Anthony Ogogo (@anthonyogogo) is a professional wrestling and former boxer signed to All Elite Wrestling. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about how he got discovered by AEW and signed as their first developmental talent, working with Cody Rhodes, his path to the 2012 Olympic Games in London and winning bronze as a middleweight boxer, the eye injury that ended his boxing career and forced him to retire at age 30, his thoughts about living in the United States and much more.

On boxing aspirations:

“So my only goal in my entire life was to win a gold medal in boxing at the Olympics, that was all I ever wanted to do. If I had done that, I would have probably retired from boxing and went into acting. [Chris asks about turning professional] Never wanted to turn pro, was never bothered about turning pro. Most kids want to become the world champion, I wanted to be like Ali and win the gold at the Olympic games. I was never fussed about turning pro, didn’t want to turn pro, there’s loads around that. But yeah, I just wanted to win the gold medal. I almost did it, I had a lot of adversity that year, which has been a common thing in my life.”

On the most unbelievable thing about Anthony Ogogo’s life:

“The eye injury that ended my boxing career and was the reason that got me into wrestling was 3 years of hell. I was 78% blind in my left eye, still to this day, my eye is f*cked. Every single day life is [a struggle]. I was clever at school and found it really easy, good at sport. I was that kid that never picked up a tennis racket but was then beating Mr. Marshall at tennis, I was always just good at stuff. But there are a million things that I can’t do. I did Dancing With The Stars in the UK in 2015, we call it Strictly Come Dancing, and I went out in week 3. Luckily growing up I was good at sport and good at school.”

On transitioning from boxing to wrestling:

“So I am just going to be me. I rub people the wrong way sometimes, but that is because people don’t get me. I found it quite easy to be honest. I have been a wrestling fan for my whole life, I didn’t miss a Raw for 15 years. So I would go to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan boxing in 2011, I would have my big laptop, a big laptop, I had a whole suitcase to carry it because it was bog. I would go and be in Azerbaijan and find these illegal streaming sites so I could watch raw, because that was my guilty pleasure and my escape. In Azerbaijan, it was 8 hours ahead of eastern time, not necessarily live but next day. My thing was to have my laptop to solely watch wrestling.”

On who Anthony Ogogo was a fan of in wrestling:

“My 3 guys were Rock, Taker and Angle growing up. Now being in the business, it hasn’t totally changed, but I can now appreciate things. I signed with AEW in the beginning and didn’t get here until a year later because of COVID and Visa stuff. The wrestling fan that I was, I used to watch Raw and SmackDown back then. For those 2 hours, I would immerse myself in it. I didn’t want to know the wrestler’s real names, who they were dating, their ages… The curtain was there and I didn’t want to peek behind it. I go to the cinema and I know it is Daniel Craig, but for those 2 hours he is James Bond to me. It’s the same thing with wrestling. I don’t look at YouTube things and see how the magician does the tricks. So I loved wrestling, when I had to retire from boxing, it was what I wanted to do. I didn’t get it from a business side, I just loved wrestling. So when I first turned pro, from 2019 to 2020 I watched your [Chris Van Vliet] interviews religiously. I watched Shawn Spears smack the sh*t out of you. Around that period I watched everything, and I learned so much about behind the curtain, because I didn’t know it. When Cody brought me in I said ‘Cody, I am so reluctant to make a faux pas, because I just don’t get how the business works.’ I never wanted to know, because I wanted to believe that it was real. That may sound silly and childish, but that is how it was.”   

On how Anthony Ogogo became friends with DDP:

“So I retired from boxing and I was friends with DDP. He is like my mentor in this game, what an unbelievable dude, I can’t put him over enough. So I was injured, I just hurt my eye, I had 9 surgeries on my eye in 3 years. It was a very difficult time. I was training so hard, making and losing weight, and I got a back injury. I thought that I needed to do something, and being a wrestling fan I listened to podcasts, and Jericho was always putting over DDPY. So I reached out to him [DDP] and he got back to me and we became best mates. I had 9 surgeries on my eye in 3 years, 4 in America. Every surgery I had in the USA I would come over early and stay over in Atlanta and we would hang out together. We would do yoga together and hang out together, and he said ‘Have you ever thought of being a wrestler.’ I said ‘Dallas I am honored.’ He said ‘You can talk, you got the look, you are athletic. I think you can do this.’ I was really humbled but I told him that boxing is my thing, he got it, he is someone who is all about work ethic and achieving your dreams. So I had a surgery, and one of the maddest things happened to me. I woke up from the 3rd surgery and I knew the protocol, 5th on my eye altogether, but then my heart stopped altogether. They resuscitated me back to life, and it was scary as you can imagine. I stayed in hospital overnight to have some regular checks, and Dallas called me. He asked how did it go and I said not well, all the doctors were panicking, big thing. He said ‘Listen, when are you going to give this dream up? It’s not happening for you. I can make one phone call and make you a wrestler today.’ That was the only argument that me and Dallas ever had. I snapped at him and said ‘F*cking hell! I need everyone that everyone that I love and respect to be on my f*cking side now. I can not have you dangling the carrot over here. I have got the blinders on.’ We had an argument and I said to him ‘Don’t mention this to me ever again.’ He said ‘I get it.’ That was March 2018 and I retired in March 2019. I Facetimed Dallas and said that I was retiring from boxing and to thank him. He said ‘I’m sorry. I know how much this meant to you.’ He took a beat, then the next thing he said was ‘So now do you want to be a wrestler?’ I said ‘F*ck Dallas, let me mourn my career! 18 years of unfulfilled dreams and pain and bitterness.’ I wanted to sulk, I was still writing my retirement speech. He goes ‘When you are finished sulking then give me a call.’ So I retired the next day, and I went to WrestleMania with some friends from school for my 30th birthday, we all went to WrestleMania in New York. I met Dallas there and he said to me ‘You gotta meet Cody, I’ve been telling Cody about you.’ So I met Cody and told him my story and all of the ins and outs, glossing over how my heart stopped on the operating table and having the insane belief that I was going to fight again. Incidentally at this time, I did an interview after I retired with the BBC. I had tears in my eyes, I was boxing since I was 12. The journalist asked me what was next, purely to pop myself I said ‘I like wrestling, I might become a wrestler.’ It was purely to pop myself, I wasn’t thinking about the future at the time. So word got out, BBC and it all goes around the world, WWE offers me a try-out. I ask Dallas what to do and he says to go and do the try-out, then meet Cody. So I did the try-out and they were impressed with me, I did promo class with Road Dogg and I killed it. I was asked to just watch while they did a 2 minute promo where you had to have a turn. I asked to have a go and I was the second to last person, everyone did the usual ‘Duh duh duh and now I am a bad guy….’ So I switched it. I came out and being really cocky and arrogant saying that wrestling is beneath me, then I said that I took a bump and realized how hard it was. Road Dogg loved it and asked me to come back next week with the scenario that I am fighting Finn Balor for the Intercontinental Title at Battleground. Madly enough I took my leather jacket with me to Orlando, did the promo in my jacket and sunglasses and they loved it. They basically offered me a contract, and then AEW offered me a contract. Two weeks ago I was a boxer, two weeks later the two biggest companies wanted to sign me. I met Tony Khan at a Fulham game in London and as soon as I met him and heard his vision for AEW, how charismatic and nice he was, I fell in love with his vision of AEW.”

On leaning towards AEW over WWE:

“To a degree. They [WWE] never actually got to a point where they offered me money. But they did speak to my agent and they were talking numbers and the numbers were better than the AEW numbers. I was going to be the first developmental talent that they [AEW] signed. Reading between the lines, I don’t think that they were that fussed about signing somebody from scratch, because we had no real school where we trained, we had to figure it out. QT [Marshall] was going to train me but QT at the time was also Cody’s assistant, doing the behind the scenes stuff and being an on-screen talent, so he was also really busy. I think they [AEW] actually offered me a contract because they were like ‘He might not accept this because it is not the best contract. But if he does accept it, then let’s see how much he wants it.’ That was quite an attractive offer, but meeting Cody and Tony and the vision, I wanted to be a part of that. Also when I retired from boxing I felt like my life had ended. I was extremely depressed, suicidal at points. I have got a whole mental health talk I do where I talk about the things that I experienced at the time. I was in a bad place and boxing was my everything. So I said to myself that in this chapter of my life I have got a lot of lessons to learn, life is about learning lessons, and I can’t make the same mistakes in this next chapter as I did with boxing. I love wrestling, I’m over here away from my family, I am busting my arse every day. I mentioned earlier that wrestling is easy, it is very hard, it is not easy. But it came naturally to me because I watched it for so long and I am very athletic. Also I am a bit older and I have got no time to waste. I started at 31 and I am on it, I can’t dawdle for 4 years like an 18 year old can. Lee Johnson is 24 years old, he has got all the time in the world, I haven’t. That is why I train so hard and study so much, time is against me.” 

On being trained by QT Marshall:

“I got to put over QT Marshall. Unbelievable coach, unbelievable talent, one of the best wrestlers in the world. He is so good at what he does, I say it on commentary all of the time, there is not a move he cannot do, and not just cannot do, the only person who can do a better 450 than him is PAC, it’s so good. He is so good that when he does a move bad, he does it bad on purpose. How good must you be to do a good move bad just to get heat. He is just so good and unbelievable. Bit shout out to Cody too, going to bat for me.” 

On facing Cody Rhodes in Anthony Ogogo’s debut match:

“We had 16 minutes, we lost 6. So having your first match on a massive scale like that, literally my first match. I had been training for, I got in September 2020 and then we were doing the Jacksonville loops. So Jacksonville for a week and then back in Atlanta for a week. So I was training every other week September to May, so 9 months. I had 4 and a half months of training under my belt to then a 16 minute match with Cody. And I had seen people on TV like wrestling [and are told] you gotta cut a minute, and then they start to panic and make mistakes. We lost 6 minutes in that match, like 6 minutes in my first ever match, which was annoying because we had some cool sh*t planned and were going to hype up the big moments, but you have got to be a team player in this business. I very much am a team player, I want to be successful of course, but I really want AEW to be successful as well, and I want to be a team player.”  

On the infamous weigh-in segment:

“F*cking dogsh*t mate, f*cking dogsh*t! So Cody said to me that we were going to do a weigh-in. I’m like ‘Cool, so what’s going to happen?’ And Cody is brilliant, he is brilliant at what he does and he has got a great mind for it, he is a really good coach, great promo coach. QT is a great wrestling coach, any move he can teach you how to do it, how to get out of it, the reversals. QT is the f*cking man. However, [Cody] was like ‘We are going to do a  weigh-in.’ I’m like ‘Cool, who is getting knocked out? What are we going to do.’ [Cody responds] ‘It’s a weigh-in, we are not going to touch.’ I’m like oh, I have watched enough wrestling to know that that’s a bit drab, a bit of sh*t. [Cody says] ‘Nah it’s gonna be cool.’ It’s my third week on TV, I am going to turn up, work hard and do what I am told. Mate, I am in it and I am thinking this is crap. You got Big Show there sweating his tits off and getting really hot. So I said to him [Big Show], I’m just being a heel and I thought that he hated me for ages. I said to him ‘Can’t you count you dumb yank?’ And then after the segment has happened, no one was happy. I was just doing my job, there was nothing that I could do. I get my phone and my friend texted me, he said ‘I can’t believe you called Big Show a c*nt.’ I went [makes confused face] did I? When I go out there and the red light goes on I am in the zone and what I do is real. That is my favorite word and I say it all the time, but even I wouldn’t have said that. I do get lost in the moment, because it becomes real to me. If I have a problem with someone, I will call them every name under the sun before knocking them out, so like possibly I did. So I watched it back and I said ‘You can’t count’ And when I said count it looks like I said [c*nt], but I didn’t. So I’m like agh, I saw him next week but he didn’t speak to me, he was busy not because of that. Mate the whole thing was disastrous, but I feel like I’m the victim. It was my first kind of entry, and I am in this really weird segment that wasn’t my idea. I would have rather knocked out Goldust, knocked out Dustin. We get out the ring, we bicker, maybe Aaron Solo gets beaten up and me and QT get away Scott free. At least then something happens. But I have this weird thing where I am wearing Union Jack pants, I get up on the turnbuckle and get a yay/boo thing, which is so childish. I like the Bryan Danielson and William Regals that are so in your face and smash, Jon Moxley [as well]. They get stuck in, that’s what I like about wrestling, I like blurring the lines between real and not real. I don’t like standing in my pants going ‘Boo! Yay! Boo!’ So I was embarrassed. I had never stood on the turnbuckle before with no shoes on, and those metal struts are very hard. So my poor little feet are getting dug into by these metal struts. I wanted the ground to swallow me up, but you got to do your job.”

On the segment starting strong but ending poorly:

“It didn’t start that strong [laughs]. Big Show couldn’t work out the thingy [on the scales]. And because the ring moves the thing wobbles. I think he said I weigh 219, and I weigh 235, so he did me in like 15 pounds. I’m like you’ve done me mate. Again, hindsight was a wonderful thing. I wasn’t and still am not at the stage to do pitches, Cody has been there for 15 years I can’t tell him how to do this. I would have rather stuck the nut in on Dustin [headbutt], he had all his posse out, his students. Chuck Aaron Solo, me and QT get out there laughing.” 

On future plans in AEW:

“I had this program with Cody and then I had to go back to the UK because I had some Visa stuff going on. I had to get a new Visa and I had to leave America to get a new Visa, that took 4 or 5 months. Regardless of the Cody storyline I had to leave anyway, and that was really sh*t because I wanted to build on that. And I have come back and when I was gone we have signed the best wrestler that has ever lived, Bryan Danielson. We have signed CM Punk, Malakai Black, some amazing stars, it is a really rammed roster. It is great, unbelievable, but I don’t see it as competition. I know me, I know what I can do, I back myself and I want people to do well. Because the better they do, the harder I have got to work to get that opportunity. So I know what I have got to do and no one can be me, so I back myself to the hill. But I would like more opportunity to show what I can do, but I am working hard and I am learning a lot.”  

On what Anthony Ogogo is grateful for:

“Life after boxing, my mum is still alive and getting to share my story.”

Featured image: DAZN

Jo Koy (@Jokoy) is a stand-up comedian and actor. His new movie “Easter Sunday” is in theaters now. He talks about the difference between comedy on stage and comedy in a film, what his family thinks of the impressions he does of them, how comedy has changed since he started in 1989, the best advice he ever received and much more!

On if Jo Koy knows if something is funny while on set:

“You know what, you don’t. You got to really trust your gut and really trust the director. Everything is in the director’s hands you got to trust him. If he says ‘I got it.’ Then you got to trust that he has it. There were several times where I didn’t feel like I gave it to him, but he was right. Big shout out to Jay Chandrasekhar.”

On the movie being based on Jo Koy’s life:

“The whole movie was based on me so it was the stand up comic aspect. We didn’t want to go up as Koy becasue it wouldn’t make it fun to watch. It wasn’t a documentary, we wanted to make a movie so we had to change my name.”

On what Jo Koy’s family thinks of his impressions of them:

“I’m always going to get that. Even my son says ‘I don’t talk like that dad.’ But it’s like yeah you do, this is an embellished version of you, but that is what I hear. So that is what I am going to give.”

