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John Cena On His Heel Turn, Farewell Tour, The Rock, Fav Matches, 17th Championship, Brock Lesnar

in LATEST EPISODES on December 9, 2025 January 28, 2026

John Cena (@JohnCena) is a professional wrestler and actor signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss the last match of his legendary career, planning his Farewell Tour for 3 years, turning heel and the criticism from fans, what winning a 17th WWE Championship meant to him, becoming the Intercontinental Champion, why his match with Brock Lesnar at Wrestlepalooza was so short, his love letter to wrestling with his match against AJ Styles, wrestling Dominik Mysterio in 3 of his last 4 matches, who he feels is his wrestling soulmate, and more!

How he feels heading into his last match:

“Great, truly great. We’ve been able to put programming that’s held the attention of folks out there for a year, been able to leverage individual intellectual property and create attention through things like the time is now tournament, stuff like that’s important, even when you can’t be there, you kind of help him get eyes on the product. Gosh, I’m super excited about the 13th because they bought what I sold them. I would love for it to be, rather than just a tribute show, I want it to be a look ahead. I’ll have my last in-ring performance. That is for certain. I’m not doing anything after that. But in doing so in the night too, we get big WWE Superstars so they can say they were on the card in non-canon exhibition matches against the best and brightest we got in NXT. So gosh, what a way to go out. Using those few hours that Peacock has given us and Netflix internationally to be able to say goodbye to a chapter in my life that’s very important, and in doing so, hopefully get eyes on what could be the next two-decade run, or maybe give somebody that boot in the butt that like, Yo, this is what the noise sounds like. I’m really, really happy, man. I feel great.”

How did you pitch the farewell tour?

“We have two options. At 48, I feel I can compete using magic, hocus pocus and all the tricks and wisdom I have, but the pace of the product has passed me by. I either post, ‘I’m done’, which is a post, or I can pump the brakes on all other activities for the year and dedicate this to being the last year. I know it hasn’t been done, but this is what I think could possibly happen creatively. I’m allowing you to do whatever you want. I just want to try to use whatever energy I have to pass on and hopefully give audiences memorable moments. I think, I don’t know if people understand it right away, because no wrestler ever retires, I’ll be the first, but it’s been great to see audiences get it and audiences understand. So now to be at these shows is something special, and we’ve had great moments come out of these shows. I’m not saying I’m the sole driving force behind it, but a lot of people are showing up to be like man, this is the last time I can see John, and then the show’s been great enough to be like yeah, but I want to watch them fight too. So I’m very happy they bought it, and I think I would say everyone internally is happy, and I would say everyone externally has an opinion about it, which is good. Here we are in early December, looking forward to the 13th. I don’t think there is apathy out there. I know some people are critical of it. Some people may be upset, some people may be overjoyed, but there isn’t apathy, and I think that means we did okay.”

How do you feel about that criticism?

“It’s part of what we do. That is absolutely part of what we do. I love it because it’s vocal and it starts a conversation. That’s the thing. I’ve been part of this live criticism pit since WrestleMania Triple H or fighting Kurt Angle. That’s what people don’t understand, I am criticized all the time.”

How much planning went into the schedule?

“The whole thing was like 3 years. So by then [2022], I knew I had a lot of opportunities outside of WWE, and those are very difficult to balance, not just being everywhere like the first half of this year for the tour, I was flying back and forth to Budapest and Morocco, making PLE dates. The day I announced, Jan 6, I left to land in Budapest to shoot the next day. That’s a scheduling. The biggest hurdle to climb is insurance, and insurance is super pricey. Every date, the cost goes up, whether it be $500,000, $1,000,000.”

Because you might get hurt?

“Because you’re doing a picture, and you’re being like, ‘Hey, I have Saturday off.’ That’s the thing a lot of folks don’t understand. It’s like, but you have the weekends off, you can do this. Or they can shoot Tuesday through Saturday if they want. You can do every Monday. You’re right, but the liability of, hey, I’m doing this action movie, and then I’m gonna go do, albeit choreographed action, but with a high variable that I could get hurt. If I get hurt, I can’t come back to shoot. Or I get my nose broke, or if I get a black eye or something, we’ve already captured these moments on camera, and now I got to stop and wait for the thing to heal before I can shoot another frame. So that’s something that I had to learn the hard way of like, my schedule is open. I can do it. It’s an insurance thing, and this is what it costs. So trying to get a studio to leverage that to let you go play stunt man is impossible. So you got to a lot of times you got to come out of pocket, and that’s a tough balance.”

