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Maxxine Dupri Wants To Win A WWE Title, Becky Lynch, Getting Engaged, LA Knight

in LATEST EPISODES on November 6, 2025 January 30, 2026

Maxxine Dupri (@maxxinedupri) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Tampa, FL to discuss getting engaged to Anthony Luke and teaming with her fiancé on WWE live events, her in-ring progression that included standout matches with Becky Lynch, working with Nikki Bella, the storyline where her late brother was brought up, dealing with criticism, and more!

On being engaged to wrestler Antony Luke:

“We have had several careers together. We’ve lived in three states. He was actually playing football for the CFL in Montreal when I got signed, and when he left for his season, we were living in Arizona, so I called him and was like, I got signed. I have to move in 30 days. I’m packing all of our stuff, and I’m moving us to Florida. So when your season’s done, you’ll be living in Florida. And he said ok.”

How he got signed:

“So the crazy part is that this was actually always his dream. He is a childhood fan. His dad is a die-hard fan. So he always knew he wanted to do this, but when I was doing it, he wasn’t ready to give up football. So when I got signed, and he kind of saw me go through my journey, and he was kind of done with the football race. He wanted to get a tryout, and I was nervous about me going to, like, Coach Bloom, or someone, and trying to get him a tryout, because I don’t know. I wasn’t sure if that would hurt him or help him. So I was like, I think that you just need to apply for a tryout. They’ll figure out we’re together. But I think you need to do this on your own. So he did it on his own. He got a tryout and got signed. Thankfully, he was already living in Orlando, and it’s been such a dream.”

On her WWE progression:

“I felt like I was swimming upstream for a long time, just like that constant treading water, just trying to stay afloat. But being on the live events has helped me immensely. Obviously, training is so important, of course, but there’s just something you can’t mimic about performing in front of a live crowd. I think for me, a lot of it is the mental side of it, I need to practice having those nerves, having things change, not having a ton of time to rehearse something or be prepared for something new I’ve never done. I was telling Coach Bloom, I said, thank you so much for putting me on this loop, because that was my first time doing a triple threat, and I’m so grateful that I got to do my first triple threat on a live event instead of on Monday Night Raw. As cool as it is to have those first experiences on Raw, there’s just so much you don’t know until you’re in it. So I’m just so grateful that I’m getting to kind of check off that checklist on live events.”

On whether she is still related to LA Knight:

“That is my brother. And you know what’s insane. I have a huge match on Monday versus Becky Lynch. And do you think my brother has called me to offer any advice or train me? No, he has not, and our mother is worried about him. He’s out here living by a new name, it’s crazy. It’s a whole thing. Like, if he would like to show up to a family reunion, we would be so happy to welcome him with open arms.”

But seriously, has there been any conversation about changing the name:

“No. I know it is kind of funny, but no, I haven’t heard anything.”

On whether she felt ready in the beginning:

“Oh, my God, no. Not even close. I’m grateful. It was an amazing opportunity and a story that I will forever love to tell. I think that I am someone that does well in sink or swim scenarios. I’m a performer. I will push through no matter what happens. But was I ready? I mean, I don’t know if I ever would say that I was ready, but it was a tricky scenario to be in.”

On dealing with criticism:

“I think I’m always criticizing myself more than anyone else is. I recognize all of it, I promise you. But I also think it’s so great to hear the praise and hear that people feel something with you, but at the same time, that can all change in the blink of an eye. At the end of the day, I’m playing a character, and I love that the character makes them feel something good or bad. If they feel something, then I’ve done my job. So I think the criticism I take is from people that I really admire and look up to, and who I know are coming from a place of love and want to see me shine and grow. And I have lots of those people in my life that I get to go to, which is so cool. I just try not to fish for any of it online.”

On working with Nikki Bella:

“Oh my goodness. It’s a dream, seriously, my Total Divas dream. I’m in the locker room with Nattie and Nikki. It’s unbelievable. It has been so fun. It was Evolution when we got to do a little spot in the ring together, me, Nattie and Nikki. And I was like, love that. It was such a cool moment. I was grateful to be a part of it. I always say, whoever said don’t meet your heroes, they never met Nikki Bella or Brie Bella, because they are 1000 times better than what I imagined. They are the most wholesome, down-to-earth, kind, loving, beautiful humans you’ll ever meet. We actually had the best time in Paris with them. Me and Jackie went out and met up with Nikki and Brie and their photographer who was with them, Claire. She’s also amazing, which is also a testament to them. Every single person that is around them, to their core, is a wonderful human. Everyone I meet, a manager, whoever, I’m like, wow, you just like, surround yourself with such amazing people. And it shines through them. But that night, I learned Brie is hilarious. If she needs a side gig, she should do comedy. I was crying laughing the whole time.”

On learning from Chad Gable:

“Oh my gosh, so much. He’s actually someone kind of what I was saying earlier, he’s a man of few words. So when he tells me something, I take it to heart, because he’s someone that can look at something creatively. Just the business, the mind he has for this business, he’s just able to zoom out and see everything and give me these pointers that I’m like, duh, why didn’t I think of that? But I would never, and he sees it so clearly. So I go to him a lot for things like that, because when it comes to matches and just his ability to understand this business truly is out of this world.”

On why she does the worm backwards:

“Okay, it’s a backwards worm because I think the first time I did it was, it might have been the six man, which is my very first match, or it may have been my singles with Valhalla. But whatever it was, that day we’re in the ring, and they were like, Okay, we think you should do the worm. And at first, I’m like, yes! I got this. I got this on lockdown, easy peasy. What I didn’t realize is the last time I’d done the worm, prior to that, was when I was a guest on Below Deck Med with my mom, and I did it in a beer suit. I was feeling good that day. We were on a boat. You know, drinks were flowing. I was feeling good. I didn’t remember that I did it backwards, because I was so good at it. So I didn’t remember that I did it backwards. Okay, I can do the worm, and I’m trying to do it forward. And, as we know, it was like a mechanical worm. I would like, drop to my knees, and that was my worm going forward. And it just got to a point where I was so embarrassed every time I watched it. I was like, this is horrific. And I know everyone says it’s endearing, it’s funny, it’s part of your character. I’m like, this is horrendous. Then I was like, I know I can do it backwards, but during that time, I was just not comfortable with my character yet. So I didn’t even feel like I was allowed to do it backwards. I think I said to Chad one time, ‘Hey, do you think if I cartwheel into it and do it backwards, I’ll get in trouble, or is that okay?’ Because it’s way better backwards. And he was like, ‘Do it you’re making it your own.’ Then I did it that way, and it was so much easier and so much better. So it was not an intentional ‘Oh, I’m gonna do this new, unique worm.’ It’s just that I truly cannot do it well forward.”

On whether she was ok with her late brother being used in storylines:

“Yes, 100%. It was that line I said, as I was the originator of the idea. So I said, we had the layout of the match where she’s going to yell at me and I’m going to walk out of the ring. And I just felt like if you want me to walk out of the ring, give me a reason to walk out of the ring. To me, I didn’t look at it as a negative towards my brother or towards my situation. To me, it felt like a positive, I get to bring light to the fact that I have a brother. To me, it was we’re gonna acknowledge someone that’s my whole world that passed away, whether she’s saying it in a negative way or positive way. To me, it was a positive. And I love Candice, she’s an angel, such a wonderful human, a wonderful mom. I don’t have anything bad to say about her.”

On her mom’s reaction:

“My mom was definitely emotional about it. But again, she wasn’t emotional that Candice said something. She just didn’t know that that was going to come up. But if I would have told her, she would feel the same way that I feel. But Mondays are crazy, you know, the day gets going, you’re busy. I forgot to give her a warning.”

On her first match with Becky Lynch:

“My first title match. And I was really excited to work Becky to feel her timing in the ring. And, of course, if you want to meet your hero, don’t meet Becky Lynch, obviously. And I came up short in that match. However, I felt like I gave her a little run for her money, and I’m facing her again on Monday, which I’m very excited for. I’m feeling like since that match, we’ve been in the Dungeon, working on a lot of things that needed to be adjusted since then, and having Nattie and TJ in there with me, just really fine tuning, filming things, watching it back, seeing like what needs to be adjusted, has been really, really important to my growth.”

On her Batista fandom:

“So [my fiance] Anthony, childhood fan. He’s loved Batista since he was like five. Like, no joke, he loves Batista. So fast forward. We start dating, this is pre-wrestling. I’m gonna say it’s like 2018, end of 2018, December, and Anthony was verified on Instagram from football, but this was before everyone was verified. It’s like, when you had a blue check, you had some finesse. And we had a great time playing around with that, because you could DM celebrities, and they would actually see it, because no one had blue check marks. So he took a video Batista bombing me at my dad’s house, and he messaged Batista and sent it to him, and he responded. Yeah, it was pretty great.”

What did he say?

“Let’s just say he was impressed. He was impressed. Okay, he may have said, ‘Why are you stealing my moves?’ [Laughs] No, it was great.”

On comparing her career to one year ago:

“I feel like I’ve grown a lot in the last year, but not just physically and not just in the ring, but like mentally. I feel the clarity, the confidence. I’ve really fallen in love with getting better and with being in the ring and just like, not necessarily even on TV, but just like in training, and just like having fun. We always say, I’m gonna when I train at Flatbacks. We always text before, like, All right, who’s bringing the vibes? Everyone bring the vibes. Vibe check. And it’s just like, the vibes are up. It’s fun. I’m just having a good time.”

What is Maxxine Dupri grateful for?

“To be marrying my best friend this year, my mental clarity, and for Nattie.”

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Grayson Waller On Austin Theory, Getting JACKED, New Day, Roasting Fans, CM Punk

in LATEST EPISODES on November 4, 2025 January 30, 2026

Grayson Waller (@GraysonWWE) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Anaheim, CA to discuss WWE’s recent trip to Australia and not being a part of the Crown Jewel card, the rise of Australian wrestlers, ending his alliance with Austin Theory and A-Town Down, teaming with The New Day, what he really thinks of the Canadian Destroyer, upsetting Taylor Swift fans, recently debuting a new finisher, who his WWE dream match is, and more!

On which Australian stereotypes are true:

“Most of them, to be honest. Because obviously we were just in Perth for the last week, and it was good, because we got to be there [for a week]. Usually we’re in and out. Like today, got here last night, 11 o’clock. I leave tonight, 11 o’clock. I don’t see any Anaheim, no Disneyland, no Mighty Duck store. That gorgeous smog. It’s beautiful. Who doesn’t love California? I think everyone got to spend a whole week [in Australia], and it’s like, Australia is what it is. We’re a bunch of fun, silly bogans who like to go and have a good time, even Bron Beakker, who for years has relentlessly mocked Australia, [sayiing] ‘It’s mud huts and it’s lions and tigers…’ showing his understanding of culturals outside of America, said he loved Australia, and it’s his favorite place that he’s traveled so far. So that makes me happy.”

On wanting to wrestle a WWE PLE match in Australia:

“That’s 100% my goal. That was my goal this year. And unfortunately, it didn’t get to happen, which is obviously disappointing, but I got to perform twice in front of my home crowd. I’ve been dialed in for six months. This is what all my focus was on getting on these shows. I told them, I don’t care how, put me out in front of that crowd, and that match against Fenix that I had before the show on SmackDown, that’s my most memorable match I’ve ever had. I know we’ve done WrestleMania, we’ve done all those which was so good, but for me, that was the one that got me. Because when I came out, you don’t know the reaction you’re going to get in all these different cities. Fenix went out and they love Fenix. He wears a mask, and now WWE fans love idiots in masks, like The Lucha Losers are super over, which sucks. But then when I went out, and the reaction I got, and then they’re booing Fenix. We’re on Main Event, we’re before the show, usually this isn’t the big stuff. So when they chant my name and that type of stuff like that meant a lot, because I always rep Australia, that’s what I’m really proud of, and to get that energy back from the crowd, that was my favorite match I’ve had.”

On being cheered by the fans:

“I enjoyed it, because these are my people. I don’t represent the fans anywhere else. I represent my fans. There were a lot of people who said they saw me on the Indies, you know, like, calling me Matty Wahlberg. ‘Oh, we saw you at this RSL Club. We love what you do for Australia.’ So it was nice, because they’re my people. I represent them. So I think even though they know I’m an idiot, I’m their idiot. And they got behind me that night, and for one time only, I was like, I get it, and they bring you presents and stuff, maybe being a good guys is ok. I understand what it means now. Now I know why Cody fakes it for so long, they bring you all these fun gifts and things like that. Some guy brought me a Jordan Mailata Eagles jersey, a real one, not even a fake Chinese one. So I was like, oh, man, I need to pretend to be a good good guy for a while.”

On Australian wrestlers being rare 20 years ago:

“Nathan Jones, he was good. Superstar. Fell over at WrestleMania. That’s who we had for a long time. Nathan Jones getting taken out of WrestleMania. That was our hero.”

On the influx of Australian talent:

“I think from what I’ve heard, that level of talent was always there, but people hadn’t seen them. You couldn’t see them because they’re so far away, but the talent was there, and it took Tenille and TM61 and Buddy and all those, Rhea, obviously taking it to another level, getting those chances and doing really well. Oh wow, those Aussies are [great], let’s try another one. Bang, bang. I think everyone who’s come to WWE, especially as an Australian, has done extremely well. Our hit rate is 100% If we were baseball players, we’re home run after home run. Now I think what we’ve done is we’ve opened the door for more to come in. Speaking to Rhea and speaking to Bronson, that’s what we want to do. We have a lot of Aussies who will come over and stay with us, and then we help them out. Hey, stay in my house. I bought a house specifically with extra rooms, so when the boys from home come over, they stay in that room. I’ll take care of everything. Food’s taken care of, everything’s taken care of. You guys just go wrestle and train and gym and work as hard as you can, and I’ll open the door and hopefully you take advantage of it. And there are a lot of guys doing that right now, and I’m so excited for you and other fans to see these guys come up. There’s two guys in Australia called The Dropouts, who came and stayed for six weeks. They worked their ass off harder than I’ve seen anyone, and they have this, they call it the Australian yeet. I hate Yeet, so I don’t like putting it over, but they do the Chelsea Dagger song. In Perth, Otis came, and Bayley came. And when they did their entrance, Bayley’s like, ‘Oh my God, Who are these guys?’ And then on her match on Raw, she did the [Chelsea Dagger], which was awesome. So there’s these guys who, I think, once they get given a chance in the US, they’re going to take over and they’re going to get signed immediately.”

On whether he thought he would always make it to WWE:

“To be honest, no. I just loved wrestling. I loved Friday and Saturday, going out with the boys and chatting backstage and doing these matches, it was fun. I loved wrestling, and I obviously had goals. My goal was to just do an indie in America, because I used to watch American indie wrestling. I was like, that’d be sick. I remember King of Trios, and Chikara was one I used to love. I was like, if I get to do King of Trios, man, that’s a dream made. So this didn’t seem like a potential; there was no chance of it happening. Whereas now, I think the guys and the girls in Australia see the road, it’s like, oh my god, it’s possible. And even talking to a bunch of fans in Australia, they go, ‘Hey, I really want to start training. Where should I train?’ They can see there’s an opportunity there. They can make it happen, which is really, really cool that, I think myself, Rhea and Bronson and obviously Kyle Fletcher two are showing these Aussies hey, this is 100% possible for you to achieve.”

On future goals:

“I think the WWE roster right now is the most stacked it’s ever been. I’m on Raw. You got Punk, you got The Usos, you got LA Knight, now you got Bron and Bronson. You got Roman when he comes around. That’s not even taking into account, AJ, Dom Mysterio, Penta’s here now. It’s so stacked. So the guys you’re competing with now are the top of the top. So they’re the kind of guys that I’m trying to take on. So obviously, right now, I’m doing some stuff with The New Day, which is super fun, best tag team of all time, but I know I’m just going to get in the best shape I can. Every time I get an opportunity, I’m going to show out. I’m going to do whatever it takes when the opportunity is there, I’m going to steal it, I’m going to take it, I’m going to run with it, but I just got to wait for that chance and it’s coming. It’s all about patience. Sometimes you get in your head and you’re like, maybe I wasn’t on Raw today. Oh man, they don’t like me, I suck, whatever it is, and that’s not what it is. It’s just like, it’s not your chance tonight, dude. Your chance is coming and you just got to wait. I think some people fumble the bag stressing about that time period where you kind of sit and wait. But the end of the day, we get paid to travel well and do these cool things. I think my perspective has changed a lot. There was actually, would you like me to put over John Cena for a moment? I hate saying nice things about John. Maybe two years ago, where I was kind of freshly on SmackDown, he did a locker room thing. We had a little meeting. We had to talk about some stuff. He got up and he said something that really stuck with me, where he talked about, ‘You don’t have to do the Netflix break promo. You don’t have to wrestle before the show, you don’t have to do the dark match, you get to.’ It’s like, you get three minutes to say whatever you want on Netflix. You get to wrestle before the show when they’re the hottest, when they’re the most excited, and you get to wrestle another great Superstar. And when he said that, it changed my perspective a little bit. Who are we to complain about it? I have mates at home who would literally give everything in their life to wrestle before Raw. Who am I to go, oh man, I gotta wrestle, I hated that I even possibly thought those things. So once he said that, that changed everything for me. And I look at everything as anything you give me, you give me 30 seconds backstage, I’m stealing that. I’m going to make sure people online are going to re-share the 30 seconds that I have. I’m going to make sure whatever moment I have is going to be something. That’s the mindset I think you have to have.”

On believing The New Day are better than The Hardys:

“They’re just falling off a ladder. That’s so hard? I could do that. You know how many fail videos I’ve seen on YouTube of people, old people, falling off ladders? I’ve seen it happen before. I’m not impressed with the Hardys. I think The New Day would dog walk the Hardys.”

You’re not impressed with The Hardys?

“No, those young NXT prospects, The Hardy Boyz? You just fall off ladders. I’m not impressed by you. I think The New Day would walk all over those guys. So I know they’re hanging down in NXT a little bit, but hopefully one day they get called up, and if they have the opportunity to get called up to the main roster, I think The New Day is gonna have a chat with them.

The best thing, I think about The New Day is you can give them anything, and they turn it into something huge, like they’re so good at this mourning thing, because obviously mourning the death of the tag division. It’s so sad that the tag division is dead on Monday Night Raw, little nail in the coffin. You got Dragon Lee and AJ Styles as champs now, that’s cringe. That’s really sad. That mourning thing, that’s something that was a one time thing that they’ve now turned into months worth of television. And they have giant hats, which I now have proudly in my house. I have a giant Frankenstein for Halloween. He has a nice giant, whatever the hat Woods calls it. But they’re just so talented doing that stuff and being a guy who was in a tag team for a long time, getting to work with them, it’s a dream. They’ve been through everything that’s ever happened. So I’m trying to learn all I can from them, because a lot of the vets in the locker room, they don’t want to hand back down, they want to protect their spot. New Day are great guys. And Big E can’t wrestle, so you get Big G.”

So is A Town Down Under done?

“I’m not sure what that was.”

Austin Theory?

“Theory? Oh yeah, he was the big idiot, the big jacked idiot. Yeah, I haven’t seen him. That’s kind of crazy. He’s been gone for a long time, that’s a good thing. I think that’s a positive.”

What if he comes back?

I’m good dude, that’s if he comes back. I haven’t heard from him. Have you heard from him? I got nothing to say about Austin Theory; that’s the past. I think it’s sometimes things run their course, and you just got to move on and hang with The New Day now. That’s a much more positive experience.”

On upsetting Taylor Swift fans:

“That was a beautiful thing. And it was just like, it’s funny what we do. We talk for an hour today. You don’t know what the 10 seconds of this interview are that people are going to latch on to. And the same with any interview. I just made a joke on The Bump that if Travis Kelce is happy settling for a six, good for him, which is funny. That’s a great line. I was pretty happy with that, but I didn’t even think about it until all of a sudden, I have these cringe mums on TikTok who don’t spend time with their kids doing videos on me about how ugly I am. And they were saying some wild stuff, like Swifty fans are mean. There was one lady who was talking about how I had no lips. Never in my life have I thought about not having lips, and I’m looking at the mirror like, do I not have lips? They got my head a little bit. But I doubled down on it too, because I think people get stressed about when you annoy the fan base, especially the Swifties. But I doubled down on it because it was so fun. They were so angry and so upset. But there has been a part two to the story. So recently, George Kittle invited a few of us, it’s called Tight End University in Nashville, and all the tight ends train together for a couple of days, and they do a few events. And he invited us to this party one night. So me, Bayley and Sheamus all went to Nashville. Went to the party, and then Swifty and Travis Kelsey were both there. Now in the back of my mind, she doesn’t know who I am, but I’m like, oh, man, imagine if at some stage they’re scrolling through their phone and they’ve seen this idiot Australian has said a really rude thing. So I’m a bit like man, I’m gonna have to fight Travis Kelce. I’ve said multiple times, I’ll fight Travis Kelsey. And then I see how big tight ends are and how big he was, I’m gonna win, but it’s gonna be scrap. So I’m there with Sheamus and there’s all these famous people up there. We met Theo Von. There’s all the tight ends. Obviously, there’s just all these well-known people. They all know Sheamus. Obviously, he’s pale, so it’s like, you get this bright light in the corner of your eye, like you’re opening up the fridge. So it’s kind of painful for a second. So they’re all coming up and talking to him, and then Kelce comes up. Here we go. And he was super nice, Cena-esque. I’ll give him Cena-esque in the sense. He didn’t have to come over and chat to us. Super chill. Chatted to us for a bit. I was like, ‘Hey, man, Jason’s done some stuff. When are we getting you coming in?’ He’s like football first type of thing. So he was really cool. Didn’t get to meet Taylor officially. She did walk past me at some stage, and I had to move and go, oh, sorry. And she said, Thank you. So I think that’s the reconciliation. A good sister, too. She was just up there. I guess in my head, I thought, Taylor Swift, she can have all this security around all this. She was just sinking beers with the boys, just hanging upstairs. I was like, she’s good, good for her. There we go, reconciliation. I think the circle’s done. The circle’s finished. I was like, any, any girl who’s that famous, who just sits drinking with the boys and then goes down and does a song on the fly, that’s good.”

On his new finisher:

“My thing is I like taking moves that I see and then making them my own. So obviously, the rolling stunner I used to do. The Stunner is sick, but I do it this way. Elbow drop. I do it this way. So I’d seen someone do it standing, just standing in the middle of the ring. Now there’s some big boys in WWE. I don’t think I can do that to everyone. Some of those big boys like to try and get them. I think I’ll probably hurt myself. So then I was like, what if I do it off the second [rope]? There’s some freaks at NXT, who like trying wild stuff. So I went down and tried some stuff out. So I did it two years ago against Melo, I’ve been sitting on it, and it’s one of those ones save it for a special occasion. That’s what they always say. And then sometimes special occasions don’t turn up. So I think Australia was the perfect place to do it. I actually wanted to use it on Penta so I needed a reversal to the Canadian destroyer. So I was like, Maybe I come up with an Australian destroyer. Not that that’s the name, but I was like, I need something flippy, because it’s disrespectful to make someone flip and land on their head. So I did it to his brother instead. Yeah, stupid Lucha flops.”

On his Mexican Destroyer videos:

“For some reason I think people forget how dangerous that move is. Legitimately, because everyone does it. If you watch an indie show, they’ll do it four or five times.”

You took it off the top rope

“I got backstage, and some people weren’t happy with me. They were like, don’t do that. Someone pulled me aside and said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ It was just like, I understand the risks involved, and obviously I don’t want to take a move like that, but Penta is very good at what he does, but it’s very dangerous and it’s scary to be in that position. And I think sometimes we do so much wild stuff that sometimes we forget to put in perspective how wild that would be for someone off the street to be in that position, that high up, taking something like that. So that was a stressful thing. I think sometimes you go into, I don’t want to say go into shock, because that seems super scary. But when that impact happens and it’s like, Am I okay? Am I okay? You do legitimately check yourself. Am I okay? Do I feel okay? Obviously, adrenaline is a crazy thing too, so sometimes you don’t feel stuff, and then a couple hours later you do. So it’s like, sometimes it’s a real, you say sell, but it’s real. I’m like, Am I okay? Am I okay? And thank God I was.”

On a future dream match:

“I’ve said it a few times now. I’m gonna keep saying it. Right now, I want Punk. I want Punk so bad, dude. Because, as I said, as a ROH guy, I’ve watched Punk for a long time. I love the stuff he did in Ring of Honor. I loved when he signed his WWE contract on the Ring of Honor Championship, that’s so good. And when he came back, because I said some really mean things about Punk when he wasn’t here. I remember I took a super kick from Jey Uso, and it was the day that Punk left his last job. I took a super kick, and I put a photo online of me icing my jaw with a Pepsi can, which was just like, sometimes I like to have fun online and cause some chaos. So when he was coming over here, I was like, This is gonna be fun. What Punk are we gonna get? And then we’ve got this real soft Punk. So I want to find out who the real Punk is.”

Soft in what way?

“I’ll give some examples. I go to NXT last year, and he’s there with Fraxiom watching their match back, giving them some advice. And then Roxanne’s there and he’s like, ‘Hey, Waller, want to come watch this match?’ What do you mean? He’s really helpful backstage, and he’s super nice and all this. I’m either gonna be really disappointed that he’s softened, and this is the new Punk, and he’s just a really nice guy now, or the real Punk is hiding in there, and I want to be the one to bring it out. That’s what I want to do. Because it’s like, I guess I was ready to fight him backstage. I thought that’s what we were gonna do. I was like this is gonna be sick, like he’s gonna start causing chaos, like he’s gonna beat gonna beat up little flops backstage again, I’m in dude. But now he’s just a really nice guy and very helpful to everyone, helps everyone at NXT and does all this. That’s not the Punk that I love. I want to bring it back out, so I’m gonna get that opportunity. I’ve told him to his face, I’m like, there’s gonna be a day where I’m gonna stand across from you with a microphone, and I’m gonna tell you exactly what I think about you, and I want you to tell me exactly what you think about me. And I think that magic, because I don’t think we’ve seen NXT Waller on the main roster yet. I’ve had a lot of fun. I’m being very fun, but I don’t think they’ve seen how mean I can be, how cruel I can be. When I really lock in on something, like, I’m a different breed, and I don’t think I’ve been that recent. Just talking about it right now, I can feel it inside, that’s what I need. If you want to see a different side of me, put me against that guy. I’ll show you the real me.”

What is Grayson Waller grateful for?

“My mates, my health and the hunger I have right now.”

Michael Chandler: The Next UFC Star In WWE?, Fighting Conor McGregor, “See You At The Top!”

in LATEST EPISODES on October 30, 2025 January 30, 2026

Michael Chandler (@MikeChandlerMMA) is a UFC fighter and podcaster. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Nashville, TN to discuss the upcoming UFC event set to take place at The White House, potentially fighting Conor McGregor at the show, cutting a promo on an episode of WWE Raw, possibly pursuing pro wrestling after MMA, why he ends his promos with “See you at the top”, and more!

On what Sheamus found the hardest in their Celtic Warrior Workout:

“I think it was just the overall workload, because I don’t think people really know, like, if you’re just lifting weights, it gets a certain amount of hard, but then when you couple it with something explosive, now all of a sudden, those fast twitch muscles start engaging, which increases the heart rate, and you’re doing something kind of more dynamic. So it was just the coupling of both. And if your body’s not really used to it, you could do just something very, very simple, like we did the belt squat, but then we did jumps right after. So there’s like, six jumps as high as you can. So you’re adding the cardio with the strength. So I think it was just the overall cardio workload of the thing, and then we did the sledge push, after which, thank God we didn’t have to do too many of those, because it was like, Okay, we got some good footage of this.”

On his current weight:

“I’m at 188. I’m trying to keep it below 190, but it’s pretty easy for me to get up to 190, and that’s with me not really focusing too much, like I said, if I wanted to put on more muscle mass, I’d probably get closer to that 200 range. But I think I don’t really necessarily want to be there.”

On whether he was supposed to cut a promo on WWE Raw:

“No. Well, so I asked for it.”

