if conversations after the Royal Rumble for more WWE dates:

“I mean, not with me. The only time that I knew about these things was when they were already talked about within the two companies and set in motion. They were being booked by Ariel, who’s the head of TNA and then Shawn, who’s obviously Shawn [Michaels]. I wasn’t asked, I was basically told Oh, you’re gonna go do this for these amount of dates. I was just like, I mean, obviously I’m not going to say no.”

On her surprise NXT debut:

“Then that was the big surprise. It was not leaked at all for who the surprise opponent was going to be. They had me come at 7 pm, snuck me into a room and put a Do Not Enter sign on the door. It was wild. Yeah, they kept the surprise really well. Roxanne didn’t even know. Because she had been asking, I guess, who’s it going to be, and no one would tell her. Then they were going to tell her right before we went out and she was just like you know what, I don’t even care anymore. Just let me have a natural reaction out there. So she went out to the ring, did her promo, and then that was her natural reaction.”

On 2025:

“It’s a crazy crossroads for me right now, because I honestly have no idea what’s going to happen. Obviously, I feel like people think they know what I’m going to do more than I actually know what I’m gonna do, and I think all doors are open. As people are watching this right now my contract has already expired, and I don’t know, maybe you already actually know where I am. But as of right now, I have no idea. I could stay in TNA. I could go anywhere else, who knows? You might see me in CMLL. I have no idea, it just all depends and there’s a million different factors. I have six dogs. I don’t want to leave home where I’m at right now. It’s really hard to find a house anywhere for six dogs. I don’t know if you knew that or not. Very difficult.”

On why she let her contract expire:

“I’ve been at TNA for a very long time, since 2018, and I’ve never let my contract expire before. I’ve always just re-signed. I don’t know if it was just the uncertainty of not knowing what was going to happen next, or I was just scared that no one was going to want me. But I feel like now I’m more confident. I had an amazing 2024 and I think it’s time. I’ve done so much in TNA. I’ve done pretty much all there is to do and I feel like if there was ever a time to move forward, it’ll be right now.”

On if she would have stayed with TNA if Scott D’Amore didn’t leave:

“Well when he left, I was very emotional when he left, like a lot of other people, because it was just so out of the blue. We found out on a Zoom call, it was very corporate, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But at the time, I was just like, You know what? I only really signed here because I had faith in Scott that he was gonna do good things for me and good things for the company. He’s the one that kind of set in motion the whole rebirth of TNA and I told them I wanted my contract to be cut, basically. So it was supposed to be until October of this year, and I was like I want to get out in January of this year. I mean, kudos to them. They heard me and they let me. So I’m very lucky for that. But I think probably I’d still be at TNA.”

On if she asked Scott Steiner’s permission to use the siren in her entrance:

“No, I didn’t ask permission. But it’s not the exact same siren, so I think I kind of got away with that. Yeah, I didn’t ask permission and no, I don’t say [Holla if you hear me]. But I did wear the chain mail one time when I did a triple threat match with him, Petey and me, and I wore the chain mail.”

On her best match:

“Okay, I would say Bound for Glory. 2022 me versus Masha Slamovich for the TNA Knockouts world title. That was up until recently the best match I’ve ever had. I loved that match. We beat the sh*t out of each other, and honestly, we’ve done it a few times since then and have topped that match, I think. But that was the match where I probably felt like I reached my peak at that point.”

On the Iron Woman match against Deonna Purrazzo:

“That was in front of nobody. That was an awesome match. I just don’t think I had gone through my transformation yet, so that’s why I would say I don’t think people should start with that match. But if they want to go back and dive into the history of Jordynne Grace I would start there, so they can kind of see how I transformed over the years.”

Who has hit Jordynne Grace the hardest?

“Masha has knocked me out before. Legit she’s hit me with a back fist and she’s knocked me out. So definitely her. Something else about Masha is, for the longest time, thank God that she finally listened to me, she didn’t wear kick pads, and I don’t know if you’ve seen her wrestle, she throws kicks constantly, so anytime she would kick me, it wouldn’t make a great sound. Because when you kick someone in real life it doesn’t really make a sound but it hurts so bad. So in wrestling, you want the strikes to make a sound, and it’s okay if they’re stiff, but you don’t want them to hurt. So every time that bony front of her leg would hit me in the chest or hit me in the face it’d be so painful, and people didn’t know how painful it was, because there was no sound.”