So you paid out of pocket for the insurance?

“There are ways to get everyone to play nice. A great way to start a diplomatic conversation is saying, I will invest. So whether it’s 100% of the cost or a fraction of the cost, or like, Hey, can you help us out? Can TKO help us out? And I’ll chip in. There’s a lot of ways to be diplomatic, and when you want to do something, and when it’s not purely about financial gain. With this year, it was like, I thought I was going to take the whole year off for WWE, but then when they said, ‘I only need you for 36 [dates]’, a few opportunities came up, and I was like, Okay, if I do the opportunities, I’m going to be on the hook for insurance. Insurance is this. I knew what I was signing up for. This will travel a long way. Thanks for your patience. Three years ago, I started getting these opportunities, and so I’m filming three, maybe sometimes squeezing in four movies a year. I’m on set all the time, which means I can’t make any dates. Then I know my year in advance, these things going to pre-production earlier, so you know kind of what you’re doing the next year. That’s like 2022 booked, 2023 booked 2024 looks pretty busy. Okay, in 2022, what if we outline 2025? Why do you want to do that? Because I won’t be able to physically do it past 48. So in 2022, we kind of laid the groundwork for the idea of this, and then in early ’23, we pitched to TKO. We pitched the idea of a year, call it as you see it and again, lead with diplomacy. I think it’s worth this, but you can think it’s worth whatever. Please allow me to bet on myself. You want to run on incentivized contract, I want to do this. And I want to make everybody win. If you put down a buck, I want to give you back 10. And at the same time, I want to give everybody out there a run for their money, like we’re really gonna go for it. I will do my best not to suck. I’m not just gonna go do the five moves of doom. I think we can do something real special. And they bought it. But it also takes a while to put that through the engine, so as soon as they bought it in like mid to early 2023, now I’m like, Okay, give me a list of all possible cities I got out. 60 cities put on my desk merchandise uniform for everybody, because I know it takes like nine months to clear IP design to get in production. Hats and wristbands take longer than T-shirts. When I announced in Toronto, 15 months out, we were like lasered in for everything. So we had every city, every potential city. Cool thing about the uniforms is they become awesome because we did so many. I actually, no kidding, I did 17 extras, and I’m trying to get Fanatics to release the never-seen 17 [merch line]. Houston’s on there, Sacramento’s on there.”

Was the heel turned planned in all this?

“No, that stuff you see on Unreal is real. ‘We need to make Chamber big, so let’s do something that’ll shock everybody.’ ‘Hey, man, we got this idea.’ No problem, I’ll do the best I can.”

Were you excited about it?

“I’m excited about everything. I like the riddle. You see my stuff. I’m not exactly the most gifted athletic performer. I give you all I got.”

How did you feel about the turn and the months that followed?

“This is just my perspective. What I like is people are talking about it. And the cool thing is, people who are critical of it, apparently had some idea in their head about what they wanted, which is great, because that means you’re attached, that means you care. I enjoy that, and I hear that criticism. When we did it, we did it as a big moment, but with a purpose. Hey, this is going to ignite something with you and Cody. It’s going to start in February and end in August, because you only have 36 broadcasts and Intuit and Rumble are gone. So now we’re down to 34. Then we need some on the back end, with you actually being a good guy. So let’s take it down to 24. We kind of have to tell a story that should be two years long, 52 weeks a year, plus 14 to 18 PLES. We got to do it in like 20 episodes of television. Okay, so it took my focus on Cody, on the championship and on frustrations that I’ve had, it all comes from a genuine place, things I could say. I’m so happy to say that I wouldn’t retread the course, because I gave everything I had my poor wife. I’d wake up in the middle of the night writing promo lines and thinking about spots and stuff. The opponents I had were great, but I remember everyone talking in February and be like, this is how things change. Yes, this is a good plan. Okay, guys, if I’m gonna ruin this thing, like I’m gonna I’m gonna wrestle methodically, I have an idea of what ruining wrestling is.”