On what happened after he was introduced:

“They knew [the promo] was gonna happen, because I wanted to ask for permission. Once again, going back to I’m not going to show up to WWE and make it about me. So I asked, I forget who I was sitting with. But they asked, and it went up to Nick [Khan], went up the flagpole to Nick, to be like, Hey, we’re going to introduce Chandler. But I was like, Well, hey, why don’t you just give me the microphone? And they were like, you want the microphone? And I was like, Yeah, I want the microphone. And they were like, hold on. Everyone’s got the ear pieces, one of the production people wound it up the flag pole to Nick, and Nick’s like, yeah, give him the microphone. But then they did say, Hey, make sure you do not rip the rip the microphone out of her hand, they will freaking be mad at you if you do that. I’m like, okay, I’ll take it. But it was a little bit of a passionate grab. But it wasn’t like, Give me that thing! Then it was, it was during the time, obviously, they the UFC was just in Anaheim the night before. And yeah, it was during the time where we were kind of still working on when am I going to fight Conor and all that stuff? And, yeah, just ripped a promo, jumped up on the seats. And then, like, afterwards I’m off camera, and then Pat McAfee is, like, Michael Chandler just ripped his shirt off because I ripped my shirt off, and I was just flexing in there, and the whole crowd is going crazy. It had like, freaking 60 million views in like, 24 hours. It was cool, it was fun. And, like, that’s my environment, man. I love entertaining people. I love to be around people and just say, it’s kind of weird, because I don’t love being the center of attention, but when it’s time and that, lights come on and it’s my moment, I’m there, man, and I turn it on and just and have fun with it and enjoy it. And I feel like that’s what I’ve always done with my fight career too. It’s like wins and losses are very important, but my number one goal is always to make people feel something. If you’re buying a pay-per-view, if you worked a blue-collar 40-hour work week this week, you just took your work boots off, you invited some buddies over, and you’re going to watch me fight. I’m going to pour every single ounce of myself into that performance. I think you don’t see that with certain guys and gals in the sport, it becomes too much of a well, I’m too afraid to lose so therefore, I’m not gonna put myself out there. I’m not gonna take this, I’ve made so many ill-advised decisions in there, like, I’m gonna do this and see what happens. I don’t care if something bad happens, I’m just gonna go ahead and do it. And I think that’s why I’ve been known as one of the most, if not the most entertaining fighters in the UFC because I care about the wins and losses, but I also care about fulfilling my passion and what I’m doing, sometimes focusing so much on the on the technique and the game plan and all that stuff, can just pull away the actual carnal nature, the pure nature of I’m fighting you right now in hand to hand combat, instead of thinking well, I don’t want to lose because I got this belt, or lose because of the world ranking, or I don’t want to lose because of for losses sake. It’s like the Man in the Arena, man like, fail if you’re going to fail, fail while daring greatly, and you’re out there, and I’m living my passion, and I love God created me for hand-to-hand combat, in the wrestling mats, maybe in the WWE ring after fighting, but right now in the UFC.”

On wrestling fandom growing up:

“I was, man, yeah. Diamond Dallas Page, Steve Austin, The Rock, big time middle school and high school. Late 90s, man. I think what I loved about it too, is I was always kind of a shy, shy kid. I was a small guy from a small town. I was taught to do small things, people around me, we were just talking about, I grew up in St Louis, Missouri, but not downtown. I grew up in rural outside of St Louis, and where I came from was kind of just like, hey, don’t ruffle any feathers, kind of blend in with the herd. Don’t think of yourself too highly for the fear of maybe making other people feel insecure around you. And I was kind of an insecure kid, and the big guys had hair under their armpits before me, and they were bigger than me. So I was always just kind of like, well, I’m gonna go with the flow kind of guy. So I think watching wrestling, you watch the way that they carried themselves, and you’re like I see a little bit of something inside of me in that ring right now. And I think that’s why people love wrestling so much as well, because it’s beautiful storytelling, and there’s beautiful rivalries, but then there’s also the redemption stories. I was just into it big, big time, and then now I’ve kind of come back around and even more into it now than I probably was back then. And it’s been, it’s been a lot of fun.”

On possibly pursuing pro wrestling:

“I think it intrigues me. I think it’s a lot of fun. I do think I would enjoy it. I think there would be some intrigue and interest on both sides. Spending some time with Sheamus and a couple of other friends I have. Diamond Dallas Page has been a friend of mine for a very, very long time also. What’s really cool about him too, which would be kind of similar to my story, because he always said, my career didn’t take off till I was 40, because he came in as a manager. I think that’s one of the cooler things about the sport as well. It’s like a lot of mature men, the sport of mixed martial arts is a kind of a younger man’s game, but not really. We can get into that a little bit. I think young is awesome, and your body feels great, but you haven’t quite matured enough to get to that, not old man strength, but kind of that maturity of your body, and I think you don’t really hit that until 32-33, so I’m just a fan of the sport. Love to go to the live events, obviously, love to watch it on TV. Obviously, now WWE is now on ESPN at the time of this. So it’s pretty cool, man, a lot of fun to watch.”

On if he still thinks he has time as he turns 40 next year:

“I think so. I think my body’s my body still feels phenomenal. I don’t want to toot my own horn. But also emphasizing enough how well I’ve taken care of my body, there’s a reason why I’m still competing at this high of a level at this age, and a lot of guys kind of fizzle out. I think I’ve just taken really good care of my body. I’ve preserved my body. I’ve taken some damage, obviously, as every athlete has, but man, I wake up in the morning just chipper. I still jump just as high, run just as fast, punch just as hard. I have a zeal for life and I love the platform that God has given me to be in front of people, and WWE makes a lot of sense. But we’ll see. I need to go. I gotta, I’d have to go and prove my worth. I’d have to, you know, make them believe that I could do it and enjoy it, and then deal with the travel and the lifestyle of being a WWE superstar, and get into some matches and beat some people up.”

On the rumoured Conor McGregor fight at The White House:

“I mean, as we sit here today, I would say I’m cautiously optimistic that that is the fight that’s going to happen. They’re definitely doing a fight at the White House. Conor was on the news and did interviews saying he’s fighting me at the White House. Dana’s doing interviews saying, hey, Conor is definitely motivated to come back. Because the biggest question here isn’t, is Conor and Chandler going to fight? The biggest question is, is Conor going to come back? We still don’t know. It remains to be seen. We had a fight lined up last June. He pulled out of the fight for injury. So we’ll see how it plays out. And we’re still months and months away. Could be a lot of things that happen between now and then, but I’m cautiously optimistic, that’s the fight that’s going to happen at the White House lawn June-ish of 2026, right now it’s slated for June 14. Could change tomorrow. Who knows? A fight of this magnitude, you’re building an arena, building a bubble, building a stage, doing whatever they have to do, light it up and like, do all the things, all the security clearance. You take a UFC card in Vegas or wherever, where they’ve done it 85 times, or way more than that, actually hundreds of times. it becomes like clockwork. This is a brand new one of one never been done before. Never will be done again type of event on the grounds of the President’s doorstep. It’s like there’s a lot of logistical stuff that needs to be figured out, but all I can do is keep the main thing, which is train, be ready for June and then hopefully knock Conor out. Get my hand raised.”

Conor’s suspension will be cleared by this time?

“Yeah. So it was retroactive. So I think the way it was explained to me was essentially, he pulled out of the fight in June, and then he went on his yacht. So if you remember it was just a broken pinky toe. So there was talks in June, and that’s why I didn’t fight Oliveira until November. And there was talks like, Well, hey, it was June. Let’s just push it back to August, September, October. I think the UFC was kind of a little bit gun-shy, where it’s like, Hey, man, we just had this big promotion. We promoted you and Chandler, June 29, international fight week, we had a press conference in Dublin that we were going to do. And, I mean, I had, I had my flight booked. I got called by Hunter Campbell at like, two in the morning and said, hey, don’t get on your flight. We’re trying to figure some stuff out right now. So they canceled the press conference. So there was just a lot of kind of bad taste in their mouth of like, hey, we can’t just book you. Two months later, we got to know that you’re actually going to come back and fight and do it. So I think during that time, he was probably like, forget you guys. Forget this whole thing. This is, you know, how we get as human beings, we’re just like, Okay, I’m fed up with it. All bets are off. So I think he missed a couple whereabouts. He didn’t fail a test. He never failed a test, he just didn’t show up for a couple of them. And if you miss a couple of them, then you get an automatic suspension. His suspension was 18 months. That 18 months ends in March, and he’s cleared to go for The White House.”

On how he sees the fight playing out:

“I’ve studied Conor, obviously, a lot over the last couple years. I studied him even before I was going to be matched up against him. Hard-hitting straight, left hand. Loves that pull back left hand. He’s put on some size, so he’s a little bit bigger. If you watch his last fight with Poirier, he was doing pretty decent until the leg break. And Poirier is probably one of the best strikers, if not the best striker in our sport in general. He’s great with his timing, great with his hands. That’s a southpaw versus southpaw matchup. So it’s a little bit different than me. The good thing is, one thing that people should watch out for when they watch fights this weekend or next weekend is if you have an orthodox guy versus a southpaw guy, the power hand, the backhand is kind of your main weapon, which is always great because you got two guys throwing their power hand, his left hand, my right hand. Whereas with two guys who are Orthodox, we’re more jab, heavy, which is still entertaining. But that big back leg kick is available, and that big back power hand is available. So I think we’re both going to come to the center of the Octagon in the middle of the White House lawn and absolutely sling leather and may the best man win. You know how I fight, that’s the goal. We’re going to go out there. We’re going to put leather on his chin as quickly as possible, hopefully separate him from consciousness. Get my hand raised and do a couple backflips, rip off a promo, and we’ll see.”

If Conor can’t make it, will you be on the card still?

“If I had my way, of course. If I’m calling the shots, yes, I want to be on the White House card for a multitude of reasons. The main goal, and the pie in the sky, best-case scenario, me fighting the sport’s biggest star and kind of finally closing this chapter. I’m a human being, no matter, throughout this all. I can sit here and say, Man, it was easy, or it was tough, but I had my tough days. Waiting is tough for me, because I don’t really like the wait. I’m an action guy. Being let down is tough, even though I’ve been let down a million times in my life, as have you, as has everybody. But the whole process, just with the whole Connor saga, would be great to just finally close a chapter, put an exclamation mark on it. He owes me a fight, and I think it’s the fight that he wants. One thing I’ve said about Connor publicly isI think he’s more he’s more romantic about the sport than people give him credit for. He does realize that when he was on welfare as a plumber in Ireland, and John Cavanaugh, his coach, was pulling him off the couch like, let’s get to the gym. Let’s train. Get you out of this funk that he was in. Then he wins the Cage Warriors title. Then he comes over to the UFC and just gets shot out of a cannon, becomes the sport’s biggest star. Then he fights Mayweather and all that stuff. For as egotistical as people will call him and as big as he has gotten, as big as a global sports superstar as he is, I think he’s more respectful and more romantic about the sport than people give him credit for, as well as I think he’s more of a man of his word than people give him credit for. He said a couple times on social media and stuff, calling me out and use the hashtag unfinished business, and man of my word, he’s like, I’m a man of my word. Even though he pulled out of that one fight, even though he’s had some little lies here and there, as we all do when you’re kind of taking people off the trail in the media and all that stuff. He’s more of a man of his word than people think. I could be completely wrong. Maybe he never comes back, and if he does, I wish him well in his retirement. Wish him well in his future with him and his and his family. But I’m fighting on the White House card. No matter what, I think I should be on that card. That’s my pitch. I will show up. I will be draped in the stars and bars. I will be the perfect guy to go out there and make people feel something on the White House lawn. And nobody else is guaranteed action more than me. So I’m gonna go ahead and do it.”

On his “F it” moment at MSG:

“I did, yeah, I’m not proud of that. My kids gonna see that. But it’s one of those deals where human nature takes over. It’s just like, I’m fighting in a cage. The guy that you see here kind of clean cut, you really cuss but I’m like, F it, dude. This is here we are. I had one hand like, stumbled to the middle the octagon, and then just boom, explode again, man. Then at that point too, it was kind of like I tapped him a little bit like, you know, good fight.”

On always ending his promos with “See you at the top”

“So see you at the top came from Zig Ziglar. Rest in peace. He was, to me, the greatest motivational speaker of all time. I love Zig Ziglar. I haven’t really always been a fan of Zig Ziglar. I was introduced to him by my mentor, Chris Patterson, who actually was mentored by Zig. I read his book called See You at the Top. So I just kind of started using it. It kind of became a thing, and now I’ll see people on the streets and like, ‘Yo Chandler, see you at the top.’ It’s kind of become a thing. I think the biggest thing about the See you at the top mantra isn’t like, Hey, I’m going to the top, look at me, I’m at the mountaintop. It really is about seeing you there. And I’ve always thought two things when I got into the sport. Number one, I always wanted to change the view of what people thought a mixed martial artist was. I wanted to be different, and sometimes you’re different, so people don’t like you, and that’s fine, but I wanted to change the view of what people thought a mixed martial artist was. And number two, I wanted to use what I’m doing to inspire and motivate people to become their best self, the little guy out there from a small town who was taught to do small things. There’s a million other little Michael Chandlers out there who don’t think that God created them for great things. I want to be able to make those young men especially believe in themselves to accomplish great things. So if I get to the mountaintop and I’m UFC Champion, I’m the number one fighter in the world. I’m the biggest sports star on the planet, all the money, all the lights, all the platform. And I get there and I’m at the top by myself. What did I do it for? Besides just a narcissistic, ego-driven, selfish journey. I want to look to my left and look to my right and see all the people that came with me. Maybe they’re a summit below me, or two summits below me, but they’re heading toward the top with me, and some of them are getting there. And it doesn’t have to be sports, it doesn’t have to be money, it doesn’t have to be platform. It just has to be the internal, intrinsic feeling that they were created for so much more than they could think or imagine, and then just make unlocking people’s view of what they are able to accomplish, and I think that’s where See You at the Top comes from. And of course, I get some people are like, See you at the bottom, or you aren’t even close to the top. And it’s like, yeah, dude, I’m doing pretty alright. I’m doing pretty good, and I’m still a work in progress. I’m still in pursuit. So, man, it’s been, it’s been a heck of a journey, and I want to bring as many people with me on the journey as I can.”

On a possible WWE appearance:

“When’s Wrestlemania? [April] So we can’t do Wrestlemania. SummerSlam is in August? I knew there’s one in August. Minneapolis in August. Me versus Logan Paul. Could be awesome. We’ll see. We got a lot of talks to happen between now and then. Obviously, they know I’m interested. I believe they’re interested. So we’ll see where we’re at.”

What is Michael Chandler grateful for?

“The journey I’ve had, my wife and children, and a healthy body.”

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Mickie James: Hall Of Fame Induction, Trish Stratus, Nick Aldis, WWE Return, Hardcore Country

in LATEST EPISODES on October 28, 2025 January 30, 2026

Mickie James (@MickieJames) is a professional wrestler and TNA Hall of Famer. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Nashville, TN to discuss her recent Hall Of Fame induction at Bound For Glory, if one more match is possible, wrestling most of her career under her real name, her rivalry with Trish Stratus and the infamous spot during their WrestleMania 22 match, receiving her belongings in a trash bag after being released, if her husband Nick Aldis could return to the ring, and more!

On being inducted into the TNA Hall of Fame:

“It’s crazy to even say Hall of Famer. I gotta change it in my bio. It feels amazing. I’m super humbled, and I think, you know, you spend your whole career trying to be humble and all that other stuff. And it’s like the one night you can kind of pat yourself on the back, but it’s super uncomfortable to do it. But still, it’s always incredible, I think, when you’re recognized for your contributions to the company or to any business, and for TNA to do that for me, I was incredibly honored.”

On being on the very first TNA show:

“I think for me at the time, I was so young and still new in the business, but I was starting to get really good. There weren’t as many women training to be wrestlers, so as far as female wrestlers that were up and coming, I was being called one of the better ones, but I still had so much to learn. You think back, and I was like, God, I was so green. I had no idea what I was doing or could even fathom at the time an opportunity like that, what it was going to do for me now, or where we are now. And that was just kind of the first step of that journey. But I was just excited to get an opportunity to be seen. It was a lingerie battle royal, I was like, sure. I could go out there, and it’s going to be on pay-per-view, and it’s this young upstart company, and everybody’s excited about it, because especially as an independent performer, and you’re making nothing and just like that exposure, what that could do for you, but also the opportunity to have another place hopefully for us to all go and grow. And you could already feel in the building that there was so much excitement and love behind it. So, yeah, it was crazy, but I had no idea what I was doing.”

On wrestling under her real name:

“Even getting that opportunity to be able to use my real name, that’s a whole other story. And when I actually debuted in WWE, because I was Alexis Laree, I got to go there, and I did The Gathering. The Gathering was another whole thing that had to be a goth character. I had to look it up. I bought Hot Topic out of every fish net they had, every skirt, t-shirt. I was like, I’ll wet my hair. I guess I don’t know what goth is. It wasn’t my jam, but it worked.”

On being able to use her real name in WWE:

“I was Alexis Laree in OVW. I just love the name Alexis and Laree is my legit middle name, so that’s how that name came about. But I’m about to debut this crazy stalker character, and Vince is like, ‘What’s her name? Alexis Laree? I don’t like that name. It sounds like a stripper name.’ And I’m like, Oh, guess it does, doesn’t it? Yeah, okay. He’s like, ‘Well, got anything else? Got any other names?’ And I was like, ‘Uh, Mickie James?’ [He said] ‘I love it.’ I didn’t say, Oh, it’s my real name. I was like, oh, okay, great. So I was able, and probably one of the last few people, to actually be able to use their real name. I was able to use my real name. Wow, crazy. And how grateful I am for that.”

On whether she could do one more match:

“Hell, yeah! I could do 10 more. But it’s also with the career that I’ve been so blessed to have, and the moments that I’ve been able to have and the people that I’ve been able to work with, I could retire tomorrow and be a happy woman. I don’t have anything else, I think, to prove in the wrestling business, but I also love it, and there’s nothing like it. I’ve been able to act in films. I’ve been able to do music and perform on stages and alongside mega names and stuff like that, which is also incredible. But there’s nothing like performing in front of a live wrestling audience, especially when they’re so invested in your story, in that story, because it’s the emotion, that’s what we live for. That’s that’s the art of this dance that we do.”

On when she felt validated:

“I think what I was able to accomplish with The Last Rodeo solidified me. It validated me. It vindicated me. My first WWE run, I was able to have some amazing moments, but I think it was cut short. I think I had a lot more to do in WWE and the timing and my own life, and professionally and personally, I needed to go away, I think. So it was unfortunate, but I think my first tenure was cut really, really short, and especially when I look at opportunities, because we all make mistakes and we all live and learn. I think about comparatively mistakes other people perhaps were making, and when you try to compare it, and that’s where I had to take my own ego and stop comparing, because you can’t compare careers. You can’t compare anything, because we’re all individuals. So I was not satisfied. I would have been very unhappy. I think I would have been disgruntled, and I would have hated the business if I would have ended my career after my first run. I would have been all that work, all that dedication, everything, it would have been unfulfilled, and then I would have had a chip on my shoulder, because when I left, I had a chip on my shoulder because I felt like they didn’t have to fire me. But that’s, you know, you live and learn. I was also young and making mistakes, as we all do.”

And do you feel fulfilled now?

“I feel so fulfilled now. I feel so fulfilled. Not only that, if I think about that now, and that was me in the moment. So I’m speaking me in the moment, 27-30 year old, Mickie James, if I hadn’t even have left, not only like part of my healing journey and all that stuff, but I would have never met my husband. I would never have my beautiful son. And when I left WWE the first time and I was in this reset, trying to refine myself and redefine myself. And then I meet Nick [Aldis], and that story and that chapter opens, and then obviously, hardcore country is born in that same so that is all. And then I wouldn’t be here today or sitting in front of you as a Hall of Famer if that hadn’t happened, so you don’t know.”

On her Hardcore Country theme:

“Do you know who that is [in the intro]? Serg Salinas. Dixie Carter’s husband Serg Salinas, thank you, Serg. Thank you Dale Oliver, God, there’s 1000 thank yous in that speech I didn’t get to. We all sat down together and created, Dale and I wrote the song, created the song. And that is Serge hollering Hardcore Country.”

On the Michelle McCool storyline:

“Especially at a time in my career where I felt like I was being kind of punished on a professional level, so I wasn’t sure how much of that was does the company truly think this about me? Is someone saying this in creative and they just think it’s funny, and let’s see how this plays out on TV, or is this just a storyline? I think, if nothing else, that’s where I had to put my ego aside and I was like, You know what? I don’t care what I’m going to do, because this is powerful, and we’ve all been bullied, and there’s been moments. There’s just a story right now of this little girl, Sophia, in middle school in the town over from where we live right now, who just committed suicide over bullying, and she’s 11 years old. So you think about that, and you think about the cases of suicide and all these things of like people really getting bullied, and I think it was really coming to light at that time because social media was becoming a thing, so it’s really starting to come a light how this can affect people, especially affect people who weren’t weren’t mentally capable of deciphering, like young children.”

On heat from the Piggy James storyline:

“Well, it took all of us, because for them too, they had to be the bad guys in that situation and be okay being the bad guys, which I think a lot of people still struggle with. Because as performers, you’re trying to be loved and trying to be hated, to be a heel, I love it, but you have to be okay being hated. But also for them to be able to go out there, her and Layla, both, and do all of these things, and then have to take on all the hate from the fans for doing these hateful things and really embrace it. It was a lot. I think we all struggled with it, doing it in the moment. And I was like, no, what we’re going to do is we’re going to go out there and we’re going to make it gold, and we’re going to make it better than they ever expected. And it did. And not only did it really land in the hearts of a lot of people, I have people that still come to me about that whole story and how much it helped them. And I’m sure Michelle and Layla have the same but it helped launch Lay Cool. I think they were looking for something to turn them into monster heels, because there wasn’t really a strong, strong heel, especially on SmackDown in the female division. And they would wanted to really get some hot steam behind them, and they chose me to do that. I should be honored that they believed in me enough to be able to help in that story. So there’s a lot of conflicting things on there.”

On who is her biggest rival:

“Trish, for sure, every day, all day, even still. I think about how we’ve not had really a chance to do a whole bunch, but even like that rumble moment where we had a chance and the people just erupted. And I think that that says it all and that was such a validation that what we did then still holds true and still connects today.”

On that moment in her WrestleMania 22 match with Trish Stratus:

“[The backstage reaction] was not good. I mean, the people loved it. The reaction, in my opinion, I made the right choice, in my humble opinion. Not what I expected. So I had asked Steve Keirn. Steve Keirn was our agent. I had asked Steve Keirn, ‘Can I lick my finger?’ Because we had already had the crotch grab spot. We’re gonna do it. So we knew we were going to do the vag grab. You think about the whole story. I have pretended to be Trish. I have accused her boyfriend of terrible crimes. I have kidnapped Ashley Massaro, I have stalked her in the shower, her home. I have done many things, tried to kiss her numerous occasions, access denied. So we’re at WrestleMania, and I’m like, all the things that we’ve done to lead to this and they want this moment. I’m like, okay. I felt like that’s what anybody would have done in that moment, after all that. Finally, you got, I don’t know, I’m not going to go there. That’s a little too crass, even for me. But I also thought, you know. So I had asked if I could lick my finger. Clearly, that’s not what I did. He was like, ‘Lick your finger?’ I was like, Well, yeah, I mean, I’m grabbing [her], wouldn’t I [do it]? I’ve been trying to get my hands on her, you know, forever. This would be my dream come true, right? And he’s like, ‘I will see.’ I went away, and he comes back, and he goes, ‘Yeah, okay, I think you can lick your fingers.’ Fine, whatever. Sorry, Steve Keirn. So that’s not what I did, and I did this actually, I think it was more like this. It was a double, so they made sure they saw it, because my hands aren’t big enough, obviously. I thought in my heart and in my soul, I honestly believed I was going to walk back through that curtain, and I had never received a high five. I’d seen other women get high fives from Vince and thumbs up and all these things. I got thumbs up before. I got a few thumbs up. I thought I was going to get the biggest hug of a lifetime, and fist bumps, maybe even a hoist on a shoulder and out the door, something for being so brilliant. It’s not what happened at all. Go back through the curtain and Vince is pissed. He’s like, ‘That was crass! Do you know what we’re gonna have to do? How much money it’s gonna cost to edit that and to pull it from everything? We’re a publicly traded company! What are you thinking?’ So if you can imagine the high of a lifetime and then walking through and just shanked right through the curtain, I was like, Oh. But clearly he didn’t hate me too much, because I still was the champion, so maybe deep down he really loved it.”

On receiving her stuff in a trash bag:

“I wasn’t as offended as the fans were when it happened, because I don’t think you realize how many times we’ve been offended. I’m so numb to getting my feelings hurt, or I’m so used to, Oh, you got to separate your ego from it, and don’t take it personal. It’s just business. So I posted, because I’m a sarcastic person, and if I was to be honest, I got two boxes with two trash bags. I still have the trash bags because I’m keeping them, receipts. But I think it was important for a couple reasons. Well, one, because I’m a smart ass, and it was sarcastic, and I remembered in 2010 when I got my stuff back and I got it the same way, and 2010 me was devastated. 2010 me was like, Oh, my God. They think I’m trash. They hate me, they’re throwing me out with the trash, nothing I did mattered. I took it real personal. This time, I didn’t take it personal. I’m like, of course. It’s more about the lack of thought of how you’re so disposable, and I was on par of sometimes how this game makes you feel. So I kind of posted it like that. I was literally excited to get the box, only because it had all my jackets in there and I’m getting ready to walk out the door to do this photo shoot with Chapel Hart for our single that’s coming out, and do all this other stuff. And so I’m like, Oh, my jackets! I’m so excited. And I open it, of course. Then as I’m driving, I posted it, there! Then Hunter called me, Stephanie text me, Johnny called me. Everybody called me. I still feel bad for Mark Carano, who got fired for it, because Mark was always good to me. Mark took care of me when I was there. He was probably one of my dear, actual friends sometimes there, and so he’s the one who got fired. But it was just a testament to that was like a company thing of like, they just didn’t really think you know of how that would affect [you], especially if you are already in a bad place when you talk about mental health and all these things. Worst day of your life, whatever career, for sure, totally, especially if it’s like the first time you lost, you know, now you’re on the, oh there’s always an opportunity to have a second time or a third time. Then the other people came out. Oh, of course it did, because that was just like how it was done. We have these massive drawers full of all of our stuff for the road. We got lots of just-in-case outfits. I don’t think anybody else will get their stuff that way anymore. So that’s fine. I don’t think they come in Gucci bags, but they certainly don’t come in hefty bags. It was crazy to see. And then as the fans are responding and like, whatever, because I’m halfway through the shoot, and then all sudden, I look at my phone, my phone’s blown up, and I’m doing all this. I’m like, what? I was like, Oh my God. I didn’t even realize I should have been offended. I’m so used to being like, suck it up buttercup, that I didn’t even think about that side of how offensive it actually was. And not compare, I don’t know, would they have done that to someone that they thought highly of? So I was like, Oh, I guess I should be offended, I kind of did it out of sarcasm, but you’re right. This is bullsh*t. But, yeah, Vince called me and I spoke to him on the phone, and so that was what I was getting to as I ramble on. Vince called me and we spoke on the phone. He was the one person I actually did call back in the middle of that shoot. Because I was like, Vince has never called me before, so left me a voicemail or a voice note, actually, where he’s like, because my voicemail box was full. And he was like, ‘Your voicemail box is full, by the way.’ I was like, Oh, no. I can’t win with this man, yeah, but he was genuine. He was like, ‘You know I’ve never thought that of you, and I’ve always thought highly of you, and I’m so sorry that happened and that person is not here anymore.’ And then I was like, Oh no. Felt bad for Mark Carrano. I was like, oh God. I was even honest with him, I was like, I don’t think that you ever felt that way and I don’t think it was you personally, he was always good to me, gave me more opportunities, gave me my dream and all that stuff. But I also didn’t think he was sometimes aware of the other things or how we feel in those moments, because you can’t just go run into Vince and talk about how you feel.”

On whether Nick Aldis has another run in him:

“Oh, my God, yes. Oh, he’s far from done. I mean, I think if he was ever given, and I would pray for the perfect opportunity and story or whatever, but I think that if he’s ever given an opportunity to put on his boots and get out in that ring, I know it would be a dream come true for him.”

What is Mickie James grateful for?

“I get to wake up, to be a mom, and to make it to the other side.”