On wrestling Bully Ray:

“No, he does not hit hard at all. But also he didn’t do any strikes to me. He just did slams. So he didn’t slam me super hard. He actually complained about how I hit him. He was complaining to me about how I hit him. I know that’s what I said. I was like, Come on, get out of here. I did beat Bully, which was wild. That was 2023 that was why I say that that year was so awesome, that was one of the moments that made that year so cool was that I got to win, be the first ever Knockout to win the Call Your Shot Gauntlet, and I also got to beat Bully on top of it. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.”

On her lifting records:

“For deadlift 505. I want to say it was like 275 for bench, and then for squat it was like close to 500. I cannot do anything close to that now. I don’t even want to try. Now I’m lifting much lighter, I’m just getting a pump and I just want to feel the burn essentially. You don’t feel the burn when you’re powerlifting. You just feel your back giving out.”

On if WWE has always been the goal:

“It was just to be a wrestler in general. I just wanted to wrestle when I was a kid, but I also wanted to be a Diva. That’s the era I was watching. So I wanted to be like one of the models. I wanted to be like one of the model wrestlers. I think since then, obviously things have changed so much. I started watching TNA I want to say a few years before I actually started wrestling. And the variation in WWE and TNA at the time was huge, obviously. I saw women like Awesome Kong and I was like dang, maybe I could be like that.”

What is Jordynne Grace grateful for:

“My family, my husband, my 6 dogs and my 2 cats.”

Baron Corbin On His WWE Exit, New In-Ring Name, AEW, TNA, New Japan, What’s Next

in LATEST EPISODES on January 23, 2025 January 23, 2025

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Tom Pestock (@tompestock) is a professional wrestler known for his time in WWE as Baron Corbin. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his WWE career, being told that his contract would not be renewed and the overwhelming fan response to the news, his Bloodsport match against Josh Barnett at The People vs. GCW, what’s next for him in wrestling, his new in-ring name moving forward, responding to the discourse surrounding AEW contracts, a John Cena match that did not go according to plan, how he met Taylor Swift at a Kansas City Chiefs game and more!

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On his GCW appearance:

“I put in 13 years with WWE, and that was my first ever in-ring experience was WWE. Most guys come from the independent world or whatever. There’s a few of us that skip that whole process, more so now too with all of the NIL and bring in athletes from college so you don’t kind of get that taste of the other side, if you will. Gable [Steveson] is another guy who came from Olympic wrestling, and all these people love wrestling, but it’s a different world out there. I now know and can say that I actually know working an independent show.”

On his Bloodsport match against Josh Barnett:

“I was so nervous going into it. I mean, you always get good nervous when you’re doing a show, especially massive arenas in front of lots of people, big matches. But it was a different nervous for me because I had no idea how they were going to react to me. Also, GCW is known for its crazy matches and wild bumps that guys are taking, and we’re going to put on a Bloodsport match, which is we’re grappling, we’re hitting each other a lot harder than we would if it was not a Bloodsport match. I was like, man, how’s the audience going to take to this style match? I was worried. If I planned a match or put something together that had a lot of like the jiu-jitsu grappling and all of that in a WWE ring it just doesn’t translate as well. I think especially with the audience being families and kids they would get bored very quickly of watching, the same reason a lot of kids don’t watch UFC, if you will, because they don’t understand the grappling, the technique, and it’s chess, not checkers, they’re trying to set things up, and sometimes it takes a minute or a minute and a half to set up a triangle or an arm bar. So going in front of that crowd that I know is rowdy and I’m going, man, how are they going to react to not hearing Baron Corbin? How are they going to react to hearing Tom Pestock? Are they just going to chant Corbin or are they going to boo me out of this building? I had zero insight into what was going to happen. It was very surreal. It ended up getting some pretty cool chants.”