What was the original plan for The Rock and Travis Scott?

“Who cares? It doesn’t matter. We can talk about what could have been until the cows come home. And I think that’s what’s great about the people who are left standing. Certainly me and Cody. What’s the change? this? All right, let’s go. I don’t dwell for one second on what could have been, because what could have been is Brock doesn’t leave for the NFL and there’s no John Cena.”

Could there have been a match with The Rock?

“Could there be anything? That’s the thing that sucks about what could have been, it’s not what it is.”

Was it talked about?

“I don’t care. First of all, I’m always the last to know. It doesn’t trickle down to me. If you watch Unreal, that process is genuine. ‘I talked to Rock and then the last guy I gotta call is John.’ I’m usually the last guy they call because I’m the easiest. ‘Yeah, let’s do it. No problem. I’m in.’ So I don’t sweat the [small stuff]. ‘Yo, we don’t have those guys anymore.’ Cool, what do you want to do? We would like to do this. We need you to start being more competitive. We want to put you in these matches. We were going to build to this. That’s over. I didn’t even get that. Okay, fine, great. What are we doing now? That’s what’s tough. I think it’s great to talk about. It gives good argument, gives good perspective, of like, how do they book this stuff? A lot of that stuff’s beyond control of even the people who own the sandbox. If I decide to walk, I have contractual obligations, but they I’m not gonna be there on the 13th. Like, if I decide that, you know, and they’ll figure it out. I saw Austin get fired, you know what I’m saying. I saw Brock leave. I saw, you know, Dwayne take his break, and I don’t sweat any of those guys for what they did. Austin was worn out. Brock was probably going to assault somebody in an airport, and Dwayne had such great opportunities, I don’t fault people for being like, I can’t do this right now. McAfee being burned out behind the booth. The guy has got so many opportunities, dude, you got to just focus on what you can do. I don’t sweat them for that, but sh*t changes. Open opportunity for Wde Barrett, and I love listening to that guy on TV. Not that I didn’t like Pa,t but I really like listening to Stu [Bennett]. So I don’t really sweat it, but could there have been? That’s why I don’t choose my opponents.”

You didn’t choose a single opponent this year?

“Only thing I wanted to do, the only idea I gave was about Saturday Night’s Main Event on the 13th, saying it should not be a John Cena show. If everybody’s saying you’re going out on your own terms, which is BS, because I want to do it forever. Okay, you have an idea of this is how I want John to go out. You do. I have an idea of how I want to go out. And how I want to go out is not by folks remembering what I did. I want a chance to perform and do some good. You want to sprinkle in moments and memories to understand and make that last match more meaningful, fine, but let’s use the rest of our two hours and show the future of the business. That’s how I want to go out, because when I came in, there was a gold medalist who’s like, I’ll work with the kid. To be on a sold-out show in Chicago and hear that noise, I was already hooked, but that’s it. I want to give NXT kids a chance to be there, and I want to give major WWE superstars a chance to be on the card. It’s a limited thing. It’s not WrestleMania, it’s only limited spots, but that’s how I want to go out. And there’ll be people to criticize that. My theory, or my perspective was, if you do a whole show on John, two things can happen. Too much, not enough. No one’s ever gonna be like, nailed it.”

What did winning that 17th championship mean to you?

“I want to choose my words carefully. I have been apprehensive for quite some time for that, because I love Ric, super mentor to me, always been a great guy to me, and I love him. I meant what I said in the press conference at Rumble, and this is another thing, like I never wasted a second. We want you to do the press conference. How do I make these moments meaningful? I want to win 17 so I can shake the hand of the performer that wins 18. So what it meant to me, personally, was, ‘Hey, young uns, one of them is going to be you. You better get working, because I don’t want to be in the ground when 18 happens.’ I want to shake somebody’s hand. And something that’s impossible is now possible. So that’s what it means to me, hopefully, by my actions, this is possible. Holy hell, this guy wants to shake my hand when I pass it, and I can’t wait to do that.”

What about winning the Intercontinental Championship?

