Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Los Angeles to talk about the new Warner Bros & DC Comics film BLACK ADAM, what The Rock’s superpower and weaknesses are, his definition of success, whether he still keeps up with pro wrestling and the WWE, his thoughts on Roman Reigns as the Head of the Table and being the Tribal Chief.

Your superpower is just being so kind.

“Look, man, I always say like kind of being kind is and being nice. I heard a quote when I was 15, and I’ll never forget it. And I use it as my lead foot, by the way, like in life, which is it’s nice to be important. But it’s more important to be nice. And I still feel that being nice and being kind is truly one of the easiest things to do. Because to me, it takes effort to be an asshole.”

So that’s your superpower. What’s your weakness? Mine is pizza.

“Mine is tequila. That’s a real bad combo man.”

With everything that you’ve done in your career, wrestling, Hollywood, everything in between? That’s such an amazing career. How do you define success?

“That’s a great question, you’re making me think about this, I’m gonna take a crack at it right now. I would say define success by having a positive influence on people. And in the world of entertainment, that is a small sector, but yet it can be very influential. And my goal in terms of the things that I do in this, on this side of entertainment, and some of the other businesses that I’ve started is the key, the number one anchoring element is to always make sure that people walk away feeling good, and that’s important, walk away feeling good. Walk out of the theatres feeling good watching a movie. If they’re watching it at home, they feel good when the credits are rolling. If there’s a product that I’ve created and I deliver it, they feel good with that too, as well. So I define success by how it makes people feel. And I also would define success by raising some good babies, if you’re fortunate enough to have some kids. I would define success that way too.”

I mentioned wrestling. Are you keeping up with what’s going on in WWE?

“I love wrestling. Always. Yeah, absolutely.”

You’re on chat wrestling. Do you want to let’s do it. You acknowledge the tribal chief?

“I do. It’s my family.”

He says he’s at the head of the table. But yeah, look, it’s you.

“I think those guys are I think they’re doing a great job. And I think what an interesting shift that the company has gone through this year, unexpected in many ways. But when expectations happen in that kind of way, and form and fashion, especially in that business, you got to have the ability and the agility to pivot, which they have. So with Roman I think he’s doing a pretty good job and the boys too, The Usos, those two as well.”

Dan Lambert (@danlambertatt) is an entrepreneur, AEW Wrestling personality, black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and the owner of the MMA gym American Top Team. He joins Chris Van Vliet at the Blue Wire Studios at Wynn Las Vegas to talk about being part of AEW, why he loved being a heel, working with Chris Jericho, why he started American Top Team, what they look for in an athlete at ATT, how close he was to buying the UFC, his take on the Jorge Masvidal vs. Colby Covington feud, taking legendary wrestlers out for dinner and much more!

On AEW fans:

“Every time I went out my goal was to make them hate me as much as I hate them. Every one of them, hate.”

On being booed:

“I don’t know how the faces do it. I don’t think I could do it, it’s got to be way harder.”

On praise for Chris Jericho:

“He is so good. He said ‘Ok, you are going to cut my song off at this point, and people are going to lose their minds but keep singing the song.’ I’m like ok, and whatever he said happened, it happened.”

On how the partnership with AEW started:

“Tony Khan is an MMA fan. He just happened to be down in Miami meeting with Jorge Masvidal and his agent, they were talking about doing something together when Jorge was so hot after the whole flying knee thing. His agent gives me a call and says ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ I’m like well I just sat down for dinner with some friends that came to town. He says ‘Well tell them to p*ss off. I am down in Miami sitting with Tony Khan, you guys are like brothers from another life. You have got to come and meet this guy.’ I’m like really? Okay. I told my friends see ya, nice seeing you, I’m out of here. I went to meet him and we just totally hit it off and became friends. He is a total wrestling nerd, I’m a total wrestling nerd. Obviously he is a big football guy and football is the greatest thing in the world to me. We just totally hit it off and became friends and stayed in contact. When he came down to do a Miami show, it was actually the first show they did there after the pandemic was over in front of a live crowd. He reached out to me and said ‘Hey, do you want to come to the show? Maybe bring some of the guys down, grab a mic and cut a promo on people, just for fun?’ Yeah why not. So I did it and it was a blast and I thought that was it. But then I get a text 2 weeks later saying ‘Hey, what are you doing? Do you want to come to Jacksonville and do a show?’ Yeah why not? And then it just kept going.”      

On being involved in wrestling before AEW:

“I actually met Jeff Jarrett at a UFC show in Nashville, just happened to be sitting next to him. I hit it off with him, and Bobby Lashley was their champion at the time, he fought and trained with us, super good guy. Jeff reached out to me and said ‘Hey, would you like to bring some of the fighters over and cut some promos.’ I was like yeah, and that was a lot of fun.”

On being a heat magnet:

“I got really lucky with the people that they matched me up with. I got to do stuff with Jericho, got to do a short something with Cody, got to do something with Lance Archer against Hangman Page. Some of these guys are so over, getting heat off of Jericho, he does all the work, you can’t get an easier assignment than that. Once you do something with him, everybody knows you from that and the heat just kind of has a residual effect. I guess I just got lucky.”  

On wanting to be a wrestler:

“I still want to be a wrestler. Who doesn’t want to be a wrestler? [Chris mentions he trained to be a wrester] If you want to be a wrestler you are a dork. [If you want to] Go and do something easy, then go and be a fighter. That’s not an easy way to make a living, those guys take a beating. I don’t think that people appreciate the toll that it takes on those guys.” 

On having a match in AEW:

“I figured that the heel cowardly manager gets somehow tricked into a match to get his ass kicked. So yeah, I figured I would. I mean Chris Jericho beating me up with a kendo stick in front of 20,000 people on pay-per-view, how cool is that? I can’t tell you how much I was having, it was the coolest thing ever.” 

On if Dan Lambert is still working with AEW:

“Not now. About 2 months ago we finished up our feud with the Men of the Year, we had Scorpio Sky drop the belt to Wardlow. Sky was going to take a couple of months off because he had a knee injury that needed to heal. Page was being repackaged so he could do what he is doing now with The Firm and with MJF. So I thought that it was a good time to wind down, I thought that I was getting stale. The reactions were still good, but I just grabbed Tony after the show and said that I think this has run its course. I don’t want to go backwards or overstay my welcome. He was like yeah man sure. If you have an idea for something in the future then come back then sure whatever, call me. If Tony called me tomorrow and had a good idea and I liked it then sure, I’ll do it.”

On getting recognised more:

“It depends on where you are. No one cares about teams in MMA, the fighters get recognized, the coaches don’t. They may mention where the guy trained, but people don’t care, it’s an individual sport. In wrestling it is more about the individuals and stuff, so you get a bit more recognition.”

On Dan Lambert’s promo style and comparisons to Jim Cornette:

“Jim Cornette is the greatest manager of all time. He just is. I think [better than Heyman] and I love Heyman, but I grew up with Cornette. A lot of it, who you remember as the greatest football player or basketball player is who you were the most exposed to when you were younger. Bobby Heenan towards the end of his run, I have been watching since the late 70’s, but it was towards the end of his run when he was in the AWA when I first started watching wrestling, so I didn’t have much exposure to him before he went to WWE. We didn’t get AWA until it was on ESPN for a short period. But Cornette was right in my wheelhouse. Man, he was just so good. I know a lot of people have said that the things I have said in your promos are what Cornette has said on his podcast, but I don’t listen to podcasts. So I’m like oh cool, if Cornette says it, then it must be right. I always took that as a complement, I thought the guy was so great back in the day.”   

On MMA improving over the years:

“It’s still such a young sport, it’s still evolving so much, especially from the training and the running teams side of it. There are so many things that are different from 5 years ago, never mind 10, 15 or 20 years ago. But these athletes are studs, if you are a 145 lb guy and you want to make money in sport, you aren’t gonna play football or basketball, where are you going to make your money? The level of athlete is changing, what works now and what works before are completely different.”

On the biggest shift in MMA:

“Probably the ranking of what disciplines matter the most. Back 20 years ago it was who was the best ground fighter. People would laugh at karate back in the day, it was all about ground fighting. Now, who wins fights on their back these days? Not named Charles Oliveira or Brian Ortega. You don’t win fights on your back anymore. Everybody knows enough of the ground game to defend it. The person on top wins the grappling, and now there is karate working in fights, holy sh*t that stuff actually works. I think that karate may work more in MMA now that Jiu Jitsu does. It’s just the evolution of the sport.”

On what Dan Lambert looks for in an athlete:

“Go back 15 years and it was like where would we get our next generation of fighters from. But now the sport has evolved so much that we probably get 30 legit fighters a month reaching out to us to do a camp and do training. We have a big gym but we have limited resources, only so much mat time and so much training. If 30 people want to come and train, we will only say yes to 2 of them. We just want to make sure that they are the right fit. It might not be because they are a stud, undefeated and will be a champion. It might be that this guys is a heavyweight that has a good ground game, he has potential and will be a really good training partner. Or this guy is a 125 lb good wrestler, he is a great fit as a training partner. When we think they will be a good git, we take them in a for a week and see if it’s a good fit for them. Some are better in the smaller environment than ours, but we just look to see is a good fit. But if you were to ask me for the number one thing to look for in a fighter, athleticism. It used to be the best ground guy, then the best wrestler, then the best striker. Now it’s just give me the best athlete, we will do the rest from there.”

On his proudest moment:

“The coolest thing that I have ever seen was Masvidal’s flying knee. Without a doubt the coolest moment I have seen in a fight. But the coolest thing I have seen is Jorge’s resurrection. He called it. He had so many highs and so many lows in his career. I never thought he reached his potential, the guy is a nut job. You hear about him jumping over a table at a restaurant to punch someone, that’s him. I could probably get arrested just telling the stories of what this guy has done over the last few years. But to hear his story and to see what he has done coming up from a split decision loss here and a dumb decision there and thinking he was on the tail side of his career. To see him catch fire like that, he was in great shape and he said that he was going to kill people. At first I thought he was full of sh*t. He came out and had that run, the BMF belt, the Askren fight, he was a next level star. You know how Chris Jericho can lose and put over the next 10 people he has feuds with, he is still Chris Jericho. He is still going to get that heat and people still want to see him. Masvidal is like that, people have such crazy respect for Masvidal. He can still lose a fight here and there, but people want to see him because he is Jorge Masvidal. He still is a BMF and his story is so cool. This guy is making money, he calls me from Saudi Arabia, to see that guy, his story and where I thought he would end up. That ascension is the coolest thing I have ever seen.”   

On Dan Lambert’s favorite belt from his collection:

“I would say my favorite is not the one that people would say is the coolest belt that I have. But my favorite is the old Georgia Heavyweight Championship belt because that was the one that was on TBS during the 6:05 to 8:05 timeslot, and it was same one for like 20 plus years. A lot of these belts, they change every 4 or 5 years, it gets beat up, broken, stolen, thrown off a bridge. This was the same belt forever, and everyone held that belt. The only belts I collect are actual used belts, so all of them are ring used.” 

On what Dan Lambert is grateful for:

“The fact that MMA has become such a mainstream sport, that I got to meet Tony Khan and I am at point in my life where I can do stuff I like.”