On what fans say when they meet Jo Koy:

“They say ‘Jo say it.’ It’s non-stop, and it will be from far away too, so I have to look around and see who said it. I just acknowledge it, I get it, they just want to find an ice breaker. I just got to realize that it is a phrase that people love.”

On what is the biggest difference in comedy now compared to 1989:

“I see that there is a bigger push for stand-up comedy now. When I started, no one was doing stand-up. It was like you could name the comics and that was it, the guys that were working in the comedy clubs, you didn’t know them because of social media. But now there is Instagram, Tik Tok, everyone has a winning shot at stand-up, I love that.”

On the best piece of advice received by Jo Koy:

“Man there is so much. Corey Holcomb, I used to open for him all the time, he would say ‘I don’t know who you are, so you need to tell me more stuff about you.’ I was already telling stories, but I got to be more specific and creative with my stories. Another one was Joe Torry, who told me to never be scared of silence and always go for the big applause breaks. And then Cedric The Entertainer, who said that whoever is smashing before you, you go out there and smash harder.”

Featured image: People

More episodes of INSIGHT can be found here.

Chris Harris (@amwwildcatchrisharris) is a professional wrestler known for his time in TNA as part of the tag team America’s Most Wanted with James Storm. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about working for WCW until it was purchased by Vince McMahon, being part of the early days of TNA Wrestling, how he was teamed up with James Storm, the success of AMW, becoming the 6-time tag team champions, taking the crazy cagewalk hurricanrana from Elix Skipper and Turning Point 2004, his time in WWE as Braden Walker, what he is up to now and much more!

On TNA changing their name to IMPACT:

“It does [feel different] but in a lot of the ways it feels the same. I am so happy that we got 20 years with this company and I am so happy that it is still going strong. But there are a lot of differences where it was on top as TNA, I am hopeful that IMPACT Wrestling can get back to that top again.”

On why not many people watch IMPACT:

“It could be something to do with the name change but a lot of people are not aware that it is still around. They knew about TNA, but as I remind them, a lot of people ask me ‘Well where can I see it?’ But you are right there is some phenomenal talent out there. I tell them that it is on AXS TV on Thursday night and people just don’t get AXS, it is just a matter of the availability. When I was around we were on Spike TV, it was one of the prime channels you could tune into and it was like the guys channel, they could tune into the UFC and things like that. I think that the availability is big with that, maybe if we could give IMPACT a bit more of a push, we could maybe get a better channel and some better visibility.”

On if Chris Harris stayed in WCW and it was not bought by WWE:

“In my time growing up it was the big two, it was WCW and WWE, and that was what you really wanted to strive for. That was the goal. I had my connections with WCW, of course I started out as a security kind of thing, they were bringing in groups for security. But they had their WCW Worldwide programme, they had their WCW Saturday night programme, and those were programming for talent like myself to wrestle the big stars. And I was doing that almost every week. I kind of figured that they were happy with my work, all the guys that I worked with, it was a pure honor. But to continue down that road for most of the year 2000, that was what I was doing. I was performing in a lot of these matches and getting to perform with guys like Booker T, Shane Douglas, Curt Hennig, just a list of guys that I got to step in the ring with. It was just a privilege. It’s amazing how they ran that into the ground with so much talent over there.”

On if there was a meeting when WCW was bought by WWE:

“I’ve heard that there was a meeting. I don’t remember when my last date was but there was a meeting and I wasn’t a part of it. They stopped bringing us in, it was extra money to bring in extra guys. I would say somethwe in early 2001 they stopped bringing me in. I think they made it to March or April. They had their pick of everybody, so the guys at my level, they didn’t have a chance.”

On Chris Harris being put in a tag team in TNA:

“There may have been something to that because all my career at that point had been in singles, [James] Storm was the same. At that point we were just happy to be signed, and I don’t think they knew what to do with us. They were interested in our talent and they wanted us to be a part of the company, but they just didn’t know what to do with us. I always tell people that there was a lot of moving parts, they were just starting to really focus on their top stars, but also really building up some of the newer stars. So they put us in a tag team, and Storm and I had the attitude of if this is what they are giving us, then we will take it and run with it. That was just how we were trained and how we were brought up in the business. Sometimes you are given something that you are not very happy with, but it could have been a lot worse. When I look at it and they say ‘You are going to team up with this cowboy.’ Which I have nothing in common with. He goes up to the ring and he shoots his guns off, I’m like you have gotta be kidding me. The truth is that there were a lot of similarities, but I think that the differences is what a lot of people were attracted to. It was two separate guys but we gelled as one. We had the attitude of if we are going to be a tag team, we are going to be the best damn tag team out there.”

On TNA being a weekly pay-per-view at first:

“During that short time between WCW and TNA, it was about a year, there were a few startup companies. I say a few, there is probably a lot more than I realize, but nothing was really catching on. When I first heard about TNA, it probably wasn’t long before the first ppv, early 2002, I heard about another company starting out. I was already wrestling in Nashville and I heard that was where it was going to be based, so I heard a lot of rumbling about it. There was a part of me that was like ok, here’s another one. But when you are hungry and eager at that stage of your career, you are ready to jump on anything. Everyone just wanted to be a part of it no matter where it went. I heard that Jeff Jarrett was involved and I knew Jeff from WCW. A lot of things were adding up to where this really is a chance to make it. When I thought about the weekly pay-per-views I was open to it. It had never been done before but that doesn’t mean that it can’t work. Of course as we later learned, it is always better to have a tv deal. But that’s the thing, a lot of people say that it was going to try and compete with WWE but it was never about that, it was just there to be an alternate. So it had to be different, we were not going to do a monthly pay-per-view, we were going to do one every week at an affordable amount. Yeah I was very open to it and hungry and eager to be a part of it.”

On comparing AEW to TNA:

“There’s a lot, especially when they [AEW] first started. I was looking for that because it did remind me of that. The big difference that I see from the outside is that they have the big money backers, whereas TNA being funded by [talent]. I know that there were some guys that threw their own money in, and then they had to go out and get the investors. We were really struggling to make it, and when that happens, you have to keep the budget down. With AEW, it is almost like they have an unlimited budget. If they get a hold of a WWE talent, they’ll sign them. That has been a lot of the talk in the past year is that they keep taking the WWE talent and they can afford it. Well TNA couldn’t, we had a select few that was helping us grow the company with the credibility, but we really had to focus on building the new talent. And that’s what we did, we mentioned it earlier, The X Division, AJ Styles, tag team America’s Most Wanted, we were building new stars. There are a lot of similarities, but I think the big difference is the funding.”

On Kurt Angle signing with TNA:

“That was huge man, that was huge, and they kept that quiet. I didn’t know until I saw that video. We were doing our tapings in Orlando then at Universal Studios. A side note, if Storm and I were finished with what we had to do on the show, there was a scaffolding by the hard cam where they would put a camera on top, but it was a scaffolding. We found our own little pedestal halfway up and we would just watch the show from there, and we really enjoyed that. Any time we didn’t have anything to do, we would watch. That particular night, it might have been a pay-per-view, we were sat there on our little perch. And at the end of the night they ended it with that video package, I looked at Storm and I was like holy sh*t. We got Kurt Angle man, that is huge! That was a big win for us.”

On taking the Elix Skipper cage hurricanrana:

“It is [insane] and it’s crazy that people still talk about it to this day. That was our second cage match, a lot of people don’t remember the first one. Our first cage match had got a lot of attention, but when we were talking about the second one, we wanted to top the first one, which is incredible if we could do that. Elix had this idea and I thought that it was completely absurd. What a lot of people don’t remember is that part of Elix’s arsenal was that he would walk the top rope and do a hurricanrana off of that, on the ropes. It wasn’t a complete out of the blue idea, he had done it in is matches previously. When he brought that idea up, I was like that takes it to a whole different level, that is dangerous. A lot of people don’t know this, but I told him no for most of the [day], it wasn’t talked about until that day. Most of the day I was telling him no, there is no way. I don’t know if I want to take something like that and it is dangerous for him. It couldn’t have been more than a few hours before the event, he came and he tried it one more time. I looked at him and I said ‘Can you really do this?’ What convinced me was his confidence, he said to me ‘Yes. I can do this.’ When I saw that he had no wavering, I said ‘Ok, let’s do it.’ You have to take your chances man. A lot of people still think there is a lot of practice and going over everything, that is a one and done thing, you don’t practise that. I don’t know if they had a cage up that day. I don’t think we walked through anything. But we were all professionals and confident in our abilities. So yeah, I said let’s do it and it just was a switch. I can remember, if you look back at that, he is stumbling at first to get his footing. I am over on the other side with Christopher Daniels and already he is taking a while. I am looking at Chris and I’m like what is plan B, because he is not going to make it. By the time I looked back he was on me, so you saw once he got his footing he was gone man. Next thing you know his legs are around my head and here we go. He gets props for that and I am glad he does, but a lot of people forget who took that bump. But it couldn’t have been any better, I am very fortunate, it’s a long way down.”

On the breakup of America’s Most Wanted:

“To be honest with you, it had been talked about within the first year. Crazy to think about that now. But when you are trying to build weekly episodic television, and you got a good thing going, sometimes you have the writers who are just looking to go ‘This will be exciting if we do this…’ There was talk after the first year of splitting us up and there was talk a few times after that. But we were new there, and once we knew that we had something special and really strong, we felt like we really had to speak up. We told them ‘Look, we think that we have something here and there is a lot of life left in America’s Most Wanted.’ They listened to us and I am very thankful that they did, we ended up together for 5 years or 6 years. But there was talk about it, we won the titles 6 times and we had a little heel run. But when there was talk me and Storm were ready to see what we could do as singles. We did our tag team and we did it well, let’s see what happens when we go on our own. Of course we knew, the first step was to go at each other.”

On James Storm joining Beer Money:

“A lot of people asked me at that time ‘What do you think of Beer Money?’ They thought that I would trash it, but I was the number one fan of Beer Money, I thought that they were great. I loved Bobby Roode, I travelled with him, good friend of mine. So when Strom and him hooked up, I think for similar reasons, they [TNA] didn’t have anything for them at the time, and they wanted to make it work. But yeah, they became very successful and it doesn’t surprise me that Storm was a part of that. He knew what to do and he knew what not to do in that department. The thing is, a lot of people have compared us to Beer Money, and I know nowadays a lot of people, Beer Money gets the nod. But it brings me back to as the company was building, they were getting more fans watching every week. As America’s Most Wanted was gone, they were still increasing viewers. So I think more eyes were on Beer Money, so that would be their favorite.”

On Chris Harris being the fake Sting:

“It’s crazy, some of the most exciting moments of my life are me being someone else. I was one of the many in WCW that was doing the security, but some of the higher ups knew who I was. I think I was picked back then just because of the look. I had the long hair, even though Sting’s hair wasn’t as long anymore, I fit more of the crow Sting. I got Sting’s outfit, he’s the one that painted my face up, it’s crazy. They could have had their makeup artist do it but Sting was the one that did it. Even Sting looked at me as he was painting and said ‘This is like looking in a mirror.’  I guess he saw that crow Sting with the hair, but it was very cool. I think I am most remembered for the Halloween Havoc where I came out of the ring, which was the most fun I had being Sting, because I had a part in that match. But they got clips of me in the rafters, and you couldn’t tell who it was. There were times where I was in a coffin, and they had me bust out of a coffin and beat somebody up. But a lot of times they would get out of that because they would have the strobe flashing, so you couldn’t tell who it was. But there was a lot of times where I was doing the fake Sting whether he was there or not.”

On Chris Harris going to WWE as Braden Walker:

“It was unfortunate that they would do that but I can’t say that I was surprised. Going in there, they just want to erase your past, which is unfortunate because you try so hard to build up a reputation for yourself and not that they would ever talk about TNA, but they don’t want them to talk about you like you are a rookie. Going in there, I tried to keep a positive attitude. The Wildcat is gone, I’m going to be a whole new character. They gave me the name, and a lot of people have trashed that for years, but it wasn’t a surprise. They gave me the name, if I was still able to be myself, I could take any name that they throw at me. I could make Braden Walker work if they had given me an opportunity. There was no preparation and no thought behind it. I think I was doomed from the start.”

On his time in WWE:

“I was there for close to a year, and I just from the get go, I just saw different things. When I first went, people were excited to see me and they didn’t want news getting out, it felt like a big deal. ‘We’ve got plans for you.’ Things like that. I felt like maybe I made the right decision. But within weeks, I was seeing that there was no background to this and no thought and I was just going to be one of the ones that are just thrown out there, and I was. I was just thrown out there, there was no story or background to Braden Walker anything like that. I had generic music, gear, name, there was no reason for people to get behind me. I still feel like I could have made that work if they let me wrestle, but they were even taking that away from me. Seconds and minutes before I went out, I had a producer change my match. ‘You can’t do this and you can’t do that, so why don’t you try…’ You’re messing with me man, I couldn’t go out and be myself in the ring. It was very unfortunate and I felt like I could make it work, but the opportunity was never presented to me.”

On what Chris Harris is grateful for:

“My career, my family and sobriety.”

Featured image: Wrestling Attitude

Embedded images: Instagram

Colin O’Brady (@colinobrady) is a professional endurance athlete, adventurer, motivational speaker and bestseller author of the books “The Impossible First” and “The 12 Hour Walk”. Some of his most impressive conquests include a world-first solo crossing of Antarctica, a world-first ocean row across Drake Passage (from South America to Antarctica), and summiting Mt. Everest twice. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about the transformative power of talking a 12 Hour Walk, breaking your limiting beliefs, what climbing Mount Everest is really like, what motivates him and much more!

On what Colin O’Brady’s goal is now:

“It’s funny. I humbly sit here with 10 world records and have explored many places. My new book is called the 12 hour walk, I answer that at the end of it. The book is a prescription for people to get out there and to explore, and at the end I answer the question what is my new Everest? My answer right now is to inspire 10 million people to take this 12 hour walk. This book is a challenge for you to take one day, put the phone on airplane mode and to walk for 12 hours in silence. It might sound ridiculous, but I have seen it change people’s lives and unlock their true potential. It sounds hard if you are not in great shape, but take as many breaks as you need to. My 77 year old mother in law completed her 12 hour walk, she walked around the block and sat on her porch while maintaining the silence, then she did another walk around the block. The 12 hour walk is more of an exercise of the mind and the grit, and it can unlock the limitless possibilities. My goal now is for people to unlock their potential to really reach the summit of their dreams.”

On Colin O’Brady’s experience of the 12 hour walk in Antartica:

“It starts there, but it gets to a point that is way more accessible than going to Antarctica. I set myself this massive goal a few years ago to become the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unsupported. Whatever you get dropped off with, that’s what you get. For me, that meant a 375lb sled pulling behind me full of food and fuel. I couldn’t pull my sled a mile at first, how could I do it for 1,000? Also I was not propelled, so no kites and no dogs. People have tried this in the past, one guy tried it for 71 days and died 100 miles from the goal line. I attempted it and I realized that I would run out of food and fuel if I took one day off. If I walked any less than 12 hours a day I would also run out of food and fuel. It also turned out that I wasn’t just racing history, I was also racing this other guy who was a badass military dude.”