“What is special about that is I was able to work with Dom Mysterio three of my last four matches. And, gosh, that was really special. And honestly, the most special thing about winning it was being able to lose it how I did. That was really cool. I got to experiment with the US title and create an open challenge. And before that, I got to experiment with the US title and turn it into a spinner Bell. Turn it into a spinner belt. Twice, I was given what we in the company view as a secondary achievement, and was relentless in making it a primary objective. The guy on his way out. I said something in passing I’m like, that late IC title run just like Stone Cold had. You don’t touch that stuff at the end. You’re a champion. You’re of this pedigree. You don’t mess around with secondary objectives. In Boston, I made it mean something, and it did. It’s a nice it’s a nice win, and then the person who had it before me certainly gave value to it, but him beating me again for it, and now having it gives him even more value.”

Why was the Brock Lesnar match so quick?

“Well, I guess quick is perspective, because my frame didn’t feel like it was.”

Quick relative to the other matches you have worked this year:

“Again, I love the public’s ability to weigh in. You have this guy who’s returning, who absolutely looks like he hasn’t aged a day, moves like it. He can split his pants and still move like a ballerina, slip on his Pyro and do a ninja roll and be okay. He’s a beast. It’s his first time back. I’ve been in this seat before. It’s like I’m always in the seat when Brock comes back, Rock after Miami, who’s the next guy? SummerSlam with Roman, here he comes again. After he beats Taker for the streak, I’ve sat in this seat before. You have to figure out who gets the shine that night and if, in his return again, only my perspective. This attraction where we are going to build until he goes into the sunset, which is, I think, in Minnesota? Creatively, it’s very soon. To create a mountain to climb for someone, you have to build the mountain. I’m on my way out. It’s not like it’s gonna hurt me, but I’m a viable commodity, and it’s a great main event. See these two titans for the last time, and it’s ok. Sometimes your team gets blown out. We were first on the program. I did the best I could. We all did the best we could to make it a competitive fight into the middle. People forget I was in that arena when Brock fell down for the first time on the shoulder tackle, and then I was able to give them all the stuff. They were into it, and then just a bunch of gratuitous F5’s. That’s how you build Brock.”

That intro for AJ Styles was great:

“I just wanted to do something nice for my guy. I didn’t even show Alicia until I handed her the paper. You don’t get those moments unless you get the sh*t beat up. I wanted to do something special. I went about it the wrong way. I went into business for myself. I should have gotten permission to do that, and I would have gotten permission to do that, but I told no one about it, because I wanted to do something special, and in doing so, the people running the show felt surprised, and that’s not a position I ever want to put them in because they award me such creative liberty.”

I can’t imagine anyone had a problem with it?

“We’re all trying to make these moments special, and we’re all on the same team, and it shouldn’t be me doing something outside that realm. If I tell my teammates, hey, let’s do it. I can keep it from AJ, I can keep it from Alicia, but if I tell my teammates who are crafting this show, maybe they make it look better. The first thing I did was thank AJ, the second thing I did was pull a few creative individuals aside and say, ‘I’m sorry. That will never happen again. I know where I f*cked up. I’m so sorry, and I went into business for myself. That’s not me. I hope you look at my body of work, and all the times I’ve asked for permission, and this is the one time I ask for forgiveness.’ It got the best of me, but I wanted to do something nice for AJ.”

That match was so much fun:

“I just want to get that ball rolling. All right, they’re wasting the heel turn at WrestleMania, and they’re like, Oh, the Randy thing. And then the Punk, and then Cody, and then Logan in Paris was even kind of dope. And then you go to Brock, what? What are they gonna do next? And then you get the payoff, and we look at them all in individual moments, but it’s why, until now, I have refused to give anyone any information about any of this, because I don’t want to lead the witness. The last one is going to be the last one. We have told the story, everybody knows the drill, a tournament to decide, this is going to be it. I want the last one. I want people to look at the road ahead, 26 and beyond. I want them to take away some Superstar’s name from the 13th. But now we can reflect on the year. We get caught up in these moments, thinking that’s all you get and not realizing that this is the commercial spot before the reveal, before the big finish. We’ve just had to digest it as it has been a year storyline, and reflecting back on it, I get excited and again, I don’t feel I could have given anything else. So I’m very happy with how it’s gone so far.”