Jelly Roll: WWE Debut, SummerSlam Match, 250lb Weight Loss, Randy Orton, Logan Paul, The Rock

in LATEST EPISODES on October 23, 2025 January 30, 2026

Get tickets for Insight LIVE in San Diego & Las Vegas! https://cvvtix.com

Jelly Roll (@JellyRoll615) is a Grammy-nominated singer. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Nashville, TN to discuss his success in the music world and how that led to a spot at WWE SummerSlam 2024, chokeslamming Austin Theory, teaming with Randy Orton at SummerSlam, taking a frog splash from Logan Paul on the announce table, giving Drew McIntyre a Black Hole Slam, how he lost 250 pounds, finally meeting The Rock after a decade of speaking with him, interactions with pro wrestling legends, if another match could happen, and more!

On early wrestling memories:

“So I’m 41, dude, my mamma had a crush on Brutus The Barber Beefcake. Did your mom have a crush on him too? My mom thought he was the hottest thing. So awkward now when I look back at that, I have those memories of that kind of stuff. We went to fairground wrestling all through the early 90s too, even high school when Smoky Mountain Wrestling was first really getting going. We drive to East Tennessee, or they’d come here. It was just something we were into. The WWF house shows would come through the Municipal Auditorium, and then the WWF was one of the first things that ever came to the Bridgestone, when we opened the Bridgestone. I mean, we had ECW coming to the municipal back in the day, TNA. Wrestling and the south are so hand in hand. Wrestling in southern culture is a really big thing for us.”

On his current favourites:

“I mean, obviously, Roman’s arc has been great. Seth’s in-ring, just like me and you were talking about this off camera. It’s a great time to talk about it now. I think what makes the greatest heels is like to some degree, it’s not easy to be a heel. People use that loosely, but you can position yourself to make people not like you easier than you can position yourself to make people like you. But the hard part is, what makes a great heel to me is, how great can you make the babyface look? When we were talking about guys like Austin Theory. How great at that he is. Seth Rollins, to me, he makes Cody Rhodes look like an absolute rock star. For as much of an asshole as Seth is on the microphone, in the ring, he’s putting everybody over every time, all out, Shawn Michaels style. It’s hard to take that from him. But these are the guys, I’ve loved everything that’s happening. I think I said this a lot, to the point of exhaustion, but I think wrestling’s as cool now as it’s ever been. I’ve been looking for this too as a wrestling fan. When I got involved in a match, I was one excited that I was famous enough to finally get the celebrity, because somebody’s gonna get it, don’t be mad at me. Somebody was gonna get it, at least somebody who cared got it. But also, to be a part of a time where, do you remember what it was like? You would go to school in the late 90s, mid 90s-ish, and all of a sudden there was this thing kind of happening.”

You would see someone walking down the halls wearing an Austin 3:16 shirt or a DX shirt

“And it’s like, do we have something now talk about every single Tuesday morning, dude? And it was like, all of a sudden I wasn’t a cool kid. I’ll be the first one to say that I wasn’t the coolest kid at school by a country mile, but some of the cool kids started getting into wrestling, and I was already into wrestling and knew about it. So I was watching that culture shift happen, and I’m watching it happen again, because I’m also watching balances be made that couldn’t be made before. When I’m watching Cody Rhodes right now, this is kind of deep to talk about, but he is, to me, the epitome of a wrestler. The suit, how he carries himself, some of the greatest promos, ultimate babyface. But what he did that was different, think about Hulk in the late 80s. I liked Hulk in the late 80s because I was a baby in the early 90s, and it was a great thing for my parents to push on me, vitamins, prayers, you know, whatever. But my older brother couldn’t necessarily feel it, right? My oldest brother, who was 12 years my senior, kind of probably looked at it like, yeah, it’s kind of corny, right? Where 18-22-year-old kids can look at Cody like this dude’s a gangster. But my nine-year-old son can also look at Cody like this dude’s my hero. Roman Reigns has got that same depth where it’s like grown men, gangster men acknowledge The Tribal Chief. It’s the coolest thing ever to see that happening again.”

On how he feels before going onstage:

“I’m shaking, for sure. Visibly my hands are shaking every time, sweaty palms. Like I joke with my crew about it, you’ll watch my palms. If you’re one of the last people in my crew that shakes my hand before I go out, you wipe your hand.”

Do they go immediately when you go out there?

“Not immediately. It normally goes into the first song or two, and it depends, if it’s live, they never calm. If I’m live to a crowd and a television show, I’m shaking the whole time, anyways. That’s how I know I’m still here, because I love it, and it scares me. Nothing scares me any other way, man, for sure. Yeah, and I felt that at SummerSlam more than I have even in music.”

On his previous Raw appearance and Randy Orton interaction:

“It was the best rub ever, dude. I’m sure y’all know this about the Viper already, but none of that happened in rehearsal. In rehearsal, I was supposed to push Dom into him, and he was supposed to table him, you know, the Randy table drop. So I was gonna push him back, Randy’s gonna be there, and I was gonna push him. Instead, it was like so when Randy does it, walks over to me. I was like, Oh, this is the coolest thing ever, dude. And it was cool because obviously I was getting stoned in the back, so that’s what he’s alluding to. I smelled like a big reefer, but he’s just so awesome. And then I was in the back that night doing my interview, I think maybe with Jackie, and he stopped and crashed my interview and put his arm around me and was like, Man, I’m proud of you, man. A lot of the celebrities have come here, gave the big rub on camera right then too. And I would have never guessed that that was going to us being able to wrestle together.”

On giving Austin Theory a chokeslam at SummerSlam:

“Which was all Austin Theory. But once again, the greatest heels make the babyfaces look incredible. That’s all Austin. I mean, that dude’s a seller and a half. But he was the dude I wanted to Undertaker style it, you know, because that’s what I grew up watching. Throw the arm over, kind of like I did Logan in the actual match. Thank you Taker for giving me that nod. But when I went to it, Austin was like, ‘One arm, it will get higher.’ I was like, You sure? He was like, ‘Trust me, bro.’ This is like breaking all kayfabe, straight shoot. He looks at me and goes, ‘My brother, I’m going to jump through the building. I got you dog.’ Because I was so nervous. I made him make us work it out on a crash pad 30 times. They were so over it, him and The Miz, but they were so patient with me. They were like, it’s this easy. And me and Ron Killings are homies. So he was just back there laughing. He’s like, Jelly, I swear you’re gonna be fine. I was like, okay.”

On how the spot led to a match:

“Well, I’m walking up into Gorilla, and I’m obviously losing my mind. I’m definitely a very inflated version of myself, and I see Triple H, and I’m like, ‘Triple H, I got to do this again. I got to take a match, bro. I’m gonna go lose 100 pounds and come back and take a match.’ For the record, I had had a big disconnect between what 100 pounds was gonna feel like and how much I actually needed to lose. That’s a whole different story. But I was in my mind, I’m all jacked up on Mountain Dew. I’m like, Dude, I’m coming back. We’re gonna do this, man. And what I love about Triple H is he’s very direct, he’s serious, but he’s sincere. There’s a real sincerity in his face. You see the seriousness. But I think you got to look at his eyes are sincere. His face is serious. His eyes are sincere. And I seen them eyes, they really soften. He shook my hand. He said, ‘Brother, you lose that weight, you got a home here.'”

Why was 100 pounds the number?

“I guess in my mind, it was like a realistic shot, I should be able to lose 100 pounds in a year. I’ve already lost 50 or 60 pounds in this amount of time. I don’t know what I was thinking, Chris, I was just doing screwball math. You know what I mean? I was just gassing myself into just shooting my shot.”

Did you believe Triple H?

“For sure, I could see it in his face. Like I said, he’s got a serious face, but it’s also very sincere.”

What was your heaviest?

“I was 540.”

What are you now?

“285. I feel really, really good about it.”

On how that led to the match:

“Before Wrestlemania in Las Vegas, I’d already got down like 60 or 70 pounds, and I started looking at it as a God thing, man. I travel like 300 days a year. I travel so hard that my management this year was very intentional about giving me more time off. So they had booked the entire month of July off for me, except for this one thing, where I was going to host Kimmel for a couple days, and I was going to have the whole month off, and I was going to stay here and write my album, because I hadn’t wrote in a year. I’ve been just taking time off writing to just allow life to happen. I started calling management January, and was like, ‘Hey, man, I think I’m going to be able to use July to wrestle at SummerSlam like I told Triple H I wanted to do.’ And as you can imagine, management was so against it. Nobody on my team was cheering for this to be a reality. You know, that’s another fun thing to talk about. But I talked to management, they’re just like, ‘Hey, man, you know, it’s gonna cost you a lot of money. You got time to write. You’re always complaining about not having time with your family. Have you ran this by your wife?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I prayed about it, I talked to my wife and kids. They’ll come see me in Orlando.’ I was like, I want to move down there and just move to the PC for the month. This is January, and I’m like, I want to rent two houses, and I want to put a studio in one house, and I’ll write them up while I’m icing down every day, or see if my what my body can handle, because I didn’t know what I was going to be able to handle or not. And they were like, look, you know, keep thinking about it. Then as we get close to WrestleMania, I was like, Hey, man, if I’m going to do this at SummerSlam, what’s up? They were like, ‘Can you do a ring check the night of WrestleMania?’ I was like, no problem. I showed up, and I was like, what time is the ring check? They were like, ‘Can you wait till midnight?’ And I was like, ‘Yep, no problem.’ I stayed there and watched. I was going to watch the whole show anyways. And at midnight, I walked into that room with Bruce Pritchard and a couple of the producers, and I proved to him I could take a bump for about an hour and a half. I don’t want to say it was a rib, but they were definitely there to see if I had any bitching in me.”

Had you trained at all?

“I knew nothing. I’d done some stuff whenever I was a kid, we had a wrestling ring from DOA, had a spot in Laverne that we’d go to when I was like 10-11, it was so sick, dude. I’d go jump off the top rope on crash pads. But I hadn’t really properly trained at all. I knew nothing about it. I just understood it from being a fan, which is way disconnected from the physicality of it, by the way, we are all grossly underestimating how much all of that hurts. So I mean, I knew I’d be good with the mic, and I knew I could get the storytelling side, you know what I mean, but I wasn’t sure if I could do the physical side. And that’s what they were worried about.”

On advice from Charlotte Flair:

“Charlotte Flair told me this. It was so cool when she came back from her injury. You got to remember, I’m at the PC suffering, so everybody’s having to watch me just limp around. I’m clearly not able to hide the fact that I’m hurt. Charlotte gave me the best advice. She walked over. She said, ‘Baby, I’m gonna tell you something. When I came back from my injury, it bruised my back. I’ve wrestled my whole life, you’re fine.’ And I was like, Thank you. Because you’re starting to have moments as a man, I’ve never done nothing this physical. So I’m like, dude, am I way weaker than I thought I was this whole time? And I’m just like, mad soft. Then they’re like, No, dude, and they started telling me about how many athletes drop out. Athletes that are getting paid good money to train there every day. So they kind of put me through that for like, an hour and a half. You’re just holding the middle rope, swinging back. And they’re showing you how to tuck your chin and not throw your head. You wake up the next day with a pulsating headache all the way down through your neck and spine and forehead. And they tell you exactly where the headache is going to be, and when I woke up the next morning, and they said, ‘Tell us how you feel tomorrow and the day after, if this is what you want to do.’ I text them two days later and said, ‘I’m all in.’ They were like, ‘How sore?’ I was like, ‘Pretty sore, but not sore enough to detour me.’ Well, that’s step one.”

So then where to go from there?

“We set up times to go to the PC. And they gave me the window and they gave me choices. This is so inside baseball. They were like, ‘Hey man, we can send a ring to you and a couple of trainers a couple of days a week, or you can come down to the PC and train unlimitedly, but you’d have to live in Orlando.’ And Matt Bloom kind of runs some of the coaching up there, Coach Matt Bloom. I went and did another ring test with them down there, because then I had to get approved by them. Shawn Michaels comes in, Matt Bloom, Coach Moss, Brookside, it’s that moment, you know what I mean? It’s a real moment, and you got to prove to them you can take the bumps too, or you can at least know something. I just fell in love with Coach Bloom, I fell in love with all of them that day, just the love in that room, the PC just overwhelmed me. So I was like, I want to go to the PC and do it. For sure.”

Did they tell you you needed to be there a certain amount of days?

“Well, no, they were cool with whatever. The biggest thing was, if I did it at home, I didn’t get Coach Bloom or Coach Moss, I would get maybe one every now and then, and I was like, No, I really want these guys pouring into me every day. So that’s ultimately why I picked Orlando. I lived down there for probably 40 days, 45 days. I trained five, six days a week during that time. We did two-a-days, the last two weeks. I had bone bruises. I’m not looking for sympathy on your YouTube channel here, somebody’s gonna make fun of me, maybe. But it was brutal. It taught me so much about me as a human.”

On his goal for the match:

“It was a three-part thing. It was very personal to me, like a lifelong dream. Selfishly, Chris, it’s hard to admit it this honestly, but I’m an honest guy, it was a chance of a lifetime that I thought I had to do, and it was I had to do it. You grow up watching it like I did, and dreaming of it, and then add the component that I came from being so morbidly obese. There’s a moment where I fall down when I chokeslam Austin Theory, and we do the five knuckle shuffle that I fall down, and I am struggling. I’m so fat, I’m struggling to get back up that The Miz and R-Truth come over and help me. I have The Miz on this arm, and I have R-Truth under my other arm, while that arm’s holding a rope. I was so fat that the SummerSlam, before Logan Paul threw me on a table. I was so fat one year before that, it took two grown men and a steel cable rope to get me up from one move down, and one year later, I came back and took a suplex, two snap back bumps, chops. I mean, I took bumps, that is all a part of the story. For me, it was proving that I could do that, like that being a North Star. Two, wrestling is so cool right now. Why is it not being explored in pop culture? That was frustrating me a little bit. When it did make pop culture was always for the wrong headlines because the celebrity involved didn’t commit, or whatever the case may have been. So I was like, Dude, there’s a chance we could actually bleed this thing back into the streets like wrestling used to be, we might be able to blur the lines. We were having conversations early of how Drew’s disgusted by me being there. How real that can feel or not feel, Logan and me really feeling tense. Also, can we take the storyline to Kimmel? Can we take it to ESPN? Can we take it to, like, pop culture? I thought I could bring that to the table a little bit. You know what I mean? Was like, a real big part of it too, was like, almost like, wanting to be one of the guys blowing the trumpet for like, Yo, y’all are missing one of the greatest shows in the world right now. Then I think the third part was, I wanted to see if it was something I could do, and if I could do it, and was able to do it, would I be able to do it again?”

On Logan Paul crashing his live performance:

“First of all, it’s not cheap gear. For the record, that actually was some of our gear. There was definitely a couple of things that we intentionally, like, Yo, don’t touch that speaker. And he still touched it. Well, at that point, he’s just, you know, he’s Loganing out it out. I’m like, yo, there’s a thing happening there, if that motherf*cker touches that one amp to the left, gonna cost me $1,200.”

On not wanting to win the match:

“I fought that immediately. It’s one of the first things I fought was like, Yo, man, I don’t want to go out [on top].”

Was that the original plan?

“It was originally, babyfaces up. So the day of, I’d been dropping it in on Shane [Helms] the whole time. Shane, I want to lose this match. And he was like, ‘Brother, you got to take that up with them.’ I was like, Cool. So I came down and me and Triple H talked about it right there at the ring that day. I said, ‘You know what I’m coming to talk about?’ He said, ‘I want to hear it.’ And I gave it to him. And he was like, All right, all right.”

What was the pitch?

“It was an easy pitch. I was just like, it took three things. One, it’s the right thing to do, let’s just start at core values here. No celebrity has any business coming in and pinning a wrestler on their first run without some extreme circumstance. If Randy comes out and double RKOs everybody while I’m out and puts me on top of somebody. But two, I can always come back, I don’t think any other celebrity ever really cared enough to think full angle through. If I lose this, I love Logan. That’s my friend in real life. But every time he’s in that ring, now he’s got to wonder if at some point he’s going to hear, ‘You know I got it, so come and get it’ [Who’s Your Daddy? By Toby Keith]. He’s got to wonder about that a little bit. Drew too. If I really owe one of them, it’s Drew. So that was part two of it. I was also smart enough to be like, Yo, I want to angle in. And I was like, I don’t want to be remembered as a celebrity who did the thing, and then Triple H stopped me. This will probably be on Unreal because it was so gangster. He said, ‘I will tell you this though.’ He said Floyd wanted to lose to The Big Show. I don’t know if I should be sharing that, but he told me that, and I thought that was cool.”

On the Logan Paul frog splash:

“Thank you for bringing that up. I practiced everything, but that. It’s the scariest part of the night. It’s also the moment you know that’s going to go, because me and Logan had extensively been like, Look, man. If there was ever a time for you to jump, and I know you jump as crazy as you can every time, but if there was ever a time like this, this should make every headline in the world tomorrow. We knew we had that kind of a moment if we did it right. I do remember the hardest part was, I don’t know if I should get this inside, but I got onto the table wrong, which everybody talked about, because I had to slip back, and did the worst job selling my slip back. But equally, I was scared because of where my back was sitting at that moment. I’d never been through it, and I didn’t know where this thing was going to break. So like I had just a genuine self-preservation, like, f*ck what everybody thinks. This is scary as f*ck. But then I looked up, and when Logan took the two bottles, I just remember thinking, I’ll talk about this on my deathbed. I’ll tell this story of what’s happening right here in this moment till I die. I don’t know how many other things in my life I’ll think are cool enough to talk about until it’s all over, but I will, for sure sit right here and think about this moment, dude. He comes, and he hits me, and all I hear is the clear sound of every bit of his air coming out of him, like a [wheezes], And I’m like, oh sh*t. So as soon as I land, I shoot over immediately towards Logan, real fast and cover my mouth. And I’m just like, ‘You okay, bro?’ I was worried I hurt him, he ate. I don’t think he hit the table, Chris. I think he hit all Jelly Roll. I think he’s been used to jumping on people that are like half my width. So I don’t think he fully [knew], because he couldn’t practice for it neither. You can’t put a Jelly Roll size doll up, you’re just having to kind of guess. Then I rolled back over, and I’m laying there, and I’m hurt, of course, I mean, because if you don’t hit that spot, not hurt a little bit, you hurt a lot the next day, but even in the moment, and I just remember looking up and seeing Fat Joe, and that’s my friend, and Druski was standing up behind him, and their faces were concerned. And right then, I was like, we got it. I was like, I just got to sell it. And dude, no lie, I spent the next two minutes selling to just Fat Joe, nobody else. I don’t know how much of it was on camera, but I was just selling because I was like, if I can get Fat Joe to believe this, I am good. It’s getting there.”

On what happened next:

“I walked by my wife, and I remember looking at her, and I just said, I just wanted to finish. And then I watched her face change. I was like, Oh, she thinks I’m hurt too. I worked my wife, dude. I was like, straight up, dude, I worked Joe, I worked. Druski. I was working. I was like, I gotta sell this. Because I knew that my moment of if I really was gonna get over was gonna be when I turned around.”

How have you lost the weight to this point?

“Cardio and eating, very clean though. Cleaning it up is would be almost a grossly under way of expressing it. So what are we talking about? Plants and protein only. I don’t eat processed foods at all. I cut processed foods out two years ago. Now, I’m not like a super weirdo about it, like Thanksgiving, I’ll have dressing. You know what I mean? Like for sure, I’m gonna eat some dressing on Thanksgiving, I’ll eat biscuits and gravy on Christmas morning. Cornbread on New Year’s Day with Black Eyed Peas, because these are family traditions from the south. But other than that, it’s like I said, That’s my three days a year that I’ll eat processed foods.”

On meeting The Rock after 10 years:

“Dude, it was like I almost cried when I hugged him, just for all he’s done for me, as a friend. I don’t know if I’ve ever expressed this this way, but dude, when he first discovered my music he sent me a message. He was the biggest box office star in the world at the time, and I was an underground rapper from Antioch, Tennessee with 100,000 YouTube subscribers. This dude just immediately started pouring into me, sending voice notes, not even just messages on Instagram, voice notes, so you know it’s him. It’s like, ‘Hey, brother, just want you to know I spent some time in Nashville, gave me his Nashville history, and he was like, I understand you, the world will understand you. Be patient with them. They might not get it now, but they’ll get it. You’re speaking for a group of people that’s unspoken for.’ This dude saying stuff to me like this a decade ago. I like the concept that I would go on to have the success I’ve had is like, so far-fetched in my mind at that time, but like, he just seen something in me that he thought he just needed to pour love into. I always say this openly, every big moment I had in my career for the longest time, one of the first two messages I would get would either be The Rock or Joe Rogan. Just like when I made my Grand Ole Opry debut, I think I’d posted a Grand Ole Opry invite video, and then eight minutes later, I had a DM from Dwayne. DJ was like, Yo the Grand Ole Opry, that’s my dream. You’re living my dream like he’s joking with me. I’m like, Dude, you’re the biggest star in the world, you’ve lived every one of my dreams. But he’s gassing me up that I’m living his dream by singing it to just like, What a sweet soul. So to meet him was like, put all that together, man. Was just really, really sick.”

What did The Rock say after your Summer Slam match?

“Just, all praises. Because I talked to him about it, then I was like, ‘Man, I think I want to get involved in a match.’ He’s like, ‘You can get healthy enough?’ I was like, Yeah, man. He’s like, ‘Go shoot for it, brother.’ DJ’s energy is, how can I help? Like, he’s got that energy in life. Anytime you get around him, it’s automatically processed. and then he’s like how can I help? So he immediately, I’m like, I’m having a match, and he stops, we’re walking, and he stops and looks at me and goes, ‘How can I help?’ I’m like no I got it, I’m talking to Triple H. Like, we’re good. He’s like, just let me know. You know what I mean. But like, that instant, like, that’s his spirit in life.”

On the moment that made him change his life after going to prison:

“Adulting, parenting, beautiful little girl. Yeah, she was born when I was in jail, and getting that kind of news in there just reminded me, it really put a spotlight on how horrible of a human I was to myself. It was the probably first time I saw myself the way the world seen me, and that changed everything for me. I was like, Man, I really am a really scummy human, and I don’t deserve to be responsible for a whole other human. That was the first thing that changed my life. That was almost 18 years ago. I was in jail because that little girl had turned 18 in six months and graduated, on her way to college.”

On whether Post Malone will wrestle:

“I don’t know if he will get in the ring, but I can tell you this, he took that personal. Post don’t take much personal, but Post has text me 10 times, Yo, f*ck that Seth Rollins guy. Post is the nicest dude ever, by the way. Post is the nicest, never say nothing bad about anybody guy. Post kind of wants it, dude. When Seth was talking sh*t to him that night, Post was like, Dude, you’re being mean to me. F*ck you. People are like, Jelly Roll, you’re the nicest guy ever. I was like, you haven’t met Post Malone. I’m kind of an asshole sometimes. Post Malone, always nice guy.”

What is Jelly Roll grateful for:

“My family and marriage, my faith, and that I made it to the other side.”

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Natalya On Her New Character, Owen Hart, Montreal Screwjob, Tyson Kidd Accident, Vince McMahon

in LATEST EPISODES on October 21, 2025 January 30, 2026

Natalya (@NatByNature) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. She sit down with Chris Van Vliet in Tampa, FL to discuss her new autobiography “Last Hart Beating” and why now was the right time to release the book, the most difficult chapters to write about, why her path to WWE was not as easy as some may have expected, her new character outside of WWE that has competed at Bloodsport, GCW and the NWA, slapping Vince McMahon at WrestleMania 26, how she found out that Owen Hart had passed away at Over The Edge 1999, when her husband Tyson Kidd (TJ Wilson) broke his neck in the ring, being a Guinness World Record holder and more!

Buy Nattie’s book “Last Hart Beating” here: https://a.co/d/aH2e47n

On why now is the time to release her book:

“So many different reasons. I had been thinking about writing a book for a long time, and so when my contract was coming up last year in like June of 2024, one of the things that I really wanted was I got some new goals, and one of them was I want to do a book. So that was one of the things I brought to WWE that I was like, listen, there’s a bunch of stuff that I want to do, and I really, really want to write a book, and I really need the company, I need you guys to give me your blessing on it if we’re going to move forward and I’m going to continue to work here because I love working for WWE. It’s a huge part of my life. It’s a huge part of who I am. I’m closing in on almost two decades uninterrupted with WWE. WWE is a big part of my life. They’re my family, but I also have new goals and I have new dreams, and I’m just that type of person that throughout my whole life, I always like to set new goals, and if I don’t have goals or dreams or something to look forward to or work towards, I feel like I’m stagnant. When I was in school, I had to have things that I just love working towards new stuff. So the book was like listen, this is gonna be part of a new chapter. I’m starting this new deal with WWE, and I want to be able to write the book. WWE was super supportive about the book. They gave me their blessing and then some, and I needed that, because it’s not like I’m writing the book as a WWE book. This is my book, and they’re giving me their blessing, and so getting their support, having them have my back on it. I wanted to have new goals. So from the cover, I was like, hey, I want to have the Women’s Championship on it, and the Divas Championship. The second I asked WWE, they were like, Yep, no problem. I was like, Oh, my God, they’re letting me. Because, you know, that’s their titles, I have to get permission to do that. Even though it’s not a WWE book, I have to still get permission to get all that stuff. They gave me 16 photos to use that have never been used or never been seen before by people. So they’ve just been so supportive. But I finally felt ready to tell my story. And the great thing is that when you read the book, you’ll realize that there’s still so much room for so much more story, which I love. But I also felt like, I said this to my husband, I said this to TJ. I go, people don’t really know me. I’ve done a lot of interviews over the years. I’ve done a lot of media. I did Total Divas. I’ve been essentially in WWE for, you know, January will be 19 years that I’ve been under contract, and I just don’t feel like people know me. I’ve never been fully able to tell my story. It’s not like, oh, WWE wouldn’t let me. It was just that I never had the courage to fully tell my story.”

On WWE not being an easy path:

“It was hard, and now that I’m this deep into my career, I’m so happy that it was hard, because I grew so much from it being hard. I think it’s important to go through hard things. If life was easy, we wouldn’t grow, we wouldn’t learn. For me, I built so much character in the struggle. Looking back on it now, the best, most fun times were figuring it out, I just have to figure it out. I think that’s the thing with me is that it’s always been a challenge. Because on the outside you go, ‘Well, she’s part of the Hart family, that’s got to be a door open for her, that kind of gets her foot in the door. She’s got a bit of a name.’ But when I was trying to get into WWE, Bret still had conflict with Vince. Bret got into the Hall of Fame in 2006, I was starting to wrestle in 2000. 2001 I was starting to have my first series of matches, but I was green, green, green, green. But Bret and Vince still had lots of conflict, so that conflict wasn’t really worked out for a long time. It was still very intense. So for me, I think it was hard because, yes, I have this name of being part of the Hart family, but there was tension, there was conflict that they have with Owen’s wife, Martha. After Owen passed away, so tragically, the company had conflict there. They had conflict with Bret. And of course, my dad had worked in and out of WWE for many decades, but my dad had lost his job quite a bit. He was fired from WWE, I think five times. So there was just a lot of baggage with the Hart family. I think that there was times, nobody told me this, but I could just assume this, that there were times that they were like, stay away from the Harts a little bit, we got the stuff with Bret going on. It was complicated. But families can be complicated. So it was just challenging for me to get hired. I kept sending in tapes. I kept trying. I would never, ever, ever ask Bret to do anything. And also, Bret’s not going to call anyone up, because he’s not on speaking terms with the company back then. So it was just me sending in tapes to Dr Tom Pritchard, that was the only person that I knew of through a friend to send tapes to, and he was just the coach at developmental. I mean, he wasn’t just a coach, but he wasn’t like a head honcho. It wasn’t like my dad was making phone calls to Vince McMahon, and I was getting in, it was just so hard because the family, like I couldn’t. My dad was struggling with a lot of personal stuff at that time, and he wasn’t well, but I love that it was hard for me to get hired. I love that so much, because it makes for a great story.”