On this episode, Chris Van Vliet is a guest on the podcast “Learn Speak Teach” on the Real Business Connections Network hosted by Ben Albert. Chris talks about being laid off early in his broadcasting career and what he learned from that, the science of asking better questions, why gratitude is so important, changing your mindset and a fun rapid fire round at the end.

On pain points:

“I would say the biggest one, and look, I was super passionate about broadcasting. It was the dream of working in television or radio, but I had zero connections to make this happen. I didn’t have a cousin or an uncle who could get me an internship. So I think that was a big pain point for me early on, I had to figure all of this out on my own and how to get there.”

On being laid off:

“Fast forward a few years and I think the biggest pain point for me was, two years into my career I had a dream job. I was hosting a show on MTV2 Canada where I was interviewing all kinds of celebrities. Our show after me being on it for a year got cancelled after one big media conglomerate bought another one and they merged together. I was at work that day and typing on my computer, my boss came in and said ‘Everybody stop what you are doing, the show just got cancelled.’ It felt like in an instance that the rug got pulled out from underneath me and I had to figure out what do I do now? I picked up my life and moved it 3,000 miles to Vancouver, and that was a big one for me. It felt like I was living my purpose, but I had to re-evaluate and recalculate my purpose from there. But I am a really big believer that things happen for a reason, because if that didn’t happen then it would lead me to where I am. Because being unemployed for 7 months that led me to try and get an agent in the United States and look for jobs there.”   

On what was next:

“When I got back home I was like this is not a vacation, I have got to find another job. It sucked. It sucked because things were going so well and one day it was all gone. My new job became finding a job and finding one that juiced me as much as the old job did.”

On levelling up:

“I will say that this felt like my purpose even before that moment where I got to do my story at the internship. I was so excited to be there, learning the ins and outs and asking so many questions. I think that really helped, I was asking about shooting on tape and the editing system. It wasn’t until 6 months in that I really felt comfortable with the editing system. If I didn’t know me, I would believe what that person was saying, I felt like I was levelling up every day. Even if it was a 0.01 each day, I felt like I was improving. There is a thing called the stand up where the reporter speaks with the microphone and setting the stage, it’s usually one or two sentences. I would record the stand up 5 or 10 times saying the exact same thing. I would then watch it back in the editing room and hopefully pick the least worst take.”

On Chris’ 1% of his day to get better:

“A lot of it, and it is uncomfortable too, is watching yourself back. You gotta do it. You will realize that you do the weird thing with your eyebrows and what your voice sounds like. Getting comfortable with meeting the digital version of yourself, that was part of it. Once you are comfortable with it, and that takes a long time, you look and go ‘I said a lot of this’ or ‘I did a lot of ums.’ I started cutting that out. I also started looking at people that were crushing it, looking at their skillset and making it my own. I think that was a really big thing. Tony Robbins says that success brings clues, if you take one thing from someone and put it in your toolkit. Then you take it from someone else, if you do that a dozen times, you have a pretty good set of tools.”

On going all in:

“For me, I just want to swing for the fences, especially in the celebrity interviews. If they are promoting a movie, like recently I was in Las Vegas interviewing Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco. You get 5 minutes with them, and they are answering a lot of the same questions doing 40 to 50 interviews a day. I learned that if you ask better questions, you get better interviews, so I have been trying to look for those moments that have never happened before. So if you swing for the fences and it doesn’t work, then you edit that out. But if it does work, my goodness you get an amazing moment. For instance, I got to rap Miami with Will Smith in Miami. If you don’t ask, the answer will be no, so why not at least ask.”

On back to square 1:

“I changed the home screen on my internet browser to be a job search website. That was a huge change for me. When I opened up Internet Explorer, that was the first thing I would see, so if I wanted to click away from something, it was like ‘Really? You don’t want to just take 5 minutes and scroll to see what is out there.’ I would use that tactic a lot, there was a sports radio station that I volunteered at, I also changed the home screen there to their website. That way I could see what was important to them and that was a huge help for me. I mentioned earlier that I made it my job to look for a job, and I was doing everything to edge myself better than the next person. I always got down to the final 2 people for a presenting job, and it would always go to the other person. Maybe they had more experience or was more recognizable in Canada. I was getting so frustrated, so I went well if I can’t get a job in my own country, I’m going to look elsewhere. There were so many opportunities in the USA, so I started spending my days googling TV agents. I sent this one cold email to an agency in Los Angeles saying that I am LA frequently, I was only in LA once in my life at that point, and I would love to come by. They asked when I would next be in LA, and I said it would be in the next month. I stayed in the cheapest motel I could in Hollywood, I was brushing away the cockroaches at the door. But the agency signed me and it worked out, they got me auditions. That got the ball rolling and got me to where I am at, but it would never have happened if I never had a clear goal on how I got there.”

Why Chris Van Vliet was hired:

“I think that I just had the momentum of being on MTV 2 Canada. I was a fresh face, which is important in Canada. Also it was low risk, if they sign me and I don’t get hired, well I’m the next one. I am guessing they liked my demo reel and they were like well let’s see what happens.”

On the big break:

“It wasn’t a break, but it was a very big audition. It was with TRL, Carson Daily was moving on and was replaced by Damien Fahey, then he was moving on and they were looking for someone to replace Damien Fahey. I am like oh my God, TRL? In Times Square? I actually had an interview at the TRL studio. In the end they didn’t hire me because they ended up cancelling the show. But to be in the final 2 of that conversation, it gave me the confidence that something is going to happen here. I think that was the really big one that made me look at things through a different lens.”

On YouTube success:

“I think it is about experimenting. Yes, I was early to the game, we are talking over 10 years ago with interviews from stars of The Hunger Games or Twilight or the Marvel films. But I was also early to the game of getting them to YouTube first. Henry Cavill would be talking about putting the Superman suit on for the first time, and I was sat in the airport trying to edit it so I could get it up onto YouTube first. It shifted a lot recently though, short form content is where all the attention is. I started a clips channel 2 years ago and really put time into it last year. It now has over 130,000 subscribers and the total views are now higher than my main channel.”

On going viral with short videos:

“I would say find a title that is highly clickable. Don’t be clickbait, but have a title that is clickable. Something like ‘This person explains this…’ What makes you want to click on an article? I saw all of these podcasters doing this and it made sense. Joe Rogan’s podcast is 2 to 3 hours long, asking someone to stay on their phone for that time is a huge ask. But if there is a 6 minute clip, that is much more suggestable.”

What makes a good question:

“It is always difficult when it is just one question. Definitely something that is not just a yes or no answer. If you can tie it into you and endear it to yourself somehow, it makes it a better question. I think also to go one layer deeper and make it into a question that has not been asked before. You always hear ‘What was it like working with…’ You always hear the answer of ‘Oh they were great.’ I take it one layer deeper to ‘What is one thing you have learned that you will take to the next set.’ That is when you can get that great soundbite, because they are revealing something they have never revealed before.”

Dane Cook (@danecook) is a stand-up comedian and actor known for starring in movies like Waiting, Good Luck Chuck, My Best Friend’s Girl and Employee Of The Month. He sits down in person with Chris Van Vliet in Hollywood, CA to talk about his new comedy special called “Above It All”, why he funded it himself, what he’s learned from doing comedy for 32 years, how he was able to use MySpace and the Internet early on to grow a fanbase and explode his popularity, why he feels a lot of comedians were jealous of him, why it became cool to dislike him and much more!

On Dane Cook’s first time onstage:

“Honestly it all happened so fast. I think if I knew I was going on that night then I would be sat there thinking well what if I bomb? But it all just happened so fast. I was up there doing some jokes and some routines that I thought of, but I was just going into it. I got a few laughs from that room of 30 to 40 people, but what I remember is feeling like right away I am a pressure planner. When it was really on me that I had to do this and I identified with it. Even though my jokes were not great and parts of the routine might have been a little lacklustre, I was prepared to meet that moment. Moving forward it was like I will be ok when I get back onstage.”  

Dane Cook on being anxious growing up:

“Yeah I was an introvert. I was one of those people that in school, forget standing up in front of the class, just the thought of the teacher asking me something, I was mortified by it. When it did happen, it was more discombobulating in that moment. I was there in class tapping my foot like please don’t call me, or in sports I would be like please don’t pass the ball to me. I didn’t want any participation because I was so scared that I would not come through.”

Dane Cook on overcoming the anxiety to become a comic:

“People ask me that at school like where did this version of me come from. I called my mom that night after the first show and she asked me how did I do? I think I exceeded my expectations, even if some of the jokes missed, it wasn’t cringey. I did like a ‘Well that joke is not ready for public consumption yet, let’s move on.’ I was covering and improv-ing, it was like a Clark Kent/Superman moment. Except I was still Clark Kent on stage, not Superman.”   

On when Dane Cook felt like a comedian:

“I was really embarrassed to say it for a long time. I wouldn’t say I do stand up comedy, I think I was ashamed of it. Up until then I worked at a pizza place, a dietary aide at a nursing home, I worked at a video store. I did anything I could to continue the stand-up career and avoid the 9-5. I knew if I went to a plan b I would get stuck in that, so I did a lot of miscellaneous stuff and got $20 here and there for stand-up.” 

On people saying ‘You’re a comedian? Be funny.’

“Oh that and a lot worse. People think that just because you are a comedian then they can just have at you. It’s strange, in Boston in that era, stand-up comedy was 2 things at once. There was the boom of the 80’s with Robin Williams, Boston identified that if you are good at  the job then you are exceptional. But also with it being Boston and being rough, if you didn’t come with something that was exceptional, they would really bring the hammer down on you. Looking back it was the best thing ever because it was like a boot camp for comedy.”

On Tik Tok being used by comedians:

“There is still an ability to craft and create something that is original. I don’t think I have engaged with much on Tik Tok for a while. But Tik Tok felt like the MySpace that can cultivate the kind of audience that you want. It is up to the creator to come up with something that will get eyes on it, but you have to have a long form game plan to where you want to take your career. I tell people there is no rush to get that 5 million, because when it happens you have to be ready. If you are not, then the next one slips down to nothing, it’s gonna feel like you are over. You are not, it’s just the way society vibes with content. But if you know where you are going to take your audience, then you have a chance to utilize the machine to feed your machine. You need to have a sustaining plan to sustain.” 

On being the Nickelback of comedy:

“I’m not looking at that at the time, I’m looking at 20,000 people that loved me. I was on the cover of Time magazine when people were saying that I sucked. I was one of the most influential people on the planet and was accepting that. This is true, I was an influential person, if they did a feature on where did they misstep, I would be in that too. But I have never had an audience abandon me so I can’t do gigs, I have never not performed in 31 years. So that really helped business, because it made me more interesting than I actually am. Being that person that people really loved or hated was great for business.”

On comedy styles for different jokes:

“I made a decision in 2011 to plant my feet and not move on stage for a whole year. So I have a story in my new special about a stalker that I have been dealing with. This is a violent stalker, LAPD involved and everything. This is a person who has physically threatened to kill me. I knew that if I was going to make this story funny, I had to be caustic and tell it like this [deadpan] this woman said ‘I’m going to kill you. I’m going to find you and I’m going to murder you. I’m sitting there and all I can think of is man, I wish I read this after I ate that pizza, because I have been waiting all day… It was finding the humour, because I grew up in a family where humour helped as a coping mechanism. I was scared, genuinely, but the 2011 planting my feet, in 2022 that is the best decision I made. I can now be completely transparent.” 