How nervous were you that you might get injured?

“That’s a concern we have all the time, not just in my perspective, you don’t think about it. I don’t really try stuff I haven’t done before on TV. I don’t debut stuff for the first time out there. So I think that helps knowing what you’re capable of. I’ve seen it firsthand. A lot of performers getting to the age and think there is good once as they once were, and again, I’ve leaned on what strength I have left, I’ve leaned on the wisdom I have and some of the tricks I’ve learned, but all the stuff I’ve done is within the realm of what I can do. You’re seeing me do some stuff for the first time, but you’re seeing it for the first time. I make sure to go through it a bunch so that I can bat 1,000 out there. And if I can’t, it’s just out, it gets cut. So I just don’t think about that. I try to set the performance up for success, and then if you dwell on getting injured, it’s gonna be all you think about in your mind elsewhere, and it’s not in the moment.”

You know there are some people who still don’t think you are retiring:

“I love that, and I don’t knock them for that. Because this has never been done before. Wrestlers don’t retire. So to be the first one, you’re gonna run into some scepticism.”

What do you think is the one thing that allowed you to have the success you had?

“I have thought about life a lot. I’m super lucky. I know that. So luck, but it’s very difficult to nail down an answer, because it could be tons of things. There’s so much unpredictability in that to do this. I think what is certain from a mathematical standpoint, I’m borrowing from Johnny Carson and Charlie Munger, is how to fail. I think how you can fail in life is be uninvested, unprofessional, unreliable and uncoachable. I think if you repeatedly do those things, no matter how gifted or talented you are, you will fail. I have never been the most gifted or talented, but I’ve always tried to be invested, professional, reliable and coachable, and I have not failed because of lack of those dimensions. But I guarantee you, if you, if you do those four things, you’re gonna, you’re gonna crash and burn.”

I’m gonna throw out some names, can you give me a word or phrase to describe them?

Cody Rhodes – Resilient

Randy Orton – Smooth

R-Truth – Beautiful. He makes everybody smile

Logan Paul – Underrated

CM Punk – My Wrestling soulmate

Drew McIntyre – A story of resilience

Sami Zayn – Underdog

Brock Lesnar – Once in a genre. There will be one Brock Lesnar in wrestling, and that’s from like carnival time to the time we shut the lights out if we’re lucky enough to get another. I don’t know who it is.

AJ Styles – Best to ever do it. Shawn’s gonna be p*ssed, and God did Shawn ever take care of me. There’s not a lot he [Styles] can’t do, and he makes difficult look easy. But that is not God given talent. That is practice. When you see difficult become seamless, it’s because it’s been done 10,000 times, and the amount of sh*t he can do seamlessly. Man, he’s best to ever do it.

Sheamus – This is way inside baseball, and only he’s gonna get it. The World’s Tallest Wrestler.

Rey Mysterio – Mentor, and someone who allowed them to be a part of their family when he didn’t need to.

What are 3 things you are grateful for?

“The love and connection I have in my life, my health and the understanding that I am a part of the opportunities, but I have not done this by myself.”

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Bryan Danielson: Iconic Matches, YES Movement, Retirement, WrestleMania 30, Brie Bella

in LATEST EPISODES on December 4, 2025 January 28, 2026

Bryan Danielson (@bryandanielson) is a professional wrestler and announcer currently signed to AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Houston, TX to discuss his new role on AEW commentary, if he has retired from the ring, why he left WWE to sign with AEW, the segment that got hijacked by fans, the YES Movement, losing to Sheamus in 18 seconds, winning in the main event of WrestleMania 30, if a Brie Bella return is possible, and more!

On making the move to commentary:

“It’s been interesting because I wasn’t anticipating being a commentator. So I was at home, and then they asked me to come in because Taz was getting shoulder surgery, and to come and help out a little bit. But traveling has been difficult for me. That’s one of the things I didn’t expect, because I’ve traveled my entire adult life. It’s no big deal. But with my neck as bad as it is, all of a sudden, it was almost, gosh. It was like eight or nine months where I was only traveling maybe once a month. I’d go to the pay-per-views and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, the weekly travel has been a lot, and it’s just been made sleeping hard and that sort of thing.”