On her new character outside of WWE:

“It’s been the most liberating feeling working on that character, and it all just happened so organically, it really stemmed from the book. After I finished writing the book, I was like, Oh my God, I know what I need to do now. I had signed this new contract with WWE, and I think with Triple H, I think he really wanted to find the right thing. I think he didn’t want to just throw me in stuff that didn’t matter. I think he really wanted to find the right thing. The thing with him is that I believe he’s a forward thinker. So he was like, we just can’t rush into it. We just have to find the right thing for you. And because I had expressed when I was signing my new deal, I was like, I got to grow. This isn’t just about money for me. This is about growing. I have to grow. I have to evolve. I feel like I’m in the best shape of my life. I love wrestling and I need something to dive into. But when I was doing my contract, I didn’t quite know what that was. It wasn’t until I finished the book, so I was in a little bit of a creative rut. It was early this year. It was like February of this year, and I was like, man, WrestleMania is right around the corner, and I don’t know where I fit in. I just know I’m not going to be on the card. I’m not in a storyline. No one’s talking about where I fit in, because you can read the room, you can measure the pulse. I would talk to the writers, I would try to pick people’s brains and go where do I fit in? And this, by the way, is after being in a company for over 18 years. I’m still climbing and scratching and clawing for my spot, which is half the battle and half the beauty. So Josh Barnett and I got to talking, and he was like, ‘Let’s do Bloodsport.’ I was like, I’d love to do Bloodsport. We got to talking about me doing Bloodsport, and I said, I’m going to ask for permission. I walked up to Triple H. He was at the ringside. He was doing a rehearsal for Monday Night Raw. Walked up to him. I told him, ‘Listen, I’ve spoken to Josh Barnett. I would love to do Bloodsport.’ And Hunter was like, Sure. I was so afraid that he was going to say no, because I was like, I really, really, really want to do something Mania weekend. I need to do something, my creative juices are just feeling so stifled. He said yes right away. And he’s like, yeah, absolutely, absolutely, no problem at all. And I know that the company really respects Josh, and they’ve let talent work and do stuff at Bloodsport before. He said yes, so supportively that I was like, I remember that day. I was so excited. I ran up to TJ, and I was like, Hunter loved it. He was like, Yeah, go for it. So I took that as a this is my mission to build something that I’ve never built before.”

On having Rage Against The Machine as her entrance song:

“It’s just different. I just wanted different, and I wanted the energy to be different, and it’s just a gritty thing, but the thing is I can do it. I can easily parlay it into WWE. And so that’s the hope, is that while it’s taken me a long time for my ship to really come in, I really want to go on a powerful run in WWE. That’s my goal. That’s my dream. I think when people read the book, I think it’s going to move them. It’s going to move them in a way that like I want people to cry. I want them to laugh their asses off. I want tears streaming down their face when they’re getting to those powerful chapters and they’re like, holy sh*t, I can’t wait to get to the next page, because I’m telling you, people are going to read this book very fast. It’s like binging a book.”

On what was the most difficult chapter of the book to write:

“I think the most difficult topic to cover was TJ’s injury. I had sleepless nights writing about those chapters. Those were the chapters that they pulled at my heart because they were really [tough]. Even with the stuff that, you know, we think about the Hart family, you think about all the things, there’s been highs and lows. Owen’s death was very tragic. My dad in his struggles, growing up with a parent that my dad struggled his whole, entire adult life, and so I had so I had so much instability that when I was a kid that I’ve never shared. I’ve never shared any of it until writing this book, that people were like, Oh, I had no idea that for two years my sisters and my mom and I lived at my grandfather’s house, and we shared a bed. We shared one bed, and we all four slept in that bed for two years, because my dad lost everything, and so my mom was trying to create some stability for us. We were never, ever homeless. We lived at the Hart House, but there was only one available room. So it really taught me about like I got to sink or swim. Those were hard chapters to write about, because I talk a lot about my dad’s addiction and the things that we went through, and it was just those. Those were hard, but they were nothing like writing about TJ’s chapters of his injury and what we went through.”

Did you know he was injured?

“I knew TJ couldn’t move. Because Cesaro was trying to talk to him, and he [TJ] couldn’t move, he literally just wouldn’t. I knew he wasn’t okay. I knew by the way, his hands, everything just was like almost curled for a split second. I don’t want to get too dramatic, but it didn’t look like a normal landing. His body just looked different. Sometimes if you hit a spider, they kind of curl up a little bit, it looked like he landed in a way that his body didn’t look natural and at ease. Because when TJ first landed, he was paralyzed for like 10 seconds, and so Claudio tried to grab him, to pull him out of the ring, and TJ said, ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.’ And then after being paralyzed for 10 seconds, TJ was able to regroup. He got up, he launched himself out of the ring. And that’s the thing, is that when you saw the way that TJ was, and I write a lot about it, and I go into detail again, don’t want to give it all away, but when I saw how TJ was acting, he wasn’t acting like someone that broke his neck. When you think of somebody that is injured, they’re limping, they’re vulnerable, they’re crying. TJ was angry.”

On TJ walking to the back after that match:

“He was very angry, and it was because he was scared. So that’s the thing, is that people deal with trauma in different ways. So, for example, I broke my ankle many years ago, 2016 small, little injury. But I remember just being so scared. I wanted the whole match to just end right then and there. TJ, I think because of being paralyzed, it scared him in a way that it went from fear to rage. So once he was not paralyzed anymore, the fear turned into rage. So people really didn’t know that he had a broken neck, because he was walking around like normal. He’s walking around, and he was just very, very angry and scared, and all of it was just coming out all at once. But those were hard chapters to write about, because I just knew once we found out from the doctors that TJ had this type of injury, the one doctor was so blunt. He was like, ‘Oh yeah, you’re never, ever wrestling again. You have to find another profession.’ He was very, very cold and blunt, and I wrote about it in the book. I just looked at Cesaro, because Cesaro was with us at the hospital. Cesaro had a tear rolling down his face. Because everybody that knows TJ just knows that he loves this. And Cesaro just knew that that was like a death and losing something that you love so much, there was a grieving there too. I also will say, just adding this, and I wrote about this in the book. My heart broke for Samoa Joe, because nobody wants to ever go through anything like that. That was the last thing in the world that he wanted. He is somebody that in the industry, Joe, I believe, and I have a pretty good pulse on the industry, not just in WWE. Joe is very respected. He’s a great guy. The guys love Joe. He’s got a great reputation. He’s a great person. He loves the industry. He’s very honorable. So it was the last thing in the world that Joe wanted. So my heart also broke for Joe, because I just always felt so bad that he had to carry that too. People say mean things all the time to all of us on social media, but that’s the last thing in the world that Joe wanted. So I always had a little spot in my heart for him after that, because I was like, he didn’t want that, nobody wanted it. It was a sh*tty situation. Nobody across the board wanted that to happen. But it happened, and it was something that we had to go through. I will say, and I’ve said this before on your show, TJ’s injury led him to, I think, the best chapter of his career, because he has been able to reach so many more people in WWE and in wrestling and in the world by doing the stuff that he’s doing now. I think it was, unfortunately, it was part of his destiny, and sometimes you can’t f*ck with your destiny. You gotta let it happen, and then you gotta let it help you.”

On debuting in the Divas Era:

“It was so difficult because I realized that I couldn’t dance to save my life. I tried so, so hard. I took dance classes, I hired private coaches to try to [teach me], because I had always heard Vince love dancing. So I wanted to learn, let me learn how to dance. They’ll love that. I sucked at it. I wrote about that in the book. But I was like, I gotta try to lose weight. I gotta try to be thin. I gotta look like Torrie Wilson. I always had Torrie on this pedestal because she’s to me, I love her physique and she’s so beautiful. I was like, I always wanted to look like Torrie, but I couldn’t, because my body’s not like Torrie’s. I realized that all these things that I thought that they wanted at that time, I was like, I know what they’ll like. What if I made every single girl I worked with look like gold? What if I was the, maybe not the star, but you know what I can do really well, I’ll be the star maker. I’ll be Vince’s Star Maker. I wanted to be Vince’s Star Maker. I wanted to be the girl that Vince would go, or creative would go, put her with Nattie. Because when I was first getting started, I was like, they don’t want me. They don’t want this. I’m never going to be them. I’m never going to look like Torrie. I’m never going to look like Kelly Kelly. But you know what I can do? I can make those girls look like a million bucks, and that will be how I get my in. And I actually started to look at myself the way that I felt like they were looking at me, where I was like, I don’t really know if I’m worthy of being the champion, I don’t think I am.”

Did you really feel that?

“Yeah, I started to feel like I was just lucky to have the job. I started to almost talk myself into, ‘Do you know how lucky you are to even have this contract with WWE that so many people are fighting to even just get their foot in the door’? I know it’s a big dream of yours to be the champion, but in the back of my mind, I started to believe it all. ‘You’re not exactly what they want. You’re not it. You don’t have that it factor. You’re not the star. You don’t look like a star, you don’t present yourself like a star. You don’t have the aura of a star, but you’re lucky that you have a job Nattie, and so just help everyone. Be there for everyone, and make sure that you do your best to make everyone look like gold.’ I really embraced that. And then it wasn’t until Beth Phoenix, and we tap into this in the book. But Beth Phoenix was coming back from an injury, and she had heard rumblings that they wanted to put the Divas title on her. She called me up, and she’s like, ‘Hey, I’m not quite ready. I’m coming back from an ACL injury. Nattie, they want to put the title on me.’ She goes, ‘But you need to try to fight for the title. Try to fight for it, go, go. If you don’t believe in yourself, no one’s gonna believe in you. You got to be your biggest advocate. Nobody’s gonna know how to fight for you better than you.’ So Beth really urged me to fight. So I did, and I pled my case, and then I left going, I can’t believe I pulled that like, I can’t believe I even just presented that I wanted to be the champion, I felt so embarrassed that I was trying to tell my bosses that I wanted to be champion when it’s like, no, we all should f*cking want to be champion. If you’re wrestling in WWE or wherever it is that you’re working for and you don’t want to be a champion, you don’t belong in the company. But I had just talked myself into you’re not really that you’re not what they want. So Beth urged me. I did, it was not easy. It wasn’t something that Vince agreed to right away, but we did it. And you know, that was my first little taste at being the champion. And then it didn’t last long. So it lasted, I think, just a couple months. And then I then I was like, back to I told you, you made a mistake.”

On being ringside for Bret Hart vs. Vince McMahon at WrestleMania 26:

“It was crazy because we only found out that we were going to be part of that the night before. So Vince wanted to do this. Vince and Bret were going to do the match, and then Vince had decided the night before that he wanted the whole family out there. Somebody was going into the Hall of Fame. I can’t remember what it was, but the family was there, and then Vince decided, listen, the whole family’s here, maybe we’ll just get them all in the ring, get them all out there with Bret. But then Vince wanted me to slap him. So Vince, before the match, he pulled me aside and he was like, ‘I really want you to have this moment.’ And I thought that was great. He really cared about me having that moment. So he was like, ‘But you have to promise me one thing, Natalie. You have to slap me as hard as you can.'”

Why does he call you Natalie?

“He always called me Natalie. And so he made me promise him that I’m going to hit him hard. He was like, it has to look real, because he didn’t want me being scared that he was the boss, where I maybe don’t touch him, imagine me at WrestleMania not actually hitting him and I totally miss his face, or whatever. He was like, ‘It needs to look good. It needs to look real.’ And after the match, Hunter was like, Who taught you how to slap, Steph?”

On realizing Owen Hart passed away:

“My grandfather had gotten a call from Vince, and that was when we knew that Owen was not okay. But Owen and Martha lived about 20 minutes from my grandparents, we all lived in Calgary at the time. So it was just, yeah, I think that was the hardest thing my family ever went through. I think it just caused this domino effect of chaos. My grandfather was much stronger than my grandmother, but my grandmother, Helen, I don’t think she ever got over it. I do believe that she died from a broken heart. I think that she had a lot of health complications after that, but she never really got over Owen, and you don’t get over that, but she was never okay after that. So it was very hard on my grandfather, because my grandmother was his everything. So it was just a very, very traumatic time for our family.”

On how the infamous gimmick was pitched to her:

“I remember with that idea, when the writer came out of the production meeting, he pulled me aside, and he made it very clear this was not his idea. And I remember being like, what’s the idea? I thought I was so excited, because earlier in the day, it was like, hey, this head writer wants to talk to you after the production meeting. They have something they want to talk to you about creatively. I remember I had butterflies in my stomach because I was like, Finally, I’m gonna get this cool idea. They’re gonna have a plan for me, and this is gonna be what I need. This is gonna be what’s gonna finally give me my turning point. Being a good girl pays off. You’ve been helping everybody Nattie, but this is your time now. He came out of the production meeting and he just kept saying over and over and over again, ‘This is not my idea, but this is Vince’s idea, and he really loves this idea.’ Well, the thing with Vince is that he liked to do things that were a lot about entertainment, and he wanted to do something, I think he saw me as being kind of a serious wrestler. So he’s like, let’s do something that’s gonna make Nattie entertaining. And it was this character, you know, eventually what I’m getting to is this Nattie Neidfart character.”

“So that was what the idea was for me to morph into Nattie or Natalya Neidfart. And I remember when the writer was explaining it to me, he’s like, ‘What you’re going to do is you’re going to be passing gas, and it’s going to lead to this big babyface moment where you have this crazy flatulence, but it’s gonna lead to a big babyface moment.’ You think about Kurt Angle. He’s an Olympic gold medalist, but he’s done goofy stuff. The Rock did goofy stuff. Trish Stratus did goofy stuff. I didn’t think anybody was trying to bury me. I think it was just an outlandish, outrageous, kooky, crazy, wacky idea. But I was like, I don’t want to fart. I just don’t want to do that. But in true Natalya form, I smiled. I said, ‘Of course, I’ll do it. Not only will I do it, I’m going to make this amazing.’ I’m going to own it. I’m going to show Vince that I’m not going to be I’m not going to be difficult. I’m not going to be difficult like my dad. I’m going to go out there and I’m going to make it great. I’m going to do exactly what he wants and I’m gonna be professional.”

Could you hear the sound effects?

“Yeah, they would play it off of an audio recorder. They’d play noises and stuff like that. We did it for about six weeks. The thing with Vince, and that whole thing was that he was so helpful. Because Vince, when I first started in WWE, he was in the rehearsals. He was in this. He was helping. He was very, very hands-on. He was a workaholic. He loved being involved in everything. And he was super hands-on with making sure everything was lit right. So he was very helpful with it. I was like, wow, this is so cool. Vince, this is his baby. He’s really getting involved. I think he initially cared about it, but I think feedback from people that were watching the product and stuff, they didn’t like it. Fans didn’t like it. Fans said, This isn’t good. And so they stopped. I think enough people had spoken up and said, The fans don’t like this. So one of the writers came up to me again and was like, ‘Hey, we’re not going to do the Nattie Neidfart character. There’s been a lot of negative feedback about it from fans and stuff like that. We’re just gonna drop it. ‘And I go, You know what, in my mind, I was like, I’m so happy that I agreed to that, because now I’m gonna ask for an idea that I want to do. I didn’t have to tell Vince or the writers or anybody, no, the fans did it for me. They protected me. And I was able to ask Vince. I pitched another idea, and that’s the thing about Vince, is that I would go to him very selectively about ideas that I would have creatively, and he would listen. He always listened. He always made time for me, always, always. There was never a moment where I knocked on his door and he said [no]. I could say, ‘Vince, I want to run an idea by you.’ He’s the boss. I mean, sometimes it would take a minute to get to him, but he would listen to the ideas. He didn’t like a lot of my ideas, but he did listen.”

What is Natalya grateful for?

“My health, my brain and the people who are reading my book.”

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Peter Rosenberg: John Cena’s Last Match, Getting Hired By WWE, Vince McMahon Interview, Hip Hop Mount Rushmore

in LATEST EPISODES on October 16, 2025 October 16, 2025

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Peter Rosenberg (@RosenbergRadio) is a broadcaster and WWE panelist. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Indianapolis, IN to discuss his journey from ESPN to WWE, previously interviewing Vince McMahon about getting a job at WWE, why Bobby Heenan is his number one manager in wrestling, if Randy Savage is the GOAT, who could be John Cena’s final opponent, his hip hop Mount Rushmore, and more!

On his first wrestling interview:

“I was still in DC, hustling and radio in 2005 ish, and I had a show at a talk station. Howard Stern was on in the morning, and I was doing nights, then eventually I got mid-days, and they said can we bring wrestling people to your show? They asked me if I wanted to interview Taz and Michael Cole, who were the voices of SmackDown. At that time, I’m not watching wrestling. I know who they both are, but I’m just not really in anymore. […] During the Attitude Era, I started college in 97, so there were kids on my hall who were watching the Monday Night Wars. I would peek in, and I still felt a connection to it, but I was just so into my hip hop stuff at that point, all I was thinking about was interviewing artists, getting the new records, doing my college radio show, being outside. So I was always tangentially aware, but not involved. So when 05 comes, at that point, I’m fully lapsed. So Taz and Cole came on my show, and I remember it being a somewhat contentious interview. This was the Michael Cole era. If you go back and watch Cole stuff in 03, 04, 05, when him and Taz had a lot of edge, particularly when they were not doing SmackDown. That is the Cole I got when he came to the ring. He was ready to go. And they were dealing with an era when people were kind of to your point, not really giving them proper interviews.”

On the Ruthless Aggression Era:

“You watch a random episode of SmackDown or Raw from that era, and segment by segment, the people you’re seeing are just like wait, hold on, it’s young Randy Orton that they’re cutting to a backstage. Then it’s Hogan. Everyone’s there together at one time. I think one day we’ll see memes online like, did you know there was a time when this happened. So it is an iconic era in that way.”

On competition in wrestling:

“Listen, every show is not going to be the greatest show of all time, but the PLEs are these days really, really good. I would say the same thing about AEW, week to week, you can have your complaints, but when the pay-per-views come around, I mean, you might have to take NoDoz to complete it, but it’s filled with matches that you’re like, Well, I want to wake up the next day and watch the rest. I want to see all of these matches. So you have two companies both doing really great Premium Live Events. It’s a pretty glorious time. I didn’t think we’d ever have competition again. So the fact that there’s now, and I understand competition is a whatever word, because WWE is just in a different stratosphere, cool, but that’s not how I think about things. I think about competition, just in what it means for those of us who earn a salary in wrestling, and if you earn a salary in wrestling, another company that puts on a good product, existing is awesome.

On interviewing Vince McMahon and asking for a job:

WNo, [it didn’t help me get a job], not whatsoever. It was a really interesting lesson, because I love that clip, and every once in a while, it’ll go a little bit viral, because it’s like a cool moment to see someone kind of shooting their shot and then look where they are now. Totally inspirational to even myself to see, it reminds me of stuff. But at the same time, the real behind-the-scenes was I took it seriously, and this shows how different the company was then. I tried to reach out to different people to make it happen at that time. I don’t even remember exactly who shot me down, but someone was very matter-of-fact, do not do that, don’t show up here.”

You showed up?

“No, I was going to and then when I reached out to someone who I either was connected to or found a way to, was very much like, no, don’t do that. And it’s interesting. Who knows what would have happened had I shown up one day to Titan Towers and said, ‘No, Vince McMahon asked me to come up here. Can someone at least ask him?’ Who knows? Because he is a grab-the-brass-ring kind of guy, and that was me shooting my shot. I just thought at the time, when am I ever getting a chance to talk to Vince McMahon? It happened one other time. I interviewed him two times, very briefly at events in New York. So, no, it did not lead to that at all. It came. The opportunities came because of other great people years later.”

On how he got the job with WWE:

“I just celebrated 10 years at ESPN. So 2015 16, ish, whenever. Jonathan Coachman started, he brought back doing those SportsCenter off-the-ropes segments where he started leaning back into his wrestling thing, and as I understand it, kind of convinced ESPN, who at that time were kind of wrestling averse, but convinced people hey, there’s something here. Let’s start covering the big events. So Coach started doing that. Coach and I did a radio show together. I don’t know if we did a whole show together, though I think we may have. And at this point in time, they were kind of figuring out where they were gonna put me. I was sort of hot at the moment, and they were like, We really like him, Where’s he gonna go? And I was doing different things locally in New York. I was just doing different things, Coach and I ended up meeting. He knew what a wrestling fan I was. We immediately hit it off and talked wrestling. So when he went to go to Sports Center at WrestleMania, I believe in New Orleans at that time, he says to me, cuz I’m already there at that point, I’m already going to Mania every year. I’m doing Cheap Heat live. I’m doing all my indie wrestling stuff on my own podcast interviews. I have a relationship with the company where they’re giving me talent. I was also one of the first people, Sam [Roberts] and I were on radio row in those very early days. Radio Row was much smaller and Busted Open would be there. It was very early days. Now it looks that way, at least. So Coach says, ‘If you want to come with me, I’ll get you a pass. You can just come with me to all the WrestleMania stuff.’ And I was like, okay, that’s awesome. So he got me one of the passes for the weekend, and I just kind of tagged along. So I went to the Hall of Fame with him. They did stuff there. I did a couple of segments with him on the desk. I don’t even know if it ever got used. I know me and him interviewed Snoop Dogg. So I’m doing ESPN stuff, and at one point on at WrestleMania, I’m standing off to the side watching him do a SportsCenter break, and a guy strikes up a conversation with me, his name was Chris Chambers. Chambers just starts asking me about what I do. I’m like, ‘Well, I do Hot 97 in the morning, and now I’m at ESPN, but I’ve really love doing wrestling, and I would love to do WWE, is kind of my dream, blah blah blah…’ I definitely had said this before, but Chris Chambers, anyone who’s watching from the company knows how important he is. Chambers was a big deal at this company. He is one of the quietest, kept most important TV guys we had, just like you have Adam Panucci. There are these characters in WWE who don’t get the big [recognition]. Everyone knew Kevin Dunn, but there are obviously other people who were really important. And Chambers came from Sports TV, had a really great eye for stuff. Famously, or at least famously to me, came up with the scratch design of the WWF Attitude logo. He’s the man.

So he’s looking at me, and for the first time, it clicked for him like I always hoped it would. He’s like, ‘Wait, you’re on Hot 97 and you’re on ESPN, and you want to be with us? You should give me a call.’ He just sort of was like, seems like a reasonable thing to do. I hit him up the next couple of weeks, didn’t hear back from him. I waited like a month. Hit him up again. He’s like, ‘My bad, swamped post WrestleMania. Let’s set a call. ‘Then we set a call, and he’s like, ‘What do you think about joining our kickoff shows?’ He’s got two things for me. They’re thinking about doing a thing on kickoff shows where we bring in someone to be like a guest analyst. Meanwhile, Sam is having a separate conversation about the same thing through Michael Cole. I don’t speak for Sam, but I’m pretty sure through Cole. So Chambers says I want to talk about that. And we also have a show idea for you to maybe host, which turned out to be the show, Bring it to the Table, which we did for a season, me Graves and JBL, which was a ball. When I go back and watch it every once in a while, now it still exists, I think it’s up on Peacock. It was a pretty cool show that we did. We were straddling the line, but within WWE programming, it was cool stuff. And he said, ‘So what do you think about coming and doing that?’ I was like Yeah, dude, and that was it. I was a Chris Chambers guy, and then Chambers moved on and was doing different stuff, and then retired from the company in the last couple years, and plays a lot of golf in Florida now. But shout out to Chris Chambers. He’s my dude. And shout out to Coach, because without Coach asking me to come along for that journey, yeah, I never would have ended up here.”

On Bobby Heenan being his number one manager:

Y”es, he is. I say that like feeling Paul Heyman’s eyes glaring at me. But Paul is something different altogether. It’s not quite fair to Bobby to put Paul in the same category. Paul has become this thing that is so much bigger than manager. I mean, he’s not a manager, he’s an Oracle, he’s an Advocate, he’s a Wise Man. He’s all those things. But he specifically chose I’m going to be bigger than manager, which he is. Obviously, behind the scenes in every way and ECW, his legacy is just unmatched. But as far as managers go, oh yeah, it’s Bobby number one with a bullet. I mean, Jimmy is incredible too, by the way, and I absolutely adore Jimmy Hart, who sometimes can end up in the shadow when we have these conversations. But Jimmy was such a heat magnet also, and did so many things well. So I love Jimmy, but yeah, for me, Bobby was my guy. Before he passed, I got a moment at WrestleCon to pour my heart out to him. He wasn’t communicative at the time. So I don’t know, you know, I know he received it, because I know that for him, his issue at that time was he just couldn’t communicate back. Obviously, his brain was fully intact. But I got a moment, and it was when I just started with the company to go up to him and just thank him for everything and tell him how much he affected my entire journey and how great that I thought that he was, and I ended up writing his obituary for ESPN.com. I just adored him. I didn’t know him, and I’m sure he was a handful in a million different ways. It certainly seems that way from a distance. But yeah, he was the man, dude, the talent put in that frame, he could have done so many things.”

On his favourite wrestler:

“So this is a battle in my heart, no pun intended, because the first two wrestlers that I essentially fell in love with were Bret and Savage. Bret was the first wrestler who without any understanding of why he was good. I just knew he was good. That’s how good Bret was as a wrestler that, like, as an eight, nine-year-old, I was like, I don’t even know what makes a good wrestler, but everything he does looks awesome. The pink and black was awesome.”

On Randy Savage:

“Savage to me, in some ways, I think gets left out of the GOAT conversation too often. I think Savage was just brilliant. From the second he arrived in WWF, because obviously I hadn’t seen him prior to that, to me, he was brand new when he got there. From the second he got there, immediate impact, like just grabbed everyone’s attention, everyone hated him, and then everyone loved him. When you go back, what makes Macho Man the perfect wrestler was that good guy, I give him 100 as a good guy, as a baby face, awesome. As a heel, clearly 100, there’s maybe nobody better. He was so easy to hate from a wrestling style standpoint, big guy, little guy. Put him in the ring with Ricky Steamboat, who’s not a little guy, but on the smaller side relative to the biggest guys, him and Steamboat have an absolute classic. Put him in the ring with Andre, you know, no problem, gold. You could put him in with anyone and everyone looks good. In the ring, to me, he’s perfect. On the mic, obviously, I wouldn’t give him 100 on the mic, because when you look back as funny and, you know, animated as the promos are, I guess they didn’t always make a lot of sense. But when he was locked in and trying to deliver a message, completely there.”

On when the modern day resurgence in wrestling began:

“It feels like the pinnacle of it all hitting, there was a combination of Roman and Paul coming together and the bloodline being born as a storyline. I’m gonna give it a combo of three things. That story, the return of Cody Rhodes, and Nick Khan truly taking the place that he’s taken, because you can’t remove, as company shill as that sounds like, you can’t remove the business moves that have now been made over the last several years in talking about why this thing is the hottest it’s ever been. Because we’re here right now in Indy, and I get to work for ESPN here and WWE this weekend. That is Nick Khan. I don’t think there’s another person to point to as to why you have the biggest sports broadcast agent in the world coming over to WWE with every relationship that he’s already built. So all of those things factor in. But Roman becoming Roman Reigns because that’s the truth. The truth is the second that camera panned over and we saw Paul Heyman, and this is what makes wrestling the greatest art form on planet Earth, is that the second that camera pans over to Paul Heyman, all of a sudden, Roman Reigns is different.”

On who could be John Cena’s final opponent:

“Because we’ve talked about all the people who make sense, and a name that just hasn’t gotten mentioned very much, it’s super unlikely, and I’m probably reaching here, but when you think about what they represented a certain time, the last Saturday Night’s Main Event happens to be in DC, if you hear this [plays Batista’s theme].”

I believe Batista when he says he’s retired:

“So I think you’re right, and I think he meant that, and I respect that. I personally as a fan, and who cares what we think, it’s about what he wants in his life. But I’m selfish, and I’m a fan. I’m not satisfied with the editing. I would love to see Batista one more time. I think there’s more. I just think there’s one more story to be told.”

On his hip hop Mount Rushmore:

“So do I start with like a true, true old school, literally, Grand Master Kaz or Curtis Blow? Llike a true early days, if they don’t start, maybe nothing ever happens. I think you probably can’t do that, because there’s so many greats that have come later, right? So I think then you put position one Rakim, and Rakim is by no means the first, but he is the one who truly took it to a next level for the first time. And by the way, there are other arguments to be had there, and I recognize them. We could have it with Run DMC or [Big Daddy] Kane, or there are a lot of people there. Yeah. I feel comfortable putting Rakim in one seat.”

What is Peter Rosenberg grateful for:

“My daughter, my wife and to God.”