On an allegedly infamous Dave Chapelle story:

“The guy that told the story even told the story by saying ‘I heard this thing. I don’t know but I heard…’ Basically he prefaced it by saying, so it was my night and Dave Chapelle did a set and said ‘Join me outside for a cigarette.’ And then the whole crowd went out, this is like 2006 and 2007 where we were both at the peak of our powers. At that time, the two people you don’t leave the room when they are on stage are me and Dave. It’s just not true. Dave would never do that, and I know people want to believe that, but 6 million people have seen that and 6 million people have been lied to.”

On the internet:

“The whole internet is someone claiming that they heard a thing, then someone makes a meme out of it, then someone is like ‘A source said…’ Then you watch it blow up, but that’s not me.”   

On movies taking Dane Cook to the next level:

“Yeah so it’s people who are really big fans of you asking if you want to play in this sandbox for a little bit. I wanted to do film and broaden my aspirations, but I just followed where stand-up takes me, and it took me to some really interesting places. I just continue to feed the stand-up, because I am excited where it takes me.”

On Dane Cook’s fiancee hearing about their relationship on stage:

“Oh she is super funny and silver tongued. You’re a comedian, you want to be with someone who thinks you are funny, but she is also funny. She will say sh*t and she will go there, she’s amazing. We laugh a lot and we have a great time.”

On advice Dane Cook gives to comedians:

“I tell them the best advice I was told, you know better than anybody what you should be doing up there. I would never dare say to anyone ‘You should be doing this…’ I would never do that. The only advice I would give is the legal side, because I have dealt with that a lot. My whole mentor thing is helping a comic, it doesn’t matter if I don’t think it is funny, it’s what you believe in in your messaging. Stay away from the noise from other people saying things like it’s too offensive. This job is about turning some people off, you won’t make everybody laugh all of the time. You want some laughing and some to be like no, I don’t want this.”

On pushing the envelope:

“It’s not really about pushing the envelope, some comics write and think what is funny to them. But the comics I love is they say what is funny to me and how can they bring me into their world, that is what you want. And if you can crack that, you can have a persona where more people who won’t laugh won’t show up to the show and more people that do laugh will.”

On what Dane Cook is grateful for:

“Love, there is a stage I can get on and that I got to show my mom and dad everything that they hoped for me.”

Featured image: IMDB

Tyler Perry (@tylerperry) is an actor, filmmaker and the owner of Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, GA. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about new movie called “A Jazzman’s Blues” which is streaming now on Netflix. He talks about writing the original screenplay for this movie in 1995, why now was the right time to make it, the lessons he learned from Oprah Winfrey, working with David Fincher on the movie “Gone Girl”, his partnership with Netflix and much more!

You have been so kind to me throughout the years! Who has been the person who has been kind to you early in your career?

“Gosh, early on in my career I ran into a lot of people who were really kind. Oprah was one was definitely one of them. Every major celebrity that I have met of the older generation, they were just so kind and parted a lot of wisdom to me.”

What do you think is the lesson from Oprah that you still carry with you today?

“Just in how authentic she is in herself. Just how it is important to her to make everybody feel seen and feel heard and feel loved. I love what that did to me and I want to do that for other people.”

When you make a film like this, how do you decide if you are going to star in the film or just do everything behind the scenes?

“When I wrote it 27 years ago I wanted to star in it but I got too old, so I had to rethink all of the casting. I went you know what, I’m going to sit back in this director’s chair and really take my time and paint every image like a photograph and find some incredible talent. We were able to do that and I am very proud of the work.”

When you have it in your mind that you are playing Bayou, what does that actor have to do to impress you in that audition?

“You know what, I was just looking for someone who understood the period and the time, and asks the right questions. Joshua Boone asked the right questions, he challenged my thought process in some of those situations and made me think. But also understanding the picture that we needed to paint together, so it’s really great.”

I think a lot of People are surprised that you are making this movie. It’s not a movie that people will typically expect from you. Do you enjoying surprising people?

“You know, most of these 25 years or so has been about making sure that I establish myself in my career so I can do things like this. I always felt with every hit that I was still fledgling in the business. If I had one miss, something would go off, so I had to stick with what I knew worked. But now I am in a place and having a partner like Netflix where I am able to do something that I wanted to do for a very long time.”

I’m curious about Gone Girl. When you are on the set of Gone Girl, what is something that you are learning from David Fincher that you take as a director now onto the sets?

“Everything except for 100 takes for each thing. 1 or 2, if I am doing 4 or 5 takes then something is wrong. He was very much a wealth of information. He knew so much about so many different things.”

Life is all about moments. What is the one moment that has set you on the path that you are on now?

“I think it was hearing no a lot. I don’t know the one specific moment, but when I heard the word no it gave me the strength and desire to give me a yes somewhere.”

Featured image: Tyler Perry

David McClellan is the CEO and founder of Social Catfish (@socialcatfish), a website that helps people to find out if they are being scammed or catfished. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about how his website helps to stop online scammers, his craziest story of catching an online predator, his thoughts on the Mante Te’o Netflix documentary called “Untold”, how to protect yourself when you are on a dating app, books that you should read and much more!

On what David McCellan does:

“We want to be the site that protects you while you are online. That is our goal and that is what we do. If it’s making sure that who you are talking to is real or making sure that the picture is who they say they are so you are not wasting your time, that’s our mission. Finding out who that weird phone number that called you is? That’s part of what we do.”

On how catfishing has evolved:

“I will say that we have evolved from the Nigerian prince scam. We all make fun of it, but if it didn’t work then they wouldn’t do it. Social media, especially with all the apps out there, have made it so much easier for criminals to target innocent people. Especially with the pandemic, with all the apps that people are using, it is a breeding ground for people scamming.”

On romance scams:

“That has evolved too, the majority of romance cams don’t happen on dating apps anymore. Now they happen on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and even apps like Words With Friends. What these scammers do is they will message thousands and thousands of people a day, and they only need to talk to one or two people. If they can get a hold of ten people, one will probably talk to them. And of those 10 that the scammer gets, one of them they will make money from.”

On the warning signs:

“The easiest thing is to not click on links that you don’t recognize and don’t give out your personal information and don’t give people money. That will generally keep you safe from most scams. But with romance scams, those can last 6 to 9 months, it’s not just someone getting you to click on a link, someone is grooming you for 9 months to get your money. The scammers will contact random people and will tell them things that they have never heard. People were lonely, especially in the pandemic, and someone is there day and night every day messaging them that they love them and asking them how they are. Eventually they groom them and they ask them for money, one person lost $2 million.”

On the victims being scammed:

“A lot of people see these cases and they say things like ‘They are stupid. They deserve to lose their money.’ You have to look at it on the flipside that these scammers are criminals that are meeting people online with the intention of stealing from them. For every person that has lost a lot of money, there are many more who have only lost a smaller amount. Only 1 in 3 people who fall for this scam actually report these people.”

On internet crimes:

“The scammers even call their victims clients. From their end there is a mental perception where they justify what they are doing. Also because it is the internet, there is not a high chance of getting caught until recently.”

On becoming an entrepreneur:

“Just do it, make mistakes and f*ck up. Like my son, he plays guitar and wants to make a TikTok account, but he is too interested in making sure the lighting is right, I’m like just get it out there. The hardest part is starting and then being consistent. My superpower is consistency, I may not be smarter than you, but I can outwork you, be consistent and that will work every time. If you can get things done and make a habit of it, then you will be successful.” 

On evolving as a person:

“I graduated highschool with a 2.3, but the guy that graduated high school is not the same guy that is running the business now. You can’t be the same person you are today, have ambitious goals in 5 years time, and still be that same person. You have to change and improve, and not just hit those goals.”

On how David McCellan lost over 80 lbs:

“So I had yo-yo dieted a lot, I lost 40 lbs and then gained it back. One thing I realized is that I kept making excuses like ‘I don’t eat that much.’ Or ‘My metabolism is low.’ I then started to realize that I could diet but a diet is not permanent. I then thought about what I could do to permanently change my lifestyle so I can live longer, I am all about longevity. Before I was eating a lot of fast food and drinking a lot of energy drinks, because I was so busy all of the time. So then it was okay, how can I make better decisions that are permanent? I changed my diet to paleo and lost 40 lbs. Then I hit all of these plateaus and was getting discouraged, so I started to track my food for 30 days just to figure out what I was doing wrong. I was eating things that were high calorie that would just throw me over, like 1,200 calories in wings. I started cutting those things out but did not want to feel like I was suffering when I was dieting. So I decided that it would be something permanent with no timeline. That is what helped me out the most was the mindset where I was committed to change my lifestyle.” 

On what David McCellan is grateful for:

“My family, my team and opportunity.”

Claudio Castagnoli (@claudiocsro) is a professional wrestling signed to AEW and Ring of Honor and previously worked for WWE under the name Cesaro. He joins Chris Van Vliet for a special live interview at Starrcast in Nashville. He talks about his decision to leave WWE and sign with AEW, what winning the Ring of Honor World Championship means to him, what happened to his partnership with Paul Heyman, who the strongest wrestlers in WWE are, Vince McMahon’s criticism of him lacking charisma and the “it factor”, his love of coffee, his match with CM Punk that was supposed to happen the night that CM Punk walked out of WWE, winning the Tag Team Championships with Tyson Kidd and also Sheamus, his current workout routine and much more!

On winning the Ring of Honor Championship:

I always believed, but I never really believed until it happened. I never really get excited until it happens, because a lot of stuff changes. But when it finally happened, I won the title, and I was able to raise it and to hear the crowd go crazy. And to hear it in Boston, which is where I have a lot of history with Ring of Honor. It felt really special, I felt validated. I also felt like I had to do this for my fans who have followed me for the past 20 years and are still following me. For me to win it for them meant a lot to me. 

Claudio Castagnoli On being labelled as underrated:

I do appreciate the underrated label, but I don’t think they [the fans] ever thought that I was underrated, maybe under utilised would be a better thing. I think the underrated thing is the best kept secret kind of vibe, and I really appreciate that. I have never been the one to go out there and tell everybody how great I am, I would rather go out there and show it. It may take longer but in the end you have a longer lasting effect. And to me, that is more important. The fact that I had so many people calling me underrated, that is such a big complement. 

On Claudio Castagnoli looking like Jason Statham:

Not as often as you would think, it’s usually when I do interviews and stuff. ‘Has anybody told you that you look like Jason Statham?’ I would say ‘No it’s the first time.’ And they are like ‘Really?’ 

On Claudio Castagnoli doubting himself at times:

I feel like every person goes through times where they doubt themselves. Okay, did I make the right choice? I am over here but I could have done this. For example, for the first few years when I moved to the United States, I was doing ok but not uber successful. I went to Ring of Honor and didn’t win the world title, then went to WWE and didn’t win the world title. It is like am I doing the right things? What am I doing? You just doubt yourself, especially when you are a creative person who wants to have success. I feel like everyone has their own way of finding success. But the way that the fans are going crazy, they do still like me. You go to a live event and the crowd goes crazy and they have not forgotten about you, that means a lot.