On if they both knew it was the same mission at the same time:

“Strangely no up until right before. So what happened, and it’s not uncommon in the world of adventure, especially with a world first. You don’t broadcast what you are doing a year before, because other people will try it and try it earlier. There are a lot of logistics in going to these remote places in the world, and it turns out that there is only really one guy and one company who has a bush plane that can land you on the edge of the continent. Obviously we both called the same guy, he didn’t tell each of us about the other one. And then there is only one season where you can actually do this crossing, which is the Atlantic summer, our winter in the northern hemisphere. It’s only -25 with a wind chill that gives it -70. It is still freezing cold. But there is one guy, one plane and a week before we find out about the other guy. And then we find out that the guy has double booked the plane. He is like ‘Yeah you will sit next to each other on the plane, I will drop you off at the start line, and there you go.’ And this guy is a total badass, he is a special forces military, highly respected. He looks at me and goes ‘You know. It should be a Brit that cracks this first.’ I get out of the plane and it doesn’t even take off, it drives for like a minute, drops him off and we wave at each other. That then starts a 1,000 mile, 2 month head to head battle.”

On possibly giving up:

“A couple of times. I called my wife 2 hours in when I couldn’t pull my shed. I said that we called it the impossible thing and that sounded about right. I had a lot of doubts and a lot of fear. I was burning 10,000 calories a day and lost a lot of weight, but as my body got weaker my mind got stronger. Near the end I did this one continuous 33 hour, 77 mile push and I got there first and set the record. But what I found in this silence in Antarctica was this deep connection, deep bliss and deep purpose. I had all of this high vibe resonance of life, and I thought that I could take it with me forever. Then a lot of positive thing happened, I wrote a bestseller and did another expedition. And then COVID hits. There were a lot of people worse off than me, but it was a scary time.”  

On the impact of the 12 hour walk:

“When people take this walk, the shift in one day is huge. The things that people sort out in their brain by creating that silence and taking that space, it is hugely impactful and I just want to spread the word. The power of the 12 hour walk proves the inner strength. I don’t consider myself a Tom Brady, but I have had some success. What the book breaks down is I bring you this rich storytelling of the edge of K2 in winter in Pakistan where I unfortunately lost some friends in a climbing accident. Or this row boat in the middle of Drake Passage or Antarctica solo, various other things. But it also shows you that I was afraid, being afraid of failing. The book comes from a  place of vulnerability, but we can rewrite that. You can make this change today by taking those 12 hours.”

On the 12 hour walk being a mental challenge:

“That is what I say at the end of the book. People think that they have to train for this like a marathon. But if you are in ultra marathon shape, you may clock up more miles than the next person, but this is a mental exercise. I am fond of saying that the most important muscle that we have is the 6 inches between our ears. I use the word muscle for the mind intentionally, because even if we are not into fitness, we hear ‘Oh you want that summer body? Go and hit the gym.’ We understand that concept, but it is the same for the mind, we just don’t understand that. If you want to do the same for the mind, you have to do the bench press for the mind, and that is what this is. It is scary and hard, but it is supposed to be a step outside of the comfort zone.”

On what it is actually like to climb Mount Everest:

“So a friend of mine took a photo and it went viral on the internet. It was a picture of basically a bunch of people towards the summit lined up. What happened on that day was a real anomaly and weird edge case scenario. Basically Everest can only be climbed in weeks 3 and 4 of May, because 50 weeks of the year it is being battered by rain and 100mph winds. People sit there for a month before and they acclimatise and wait for this weather window, which lasts about a week or 10 days. The typical Everest season will now have 500 or 600 climbers on the mountain throughout those months and people will summit within 10 to 12 days, so maybe there is 30 to 40 people on any given day. But on this given day in 2019, the good weather never came, it was a perfect storm. There was one good day of weather, so everyone went at the same time and it caused a traffic jam at the summit. First of all, it has become more commercialised. Are there people on that mountain that shouldn’t be there? Yes unfortunately there is some of that. But the other 364 days of that year, there was literally nobody on that summit. It is unfortunate that the narrative has been passed down. But it still is a very worthy challenge.”

On his morning routine:

“My morning routine has really evolved over the past few years. I am not a coffee guy so I don’t do any caffeine. I try to move my body first thing, some sort of workout or just walking my dog. I am guilty of not doing this, but I try to not look at my phone. I also have a smoothie and some greens to get some hydration. Meditation is also a big part of my day, a buddy of mine’s wife came to one of my races, she watched the triathlon and she says to me ‘That was cool, you swim, bike and run. But what do you do to train your mind?’ I was embarrassed. I asked her what she would suggest, and she has done these 10 day silent meditation retreats. You are basically in solitude and meditate for 12 hours a day. So I signed up and I went, but the hardest thing was for me to sit still.”

On how else people can get out of their limiting beliefs:

“The reason I love that terminology is the word belief. these are not limiting facts, they are beliefs, and beliefs can be re-written. I am a firm believe that we are the stories that we tell ourselves. I had those demons in Antarctica, but you got to battle against them. The 12 hour work is one way, but it all comes back to committing to something outside of that range. Something that will push you outside if the comfort one, that is where you have to dare to take that risk and be uncomfortable. It is a personal thing, what is in my comfort zone might not be in yours and vice versa.”

On what Colin O’Brady is grateful for:

“My wife, health and community.”

The 12 Hour Walk is out now.

Embedded images: Instagram

Featured image: The New Yorker

“The Nature Boy” Ric Flair (@ricflairnatureboy) is an iconic professional wrestler and 2-time WWE Hall of Famer. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about his last match that is taking place on Sunday, July 31 at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium, why he decided to wrestle again after his retirement match at WrestleMania 24 against Shawn Michaels, his thoughts on Vince McMahon’s recent retirement from WWE, who is on his pro wrestling Mount Rushmore, the catch phrase he is most proud of, his goals when he first entered the wrestling business in 1972, his thoughts on whether John Cena or Randy Orton will break record as the 16-time World Champion, the story behind his famous WOOOOO Off with Jay Lethal in TNA Wrestling and much more!

On Ric Flair’s goal when he first entered the business:

“Well I don’t know, because I didn’t know what to expect. From the day I started it was totally different to what I thought it would be. When I started it was very difficult to get into the business, extremely tough. It was gruelling and the old timers didn’t like the young guys coming up. It was just a whole different world, every step was about learning the respect, trying to get the respect from the guys that had been in it for a while. That was an every day challenge.”

On who is on Ric Flair’s Mount Rushmore:

“Austin, Hogan, Taker and Shawn Michaels. [Chris mentions that Ric Flair doesn’t put himself on there] I would, but I think those 4 guys had a huge [impact]. You could put The Rock on there too, it’s interchangeable. The best worker of all time is Shawn Michaels, the biggest personality of all time would be The Rock. The biggest draw of all time would be Steve [Austin], and you can’t leave Hulk off because he drew a ton of money. Different timeframe but it was sold out every night. Even though I was NWA World Champion and I think that my job was a lot harder than everybody else’s, because being the NWA Champion you are gone 6 months at a time, sometimes longer. And I was wrestling everyone all over the world, that’s the difference, you are not just wrestling the same guy, which I had done with Steamboat and Sting and Dusty. That was all while I was travelling around the world, especially with Dusty and Steamboat.”

On WrestleMania 24 being the perfect retirement for Ric Flair:

“It was but then I got divorced for the 3rd time. It was hard paying the attorneys and paying alimony, so you know, I probably didn’t need to, but I kind of missed it too. I sure could have worked around it, but I never considered bankruptcy as an option. Then when I got sick in 2017, I got behind with the IRS because the hospital bills were $1.3 [million] Medicare A, I didn’t have Medicare B at the time, I had to pay them $800,000. So not only did I have to go back in, I had to pay them back and then I had to pay the IRS another million dollars, just because I was late on what they call an offering compromise.”

On what the final match means to Ric Flair:

“Well it’s not about money at all, I’m great moneywise. When I saw Steve [Austin] and Vince at WrestleMania, people have been asking me to do it. Some people actually offered me $100,000 to do it and I’m just like nah, because I didn’t want to go into it half assed, I really had to get into shape. So I have taken 3 months to really get into shape and I feel great. I’ve had some ups and downs, I had plantar fasciitis, I still have it but it is 90% healed. But I have that under control and I feel great. I don’t hurt and I don’t ache so why not? And who doesn’t like the glory? If I pull it off, I’ll be bigger than ever.”  

On the positive reaction to the training videos with Jay Lethal:

“I didn’t know whether I could take a slam or not with the pacemaker, but the doctor told me that, the one I like the best, that I have enough scar tissue around the pacemaker that it won’t budge, and it didn’t. Unless it moves on the day of the match I’ll be fine, even then just plug me back in. I don’t have a defibrillator, when you have a defibrillator it is really hard to take bumps. I had that blood clot issue a couple of times in the past 10 years, but I take half a blood thinner. I plan to entertain them man!”

On the family’s reaction to Ric Flair’s last match:

“They are saying this is awesome, they are very supportive. They know that I want to be a part of it and that I want to be rocking and rolling. I wouldn’t have it any other way. But one thing that I didn’t anticipate is that this has captured the hearts of America. Everywhere I go, I do a lot of travelling for a living with autograph signings and I made a commercial with Car Shield. No one is talking about SummerSlam or AEW, they all know about my last match, it has got a lot of national publicity.”   

On possibly pushing the match back so it would be 50 years of Ric Flair wrestling:

“Conrad is a smart guy. We’ve got 70,000 people in town for the week of SummerSlam, and they are having it on a Saturday, which is unusual. But it worked out great, the roast is sold out and I think we have 200 tickets left for a 9,000 seat sell out in the auditorium. WCW never sold out the auditorium, WWE had a hard time doing it and AEW didn’t do it, so it is a big accomplishment.”  

On if this really will be the final match for Ric Flair:

“It has to be. I get that question asked a lot, but it has to be. Even if I do well, I can’t go back on my word to the people that have given me all this respect, time and bought tickets. I have been offered 10 matches at 50 grand a piece, and I think in Europe someone offered me 100 grand. But this will be the last one. I can manage somebody and be in the ring, but it will be my last match.”   

On being nervous for the last match:

“[I’m nervous about] pulling it off. It’s a lot of pressure, people don’t realize it, you lose your self confidence a couple of times. Two weeks ago I thought I had pneumonia, because I was training so hard and going back and forth. I was doing 50 mile round trips with the air conditioning and sweating, so that happened. Then there was what happened with my foot, but now it is all coming together, 5 more days.”   

On deciding who the opponents would be for Ric Flair’s last match:

“Conrad and I put it together initially. We were going to go outside and use some people from AEW, but then it all became a little political with Tony [Khan]. I’m not sure why he changed things around but we worked around it and we are sold out. That’s all that matters.”

On possibly having a legendary opponent like Hulk Hogan or Ricky Steamboat as the last match:

“Well neither one of them are physically able to do it. I talked with Steamboat for a long time and he’s got issues with his back and his shoulder. I think that if Ricky wanted to go out, he had that great run with Jericho back in 2011 I think. I think Ricky wanted to go out with that memory, because he was as good back then as he was in his prime. He had some great matches and he liked the ‘You still got it.’ Why put that on the line again? And Hulk, he has had so many back surgeries, a double hip replacement, double knee replacement, why take a chance? For me, everything is still hooked up still, thank God!”

On the origin of the ‘Limousine riding…’ catchphrase:

“It just came out one day. That’s the way I roll.”

On Vince McMahon retiring:

“I wasn’t happy about it at all, I love Vince McMahon. I don’t know what he is doing right now but I feel like he will have a hard time. He will adjust obviously, but he loved the business and he made us all who we are, from Hulk to everybody. I don’t care what everybody else thinks, he made us, and I have nothing but respect for him. He is a majority stockholder, I don’t know if he will [stay away] or not. He’s a genius.”

On the biggest thing that Vince McMahon has taught Ric Flair:

“For me personally, he said that I needed to get my sh*t straightened out, because I was pretty wild, as people are well aware of. I could be remembered for 2 things, either the greatest wrestler of all time, or the guy that p*ssed it away and got married too many times. He is such a hands on guy, nothing went around at the company that he didn’t know. To me, I guess he had a very difficult time delegating authority. He has to really trust somebody to put them in a position to make the big decisions. He hates lawyers, he likes to talk to you man to man. He would always tell me ‘Before you say a word, hear me out…’ Of course I can’t do that ‘Let me finish.’ He is not bullsh*tting you, he is the real deal.”

On how Ric Flair wants to be remembered:

“Well if I pull this off then I will have to be remembered as the greatest of all time. If it’s even remotely good. [I am] 73 and I got it down, I’m not kidding you. Unless something bad happens, and I don’t know what it will be. I am minding my p’s and my q’s, saying my prayers, taking my vitamins, I am ready, it will be fun. What else is really important to me is that my whole family will be there. My grandchildren, my kids, a couple of my ex-wives [laughs]. One of my ex-wives and my wife, all my kids, that will be spectacular to do it one more time.”

On if the match is planned out:

“No I’m one of these guys that [call it in the ring], but the guys in the ring know me, I got to hear the crowd, then I will know where to go. I’m not a plan a and plan b, but these guys are all excellent performers. I mean Andrade, who gets to wrestle with their son in law? How cool is that? It’s kind of like Rey [Mysterio] with his son, how cool is that?” 

On John Cena possibly becoming a 17 time world champion:

“I don’t think so. I don’t think they will ever give it to a part time performer. I think that Randy Orton has a better shot at it, Randy will come back, he has to have surgery. But I certainly wouldn’t be offended because the real number is 21. They all have a way to go. But I love John Cena, he is a such a credible performer and just one of the great guys in the business. About 10 years ago they told John that he couldn’t hang around with me. No, like 2008, I would go out drinking with John, and John could drink some beers back then. But then they said ‘Hey, we would like you to hang around a bit less with Flair on those European tours. I didn’t take it personally.”       

On what Ric Flair is grateful for:

“My health, my family and the world of friends that I have.”    

Featured image: New York Post      

Cathy Heller (@cathy.heller) is a bestselling author, business coach and host of the podcast called “Don’t Keep Your Day Job”. She joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about how to turn your passion into a full time job, what she learned from interviewing people like Matthew McConaughey and Tony Robbins, how to overcome imposter syndrome and much more!

On where the journey begins of someone to live in their passion:

“It’s such a great question isn’t it? I once heard from my rabbi that the opposite of unhappiness is not happiness, but it is in fact purpose and meaning. A friend of mine Emily Esfahani Smith did a Ted Talk called There’s more to life than being happy. It was all about how she went to Harvard and asked them about the most wonderful moments in their life. It turned out that is wasn’t when they were in Disney World, but moments of tremendous meaning and purpose. The reason why I started the show Don’t Keep Your Day Job is because I believe that if you are hare then you are needed. It is like a puzzle and we are all like a piece, if you don’t do your assignment, then a piece is missing. If just one piece is missing, it doesn’t feel good. I think on some level, each of us has always known that.”

The meaning behind the show’s title:

“I called the show Don’t Keep Your Day Job because it is not about having a job, it’s about having your life’s work. So what is that about and what does that mean? I think we all have this incredible amount of purpose and potential, but we stop ourselves with these two lies, I’m not enough and it’s not possible. If Elon Musk thought it was not possible, we wouldn’t be going to space. If John F. Kennedy thought it was not enough, then man wouldn’t have landed on the moon. We are not supposed to make decisions with our eyes, but instead with our imaginations. So I often say to people that if you want to wake up to a sense of purpose, then make a list of 5 things that would feel so fun. If you secretly could do whatever and not be responsible for how it is done, it comes so fast. People say ‘Oh I want to be a travel writer.’ Or ‘I want to open up a bed and breakfast in the south of France.’ Then I will say to circle the one that gives you goose bumps, and then we start from there. What if we allowed ourselves to do that? What is stopping us?”