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IYO SKY: Rhea Ripley, WrestleMania 41, Signature Emote, Trash Can Moonsault, MITB, Damage CTRL

in LATEST EPISODES on October 14, 2025 January 30, 2026

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IYO SKY (@Iyo_SkyWWE) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Indianapolis, IN to discuss her match of the year with Rhea Ripley and Bianca Belair at WrestleMania 41, winning Money in the Bank and cashing in to become Women’s Champion, the trash can dive at Survivor Series, how her pointing taunt began, future dream matches, and more!

On her love of wrestling:

“Wrestling is my life. It is hard to explain. So in combat sport, wins and losses are all that matter. However, it’s only pro wrestling where losses have a value because they shape who we are and give us a chance to turn into something special. Additionally, in pro wrestling, it is important for a character to have weaknesses.”

What are your weaknesses?

“Well, I’m small. Rhea has so much muscle, and Bianca Belair is so fast, so strong, but I’m not like that.”

So what is your strength?

“Flying high and no fear.”

On learning English:

“So I went to English school once I got a contract with WWE, but only 30 minutes in a week, or one hour a week, or twice a week, or something like that. So it didn’t help as much, better than nothing.”

On cutting promos in English:

“Promos make me nervous, even only short lines makes me so nervous, because even backstage from everything, because we are on TV, behind the camera. So that’s why I’m always careful about speaking proper English, like now I’m pretty relaxed to speak English, sometimes even broken English, you will understand, but on camera, I have to memorize proper English.”

On a bad first match:

“I feel like I was just so embarrassed because my debut match was so bad, and maybe the audience was only 30 people, but I felt so embarrassed. So I thought I want to quit, but actually I was so frustrated as well. So maybe I have to become stronger. I have to get better to change their mind, because 30 people think Io Shirai is a bad wrestler. I want to change something like that, to become Io Shirai is not a bad wrestler. So that’s why I want to quit but I should keep until they are thinking, Io Shirai is no bad wrestler, and they just keep going, keep going, keep going. Then three years later, I become full enough to wrestle.”

On WrestleMania 41:

“Oh yeah, definitely. That is my favorite match too.”

Is that your favorite match of all time?

“I think so. Here I have a lot of favorite matches, but yeah, that is totally special to my life.”

On what the match meant to her:

“It meant so much to me, of course, also so much to Japanese people as well. Because for a long time Japanese wrestlers didn’t win at WrestleMania, even for women’s wrestling, Japanese wrestler, first time ever in WWE to win at WrestleMania. So I’m so honored, and even kind of unexpected. I walk in as a champion, walk out as a champion.”

On the backstage reaction to the match:

“I was so happy, but so honored and grateful to everyone like, of course, Bianca Belair, of course, Rhea Ripley, I’m so honored to be there with them.”

On the difference between Io Shirai and IYO SKY:

“So that’s interesting, because I was Io Shirai even in NXT. I thought when I joined WWE, I would get a new ring name, but WWE didn’t ask me, and I kept using Io Shirai. That makes me happy, but I was wondering [about it]. Then I got called up to the main roster, then that time was SummerSlam 2022. So Hunter asked, because that time was I was injured, broken ankle, almost got cleared. And then Hunter called me. ‘Are you ready to go to Raw?’ And I totally didn’t expect that, he told me with Bayley and with Dakota Kai, because she was not working with WWE. That was makes me so happy, because Bayley, Dakota and me make a new unit, oh my gosh. Then he says, please think of something new for a ring name. Oh my gosh. I don’t have any time, because maybe that was only five days before SummerSlam. Iyo Sharai means purple thunder in Japanese. So that’s why I tried to think something when you’re hearing my name, you could imagine like a fire or like a water whatever, like a strong fist whatever. Sky, because if you hear me, if you hear Iyo Sky, you think of the sky, and you won’t forget my name. So that’s why I decided to put sky. IYO SKY, Io Sharai, both similar sounds.”

On not bringing back the moonsault stomp:

“I don’t think so, because that is too dangerous for me. I don’t want to break my ankle again. Because actually, I broke my ankle four years ago at NXT TakeOver, I did a moonsault to the outside, and there was an announce table. I hit my toe on the announcer’s table, very, very strongly. And then, oh my gosh, I thought it was completely broken, but yeah, no bad, but broken bone.”

On winning Money in the Bank with handcuffs:

“So actually the idea was Hunter’s. That’s such a cool idea, and the handcuff through that is so cool. Actually I did it in the match and tie up Bayley and Becky. Their hands, ladder was there, I look at the briefcase, I feel like that was perfect.”

On the moonsault trash can spot in WarGames:

“Yes, totally [I practiced it]. Because in my head, I think of course I can do that. Yeah, put on the trash can and do the back flip. Feels easy, but actually it is such a dangerous move. I went to the WWE Performance Center, and they have a normal trash can. I took off the plastic bag and clean up myself, and make it a little bit cleaner, and I hope nobody was watching what I’m doing. I put on my head, and I did my own practice thing. That was only from the top rope, but I made it, so that’s why I thought it should be fine from the cage. Make it double high.”

On the trash can dive:

“I know I am crazy, that’s why I thought at that time, I won’t practice it. So I just think in my head, oh, maybe I can do that, because cross-body is my familiar move. Even putting on the trash can doesn’t make me nervous, or make me scared, or something like that. But actually, I was standing on the edge and tried to put my head in the trash can, and I realized at that time, oh my gosh, I can’t see anything. So I didn’t think about I would be blind. I just think about putting it on my head and jumping off. I didn’t think about my vision. And, of course, in the trash can it was so dark and I couldn’t see anything, and oh my gosh, I started to get scared. Wow, I might have to jump off from here. Oh my gosh. I can’t do that. Maybe I will get injured. One second, two seconds, you know, oh my gosh, I can’t. No, I have to just jump. So first time, I was so scared. But no, because camera is here, so show must go on. I have to jump off. I did it, and second time I was relaxed. I could do it because, yeah, I knew it.”

On having great chemistry with Rhea Ripley:

“I think so, because she has muscle. I’m running fast. I’m so small, but I can flip and she’s not a flipping person, like so much the opposite. So that’s why I think we have great chemistry.”

On future dream matches:

“Alexa Bliss, never had a singles match. Becky Lynch, I think [we haven’t had a singles match].”

On her signature emote:

“So when I started this emote, not like this big thing it is now. I just started something, drop kick, whatever, and then I just started this pointing at myself. ‘I did it! Look at me!’ Something like that. I started like this, and I did it two times, three times, and then the crowd reaction gets bigger, bigger, bigger, and now it becomes like this.”

On her hobbies:

“Oh, I love cats. I’m big cat person. I have two cats in Japan. One is a boy, Santo. The other one is a girl, and her name is Rayo, both of their names came from Luchadors. I like sleeping. Yeah, I like sleeping and I like eating ice cream.”

What’s your favorite flavour?

“Chocolate mint.”

What is IYO SKY grateful for?

“WWE, my family and to you.”

Quotes have been edited for clarity.

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Nic Nemeth: WWE Return? TNA, Almost Signing With AEW, Spirit Squad, John Cena, Infamous Match vs. Goldberg

in LATEST EPISODES on October 9, 2025 January 30, 2026

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Nic Nemeth (@NicTNemeth) is a professional wrestler currently signed to TNA. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss leaving WWE in 2023 and TNA was the right fit, whether joining AEW was ever a possibility, wrestling Goldberg at SummerSlam 2019, the infamous Iron Man match against Seth Rollins that was hijacked by the crowd, the messy New Year’s Eve toast with AJ Lee, possibly making a return to WWE TV, a potential Hall of Fame induction, and more!

On joining TNA:

“There were so many people that were letting me know that I was going to AEW that they confused themselves to be extra surprised because they had told me that I was going there. They let me know they knew I was, and they were so blown away by this surprise. I go, I didn’t lead you to believe that, you told me, I didn’t tell you. So many people were like, ‘Hey, 91 days [after your WWE release], I know where you’re going.’ I’m like, Hey, cool. I’m not sure, but hey, let me know.”

On how the surprise was kept a secret:

“There’s only a few surprises in the business that can still get people excited. I went out of my way, even some close friends, to say hey, I’m just watching the game, doing something and not saying anything, just because there’s so few things that are kind of cool, and we always kind of ruin them. Even if I told just two or three wrestler friends, it would have been less of a surprise somehow, one way or another. But like an hour before, I’m like, okay, I can tell some people, but I still didn’t. I’m waiting, and then also Ash By Elegance was also backstage, and I was like, Hey, cool. We both get to have this surprise together. This is kind of fun. Nobody knew, and I wasn’t gonna tell anybody. I don’t think I told my parents. I think Ryan knew. But we were also not telling my parents or anybody, just in case.”

On when he was thinking about what’s next after WWE:

“Three years before that. Yeah, signing my last deal for an astronomical amount of money just to keep me there was cool, but I said I don’t see myself staying for the full thing. I don’t see you guys paying me for the full three years of this, because what I’m doing right now is basically break glass in case of a pay-per-view match, or somebody needs an opponent for something, and that’s okay. But it really was a lot of money, and I was ready to leave, and I go, I’m not gonna stay for the full time, because I only have a certain amount of years to be looked at as a top guy, World Champion at any company, and if I stay for three full more years, it’s gonna be like another year after that, and then who knows how this works out. So with the full intention of either some mutual agreement here, or me getting out year and a half or two to go see what I can do and prove to myself. I’m like, Oh, I was in this bubble for 20 years. I know all the people who come in and out, and it’s a rotating cast, but for the core people in there, I knew them. I knew them really well. I knew what I was capable of and what I could do. But I go, I’ve talked all this sh*t for 15 of those 20 years. I need to go do it outside of this bubble, and it’s for me, but also to let some people know I know you’re doing three-minute matches with no entrance at the moment, but we forgot that every pay-per-view you’re on, you stole the show whether you wanted to or didn’t want to. And I go, I need to prove this to myself that I could be a World Champion at any company in the world, just because this one decided I’m not on that list, I can show everybody else still. I need to prove to myself, and I really wasn’t sure. I’m gonna go to Japan, I’m gonna go to TNA, I’m gonna go to independents, I’m gonna go to Mexico. I want to see if, without people going, ‘Hey, great job, great job,’ just because I was there, I needed to know when I got out of there, okay, I can still go, because I hadn’t been tested in a couple of years. Because it was a lot of times like, Hey, you have an eight-minute match. But we know the deal. A lot of it was myself and Robert Roode just out there with Street Profits or somebody, and a lot of those eight-minute matches became four-minute matches by the time it got to us. And then do you want it down to two and a half, or do you want to cut your entrance? Cut out our entrance, so we can give them a wrestling match, and you’re seeing two minutes of guys just doing moves, and that’s okay for a TV show sometimes at that point, but it wasn’t the best use of us, and it wasn’t the best use of me being there to do it. So I wrote a really, really long email to Vince, Hunter, Bruce, Ed, and maybe one other person, and it was a compliment sandwich. ‘This is the greatest thing ever. I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I will never not say that you’re using me, or a role that a local would be in, but you’re paying me as the WrestleMania main eventer, this is bad for you, and this is bad for me.’ At this point, because of the timing of the company about to be purchased by someone else, that was the best bet to get out of it. Because in the past, I’m like, ‘Hey, I want out.’ They’re like, ‘Sorry, you’re signed. You’re not getting out of this.’ Okay.”

Did you ask for your release?

“Yes. So I said, ‘Do me a favor. Let’s do this as soon as possible, or I’m down to talk if you want to say something else or go with some different route.’ But I go about a year and a half into the three years, or just under two years, and nobody wrote me back, except for Vince. And he said, ‘Wow, this is incredible. This is a lot to read. I’m not sure what to do.’ And I said, ‘Vince, I will fly to Stanford tomorrow morning and we will finish this or talk about it, or find a new role, or at least let me go away for five years, something.’ He goes, ‘Give me a week to think about it.’ I said, ‘I really want to figure this out right now.’ He goes, ‘Give me one week. It’s a lot to process.’ I said, okay, and the next week I was on the list of people who were released. So, yeah, it worked, if they were not in the process of cutting some things to trimming the fat to be purchased by another company, I would assume that I would been in there for another year and a half or so.”

On knowing he wouldn’t get released unless he asked:

“I like to complain all the time, my thing is to work as much as possible, like a workaholic would, and then complain about always working. That’s the thing, ‘Why don’t you just take some time off? You saved your money.’ I’m like, no, because then I can’t complain about always working. That’s the thing that I have in my head at all times. So I was never worried about it. The first 15 years of my career, I was worried about it every single time the releases came out, because a lot of times either I’m losing end of the stick most of the time or not being utilized at the top, maybe 12 years of those 20. And then it became like, Oh, I’m good. I could survive anywhere. So if it doesn’t work out here, it’ll work out somewhere else. And the last couple of years I was like I would come back and not dare them to do it, but say things that would be alluding to daring them to do it. ‘Oh, you want me to go be World Champion everywhere else but here, and make your main events look [great]?’ By the way, 2018 2019 we weren’t putting out the best product. I was a little disappointed in some things that was happening and myself, obviously, always, but that’s why I stuck with the [someone said] ‘Hey, did you know you lost? You’re talking about your stealing the show last Monday.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t watch.’ That’s where that started from. I don’t watch wrestling because it was like a joke to get me out of having to argue with someone who half pretends it’s real and half pretends it’s fake. So I leaned into the I’m phoning it in, and they won’t fire me. I don’t even try. And then it got to a point where fans and people who write online articles started to go ‘Nic phoned this one in this week.’ It was just like I tricked them by saying it so much, because I would say come, ‘Oh, me phoning is still everyone else’s best. It’s better.’ But I wouldn’t, I can’t allow myself to do that. But if I wasn’t having a 25-minute pay-per-view match, I’m having a six-minute match where I’m kind of getting beat up and thrown around, I would still go above and beyond to do it and be like, Oh, look, he’s phoning it in. He only had a six-minute match. I’m not the Booker. I’m just leaning into a bit that I’m doing so people genuinely, the last five years he’s really been phoning in. I’ve never once phoned it. I tried, once on a live event to not bump so well, I was yelled at by the bosses. Stop bumping so well, not over the top, Curt Hennig stuff, but stop being so crisp and good with your stuff. So I tried one time, someone gave me something, and I was like I can never do this again. I half fell a second late. I go, I’m so embarrassed. I can never do this again. So I can’t, and that’s the workaholic part. Whether it’s three minutes with no entrance or 25 minutes with Randy and doing all the work. I have to go. I cannot walk back there. I don’t need people applauding me. I need me to go you gave them 11 out of 10.”

On why TNA was the choice:

“I didn’t want to sign anywhere because I just got out of a long-term relationship, and I didn’t want to get out of a 20-year marriage and go right down to being engaged like six months later. So I really go I need to be able to have the freedom that I could go to Mexico, I could go to Japan, I could go to Germany, I could go anywhere, and then not have to be like, well, it has to be based on someone else’s schedule. And Scott D’Amore was begging me. He’s like, three years, two years, six months. And I mean this in a very positive way. He goes, ‘Dude, you’re gonna love it here. Wait until you see the locker room.’ You would be a huge piece here. And, I mean begging. ‘Give me something about where you’re related to this company that we can use, and it’ll help you and help them.’ He started having a couple of people text me. He had Roode text me, which is pretty great. Well, we’re buddies, but it was just like him texting me out of the group chat like, something important is happening. It was really funny and I was like, All right, I’ll give it a shot. I go eight dates, so that way I can still travel the world and go test myself. And one day in, it’s not even fake, it’s real. I’m like, Oh, this locker room kicks ass. Everybody is open to creative ideas and they’re really looking for some little spark just to keep rocking and rolling along the way. And the really funny thing is, the first taping I was at, I’m dying. I’m like man, everyone’s so great. Locker room’s ridiculously nice. I know some people. I just see everybody and I go, Yeah, man, I’m so mad. I’m gonna stay here. One taping in, and one taping in, Scott D’Amore is out, my boss, who said, here’s what we’re gonna do, here’s what we’re gonna do, here’s what to do.”

And that was the first weekend it was TNA:

“Yes, and that was the big turnover, and I was like you tried to get me to sign a three-year deal, and you’re leaving the next week. He didn’t know. Didn’t know he was leaving, obviously, I mean, as far as I know. The first time I walk over to the monitor, I watched for 90 seconds, and then I watched Leon Slater jump over the top turnbuckle out to the floor, and then get up on his feet. And I go, Oh my God. Who is this guy? What is he, 23? They go, 19. Great! I was like, this guy blows my mind. Because one, I’m very old school, and I like the psychology and making things work, mostly because I can’t do the high-flying stuff. A lot of people think I can because I caught Kofi and a bunch of guys forever, but I can’t, I’m really good at the other stuff. I saw him doing that and then applying the psychology and I was like, damn it. Why is he so good right now? You’re supposed to be good after we help you. I had a match with him, we did something, and we dropped out. And I was like, getting ready to tell him to relax. Oh, he is, damn it. I came to the back, like, you’re not supposed to be that good at the in-between stuff at 21 he goes, I’m 20. I’m like, okay, got it, yeah. So it was like he was pissing me off that he doesn’t just do the cool stuff, he was actually applying the psychology to everything. And I went, Man, this guy’s gonna be something big, and we all just watched it over the last year.”

On whether he was close to joining AEW:

“I wasn’t. I love so many people there. I’ve had a couple of conversations with Tony in the past, and I rooted for those guys every step of the way. AEW being a thing helped a bunch of people out, worst-case scenario, with negotiating and setting up their career for years down the line. I go if this ends in two or three years, it helped a bunch of people out and put some other people on TV, and they’re rocking and rolling and doing their thing. I watched every Wednesday, because I have to talk about it on Thursday. And it’s another one where I gotta watch wrestling. It’s like kind of a joke, but I’ve like come to learn all the people on the show and watching what they do. If I could do all the stuff that everyone does, their top circle, the whole show, really, it has so many different moving parts and pieces to it that I don’t know that I could, from my old style. I can adapt to anything, and I have been, and I even watched. The 2025 version of me still applies some different things that I wouldn’t have done a few years ago. But I don’t know if in a 35-45 minute match, if it wasn’t with me and Bryan Danielson or Jon Moxley, those guys where I know what they’ve done, and I can move around and do some things, but it’s like, if it’s remembering a sequence like I’m getting 30 guys in Contra every two minutes, I would be more vacant in the match, instead of like feeling the emotion and just remembering it. I go, I don’t know how they do it, but when it comes to those pay-per-views, they blow the roof off, and it’s incredible. And I just really thought with TNA, I go, I will never, ever be Kurt Angle. He’s just my hero, but I know that he did something special with going to TNA and I go, maybe, just maybe, this guy that a bunch of people, most people, seem to respect and have been waiting to see what I can do, maybe me showing up here and being involved could be another spark that does something, because they’re already getting talked about and making some moves, and they’ve been a insane brand for years. But I go, maybe, just maybe, me being there makes this a bigger and better place by 1%. Then falling in love with the locker room and everyone behind the scenes, I just go, this is the fit. I wasn’t going to go anywhere. I didn’t want to. A couple dates for somebody and a couple dates at AEW, 100% I would have done that. But I just go I need to travel the world and be able to sleep at night knowing that I can go, because I talked this sh*t for 15 years. No one’s better, no one can follow me. Sorry about the booking, but that’s not my call. And it’s like, now it’s like, back it up or don’t. And I had to, and I would have gone almost anywhere for a few dates just to check it out, but TNA was the fit. I would have watched their progression from the outside if I wasn’t there, but I’m rooting for all those guys and girls.”

On how much longer he intends to wrestle:

“Every once in a while, I do. I don’t understand how, the way I bump and move my body around and as a workaholic and fly so much, how I am not in more pain and I’m not injured more.”

On a possible WWE Hall of Fame induction:

“I guess I think everybody kind of gets in eventually, but listening to that [my accomplishments], it’s like, it’s awesome. I know I downplayed the US Title a little bit, and sometimes it was just like, I’ve been there before, which is like, Hey, we got a bunch of heels going over in this pay-per-view Kofi has to win this match and win the US title back for you after like, two weeks, and you’re like, okay, and it doesn’t make sense. But there’s a lot of times where it did matter and make sense, and it felt good to be like oh, we have a good story, and now a title is involved, and now I’m fighting for it. And now I got it. Now it got taken away from me. Oh, I gotta chase it again. There’s a lot, I would say 70% of those things that you announced were like, I’m picturing the pay-per-view that led to it, or where we went afterwards. And it was like, that’s, that’s what I like. And that 1554 matches on TV would have been so much more if I wasn’t always, like, getting yelled at and taken off the show. Sometimes I really feel like there’s 10 more TV matches we could have got in there.”

Do you feel like you had a Hall of Fame career:

“Reading the paperwork and knowing what I can do? Sure. I would say yeah. But I genuinely don’t think about it at all. Some things I focus on, like hey, I have to give my body 11 out of 10 for any match that I’m in, no matter what company it’s in, or where it’s at, or if there’s 80 people or something. But knowing those stats, it’s like, yeah, I did, and it won’t be mentioned, probably even if I was in the Hall of Fame. But it was like, no one will ever follow that number of shows in a row, without being injured, without being out, without needing a week off.”

On what was dropped on him during the New Year’s Eve toast with AJ Lee:

“I think it’s a bunch of dog food, and a bunch of other gross stuff. It’s not like a big vat of movie fun stuff that smells like pudding or something, it’s gross. And I think the gross, gross one was The Spirit Squad one where we got outhouses dumped on us by DX. And the rumor was it was half real outhouses, but that’s not real. But that stuff stunk and was gross, and that was tons and tons of wet dog food and even, and if you smell it, it’s gross, and it’s in your hair and your ears and stuff and like, but you know what? Vince wouldn’t ask you to do something that he wasn’t gonna do. He was out there with us getting covered with it.”

On wrestling Goldberg at SummerSlam 2019:

“So I assumed it would be two minutes of heat, but like me moving out of the way, him taking himself out to a turnbuckle, and then a couple of moves from him, and we go to his finish or something. And I was told no, ding, ding, ding, spear, jackhammer. I said ‘Vince, why am I in this match when anybody could take a spear and a jackhammer?’ We built this up. We pretended it was gonna be Miz, then we pretend it was gonna be Shawn Michaels for one night. And we had this face-off, just so you could play the Goldberg music and make this. What’s the point of Ding, ding, ding spear Jachammer? I go, a local could do it, anybody could do it. And he was like, ‘Well, I don’t know what he can do with you.’ I go, ‘If I can’t be in this match doing something, then I have to leave this company right now.’ And I’m not kidding, if this is purely for someone a scarecrow, to take a spear and a jackhammer, I don’t want to work here. And also, it was supposed to be my second to last night. Anyway, we’ll get to that in a minute. I’m fighting with him all day, and luckily, I’m at a point at in 2019 where it’s like, I’m not just gonna go, Okay, you’re right. I should just take the moves. I’m fighting. I’m like, it should be something. I should kick him. I should hit him with my finish. I should do something where he has to come up out of it, and we were just going to his finisher anyway. But there should be something other than a bell, because then there’s no little ride, there’s no anything. There’s just a finisher. And if the crowd’s hot on his entrance, they don’t get hotter. We don’t take them down. We don’t bring them up. I pitched a million different ways to do something, and finally it was a super kick on the bell, get a false out of it. Super kick him again, and then get broken in half. And I go, Yeah, okay, that’s something, at least. There’s some up and down that we can go with. And I love Renee, happens to be on the call there, and I love making fun of her, because she’s so good at so many things in our business. It really pisses me off. She’s so good at like, 57 out of 58 things in our business. She’s not great at calling action, which I get to bust her balls for, which is great, but she’s so good at everything. But I love she didn’t know what we were doing, and it’s just ding, ding, ding. And we both stand there, and I hit him under the chin with my super kick try and kind of put him down. And she just goes, ‘Oh my God!’ I really go now we got them for a second. That’s all we needed was something, if we get them on a close kick out here, at the time, super kick was my finish. If we get them, if he’s just, like, not kicking out at zero, he’s a hero, like, let’s get 1, 2, oh! And we got two moments out of one move, and he’s just gonna spear me anyway. And of course, he kicked out at one or something, because he’s really good at wrestling. Then we got to the second one, and I spaced it out. I go, break me in half, and he did, and we got to get a couple more out of it, and it genuinely hurt like hell every time. But that’s part of the business, that’s the deal. At the beginning of the day, it was pretty easy to go around a few different things, but the spears really hurt. And I was just like, man, getting out of that last one before he was leaving. I was like, Man, I got one more, just get up and take it. It’s gonna be all right. But that’s how it should be for crazy spears. For someone who works once a year, or is in the match once a year or something, it should be like a badass spear, and it should be real, and I might have a cracked rib or something. I didn’t, but I would have been fine with things. That’s part of the deal. But I was pitched the idea to go with Goldberg because I was going to leave the company. It was going to be, I’ll leave the names out of it who pitched the idea to me who said, ‘Everything that you do when you put over so many people. Other people put over someone when they leave. You’re the only person who’s going to put over two people on the way out, because we know you can.’ And I went, Oh! I was drinking the Kool-Aid. They didn’t believe in it. But I was like, Oh yeah, you know what? Damn it. Goldberg on Sunday, and that Monday, I wrestle Miz with my career on the line, and he beats me. I wanted to make sure he tapped me out with his version of the figure four, but some version of that to like I’m helping my friend on the way out. I’m giving his figure four the best sell that he’ll ever have. So that gets passed on to him. And I lost on Sunday to Goldberg, I’ll lose there to Mike, and then I was out of the company and on a handshake deal, I was out. And that day I was told that I would not be allowed to be out.”

On a possible WWE return:

“Maybe, but I really love what I’m doing. I really, really love what we’re doing as a company, and what I get to do on my free time, plus with the company. So sure, possibly something. [But still be with TNA?] Yeah, and that’s fine. I’ve said this since they started talking together and making things public about everything with WWE relationship, I said, if I can help TNA get something, I will be there. If it’s to go to NXT and have a match, I’m not interested. I’ve done everything I’ve could possibly do in NXT, and if it’s to do something with someone that I worked with, like Randy or Cody or Seth or something, I would be open to it if it helped TNA do something, or make a stride, or just get some kind of box checked to help us out. But I otherwise, I will be cheering along on the outside.”

Why no NXT?

“Oh, I don’t think there’s anywhere for me to go there. I was the champ, and if I went there and was in a battle royal and lost, what am I doing? That doesn’t help TNA get on the map somewhere. Now, if it’s come fight our champion and and because of this, we’ll have someone come to TNA and do something. Please use me to negotiate, because I want what’s best for TNA, and there’s some things there, but for the most part, I would much rather NXT, especially what NXT is, let’s get Leon Slater there. Let’s get some people who are young, up-and-comers, who get a piece of that. And then maybe the eyes of the boss of instead of just Shawn Michaels, maybe Triple H goes, who the hell is this guy? Who is this girl? Oh, my God. Okay, we can bring them up and do something with them, and that’s what I would much rather see. We have an insane talent roster, guys and gals that some I’m just getting to know, but some I’ve been locked in and following, and that would be great for them. I don’t think me being there helps TNA. And if it does, you bet your ass I’m there.”

On the infamous Iron Man match with Seth Rollins:

“This was at the time where, no matter what you think of Roman, now he’s amazing, 11 out of 10. But at the time, he was being forced on people to constantly be the guy, and he’s great. But just at the time, he was force fed nonstop. Vince goes, this is gonna stick one way or another, whether it takes 6 years or 10 or whatever. They’re like, God, we’re so sick of this, the same guy every time he’s in the main event, and he’s out. They go, God, I wish the guys fighting for the Intercontinental title would be out there. I wish Seth would be in the main event. Wish Dolph would get it. We got it. We got a shot. Finally, against the boss’s maiden wishes, we’re going to main event this pay-per-view, Intercontinental title is in the main event. It’s an Iron Man match. Seth, who you love, Dolph, who you mostly hate, and are good wrestlers. The guys that you are begging for, the workhorse guys, to get a shot. All the stars align. Vince still says no, and we talk him into it. We’re main eventing the show, and like three minutes in the crowd just starts doing the clock. I just put a hold on. I’m like, man, what is happening? And they’re not even doing the clock right, so it’s kind of screwing me up. Then I missed something, because they’re going, ‘7,6…’ and it’s like 10 or something. I’m like, what? It’s not even a countdown. It’s just the time. And then a third of the way through they go, ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, we’re taking it off the screen.’ I go, ‘No, no, don’t do that.’ They take it off the screen. So the crowd just starts going ’10, 9…’ every 10 seconds. It’s not even every minute now, they’re doing it every 10 seconds. So now, instead of the last 10 seconds of every minute, it’s every 10 seconds. They’re just counting down. And now I don’t know what time it is, and now, most importantly, they’re not paying attention to the match. I go, man, that’s on us to get them back. We tried, and it wasn’t my best night, because I was a little out of it, because I was trying to do something on the fly that would change. But I’m trying to express that to Seth, while we’re going to these pieces that we got to get to every certain amount of minutes. And it’s just yeah, the crowd, internet crowd, live crowd, they begged for a shot for the IC title, for Seth, for myself, anything but Roman, they got it, and Vince went, ‘See I was right, you’re all wrong.’ And then it was out. So thanks a lot Pittsburgh.”