On Claudio Castagnoli leaving WWE:

A lot of thought [went into it] actually. I felt for a while that I needed a change, and leading up to it there was a bunch of signs and a bunch of stuff that different people said that they did not even realise that helped me make up my mind. One of the things that just popped in my head was Johnny Gargano’s last promo in NXT where he said to bet on yourself. That was one of those thoughts where it was like yeah he is 100% right. ‘Rather go out on your own horse…’ Is that even a saying? But it is now, I will tell you that now, put it on a t-shirt! But it was a lot of things leading up to it. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, because a lot of people do. When Cody left the first time he made a list of people that he wanted to wrestle, and then after that everybody made that list. So I just wanted to do it different, I am kind of against the grain a lot. Oh, someone is doing this? Let me try and do something over here. I felt that it was better that way because if I want to keep wrestling and then I pop up somewhere, it’s going to be a bigger surprise. I feel that wrestling is all about moments, and if I went ‘All right. I am leaving.’ Then people would have known and it would have been like oh he is going to show up somewhere or whatever. But if it’s quiet, then no one really knows what is going to happen and when it’s going to happen, that is the beauty of wrestling, you want to be surprised. Yes you want to know, but you want to be surprised. To me that is a very important thing of you do know maybe, but there is always that doubt, and that is what makes magic happen. 

On the deciding factor to join AEW for Claudio Castagnoli: 

There was a couple. One of the things was that there’s so many people that I want to be in the ring with at AEW and at Ring of Honor. I’m like man I have matches for the next [few] years that I want to do. While there are still guys in WWE that I want to wrestle, that number is less than at AEW. At my core, I always wanted to improve and get better and have new challenges. When I first went to WWE from Ring of Honor, I didn’t do it because I wanted to get onto TV, for me it was just the logical next step. Ok, I have done a lot in Ring of Honor, what is the next step? Where is the next challenge? Where are the best guys? It was the same thing here, what the next step and the next challenge? And AEW has been awesome, I have had the best first month that I could have dreamt of.   

On Vince McMahon’s comments about Claudio Castagnoli on the Stone Cold Podcast:

I thought he was wrong. Yeah I feel that charisma comes in very different forms, shapes and sizes. Not everybody has that over the top Ultimate Warrior shaking the ropes and running around crazy, yelling and screaming charisma. Not that I’m sitting here telling you all how awesome my charisma is, but I felt like I had a connection with the fans, with the WWE Universe, whatever you want to call it, in the United States and all over the world. While other people were known for long promos that get translated into many other languages and doesn’t necessarily come across, mine was about the in-ring work and people can connect with that. It may take a bit longer, but I did connect with the fans and they were behind me. I don’t know if that was not what he was looking for, but the end effect brought me here and you get to see that.

On winning the Andre the Giant Battle Royal:

So I don’t know if you remember, but the trophy I had got destroyed the very next day. What happened was, that thing is heavy, it’s huge. The base is completely solid. Until Corbin picked it up the other day, no one had picked it up. I don’t know if you remember but every time someone won the Andre the Giant Battle Royal after me, they stood next to it and did the pose next to it, and afterwards they had it ringside. They brought it in for me, and this is my second match of the night. I’m like no I want to lift it, it will look cool and I want to have pictures and everything. And I lifted it and it is so heavy, I was like [makes strained face], and I wanted to carry it to the back as well. So the next day they just kind of carted it around for me, and they have those little baby ramps that goes over cables. Someone pushed it, it went this way and the trophy just absolutely shattered. So they fixed it as good as they could, they still have it at the warehouse. The broken parts I was supposed to get them, I never did, but I still have the first ever plaque that was made. 

On the swing:

The longest I have ever swung someone, the crowd once counted to 100, but I was told by someone online that it was actually 88. I’ve heard from many people that it is their least favourite move to take, and they absolutely hate it to the point where they refuse to take it. Because it makes them so dizzy, they hate it. I just tell them to relax, which I guess is the wrong thing to tell them. 

On where the UFO swing came from:

OK you would never guess it, but I stole that move from Dancing With The Stars. That was probably again 15 years ago when you didn’t have the option of Netflix or anything, you just got to watch cable. I was watching Dancing With The Stars, I don’t know why, and they just have this cool lift, where they throw people around and everything. One of my Mexican teachers, he would watch gymnastics or whatever, and he would figure out new moves just watching anything. So I watched that because they had really cool lifts, the way they pick people up and stuff. And they did a variation of that, I’m like that’s cool, so I gave it a try.  

On losing the tag team championships to Braun Strowman and Nicholas:

I didn’t even realise. So I met Nicholas earlier that day and I didn’t realise that he was going to be the mystery opponent, because no one told us until the last minute. It was like 3 hours later and I asked Sheamus or somebody ‘So who is it?’ And he was like ‘You met him 3 hours ago.’ I’m like ohhh! I thought it was really cool. I mean every show, what I love about wrestling, all the kinds of different matches, the roller coaster ride it takes you on. That show needed a match where it was fun. Every show needs fun matches. WrestleMania, everyone is nervous and hyped, it is WrestleMania. Once everything was figured out, everything was so much fun. We had the float with the big head guys, it was a crazy, awesome entrance. The match was just fun, and it is all about moments. If you are a kid watching WrestleMania, that could be you. For people to still talk about it to this day, that WrestleMania had a lot of bangers on it, but for people to come to me and still say ‘So Nicholas?’ That’s cool. 

On Claudio Castagnoli teaming with Tyson Kidd:

We found out on Twitter that we would be teaming up on Raw that night in a tag team gauntlet. That is legit how we found out. We get to the arena and it’s like I guess we are teaming together tonight. We were always friends, but then the first time we teamed was that night and it instantly clicked. 

On what is on the bucket list for Claudio Castagnoli:

There are so many things. I did an in-ring segment with Tony Schiavone the other day and then I was like well there is another one off the list. There are so many moments that I can’t foresee, but when they do happen it is amazing. AEW is going to Arthur Ashe Stadium, and being a huge tennis fan that will be a big thing for me.

On what Claudio Castagnoli is grateful for:

Only 3 things? My family, my fans and my health.

Owen Beiny (@thepointspartner) is better known as The Points Partner. He is a former CEO that has spent the last 20 years traveling around the world for free by using credit card points, air miles, upgrades and benefits. He joins Chris Van Vliet from his house in Los Angeles, CA to talk about how anyone is able to sleep on a bed on an airplane for free, what the best credit cards to get are, he breaks the myth that having too many credit cards harms your credit score, his favorite destinations to travel to, the best free trip he has ever taken, how you can do exactly what he does and much more!

On common misconceptions:

“I like to start by dispelling some common myths. It is not bad for your credit score if you get multiple credit cards, it is healthy if you do it correctly. Also, you don’t need to spend millions on your credit cards to be able to do it. I find it offensive that people think that, I have worked my butt off for 20 years with a calculator to help people do this without those barriers.”

On maximizing credit card points:

“Instead of credit cards that give you one point per dollar that you spend, look at where you spend your money each day and choose the cards that will give you the most on food, gas, travel, these can give you 3, 4 or 5 times the amount of points. If you know what you are doing, which is my job to teach people, then credit card points can be worth 7 times what airmiles are. 7 times the amount. But you can’t use them the way that the credit card companies imply, you have to learn the art and the skillset of transferring your points out of the credit card companies, which is what I do. If you look at credit card points as a currency, they are no different to dollars, euros or yen, you buy them at a rate and you sell them at a rate. We are not buying them technically, we are getting them from spending money on our credit cards. And we are not selling them, we are redeeming them for free travel. But the concept is still the same, but it is not weighted the same. If you buy currency, there is a 50/50 chance of selling them. But with credit card points, the points only represent 30% of the transaction. 70%, the majority is the selling side, if you don’t know how to sell them, you have missed out.”

On making the points work for you:

“If you have 100,000 points, to the average consumer that is worth $1,000 in free travel, so you get roughly 1% back. But if you use your points correctly, they are worth $7,000 in travel. With some credit cards, even the sign up bonus for getting the card gives you that amount. If you get 2 or 3 cards and get them at the right time, you can get up to $30,000 in free travel just from the sign up bonuses. People assume I am a billionaire, I’m not. Last year I did $136,000 of free travel, which people think is a joke. That is why I opened up an Instagram account, because I show people how I travel for free. I explain which card I use, how I booked it, and all the details.”

On Owen Beiny’s history:

“Originally I was part of a paparazzi company in London. My job was to get 1,500 photographers and have them chase celebrities around planet earth and getting photos of them. I spent my entire working life on a plane chasing celebrities. Back in 2005 I got a phone call to cover the breakdown of Britney Spears in Los Angeles. It was the week that she shaved her head. It was also the week that I was coming to America, I was coming to America all the time. I came out for a week to cover Britney Spears, but her breakdown lasted longer. I was flying backwards and forwards, but to cut a long story short I ended up living in Hollywood. The industry went in the wrong direction, I quit while it was still at the top and looking for something else to do. Aside from chasing celebrities, my only other skills was flight related, as I had spent so much time on planes. I found all the tricks to be upgraded, so I came up with the idea to do something with credit card points.”

On what is good credit:

“When people talk about credit they talk about a credit score. That is a quantification of how trustworthy you are to lend money to. That is not what a credit card company uses, they look at your credit profile. They look at how many people have lent you money, when did you pay them back? How much did you borrow? And all of the details. A credit score of 700 is where you can go on my website and start to apply for travel credit cards.”

On Owen Beiny’s proudest trip:

“Just before the pandemic, me and my best friend went from Los Angeles to Tokyo. We did a week in 5* hotels across Japan, took the bullet train to Osaka, went to Shanghai, China for New Year’s Eve, spent the night in a 5* hotel, business class back to Los Angeles. In total it was $22,000 in travel, out of pocket it should have been $118, but I used points just to make it free. I explain to people on Instagram how this can be done, I am not a cheater or a travel hacker, I hate that term. I keep everything in the terms and conditions, the police don’t hate me, the airports don’t hate me. This can be done by anyone.”

On the best credit card to get:

“There is no such thing as a good credit card or a bad credit card. However, there is a good credit card for you and a bad credit card for you. So what is good or bad? Start off by printing out your credit card statement from last month. Is you spending in any of these 6 areas: Food, drink, gas, travel, marketing or office supplies. If you spend your money in any of these categories, which everyone does, you need to find the cards that will give you more money for one of these. For example food and drink, there are 2 credit cards that clearly whoop everyone else. The Citibank Premier card has a $95 annual fee and a 80,000 point sign up bonus, that is $3,500 worth of travel if you know what you are doing. This will also give you 3x the points on food, drink, gas and travel. You can use that card for everything day to day and you can crush it. The other card is the American Express rose gold card. This has a $250 annual fee, but it will give you $240 in places that you already use like Grubhub, Seamless, Uber, a whole bunch of places. It comes with a 60,000 point bonus for signing up and 4x food and drink bonus.”

On what Owen Beiny is grateful for:

“The capacity of other people, the people around me and credit card points.”