On what he wants to do now he is no longer with WWE:

“I mean, a lot of things. I’m always a guy who’s got multiple things in the fire, always was with WWE. I was doing food stuff on my social media, or I started a coffee company and was doing the coffee company, and then all the family stuff and like that. But now I’m gonna have an opportunity where I don’t have to ask permission to do something. I’ve also been smart with all of my money that I’ve made over the years with WWE because I’ve watched how quickly it can end. When I left the NFL it’s like no more paychecks, and you go oh man, it ends that quick. I was playing ping pong, and now I don’t have a job, it’s crazy. So I put myself in a position now that I can literally just do the things I want to do. I don’t have to do things because I have to do them and I think that’s a really freeing thought process. So I can take risks, I want to do movies, I want to do TV shows, and I want to do horror movies or thriller movies or darker action kind of films, anything in that world. Whether it’s television, it’s Netflix, it’s Hulu, or it’s the B rate horror movies that are amazing, just like guilty pleasures, I love them, that’s the world I want to dive into. It’s risky, it’s scary, and a lot of people don’t make it. But how many things have I already accomplished that a lot of people don’t? NFL, 1% of college players make it to the NFL. Made it to WWE, made it to the top of the roster, main eventing around the world. All of those things. How many people get that opportunity? Talking to The Usos one time, and they’d never had a singles match at Mania, and they’ve been in the WWE longer than I have, and I’d had three at that time. I had Ambrose, I had Kurt Angle and Drew McIntyre, and it was like, whoa, it’s crazy to think that.”

“So I think that if I go after that, it’s something I can accomplish. You need a little bit of luck, a little bit of opportunity, stages like this. Coming here and talking with you, maybe somebody hears this, and it’s like oh man, he’d be perfect for this. Or I know somebody here, it’s a lot of connections, as you know, to get into that world. I signed with CAA, with Ross and he’s going to do an amazing job with helping me get some opportunities and it’s up to me now. I control everything that happens right now. I can take independent shows that I want to take, like GCW, I would definitely go back. It was so fun. That crowd was amazing, energetic, passionate, and that show was five hours last night because unfortunately one of the girls broke her ankle in the second match, and with the New York commission it kind of put a hold on the show for like 40 minutes. It was like, how do we restructure to try to get the crowd back and all those things after this long intermission, and they were just as passionate when we got back to work as they were when they started. I want to go to Japan. I want to wrestle in Japan. I’ve wrestled there quite a few times at WWE, but never at that New Japan company. That’s something that AJ [Styles] and Finn [Balor] and [Luke] Gallows and [Karl] Anderson and Shinsuke [Nakamura] and all those guys. They did that. I never got to do it before WWE like they did. So I’m like, man, let’s go do it now. I love it over there. I love the culture. I love the history of the wrestling business over there, so many stars, so many traditions. I think it’s so cool. So I want to go there and do that. I want to go to Food Network do some food stuff. I’m going to go to Miami in like four weeks for the Miami Food Festival to meet some of the people, go eat with Michael Simon, and I’m going to do some Guy Fieri stuff. I had a friend reach out about potentially doing Beat Bobby Flay, not as a competitor, but as a host like that would be amazing. I want to win some more gold medals in Jiu Jitsu, like I got my purple belt two weeks ago after our professor tried to kill us with eight minute rounds, we basically went like 104 minutes, or something like that. 106 minutes, whatever it is, straight just beating the crap out of each other. So I’m gonna do a couple more tournaments there like the Pan Am games. I’m just kind of flooring it in all of these different avenues.”

On possibly signing with TNA or AEW or New Japan:

“I would love to go to New Japan for multiple reasons, and the door never closes with WWE either. And as far as AEW, their fans, they like that AEW in a sense is its own entity and built from the ground up. If I went there out of respect for that world, I wouldn’t want to be just another WWE guy that came there because they left WWE. I would rather go and do New Japan for a year or more, who knows? Maybe that’s where I just love it and I stay there for the rest of my wrestling career. So if I ever did go that route, I would want to kind of clear that oh he’s just a WWE guy coming over. Baron Corbin is dead as far as we know, we’re dropping new name, new moniker, new character. I love wrestling. I love the creativeness of it. I love the freedom. I love performing in front of an audience and getting that live feedback in the moment. There’s nothing better.”