Is it the sitting on the plane the whole time?

“It’s also just lugging luggage around. So I typically just have a carry-on in a backpack, or whatever it is. But then it’s like being uncomfortable in the chair. I’ve made some adjustments, so I have a cervical pillow now that I travel with me, because for a while I was just sleeping with one of those hand towels underneath my neck, just so it’s not being pushed up or anything like that. But it’s impossible. I live on the West Coast, and then I also live an hour and a half to two hours from the airport, so it’s impossible for all these cross-country flights to stay in good posture the whole time, that kind of stuff. And then, heaven forbid, I fall asleep and I do this, and then I wake up like, oh no, I can’t feel my hand.”

On preparing for commentary as opposed to preparing for wrestling:

“It’s way different. From a performer’s perspective, I really just need to know what my match is, what they’d like for a finish, how much time you’ve got, and then it’s like, okay. Then you talk with your opponent, whatever it is, and then it’s the physical preparation. I would take 30 to 45 minutes to warm up for a match. I learned that from Randy Orton. Randy Orton was the best guy at warming up in WWE. He would do all these things, and if he had to do something on short notice, he’d get pissed. He’s like, ‘I don’t have time to do my shoulder routine’, or whatever. Just think of how many matches Randy’s done. His entire career has been in WWE, and during that time where they’re doing tons of live events every year and all that kind of stuff, so his body’s been through a lot. So he prepared it, and I would see it, and I had my own 10 to 15 minute warm-up. But then as I’ve got older, it became much more like, Okay, I need 30 to 45 minutes to warm up. So yeah. But now from a commentator perspective, I tend to go around and talk to people about their matches. I tend to be in Tony’s office trying to understand what the main story is that we’re trying to tell throughout a match, or whatever it is, and then I write a bunch of notes. This is the thing, with most things, you write a bunch of notes, most of them you don’t ever use. But there have been times where I’ve sat there and Excalibur asked me a question, and I just go like this [blank face]. So I found out I was doing full-time commentary while I was doing a media tour of Australia, I found out it was like, ‘Okay, starting this Wednesday…’ And I was like, Oh no, I have to get from Brisbane, Australia all the way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and then I have to do commentary and all this kind of stuff. I was so jet lagged and tired when I got [there], there were a couple times during that, obviously Taz and Excalibur carried the bulk of the thing. There was one time Excalibur asked me a question, and I just went like this. I didn’t even say, ‘Er?’ And then Excalibur just goes, ‘Well, Taz?’ But it’s been good and fun. Commentary is a skill, so it’s something that you have to learn. I’ve been really lucky and grateful to have Taz and Excalibur and then Tony. I asked Tony Schiavone when he’s not busy backstage, and he’s super busy, and said, Can you give me some tips? Because it’s not something that I’m naturally good at.”

On his neck issues:

“So I have degeneration from C1 all the way down to T2. [Your entire neck?] Yeah. So it’s like I’m on the cusp of needing surgery. It’s this weird line. I’d like to avoid surgery as much as possible. So my last neck surgery, I never fully recovered from it in the sense of getting back the strength gains and the mobility and all that sort of thing. So I’d really like to avoid it as much as possible, especially because my son is a menace. I had a broken arm, you have a big cast, I’m in a sling. I was like, ‘Buddy, you can’t touch daddy’s arm.’ And he’s jumping on my arm and all this kind of stuff. And I’m just like, Oh no, if I get neck surgery, it’s not like you wear a neck brace, not like you walk around in a neck brace. He’s pure boy. No matter how many times Brie tells him, and I tell him, but not as forcefully as Brie does, but Brie is, like, ‘Get off of daddy’s neck!’ And he just can’t not do it. It’s just like a boy thing. Our daughter is super good about it, but he’s all boy.”

Are you retired from the ring?

“I hate the R word because I was forced to retire before. So I never consider myself fully retired. This is how I think, and this is how a lot of wrestlers think, Well, I think I could do this in this situation, if needed, or called upon, or whatever it is. But effectively for the Bryan Danielson that I used to be, yeah, that guy doesn’t exist anymore.”