Featured image: Instagram

Karen Jarrett (@karenjarrett) is a wrestling personality and the wife of WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett. She joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about how she got started in the wrestling industry, working as a heel, how Vince Russo convinced her and Jeff Jarrett to use their real life situation with Kurt Angle as a storyline in TNA Wrestling, working a match against Chyna, her thoughts on being involved in Ric Flair’s last match and much more!

On Starrcast weekend:

“We didn’t really have 5 minutes free all weekend. We were free for a little bit on Friday, but obviously we were stressed out because we couldn’t go to the roast. It was so fun, just the way that everyone bought into it and was on the ride with us, it reminded me of when I was younger. Those storylines where people hated someone, people really hated us!”

On the stiletto spot:

“Jeff came up with it. We had one take and we had to make it good. He [Jeff] wanted to make it look good, and of course Ric wanted blood. Karen wore white, we are doing something with Ric, there is going to be blood. Jeff took it to a whole new level and Ric didn’t have to do anything. If you take a snapshot and zoom in, I can’t watch it. I can watch us walking away, but I can’t watch the beatdown.”

On Karen Jarrett possibly being on WWE TV:

“I don’t know. For about 4 years I had zero desire to do anything wrestling related. I was very happy being a wife, being a mom and being out of the drama. This whole thing, because of the storyline, and it wasn’t just a match, I got sucked so far back in. I hope something comes of it and I want something to come of it, not matter what it is.”

On the term ‘Karen’:

“I have my own shirt saying ‘I am the Karen.’ It doesn’t bother me. It’s better than being Alexa. I think it’s so fun for me, I love going out there and being a heel, I love it when people boo me.”

On first getting involved in wrestling:

“I thought that it was just going to be a short stint. Jeff and Vince Russo had an idea, and then once we got through that storyline, things just kept coming and coming. Then my stay there was cut short, then I came back with blond hair, fake hair, all kinds of stuff. Jeff always says I am a natural, but you are there doing a job. I feel like I always get slack when I speak about it, because I am not a wrestler, but it is a job. I think a lot of the talent take it too serious, I watched those episodes you did with Brad Lea, how can someone so successful be such an asshole? But it is like a movie, there is a villain and a good guy, someone has to be a villain. You are getting a pay check and getting a job, whether you like the storyline or not, it is your role to sell it and become the best that you can for the people that are watching.”

On what made Karen have an onscreen role:

“I don’t know. It was an idea that they came up with at the time, I just thought that it would be a couple of weeks of something and then that would be it. But that didn’t happen, I dove right in! I didn’t realize that I missed it until all of this. Jeff would go and do his thing, he would go to the shows, but I missed it.”

On who helped Karen Jarret be comfortable onscreen:

“Vince Russo, Jeff, and one of the people that helped me the most was Bubba Ray. I would come back from whatever I was doing out in the ring, and he would pull me to one side. Even if I wasn’t wearing the right color, I remember one time I was wearing a lime green skirt, I came back and Bubba said ‘Don’t ever wear that color again.’ Or I had my mouth open for a photoshoot and trying to be hot, he told me ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ But he reminded me where the cameras are, if it was good or bad, what worked… Those 3 people and Bruce Prichard, he was amazing.”

On behind the scenes drama:

“I think because they thought they knew what was going on, but they didn’t. Nobody knew that I had left my previous husband and we had separated twice before, we always kept that under wraps. I don’t think that it’s right to put anybody’s dirty laundry out there if you have kids. Even today, 20 years from now or 40 years from now, I wouldn’t try to defend myself or throw the other side, I don’t think that it is right to do. But I would get upset, but the truth will always come out eventually.”

On Jeff’s reaction to the storylines:

“I don’t know what everyone’s initial reaction was. Even now if something is pitched I am just like whatever Jeff wants us to do. I don’t really know, I am sure that it was shocked and uncomfortable the way that I was. But at the same time, we did the storyline, our kids are backstage and everything is good. Our kids knew that it was not real life and that everything was good. But I am glad that all of that is over.”

On working with Chyna:

“She was really nervous when she showed up that day. I remember her being in her trailer all day, Terry Taylor was working for the company then and kept checking on her. She is one of the sweetest people that I have met in the business. It’s sad, it’s very sad, but I have a great memory that I got to work with her.”

On Jeff Jarrett’s last match:

“So that day [Ric Flair’s last match] I said to him, ‘This could be your last match.’ He’s an executive, you know. It could be his last match, I don’t want to walk with him, he looked f*cking amazing, he can’t walk around here with a shirt on. I wanted him to have his moment and then I will walk out. He said ‘No, this is what we are going to do.’ He had me come out first and then had me call him out. Jeff has got this 30 year career, I am this little blip. So I go to Road Dogg and I say ‘OK Jeff wants me to call him out, it gets heat blah blah blah…’ And he’s like ‘I can see his side of things.’ I wanted him to have his moment, I wasn’t happy with what Road Dogg said, so I went to Sonjay [Dutt]. He was like ‘I agree with Jeff.’ You’re all assholes. So we ended up doing it his way and it worked out, but I tired to stay away from him and letting him do his thing. Normally I would be in the ring and taunting everyone and acting like a crazy lady. For me, I want those shots of him in that outfit in our house. People think I am crazy, but it could be his last match. It won’t be though.”

On what makes Jeff a great heel:

“That’s a tough question. He grew up in the business, I don’t think it’s about him, but he walks out there and he wants to entertain the fans. He wants to give them what they want to see and he just has a way of turning it on. He is a maniac, I don’t know [how]. He is brilliant at just walking out there and making something happen. He just has a way of feeling the atmosphere and is really good at pressing those buttons. He can literally just flip the switch and turn it on. He also had some good teachers when he was younger too.”

On what Karen Jarrett is grateful for:

“Jeff’s sobriety, my family and a roof over our heads.”

Featured image: IMPACT Wrestling

Cary Jack (@cary__Jack) is a lifestyle entrepreneur, author, podcast host, professional actor/model, biohacker, eco-warrior, martial artist, and humanitarian striving to make a positive impact on this planet. He split time growing up on the beaches of Sarasota, Florida, and in the mountains of Red Lodge, Montana where he first learned the art of a balanced lifestyle. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about the importance of achieving balance, how you can start living a life of passion and purpose, what it means to be a “Happy Hustler”, a quick test you can do to see how aligned you are in your life and much more!

On what Happy Hustle is all about:

“Happy Hustle is all about infusing your passion and your purpose to make an impact. I know that those are all buzzwords, but if I break it down, it is doing something that is your inner calling from the divine, that’s the passion. The purpose is who are you serving? Then you make a positive impact while being blissfully balanced in the process.”

On people needing to have a bad job to pay the bills:

“I’ve had to do things that I didn’t want to do either, I wore a banana suit outside of 2 smoothie shops! This was to get the foot traffic as opposed to the car traffic in Florida, it was so hot! But I have done all sorts of things in exchange for money, legal and illegal. The first thing I will tell people is that I have been there, I have done things that I do not enjoy for money. But now I get to do things that I do enjoy, and I am so grateful that I get paid to do it. I truly believe you have to earn the right to do what you love, and you are not going to love everything. Wherever you are now in your journey, that’s ok, but want more and dream bigger, that is the important piece. Then find out where you want to be and reverse engineer it to get to where you want to be.”

On what is Cary Jack’s dream:

“The biggest dream for me right now is I want these 10 alignments of being a happy hustler fridge magnet that has my framework on it, I want that on every fridge in America and then on every fridge in the world. The reason is because I want people off their devices and focus on things that will increase their happiness.”

On the 10 alignments of being a happy hustler:

“So the 10 alignments, they didn’t start as this fully flushed out framework, but it makes up this acronym, soul mappin’, I want you to rank these from 1 to 5, where 5 is where you are crushing it. In the past 30 days, where are you at in these areas:

• Selfless service – Are you living for yourself?
• Optimised health – Are you mentally and physically optimised, or are you eating junk?
• Unplugged digitally – How reliant are you on technology?
• Loving relationships – Do you have love in your life?
• Mindful spirituality – Are you tapping into a higher power?
• Abundance financially – Are you living paycheck to paycheck?
• Personal development – Are you growing and evolving?
• Passionate hobbies – Are you scheduling the things that fill you with joy?
• Impactful work – Are you infusing passion and purpose to make a positive impact?
• Nature connection – Are you getting outside and connecting with nature?

Add up those scores, if you are a 37 or above, you are a happy hustler! But you must give equal importance to each of these, but focus on each one at a time.

On how to connect with Cary Jack:

“I actually have the book; 10 habits to achieve the happy hustle and avoid burnout. It’s got pictures, cheesy jokes, and all that stuff. The book is actually free, all you have to do is help out with shipping costs. You can also get the magnet to have the habits in your home.”

On how Cary Jack crushes every day:

“So every day I wake up and I drink my green juice, I hyper hydrate in the morning. I actually suffered from a brain injury where I almost died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Now I take brain supplements to help optimize my cognitive power, but I have always been into biohacking. I also have a rule of every day before I shower I do naked push ups or pull ups. I do as many as I feel like doing, but that rule is non-negotiable.”  

On what Cary Jack is grateful for:

“God, my fiancée and the opportunity of life.”

Featured image: Brand Builders Group

Billy Corgan (@billycorgan) is the lead singer of The Smashing Pumpkins and also the owner and promoter of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about the upcoming NWA 74 event in St. Louis, how wrestling is both similar and different to the wrestling industry, his thoughts on whether NWA can compete with WWE and AEW, what he learning from his time working at IMPACT Wrestling, being referenced on Family Guy and much more!

On owning the NWA:

“Yes this is not a dream, I do own the National Wrestling Alliance. It’s been a great commitment and a great honor, but I feel now at the 4 or 5 year mark it is going the way that I want it to go, so I am happy about it.”

On what is going Billy Corgan’s way:

“The best analogy is that you can buy your way to the World Series, or you can build a culture and a system. I chose to not try and buy my way to the World Series but to build the system. I think now you can start to see the system that I built with the consistency of the talent, the consistency of the narrative and the consistency to put on a high quality show every time that we go out there. I think that took time and required a lot of patience, having been through a brand build with The Smashing Pumpkins, I know what that feels like. I know what victory looks like and I know what fake victory looks like, so I have been able to build something that will live on past me.” 

On how many Smashing Pumpkins fans are wrestling fans:

“Very few. I would love it if 100,000 Smashing Pumpkins fans would come over to see the NWA, it would make my job easier and enthuse the talent. But it just doesn’t translate that way, so it is what it is. It does help when you are dealing with media and the corporate side of things. If they don’t know the NWA but they know me, that opens up certain doors. But the job of building and rebuilding the NWA has to stand on its own two feet, and I am proud of that in a way. I wish it was easier, but knowing it is not makes me proud.”