What is Nic Nemeth grateful for?

“Family, that I get to work with my brother, and never putting on the brakes.”

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Killer Kross & Scarlett: WWE Exit, AEW, “We Want Kross” Chants, Pipebomb Promo

in LATEST EPISODES on October 7, 2025 January 30, 2026

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Karrion Kross (@realKILLERkross) and Scarlett Bordeaux (@Lady_Scarlett13) are professional wrestlers previously signed with WWE. They sit down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss their time in WWE coming to an end, the conversations regarding contracts possibly being renewed, the viral promo after WrestleMania and the reaction to it, being added to WrestleMania at the last minute, what’s next for them in wrestling, possibly returning to WWE or signing with AEW, and more!

Buy Killer Kross’ new book “Life Is Fighting” here: https://a.co/d/4ckIswy

On the day the contract expired:

Scarlett: “I’d say we knew for months what was happening, what was going to happen. I hope it’s okay for me to say this, but I’m kind of his Game of Thrones Red Woman. I have been for a long time when it comes to astrology and looking things up, and a lot of the stuff I do on the paranormal show is a bit real with the tarot cards. So I did see that we were going to have some sort of contract dispute, but it was going to take a while. And I did feel in my gut like we’re going to step away since like, February.”

Karrion Kross: “I mean, we’ve told very few people about that, but yeah.”

Were you trying to make things work then?

Kross: “Always trying to make things work, always trying to make the best of anything and everything, right?”

Scarlett: “You approached Hunter back in January, actually letting him know that you want to stay.”

Kross: “And you. I said we would both like to stay.”

On Scarlett’s contract negotiations:

Scarlett: “So after you talked to the representative of talent relations about your contract. One of the last questions before the 24-hour notice was given, Kevin asked where I stood in all these contract negotiations. And they said, ‘We’ll get to her once we’re done with you,’ which I took as them using me as leverage against him. I do feel like if he agreed within the 24 hours that they would have offered me something, would it have been the same amount as it was before? Would it have been less? I don’t know. But all in all, it felt like a massive, massive red flag, and I did feel like it did come off a bit misogynistic, because originally I was hired before you, and the idea that I have no value without him, and it’s only determined by whether or not he signs, that came off as very misogynistic to me.”

Kross: “I told you this a long time ago, but didn’t really ever publicly talk about this. When I signed to go from NXT to Raw, somebody said the exact same thing to me over the phone, and I asked her, I said, ‘What do you think?’ At that time we had no reason to ever think it would be strange or go sideways, so I signed it, being told we’ll get to her after we get to you. I go up to Raw, then we go into like Mad Max and the Thunderdome, and she’s at home. So I was like, well, I’m not gonna do that again. We already saw exactly what happened with that.”

Scarlett: “I was clear to manage, but not wrestle. So at any point, I could have come up and done exactly what we did on NXT, but they said they wanted to separate us and wanted me to wrestle once I was clear after the breast augmentation that popped during that dark match. But then I was cleared, and it was a few days later that they actually fired both of us.”

Kross: “She was at TakeOver when I wrestled Joe to drop the belt, she was ready to manage, and they told her, ‘Don’t go out.’ We’re just like, what’s going on here? I was like, can we address this publicly? And they were like, ‘No, don’t talk about it.’ I was like, This is bizarre.”

Have you talked to WWE since leaving?

Kross: “I mean, she talks to the girls, I talk to the guys in the locker room.”

Scarlett: “But not the office. Well, after they spoke to you, they did call me the next day, and it was very strange, because they were like, ‘Oh, I’m sure you know what’s going on with Kevin’. And I’m like, ‘All right, you’re talking about what happened with him, sure, but what’s going on with my contract? You’re only talking about him.’ And they said, ‘Well, we’re gonna let your contract lapse.’ I’m like, okay, that’s totally fine. I’m sure everything’s gonna work out. We love working there so, you know, the lines open if you guys ever want to call us. And then he goes, ‘Yeah, you know, the lines both open both ways. I know you guys had a great relationship with Nick Khan and Hunter. You should definitely call them.’ And I was like, wait, what does what does that mean?”

Kross: “Well, then why were we talking to him in the first place, anyway?”

Scarlett: “And he was saying every single thing that he was saying was coming straight from them. So it left us very confused, very confused.”

Kross: “Yes, at one point I wanted him to be able to explain to me whether, for instance, the book sales, it’s my life story, where is that on all of this? Forbes wrote an article that we were the top seller in the company for the merchandise. He didn’t want to look at any of that. Didn’t want to discuss any of that. He’s telling me that’s irrelevant to the conversation in determining my value, that’s crazy. My life story is about a kid in the audience of their shows growing up, wanting to be a part of the show, getting into the show, and writing a book about how was part of the show. And now he’s telling me that’s irrelevant? What is the statement here? Nothing I’ve done over the last three years is relevant to the conversation? The book that they’re making money off of my life story is irrelevant to the conversation? And you’re asking me to agree to a figure with a statement like that attached to it? Anybody with any sort of dignity or self-respect is not going to say, You know what that sounds like a really good deal to me. Like there were just red flags all over the entire conversation. And I asked him, ‘Are our bosses aware of what you’re saying?’ He’s like, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, they’re aware of it.’ But I have no reason not to believe you can’t be lying to me on the phone. So when he says you have a great relationship with them, you should call them. Well, what more is there to talk about when you tell somebody that all of this stuff to track in terms of performance and your value to the company is irrelevant? What the hell are we talking about?”

Scarlett: “It’s this feeling that no matter how much hard work you put in, whether or not your promos are good, whether or not your matches are good, whether or not you sell merchandise, it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, you’re only this number that they choose for you, and it doesn’t matter what, how it’s determined, but there’s nothing you can do to improve your situation. It’s like getting hired an office where, you know, you’re hoping one day that you’re gonna get that raise and, you know, be in a better position, but they say, No, this is what it’s gonna be forever. Doesn’t matter how hard you work. But it’s kind of that feeling.”

Kross: “I was just kind of blown away. That was not the conversation we thought we were gonna have.”

On his viral promo after WrestleMania:

Kross: “So we do that. Everybody loved it. We leave. The next day was weird at Raw. So aside from everything that I’ve talked about, so we don’t talk about it again, I get a phone call from somebody in talent relations, and he says, ‘Creative is not happy. There’s heat. They’re pissed.’ I was like, Well, I apologize about that. Let me go take care of that right now. I have a great relationship with them. They’re right across the hall. He’s like uh, I said, ‘No, no, dude, this is my fault. Let me take care of it. No problem.’ I go across the hall. I speak to some of the writers, explain everything. They’re like, ‘We have no idea what you’re talking about. We haven’t talked to that guy in two weeks.’ Some of them didn’t even see it. So I was like, What’s going on here? So walk around the building and just looking at everything, everyone’s saying, Hello, everything feels fine. I call him back, no answer. The next day, no answer. I think it was like the third day he finally picked up. He’s like, ‘Yeah, I shouldn’t have said it that way. I apologize, it was actually Hunter.’ And I was like, man. ‘So since we spoke, have you talked to Hunter and explained everything to him that I explained to you?’ He’s like, ‘No.’ And I was like, so you’re letting our boss just sit there and fume for how many days now? You could have just told me this on Monday. He was down the hall. Could go talk to him and just explain all this. This is like a misunderstanding. So I eventually did speak with Hunter and cleared the air with him, you know, it’s a massive company with a lot of different departments, and not all of them are in lockstep with communication. He was super cool about it. Once we spoke to him, he understood where I was coming from. It wasn’t like a live thing. It was on YouTube. But just weird man. That wasn’t the first time I got an apology from him.”

Was it because it looked like you went into business for yourself?

Kross: “I think the image or the idea of the brand looking like the bad guy is not something they want, for whatever the reasons are, and that’s okay, it’s their show. It’s not like you go on to Curb Your Enthusiasm and rewrite Larry David scripts, you’re on Larry David’s show. So I understand that. But really, what I was doing was I was just taking different things that played out and turning paint into art, as I was saying.”

Scarlett: “I can’t remember who it was, but there was someone in the office who came to us and they’re like, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of people in the office right now that think that they’re the suit and tie in the truck and they’re all wondering who it is.’ We’re like, Oh no.”

Kross: “I was like there was no truck that day. That’s why I said this guy in the suit and tie in the truck. It’s everybody in the truck was cool. When I didn’t have something that required me to be in the building, I would go in the truck and I would watch a show, and I put the headphones on and listen to how things were timed and cued and the changes. I wanted to learn every single aspect of it. Everybody’s awesome in the truck. We went to dinner with a few people in the trucks.”

Do you think the promo led to the contract negotiations?

Kross: “No. Things felt weird, even going back into January. So I feel like at the height of what we were doing on TV with our character presentations, with final testament, stuff like that, I feel like we were entering something new and fun, actually, with Miz, who is absolutely wonderful to work with. The best. That guy is just like a fountain of information and knowledge. He helps everyone around him. He’s completely selfless. I loved working with him, but the dynamic of Miz and I being able to, at least for me, show some range instead of just being the brooding, cryptic guy, you never know what he’s talking about until it’s too late, or you never even know what the hell he’s talking about, in general, because some stuff never got paid off. But working with him, and then working with the Wyatts. I feel like now things are starting to connect with people. So January rolls around, we have the conversation about remaining with the company. I feel like we’re kind of like at that time, at our peak in terms of connection and some of our best work, then the whole group is fired, and then we’re just doing backstages. And I wrestle, I think, one time before WrestleMania against AJ, and that was it.”

Scarlett: “You were doing backstages. They had basically taken me off TV for three months. Yeah, essentially. And then something very strange happened on the European tour. Do you remember that? So there were a few people in locker room that would always fight for us. AJ Styles was one of them. AJ would always fight for us. Miz would always fight for us. Great people. So every single time he had to a backstage, because I know some people noticed why isn’t Scarlett in this? Every single week Kross would ask, ‘Why isn’t Scarlett written into this? She can just be there.’ They said, ‘Oh no, not this week, not this week.’ So a few months went by, AJ is supposed to be in this backstage with us. And he’s like, ‘Doesn’t make sense that you’re not in this.’ And I’m like, Well, that’s what I thought, too. But every week they said no. AJ went to the office, got approved that I could be in it later on, we shoot that. And one of the producers comes up to me and says, How did you sneak yourself in there?”

Kross: “I remember that. We were pissed.”

Scarlett: “I’m like, so this has been something that’s been talked about to remove me.”

Kross: “Yeah, it felt that way. There was. It was weird. You were disappearing out of these things where I’m standing 50 feet away and seen for 30 seconds as like an Easter egg.”

Scarlett: “I’m like, is this intentional? That was the only time in my WWE career when I was like, I feel like they could be trying to get rid of me and only keep you. It’s the only time I felt that way.”

Kross: “I do remember too. Anytime I would ever bring up if she could be in the shot, if I would see kind of the sides of the day, they would be like, Yeah, we just want to focus on you. And you think that week, it’s like, okay, they really do just want to focus on me, but then it happens second week in a row, third week in a row, fourth week in a row, and now we’re looking around, going, what’s going on here? Like, would it really disrupt what we’re trying to accomplish here? A lot of the people that I was in the backgrounds with people we never even worked with. So what would be the point of constantly removing her out of the shots, then they never led anywhere. It was weird, man. It was very, very weird.”

On a last-minute Mania addition:

Scarlett: “I feel like the only reason you got that opportunity to do that interview was because you were riffing on the Hall of Fame red carpet, which that whole thing was hilarious. I feel like that’s only a reason that you got that spot at Mania, because we didn’t find out that we were supposed to be part of WrestleMania until 1:30 pm that day. We were at WWE World signing, and we get a text saying, Come to ringside. And we say we’re 15 minutes away at WWE World. What do you mean come to ringside? And even talent relations had no idea. So we got a message from a producer.”

What time did you get there?

Scarlett: “1:45 pm. We had kids in front of us, a whole lot of kids. I said, we’re not getting up until we get through all these people. There’s no way they’ve been in line for a long time. Yeah, but that was sort of the mentality going into things that day was like, we’re disappearing off the program. I need to take control the situation and show everybody, even at my own risk, that I can do this with as little amount of time as possible. Doesn’t even need to be time on Netflix. Give me time on the channel, which they did on the YouTube channel. We were able to go, you know, through the roof with just a little bit of time and no scripts in front of us.”

On what’s next for them:

Kross: “To be honest, everything we’ve been doing has been really enjoyable. I’ll speak for me personally, having the freedom to assess the audience, where we’re at on the show, where we’re out on the card, who I’m working with, what everyone else is going to be doing on the show, and how to diversify what we’re going to do on the tail end of it, and be able to bring that to life and hear the reactions and feel that. I mean, I love being in WWE, but being able to actually perform my artistry in the way that I know people want to see it, and being able to hear that and feel that back, nothing beats that. Nothing beats that. I want to do more of that. I want to go back to the places that I was performing. I’m interested in going to new places. I’m very content with the schedule that we’ve been building and what we’re doing, going to the conventions, being able to meet fans, aligning that with the book tour, man, it’s been awesome. Being able to meet people, especially the New England area, people coming from Providence, that’s where things really took off with the we want Kross stuff. There’s people driving from all over the northeast to meet us in these different places, in these cities, and they all have their story about where they were when that took off. Being able to hear that people getting tattoos of our characters on them, like people.”

Scarlett: “People naming their babies after us. I know that sounds insane, but people have come up saying, Hey, this is Scarlet Karrion. And there’s been another Scarlett.”

Kross: “Just being able to show up anywhere, at any time and do anything, and creating an air of unpredictability at these shows, I think also serves something very interesting to fans as well.”

On possible interest in AEW:

Kross: “I don’t think we should say who we do or don’t talk to.”

Scarlett: “We have friends everywhere. That’s the thing. We have friends everywhere. Around 2022, right before we came back, there was a conversation about you coming in, but the story wasn’t, it didn’t really make sense.”

Kross: “I wanted to do something bigger for Tony at the time, so we just said, let’s stay in touch. And had planned to do something. There’s a thing that happens when people either exit or get released from a commercialized wrestling company where, and I’m not speaking on behalf of anybody, but I just know that sometimes people freak out because the ground falls out from underneath them, financially, they get scared. So they feel like the best thing to do, so nobody forgets about them, is to sign somewhere in sort of like a semi-panic or something, or perhaps they really just want to go there, and they just want to get it over with and knock it out. That’s also a scenario. We’ve never felt supported like this in our entire lives in the fan base. Once you’ve been seen by the WWE Universe, or you’ve been seen by any sort of massive amount of global fan base, they come to where you go, and we’re in a really fortunate position where we were able to lock in that connection they were waiting for us to make with them before all this happened. So everywhere we go, they come with us. And as much as we may miss being on the road and being there and performing in front of the WWE Universe, they show up, it’s like they’re still with us, you know. And maybe it’s not in the massive amount of droves, as you’d see in an arena, but they come out, and we appreciate that. And even our fans, before WWE had been still riding with us. We still see them all the time at these shows. So, you know, we’re just enjoying the process and taking things one day at a time. There’s no need to make a decision that’s going to be fear based. If the right one comes around, more importantly for me, I’ll speak for me personally, creatively. If I know that this is something people want to see, then I want to do it. I’ve always been sold on a creative principle versus money. If you put a pile of money in front of me and there’s no principles attached to it, I’m telling you straight up, I’m not interested. If I was lying to you about that, I would have just took what they offered to me. But if you remove principles out of the situation, I’m out. I can’t do that. I can’t. That’s not why I got into this. If I was just looking for money, then you’d get a job doing anything. There’s a lot of high paying jobs. I want to create something that people will hopefully remember forever. That’s what I’ve always aimed to do.”

Scarlett: “The thing is, we know what it feels like to be at WWE when it’s at its best, when you have that connection with the writers, with your bosses? When everything’s great and it’s the best company you’ve ever worked for? Like the highs are high there. We have some of our best memories at WWE. So we still have that hope that that feeling is still there, which is why we still talk about it that way, that place could still be what we remember and what we’ve experienced before. The thing about going somewhere else, it’s almost like jumping from one long-term relationship into another, when you’re still hoping that that connection is still there with the previous company, that they’re going to do the right thing, that they’re going to call. If we ever go to AEW, we’re going to be flying the AEW flag. That is going to be our home forever. Whatever our next company is, that’s it. Right now, we’re still talking about WWE the way we are. To go over there and be like, oh, you know, we’re just here to just go back to it. We wouldn’t want to do that to him. So if we go there, we’re like, No, we’re going to make this company the absolute best. It’s true. We’re going to be and we’ll do that wherever we go.”

On possibly returning to WWE:

Kross: “I mean, I’ll speak for myself. You could answer this separately, if you like. I don’t know. I don’t know what that door looks like, or what’s even on the other side of it. I’m still completely perturbed by the conversation that we had, it was so bizarre and strange and shocking.”

Why was it such an 11th-hour type of thing?

Kross: “Well, that’s a great question. It kind of feels like pressure tactics.”

Scarlett: “I think it’s sports business. Is the kind of stuff I’ve read about that a lot of entertainment industries do to put the pressure on last minute, so you don’t have a lot of time to think and you panic. If you know your value, and the thing is, we know what it feels like to not make money on the Indies. We’ve learned our value. We’ve struggled. It doesn’t scare us, if that makes sense, doesn’t scare us being independent.”

Kross: “We’d rather make less money and feel like we’re earning our money than to just show up somewhere and collect a handout and have no room for growth. I’m not going to do that. That’s just not how I’m wired.”

Scarlett: “If you accept something less than what you truly want, like in your gut, you can’t be surprised when you’re not happy later on.”

Kross: “I’m not going to be one of those people living at the bar in the hotel. I saw that on the Indies coming up before I even had anything to do with WWE. Hyper successful people. I mean, for lack of better way to explain it, Self Made Millionaires, they’re miserable. Because, more than likely, they accepted something that they weren’t happy with, close the distance financially, on whatever it is they were, looking to get or wherever they were looking to land. No, there’s no way.”

Scarlett: “I asked you, Is money the most important thing to you? I asked you if you were making this amount of money, but things stayed exactly the way they were. Would you be happy? If you were making a fourth of what they offered you just doing your own thing, would you be okay? You said, Yes, of course. Because what were you really looking for? Like, what? What did you get into this for as a kid, as a wrestler?”

Kross: “The artistry of it, making moments so people could remember them, the way I did when I was little, when I saw them happen.”

Scarlett: “And then the answer was very easy the next day.”

On opening up in his new book:

Kross: “Oh, yeah, kind of the whole thing. The place I was in before I met Elizabeth. That was scary for that to be in the book. But I just thought I wanted people to be open to potentially finding a soul mate or the love of their life, when they might not necessarily feel like they’re ready to have that in their life. I could have closed myself off to that, and I would have been the biggest mistake of my life. I was very upfront to her as to where I was, and she was like we’ll take things one day at a time and see where we’re at. I was in like, a very, a very weird place, but couldn’t deny that I loved her.”

Scarlett: “I also chased you very aggressively.”

Kross: “Which I loved, yeah, that certainly made it very easy.”

Is life still fighting?

Kross: “It’s always fighting. Every single day, my feet touch the floor. I have thoughts run through my head saying, I’m going to disappoint everyone today. I’m going to fail. We’re not doing enough. I’m not doing enough. And then as they take one step forward, every single step on the way away from my bed to the kitchen and I get my black coffee every single step away from that bed, I say, No, you know what? I can do this. I actually can do this, and I’m going to do it today. Today is going to be a step forward. It’s not going to be a step backwards. Every single day life is fighting.”

What are Karrion Kross and Scarlett grateful for?

Scarlett: “My dogs, this crazy man in my life, and my health.”

Kross: “My parents being alive, having people follow us around the country, and being able to live this life.”

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Mark Kerr: The Real-life ‘Smashing Machine’ On The Rock’s Performance, Wrestling Kurt Angle, UFC Hall Of Fame

in LATEST EPISODES on October 2, 2025 January 30, 2026

Get tickets for Insight LIVE in San Diego & Las Vegas! https://cvvtix.com

Mark Kerr (@markkerrtsm) is a retired MMA fighter and former amateur wrestler. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his life story being told in the new biopic “The Smashing Machine”, how the movie came to be and how The Rock became involved in the project, his thoughts on the movie, fighting in UFC, how he got the nickname The Smashing Machine, the differences between the fighter and the person, battling addiction, wrestling Kurt Angle prior to the 1996 Olympics, and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Don’t count the days, make the days count.” – Muhammad Ali

On his story being told on the big screen:

“I’ve talked about this, I can’t even put it in context. I don’t have anything in my life that’s a correlation to it. So it’s like one of those, ‘Hey, if a movie’s made, who’s gonna play you?’ That’s a running joke, right? Well, I think I have the best person in the world. I don’t think I could like up it anymore, it ended up being just this incredible [thing]. Dwayne is just an amazing human being. Everybody involved has just been incredible.”

On the documentary being the inspiration for the movie:

“Oh my gosh, that’s another one. Benny [Safdie – director] and I talked about it, making this film for everyone involved came to them at the time that they needed it to come to them. When Benny and I touched base for the first time in 20 January 2024, the running joke was he got on the phone, he goes, ‘Hi, my name’s Benny Safdie, and I’m gonna make…’ It was like this scripted thing. And then he just stopped, and you can hear him go, ‘All right, listen, here’s what’s really going on.’ And we have this heart-to-heart. We’re on the phone for like, an hour and a half. He goes, ‘Hey, I need to be completely emotionally transparent with you, like his conversations with me if I’m going to make a movie about me, right? So that was the correlation, and it was beautiful. He said to me, ‘Hey, you’re permanent, you’re not a prop, I’ll be friends with you for the rest of my life.’ Just this amazing connection that we developed.”

On his first reaction to the film:

“Oh God, I cried. Just cried and cried. They brought me out in January, and the film was about 80% complete. My brother Michael met me out here, small little studio, it was Benny, myself and my brother, we watched it, and some of it just hit me. They didn’t tell me, ‘Hey, listen, Dwayne’s gonna do all this prosthetics.’ I didn’t see that till I was in Vancouver, and just watching how deep they got emotionally on stuff was just unbelievable.”

On how Dwayne Johnson became involved in the project:

“That was originally when I got contacted in 2019 by Brad Slater, who is DJ’s agent. It was this conversation of who owns your rights, or who owns a screenplay. So I directed him in that place, and that was like, Dwayne wants to do this. That was the first that I was like, Huh? It was like DJ wants to do this, not that he’s gonna do this, we’re just gonna figure out maybe some options. Then Seven Bucks Production acquires the rights, and then I get a call from DJ right before the BMF belt in Madison Square Garden. He makes that announcement, and I’ve said this, it’s like back in 2019, the conversation I had with DJ was almost transactional. It was like, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do.’ He said it’s going to be this, this, this, and this, and this, and this is going to happen, and you just don’t need to do anything. Then COVID hits, writer’s strike, all this stuff, and I had his phone number. I never called or text him in four years, it wasn’t gonna change anything, right? Wasn’t gonna call him up. ‘You gonna make it yet? You gonna make it yet?’ I just kind of left it to, it sounds silly to say, but I left it in the universe. It’s like, if it’s gonna get made, there isn’t anything I can do about it.”

Did you think it would still get made?

“I had hope that it would, but I just lived my life like nothing was going to change. My wife would say, ‘Go call him.’ I said, ‘You know, somehow, some way, I truly believe that the universe would go hey, now’s when you need to reach out.’ So in the fall of 2023, at the end of October, I called Brad Slater, and he just was like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t even believe you’re calling me.’ This is what he said. He goes, ‘I can’t tell you. You need to talk to Dwayne.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, you can’t say a word?’ He goes, ‘Nope, I can’t, it needs to come from him.’ And I’m like, Oh my god. So it’s either ‘Hey, this thing’s scrapped forever’ or ‘Hey, we’re rolling forward with it.’ So that was Thursday, and he goes, ‘DJ will text you over the weekend.’ So he texts me the next day. He’s like, ‘Hey, I’ll call you over the weekend.’ That whole weekend goes by, the whole week goes by, and I’m like, Oh my God. Now it’s like, nine days later. I’m like, what the f*ck? So I get another text that next Friday, it’s like,’ I’ll call you over the weekend.’ It was like Saturday, and then it was like Sunday afternoon. It was like, ‘Are you available?’ I’m like, Oh my God. So I get on the phone with him, and the difference was in 2019 I said transactional. In 2023, it was just like a different person, a different space he was in. And it was this, ‘Hey, you know, we’re moving forward with this. Production has already started. When it moves, it’s going to move fast.’ Not understanding one of his assistants had moved heaven and earth to clear out 12 weeks. He’s so busy, I don’t even know how I’d find 12 minutes, let alone 12 weeks, right? So they found a place in Vancouver and all this stuff. And it was like, he wasn’t kidding. When he goes hey, I’m gonna announce it, this is what got me, he goes to the world that this thing’s going forward. Not to California, it’s to the world. And I’m like, all of a sudden it goes and it’s heading down the tracks, it’s incredible.”

On whether he has any regrets to the documentary:

“So they filmed for 18 months, almost two years and I never saw a single stitch of footage. I didn’t see a second of it. They never showed me any of it. So the first time that I ever saw the documentary as it is, as it appeared on HBO, was an Adobe sound studio here in LA and there was like, four or five of us watching it. Literally, it ended, I got up and I just said to John [Hyams – director], almost blank, I’m gonna have to get back with you. And just walked out and walked down, got my car and started driving. I’m like, What the f*ck did I just do? I couldn’t believe the stuff they captured. And I couldn’t believe just how vulnerable, how naked I was. It’s like they filmed a porno basically.”

On how close he came to dying:

“I should have died at the hospital before they transported me to the main hospital. I mean, I was unattended. When they found me, I was in the bathroom, lips blue, barely breathing. It was just one of those where your body starts going into this catabolic state where they really can’t do anything medically to pull you out of it. Your body has to kind of find its own equilibrium. Like my blood, because the lack of oxygen was acidotic, it’s acidic. The pH balance in my body is just all whacked out of line. So I spent three days in the hospital just to get to a point of neutral. So the filmmakers are way over their skis. They have no f*cking clue what to do. And so they literally wouldn’t let me go home, just like they put me on a plane and sent me to New York. Because they’re like that, we don’t know what to do. So I was in New York for seven days at a friend of mine’s house, and it was just brutal. I mean, brutal. When you come off opiates, your body is just destroyed. Walk down this flight of stairs, walk a block and have to turn around and walk back because I just didn’t have the energy to walk any further. And it’s this whole, like, my body’s resetting, and it’s like this hardcore way to do it. At that point, I had been on opiates for probably 10 months, not, not a single day missed.”

On the difference between the fighter and the person:

“So the first fights ever, I hoped I had that switch, because it’s a little different switch than just, hey, we’re competing against each other. We’re wrestling. So wrestling is a combat sport in and of itself, without strikes, kicks and so on. But I had always hoped that I had that switch. Part of the narrative I had in my head was like, Okay, if you and I get thrown in a room and one person has to come out, I’m coming out. I know that I am. And then having that little doubt in the back of your head going, I think I know I am, because at that point, I didn’t know, I didn’t know if I had that gear. And then once everything in the ring, everything just coalesced and together. It’s like I have that and it’s one where I do have to click a switch, because it is just such a different contrast from my everyday me.”