Do you want to go back if you can’t be that Bryan Danielson?

“I would love to, but not on TV. So, for example, I spent a large portion of my early career doing Butlins shows in the UK, because I was very bad at performing and being entertaining. William Regal hooked me up with Brian Dixon. We’d go over and do these Butlins holiday camps. So you pay $500 for a weekend, and your whole family can go. It includes food. It includes entertainment. So you see magicians, you see musicians, you can go to a dance hall, and oh, in the afternoon, there’s wrestling. So these people aren’t wrestling fans. They just want to be entertained. You know what I mean? So William Regal had me go over there, because although I naturally picked up the wrestling aspect of it very quickly, I did not pick up the entertainment aspect very quickly. So I spent a lot of time, and I learned to love it. I’d sing the American National Anthem, very poorly, and forget the words. There would be times where I’d be like, Okay, how many times can I accidentally hit myself in the crotch and all these sorts of things. We were doing it six, seven days a week, every week. The first time I went was 2003 and I was there for six months, and in the last 15 days I was there, I wrestled 21 matches. So you kind of have to with this kind of schedule, and you’re doing long drives every day and all that kind of stuff. With that kind of schedule, you had to be more entertaining. That’s what Regal said. He said that stuff saved me when I was hurt. When you look at William Regal’s career, I remember all the great wrestling matches. But what I think a lot of fans remember is his comedy skits backstage and how funny he was. Then, if you look at his ring stuff, when he was doing a lot of flexing and then pushing his bicep up and all that kind of stuff. But that’s all stuff that you learn from doing these holiday camps versus, at the time, I was doing a lot of independent wrestling that was very much geared towards having great matches, right? So yeah, I think I could go have fun matches and have fun doing the fun matches. But then I don’t think that’s the kind of wrestling fans would want to pay to see Bryan Danielson do.”

On his first WWE contract:

“I got signed in February of 2000 and then got let go in June or July of 2001. I think my career, and I think my life was better because I got fired then. But that’s all hindsight, at your time, it was just like I thought it was the richest man alive. At first they hired us at $500 a week, which is $26,000 a year. I thought it was so rich, because I grew up below the poverty line, and I was just like, ‘Oh, my God, you’re just gonna give me $500 every week to wrestle? This is unbelievable!’ So we were in San Antonio when they first gave us the deal. Then we moved to Memphis, and they paid us $750 a week. And I’m like, this is the most money. I can’t even imagine having this much money. What is this? Then they fired me, and it’s like, oh no, but then they pay you for 90 days after that and I’m like, Oh, wow, this is just free money. But it was weird because then I had to start building a name on the independent scene, and then you’re going back to the idea of like, okay. There was this great company called ECCW. I’m pretty sure, and I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure it stood for Extremely Canadian Championship Wrestling. But they would do like 150 shows a year, they were based out of Vancouver and Surrey, British Columbia. So I moved back home, lived with my mom, started going to community college, worked two jobs, and then I’d go up on the weekends, and they do like three shows every weekend, and so I’d go up and I do those shows, and they’d pay me $75 Canadian, which at the time was like $45 American, and it did not include my gas money. So by the time I was paid, I was barely breaking even, or whatever it is. But the time making $750 a week allowed me to have that kind of savings. So it wasn’t a bad gig.”

On being The Miz’s rookie:

“I thought it was great, because what you want in WWE is some sort of story. So this is one of the things that I had a hard time with. When they signed me, I had longer hair and a little bit more of a wilder look. I liked that look, but they said, Okay, you’re gonna do this thing with The Miz. You’re gonna be a rookie. So I really without anybody asking me to, and maybe that’s one of the things that I should have said was, ‘Hey, how much are we going to play [into this?]’ The reality was they didn’t put much thought into that show at all. So it was like, looking back on it, it’s like that was their main priority was they’d film SmackDown on Tuesdays. Their main priority was SmackDown, then they just threw NXT together before that. But I thought this is, and it was, a huge opportunity to be on TV. So what I did was cut my hair more to look more generic. I tried to look as generic as possible with the idea, and me and Miz were collaborating on this stuff. Of some ideas, Miz was great about pitching ideas to the writers and all that kind of stuff about all these things of, okay, I can’t learn wrestling from Miz, but he’s going to teach me to be a Superstar, and me being frustrated like, ‘That’s not important. The only thing that’s important is the wrestling.’ That kind of thing that people think that I actually think, or that people think he would actually think, this could be a really good TV dynamic, and we both thought that, and then none of it ever happened. So then I just looked like a nerd for no reason. Not to say that I’m not a nerd. I’m just saying that I went out of my way to look less.”