On trying to get NWA to the level of WWE and AEW:

“It’s proportional. I’m not running 4 to 5 hours of content a week, I am running an hour to an hour and a half. You have to look at things to scale, if you look at what the big companies spend and the oxygen they get from the media vs. what I spend and what I get, you can see that I am outpacing my costs, so we are ahead of the curve as opposed to behind it. It does feel frustrating when you feel like you are behind the curve but we are ahead of the curve. For example I was talking to someone who is in the television business. He looked at all of my expenses and said ‘How the hell are you doing what you are doing. How are you producing over 100 hours of television a year at these numbers with this level of quality?’ I said that it’s culture, it’s building a team and finding the right talent. It is building an atmosphere where the talent feel that they can take chances and if they go off the beaten path for a second then someone is not going to knock them with a club. That takes time and people don’t necessarily believe you. I do deal with people who have had promises made to them and then have the rug pulled out from underneath them. So it takes time for the NWA to be a safe space to work both physically and emotionally. These are high strung, talented people who want to feel that their efforts in the gym and the ring being rewarded.”

On wanting to have a weekly NWA show on TV:

“It is on TV, it’s just on a different TV. I don’t think anybody would argue that if a major digital platform came along and gave me money that it wasn’t TV. We are still in this schism of is YouTube TV and is Peacock TV? I think it is all about economic reach. With the YouTube model you can reach everybody. The hard thing about that is you don’t know with their AI systems what is being recommended. You can have one video go crazy and everything is going well, but the next week you will have 1/10th of the numbers and it has nothing to do with what you did or didn’t do, it’s weird how the AI works. It’s frustrating because you can’t really get a real read. Access, marketing and economics always go together, we are still in a medium where the economics are my own, I still want to drive my vision. The reason why there are no partners is because no one has made me an offer to make me want to give up equity in the company or give up control on some level of the business. But we are now right on the level where some serious numbers are being discussed. But entertainment is cyclical and the Pumpkins have had the biggest period we have had in 20 years, we are about to do another arena tour this fall. Those things go together, when I go into a boardroom to talk about my vision and they see that I am headlining Madison Square Garden, it doesn’t hurt, those pieces start to get put together.”

On having talent disputes:

“There hasn’t been a lot of that honestly. I think I am blessed that I have worked on the indies for long enough that I start to understand the mentality of what is important to a wrestler. Then I started to work in TNA, not only in booking but also as a producer. I got to see how people translated their characters through the screen and how it translated into the wrestling ring. As you work from the independent talent to the higher up talent in TNA, you start to see that this is important, this is what will draw money, this is not as important. Once you have those experiences and a company like NWA where it is my world, things are a little different. It’s not like I bought the NWA with no experience in wrestling, I have been working in it long enough that I can appreciate it.”

On shaving his head:

“That’s the stupid part of my life, you make headlines for doing anything. Look at me being sad at Disneyland, it was on Family Guy. I just didn’t like the way my hair was looking, decided to shave it and that was it. When you shave your head you get some really weird compliments like ‘Oh you have a nicely shaped head.’ I’m like ok, thanks. What do you do with that kind of complement?”

On what Billy Corgan is the most proud of while owning NWA:

“I just think that being still here. I wish there was some magic, you turn the key and the NWA is back and tens of thousands of people care and Pumpkins fans are into wrestling. I wish it was magical but it is really hard. It is a complicated market and there has never been more independent talent and have never been valued more, it is a lot to navigate. The fact that we are doing a 2 night pay-per-view coming out of a pandemic, working at The Chase, there is so much cool stuff. I think that is the best part. Secondly the quality, raising the stakes and putting talent in high pressure situations, which they should want to be in as talent. I want to be in high pressure situations as the president of the NWA, as it comes up then so does the pressure. We are seeing who is going to be the next star, that is all just the best part of it.”

On giving Matt Cardona his first major championship:

“I didn’t think about it until it happened and he started to talk about it. In my mind he was this big star, and I’m not a person who usually correlates being a star to championships, but that’s just the way that it goes. There is no question in his previous life that he was certainly undervalued. He was a guy who got continually over no matter what was put in front of him. I was certainly impressed by what he was able to do with seemingly not a lot. And there a lot of people I have worked with, Aaron Stevens comes to mind, where they were just able to get over with whatever they were given because they are just super talented people. So it was not a question in my mind of putting the belt onto Matt. But now putting the belt on Matt, I think what distinguishes this is not only has he done a great job and brought an audience to the NWA that maybe wouldn’t have been interested in the programming. But in his darkest hour when he is injured and there is a pay-per-view named after him, he is facing a 5 to 6 month rehab, but the freak that he is he is pretty much already rehabbed in 3 and a half months. The day he has the surgery, he holds up the 10 pounds of gold and says he will be at the pay-per-view. He doesn’t have to come, and I thanked him for that. I said thank you for everything you do and he said that it wasn’t a problem, he likes being here. That to me is why he is a champion. Yes he is a champion because he is a star, a draw and a top level wrestler, but to me he is a champion because he is a great person to work with. He represents the company on every level behind the scenes and in front of the camera and to the public. Someone asked me how I felt that he got hurt on someone else’s show. Well that’s his life, I support that. By extension I support the effort of the other independent companies including Game Changer. Matt Cardona is an independent wrestler in an era where he should be an independent wrestler. Unless I am going to come in and break the bank to sign him to an exclusive contract, he should go out to do what is best for him and Chelsea. So yeah I have no problem.”

On Triple H taking over WWE creative:

“I’m looking forward to seeing what he does. Somebody asked me if I saw any changes and I said that you don’t turn a battleship around quickly. That’s a big institutional culture with a lot of pieces. As someone who runs a big organisation with The Smashing Pumpkins world, you don’t flip switches and see what happens. You are going to poke around and put some people in places, but I don’t think we will know until about 18 to 24 months what the vision of Triple H is. I do know, well this is speculation, I do know as AEW has gone out of their way to pick fights with the WWE world and the WWE world has not responded, I don’t think that will continue under Triple H. I don’t feel that he is the type of personality that will let people sock him in the chops over and over again and he’s not going to respond. He was in D-Generation X and I think he was a big part of the sass that they had. I think there is business there as well, it is blow for blow and competitive. Now the position from WWE corporately, from what I see from a public observation, is we are not going to sweat it publicly even if we are sweating it privately. I think those dynamics are definitely changing.”

On TNA taping out of sequence:

“I might have been part of some of that. We used to purposely try to confuse people occasionally because we didn’t want the spoilers to make sense even if you read them, so we would shoot things out of sequence sometimes. There were times where we had to shoot out of sequence, and that was mind numbing. Somebody would win and the next night they would cut the promo of ‘I’m gonna beat you.’ It was so confusing.”

On NWA possibly not coming back:

“During the pandemic I had days where I thought that this is not going to work. It wasn’t that it wasn’t going to work based on my plan, it was do I have the commitment level to make this work on the highest levels. It’s like the joke I tell where you take an 8 mile walk but after 4 miles you turn around and go back instead of reaching your destination. You have that thing where I could turn back and I haven’t gone too far or I can go to my destination, I had that conversation daily in my head. I talked to people privately in meetings about what would happen when the NWA came back, and people were surprised that I had reservations about restarting again. I think some people ran and went ‘Oh he’s going to sell, he’s going to get rid of it.’ I was never going to sell, it was do I have a deep enough commitment level. Now I see what I need, do I want to take this journey. The good part is that I went all in and it has benefited from my commitment. That is not to put myself over, but the talent has seen my commitment and that will reward them for years to come.” 

On what Billy Corgan is grateful for:

“My family, The Smashing Pumpkins has continued and to be the proprietor of the NWA.”

Featured image: Metro

Chris Naugle (@thechrisnaugle) is an entrepreneur, former pro snowboarder and has dedicated his life to being America’s #1 Money Mentor. He has built and owned 19 companies, with his businesses being featured in Forbes, ABC, House Hunters, and his very own HGTV pilot in 2018. He is currently founder of The Money School, and Money Mentor for The Money Multiplier. He joins Chris Van Vliet at the Blue Wire Studios at the Wynn Las Vegas to talk about how to thrive during this recession, what school didn’t teach you about money, how to be your own bank and much more!

On transitioning from snowboarder to entrepreneur:

“It was hard. I started my first company at 16, which was a clothing company in my mom’s garage. But that soon transitioned into the idea of wanting my own skateboarding and snowboarding shop. I saw all these other guys with shops and I am like I want to have that. When I first started taking my clothing to shops, the guy asked me if I wanted to go snowboarding with him. I’m like ‘Don’t you have to work?’ He’s like ‘They’ll run it.’ I’m like you can just leave? So from there I knew I had to have my own store. I went around trying to raise $70,000 at 17 years old, you can only imagine how that went. Everyone said no to me apart from one person, that was my mom. She put her house on the line for me, we didn’t have much. So I opened the store in 1994 and that was a dream. From 1994 to 2000 I was a pro snowboarder and running my shop, it couldn’t get any better. When the plane hit the tower in 2001, I was driving to my shop that day. I am like what just happened? Then the recession came and that was the first one that I ever saw. It hit my business hard, I needed a job. I went to Little Caesars where my friend worked and asked if they needed any delivery drivers, they said no. So I put my resume out everywhere, and the only people who said yes were Wall St.”

On the first job interview:

“I put on a suit for the interview and it was the first time in my life that I wore a suit. I am a punk snowboarder, what business do I have in a suit? My grandma got me a tie and I went to the interview. The guy slid the keys across the desk to me for his Porsche and was like ‘If you work here, you could have one of these.’ I’m like sign me up! It was only a temporary thing, but I never thought that Wall St. would be where I would spend 16 years. The only way that I could bridge the gap between snowboarder and entrepreneur is I was wearing a suit by a brand called Volcom, which is a snowboarding brand. It may be a jump but that is the way that I did it.”

On the signs of a recession:

“Well look what the feds are doing. They are raising the interest rates to combat the inflation that they created. They are doing it aggressively, but that is not what will tank the economy. What they are doing is unravelling $8.9 million in treasury bonds and mortgage security. They have begun the process of selling these on the market. They are sucking up the money that they have printed out, and every time apart from one it resulted in a recession.”

On advice for someone who has bought a house:

“Even in Buffalo we have had some appreciation. It is just supply and demand. Mortgage rates have been raised again, so someone who could afford $500,000 can now only afford $350,000. This means that there is not enough supply, so either the prices drop or people go into rentals.”

On advice for saving money:

“Once you save money, don’t give up your control on it. Your money has to work for you. When I take money and I work for it, the time was the most valuable thing used to earn that money. So then I take that money to the bank, what does the bank do with that money? They make it go to work for them. They didn’t have to do anything, you gave it to them. Once you learn how to do it, it’s easy to take back control. What we are talking about is taking one change so your money is in control. You want the access and control of the money, but what if the money I took out didn’t stop earning interest? If I have $100 and I give you 50, how much is left in my account $50? Wrong, it’s $100. This is where people get confused. What if I never had to pay tax on the money in the account, it is the same place where all the wealthy people keep it, which is this life insurance policy. Most people think that it is the worst place to put it, but you are wrong, you are thinking of life insurance the way you have been taught. Whole life insurance is not the number one profit insurance for insurance companies. Insurance companies make the most in term insurance, it is their number one product.”

On whole life insurance:

“Banks keep their most valuable capitol in BOLI [Bank Owned Life Insurance]. It is well over a trillion dollars. Why are the banks putting their money where people are telling you not to? It is because the banks know how to design the contract. It requires me to design the policy so I take a 90% cut in my commission. If I paid in ten grand, it would pay you a commission of 5,500. If I did it with my design, the commission is $387. So if we take $387 from $5,500, that is how much more money you would have as the client, someone has to give for someone to get.”