On his time in WWE:

“I think that for me, with my contract ending in WWE, deciding not to renew, obviously that hurt and lights a fire, because I felt like in my WWE career I was in uncharted water, in a sense. I had gone to NXT, reinvented myself and put a lot of work into it, even though I didn’t agree with some of it. I had a conversation before I moved to NXT. I was sat down, I’m gonna be polite. We talked about it. Bruce Prichard, I’m gonna be polite. He was like, y’You know, it’s just not working, we want you to go down there, reinvent yourself, new moves, lose a little weight, blah, blah, blah.’ And I did and I think it was maybe not meant for me to succeed as well as I did down there. But they’ve got such an amazing system there with the talent they have, with the producers they have, and with the coaches they have and the writers, it’s impossible not to succeed down there. I think I killed it, and it couldn’t be denied.”

“I went back to the main roster and I’m a very open, truthful person. I’m not capable of lying or BS-ing about things. But when I got up there, I feel like someone was holding me down, in a sense of that wasn’t supposed to work, because I would go out and do dark matches, or when I did wrestle on TV the crowd was insane for me. It was the best reactions I’d had in years since I was the King or the Constable. When I was getting all that heat, this was the opposite. I was getting people chanting my name. There were times in matches where Apollo would be getting beat up and they’d be chanting my name, and he’d just look at me like you’re over, it would be crazy. Every night it would be crazy. My reactions, and with no ego, I say aside from maybe Cody, Randy and Kevin, were the best on the whole show every night on SmackDown. That’s doing dark matches, or doing TV, like Berlin, we did that tag match, they were insane. I would come back to the curtain and Regal would always be like, ‘This is amazing, the work is awesome.’ They love you. Road Dogg would be like, ‘Corbin you’re over in this town.’ I’m like, ‘It’s every town, dude, it’s not just a one off.’ Even one of the writers we were talking about turning me heel and I’m like, I don’t know, man, we’ve never done this babyface. They wanted me to be different, what do we have? Then we went out there, I don’t remember what city it was, Arkansas, or somewhere, and it was crazy. They blew the roof off for me, chanting my name in the match when I wasn’t even in the match, standing on the apron or whatever, cheering for everything. I walk back and it’s the head writer Smackdown. He goes, I told him that you should just walk back here and give us both the finger and walk off, because the reaction was so good. So I think that that was frustrating. I’m like, man, there’s still something there maybe unresolved that I could get back and accomplish as that babyface with the cheering. I think it made me hungrier to succeed being told, Oh man, we’re just going to go a different direction after already being told hey, we want to go change everything and you do it and it’s successful.”

“I’m very self aware at the same time, there were times with the JBL stuff I think it could have worked if we’d done it differently, which we’d pitch several ideas. JBL is the man, he’s unbelievable. He sent in amazing pitches and they just died in the wind somewhere. But I’d stand out there and go you could feel it’s not working. I’m not getting the reactions I want or anything like that, to where six months ago, I’m telling you, the reactions were everything was there. It was firing on all cylinders. I recreated everything like I was asked to do. I’ve always done everything that I’ve been asked to do, and then to be like we’re gonna go in a different direction. What? That was frustrating because there’s nothing you can do at the end of the day. I was talking to Randy about it, a lot of guys reached out, you know, I’m sorry, guys you expect like Seth and Finn and Kevin and those dudes are amazing people, and Punk and Randy. But Randy’s like Dude, I honestly thought you were gonna be here another 10 years? I don’t understand it. He’s like, do you mind if I talk to Hunter about it? I don’t know if he ever did, but he’s like somebody doesn’t like you. I’m like, There’s nothing I can do to change that. I feel like I know who it is, and that’s besides the point. But they had power enough to either kill creative or whatever it is, and they got to go to bed with that at the end of the night. That’s on them. But for 13 years I made this entity that is me and is Tom Pestock, and I think it’s going to help continue to push me and again, I wouldn’t have had that without WWE.”