On where to start:

“If you want to start a business, there’s 3 steps. You’re gonna test it, sell it and scale it. So test it, you need to give a sample of this. Whether you will teach a class or make granola or paint cars, you need a beta. You need a focus group and you need to test it. You might say that your sister in law needs her car painting, so you will do that in exchange for a testimonial or for feedback. Everything that has been sold, whether it’s an iPad or peanut butter, they love data. We want the feedback, that is the answer key. So if you have a job you can’t stand, you don’t need to quit right now while you are testing. The job right now is the investor for my dreams, and after work I will find 5 people I can offer this to and get the feedback.”

On the selling steps:

“Once we test it, we can see if people are satisfied with the cheesecake or the work that we have done on their car. Now you say ‘Can I sell one of these? Can I sell one cheesecake?’ If you can sell one. You can look at the market and decide where you want to be. You can get a bangle from Cartier for thousands of dollars or go to Target and get one for $18. So decide where you want to start out and work towards the lower middle if you need some confidence. But there is already a market and you are not making it up. You see if you can sell it one time, and here is what is cool, and when you sell it to one person and they are satisfied, you are done! Here is how we know. When you go to Target or Starbucks and they ask you to fill out a survey, they are looking for the 9’s and 10’s. Anyone who says a 1 2 or 3, they are not interested. If you are a satisfied customer, you will be compelled to sell someone else.”

On being a niche and scaling it:

“I also want people to hear this thing that Seth Godin shared with me. He asked me ‘Would you rather have the popularity of Taylor Swift or The Grateful Dead?’ The Grateful Dead never had a number one single, they were not radio songs. Most people say they are building this business and they have to be vanilla ice cream, they have to be Taylor Swift, they have to be the thing that people talk about. But here is what people don’t realise, Taylor Swift fans will say ‘I’ve seen her 3 times, she is so good.’ Grateful Dead fans will say ‘Are you joking? I have seen every show. I’ve seen them 49 times and have 65 records, all the b sides.’ One really likes it, and one is obsessed with it. People are shooting for vanilla, but if you make gluten free, kosher, vegan ice cream, and only a small portion of the world loved it, you would quickly be a phenomenon. It’s the depth and the intimacy, you don’t have to worry about the width. If you establish that, you can keep scaling.” 

On not quitting your job right now:

“There’s so much cool stuff you could get started with right now and work on for 90 days. At the end of the 90 days you could sit down and find go ‘OK, I had this many people in my yoga class. How many yoga classes at 15 a piece would I have to do to quit my job?’ People say that they have no time, but we know that people are spending several hours a day on their phones. So there is no excuse, you do have the hours.”

On growing the podcast:

“I love podcasting so much, it is so much fun. There is a line that words from the heart enter the heart immediately. I think that we are so highly refined that we can do something from a  genuine place. People crave intimacy, and intimacy is velocity, and advertisers have noticed that. There used to be a Colgate commercial in the middle of a Thursday night episode of Friends, but that model doesn’t work anymore, no one is watching through the ads. We see that people have a connection with people too. If someone hears Joe Rogan and they are like ‘This is my dude.’ Then he says ‘Oh Casper Mattresses…’ Then there are loads of sales, because they trust that person, the intimacy is unreal. With podcasts, people are self-selecting that they want to hear you while you are at the gym or on a commute, it is part of your day. It is so big for your business, because if people like and trust you, they have the connection, so they are in. When I started, I tell people that if you want to start a podcast, you will want to batch record 10 episodes so you won’t have to scramble. I would do one a week, and before that just put up a 3 minute trailer. One thing that is really important with a podcast, you are doing it for the audience. I would bring them in by thinking that I am their ambassador, what is their greatest pain point? This audience has that pain point, and quite often, their audience is you before you had that breakthrough.”

On what Cathy Heller is grateful for:

“The people in my life, health and the opportunity to do this.”

Featured image: Don’t Keep Your Day Job

Ben Nemtin (@bennemtin) is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and co-creator of the hit MTV series “The Buried Life”. He joins Chris Van Vliet from his home in Marina del Rey, CA to talk about the importance of living without regret, how he and 3 of his friends started The Buried Life movement, how to find your purpose, his new Bucket List Journal, how he played basketball with President Obama, had a beer with Prince Harry and more!

Check out Ben’s Bucket List Journal here: https://bucketlistjournal.co/

On going all in:

“If I find something that I love then I can’t not do it as much as I can. With tennis, I feel like it is meditative. You are in the sun, with friends, get that aerobic exercise and it’s good. It is a good old person sport that you can play until you are like 60 or 70.”

On his first mental health crisis:

“I think that when I started to surround myself with people that inspired me, it made me want to do more. I has this moment in university where I had a real low moment. I had dropped out because I had put so much pressure on myself to succeed. So I was on the national rugby team and had a scholarship, and we were training for the World Cup. I was so worried about missing a kick, because I played at fly half, I would lose sleep at night thinking about it. So I got anxious, stopped going anywhere and was just shut inside my parents’ house. This was my first mental health crisis. When you go through your first mental health crisis, you think you are totally screwed up. You don’t realize that this is a normal part of life and that other people are going through these struggles too. But when you are 19 or 20, you don’t want to talk about it. You think you are losing everything, so I just felt like I was spiralling. What brought me out of it was my friends literally dragged me out of the house and brought me to a new town to work in the summer. I started meeting people who had started new businesses or they had travelled, it was really inspiring. So I realized that I was not the only one going through this, and these kids gave me energy. I needed to be around people that gave me energy. So I made that decision to be around people whom inspire me, called my friend Johnny and decided that I wanted to make a movie. The more that I did things like that, when you see your friends achieve great things, you feel via osmosis that you can do great things.”  

On how people around you can affect you:

“100%. I have now started to realize that in terms of success. Can you continually be energized by your days, and I think that is purpose. Instead of thinking what is your purpose like this big mountain that we have to climb, I think that we have multiple purposes. It could be spending time with your kids or it could be climbing Everest. I just think that as long as you are fuelled by this thing then that is part of your purpose. If you can do that without the day to day getting in your way, because that can get the purposes swept away. Paying attention to the energy, if you can find those people in your life, you can lean into those friendships and they will fuel you and make you believe what is possible.”

On someone finding their purpose:

“I think it’s looking at the energy. What fuels you, what are you curious about? I think it then important to write this down, because then you make it real, it reminds you that it exists. As you get buried by the day to day and you come back to your list, it reminds you of what is important to you. Then it forces you to slow down and see what is important to you.”

On the barriers people face:

“The first thing that stops us is that there is no deadlines, so we have got to create the accountability. So write down the goals and get an accountability buddy, you are 77% more likely to achieve your goals then. If you can find that accountability buddy, that is huge. The second thing is that people need to be inspired. I got a guitar at the start of the pandemic and have just been waiting to feel inspired, but I haven’t. But you have to create your own inspiration through action. It is like we are overpreparing for the right time, but action is part of the plan. I think that you create that momentum, and that fulfils you. The third thing is the fear of failure, but you can flip that if you share your goals. Because then, you share the goals, you don’t want to look bad, so you can use that as a driver.”

On having specific goals:

“Now that I have looked at the science behind goal achievement, it is important to have a goal that is measurable, the SMART goals, because you want to know when you will achieve it. It is not “be healthier” it is “Run 5 miles 3 times a week.” So I think it is important when you look at your list, looking at a blank page can be daunting. I would traditionally look at the cliché things for a bucket list like skydive or go travelling. Those are obviously great things for a bucket list but I think that my definition of a bucket list reflects on who you truly are. So you are looking at your travelling goals, but you also want to give back, what are your giving goals? What are the physical goals, mental health goals, relationship goals, because 1 in people’s regrets is not keeping in touch with someone. Those don’t cost any money, it’s picking up the phone and meeting up with someone. You have to invest in those and those take energy. When you think about your list as a whole reflection on what is true to you, then you start to have this picture of things in your life that you need to priortize and how to not forget about these things.”

On people not starting:

“That is where the fear stops you. So we were young, dumb and broke enough to prove that these things were possible. I think the young naivety is so important to keep. Because you are young so you don’t have much to lose. You are dumb so you don’t really know how hard it will be. And again you are broke, so you are just scraping together what you can. If you can keep that youthful energy, and of course when you get older there is more risk. But if it doesn’t work, what do you have to really lose? I think that is what is really important.”

On the most ridiculous thing on the list:

“That was the reaction when Obama was elected president and we said ‘Let’s put play basketball with Obama on the list.’ I laughed because it was the most ridiculous thing on so many levels, but we were like ‘OK, let’s put it down.’ 3 years later we were at The White House shooting hoops with Obama.” 

How Ben Nemtin got to play basketball with Obama:

“So the first step was driving down to DC and asking people on the street if they knew anyone. It was a dumb step, but what we learned was that we could contact politicians through the publicly listed websites. We sent the email saying that we want to play basketball with Obama to prove that anyone could do anything. Most people ignored us, but a few low level officials agreed to meet us. We just stayed long enough until we would meet with their boss and their boss. We then got to meet with the secretary of transportation, who called The White House while we were in the room. Then we got an email saying it can’t happen. We were not ready to give up, then we heard about these secret basketball games that the president did with a couple of senior officials. The man that set it up was Reggie Love, who was Obama’s personal aide, the kind of gatekeeper. We tracked him down and would just send emails challenging them. Then we would show up to the YMCA every day for a week and no one would show up. Finally I get a number from a blocked call saying ‘What’s this I hear about you challenging the president to a game of basketball?’ I explained the mission and he said that he might be able to make this happen. He called me back 2 weeks later, not going to happen. We came back to DC and he gave us the tour of the White House, show us the basketball court. Then next thing we know, we hear the president. He said ‘Hey guys. I heard about what you are doing. The least I can do is shoot a basket with you.’ He was there in town and we were floored. There was no fiber in my being when we wrote this down that this would be possible. And here I was, seeing him walk on the court. From that my whole belief system changed. I guess now anything is possible.”

On where to start:

“Step one is to write your list. Next, think of the list as a magic lamp. You know, the rum the lamp and a genie comes out saying ‘Congratulations you wrote your list. I’m going to make one of them come true, but there is a catch. If I make it come true, you will never be able to achieve anything else on your list.’ So what do you choose? That is the most important list item. Move towards that most important item, which probably won’t even involve a lot of money. Then, write 48 things that you could do in the next 48 hours. Ask someone for help, make a phone call, book the trip. Now you have the accountability.”

On drinking a beer with Prince Harry:

“That was actually pretty straightforward. We found somebody that knew a friend of his, and they said the best way was to write a letter and we could send it to his office. We wrote a letter saying that we were going to be in London. So we met him at a secret bar in London, had dinner with him, he’s very cool and philanthropic. That was how it happened.” 

On what’s left on the list:

“So there are 4 things left on the list. Go to space, being on the cover of Rolling Stone, I’ve always wanted to go to India and host another TV show.”

On what Ben Nemtim is grateful for:

“This conversation and to feel like I am finally following my true self.”

Featured image: Ben Nemtin

Embedded images: Instagram

Ken Anderson (@mrkenanderson) is an actor and professional wrestler known for his time in WWE when he went by “Mr. Kennedy” and in TNA Impact Wrestling where he was a 2-time TNA World Heavyweight Champion. He talks about his wrestling school called The Academy School of Pro Wrestling, how Paul Heyman helped to change the course of his career, how he came up with the name “Kennedy”, his relationship with Vince McMahon, what winning the Money in the Bank ladder match at WrestleMania 23 meant to him, the regrets he has about his time in WWE, working for TNA and his epic cage match with Kurt Angle, training Gable Steveson and much more!

On training prospective wrestlers:

“I will say this, I do not regret being trained by some of the guys that went to the dance. Because the guys that trained me were awesome, even though they never quite made it to the scene. They knew the inner workings, but they also taught me that a lot of the mistakes that I had to make were my own. I had to wrestle on the independents for 6 years by the time I was hired by WWE, and that was my goal from day 1. I never said that to anybody, but internally I was like I want to go to WWE. When I started sending tapes and getting responses from Kevin Kelly, and then I got booked as an extra, then I was like ok, I can do this. All I have to do is get better every time and show improvement, and then I will get hired. But yeah, I do think that the reason why I opened my school in the first place is that I wanted to cut out a lot of the missteps that people have to make. I had to stumble and bumble my way about, and I am able to cut a lot of those corners for people.”

On the backstage environment in WWE:

“When I was backstage at WWE or TNA, they need silence when those backstage interviews [take place]. A lot of times they are recorded during the day. There have been times where it seems like we record 50 times, and we would then get busted by somebody [saying]’ Cut! Cut! Gotta do it again!’ So I am kind of used to it.”

On John Cena’s work ethic:

“There was a story when I first started that John Cena had been home one day out of 365 days. He had been on the road for [that long] because he would go from, you know, wrestling house shows, pay-per-views, and then he’d have appearances and things like that that he would have to do, and this was before he was doing movies. So that’s just kind of, that’s the way it goes. And I always looked at it, they would come to me and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got this appearance for you out in California. On your day off. Do you want to do it?’ And you know, it’d be sometimes, like unpaid, or we would do interviews with people when they would be unpaid. And some people would complain about that. I always looked at it as this free advertising for my business, you know. So I love doing it, I love doing it. And yeah, it was just kind of crazy.”

On being one of the first Paul Heyman guys:

I don’t say this with great glee. But I will say that the best thing that ever happened to me in my career was Jim Cornette slapping, paint brushing Santino Marella backstage at OVW. Because, he did that and he got fired, and they brought Paul Heyman in. And I had done some stuff with Paul, he would come down every couple of months and he would do a promo day. And we would have to come up with an opponent in a two minute promo, we would go in and sit in a room with Paul and a camera, cut the promo, then he would give you some feedback and a few notes, and then you go home and fine tune it and come back the next day and cut it again. And I remember, I would come back and I would sit down, and he was always kind of like, not standoffish, but just professional, you know. And then I would come back on the second day, I would cut the promo, he would go ‘I love it! Great! I would say ‘Any notes or anything?’ [Heyman responded] ‘Nope, I love it. Thank you.’ And I was like, this guy hates me, okay, that’s the worst. Sometimes when you’re trying to learn and you’re trying to get to that next level, that’s the worst thing is not hearing anything at all, not hearing any feedback, there’s got to be something that I can do better.  And then when that happened, and Paul Heyman came in the first day to do TV at OVW. He pulled me into the office, and he said, ‘You’re the next guy out of here.’ He literally said those words. He said, ‘You’re the next guy out of here.’ He said ‘I’ve been a fan of yours since I saw you when you were an extra.’ Because I had been an extra one time and all the extras were in the ring. Like there had to be 10 of us, and we were just kind of tagging in and tagging out and you get in there and wrestle. And guys were getting in there and they would just chain wrestling. I remember Daivari, he had been hired at that time already and he pulled me aside. He was like ‘That’s not what they’re looking for. They don’t care if you can wrestle. They don’t want to see moves. They want to see character.’ And so when I got in there I made sure to show some character and stuff. And Jim Ross and Paul Heyman were sitting ringside. They were the only two people there because like everybody else was in a staff meeting or something. And I tagged out and Paul said ‘Come to me for a second.’ And I walked over to him, he was like ‘Who trained you?’ And I was like ‘I got trained by two guys in Green Bay. And then I got polished up and fine tuned by Brad Rheingans.’ And his eyes lit up because Brad Rheingans trained Brock Lesnar. And he was like, he asked me a couple of questions. And from that point on, it was like, I think at the end of the day, he gave me his number. And he told me like, call my number next week, let’s talk and I was like, here we go.”