On why this is not readily available:

“Because every advisor would have to take a massive cut in their commission to do this, why would they do that? I worked for a big financial insurance company, when I went back to them I asked them why they never taught me this, they said to me ‘Do you remember how hard it was for us to keep the agents and advisors?’ I said I remembered that it started out with 50 people and a year later went to 5. It is because this is a commission based job, they barely make it on what we paid them. If we tell them about this product, all of the advisors need to take a pay cut of 60 to 90%. How many will we have left? Probably 0.”

On this sounding like an infomercial:

“It does sound like one, but now everyone is fixated on a prodigy they have bad feelings about. What if I tell you that it is not about the product? What if I tell you that this is the only product in the world that I can put money in, take money out immediately and not stop earning interest?”

On still earning interest when you take money out:

“When you graduate, as the insurance companies put it, it means when you die, the insurance will pay a death benefit to my family. But there is nothing saying I can’t use that benefit while I live. The insurance company will always be willing to give me my death benefit in the form of a loan, they collatorize it. I can take ten grand out and my death benefit will go down ten grand. The loan never needs to be paid back, I will die no matter what, the insurance company will be paid.”

On how you can be the bank:

“Banks don’t just lend out money to anyone. You are making a monthly payment irrespective of the bank. If I own the bank, the same with any business, I won’t steal from the business because then it will go out of business. If I am the bank, I am not going to not make deposits because then someone else will get my money. If I take money out of my bank, will I pay the money back? Sure.”

On what Chris Naugle is grateful for:

“Every day I wake up, my daughter and the ability to change people.”    

Featured image: Entrepreneur

Drew McIntyre (@dmcintyrewwe) is a professional wrestler signed to WWE. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about WrestleMania 39 tickets being on sale now, winning the title at WrestleMania 36 with no crowd, why he wants another WrestleMania moment, his excitement for Clash At The Castle, why Vince McMahon told him to lose his Scottish accent, his thoughts on Karrion Kross returning to WWE and much more!

On building to WrestleMania 39:

“It’s wild, but the machine never stops with WWE. 52 weeks a year, no reruns, no off seasons and it all peaks at WrestleMania. Even though we just finished WrestleMania not too long ago, and I am still on a high from it. The AT&T Stadium was unbelievable and the crowd were unbelievable. I managed to cut the top two ropes, maybe it was only supposed to be one rope, but it could have been a disaster and I could have cut no ropes. Everyone thinks that the ropes were rigged and they were going to split apart on command, they weren’t. It was real ropes and it was a sword that was extremely sharp, I had to hit it perfectly and thank God it worked out in the end. So next year I am looking forward to making a big WrestleMania moment once again when WrestleMania goes Hollywood.”

On the sword being real:

“It is super sharp. I don’t know if I could technically take it into battle if I was living back in the old Scottish days. If I was side by side with William Wallace it might end up getting bent, as we saw one time when I swung it too hard. I technically had a bend in it, but it is extremely sharp and it does do some damage. I try to reiterate that whenever I can when fans are reaching out to slap hands with me. They are not just reaching for my hand, they are reaching out to touch the sword. I am like did you see what happened at Mania? Did you see when I cut the rope with Sheamus? I want to show you that this thing is sharp for real and you are going to lose a finger.”

On the WrestleMania match that Drew McIntyre loved:

“There was countless for me. Like yourself I watched everything that I could get my hands on, and WrestleMania was such an important event every single year. My brother and I would stay awake until 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning on a school night and be very tired at school the next day, it was always a big thing for us. Some of the big memories for me as a kid, as a Bret Hart fan, my goodness, it seems like Bret was on the losing side of a really big one. One my earliest memories was Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 12, my good friend at school was a Shawn guy and I was a Bret guy. The next day he rubbed it in about the result and I might have beat him up at school. Bret Hart vs. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, great match, one of the best matches of all time in terms of storytelling perspective, physicality perspective, and the double turn at the end, just unbelievable. I remember how much I loved the theatrics at WrestleMania 14 of Kane and The Undertaker. The build, Undertaker’s entrance, just Kane’s presentation and story overall, these two monsters going at it. I could go on and on. But just off the top of my head, those are 3 of the big ones that pop in there.”

On if the WrestleMania 36 win still felt like a WrestleMania moment:

“It was for sure. And people will remember the WrestleMania where the world stood still. Sadly they will probably not be in a hurry to watch it back on the network and Peacock, but they are going to remember it. That was a scary time for the world, we had a lot of questions and a lot of fear going on. WWE pushed ahead and gave everyone that escape, and as upset and angry as I was initially, once I understood the gravity of the situation I was very proud of WWE for putting on WrestleMania over 2 days for the first time ever. More specifically, myself being in the main event, my first ever title match and the feelgood story going in, I knew me winning the title would make a lot of people happy, which it did. The social media interaction was up 60% on the year prior, which is unbelievable viewing numbers for that. It did take people’s mind off of what was going on in the world at the time. So I am proud of it, but at the same time I am still looking for that  big moment of winning the title in front of a live audience. Because I am a two time WWE Champion, but I have not held the title in front of fans yet, which I don’t think anyone else can claim. As proud as I am of that, I want that title in front of fans.”

On WWE going back to the UK for Clash at the Castle:

“When I say that I dreamt of moments when I was a kid, I dreamt of main eventing WrestleMania and all these big moments that seemed attainable. In my mind they were attainable but nobody else believed that I could do it, coming from Scotland to the WWE. But the idea of main eventing a UK stadium show the level of SummerSlam 1992 didn’t seem possible because they didn’t run UK stadium shows. This is something I actively talked about, actively pursued and actively asked questions about for years, especially when I became WWE Champion. I had a lot more media going around at the time, especially high profile media, and I mentioned it all the frigging time. Thankfully I guess that there were some talks going on behind closed doors that I didn’t know about. It got to a point where I talked about it so much that someone had to say to me ‘Do you know something you shouldn’t know?’ I said ‘Nope, I know nothing. I have just got certain goals that I have been pushing for a while. You do what you are doing and I will do what I am doing and hopefully this will work out.’ Thankfully it did work out, I got involved in the process eventually and it is happening now. I would love to take the credit for it but it’s the unsung heroes behind closed doors that work in WWE that make these things happen. The problem with it being that if it did happen and nobody cared and nobody bought tickets for it, they kind of needed a public scapegoat. The fans would go ‘McIntyre you were wrong you idiot!’ The blame would fall here so I am happy that it worked out and happier, proud that I am main eventing and fighting for the title in the first stadium show in the UK in 30 years.”

On a future WrestleMania happening in the UK:

“Yeah, I can’t see why not. I’m not going to talk about numbers that I have heard at the moment until they are official, but we have seen the numbers that have been released, just the demand for the tickets broke records initially. Right now we are on course for some big, big numbers from a business perspective. But people watching and tuning into Clash at the Castle and seeing the live audience, how loud and rowdy and crazy they are with the chants we have seen in the past with Raw and SmackDown that have come from the UK. I know a lot of people are going to go ‘Why don’t we do a WrestleMania here?’ It’s gonna be crazy, imagine those wild UK fans and people coming from all across the world joining in the passion, the atmosphere and the inanity of the UK fans.”

On Drew McIntyre losing his Scottish accent:

“Everyone else on earth has heard Scottish accents in the past or has heard what Scotland tends to say when I talk. Every single person in Scotland has the thickest accent on planet earth, even though we only speak English. Even though people have said to me multiple times when I first got here ‘You speak really good English.’ Well I fricking hope so, it is the only language that I talk. We have these extremely thick accents, we mumble, most of us, and we use a lot of slang. I had to really work on it to the point where Vince McMahon told me when I was 24 ‘We are going to have to get you elocution lessons Drew.’ After I gave him this passionate speech about my ideas and what I want to do for the company. That was the retort ‘I think we are going to have to get you elocution lessons.’ So I worked on it and I spent a lot of time learning to slow down, especially my time away from WWE. I learned how to make myself understood in these kind interviews and on the microphone, get comfortable in those situations, because I know how important it is. When I finally honed it and I finally felt good about myself and the world was saying ‘Man, Drew is a really confident talker and has improved that area of his game.’ I had Scotland to bring me back down to earth [Thick Scottish accent] ‘Why are you talking like that? Why are you talking like this now?’ That’s why, because you can’t understand us! I’m so proud to be from Scotland, but nobody understands us, so I have to soften the accent to make it a little less harsh.”

On the first step of the reinvention process of Drew McIntyre:

“Oh there are a lot of steps. Thankfully I have a book available called Chosen Destiny, which is out now. Step one, as my wife reminded me, wasn’t just ‘I’m going to take over the wrestling world outside of WWE and redefine what it means to be an independent wrestler. ‘ I’d like to say that, and I did say that, but my wife reminded me that I was full of anxiety and uncertainty. I had been in WWE for a long time, but never had any significant matches, significant interviews, because I always read from the script line by line. I was very nervous, but I did believe that this is something that I was meant to do. I did believe that I could go out there and make a name for myself and reinvent Drew McIntyre/Drew Galloway. Right away I knew I had to go back to Scotland to get my mission statement out to ICW, Insane Championship Wrestling, where all my friends were that I started with. Business was on the upswing there, they had their biggest show in the UK. It was 1,500 people there and it was 3 weeks after I got released. I told the promoter Mark Dallas that everyone is contacting me, why are you not contacting me? He said I thought my friend would be upset that he was fired so I wanted to give him a moment before I tried to book him on a wrestling show.’ I said that I appreciated that, but I want to be on the show in 3 weeks and I want to keep it a secret. So you know, he sorted out the travel and we kept it a secret between 3 people. I showed up in Scotland, there is a famous clip online where I spoke for 20 full minutes unscripted and said everything that I was feeling at the time. It got such an insane response afterwards, it felt so good to get it out, it felt so good to be myself and I said some bold comments in there. ‘I’m going to show you the real Drew Galloway, take over the world as far as I’m concerned and put ICW on the map. This little company is going to take over the world.’ A lot of people watched it and went ‘Oh my God look at this guy. This is incredible, he is going to do some big things.’ Including Mick Foley, who went on Stone Cold’s podcast and talked about me, he texted Triple H and said ‘You need to keep an eye on Drew.’. Then there were the other people who watched me in 3MB and said ‘This guy is out of his mind. He’s not going to do anything.’ But that was phase 1, I have literally looked myself in the mirror and said that was a tough past few years in WWE professionally and especially personally, in the end it is on you for not getting the help you needed personally but also working as hard as you could professionally. You would have been happy to be the water boy at one point, you forgot why you came here, you lost perspective, never let that happen again. I worked as hard as I could, left no stone unturned and only being accountable to one person and one person only, social media. I’m kidding, I don’t listen to fricking social media, ever. Everyone out there, don’t listen to social media. The person in the mirror is the only person I listened to, aside from the wife. There were other areas that I still had to work on, the partying wasn’t gone yet and I was still burning the candle at both ends. But I took every booking that I could and was lucky enough that people believed me and gave me a platform to apply my craft and learn to become a leader, get confident in the ring, get confident on the microphone and build myself to a place where I was ready. The guy that was faking it and until he made it in the beginning everybody believed in, finally believed in himself and became what Vince and Triple H saw all those years ago. I finally became the Drew that I could be. Once, I’m not talking about professionally, I broke my neck that one time, I had to sit at home for the first time in my life for 8 weeks. I had the come to Jesus talk with my wife and we talked about partying and going out and how I am giving it my all but I’m not giving it my all. I said you know what, you are right. As successful as I am right now, my brother referred to me as a verb. ‘Do a Drew. Leave WWE and become more successful.’ Which was very cool. I still had a way to go, I looked in the mirror and looked at my body and said ‘You could step into the ring with Brock Lesnar right now. The biggest attraction at the time and people would go “He could bet Brock”’ You got to work on the body, you got to cut out the negative stuff. So I cut out the partying that I was doing all the time. Within a few months of changing my diet up and changing my training up, my body changed dramatically. I then saw myself in the mirror and I went ‘That’s the guy who is ready to take on the world.’ I figured it would be Japan, but I took the phone call from Triple H, and then I knew it was time to go back to WWE.”