On how he became known as The Smashing Machine:

“So down in Brazil for those fights, they had a Brazilian reporter, and he looked at it and he said it’s the only thing you can come up with. Because the first two fights were quick, but they were gory, and the last fight was 15 minutes or so, 18 minutes, I forget what it ran, but it went to decision. And it was a time where back then it was here’s the rules. You’re gonna fight until someone wins. That was it. So when I say, I don’t know if it went 15 minutes, I know it went a while. It went until they stopped it, and so I had taken this guy, Fabio, and I mauled him. It just was one of those things where I couldn’t understand inside me why he just wouldn’t give up. It was like I am punishing him to the point where any human being would just give up. And now, looking back on it, I can understand what I was after was taking his will, and some people just don’t want to give it to you. And he’s one of the people that didn’t want to give it to me. He just refused to give it to me. Because other people I’ve fought, I’ve put pressure on them, and I’ve hurt them, and they just give me their will to win. And you can feel it as a fighter. You could feel somebody give a little bit of it, and it propels you to take more of it. So he just wouldn’t give in, and it frustrated me. And I just, you know, in the documentary, it’s like I dig in his cut, I fractured his orbital, get to the point where I can’t even punch with my hands. So I’m punching with the palms of my hands. I’m trying everything, and he won’t [give up], and it baffled me. It literally baffled me. And looking back, I understand what I was after and what he didn’t want to give me, you know, in that moment, I was like, just f*cking give it to me. because I just kept pounding him and pounding him. And it went for so long. It was like a machine that was on an assembly. It was a headline in a magazine.”

On wrestling Kurt Angle:

“I think total of eight times. It ended up being four, four.”

But he won the Olympic trial?

“He did. Yeah, the two years prior to that, I had beat him from the world teams. This is just how beautiful a person he is. So my mom, who had terminal cancer in 96, I tell people, you want to know a bad month. So, 1996 January, Dave Schultz, I wrestled for Foxcatcher. So did Kurt. Dave Schultz is murdered. I’m over in Russia when they make that announcement. Just heart goes absolutely cold, we still haven’t competed yet. And so the coach is like, if you don’t want to compete tomorrow, you don’t have to. And I’m like, okay. We’re in Siberia, Russia, and I go, Okay, I’ll compete. So I competed, but my heart wasn’t into it, so I lost the first match, and I go, F*ck it, I’m done. And I go home. I was supposed to actually fly from Russia to Foxcatcher to continue to train for the nationals, which were in April. So I ended up going home to Ohio. My brother asked me to come home, and he says, ‘Hey, listen, you know, the cancer is terminal. It’s metastasized outside of my mom’s colon, and they’re going to try some experimental chemo. She’ll have to have a chemo pack on to pump chemo for 24 hours a day. But it doesn’t look optimistic.’ So I go ahead and just devastated, and I gather myself up and I go, Okay, I’m living in Arizona. I continue to train. I end up going to Athens, Greece, and end up pulling my transverse abdominal and drop into my groin muscles, pulling them completely out. And so I can’t compete in the Nationals, so I have to petition to get in Olympic trials. They are in Spokane, Washington, and I wrestle Mark Coleman. I lose to Mark right off the bat. So my chance to be an Olympian, I could be an alternate, but I can’t get to Kurt, right? So I throw shoes away, literally, like, f*ck it! What’s the point? And Arthur Martori, who had the Sunkist Kids [Wrestling Club]. He comes over, says, ‘Listen, it’d be the last time your mom’s gonna watch you wrestle. Why don’t you get your shoes on?’ I’m like my God, you’re right. And so get my shoes on, and I wrestle three more, four more matches that day. And it puts me in a spot to be where I can be second alternate on the Olympic team. So I wrestled the next day. I mean, my body is just devastated, and I end up losing that match. So I gather myself up, go to Ohio and me and my mom watch Kurt win the gold medal, and then we try everything to get a hold of him afterward. And my mom dies September 3, we get a letter from him, September 5, and it’s this beautiful, beautiful letter. I can’t even talk about it. Make me bawl. In the letter, he’s basically like, because you made me Kurt’s biggest obstacle it helped him win the gold medal, because it was an obstacle he never thought he could overcome. Now, I’ll have to show you the letter someday. It’s one of those we’re still to this day reading it, or my brother reading it, it just drops you. It’s incredible.”

Do you still keep in touch with Kurt?

“I actually bumped into him again in Philadelphia for Wrestlemania, and we just had a beautiful conversation. Such good just a great human being, yeah, you know, just really good human being.”

On possibly returning to the UFC when he was competing for Pride:

“Yeah. So this is how small this world is. So I’m living here in Santa Monica, and the UFC gets sold, and we get word that there’s a training camp going on in Big Bear, and it’s Tito Ortiz’s training camp. They’re going to push him to be the face of the new UFC. They get it sanctioned for New Jersey boxing Commission, which is the gateway to Vegas. So I go up there, and I’m driving up there. This is so strange. I’m driving, it’s like February. I’m driving up there, snowstorm, roads are icy. I’m in my truck, and I get hit by a drunk driver at 11 am in the morning. He hits me like we reached the peak of a hill at the same time, he panics, he slams his brakes on, and he just skids right into my truck. At the bottom they were stopping cars because there was so much snow going up. They’re like, You need four wheel driver chains, and that’s the only way of letting people up. And so he crashes into me, and I have an attorney that was helping me at the time, and a friend of mine, and we’re like, you know what? Let’s just continue on. So we jump in the tow truck, and the tow truck continues to take us up, and we finally get to where the training camp is. And it’s, it’s Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta. It’s Dana White, it’s Chuck Liddell, it’s Tito Ortiz, it’s everybody. I mean, the Fertittas brought their massage therapists, their chefs, I mean, everything that you could possibly imagine for a training camp. And so it was like, I wanted to meet him. I want to see who the new owners were. And so because I got hit by a drunk driver, didn’t have a car to get down the mountain. And Frank and Lorenzo were like, ‘Hey, we’re going to Beverly Hills Hotel tomorrow. Do you want to ride in the limo with us down?’ So it was this awesome ride down the mountain with the new owners of the UFC, got a chance to talk to him, and shortly after that, they made one offer. The pay was so little comparatively to what I was making in Japan. I was like, I just can’t. They go if you’re willing to sacrifice now there would be ample opportunity for you.”

On The Rock getting big for the movie:

“The running joke was that Benny is the only director in the world that looked at him and said, ‘Ah, you need to get bigger.’ The first time I ever saw him in full prosthetics, so they brought me over to Vancouver for fight week, we’re in this big venue, they’re going to film these scenes, scenes that are in Japan, and they didn’t tell me they’re going to do prosthetics. They didn’t say any of this. And so I’m talking, Dwayne walks in behind me, and he’s got a blue Pride shirt. He’s got these Adidas track pants on. He’s got the shoes on I wore, he’s got my hair on, he’s got all the prosthetics on. And I turn around and I could only cuss at him. It was this whole thing of just pushing him and going, ‘F*ck you, dude.’ Because I didn’t realize how much time he put into [the appearance], because he goes, ‘I needed big traps and I needed big shoulders.’ Because it’s like, when you look at me back, then it’s like, I had a 25-inch neck, I had shoulders that just were on top of shoulders. I looked at him. I just couldn’t believe it, like a doppelganger, he was me. Shockingly, I couldn’t process it because it was just like, Oh my God, dude, this is unbelievable, because no one said, ‘Hey, listen, we have Academy Award winning makeup and prosthetics.’ Incredible.”

What is Mark Kerr grateful for?

“Stability, relationships, and sense of self.”

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Santizap: John Cena’s Heel Turn, Best Current Theme Song, Most Underrated in WWE, Roman Reigns, The Rock

in LATEST EPISODES on September 30, 2025 January 30, 2026

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Santiago Zapata (@MrSantiZap) is a podcaster and YouTuber better known as SantiZap. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss the success of his YouTube channel in a short amount of time, his reaction clips being featured on WWE TV, making sure he posts a new video every day no matter what, the John Cena retirement tour and who the final opponent might be, celebrities in wrestling, Logan Paul’s WWE career so far and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “The windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror for a reason, because what’s in front of you is so much more important than what’s behind you”

On being a Chargers fan:

“That’s right, yeah. So, I mean, we’re talking 2005 when I got into football initially, and it was just like my buddies wanting to play Madden. We went from Halo to playing Madden. I was like, well, I need a team, right? And being from Southern Ontario, from like the Waterloo, Toronto area, for those that don’t know, Southern Ontario, there’s no NFL teams there, first of all. The closest teams were the Detroit Lions, they sucked. The Buffalo Bills, they sucked. So as a kid, I just came up with the very logical reason of picking the team that sounded closest to my name, Santiago, San Diego, literally now, because of that 20-year fandom, super fandom, I adore the Chargers. I live and breathe by that. To me, forever and always. They will be the San Diego Chargers, even though they’re in Los Angeles, but that is a genuinely a team that I live and breathe by. Now I’m just fortunate and lucky to be in a position to travel to be able to watch their games, because before I would have to wait for them to maybe have a game against Detroit Lions, maybe have a game against the Bills, and that might happen once every four years.”

On early WWE fandom:

“2001, I missed the Attitude Era. I caught the back end. So when I got into wrestling, I’m seeing the last like, six months of Stone Cold Steve Austin.”

You’re seeing WCW get bought by WWF?

“Bingo, bingo. So for me, when I think of when I got into wrestling, I think of the nWo coming to WWE, my first big show where I couldn’t see it, because I’m like, What is a pay per view, was WrestleMania 18. I had to watch WrestleMania 18 five months later, waiting outside of our public library in London, Ontario for the VHS version to arrive at the local library so I could watch WrestleMania 18.”

On writing a paper on Rock vs. Hogan:

“Yeah, technically not, but in my mind, that’s what I was going off of. It was a psychology paper on the power of nostalgia. So it was referencing how nostalgia took over the fandom in that match with Hogan being the bad guy, and then nostalgia rose-tinted glasses, that concept took over. And those people that are now adults that were kids watching Hogan, it just took over. This thing that they were supposed to follow of Rock the good guy, Hogan the bad guy, got completely thrown out the window because of the power of the dopamine that is gathered from nostalgia. I wrote it like a 15 to 20-page paper on that. And the basis of it was Rock Hogan. [I hope you got an A]. I got like a C plus.”

On posting a YouTube video every day:

“I’ve got a trip to Japan that I’m gone for 12 days, 13 days, there will be a video on YouTube regardless. That is my motto, my mentality. Because when it comes to the online space, the concept of is my video better than somebody else? That’s purely subjective, right? It’s purely up to the opinion of the viewer. I can’t necessarily control that. I can try to make the best video possible, but I can’t sway the audience’s opinion on it. What I can sway is how available I am. So I don’t think I’m the best content creator out there, but I do think I’m up there with one of the most consistent ones. So whenever you log into YouTube, we’ve made a social pact. There will be a SantiZap video there, and my side of that pact is to upload. Your side of the pact is to keep showing up and watching, and it’s worked pretty well for the past two and a half years.”

On how he gained 100,000 subscribers so quickly compared to CVV:

“It’s a different landscape back then, though, definitely, I do think that it is funny enough people think it’s harder to get into content creation now, I think it’s the easiest it’s ever been, especially because everybody has the little super computer called their iPhone where they can make content I’m thinking of like 11 years ago, like you really needed, like equipment that was only accessible to those that really wanted to dive into content creation. But now, literally anybody could be a content creator, but it’s intimidating because of how many content creators there are out there. But I promise you, if you’re listening, if you’re interested in becoming a content creator, for every content creator, there’s thousands of viewers.”

On how his content blew up so quickly:

“I think it comes down to relatability. You and I have spoken about this before, about former wrestlers wanting to start podcasts. I think they have wonderful stories, and we’ve seen former wrestlers start podcasts and YouTube channels and do well, but for everyone that does well, there’s like 50 that do horrible and can’t stay consistent and just quit, right? Because they realize it’s not that simple. I think what’s worked for me is one, consistency, but two, relatability, because I really am just a fan at the end of the day. Those wrestlers that make content you can’t relate to those guys and girls. You’re not The Undertaker. If the undertaker says something, it’s gospel. If Santizap says something, you can disagree with me all day long, because I can be wrong, because I’m just one of you guys sitting on the couch. I’m literally just a fan. I just happen to have viewers, but I am in the exact same position as everybody that watches my videos. It’s actually the reason strategically why I’ve avoided doing wrestler interviews or taking on opportunities that kind of take me out of the chair and put me into more of an industry person, because if I’m all of a sudden more ingrained in the industry, I lose my spot on the couch, and I’m no longer relatable. I’m no longer the guy at the bar that you’re watching wrestling with. I lose that relatability. So I think that’s why it’s been successful, consistency and people being able to agree and disagree with me, because I don’t have any authority in this space. I’m literally just a dude.”

On where he gets the ideas for a video every day:

“For me, my content calendar is doesn’t matter, figure it out, post something. Sometimes when wrestling is hot, it’s so easy to come up with something. Sometimes when it’s not hot, it’s like, All right, we gotta stretch something and come up with something and just throw it out there and see if it sticks. And what’s funny is that sometimes I’ll come up with a video idea and I’m like, this is terrible, but whatever, I’m posting it anyway, and it does well. It does better than I would’ve thought. So that goes with my mentality of some content is better than no content, but just stick to the plan every single day. But for me, it really is like, sometimes I’ll have five videos ready to go for the next five days. Sometimes, oh my God, my editor falls asleep in like 30 minutes, I need to come up with something, and I just have to just sit in front of the camera. And then inspiration comes in just by turning on the camera and realizing that if I don’t make something, my editor doesn’t eat, my thumbnail guy doesn’t eat. These guys are relying on me to do my daily video, and that alone maybe the pressure makes the creative juices start flowing, and the video comes out in some capacity at some point.”

On doing more than reaction content:

“For me, it’s a lot of the reaction clips [that people find me and think it[‘s all I do], which is so far from the truth. When you look at it from like an iceberg perspective, that is a tiny 1% of what I do. The intention with those reactions is, hey, hopefully you like the personality. Come find everything else that I do. But a lot of people think that all I do is react to content. I don’t. I do have a podcast, I have a Patreon. I live-stream pretty much every single major show so that I can have a community to discuss the show with. But the thing that gets the most views is usually the thing with the least amount of effort, which is the reaction content.”

On the shelf life of reaction content:

“The shelf life is the legal shelf life, until WWE decides, nah. That’s the shelf life.”

Is that what happened to your TikTok?

“Yeah. But that’s not even WWE. That’s just this automated system that TikTok has. It’s not even like across the board on all of the different platforms. So, like, they’re fine with it on Instagram, on Facebook, it’s this TikTok thing that you all of a sudden decides, no, you’re not allowed here anymore. Get out of here. But when my first TikTok got banned, and it got banned at like, 700,000 followers, that’s when I realized you can’t scale off of this. You gotta focus on the more creative sides of content creation, and unfortunately, and I say that loosely, because it’s great, there are a lot of new people trying to get into reaction content, and that’s amazing, but that’s all they’re doing. I highly encourage those individuals to try your hand at long-form content. Try your hand at live streaming, be more creative, because you cannot scale off of just reaction content. I was lucky that I got into a time where they were really loose with it, and they’re like, Sure, go ahead, use this content, reactions, whatever, but they can literally turn that off at any moment. Why should I rely my and have my livelihood hang on this thing that’s just not reliable, something that could literally disappear overnight. You gotta diversify.”

On being used on WWE programming:

“Dude, The Rock stuff, he used me for some evil propaganda. You remember when everyone hated The Rock because of the ‘We want Cody’ stuff? All right, so I was firmly in the ‘We want Cody’ side of things. I was like, I don’t want The Rock here, but I made a video talking about the positives of having The Rock here, and he used that on his own Instagram to show the world look at how much the WWE Universe loves the final boss taking Cody Rhodes’ spot. And I was so conflicted, because I was like, Well, I’m getting free promotion on the fifth biggest Instagram page on the planet, and it’s the freaking Rock. But now everyone hates me because they think I’m some sort of agent of The Rock that wants Cody Rhodes out of the picture.”

On the John Cena farewell tour:

“Hit and miss from a quality perspective, storytelling perspective. I think it’s been fantastic as an ability for me to say goodbye to John Cena, getting to see him in all different kinds of environments, getting to see him as a heel, as a babyface, interacting with those that he interacted with in the past. Him doing his ode to Adam Copeland, who’s in AEW now, most wrestlers don’t get this. Most wrestlers, that’s it, they’re just done, and they don’t even know when their last match is. We have both the fortunate and unfortunate pleasure to know when John Cena’s last match is. Fortunate because we get to say goodbye. We get to have the journey to see him go into the sunset, but unfortunate, because we get to know when it happens and it’s counting down, and it’s like starting to strangle me that my favorite, my goat, the greatest of all time, is about to leave this industry forever. And you know they say in wrestling, never say never. I believe when Cena says never.”

On the Cena heel turn not being looked upon as favourably:

“I get where you’re coming from, and him being heel allowed for matches that wouldn’t have made sense if he was a babyface. Randy Orton CM Punk that tag match against Cody Rhodes and Jey Uso, I think it was, at Money in the Bank that wouldn’t have worked if he was a babyface. So him being a heel, even though it didn’t get paid off the way that it should have, did open us up to have matches that we all were clamoring for in his retirement tour, and they were able to do it in a way where it made sense, because he was a bad guy. Again, they didn’t pay it off. It’s not his fault. He tried to take fault for that. I don’t know if you saw, he tried to take fault for the heel run not working. It’s like, no, it was not you. You were doing everything right. It was the circumstances in the third parties that were involved in your heel run that couldn’t or didn’t want to be part of it moving forward that ruined it.”

On who could be the final opponent:

“There’s the ones I want and the ones that I think. Right now we’re off the back of Wrestlepalooza, the way that ended with Brock Lesnar eating John Cena alive. I could see them wanting Brock Lesnar to be John Cena his final opponent. And I think it would make sense with how Wrestlepalooza ended. John Cena, finally conquering the beast, this guy that’s just eating him alive for his entire career. He ends his career finally exercising the demon that is Brock Lesnar. I could see it. I don’t want it. The other prototypical perfect John Cena heel is Gunther. If you look at everyone that he’s feuded with throughout the years, Gunther is like the prototypical made-in-a-lab, perfect John Cena heel. He really, really is, and we’ve already seen Gunther retire Goldberg. That could be something he chases, something like a legend killer, legend retirer. I could see Gunther also being a final opponent for John Cena. But just as of the conversation, as of the day of this conversation, Brock Lesnar is probably the one that I think they’re going to run.”

On celebrity wrestling:

“Jelly Roll, to me, is the most impressive one. Turns out he was watching my videos, listening to me being critical of him. I was never disrespectful. I’ve been very conscious of some people that I’m talking about, watch my videos. I said I think that putting in too many resources into this Jelly Roll match. Randy Orton, Logan Paul, Drew McIntyre. When Bad Bunny debuted, they gave him a mid-card Damian Priest. When it was Johnny Knoxville, they gave him a Sami Zayn that was doing nothing, but we’re putting in three main eventers with Jelly Roll? By the end of the whole feud, I basically apologize, Jelly Roll, you were amazing, fantastic. This was a great match. Brother leaves a comment on my YouTube on the review of that SummerSlam on his 4 million subscriber YouTube page, saying, watching me win you over over the last several weeks has been amazing. Man, I love that you have the pulse, that you’re listening to what fans were saying, the feedback that they were giving you, because you clearly applied it. You are somebody that gives a sh*t about this. And if Jelly Roll wants to come back 2, 3, 10 more times, I’m in!”

On his favourite match:

“Favorite is different than best. Okay, I want to make that very clear. My favorite match of all time is Kurt Angle versus Rey Mysterio from SummerSlam 2002. If there is a match to show non-wrestling fans, it is that one for the hardcore wrestling fans. You’ve always pondered that question, what match the show non-wrestling fans and so many people want to say Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker. Kenny Omega versus Kazuchika Okada at Wrestle Kingdom. Those matches are 40 minutes. A new wrestling fan will not sit through that. Kurt Angle vs. Rey Mysterio Summer Slam. 2002 is seven and a half minutes of the most jam-packed action that you can see. A combination of lucha and technical wrestling that is an absolute masterpiece, just eight minutes long. The commitment is low and the reward is enormous. I adore that match.”

On what is the greatest match:

“Keeping it in WWE it also depends. If we’re talking from a technical perspective, I will pick The Undertaker versus Shawn Michaels, specifically WrestleMania 25. I think that is a wonderful match. I think it’s damn near perfect, but I have a slight preference for Kurt Angle versus Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 21. I think that is a genuinely stellar match with a wonderful finish of Shawn Michaels being locked in an ankle lock for seemingly like 20 minutes, and he is screaming, writhing in agony. If you ever want to see a believable submission hold that lasts for a long time, that’s the one. That WrestleMania 21 match is utterly fantastic.”

On what he did before content creation:

“I worked in tech and I was a senior account executive at a tech company in Waterloo, selling tech to big companies and traveling to their location to try and sell them on the software that we had. That was the job. It had nothing to do with wrestling, but I daresay might had something to do with content creation, because I was selling through Zoom, talking to people and presenting on Zoom, ‘Here’s why you should buy your thing.’ I had my sales voice. I had the sales pep, and maybe that’s something that translated nicely onto content creation, like I was doing corporate sales for a long time.”

On what made him go full-time into content creation:

“My dad, which is fascinating, because when I tell people, a lot of people think that he’d be the one that would tell me, ‘Keep your day job, son’ is like, a pretty common thing that you might hear with parents, especially somebody born in the 1950s where content creation is this, like, super foreign thing. But when it got to the point where financially, I could leave my corporate job, but I still refuse to, because I was scared, my dad’s like, ‘Well, why are you scared?’ Well, because I might fail with the content creation. ‘Well, what’s the worst-case scenario if you fail with content creation?’ I go get that job again. ‘Okay, so what is the upside with the content creation?’ I might get to do the thing that I love for the rest of my life? I’m like, That’s he says that’s the easiest trade bet, gamble that you can make. If you fail, if you lose, you literally lose nothing, right back where you started. But if you succeed, you can change your life upside down, inside and out. And that’s what’s ultimately happened. It was my dad. My dad’s like, do it. Quit. Jump into the pool. Get into the uncomfortable. Get comfortable in the uncomfortable. Because that’s the only way that you’re gonna be able to succeed in the uncomfortable.”

What is SantiZap grateful for?

“Family, wrestling and fitness.”

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Charles Robinson: WWE’s GOAT Referee On Brutal Bumps, His Viral Ramp Run, Iconic Matches, John Cena, Cody Rhodes

in LATEST EPISODES on September 25, 2025 January 30, 2026

Get tickets for Insight LIVE in San Diego on November 28! https://cvvtix.com

Charles Robinson (@WWERobinson) is a professional wrestling referee with WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Indianapolis, IN to discuss his legendary career in both WCW and WWE, refereeing some of the biggest matches of all time, being the first WWE referee to ref in 4 different decades, his viral run at WrestleMania, taking a spear from Goldberg, a shoulder block from John Cena, getting to work with Ric Flair as Lil’ Naitch, being hospitalized after getting bitten by a bat, the worst bump he ever took, and more!

Book a custom intro from WWE SmackDown announcer Mark Nash: https://cameo.com/markshunock

Quote I’m thinking about: “A dream written down with a date becomes a GOAL. A goal broken down into steps becomes a PLAN. A plan backed by ACTION makes your dreams come true.” — Greg Reid

On being bitten by a bat:

“Sleeping, 2am in the morning, hear a noise in the bedroom. We have two cats. One’s named George, the other is Michael, George Michael. So I got up, used my flashlight, saw the two cats sitting there with their toys. I said ah, cats, they’re just playing, having a good time. Well, there was a big black blob right in the middle of the room, and we carry black latex gloves as a referee. So I said, hey, they got my glove. I better pick it up so they don’t choke on it. Being the good cat dad that I am bent down, picked it up, and that sucker bit me. Came down the chimney. So, five hours in hospital, seven shots later, and no reflection [laughs]. I’m a vampire.”

On also previously dealing with a broken foot:

“I broke my foot in San Antonio. We were setting up the ring, I misstepped, fell off the ring and broke my foot. You know, that’s how tough I am. I’m so tough I have to hurt myself. Cena couldn’t do it. Brock couldn’t do it. Undertaker couldn’t do it. I had to hurt myself.”

On also being ring crew as well as a referee:

“One thing I would love people to understand. I have people [ask me], ‘Charles, picture?’ But I have a job to do. So we get the ring out, so the lights can get out, so the video can get out. We are the very, very first thing that has to go. And I mean, I feel bad. I just don’t listen and do my job. But I wish people would understand. I’ve been cussed out so many times by people. ‘It’s just one picture.’ It’s never just one picture. You take one, then it’s two, then it’s three, then it’s four. And I love to meet the fans. I love to take photos, but when I have another job to do, that has to take priority.”

On never believing he would have been involved in wrestling:

“No, never. I mean, I didn’t have the body for it. I didn’t have the athleticism for it, but things happened for a reason. I got very lucky. In 1995, I got my first divorce, and then I started to work taking photographs for the PWF, which was the Professional Wrestling Federation. It was George South, The Italian Stallion, and one time they wanted to do a storyline where I’m taking the photo, the flash blinds the heel, the heel gets rolled up, 1, 2, 3. He gets mad. He comes out. He beats me up, little blade job in the corner post, and I cut a little promo, and I came back the next week as a special guest referee, The Photographer. It’s ridiculous. George South told me, ‘Calm down. You’re cutting a better promo than most of my guys here.’ But I’d watch Ric Flair for decades, and that’s what I went off of.”

On early Ric Flair fandom:

“Back in high school, we actually had a talent show when I was in the ninth grade, my brother was Ricky Steamboat, I was the Nature Boy. We had a hair versus hair match. I had a bathrobe, the ugliest bathrobe my mom had. I lost the match, but I didn’t lose the hair. I took the scissors and punched him in the head. Talk about having heat for about six months at school. That was fantastic.”

On taking a lot of bumps:

“I love taking bumps. If I could take a bump every week, I would. Easy bump, I like punches. I love punches. I love clotheslines. I mean, Kevin Owens gave me one back a few months ago, Elimination Chamber, which was freaking fantastic. I mean, that just came out of nowhere. My thing about bumps, you have some referees, they’ll say we shouldn’t bump like the wrestlers, but to me, we should bump exactly like the wrestlers, because they’re bumping like it’s real life. So we should bump like it’s real life. So that’s what I try to do.”

On the worst bump he has taken:

“Randy Savage elbow. But it wasn’t a ref bump. I was a worker then, but that was the worst bump I’ve taken the elbow from Randy Savage. He put me in the hospital for 12 days. It was Ric [Flair] and I against Medusa and Savage, and he came off the top with the elbow and Ric Flair wasn’t going to take the elbow from Savage, so they let Little Naitch. Cracked my sternum, collapsed my lung. So two hours later, I went to my room and I said, Oh, man, I just can’t breathe. Went to my room, two hours later, still can’t breathe. I called Jimmy Hart lifesaver. He called the EMTs. They came to my room, took me to the hospital, said, ‘Hey, we need to put you in the hospital.’ So that hospital, I won’t say what city, they released me the next day to fly home to Charlotte, which with a collapsed lung you’re not supposed to do that. So I went straight to the hospital for 12 days. But Randy Savage called me every day just to check on me.”

On Randy Savage:

“He was always real nice to me, especially if we’re in a program together, very good about what he wanted. Very clear. Some people don’t. Hey, it is what it is, but he knew exactly what he wanted to do.”

On the Sid Vicious powerbomb:

“He folded me in half, and the expression on his face after he did, it was like, I have killed Charles Robinson, he’s dead. Because I folded up like an accordion. But much younger, much more limber, and it didn’t even hurt. So the ones that look the worst sometimes there’s nothing to it. I don’t remember how it felt the next day. I mean, because back then, we were working every day, bam, bam, bam. You didn’t have time to slow down.”

On the WrestleMania run:

“When I did the run to the ring for WrestleMania, that was epic. I mean, there’s so many memes. It’s fantastic. But I run down then Undertaker goes to choke slam me, and he’s slippery, and I didn’t post right. He got me up off the ground about six inches. Made him look so weak, and I felt so bad for him.”

On what was going through his mind at that point:

“Wrestlemania, 24 Orlando, Undertaker and Edge. Jim Korderas, he takes a bump. Me being the professional athlete that I am, I start hauling butt down the ring just going, Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall.”