On his WWE exit:

“I wish it hadn’t ended like it did. I wish I had more opportunity to continue with this babyface thing. Nobody wants it to end. Any job, it’s not fun. But it’s also exciting at the same time, because now I can literally do whatever. I can try to create something new. I can go in different directions. I think the most frustrating part for me is not understanding why there’s an ulterior motive there. Because, again, I’ve been a company guy through and through. I’ve never said no to doing something. I’ve made everything work that I’ve been given, not complained, have never once complained online. You can send me to talk to ESPN. You can send me to talk to boys and girls club. I fit the mould of a professional. I dress professional. I show up professional. I don’t miss shows. 13 years never once missed a show or training or anything because of injury or being sick. Not once, not even COVID. I was a hero during COVID in my opinion, I was on every show. Sometimes both shows, I’ve been a team player through and through and I think maybe in the end it hurt me a little bit always being the guy that’s like, yeah, no problem. Oh, you need Finn Balor the demon to beat me up in three minutes at SummerSlam? Okay, no problem, cool. So it was a weird place to be, but I think now, again that moment yesterday, standing in between the two buildings, it’s pretty cool to go yeah man, I was here, now I’m here. How do we get back to there? Not necessarily WWE, but that level of accomplishment.”

On fans being shocked that he exited WWE:

“It was two and a half million views on my tweet alone. People were shocked. I was shocked. I could weirdly, kind of, you know when your gut instinct tells you something, and like I said, I think there was one person in particular that I think was behind all of it, and it sucks, but it is what [it is]. I’m not gonna cry over it because I’m grateful for everything I had there and every opportunity that I had there, I can’t let one person put me in a bad place. I’m not gonna let one person control my emotions. I mean the fact that Randy Orton’s calling me, going there’s someone that doesn’t like you. Again, I know who it is. I told him and he’s like yeah, probably right. But when you have someone of that magnitude being like I want to talk to Hunter, it makes you feel good, because, you know, a lot of other people see the flip side of it. They’re like, Oh man, no, he’s really good. I don’t why no one can do what I do in a sense of going out and make people believe in the authenticity of what I’m doing. Whether it’s Happy Corbin, Sad Corbin, Wolf Dogs, or the new stuff I was doing with burn the ships and just being myself, people believed it. And then also too I could make people believe. I got beat 10 million times, but people were still booing me and still having fun. When I would work with different babyfaces again, when I would lose every single week they still bought that there was a chance I was going to win, a chance that I would screw this guy over and that’s a special talent to have, and also to do it without complaining. There’s a lot of guys that walk around boo-boo facing when they’re not getting the win or whatever it is. I just did my job, and I was happy to do it. When I look back, we were talking earlier, maybe I should have been a little more selfish with what I did. It could have hurt me, and I could have been done three or four years ago, you never know, or it could have helped me, because there are some guys that are that way, and you see it benefit some and doesn’t benefit the others. I don’t know. There’s no right path to take to find all the success that you want.”

On wondering when his moment would come:

“100%, that’s why I was there. I wanted to be World Champion. I wanted to have that accolade on me for the rest of my life. That’s a cool thing to tell people when you’re 60 or tell my kids I was a World Champion in WWE, here’s a picture of it. Whether it was a day run like Kane had or whatever, I wanted that moment and I did it for a lot of people. I built Braun to go. I mean, not that these people needed building, but I worked with these guys. Braun went on and then he won the title from Bray Wyatt. Seth Rollins, I worked with him, he went to SummerSlam with Brock Lesnar. Roman Reigns did that. He went to WrestleMania. I’m not getting those big moments, but I had a lot of great, big [moments]. There were so many.”

On if he will still wrestle as Tom Pestock:

“I’m letting it out right now. Because I got to do me at the end of the day still. I’ve talked to you about I want to go here, I want to go here, I want to go here. I want to go to New Japan. TNA has called, so maybe there’s something there. Maybe NWA, I’m open to it all because I love wrestling, and if I can go somewhere and be in front of fans, I’m going to go like, it’s just I know that I don’t want to sign a contract right now, because I like this ability. So I’m going with “The Nomad” Bishop Dyer, I’m gonna be The Nomad. I’m gonna roam and I’m gonna go to all these. Change a little bit, because it kind of pays tribute to The Lone Wolf, Dire Wolf, and then a bishop is higher than a baron, so we’re going up. The rankings are going up. So it’s getting trademarked. So don’t even try it suckers, getting trademarked right now. But I think it’s just a powerful name, it’s a cool name, and I want to be The Nomad. I’m gonna float and see where the wrestling world takes me in that sense.”