On Vince McMahon giving Mr. Kennedy a surprise last minute TV debut:

“But I would call every week, he would never return my phone call. So you know, fastforward, we’re in that office, and he says, ‘You’re the next guy out of here. I’ve been a fan of yours since that day. And I’ve loved your promo work and stuff. And I’m going to do so much stuff with you on TV that they’re going to have to take notice. And you’ll get pulled up in that first night.’ OVW was in one hour programme, and I think I had 35 to 40 minutes on that first one hour programme that Paul Heyman did. And five weeks later, I got a call from Tommy Dreamer. He said, ‘Hey, they want you to come up. And they want to see you and they want you to do your gimmick.’ Because I had just started doing the, you know, the announcer thing, announcing my name and saying my last name twice, and then I went up. And this was crazy, because I was just supposed to do a dark match. It was supposed to be a dark match against Funaki, who was gonna win the match, and I was in Gorilla position. I’m warming up doing push ups, going over everything in my head. And Vince walks by and Vince would never come up and see the dark matches and stuff. He would sit down literally as the pyro was going off for SmackDown or Raw or whatever. And he came up and he nodded at me. And then, like two minutes later, Dave Lagonda came walking around the corner and he said, ‘Hey, there’s been a change.’ And I immediately in my head, I was like, [sighs] I guess they’re pulling my match. Okay, no big deal. And he said ‘We have to come up with a finish for you because you’re going over, winning the match. And this is no longer going to be a dark match. This is going to be a televised match, welcome aboard.’ And he stuck out his hand and I was like, really? He’s like, Yeah. Earlier in the day, I had gone in and done a promo, Brooklyn Brawler told me to. And he’s like, Hey, come here and cut a promo. And I went in I just had something in my back pocket because I had cut so many in six years and I hit that promo. And I remember he said ‘I’m going to tell Vince that was awesome.’ And, and he did. So it was like all these things sort of merged all together. And, you know, I was very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.”

On wrestling being more about the character than the moves:

“I just saw an interview. I think it was Vince McMahon on the Pat McAfee show, where he said, like, ‘I don’t care about wrestling moves.’ And I keep trying to like, drill this into my students. And they’re like  ‘Hey, look at this new move that I came up with.’ Like, I don’t want to be, I don’t want to be a jerk, but like, I’m kinda like, that’s cool, but you know, that doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter. In the end, if you can do 75 cool moves, but you can’t talk to a crowd or, you know, you can’t tell a story with your actions. And there’s a guy who can literally do like a clothesline, a hip toss and a body slam, and that’s it, but he’s got a great character, the WWE, you know, they have to hire somebody, they’re gonna hire the person that can do that for them.”

On winning Money in the Bank:

“I remember thinking like, that was what I wanted to do when I grabbed it. And I start climbing the ladder and you can see I look up and I’m like, God, this isn’t going to be a good shot. So I shifted a little ladder over directly underneath that briefcase. Yeah, definitely. You know, the crazy thing about that was I remember walking through the curtain and looking out and expecting to see this like, you know, it’s 83,000 people that’s the most people had ever wrestled in front of and it didn’t look like it. It looked just looked like a really jam packed, you know, 15,000 seat to 20,000 seat arena. [Chris – So just like a Raw or SmackDown] Yeah, and so then I went, I did my match and I showered and I went up to the boxes, because they had a luxury box up there for the family members. And that’s when I got over to the window and I looked out and I saw this giant sea of people and this little tiny ring in the centre. And then it dawned on me what I had just done. It was kind of crazy.”

On possibly being given the name A-Hole

“So Vince asked me ‘Do you have any catchphrases?’ and I said ‘ Yeah, nice guys finish last thing good thing him an asshole.’ And he was like, We they had just gone PG. It was like, ‘No, I don’t, we can’t do that.’ And then Johnny was getting into it, it was like Johnny, Stephanie, Kevin Dunn, Vince, I think that’s who was all in that room. And Johnny goes, ‘Hey, how about what if your name was like Adam Hole? And then you could say, “Nice guys finish last. Thank God I’m an A Hole.” And it would be…’ And I remember Vince, just, there was a silence in the room. And Vince just looked up at me and he goes, ‘What do you think of that?’ And I said ‘I like it. I think it’s funny. But I feel like that would be sort of a flash in the pan, somebody that would be here for like two or three months and then be done. It sounds very gimmicky. And I’ve been here for a long time.’ And Vince looks at me like, almost as though we’re a test.”

On the origin of the Mr. Kennedy name:

“Like, I feel like he did [get the connection]. Because it was Paul that suggested it in the first place. Because I called Paul and I said ‘Hey, they want me to change my name? What do you think?’ And he was like ‘You know, you have to pick something that is near and dear to his heart.’ And he was like ‘His dog’s name is Ruckus, or Rumpus.’ I think he had two dogs at a time. ‘But what about Kenny Rumpus? Kenny Ruckus?’ I’m like no. And then I had, I was Kamikaze Ken when I started in the indies, and I had these like backwards K’s. And I wanted to sort of like keep that as my logo. And I was like something with a K and he was like ‘Kennedy is his middle name.’ And then I remember when we were in that room, and I said that they just pause for a minute it was [Vince saying] ‘Oh, I don’t think there’s ever been a Kennedy. Do you like it?’ And I was like ‘I liked Ken Anderson to be honest with you, but you call me Mr. Dickhead if you want to. It’s your company.’ And he just kind of smirked and then he looked at Kevin Dunn, and he goes, ‘Make sure he’s got Kennedy on his TitanTron tonight.’ That was, that was the second week. That was the week that I did do it on SmackDown. So the first two weeks that I was there on TV I was Anderson.”

On losing the Money in the Bank briefcase:

Yeah, the idea was that I would cash it in next year’s Wrestlemania. That was the plan, I announced it right away I believe, and that was the plan. And then a few months later, I feel like I only had it a month and a half, two months maybe, and they came to me. I was riding with Matt Hardy. We left the building early, which was unlike us, we usually stayed until the very end, for whatever reason that day, we left early. And I got a call from Michael Hayes. And he said ‘Where are you guys? I need you to come back. Vince needs to talk to you in his office. So I like scurried back to the building and I was walking into his office. And by the time we got back there, everybody had pretty much filed out, so it was an empty building. And I remember Batista coming out of Vince’s office, and we passed each other in the hall. And he just came up to me and he gave me a big hug. And he was like ‘You deserve it bro.’ And I you know, I played stupid, I was like, what do you mean? What do you mean? He was like just, you know, go in there, I want them to tell you. So I went in, it was Vince and Stephanie. And they said, Look, we had planned on having Taker as the champion for like, a really long time. Unfortunately, he’s injured and tore his biceps, I believe, and he needs to have surgery. So we’re going to next week, and he laid out the scenario, and he’s like, you’re gonna cash in your briefcase, we’re gonna have a new champion. And I remember him telling me that they were high on Batista at the time, that was their guy. And that, if Batista [was champion] you know, sometimes guys are better when they’re chasing the title. When they have it, they kind of like their ratings kind of dip. And they felt like the Batista needed to chase for a while and they said, you know ‘When we feel the time is right, we’re going to put it on Batista. But we don’t know how long that could be. It could be like a month or five months or six months, whatever.’ And I remember I just said, like, ‘Look, I appreciate you guys saying that. But this is business and I’ll do what’s necessary.’ And then the very next time I wrestled, I got clotheslined, and I hit the mat, and I felt something popping in my triceps. I rolled out to the floor, and I remember Finlay came over, he looked at me, he goes, ‘It doesn’t look good. And by the time I got downstairs it was already, my arm was swollen up. I couldn’t bend it. It was starting to change colours already, which is really weird because bruising normally takes like a week, like those deep bruises. And then I went to [hospital] I remember Hornswoggle drove me to the emergency room in Erie, Pennsylvania. I got an MRI. And then the next day Stephanie called me in my hotel room and she’s like, ‘Ken you tore your triceps off the bone. We’re gonna have to, we still need to get that title off of Taker though. So we’re sending this jet to pick you up. We’re gonna take you to Penn State, Edge is going to challenge you for the briefcase, and then he’s gonna go on and do what you’re supposed to do tomorrow night. Okay, and I remember thinking at the time like I got a year to cash this thing in isn’t there some other way that you can get it off him? But I didn’t say it. I sort of regret not saying it now. But. And then I went in, Edge called me a chicken. I said, ‘Nobody calls me chicken.’ And gave up the briefcase. The next day, I flew to Birmingham, Alabama, I’m sitting on Doc Andrews table, and he’s feeling my triceps and he was like, ‘That’s not a tear.’ And I was like ‘Excuse me?’ And he goes, ‘I don’t I don’t feel a tear.’ And there’s not a tear there, I’m pretty sure. So we did another MRI and sure enough, it was just a bruise. It was like a large bunch of blood vessels burst inside my triceps and he said you’ll be out for four or five weeks. And that was kind of a crazy.”

On if winning the TNA World Title feels like being on the top of the mountain:

“No, no, I think, you know, and that’s nothing against TNA, but like they just were not the same. It wasn’t the same and, but it’s okay. Like, I’m not, you know, not crying in my oatmeal about it, like, it is what it is, we gotta move on. But yeah, I do have some regrets for sure.”

On WWE reaching out as Ken Anderson was making a name for himself in TNA:

“I had heard from somebody in the office that Vince had said, I think he regretted pulling the trigger so quickly on firing me. And I probably should have, like, reached out at the time, but I had such a huge chip on my shoulder. I had a chip on my shoulder for years from, you know, the way that I left WWE and and you know, today I will say honestly, like, that was all my fault. Like I am, I am responsible, nobody did anything to me, I did it to myself. So you know, it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back there at the end. But  I heard that and then at some point, I cut a promo and I remember Randy Orton texting me and saying, like that was an awesome promo. But I believe he was being serious. I don’t think it was him being sarcastic.”

On being Eddie Guerrero’s last ever opponent:

“I remember him telling me to calm down in the beginning, there was some, we did some chain wrestling. I remember I was scrambling to get to the ropes quickly to break. And I remember him telling me like, just calm down, like, you don’t have to go so quickly there. And then I remember, we were talking through the match, I’m supposed to hit him with the chair at the end, and I remember he’s like ‘Bring it. Hit me with it.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna hit you with it.’ And then I hit him with it. And we got backstage and he was like ‘Maybe a little too much.’ But then we went out to dinner that night, I was riding, I was actually writing with him and Benoit at the time, and we went to a steakhouse. And I remember they were talking because the next week after, it was like a super show in Minneapolis. It was Raw and SmackDown, I’m not sure if ECW was around at the time yet. But it was going to be a Raw SmackDown Super Show and then we were heading to the airport, we were going to fly out and doing my first international tour. They were like, you know, you’re gonna get [pranked] they’re gonna mess with you. They’re gonna shave your eyebrows while you’re sleeping. You know, stuff like that, get me all riled up. And then I remember, I pulled into the arena. And the guy that parks the cars that helps park all the vehicles told me, he’s like Eddie died. And I walked into the building. And it was just like this crazy, sick feeling that everybody had all day. Everybody was super sombre and sad It was, it was a crazy, crazy day.”

On one of his biggest regrets:

“And one of my biggest regrets was WrestleMania 23. After I won that Money in the Bank briefcase, Michael Hayes came up to me, he goes, ‘They want you to cut a promo afterwards. And they want it to be an Austin 3:16 moment.’ And I was like, I’m gonna say it. And I’m gonna hit the line. ‘Nice guys. Thank God I am an asshole.’ And l walk off. And I remember, right, I better just ask [permission], And so I asked permission. And of course, at the time, there was no swearing, no cursing, but it was WrestleMania, I thought I could get away with it. And I would have gotten away with it too. But I asked permission and they said no. And so you know it’s the worst thing like if you ask for permission, but they said no, you can’t do it.”

On what he is grateful for:

“A partner that I have who supports me in everything I do, 2 awesome kids and I have had these experiences and can pass them on to other people.”

Featured image: Wikipedia

The quality of your life is the quality of the questions that you ask. I’m so pumped to be able to connect with you one-on-one for this solo episode. I feel so incredibly fortunate to be able to spend the last 17 years working as a TV Host and Entertainment Reporter and talking to some of the biggest stars in the world like The Rock, Oprah Winfrey, John Cena, Leonardo Di Caprio, Julia Roberts and so many others. I learned that if you ask better questions, you get better answers. And that doesn’t just apply to the questions that you ask of others; it is most important for the questions that you ask of yourself!

Why you should ask better questions:

Tony Robbins says that the quality of your life is the quality of the questions that you ask. So for the last 17 years, I have been so fortunate to work as a TV host and an entertainment reporter. I have shared conversations with people like The Rock, Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey, Adam Sandler, Julia Roberts, Ryan Reynolds, and so many others! I have learned quickly that if you ask better questions, you get better answers.

Where it all began:

I have always been a naturally curious person. Maybe you can relate to this. If you can’t relate personally then you definitely know somebody who is like this. I was that annoying kid who was like why/ Why is that? Why why why? Until you’re parents are like ‘Just because! OK!’ I got obsessed also with the word how, how do things work? I was the kid who would take their pen apart during class and I would be like ‘Oh there is a spring in here. If I stretch the spring, my pen now clicks faster.’ I’m sure you can relate to this, I like to call it conscious curiosity. It is this general wonder of who, what, where, when, why and how? That curiosity that I had as a kid, it really grew and it lead me to what I am doing now here on TV, YouTube and on the podcast. I have told this story several other times and I am sure you have heard it, but basically I talked my way into getting my first TV shop. I kind of lied my way into it. Basically I was like ‘Hey I’m going to be in town next Thursday, if you have some time can I come and maybe talk to you about the job?’ It worked, and here I am now because it worked. 

Do you enjoy your job:

It’s amazing to me, because as kids we are always asked the same question, and you know the question, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And there is this general attitude of we encourage kids to dream as big as possible. Then this strange thing seems to happen. When we “Grow up” because none of us have really grown up and figured this out, but the question becomes ‘So what do you do?’ It shifts from what do you want to be to what do you do? And you can define by this job that you have, and for so many people it is not a job that you enjoy doing. 