On seeing Karrion Kross on SmackDown:

“I was very surprised to see him. I didn’t know until the very last second. We can say a little more here than we can say in general, but let’s just say that someone who has worked hard for that opportunity deserves that opportunity and he is getting the biggest opportunity of his career. Unfortunately for him, it’s not going to come at Drew McIntyre’s expense.”      

Featured image: WWE

Jamie Foxx (@iamjamiefoxx) is an actor, musician, and comedian known for his films like Ray, Collateral, Any Given Sunday, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Django Unchained, and many others. Dave Franco is an actor known for his films like 21 Jump Street, Neighbors, Now You See Me, and The Disaster Artist. Their new movie called Day Shift is streaming now on Netflix. They sit down with Chris Van Vliet in Dallas, TX to talk about balancing action and comedy in this film, their favorite Snoop Dogg song, the roles that changed their career (Any Given Sunday for Jamie and 21 Jump Street for Dave), and Jamie Foxx ends the interview with a spot-on impression of Donald Trump.

On Jamie Foxx not ageing:

Jamie Foxx: “I’m gonna tell you something that it interesting about our business. In the arts, you look a lot of people that have been doing this, there is something about we never grow up in our eyes. I think it sort of takes over our body and I don’t feel it. I know the age that I am at and hanging with young guys, it keeps you on your toes.”

On balancing the action and comedy:

Dave Franco: “I remember that we were shooting a kind of intense scene on the very first day. I am like this is an intense scene and he [Jamie Foxx] was like ‘OK, let’s add some real weight to this scene, it’s intense. But also, let’s add some comedy here and wherever we can.’ That is what adds that extra layer. So in ever scene the director let us add whatever we wanted and it was easy.”

Jamie Foxx: “He is being very honest. I watched Robin Williams work in the same fashion, where he would show up and have a bag of all these different things that he wanted to try, and he killed it. I think that is what makes the movie jump, I said to J.J. [Perry – director] ‘If Dave Franco is not in it, then I don’t want to do the movie.’ One, I have ben trying to work with the dude for a long time and he has something special. We have been watching everything.”

On what role changed their lives:

Jamie Foxx: “Any Given Sunday. I was trying to do comedy movies and everything did either looked like a Martin Lawrence movie or sounded like an Eddie Murphy pitch. So Oliver Stone, who wasn’t as familiar with me, aid that he needed someone to play this quarterback. I said that I played quarterback in high school, that changed the trajectory of my art. It went from trying to find the joke to having this incredible arc.”

Dave Franco: “I love that a lot of your roles are you growing playing football and then being in Any Given Sunday. And then with Django, you grew up riding horses. It’s amazing. The thing that set me on a different trajectory was 21 Jump Street. That movie I fought really hard for, I went in 7 times for that movie. Leading up to that, I had been working on stuff but I wasn’t proud of it. I started telling friends and family to not go and see what I was in. I started making comedy videos with one of my best friends and we put them on Funny or Die. Even though they were on a small scale, it was an accurate representation of my sense of humour. The director of 21 Jump Street told me that one of the reasons that I got the job was because they saw these videos.”

Featured image: Just Jared

TJ Perkins (@megatjp) is better known as simply TJP. He is a professional wrestler who has worked for WWE, IMPACT Wrestling and he is currently signed to New Japan Pro Wrestling where is one half of the current IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions. He joins Chris Van Vliet inside the Blue Wire Studios at the Wynn Las Vegas with his 1-year-old son James to talk about what has changed since the last time he was on the show in 2019, his fiancée Aria Blake, working with NJPW, his favorite memories from Impact Wrestling, he tells a great story about Hulk Hogan on a Southwest flight, how William Regal convinced him to be part of the first ever WWE Cruiserweight Classic and much more!

On becoming a father:

“Everything that I kind of expected is all of the big changes. I obviously want to spend all of my time with the family. I have always been a bit of a homebody but just without the family. I think people have the outside perception that I love socialising, a lot of people think that I am an asshole. But honestly I have always been, what is it called when you leave a party without announcing it? The Irish goodbye? I am the king of that. If I go out with everybody, I am usually the first to get back to the room. I just want to pick up a video game controller or call my family.” 

On wrestling with New Japan:

“So it is tough being away, but I will tell the younger guys on tour, especially when it is their first tour. I would tell them that when I first started, and this going to age me real bad, but when I first started touring on these long tours in 2002, I couldn’t Facetime the kid and stuff. Now I can do that and it’s great. But there was no wi-fi, you had to go to an internet café and reserve an hour or buy a phone card from a Seven Eleven and walk to a strange payphone on the street in the middle of the night. There is a 100% chance you will get yelled at by your girlfriend on the 15 minutes you bought, so you have to buy another one and get yelled at for another 15 minutes.”   

On being away from his family:

“It is like being a military dad in that it feels like I am being deployed. It’s not like if I was in WWE, but on that note I prefer it because when I am home I am home. If I get 2 months off, I can work if I want to, but otherwise I am home. It’s not like I leave every Friday and am not back until Tuesday, that sucks.”

On making more money after leaving WWE:

“I remember us talking about that. And fans, give them any bit of information and they will fight over anything. I was talking with some of the guys this past week at Starrcast, New Japan had a show there. When I see that, I didn’t look at it as a validation for me, I don’t look at a lot of the stuff and how I am connected to it. But what I got out of that experience, what people can do in and out of WWE, AEW or anywhere, just the importance of people to understands business 101 and the basic building blocks of capitalism, how to be a responsible adult. A lot of people, and you hear it mostly in a critical way, and I hate to say it this way as I don’t want it to take it as critical, but there is validity in the statement of people playing wrestler. People play a lot of things in life, people play doctor and play a lot of professions in life where they don’t maximize it to what it is meant to be. They are just happy to call themselves whatever that is, an architect, anything. No you don’t just have to be an architect, you can be an architect that creates other things, and then you become an entrepreneur. I would tell guys now having experienced it making more money than before is that you have to find ways to create that business, you have to become a businessperson. It is kind of sad but a lot of wrestling companies don’t know what to do with their business, which is why you see a lot of companies rise and fall and die out of nowhere, because they don’t know what they are doing. I tell guys to keep themselves valuable and to be valuable to those around them is to find the little things that create money generation for everybody, it’s not just a personal thing. I saw it as me going back to school, it wasn’t ‘Look at how much money I am making.’ It was ‘Look at how much I have figured out about life.’”

On beginning to wrestle at 13 years old:

“I remember because I was starting high school, I thought I would try to join the amateur wrestling team, but the school didn’t have one, so that accelerated me to go ‘Well I guess I will see.’ [what happens]. There was a kid there that had a local wrestling school’s shirt, you have to remember that there was no real internet then unless you were really savvy. A lot of people didn’t know, so when I saw that I was like what is that? He explained that it was a local gym that you can go to and I was like I can’t amateur wrestle so I will try that [professional wrestling].”   

On TJP wrestling longer than John Cena:

“I think someone tweeted about this. I think somebody said ‘You know he has been wrestling longer than Cena?’ I don’t reply to a lot of people but in my head it was ‘That’s not the flex that you think it is.’ They said fun fact, I said it’s not that fun. He is so successful and I am nowhere near John Cena.”    

On the Cruiserweight Classic:

“The Cruiserweight tournament was interesting for me. I remember telling some of the guys, for a lot of those guys it was their first wrestling job. Some were personal trainers, some worked at Best Buy, [Mustafa] Ali was a cop. Some of these guys have no experience, are nervous and don’t know how to fit in. I was telling those guys that I am so old that I could have been in the first Cruiserweight division [in WCW]. That was my goal, I wanted to be like Jericho and Malenko and Guerrero, all these guys that were putting these building blocks down. That is what I wanted to be, I wanted to wrestle Chavo on Nitro.”

On TJP being interested in acting:

“Not especially. I was an actor when I was a kid, I still have my headshot. My mom got Hulk Hogan to sign it, she would keep some of them [spare]. She is a flight attendant and she sometimes likes to brag about her son. She had Hulk Hogan on her flight and she went into first class and asked him to sign it. So I have a Hulk Hogan signed headshot, of my own headshot.”

On William Regal repeatedly asking TJP to compete in The Cruiserweight Classic:

“He just kept asking me to do it [laughs]. I was doing motion capture for the WWE video game at the time. [Chris asks if LA Knight was also there] I don’t know if he was there that day, but I have done it a lot with him, I might have got him on the crew there. Low Ki got me on, and from that point whenever they asked I would try to get other guys on. They look for certain body types or movements, so I try to spread the wealth. So I was doing the motion capture and he [Regal] had left me a voicemail, then he called me back again and I answered it. I didn’t turn it down, I didn’t have a reason to not necessarily want to do it. But what I didn’t think was that I was going to sign and stay with the company. But when he asked me I was liek this could be a generational thing, this could be like the new J Cup. I don’t care about legacies, I don’t care about my own legacy at all. If I retired today and my Wiki disappeared I wouldn’t care. I enjoy it and I love it, but with flagpole moments I don’t really care about that. But this is something in history that 20 years from now some kid will go ‘Man that Cruiserweight Classic.’ WWE were not doing these types of things at the time, it was still at the tail end of the FCW era. I thought that this company only likes big dudes and models, so that’s it. But things were changing, so I decided to do this one thing but I didn’t think that I would stay. But he [Regal] called me a couple of times and then he called me a couple more times, and then a few more times. It was then that he needed help to fill out the rest of the field. He said to me ‘Do you know guys from different parts of the world? What are we missing?’ I don’t know who I got on board, a lot of guys may have already been on their radar, but I did recommend people like Lince Dorado and Gran Metalik. But I did it and it was after that second round match with [Johnny] Gargano that they put us all in a room and giving us offers one by one. I kept turning them down, I turned them down three times.”

On competing in WWE without a contract:

“I didn’t sign until Clash of the Champions. I had some time between the final and Clash agreed to sign, but I didn’t sign. So I could have left.”

On what TJP is grateful for:

“I just usually say Aryia and James 3 times.”