On WWE plans suddenly changing:

“So many instances of that in my career, and you kind of lose faith in a sense of, this is the plan, this is where we’re going and then it changes six hours later.”

What was the original Money in the Bank plan?

“I think Vince saw me becoming World Champion, and I think that winning that he’s like, you’re going to hold it for a while. Because I think Jinder being champ also played a part of not only him doing his thing because he’s an incredible performer, but also they were trying to get a certain demographic of an audience, that helped, and they had no intentions of changing that title at that time. So it was to carry it, and it was eventually to take it off of Jinder. But obviously it did not come to fruition.”

On Sad Corbin:

“I had a lady in Houston too. I was leaving the building, I’m driving up the rampway, and I had a lady trying to shove a $20 bill in my window. And I was like, I should have done the D-Von and passed the hat, I probably could have retired three years ago. [D-Von kept all that money]. I would have too. Why would you not? I mean, I’m walking to the ring. I probably could have made 1000 bucks a night, for sure. And if I pass the hat in the stadium.”

On feeling disrespected:

“I was sitting with the head writer of SmackDown, and it still just kind of makes my blood boil, because it doesn’t pertain just to me. But I was just like ‘Hey, do we have any ideas? What are you thinking creatively?’ He’s like, ‘Well we got we got Jacob up and running, so we’re gonna need bodies for him.’ I was like we’re not bodies dude. Nobody on this roster is just a body. That was so frustrating to hear. Like I said, it doesn’t pertain to me, but it just goes, this is what you think of [us]. I’ve been here at this point 12 years and I’m a body for somebody else? Dude, if you want to say something like that go ‘Hey man, we think you’d be great, because you could help build Jacob, you could make him look like a monster.’ Dope, let’s go. But we’re gonna need bodies? He’s referring to the bottom half of the roster. When you say that it’s so disrespectful to say that about people who go out there and put their life on the line every night, because careers can be ended in an instant. I mean, look at Big E, one suplex wrong and he may never wrestle again, it can end like that, or you can end up a quadriplegic. All of these things could happen. It’s your livelihood. It’s how you put food on the table.

I’m so gracious to have such a long career that I don’t have to worry about that. But if you’re three years in and you’re just a body, and you’re disregarded as not even a human being, in a sense, come on dude. It takes everybody, guys who are there to be extras, they’re just as important as talent in a sense, because without those guys doing that, we don’t have major superstars. You need guys that can do that and do it well. I think that that’s harder sometimes than being the top guy when everything is fed to you, you’re given every opportunity, you’re built on this pedestal. When you’re all the dudes clawing at the bottom to try to get there, it’s way harder to be down there and survive and be happy and successful than it is to be this is our guy, we wrote his name right there, so everything else funnels to him. That’s easy to be up there. It’s the only hard part is the amount of time it takes. When you’re put on a pedestal, it’s much easier than being guys fighting for those two three minutes on a show and then to refer to him as bodies. I said something, and he was like, ‘I didn’t think about how I said it that way.’ But I was just like, This is why it’s good that I’m going away for a little while regardless.

On a funny John Cena story from his time in WWE:

“I will start with the backstory of it. So when Nexus was up on television Bray Wyatt was not Bray Wyatt. He was Husky Harris, we’re going back here. There is a rumour that I believe is 100% true that Husky poked John Cena in the eye in a match, and Vince was so mad, Cena was so mad that they sent Husky Harris back to NXT. We’re all grateful for that because Bray Wyatt was born. So this story of I’m gonna tease Randy, because Randy’s a buddy of mine, but you’re always taught don’t hit Randy, he doesn’t like to be touched. Everybody’s kind of scared to work with Randy. It’s not like that, Randy’s tough. Sometimes he’s a baby. Sometimes Randy, I know you’re listening, you’re kind of a baby. Love you. So this whole rumour of Cena has been poked in the eye a couple of times and it sent Bray back to NXT for two and a half years, this was a massive punishment for that. So fast forward to this six man, and I’d only been on the main roster [a short amount of time]. I still had hair, we’re going way back. Still had the long, beautiful locks.”