What are you waiting for:

I want to ask you a different question, ‘When did your journey begin?’ It’s not the day that you were born, but when did you get on that path that you are on now, and is it really your path that you are on? If it is not the path you want to be on, what are you doing to really get back to the things that juice you and really fulfill you every single day. It’s really important to not just ask great questions of other people, but so important to start with yourself. A big question that you should be asking yourself right now is what are you waiting for? There is no such thing as the perfect time. For me, I realized in my senior year at college at 21 years old that after graduation, we were going to have to work for the rest of our lives. I was having the best time of my life in college, I was living with my 4 best friends and we would decide whether we would sleep in or go to class or drink beer. I asked myself in this moment, I asked myself if I would be happy waking up and going to a job I don’t enjoy for the next 40 or 50 years. Then more importantly, if I settle for a job now that has decent pay and benefits, am I going to be happy in 40 or 50 years knowing that I could have tried harder and could have pushed more in my 20s and 30s. If somebody out there is doing what you want to do, I know it makes some people jealous, but it makes me pumped up! It makes me pumped up knowing that the path has been carved by that person and I can reverse engineer my way back from there. 

A lesson from Oprah Winfrey:

I do think that social media is the worst for this. It shows the highlight reels of people’s lives and so rarely shows the bumps in the road. So if the quality of your life is the quality of the questions that you ask, what are the questions that you are asking of yourself? I heard a great story that Oprah sets an intention for every interview. In the green room beforehand, she would ask the person ‘What is the intention for this interview? What do you want people to feel about you once this interview is done?’ And now she is not doing as many interviews, she sets an intention for every meeting that she is in. At the start of every interview she asks ‘What is our intention? What do we want to achieve when it is done?’ From that I take the idea that it is so important to have a vision and a clarity and an intention for your life. 

What is your intention:

What if you started asking those questions of yourself? What is my intention for today? What is my intention for this week, this month or this year? What is my intention for this event I am walking into, this interview that I am doing, this meeting I am having? The reason why I ask people at the end of every interview what they are grateful for is 1) I am genuinely interested to hear what they are grateful for, but 2) I want people who are listening to go ‘Oh my gosh. That person who is so successful and has it all is grateful for things like their health and family. I can be grateful for those things too.’

Be grateful for what you do have:

I learned that it is impossible to be simultaneously angry and grateful. If you are angry, maybe focus on the things that you do have, instead of the things that you don’t have. And start asking better questions, of others of course, but mostly of yourself.

Harrison Rogers (@harrisonjrogers) is the CEO and Founder of Freedom Fight Night. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about the next event with Team Tito Ortiz vs. Team Ryan Bader on July 15 in Mesa, AZ. He also talks about why he started Freedom Fight Night, his love of MMA, the biggest lessons he has learned as an entrepreneur and much more!

On Freedom Fight Night:

“We are having our first Freedom Fight Night in Arizona. We had our first one in Miami and it was a blast. Some of my friends and family were frustrated because they were like ‘Why did you do it across the country?’ So we are bringing it home:

On being a fight promoter:

“It evolved and it is still evolving. It started out as trying to figure out how to be in politics without being some fundraiser guy. Being in the private sector, one of my passions is MMA. I am not a fighter but a lot of our audience in the MMA world want to be involved in politics but they don’t know where to begin. It seems like MMA is the only sport that has not moved into the woke movement. So let’s see if we can evolve this and move it into other sports and have a good time promoting fights.”  

On the big names at Freedom Fight Night One:

“Yeah it was surreal. Watching these big names I saw growing up like Frank Mir, Tito Ortiz, Rampage Jackson, Evander Holyfeld came too. How did this happen?”

Where it all began for Harrison Rogers:

“I grew up sucking at formal education, I dropped out of high school in my junior year to start my first business cleaning carpets. Over the summer of my junior year, it got that busy that I could either be in the formal high school class and not succeed, or I can pursue this and make some money. So I grew the business enough so that I was busy and the rest is history.”

On what was next:

“I sold my carpet cleaning business in 2007, right before the market crashed, to go on a missionary mission. The problem is I parlayed the proceeds into real estate. I came back from the mission and had a heart attack at 19, it was a birth defect. I didn’t have any money because I had no business, so I had to start from scratch.”

On what scratch was:

“Well I got married, I met my wife shortly after I got back. Then I took out as many student loans as possible and enrolled in the cheapest online college that we could find, because then you can max out the student loans. We did that, and after paying for the tuition costs, we had about $6,000, and I traded that in currency. I got really good at figuring out how political announcements would affect currency, so how it would affect the dollar against the euro. So I did a lot with the euro and dollar, the euro was tanking because of the situation with Spain. I loved speculating with the markets, so I said if I have extra time, I am going to help my sister and mom, my sister has extreme autism. So I got a contract with Arizona to provide these services, being able to pay providers a good wage, you get the best of the best.”  

On dream partners for Freedom Fight Night:

“Well Frank Mir has been an incredible partner. Not only does he know so much of the MMA world, he is our host and commentator. So many people that don’t know MMA listen to him and he is educating them on the moves. But right now, I would love to have a Joe Rogan or an Elon Musk supporting this.”

On his favorite MMA fight:

“Just because of what it did for the sport, I think the Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar fight. I wish I could say something before then but I am not an OG.”

On future Freedom Fight Night Plans:

“I want to say that nothing is set in stone, but in October on Freedom Fight Night 3, Tito Ortiz wants to do his final fight. It’s weird growing up with all these legends, and now to have them on a card that I am promoting, it’s fun.”

On what he is grateful for:

“My family, a loving creator and the opportunity I have right now.”

Featured image: PR Newswire

Peter Avalon (@pavalon) is a professional wrestler known for his time in AEW, TNA and Championship Wrestling From Hollywood. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at his house in Burbank, CA to talk about his current status with AEW, how Tony Khan came up with his character “The Librarian”, working his first match for NJPW Strong, why he feels wrestling is like The Muppets Show, how he started training actor David Arquette to be a wrestler and much more!

On Peter Avalon doing acting:

“I’m trying to do more and more. I just got myself a little commercial agent and I am working on getting myself some more agents. I just did a film and a music video with Jacob Sartorius. He is a very talented young man and he is big on Tik Tok, millions of followers. I am just trying to stay busy while also still wrestling. I am still with AEW, [also] booking, writing and appearing on Championship Wrestling, which we do every month at the Irvine Improv. Then I am doing GCW with my man Ray Rosa, Prestige Wrestling, we have Epic Pro Wrestling coming up. There is a lot of stuff, I am very active, very busy and a lot of fun.”

On still being in AEW:

“You can see me and [Ryan] Nemeth and the rest of the wingmen, Cezar and JD, we are usually main-eventing Dark. Weird how it works out where people wonder where we are at, we are not on the flyers or any of the advertising. Hell, it’s hard, they don’t even post any of our pictures on Green Fly. But it’s funny that we will main event most episodes of Dark and we are now 0 and 672 to The Dark Order and to The Best Friends. We are doing really well against both teams.”

On the fans’ reaction when Peter Avalon said he was taking bookings:

“It’s weird in wrestling when people in wrestling, you know, whatever. [They] Start to think of ideas and [makes confused face. Chris mentions it is the fans who think that]. Yeah, that’s what I mean. But it means that I am still there, I am doing more things and there is more to life than Dynamite and Rampage. I’ve been in Dynamite since day one, and they are doing their thing so I am going to do my thing.”

On multiple stars in AEW taking other bookings:

“It’s beautiful for Tony to let us do that and expand our horizons while still being able to work at AEW. It’s great, shoutout to Tony for that.”

On Peter Avalon’s initial name:

“I wanted to be Prince Peter Avalon. I wanted to write myself as a Spaniard prince and put a little italic over one of them. It was a little idea I had for Hollywood that I never ran with.”

On possibly teaming with Aaron Stevens in Championship Wrestling from Hollywood:

“Funny you should say that. He was writing the show before I took over. So that’s fun. We are both handsome and stunning.”

On The Librarian gimmick:

“That is all Tony, it’s Tony Khan’s idea. I had Cody when he was there and it was when AEW was still an idea that people were talking about. I had a DM from him after working at Championship Wrestling. He DM’d me saying ‘Hey. Hold whatever date in May.’ It ended up being the first Double or Nothing. May 25th, hold that date. So I said OK. So at a bar wrestling show at The Bootleg we are downstairs and I think The Bucks came, Chris Daniels maybe, Scorpio Sky was booked. And they all just started telling me this idea about The Librarian, and it was Tony’s idea. After then explaining it to me and after Tony explained the idea, we thought that the only person that could get this over and play this well is Peter Avalon. I said oh thank you. So they explained the idea and they explained this and they filmed a bit for BTE and then it was kind of off to the races. They would still kind of describe what the character was going to be as time went on. So the idea that Tony wanted was that he wanted a librarian, it was a character that got heat by saying shush to everyone, I work at the library. And that was pretty much the gist of the idea. The Bucks wanted to do a take on it where I am Peter Avalon and I am going to take this dumb part because I want my foot in the company by any means necessary. So we are kind of acknowledging that this gimmick is dumb but I am going to do it because I want the job. We then kind of played it like that on BTE. Ultimately I just kind of became a librarian and started to believe it. Then the team with Brandon happened and then the split happened.”

On Leva Bates being The Librarian as well:

“That was also just kind of done on the fly. I was under the idea that I was going to be the only librarian. I was under the idea that I was going to be The Librarian on BTE, and then they did this thing where there was going to be a contest where people could send in promos to become The Librarian. They kind of told me that it was going to happen and that they had an idea for 2 librarians. I am like hey whatever, I’m down for whatever. I am professional Peter Avalon and I can make anything work. Especially anything silly. So whatever, these promos happen and Leva’s naturally gains traction, she is good at what she does, she is a natural entertainer and she is good. So now she wins the contest and we are partnered together and here we are today. It was kind of written as we went on, and it was a lot of my own brainchild of trying to think of what to say. Tony wanted it to be very Lanny Poffo, but I didn’t just want to be a direct Lanny Poffo. Maybe I won’t do poetry, let me dive in and actually see what a librarian actually does. I know he is not someone who just reads books, a librarian just doesn’t read books, he is Google before Google. You go and talk to him and you can find out information or he can point you in the right direction. So that’s what I will do, I will spit facts. So maybe I will find some sports facts and start reciting some facts. So that became my fame for a little bit as I come out and try to take the little jabs at the sports teams. I had Jenn Sterger there at the time, she was my clue in to anything that was sports related. She knew her stuff man. I would be like ‘OK, where are we at? What team?’ And she was hammering off like current stuff like ‘This guy is this, this guy is injured…’ I’m like sh*t I don’t know any of this stuff. I don’t give a sh*t I am not an NFL or an NBA guy. So she helped my big time with those promos.”

On the crowd loving to shush:

“They did, I still get shushed. My match with Sonny Kiss at Fight For the Fallen was the first time that I got to actually wrestle as The Librarian. I just remember, and again, everything was just done on the fly. Nothing has been hammered out, I am getting my reps in on air as The Librarian and what this character is. I have nothing written down. So this is kind of before I started doing the shush schtick before I started walking down to the ring. So now I have no idea what I am going to do as The Librarian, transitioning from Professional Peter at the Hollywood show, then being Producer Peter at my Arizona show, those are 2 separate characters. Then I was still doing the stripping PPRay act, which is a completely separate character. So now I have a fourth character that I have to develop and I don’t know what it is. So I come out to just silence. I have the mic, they wanted me to say something to get to Sonny’s entrance, and I am getting booed the entire way down. I am like hell yeah this is awesome, this feels good. They are booing the hell out of me and I didn’t have the music, they just had the Titantron that said ‘Quiet in the library.’ Me and Leva just paused at the top of the ramp and continued down. Boos, heavy boos, I’m like yes this is great, this is working. I get in the ring, look at the hard cam and give them one lone shhh. And they are then booing the hell out of me and I am like this is great, this feels so good. Me and Sonny have a nice little 5 minute match. I think it was a good pre-match, we didn’t overstay our welcome. But Sonny comes out with a little song and dance number, fun little match, Sonny wins, we go home. Everyone is awake and goes into the pay-per-view excited, which is the point of a pre-match. Then when I got to the back, Tony was ecstatic, he was so stoked. He was behind the desk going ‘Peter that was great! Peter Avalon Championship Wrestling from F’in Hollywood! My man, that was wonderful. Hell yeah, great job great job!’ He’s telling me how great I did and he is putting over Championship Wrestling, hey thanks for watching. He was so stoked that it went so well, and I was so stoked that it went so well. It just had a natural, people had the natural inclination to boo this. ‘Don’t tell me to be quiet.’ And they did [boo me] and it was great.”

On Chad Gable also shushing people:

“I got quite a few [texts]. I would get tagged on social media. I’m like what is this and then it’s like ohh. [Puts thumb up] Good for you Chad. [Chris mentions Peter Avalon did it first] That’s right, I’m the shush man.”

On who helped Peter Avalon get his foot in the door:

“It was a bunch of people. I am a one of a kind character in professional wrestling. I can play one of a kind characters. It is great that people can practise their characters for so long, but I can play it with nothing, just give it to me. Like The Librarian, there was nothing given to me and I made it completely unique, so I am a one of a kind character. So it was Cody, it was The Bucks, most of the EVPs sans Kenny, he was the only one I hadn’t met. I met The Bucks in 2007, I was training at a school in Anaheim. Charles Mercury was the trainer, he is an old PWG guy. Scorpio Sky was one of my trainers, he would come through. And since they were pals with all the guys in the area, The Bucks were still coming up from time to time. They came around to roll in the ring, we also had Chris Hero, Candice LeRae, a lot of people would come through. That was how I met the bucks, they would come through training once or twice and I rolled around with them. They were like ‘This kid is talented and he wants it.’ I got to meet them for the first time and saw them wrestle at AWS nearby, this is when they were Slick Nick Jackson and Instant Replay Matt Jackson, freshly called The Young Bucks not too long ago. This was before they started working PWG too. I was at their first PWG match and I was excited for them because of the training that I had with them. Hell yeah, my pals are wrestling at Guerilla. I want to say it was Scott Lost and Chris Bosh. I am happy that they thought of me, it is one thing to say that my pals got me in, but an idea came and they all clicked in unison, Peter Avalon, immediately Peter Avalon. Yeah I had that way in, but all of their brains went into one direction.”

On call The Gunn Club “Ass Boys” before Danhausen did:

“Yeah, like way before. Me and Shawn Spears wrestled against Austin and Billy, Colten wasn’t there yet. Me being The Librarian, I got to talk on the mic, I can’t remember what I said exactly. But it was something like ‘Billy. Billy Gunn and son. What does that make you? The Ass Boy?’ There was Ass Boy chants going on and everything, it was fun. It was on Dark and it is on my Twitter. It’s alright, my cheque will come.”

On dream matches:

“Oh there are so many. Christian Cage, Ethan Page, Brian Cage, DDP. I would have loved to have wrestled Brian Cage when he was the TV champ, but who wouldn’t want to?” 

On Peter Avalon’s time in TNA:

“I loved working with Ethan Carter, EC3, he is great. He was very helpful with me, he knew what the role was, I’m there to get my ass whooped. But he wanted me to come out of it really well and he knows I’m not supposed to come out of it well. This is all for him, but he wanted to make sure that I got as much mileage as I could out of it. I think because of that, I was able to get 6 months out of it in 2013 as Norv Fernum. Jeff Jarret was the producer of most of our stuff and was behind it. But when he left, they were not as gung ho and eventually we just stopped getting used.”

On possibly competing in a deathmatch:

“That goes through my mind a lot. I think it would have to be a lot of money behind it. Seeing Pretty Peter in a deathmatch, there would have to be a big cheque for me to do it.”