On the John Cena body check:

“With Cena, when I did it recently, I didn’t run as fast for a reason, he didn’t want me to run past him. So he goes, ‘Just take it easy coming down the ramp.’ I saw the camera guy, so I looked. I wasn’t looking at him, I was looking at the camera guy. And then I kept going straight, and then, boom, knocked me out of my shoes.”

On the Goldberg spear in his final match:

“I mean, normally he picks you up, lays you down, nice and soft. He went right through me. [And he cracked your rib?] Well, no, my girlfriend and I were in the movie. I said, What can I do to put this over to make Goldberg feel good. I said, Hmm, there’s an image of a broken rib online, so I just posted that.”

People thought Goldberg hurt you.

“I called him to tell him what I was doing. He goes, ‘That’s a great idea.’ So he didn’t mind. I was sore, seriously, for about 10 days, coughing and stuff. They can’t do anything about a rib anyway, so why go get it checked?”

On refereeing Cody Rhodes winning the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 40:

“That was emotional. Just felt great to be part of that. I mean, he was crying, I was crying. His mom was crying, everybody was crying. I was just proud to be part of that. I mean, that’s one of the biggest stories in the last 10 years.So just to be part of that was amazing.”

On WrestleMania 18 refereeing Undertaker vs. Ric Flair:

“That meant a lot for two reasons. Number one, my first Wrestlemania, of course, he threw me in with Ric and Taker. What a great match. Very important, because my wife, at the time, she had cancer, and that was the last WrestleMania that she got to go to. So, yeah, so she was up there with me, and she was doing chemo and stuff, and she came to the WrestleMania just to support me. So great match, and great to have her there.”

What is Charles Robinson grateful for?

“I have a career I love, my family and friends, and the fans.”

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Mark Nash: WWE’s Newest Ring Announcer, “Never Seen 17”, John Cena, Cody Rhodes

in LATEST EPISODES on September 23, 2025 January 30, 2026

Get tickets for Insight LIVE in San Diego on November 28! https://cvvtix.com

Mark Shunock (@MarkShunock) is a ring announcer currently working for WWE under the name Mark Nash. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Las Vegas to discuss his journey from the theater stage to professional wrestling, playing Timon in “The Lion King” Broadway show, how he went from announcing Top Rank Boxing to WWE, providing the introductions for John Cena and Cody Rhodes, the origin of his WWE name, winning the Stanley Cup with the Las Vegas Golden Knights and more!

Please help support The Space: https://thespacelv.com/the-space-v2/
Quote I’m thinking about: “You cannot control the behavior of others, but you can always choose how you respond to it.” ― Roy T. Bennett

On growing up in Canada:

“We grew up on a border town, so there’s a Sault Ste Marie, Michigan and a Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. So Michigan was a big part of my childhood. My mother is from Windsor, Ontario, so another border town, Detroit, Windsor. So pretty much every summer was spent driving 75 south. You’d cross the border into Sault Ste Marie, Michigan. Take 75 south through Michigan into Windsor. So I was a big Detroit Red Wings fan and a big Sparky Anderson, Kirk Gibson, Detroit Tiger fan, and that’s back in the 80s, right? Late 70s through the 80s was my childhood. I’m aging myself. But Detroit was much different back then, and we’d go through the tunnel into Windsor. But yes, the answer is yes, going into the United States as a kid, growing up in Canada was always a big deal, and it’s something that we always looked forward to as kids. But I’m a US citizen now, and I’ve been in the United States since 96 full-time, and I love it.”

On why he moved to the US in 1996:

“You know, chasing an acting career. So, like every other Canadian kid, I wanted to play hockey, and I made it as far as I could. But there’s that tough choice. Do I go over to Europe to play and continue to chase the dream, or do you get crazy and pick a different career to chase that’s even more difficult and go into entertainment? So I moved to New York City as a 19-year-old to chase a Broadway career. And I just got lucky man, I surrounded myself with some of the best in the business. Goofy kid. I was a goaltender. I was a goalie in hockey. So I think all goalies are a little kooky to begin with, but that gave me the sort of drive and the, I don’t know what you call it, just the balls to go up to people and say, ‘Hey, can I learn from you?’ And I think that’s something that I still carry with me today. If we’re not learning, we’re dead. But yeah, I literally surrounded myself with the best of the best in the theater world. In New York, Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts, a highly respected festival, went out there for a couple summers to just watch, and I’m watching stars on stage, and The Lion King came calling once. I was Timon in The Lion King, and that sort of changed the trajectory for me. And casting directors didn’t need to be convinced that you could perform eight shows a week on stage night after night after night. So that was it, and I got lucky.”

On announcing for the Las Vegas Golden Knights hockey team:

“Crazy, dude. It is, to this day, one of the highlights of my life, and I would probably say my family’s life as well. To have your name on a Stanley Cup ring.”

On lifting the Stanley Cup:

“Fast forward to the sixth season. We make the Stanley Cup Finals for the second time. We made it in our first inaugural season, which is unheard of, but we made it into the sixth season, into the finals again. It was a home run. We knew we were winning. I flew my dad out, two of my brothers, game five, Stanley Cup Finals, and we win it all. It was over after like the first period, because we ended up winning the game like 9-3. It wasn’t even close in game five, so I’m on the ice doing interviews with the players, the ownership group, management, trainers, all the staff, and then families and wives and girlfriends and kids are on the ice, and my producer just says into my ear, ‘Hey, man, you’re wrapped.’ So I pop my earpiece and I’m just standing there with a microphone, just enjoying the moment. I see my family up in the stands, and one of the trainers says, ‘Shunock, it’s your turn.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ And he just hands me the cup. And I’m like, Oh my God. And there it was, over my head, this 33 and a half pound Holy Grail of all things Canadian as kids. I got this thing over my head and I’m screaming, and it’s a moment that I’ll never forget. Immediately after we celebrate that night, you got to plan a parade. So it didn’t really set in that we won, because we got to go back to work, and we’re planning a parade for 300,000 people to line the streets in Vegas, and it really, really didn’t set in until about three weeks later, after the parade, all the dust is settled. My wife is away on a gig. She’s doing an acting gig. I don’t remember what it was, and just like everybody else, I look at my phone in the morning and there was an email from the team staff-wide saying, ‘Please click the link and get fitted for a ring.’ And that’s when I was like, there were some tears, I’m not gonna lie. I’m not embarrassed to say it. I’m in bed by myself with a couple of dogs. And I knew at that moment that I was getting a Stanley Cup ring with my family name on it. And the minute I got the ring, it was in a FedEx box to Sue St. Marie to my dad.”

On moving to Vegas:

“I got a call to do Rock of Ages, the big Broadway musical out here in Vegas, that’s what brought us here. So my wife and I were living in LA, I love telling this story, because Vegas has been so good to me with opportunity. 13 years ago, on Halloween, I moved to Vegas. 13 years ago, a week ago, I was bartending downtown Los Angeles, chasing an acting career, and I got a call saying, ‘Hey, you want to do Rock of Ages in Vegas?’ And I was like, Yeah, let’s go. My wife and I looked at each other, we’re like, we’ll do six months. We’ll do a year. We’ve been here 13 years. I’m in my dressing room one night, I got the 80s wig on, and Rock of Ages changed my life, essentially, because it brought us here and I was introduced to this incredible city, and what makes Vegas so incredible are the people. We’re still here, but I’m in my dressing room, and at 7:45 I’m about to walk on stage, and I had a great room, TV, bar, It was awesome. Bill Foley, our owner of the Vegas Golden Knights, goes on the news. And at that time, it was just an idea. And he said, I think I want to bring professional hockey to Vegas.”

On how he landed the gig at Top Rank Boxing:

“Todd duBoef, president of Top Rank Boxing, Top Rank’s based in Las Vegas. It goes right back to season one, three weeks into season one. This is now nine years ago. I’m doing my thing in the stands with a microphone, acting goofy, getting the fans going crazy. And he literally said to his agent that represented Top Rank, Hey, we should call this kid. He should probably come and work for us. So a few weeks later, I get a call from Kirsten Pauley at CAA Sports, who is Nick Khan’s assistant, saying, ‘Hey, we represent ESPN and Top Rank Boxing. Would you be interested in coming to meet with us?’ I looked at my wife, and I said, Absolutely. So we still have an apartment in LA. Flew back to LA. I go to Century City, go to CAA sports. I walk into the mecca of agencies, and at this point, I’ve been in entertainment almost 20 years, and I’m like, I can’t believe I’m walking into CAA, the agency, right? I walk down the hall, and I get to meet Nick Khan for the first time. I walk into his office, and I was blown away. And he said, ‘Hey, man, we love what you do. Would you be interested in working in boxing? ‘And I was like, ‘Absolutely. Do you want me to work in boxing?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, we think you should work in boxing.’ And so my career started immediately with the Golden Knights, Top Rank, ESPN. And I got to say, I loved working for Top Rank. It was an unbelievable experience, some of the best people in the business working for that company, and they really held my hand. And I don’t think I’d be where I am today if it wasn’t for that incredible group of people who really brought me on and nurtured me and shoved with love, as we say in entertainment, you know, to get me to where I am today.”

On how that led to WWE:

“Well, we all know Nick Khan is the president of WWE, they lost a ring announcer, and there was an opening. I got a text message out of the blue from Triple H, and I looked down at my phone, and it was right around the time of the election in last year. So I looked at it at first, and I don’t even know if he knows this, but I looked at it at first. I said, Oh, this has got to be a solicitation text for a candidate, right? It was just numbers, and it started out, ‘Hey, it’s Paul Levesque, Triple H with WWE.’ So it was like when you see that, you know they’re not really texting you. That’s a bot texting, right? Like ‘Hey, it’s Morgan Freeman. I want you to vote for me for the Screen Actors Guild’ or whatever. Yeah, that’s what I thought it was when I first glanced at it, and I looked down, whatever. But my phone, like many people have, is connected to my computer, and I was working on my computer and I could see the text message also pop up on my screen. I read the first bit, and I was like, Oh this is actually him. This isn’t somebody pretending to be Triple H. And I read the text, and it was like, ‘Hey, man, we’re big fans of your work over here. You got time for a call?’ Yeah, hold my beer. Of course I got time for a call. The greatest mind in wrestling of all time is texting me, and I’m like, wow. And that’s how it started. We started a conversation, and the timing was perfect. My contracts were up with Top Rank, and I graciously said, ‘Hey, I think I’m gonna move over here’, and I will say this about Top Rank. Brad Jacobs, who was my point, is probably one of the most incredible human beings on the planet. His words to me when I called him were, ‘It sucks for us. This is incredible for you. Congratulations.’ To this day, I have the utmost respect for Brad. And I’m sure, I don’t know for a fact, but I’m sure Nick had something to do with this when that vacancy presented itself. Because he’s the one who brought me over to boxing, and I’m sure he had something to do with bringing me over to the WWE. And you know, Joe Tessitore is with the WWE, and he was the voice of Top Rank forever. So we have a wonderful relationship. And I can say that Joe has been remarkable in holding my hand. Everybody has been. So again, kid in the candy store, humble as hell, grateful for everything.”

On his first introduction being Cody Rhodes:

“My first hit was, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome The American Nightmare, Cody Rhodes.’ I’ll never forget it, amazing. I was scared sh*tless. And you know, I had been to the O2 with other events, but not with the WWE Universe. And after that show was over. Man, the fans were awesome, and if I could have, I would have hugged everybody. That’s how much of a high I was on, because they were so gracious, and they all wanted to know who the hell I was. And that’s just wrestling. Yeah, it’s just the WWE Universe man, they want to know, and I’m happy to let them know. So having this opportunity, this is so cool, dude. Thank you.”

On the origin of his WWE name:

“There’s a process there, and it’s awesome. That’s a big part of wrestling is finding out who this person is now, and where this name is, or how they’re finding that name. So it didn’t come overnight, and there was a lot of conversation about it back and forth with options, and Nash was, believe it or not, something that I came up with. It’s my mother’s maiden name and my father’s last name squished together. So my father’s name is Shunock, as everybody knows, S, H, U, N, O, C, K. My mother’s maiden name is Nassr N, A, S, S, R. So I took N, A, S, H, put it together, and I just threw it in an email. I didn’t even need an explanation. I said, Hey, what do you guys think about Mark Nash? It’s my mom’s name and my dad’s name squished together. They’re like, awesome. So again, as much as it’s not my real name, it is. So when I walk out, I am so proud of Mark Nash on that screen, because you’re allowing me now to tell the WWE Universe that that’s my mom and my dad on that screen with me, and I’m just like you and probably all of your listeners. We all have families. We all have mothers and fathers, and I love mine just like everybody else, and they’re with me every Friday night.”

On his never-seen 17 John Cena introduction:

“I’m gonna just say it. This [Stanley Cup] ring is pretty special, and that’s an iconic moment from the Stanley Cup. I don’t know that I will ever be a part of a moment. Let’s knock on wood that they keep happening as amazing, I don’t have another word for it, just unreal, amazing, incredible, as this last three months that I’ve had with John Cena. Again, what is life? He points at you and calls you into the ring and tells you, ‘Your announcement sucks. Read this instead.’ And then I’m like, okay. I get this elaborate ring announcement for John, and it goes bananas and viral, and everybody loves it. And I’ve had the privilege of now repeating it for three months, and you know that came to an end two weeks ago, his last appearance on SmackDown, and I had a moment with him where I just, I literally just looked him in the eyes, and I said, Thank you so much for this incredible opportunity. Again, I don’t even know that we’d be sitting here if it wasn’t for that, right? Because it propelled me in the WWE Universe in a pretty cool way.”

On using cue cards at the start of his WWE run:

“Well, that’s a boxing thing, right? And I’m glad you brought that up, because like you mentioned, some fans are not so friendly. It’s a safety blanket for me, and has been. A lot of ring announcers will write things out and they’ll have an actual big binder book. When I was doing boxing, I would have two cards per fight, I would have the introduction card and the results card, just crazy prepared. Because at the end of the day in boxing, if you mess up a split decision announcement or a majority decision. There’s six ways you can announce a fight result. If you mess that up, you’re done, right? There’s no reason to try and risk memorizing a result in boxing simply because you want to memorize it and not hold a card. Read it, because again, it’s not about you. It’s about telling and still, and new, so don’t screw it up. Read it. Here, there’s no scores, so it’s a little easier to announce a result, much easier, but to answer the first part of your question, no, I’m still learning there’s a lot of talent in the WWE, NXT, and Raw, Smackdown. I think this is now my sixth month with the company. I’m starting to feel comfortable with the blue, right? And it’s funny that this room is blue. SmackDown, I’m starting to feel comfortable. I’m a perfectionist, right? And I want to be perfect for you. I don’t want to be perfect for me.”

On whether he wants to know the results ahead of time:

“No, no, no. Why would I? I want to live in that moment with the fans, right? And then hopefully that my read for the result sounds even more authentic, because, holy sh*t, he won! I don’t want to know the results.”

On never doing the high-pitched Chelsea Green intro:

“I’m gonna just throw it out there for the world to know that is never coming out of my mouth. Because also, Chelsea is badass, and she deserves to be introduced as a badass. So I think that fans will start to resonate with the badass announcement of Chelsea. Michin, she’s awesome. And then The Miz has been wild, Melo, they’re all great, man.”

What is Mark Nash grateful for:

“My mom and dad, my family, my wife and health.”

Please support our sponsors!
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Shawn Michaels: Legendary Matches, Classic Feuds, NXT, Favorite Opponents, Mr. WrestleMania

in LATEST EPISODES on September 18, 2025 January 30, 2026

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Shawn Michaels (@ShawnMichaels) is a retired professional wrestler, 2-time WWE Hall of Famer, and the Senior Vice President of Talent Development, Creative at NXT. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Las Vegas, NV to discuss the transition from wrestler to running NXT, what looks for in a young Superstar, the 2 defining eras of his in-ring career, his epic matches with the likes of The Undertaker, Ric Flair and Kurt Angle, whether he views himself as the greatest wrestler of all time, his thoughts on his return match at Crown Jewel, his mindset to become Mr. WrestleMania and more!

On getting involved with NXT:

“Well, I guess it depends on how far you want to go back. And again, to be perfectly honest, way back in 1998, obviously, when I left wrestling and thought I was kind of done, my wife and I talked, and I had the Shawn Michaels Wrestling Academy, which I started. And of course, I can remember not long after that, obviously, my life changing a great deal for the positive and I began thinking about the giving back process of all of that, and being able to maybe one day have this facility. So you fast forward all these years later, and it’s not the way that I thought it would go. But sure enough, it ends up here I am, again, in this wrestling environment. And it is, in a way, obviously, giving back, and I don’t know, giving back in the thing that at least comes natural to me. So that’s part of it, I guess, more of the spiritual side. But honestly, I can remember when Hunter talked about NXT, and just asking me to come by one time. I had been to a couple of events while I was retired, but I was in Texas at the time, thought it was fantastic. We went on a vacation to Florida, taking the family out there. And they just happened to be doing a television show, Hunter was in town, and wanted me to come down and see the Performance Center and just come and see what I think. When I walked through those doors, that feeling just sort of came back. And again, when I retired, I just exited and wasn’t around that environment anymore. So when I came back in, it was just something that clearly was noticeable, because when I went back to the home we were renting, we rented a house for the week to go on vacation and stuff, and I came back and my wife said, ‘Obviously, it went well.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, it did, what do you mean?’ And she said, ‘I can just see that look.’ And so we just got into this big conversation that I told you about, by that time was 1999 when she and I had first met and talking about that stuff. And that’s kind of the first time she revealed to me, in all of my retirement, she said, ‘Well, I was surprised that you walked away when you did, and how you just completely left it. I just always figured you’d go back and you’d do something with them, but when you said you were done, you were actually really done.’ And nobody was more surprised than I was. And so we just again, had a very awesome conversation. My wife and I, we’ve lived our whole lives like that, that’s our relationship. Started doing things that we feel and both have this unbelievable impulse, it’s a calling in our lives. And in a matter of probably three hours in this conversation, we had made the decision to go back to Texas, pack up in three weeks and move our entire lives to Florida, and that’s what we did.”

On being a teacher in NXT:

“So I’ll say this, I don’t know if I am a great teacher. That was probably the most challenging thing about it when I came in first as a coach. But I was very upfront with everybody. It’s one thing to teach the basics and then share your experiences. So I think what helped me, I don’t know, teach, was being able to connect with these people on such a personal level, a relationship level. I was kind of in their minds, freshly out, I was still relevant. And I think that’s one of the things that makes the difference. There are times now, as the years go on, at least I joke about it, and I joke about it because it’s true, I’ve been there now for 10 years. The athletes now, they’re so used to seeing me, I no longer walk on water. Now, I’m just the guy that kind of yells at the television, and every now and then gets in their face or tries to tell them this or that I’m the boss here and it’s not quite the same. The things that I say may not always carry the weight that it once did at the beginning from a coaching level, but it is something that most of them, once they go up to the main roster, and now they experience some of those things that I was talking about. That’s when it connects now. So now a lot of the teaching isn’t right there in the moment. It’s a couple of months or a year down the road, and then they walk back in the Performance Center and said, ABC, this happened, and that’s exactly what you talked about.”

On what he is looking for in a pro wrestler:

“I think when we talk about feel, and timing. Timing and feel are probably, in my opinion, the two most important things in this business. You can get by with so much more if you have those two aspects. You can be a little short in athleticism, you can be a little short in psychology, you can be a little short in, I don’t know, overall knowledge of the game, so to speak. If you have timing and a real feel, because those are things that, I guess charisma plays a part in that. But if you have timing and feel, I feel like the charisma and all the other is going to sort of match that timing and feel, if that makes sense. I know sometimes when I talk about this, I know I don’t always make sense to a lot of people, but that’s the level that I’m at.”

On when he realised his potential:

“That’s something that, again, you’ll regurgitate out of your mouth. But it wasn’t for me until, I think, 1995 that I felt like I had a real chance to be a main event type of individual. It wasn’t until 1995 that and I guess that was at a decade in.”

Are we talking WrestleMania 10?

“Honestly, that was the first time. That was the first time that I really felt like I can do this stuff. And there’s a landscape now in the WWE that I can see the possibility of that happening.”

On the wrestling epicentre that has been created in Orlando:

“Again, that is the brainchild of Triple H, and it was just a fantastic idea. And look, there are times I can kick myself for not jumping in on the ground floor, but I think I needed my time away, and I needed my time away with my family and just kind of a rest from the wrestling business. But what he built, and what he began, there was something that was, I don’t know, I guess in some respects, people go it’s not like some kind of crazy genius idea. But more than anything else, it’s the culture, it’s the environment there that he instilled in that place. And to be perfectly honest, as everybody knows, this was not my goal to be in this role, but it was just to continue to help grow the Performance Center and continue to build on that culture, because it was so unbelievably positive. That was the thing that was really sort of the nail in the coffin for me, which was, who doesn’t want to be around this very positive atmosphere and this positive atmosphere that’s going to, hopefully, one day resonate in the WWE and be a culture that’s very different than the one that we all grew up in. And again, that’s not to say it was unbelievably horrific, because we’re all living incredibly blessed lives, but it was very different, and it was harder, and it was rougher, and it wasn’t as compassionate and understanding it wasn’t where it needed to be. And the WWE has come to such a place in, I guess, sure, we’re not the NFL yet, I guess. But it’s a part of who we are. It’s been a part of, I don’t run across anybody that doesn’t have an experience with the WWE at some point in their life. And that’s really, really cool to be a part of something like that.”

On there being 2 eras of Shawn Michaels:

“Well, sure, before and after. One from a personal standpoint, obviously, we see that we knew the difference, and we know whatever it is you want to call it before the back injury, after the back injury. Before saved, after saved, whichever way, troublemaker, much easier to deal with. Honored to have had both and both serve their purposes, certainly in my life. I always tell people, of course, I would love to go back and have had the opportunity to do the first part different. However, I’d be lying, I guess, if I didn’t say that I don’t know where I’d be at today if I didn’t go through that. And I don’t know how successful I’d have become had I not been that way. So yes, a lot of it, people look at as very negative, but I didn’t think I had any other chance if I didn’t push that way. Probably overly paranoid, I don’t know, whatever it is you want to call it. I just didn’t think I had the luxury of what everybody else did. And I don’t know that’s fair. So don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to justify it. Everything stems from an insecurity within myself about who I was. None of it had to do with the ability. Because look, a lot of times in this job, especially when you’re young, you say, I’m good enough. We make applications to this line of work like you do in football or basketball. If I can do A, B, C and D, I ought to be the highest paid. I ought to be able to do this. I ought to be able to do that. Our job isn’t like that, because it’s not what those are, and it was very hard to get that through my incredibly thick skull at that time in my life. I think on paper, I was better than 99.9% of the people that were in the wrestling ring. That’s irrelevant. It’s not totally irrelevant, not like it doesn’t mean anything, but again, whatever it is you want to say. There are a lot of people that get a kick out of saying, ‘You didn’t draw money, you didn’t do this, you didn’t do that.’ I can’t argue with that.”

Didn’t you main event 5 WrestleManias?

“I did, but you can also say I made more money after I came back and drew more money after. I don’t know, but again, there’s all sorts of caveats. And that’s one of those things, again, in that book, greatness is very kind of the times. You know, fads, trends, different times. Who’s the best basketball player of all time? Is it LeBron James, or is it Michael Jordan? If I ask somebody that’s under 30, they’re going to tell me LeBron James. You ask me, and I’m going to tell you that it is Michael Jordan, and nobody will ever convince me differently. But it’s never going to get proven and same with mine, it’s never going to get proven. I can probably tell you, I don’t know how much Michael Jordan or LeBron James cares about that. I know Shawn Michaels doesn’t. I’m honored to be in the conversation. Who cares after that? But if you’d have asked me that at 28, the answer would be totally different. It would mean a lot to me, and that was the biggest difference. Again, it was more about perspective and getting my priorities straight and understanding that there are things that are bigger than this line of work, and how can I be great at all of them, or at least have the mindset of being great at all of them, but doing them in a way that I can also be proud of doing them, and that, I think that was the biggest part of the change.”

On whether he thought there was anyone who was better than him:

“Well, look, I don’t know. I guess I would say that I know that I thoroughly love being in there with so many of them. I think because ours is kind of a joint aspect, and so I don’t know. I had great chemistry with so many people, but I think I had great matches with Angle. I had great matches with Hunter, had great matches with Taker, had great matches with Jericho. Heck, had great matches with Jeff Jarrett, numerous other people, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some people.”

What about Bret?

“Yeah, I had great matches with Bret. But again, I don’t know. I can’t express it enough in that none of those things are really relevant. I think I was great at what I did, and I think other people were great at what they did as well. They’re just different in so many ways. And again, greatness is more a mindset, I think, than anything else. I don’t if you if you have that for your goal, I think it’s incredibly productive, and I think it’s incredibly positive. But if it’s something that, I don’t know, you base every aspect of your being around it, certainly for me at one time, it wasn’t a healthy thing for me to do, until I was able to do it in a way that I began to apply it to every aspect of my life, whether I achieved it or not.”

On the Ric Flair retirement match:

“I’ve told the story with Ric where, again, it was many days out, that might have been a week out, waking up in the middle of the night and just having this, whatever you want to call it, a flow of consciousness about the end of the match and what it ended up being. I was writing it down, and I came to the end, it’s stuff that sounds like it’s a movie scene, and the little tear drops on the paper. I’m like, Oh my goodness. And I see that, and I think to myself, I don’t know if this is great, or if it’s I’m the biggest wuss in the world who thinks about pro wrestling like that. But the easy answer was, I do, and I did when I was a kid. Then as a grown man, I was at a place in my life to where I was able to sit back and see this picture, and I was able to talk to my buddy in high school who was another person, and he’s just sharing with me like, gosh, can would you have ever imagined when you and I were sitting there at my parents’ house watching Ric Flair on Championship Wrestling that you’d now be having his last match at WrestleMania. Those types of things, and being able to put that in perspective. And so all those thoughts in my head and trying to go to sleep and then all of a sudden, this comes of it. And again, it turns out to be a love story.”

On “I’m sorry, I love you”:

“It was real that day, because he was weeping the entire time, and almost the entire match, but especially at that part. He knew it was the end, he knew it was the end of the match. I know people, they’ll even say, Oh, you’re gonna wrestle again, not at that moment. Everybody was so invested in that, because for that moment in time, to us, it was real. You go back to all the way to, maybe to your first question, and that is about the teaching and the coaching. Those are some of the things I don’t know. Only the talent of today or the talent of tomorrow, that when they come up, I don’t know how many of those things will be real for them. I don’t know how many of them will have this love affair with what we do, like we did, I say my generation or that I do, but that’s not for me to decide. I still teach or convey or coach, run, whatever word it is that describes what it is I do, I still do it with that aspect in mind, and I still have moments. I was fortunate to have one just the other day with Trick Williams to where we meet on a very human level, and I’m able to step outside of the boss and all that. And it’s just Michael Hickenbottom talking with Matrick Belton about things that are bigger than this business and hoping that that will move him in a way that helps him in his career. So I don’t know. As with everything I do, I do it with every ounce of my being in the best way that I know how, and that match that night with Naich, just like with Taker, were the ones that you know all of you, all of your heart, the fullness of your heart was into it, and it’s just hard for it not to go well.”

On which match he considers to be his last:

“It’s that one with Undertaker [at WrestleMania 26]. Because the other one, it was a tag match, it was DX, and I feel kind of bad, because I don’t mean it in a negative way, but that was just sort of like, I don’t know. It was like Kiss going out, and not even with the original members or whatever, and playing a concert at The Troubadour or something. It was like, Oh, but they’re not really retired, and I know Kiss never retired, just felt like a special, separate one-off. HBK and Mr. Wrestlemania, The Showstopper, whatever, that ended with Taker at WrestleMania, because I still came back and refereed the match between Hunter and Taker and again, and will always play a role in the WWE. Would it count if I went into the Rumble this year or something? Don’t get me wrong.”

Are you going to?

“Oh, heavens no! Probably shouldn’t have said that. I was just using that as an example. But no, I don’t consider those a match. A single performance by me, by HBK, by that guy. That’s not who that was. That was a dude hanging out with his buddies and having a match. So one was the artist, the other one is was a dude, like I said, hanging out with his buddies.”

What is Shawn Michaels grateful for?

“My wife, my children, and my lord and saviour, Jesus Christ.”

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