“It’s the beginning of the match, the match starts, this is my first big match. We got a lot of crazy spots. There’s a lot of cool stuff. I’m supposed to attack Cena. So I drive Cena to the corner, put him in the corner, and I wind back to throw a body shot, and my thumb lands about knuckle deep in his eye, and I’m like oh no! And he starts cussing ‘You motherf*cker,!’ He’s dropping F-bombs, like we’re talking first 20 rows are hearing this he’s going, ‘You motherf*cker! You poked me in the motherf*cking eye, What the f*ck!?’ I mean, he’s laying it in on me. I’ve got my back to him at this point and I’m hearing all of this, I’m literally about to start crying, because I’m like I’m finally on the main roster. I’m up here, now I’m going back to NXT! Because this whole thing of Bray poking him in the eye I’m going dude, I’m going back to NXT. Without a doubt, I’m so screwed. I don’t want to go back to NXT. I’m so sad but I know I have to turn around to John for the next spot, and he’s still mother-effing me up and down. And I was just like, can we rewind life like five minutes? Let me start over, all of these things, and then we’re on live television, and these are all going through my head. The audience is even like, I can see in their eyes, they’re like John Cena is cussing, he’s going ape sh*t on Corbin. Finally I have to turn around because this is the time, I’m delaying this as long as I can possibly turn. I turn and John punches me dead in the face. It was a solid potato. I wore it, and I was like cool. Then for the rest of the match I’m trying to remember these spots, but I’m trying not to cry, because I’m like I’m going back to NXT. I just got out of there, just the range of emotions I’m going through for the rest of that match. I’m just like, dude. I’ve walked through the curtain so dejected, and they’re like, that was amazing. And I’m just head down in the corner like it’s over for me, man.”

“John comes back, and I just look at him, puppy dog eyes. He’s like, ‘Hey, that was great.’ I go, ‘John I am so sorry.’ He goes, ‘Oh, we’re good. I gave you it back. We’re good.’ And I was like, Wait, this is gotta be at work. He’s lying to me. I’m gonna walk out this curtain and they’re gonna like, we need you to get your bags. You’re going back to NXT. But that was the end of it. I was good. But, like, I legit thought my life was over. I was like, This is it? Because I poked John Cena in the eye and he mother effed me up and down. The whole match I’m panicking trying to remember stuff. And I walked through the curtain, he’s like, Oh no, we’re good.”

On his comments about wrestler contracts:

“I’m not saying that one side or the other side is correct. I’m just saying simply that’s how they work. I’ve signed NFL contracts. I’ve signed five WWE contracts. It’s the nature of the beast and it’s the same in any industry. They may not be the greatest contracts when you start out, they are unfair. You’re fighting an uphill battle sometimes in a contract. The music industry, 50% of your money is gone like that, it’s a contract, but you’re a band, you’re trying to make it. You got to do it, you got to sign the paper, and you got to get through it, and then you can kind of start to negotiate terms. It’s just one of those things. They’re there to protect both sides. Usually they benefit the person giving the contract a little bit more than they do the other side.”

“But at the end of the day, those people arguing over contracts, number one, everybody that’s commenting on social media, including myself, we don’t know the inside thing that’s going on. There could be bad blood there. There could be things one side said to the other. Nobody has a clue except for those people in that small circle. So you can’t say one person is right, one person is wrong, because nobody actually knows the answer to that question. But what I do know is how contracts work and how unfair they may be. No one is forcing you to sign it. Every contract that’s ever been put in front of me, you’ve never been forced to sign.”

“I’ve been in some sticky situations where I was supposed to sign a new five-year deal, and I’ve been pushing off because I was not agreeing to the money that WWE was offering. I felt like my value was higher. Then I was approached at WrestleMania before my match with Kurt, and they’re like hey we need you to sign this deal. I went and had a conversation, and I ended up signing the deal, but I was like, Hey man, can we reevaluate this in a year? It was one of those things and Hunter said it to me, and I fully get what Hunter said to me, but when I was asking for more money, because it was my second contract. I’d finished my first, I didn’t ask to renegotiate. I was out earning my downside. I was happy, and then my next offer was lower than I wanted. Hunter had a conversation with me and he said, look you can out earn this. I’m going, yeah if I’m booked correctly and on pay-per-views and all things that are out of my control. I can’t control who you pencil in for these things. I can do my best, because look at where I’m at now, if you went based on reaction, I would have been in that upper, not the tip top, but I would have been in that next level of guys based on reactions and based on people cheering for me, and based on what I was putting out as a product. I should have been on some of those pay-per-views, but I wasn’t, it’s not in my control.”