On training David Arquette:

“I was the head trainer at the United Wrestling Wrestle Center that is in Oxnard when the Championship Wrestling show was filmed out there every month. I was recommended to David and then I got a phone call. I think I had a private that day, so I didn’t answer the phone until after I was done. I checked my phone, got a voicemail and I thought it was a rib. So I called him back, set up a time and he came down to Oxnard. I think he came down 2 or 3 times, the first time I made his ass puke! It was hard and it was hot in my school, the rolls make you dizzy. He then bought a ring and set it up in his backyard, so I would go to his house and train every week in his backyard.”

On what Peter Avalon is grateful for:

“My current career, my future career prospects and my bunny.”

Image credits: Instagram

Tito Ortiz (@titoortiz) is a professional mixed martial artist and a UFC Hall Of Famer. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at his house in Huntington Beach to talk about his legendary career and his rivalries with opponents like Ken Shamrock, Chuck Liddell and Guy Mezger, how he got started in UFC, the regrets he has about his relationship with UFC President Dana White, why he wants to have one more match at Freedom Fight Night, his WWE try-out, how he came up with his iconic gravedigger celebration taunt, how being a father has changed him and much more.

On celebrating his 25th anniversary in the UFC:

“I didn’t do anything too special. A few of my buddies, special force guys, we partied and did a bunch of shots. I don’t remember the end of the night but we had fun and all got home safe. It’s just one of those things where I am glad I have the fans I have. Even the ones that hate me as well as the ones that love me. The scariest ones are the ones that don’t talk about me at all.”

On right place, right time:

“We would still be sitting here. I had big dreams at a really young age. When I was 8 or 9, I had the dream of being on a red carpet, back then they didn’t have red carpets. This might have been God guiding me. But things didn’t come easy, the harder I worked, they did come. I just put my time into eat, sleep, train and compete. Before that I knew that there was something I was going to do, whether it was a professional wrestler or boxer. By accident, MMA came about. I fought on UFC 13 in 1997 and I fought for free, no other UFC fighter has ever fought for free, I just did it to see how good I could be. I was training with tank Abbot at the time and asked him to give me a fight. So I fought on May 30th 1997 and stopped the guy in 22 seconds. I visualise myself in the finals, and the guy who was in the finals got hurt, so I was the replacement. I was fighting Guy Metzger in the finals and got caught up in the guillotine, I didn’t know what that was at the time. I had to tap but I was hooked. As a kid growing up on the streets, I was always dying for the attention. I had no idea what I was getting into, but this was the making of Tito Ortiz.”

On going into the UFC:

“I was really nervous. My high school wrestling coach fought in the UFC and got elbowed in the head and knocked out, they had to do a skull reconstruction. It put the fear in me that you can get hurt but that put the fire in my heart. I was like you know what, I better train hard. I was training 3 times a day, 6 days a week and training hard for the fight. So when I did come about on May 30th, I had the mentality of being a shark and got to pace about, eat before you get eaten.”

 On Tito Ortiz’s first sport:

“The first sport was wrestling. My freshman year I walked in and asked where is the ring? Back in the day, I thought it was real and until I got into wrestling I didn’t know the difference. But fast forward 26 years and I end up going to the WWF training facility and worked there for 2 weeks. I got to see how hard it truly was. You know what, they say it is not real. The outcome is predetermined, but the stuff they go through, they are true athletes and I have respect for each and every one of them for what they have done. But I found my happy medium with MMA, boxing of Muhammad Ali and Hulk Hogan in WWF. I got to have that aspect in MMA. people call it cockiness and I call it confidence. I has the bleach blond hair and the flames on my shorts that people were attracted to.”

On being a personality:

“They didn’t really have that at the time, there was only a little bit of that with Tank. I had that championship mentality because of wrestling. You know, hard work, dedication, sacrifice and discipline. You will either be a victor or a victim and I worked super hard to be a victor and my kids see that. My kids have watched me evolve as a fighter and a businessman and as a father and a man in general. I am handing down these qualities to my kids, the sacrifice and the discipline I had in my career.”

On Tito Ortiz’s father figure:

“Oh wow. I had a couple of them I had a teacher Tom Wyneham, who helped me out in high school a lot. Prior to that there were some guys that I fished with in Newport Beach. But I never had one I just took little things from each of them. I had a stepdad during high school that always told me what not to do. But there was never a positive grab and a hug and a ‘I love you son.’ I never had that so I want my kids to have that. It is something that all men need. It is not easy to be a parent, but it is my choice.”

On not spoiling your kids when you can give them everything:

“Now see this is one of the things that people, and I get that the government have softened everyone up in the last 30 years. A lot of parents have done this with iPads, cell phones and videogames, which is their get away from me time. That sounds harsh, but I be a parent that is responsible for my kids and their future. So I want to make sure that their education is important and that they work hard. I don’t give them everything, but they can have everything. When they get straight A’s and do their chores, they can have what they want. Since 4 years old they have never had a cell phone or an iPad, I want them to be socially acceptable to other people.”

On the trash talking with Ken Shamrock getting personal:

“After the third fight we got a little closer to each other. A few years later we met up and now we are cool. That was the only trilogy in the UFC that I did that was honest. [Chris asks about Chuck Liddell] No that was all fabricated, he sold out.”

On speaking with Chuck Liddell now:

“I think the last time I saw him was in Vegas. It was a ‘what’s up?’ and that was about it.”

On fighting Alberto Del Rio:

“Yeah we fought for belts. I put my UFC belt on the line against his WWE belt. I got it and I told my kids I was going to win it for them, they are huge fans of WWE. they walked out with me and I told them I would give them an extra $50,000 if we made it past the first round. We got about 2 minutes in so I’m like it’s time to turn this up. So I got him on his back and rear naked choke. He trained with Ryan Bader in Arizona, I called Ryan because we fought each other. I asked Ryan how he was doing and he said ‘Tito, just train. Train as hard as you can and you won’t have a problem.’ And that was a bit more motivation, I put in 20 weeks, more than I ever have in my life. My cardio was impeccable and I wish that I did that earlier in my career. But now I relaize that my body can sustain a lot more damage and I just pushed through it.”

On cutting 40lbs in a month:

“No lifting. All I did was cardio, mat work, bag work and sparring. We are talking 2,000 calories a day, that’s nothing. On a normal camp I am eating 4,500 just to maintain.”

On boxing again:

“Maybe if I box someone at my level. Anderson Silva is a lot more advanced than me. In MMA it was all about aggression, but boxing is like chess, you have to sit back and play the game. There are a lot of things that are very methodical.”

On getting into wrestling:

“So I went to I think it was WrestleMania 34 or 35 when they came to Anaheim [Chris corrects Tito Ortiz that it was WrestleMania 2000] Right and they had the ladder match that day. It was The Hardy Brothers vs. The Dudley Brothers. They went to interview me like a normal interview, but they wanted to see what kind of personality I have. I wish I had known that because I would have really sold myself way better. I think I was too mellow, they wanted to see crazy. And I didn’t know that, I was very polite and respectful and never heard anything back. In 2019 Shane McMahon reached out and said ‘What do you think about coming in?’ So I went for a try-out, went and did it, and I didn’t think about it but they wanted someone that is over the top. Not crazy, but an eye catcher. I went to the PC and trained with Norman Smiley, amazing teacher, and learned things that normally take 6 months to learn. But then nothing came of it.”

On his brief stint in TNA:

“Yeah I did a little bit of TNA and it was fun as an enforcer, but I wanted to do some matches. I think I have what it takes and it would be a lot of hard work. I did the 2 weeks of training twice a day, it was hard, like being in college wrestling again. I had no pain after, I’ve had 4 neck surgeries.”  

On the gravedigger celebration:

“So I had just win my first World Title at a Mui Thai event and this guy from Thailand came out and did a gravedigger before the match. I am like I am stealing that. This was in 2000, I fought Evan Tanner, did it and it just blew up from there.”

On his relationship with Dana White:

“Yeah I made a mistake a while back I said that I will never fight again for the UFC and I think he is holding me to that. I wish he would get over the hard feelings but that is life.”

On what he is grateful for:

“Happy family, being a hard worker and knowing that nothing can break me.”

Featured image: Bleacher Report

Chris Van Vliet is interviewed by Stu Massengill (@stumassengill) on the podcast “Finding Direction”. Stu works for Tony Robbins as a National Trainer and Peak Performance Strategist. He is also a master interviewer and asks me some amazing questions which leads to me talking about a lot things that I’ve never opened up about publicly. We talk about how you can create your own path by being in the right place at the right time, how you can start and grow as a content creator, the biggest lessons learned from interviewing A-List celebrities like The Rock, Tom Cruise and Oprah Winfrey, why it’s important to bet on yourself and much more.

Who is Chris Van Vliet:

“I am a television host, content creator I think that’s what the new title is. I have a podcast you can listen to called Insight. But I am fascinated with telling people stories, way too often we see the finished product and we don’t see the process along the way. That is what the podcast is about and what the YouTube channel is about. I then put the clips on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter… I hope through all of that people can find my content.”

On the early years:

“The term content creator did not exist. I grew up in Canada east of Toronto in a town called Pickering. I was just fascinated with broadcasting, I had a Fisher Price tape recorder with actual tapes, and I would pretend to be the radio host that I heard on the radio. So I was 4 years old when this all started talking into the microphone and I loved the idea of performing. Whether it was in plays or doing the morning announcements, I loved the idea of having a mic in my hand and getting a reaction out of the audience. We had a mini TV studio in my high school and we would produce segments and take it in turns on the positions. We would go from VTR to camera to audio to floor director to on air talent.”

The next steps:

“So when it came time to pick a major at 17 years old, which is crazy, well communications study was fun, and that was where the process began for me. I dipped my toe in and tried to get a job in television. It hit me in high school that we had to go to work for the rest of our lives, which was when I decided I didn’t want to hate work. I reached out to every TV and radio station to get some experience and that was where my journey began. I reached out to every station to just hope that they would see some value in me.”

On how anyone can make it happen:

“We are now living in a world where anything is monetizable in some sort of way, which is incredible. The internet existed when I was in college, but now it is on a different scale. I would say to lean in on what you are passionate about, but don’t quit your job right away. Start off by doing this in your free time, a lot of people pull shoot way too early by getting out of the job that is paying them. I love diving in to things, but you need to make sure that you pay your bills. Also, bring value to whatever you are doing. What can you bring? In most cases this will be time, which you can exchange for experience. A lot of people want to be paid, but you can exchange this for experience that will get a high paying job later on.”

Right place right time:

“Think about all the different scenarios in the world. You can see where people are speaking or doing boom tours, put yourself in the way. I can’t guarantee that it will work, but put yourself in the room and see what happens from there.”

From broadcasting to YouTube:

“I had a realisation when I was working at MTV 2 in Canada. The old model of broadcasting was that if you are watching this channel at this day and time, then you won’t see it. At the time I was interviewing bands with huge followings, but they wouldn’t see it because they didn’t live in Canada. So I started taking those and putting them on a random YouTube channel without my name. I just put the interviews up there and it got 1000’s of views, so it was like OK, now this is shifting. So I created this channel with my name and did the big interviews with names like Tom Cruise and Anne Hathaway, they would go on my channel after they aired and I hoped that people would appreciate it. Some of the Twilight interviews blew up and some of the Marvel interviews did really well. This was when I realized something was going on here. So then I was like well what if I went to this show or this convention, which no one was really doing at this time, so I was ahead of the curb.”

On creating connections:

“I knew I had access to some of the back channels that people wouldn’t think of. So for example, Chris Jericho, who I am a huge fan of, wasn’t doing a lot of wrestling at the time in 2012. He was on tour with his band Fozzy. I was like well if I can get in touch with the venue to talk about the tour, maybe the venue can put me in touch with the tour manager who can set this up. It was like I was opening the third door before I knew what that was. I would also send emails with people who my guest might be friends or colleagues with, so that they would go ‘Oh he has interviewed them, I will do it too.’”

On how to be a content creator:

“This is so actionable, I love it. Number one is to get comfortable on camera and with your voice. The rest of the world hears you like this, it is how you sound. We have our smartphones, it is easy to get comfortable on camera. When I started, there were actual cameras with tapes. Number two is to just start, too many people put too much into backgrounds, lights and cameras, just start. Take all of the entry barriers away and think about the equipment 5 episodes from now. Look at Mr Beast’s first few videos, they are awful, you just need to start. Thirdly, figure out how you can become an expert on this thing and dial this niche in. Niche down on that niche and become the person people go to for that.”

On being consistent:

“I think you have to be consistent. A lot of people fail because they are not consistent. There is this stat that 80% of podcasts start after just 7 episodes. Just be consistent, one video a week on YouTube every Tuesday, make that commitment that it will go out no matter what. Also, find someone in your space that is crushing it and reverse engineer it. Maybe they are at step 63 and you are at step 2, go back from 63, 62 and so on. Number 3, find people who are the same size and collaborate with them, once you grow with them, you can all collaborate and grow together.”

Frank Mir (@thefrankmir) is a former 2-time UFC Heavyweight Champion. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at the Blue Wire Studios in Las Vegas to talk about his legendary career, being part of Freedom Fight Night, his fights with Brock Lesnar, Junior dos Santos, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Tim Sylvia and others, his daughter Bella Mir’s MMA career, his recent boxing match against Kubrat Pulev, his time working as a bouncer at Spearmint Rhino, what he thinks about Jake Paul’s boxing career and much more!

On how Frank Mir’s workouts have changed compared to when he was in the UFC:

“They are more specific, way different. I think before I wasted a lot of time training like a strength athlete when I was lifting weights or trying to be a marathoner while doing cardio. How I explain it now is that a UFC athlete is like being a decathlete. You can’t sit there and put on 10lbs so you can throw something harder. Yes you can, but then you are going to screw up your time on the 1,500. When you go from one area you take from another, so there is a lot about being specific but it’s the basics of everything. So when people watch me lift weights they might be like ‘Is this it?’ But then we go and roll and then we will spar. If you have a 2 hour workout that’s great but what are your goals here? Are you trying to be overall stronger or lift more on the bench?”

On how UFC fighters have changed:

“Well yeah at the time our fitness was like that. A lot of my workouts looked like bodybuilder workouts. I got really into the strongman competitor workouts, which I look like now but not lifting as intensely. There is only so much you can take, can lift and only so much sleep that you can get. Once a week I will lift heavy, and then the rest of the time I go pretty light. I try to go for form and function, one day could be a 50 rep day. We don’t lift that heavy just to get the blood flowing and the body to heal. Then there are some heavy days with 3 reps, but than can wreck your nervous system.”

On the fight where it all came together for Frank Mir:

“You know, the Ceick Kongo fight gave me a lot of understanding of going back and forth from fighting to submissions. You can see how quickly I can transition in the fight. I used to train an hour and a half of boxing, then wrestling, then Muay Thai. I used to train on takedowns, but the quicker you take them down, the quicker they stand up. We used to have sparring sessions, but with the 8oz puffy gloves, which are softer, and headgear. I make my daughter wear the headgear too. But I would do striking rounds and sparring rounds, but never do actual MMA rounds.”

On his daughter Bella being an undefeated champion:

“I mean nothing is certain right, you know, apart from death and taxes. But I would put Bella being an undefeated champion at number 3.”