“I was barely on TV coming back up after the draft. I deserved to be on TV, and I deserved to be working in programs. They threw me and Apollo together, and it started to really work, and I thought we had something special. Apollo was showing out and he’s still crushing it, so happy for him. He’s getting a lot of TV time right now, but those are things are out of my control. So you’re telling me I can out-earn this downside but I can only do that if I’m booked this way. Because I’m a heel number one, so I’m not slinging merch, and I’m not getting asked to do the Snickers commercials, because the second my music hits it’s guttural boos throughout every arena in the country and world. So I’m not getting all those little things that good guys get, those those monetizing opportunities. So I feel like my worth is higher than this. He said, we also had to figure out and make sure you’re not a flash in the pan. He’s like, Yeah, you’re hot right now. But what’s six months from now? What’s a year from now? I get the business sense, they don’t want to offer me this deal that I’m fighting for every penny, and they meet me where I want to be and then they lose out on it, the contract is going to benefit the person handing the contract. And I had a conversation, signed the contract two years later, it was a five-year deal. Two years later, Vince brought me to the office, up in a very fancy office, at the Royal Rumble, and was like, Hey, you’re underpaid. Let’s fix this. He offered me a different deal and I said No thank you, this is what I want. And he said, You want to bet on yourself? I said, absolutely do. He goes, how about we do a one year deal for this much? Done. Bet on myself, and it worked out fantastic for me, because 10 months later, I got a fantastic deal. I’ve had, like I said, five contracts there. I bet on myself through them. I did it again.”

“When I went down to NXT that day, they were releasing everybody. A guy named Dan was in charge of all that. I had no idea they were releasing people. So I see that I missed a call from Dan. I just got out of a boxercise class. I was wanting to get back in boxing, and I was trying to again. I was told to lose weight for some reason, who knows? I never thought I was in bad shape. I used to be 330 pounds, there’s going to be loose skin, not abs. It’s just the nature of the beast with me. I was a gigantic refrigerator, but I was trying. Again, you want me to be professional and do what you asked me Done, let’s go. And Dan, I would call him, and he’s like, Hey, I think you’ve seen we’ve been releasing people today. I go, No, I had no idea. So I was like, wow, this is a call. I’m done. This was maybe September, while I was in NXT, and he’s like we’re not letting you go. I go, Okay, so what’s up? He goes, we can’t keep paying you what we’re paying you with what you’re doing in NXT. I was like, Okay. He’s like, you’re gonna take a significant pay cut. I go, okay, so what are we talking? Again, I’m fine with it, because I understand. I’m a business guy. You can’t be paying me this monster contract of main roster, what I thought was monster while I’m in NXT working one day a week, if that.”

On if a WWE return could be possible:

“I think so. I don’t think it ever closes. I mean, how many people, look at the roster now of guys. Cody, Drew, Punk. I mean Punk, the guy who said he would never, ever, ever, ever go back. Again, I hold no ill will towards WWE because I’m so thankful for everything they’ve ever given me the opportunities to perform in front of millions of people on TV, in person, go to Boys and Girls Club, pull a plane for Special Olympics. There’s just so many cool things they do. I was a little bummed I didn’t get to be on Netflix. How cool is that? It’s such a really awesome thing, and things are changing there. I never thought I would see logos on the ring, because it’s been such a historic business of don’t change this, this is the history. We don’t mess with it. Hunter’s bringing a new light, a new vibe, a new energy and I think it’s going to bring new fans. You’re seeing celebrities. It’s not what it used to be where guys were like, Are you a wrestling fan? Don’t let anybody hear me tell you but did you see Raw last night? Now it’s like, this is cool, man. This is fun. Stars from [George] Kittle to all these people. [Patrick] Mahomes was at Raw, Bad Bunny is killing it. It’s not like, Hey, we’re bringing these guys in and they have no clue, we’re just gonna pay him to show up. Like, these are people who they know what they’re doing. They know what they’re getting.”

What is Baron Corbin grateful for?

“Family, my time in WWE and the opportunities I have gotten.”