On Bella being in the UFC:

“If she wanted to then she would be there right now. But we held back in July as she was only 17, she had 2 pro fights but I wanted her to take her time. She would probably jump into it now, but I want her to follow college. She is a National Champion and 4 time state champion, she wants to pursue wrestling in the Olympics, she is taking on freestyle now.” 

On how much pressure there is for Bella:

“I wish the outside was the only pressure that there was. She puts a lot of pressure on herself and it bugs me. Sometimes I have to reign her in on that. One time she got second in the nationals, and you know, there are things I don’t understand about female athletes, things happen every month I don’t know a lot about. So I am learning about this. We didn’t understand why she was so drained, we thought it might have been a bad weight cut. We had to drag her out the bedroom and we didn’t know why. Then we saw the bloodwork and the iron was low, that was why. So I’m like ok guys, let’s chill a bit, you are the second best in the country, you lost to the best in the country. My daughter is doing kickboxing and Jiu Jitsu, there are 4 or 5 different disciplines. I don’t want her to sacrifice things to be the best at wrestling. If you are a part time wrestler, being second and having a first place, that is not the worst thing.”

On if Frank Mir has retired:

“You know my goal is just to be in the gym and to train. I like to be healthy and I like to demonstrate what I am talking about when I am coaching. I enjoy the martial arts, sparring, rolling… When I first started, no one really bragged about being a fighter, I lost more dates than I gained. When I first started dating at 21, my wife was going to leave me. I went to check my phone after the fight and she was like ‘We need to talk.’ She had no clue.”

On Frank Mir being a bouncer at Spearmint Rhino:

“I have really seen some human nature, money, drugs and sex. One guy tried to grab my suit so I put his pinky against his elbow, that probably broke. I used to do joint manipulation, but that only works on sober people. What am I going to do, break someone’s arm? I will be broke by the time all the lawsuits are done. So I quickly learned that cutting the blood off from the brain was the quickest way to get people to see things my way.”

On Frank Mir vs. Brock Lesnar 3:

“I wanted to put myself in a position of going out there and being successful, but it wasn’t in the talks. I would be game if it happened again, but it wasn’t on his radar. When you are the draw on the a side, you get to call the shots. Because of the way I responded in the second fight, he thought I was a little off.”

On Brock Lesnar:

“He is the number one rival I get spoken about the most. Casual fans of the UFC, Brock is who they are talking about. The hardcore fans, they ask me about Wanderlei Silva.”

On if he has another match in him:

“I think I will tell you that in a couple of months. When I come back from the stem cells in a couple of months I will know. If I can spar and roll around then yeah. I was only sparring hard once a week, and they would take it as a sign that I have lost my edge. But at 41 if I do everything like a 20 year old, I will never make it to that cage again. What is the benefit of that? If I’m in the gym and a 225 rep contest takes place, I just watch. I have to pullback here if I want to succeed there.”

On boxing again:

“Yeah I would want to be a part of that as I did well the first time around. I kind of regret taking the second fight but then 5 minutes later I don’t. So look man, maybe it’s growing up with video games, but sometimes there is the reset, but the health bar is low. Life doesn’t always line it all up for you and give you everything you need, you have to make it all happen.”

On the biggest lesson learned from fighting:

“Oh there are zero guarantees. There is no guarantee of victory or failure, all we can do is push the needle. If I eat right and exercise every day, will I live longer? Maybe, but there is no guarantee. The guy who invented jogging had a heart attack at 45, you can do everything right and still fail or do everything wrong and be successful. I can make sure I can push the needle to be successful, no guarantee, but I can push the needle.” 

On Jake Paul:

“You know what, after his last fight I have to give him credit. We can critique that he hasn’t fought a boxer his own size, but I am in favour of him. You talk about what we do, the fights we do in Miami, The Freedom Fight Nights, it’s about the culture. People admire people with a left side mentality. All of our children’s heroes admire LeBron James as an athlete, you then start to take on their ideals. So that being said, the identity of our youth has been lost, unless you find a youth with military aspirations, I am trying to restore that with the Freedom Fight Nights. We do have some liberals competing, but they do believe in speaking your mind. Look how many kids are getting into combat sports because of the Paul brothers.”

On what Frank Mir is grateful for:

“Family, martial arts and the people who dislike me.”

Featured image: MMA Fighting

Kia Stevens (@meanqueenk) is an actress and professional wrestler better known as Awesome Kong in AEW and TNA Wrestling and as Kharma in WWE. She joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about her recent retirement from pro wrestling and what went into that decision, her role as Tammé Dawson on the Netflix series GLOW, what inspired her to become an actress, her only match in WWE as an entrant into the men’s Royal Rumble in 2012, working for AEW, being part of the Nightmare Collective with Brandi Rhodes and much more!

On if Awesome Kong had any part in the name Awesome Kong:

“No, zero, none. My first wrestling name was Vixen, Okay. Oh my Gosh, your first wrestling persona is all the things you have built up in your mind and stole from your favorite wrestling characters. I remember at the tie Trish Stratus being the chick, and I had just gotten off this wright loss show. I had this figure going on, so I had to get this black spandex on, my hooker boots and my hair down to there and my face beat baby and coming out sweet. My booty is 100% au natural baby, there are no fillers, and I had to go out there and show it. Everyone will tell you that the first one will not work out, but all that indulgence to get out there and work through it before you get to the persona that is right to you.” 

On the reaction to the name Awesome Kong:

“I don’t know if you heard the story of my first name, it was Amazing Kong. So I am training at the new Japan Dojo in Santa Monica, and they are training me for my first show out there in Japan. Shinsuke Nakamura, when he is brand new, was there on a rotation, they would rotate some of the new boys in and out of the USA. I walk in and he points at me like ‘Amazing Kong!’ And I’m like what did you [just say?] Wait a minute, is that what they do in Japan, they just point at black people and call them Kong? You can’t do that! You are in the USA now, let me teach you some manners. Once we got the miscommunication out of the way where he showed me a magazine where there was a press conference where they had announced that Amazing Kong was coming to be the main event of that show that they got coming up. So I’m like OK, they didn’t tell me or didn’t ask me about that. They didn’t ask me how I felt about exploiting your people essentially playing a Minstrel character. But I don’t think the Japanese promoters understood the context or that this is a lot of nuance. I told them I had to think about it, I was in my apartment in Hollywood. I remember an NWA song came on, and NWA can be NWA, and I could be Karma. I could turn that into something that people would respect, so if the people are here for me, they will be sitting up straighter or respect me, because that is a name that people would respect.” 

On if Awesome Kong found wrestling or if wrestling found her:

“A little bit of both. Fast forward and I am a social worker at a facility called St. Anne’s in Los Angeles for pregnant teenagers. You know, teenagers are already volatile, you add some pregnancy hormones and oh boy! It’s a battle royale every night! We would watch wrestling in the rec room and even though they say don’t do this at home, we would emulate it. Not to the point of contact, but we would cut promos in the hall and if my favorite worker was on the tv my girls would call and I would run. It was a very fun and calming activity for the girls watching a violent show, ironic. So Tough Enough came out, the second season, and my brother in law wanted to try out for it. This was the early days of the internet, he didn’t know how to download an application. So because of where I was working, he asked me to download his application, and I printed one out for myself. So I did, read it, filled it out and sent in a tape, and they called me in for an audition. There was a line that was 2 days and the wait time was 18 hours. I was right behind Kenny King before he was Kenny King, we bonded on that day, so when his name got called I was so happy.”

On the Tough Enough audition:

“They told to us to initially that we had to come up with a promo and then we would come up with some physical stuff in the ring. Then when they had us do the physical stuff, they told us they had to do a kip up, which I had to learn what that was. This was an 18 hour process where we had to stand in the line, but it was over 2 days. So me, Kenny, a guy that looked like a rip-off of The Rock, a girl that was friends with Stacy Kiebler but had fallen out with her, I don’t know there was some drama there. My mom went with me and got all the tea from her. We went and made a trip of it and I got  a suite at Caesars Palace. So we went to my suite and we are all trying to learn the kip-up. Even though I was a big girl I was very athletic at the time, and I learned how to do it. It was hard on the abs but I got it. However, when we got in the ring, they had me do the physical stuff first, rolling around, jumping jacks, and we had to do the kip-up last. So you are blown up and then have to do this difficult move. By the time that came around, I hadn’t impressed anyone, I was a fish out of water. When it came time to do the promo, I was proud of my promo, because I had come from acting. So I can’t remember the whole promo, but the last line was ‘Hell has no fury like a woman scorned!’ I was proud of myself, but it was like crickets. All of the judges were like, we don’t know what to do with this, and JR was like ok, bye. I was like what? No, no, I’m not going anywhere! I just dragged my raggedy ass from LA and through the mountains to get here and I spent my last cheque on a suite! I put it all in because I am going to be a millionaire! I’m like you at least need to ask me one or 2 questions. JR asked me some questions, I can’t remember the first one but it was a snarky one. But then Bob Holly was there and was like ‘No I find her interesting and I want to ask her some questions.’ And then that engaged the rest of the judges, and we got to talking. JR, bless his heart at the time, it was like ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think a girl your size can make it in wrestling. You are too big to make it in wrestling and will never make it.’ I was like what?! He was like ‘You will never make it in WWE, you are too big.’ He was gracious enough to not use the word fat, but I didn’t think I was fat, I thought I was thick. I had the build back then of Megan Thee Stallion, or she has the build of me back then. But that was the fire, remember that 200 bitches hated on me back in high school. My clapback was ‘You will kneel because I am going to be your queen!’ ‘You’re gonna have to give me flowers.’ JR said that to me on national TV so I had to clap back, but we are friends today and we have reconciled.”

On interacting with JR later:

“He didn’t remember me, but had heard about it from interviews I had done. So I’m sure that people would have brought it up to him. But the first interaction was at Cauliflower Alley Club, we saw each other at CAC and he was very happy that  had proved him wrong. Not only that, but he advocated for my signing to WWE. Him, Stone Cold and Mick Foley, personally contacted Vince McMahon. They had seen my work in TNA, not only that, but WWE contacted me the year before. There was some miscommunication and I went to TNA. What happened was that everyone who sent their best matches to WWE, I was on all of their tapes. So I mean, I never reached out to WWE, I had a plan of what I was going to do. But they called me before the part of me calling them was in my plans. So every time they sent a tape in, they are like who is this?”

On the matches with Gail Kim:

“That was a spark to the inferno that is women’s wrestling. They are not just women but they are workers now doing the deal. No more popcorn underwear matches. They used to put us on second so that the people could get their popcorn. The woman are now demanding and getting more respect. Outside of Gail and I and our programme being successful, I’d like to say I had a lot of influence in women advocating for themselves, because in TNA I would not keep my mouth shut. I just couldn’t understand some of the things that were going on, that’s backwards. You can’t tell me that when Kong and Gail are on TV, and you are telling me that the numbers are spiking every night, you can’t tell me that I am not worth x amount on paper. For example, they would put you through the gauntlet and the maze of asking for a raise or to implement change. One of the times that I asked, I found out what Kurt Angle made. All I was asking for was 1/10th of what he’s making. You look in my eye and tell me that I am not worth 1/10th of Kurt Angle, if you can’t then pay me that, one or the other.”

On leaving TNA the first time around:

“There were a lot of different aspects that would snowball. It was mainly the attitude of that I couldn’t go anywhere else. I can’t remember word for word, but it was along the lines of if you quit, then don’t think that you will be on Raw on Monday, because they ain’t interested. But that wasn’t the point to me, I made big cheddar in Japan. Tokyo ain’t cheap, and Kia was living large in Japan, that kind of burned me up. When I left, I had $70 in my bank account, and they owed me money. They thought that if they starved me out, then I would shut up. But no I am from California, I will sell oranges on the freeway to make my cheddar. I will pluck some hair off of dogs and make me the finest wig! Don’t play with me and think that you got me over a barrel because of some money.”

On WWE:

“Well after losing my baby emotionally and psychologically, I was not in the place physically, emotionally and physiologically to deal with the okie doke. Now I say the okie doke, anybody who has had a WWE contract knows what that is. It is the politics, the mind games, the expectations, the standard that you have to live up to. I’m not saying that it is bad, but it is vigorous, and I wasn’t up for the okie doke. I’m not into playing games, especially with I had gone through what I had gone through. First my mother had gone, cancer, then my grandmother gone, my best friend from high school suddenly, my manager, God rest his soul, gone. Then now my baby has gone, that is a lot of death back to back. I hadn’t taken time off, I was just me being me. The day we buried my mother, I went straight to the airport for Bound for Glory. So it was working, and the way they wanted me to come back was not healthy. I was like you can bring me straight back so I can go into autopilot and work, or let me go somewhere where I can really process all of this. A lot of people like to paint WWE as the villains, but it is not as easy as that, it is very nuanced and archaic. For the most part, they were extremely supportive, they were invested in someone, excited about it, and it didn’t turn out the way that they wanted it to. And of course just my luck, Mystico had to go and fall every damn week. I’m like get it together, Triple H just got this job, you are falling and it’s not looking good right now, this sucks! At the end they asked me what do you need to come back, and I told them what I needed. It was very simple, it wasn’t money, I felt bad that they were still paying me. But no they were going to pay me, and I told them I needed to go to a facility in Colorado, because they wanted me to lose the baby weight. There is a facility where The Biggest Loser people train, it was just a coincidence. It had what I needed to get my physical and emotional wellbeing in alignment so I can go back quickly. I told them and I told them I would pay for it. They called me back and said that they were going to send me down to Florida for a while, and that’s the opposite of what I need! They send me down there to a hotel that was filled with roaches and bed bugs. They do change and send me to a nice place, but it was so not what I needed, it was never going to work.”

On Awesome Kong possibly retiring:

“It was an off and on continuously running thought in my mind. Think of Double Dutch jumping rope, you’ve got to know when to jump. You have to be at peace of knowing when to not continue. Let me put it this way, Awesome Kong retired. I think towards the end of one of the seasons of GLOW when I thought about retiring, but then I went to AEW.”

On AEW:

“AEW they love to give it to you all. They are constantly brewing up what they can do to pop it again. I love what they do to give it to the fans, it always makes you feel so good. It’s something [retirement] that has been brewing for a few years now.”

On The Nightmare Collective:

“Here’s the thing. We had a lot of leaders that have an idea and a vision, but everyone only gets a piece of that vision. Sometimes it doesn’t work. The thing is, I don’t ant to sound like I am bashing the crew over there at AEW, we were just up and running, all new executives and trying to think outside of the box and give it to you all, something new. You reference big moments in wrestling history to put something together, because we had seen it all, so we tried to give you something that you haven’t seen. For me, I felt unheard, I felt uncontrolled, I just said that I had X, Y and Z. I couldn’t get into that room where the decisions were made, and believe me I stalked that room. I would stay for the big meetings, pick up the water bottles and be like ‘anything you need?’ I tired to get into that meeting where decisions were made, but never had a chance to. After a while I am like that’s not going to happen, I’m not so pushy. It’s out of my control, if I had my control, give me 15 minutes of every show saying that this is Kia’s 15 minutes of fame! Go out there and steal the show from the boys.”

On IMPACT owning the name Awesome Kong:

“Yeah but they gave it to me. I owned it, they put me through the ringer, it’s the least that they could do, it was good karma.”

On what Awesome Kong is grateful for:

“Feeling blessed, my loved ones are in a state of health and I am not content.”

Featured image: F4WOnline