Was your passion for wrestling the reason you signed with AEW?

“Yeah. Also the idea of wanting to try something new, I always kind of wanted to push myself. I knew it was probably the last wrestling contract I’d ever sign. I had watched Cody wrestle Penta, and I used to ride with Cody. They’re both standing on the top and Cody did this top rope Frankensteiner I was like is that what you have to do? Part of it is scary, and part of it is intriguing, like, Oh, can I do this? I used to be able to do this style. Can I still do this style? The style that I gravitate towards is a more athletic, sports-based style, so I wanted to see that. There was also the idea at the time, the pandemic was just kind of ending, and we’re starting to do live shows again. I didn’t know if WWE was going to start doing the live events and stuff again, because at that point we had two kids, and I was like, I don’t want to do that schedule anymore. At AEW, it’s just Wednesdays. At the time, it was just Wednesdays. And I was like, that was a very appealing schedule to me, for my family. And then I also wanted to see if my body could still do some of these things. Some of it could, and some of it couldn’t. You learn that the hard way.”

On coming back from retirement:

“When I came back in 2018, it was really weird. Because I was trained by Shawn Michaels, he told the whole class, The day that you stop being nervous before you go out there is the day that you need to retire, right? When I came back from being forced to retire, I thought that first match I’d be nervous, and I wasn’t. I was just happy, and I never really got nervous before a match again. There was one match that I was nervous for, and that was the match I had with Okada at Forbidden Door in 2023. The only reason why I was nervous is because it was a five-hour show, we were on last and we had to follow Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay. I watched that match and I was like, Oh no. Then there’s still two more matches, and then me and Okada have to go out there. Then I was just stressed, and I was like, ah, but that’s the only time I remember being nervous before a match.”

What did WWE say was the creative for the Sheamus match at WrestleMania?

“What they said is, it’s one move. So yeah, that was the direction.”

Did you ask why?

“No. I wasn’t at that point in my career. Also, I’ve never been somebody who’s been like, ‘Wait a second, why would you beat me in 18 seconds?’ Or ‘Why would you beat me with just one move?’ Or whatever it was. It’s like, okay, that’s the creative direction. I’m going to do the best that I can with it. I find that a lot of people put up stinks about a lot of things, or whatever it is, but I think, Okay, if you have an idea, it’s like well what if we do this? ‘Nope, we want to do that.’ I mean, you can put up a little resistance if you really don’t like something, but then if this is what the boss wants, you’re better off to do your absolute best at what the boss wants, and then try to get over from that. I think a great example in AEW is Swerve Strickland. He came in and he lost a lot of matches, but it was always like, ‘Yeah Tony, whatever you need. I’ll go out there and do it.’ Then now look at him. He’s main evented pay-per-views. He’s a world champion. He’s fantastic. There will be people who will take the other idea of, oh, I don’t want to do that, or I don’t even want to lose, or this or that, or whatever. Man, it’s not real [laughs]. I mean, there’s a couple guys in wrestling who would do well in MMA, there’s a couple, not many [laughs]. So it’s like, okay. I mean, if you want to win every match, you can go try MMA. You could even just try out the best guy at the local gym here in Houston in your weight class and see how it goes. Not to say that guys in wrestling couldn’t do it. It’s just we haven’t spent time training together. But yeah, I’ve always been a little bit perplexed by some of that kind of stuff.”

On fans hijacking and winning Money in the Bank:

“But even in the sense of like, then when Batista won that Royal Rumble. I feel bad for Batista, because he worked hard to come back and all that kind of stuff. You do that with Batista now, he gets a great reaction, or any other year. I don’t think it was necessarily me. It was okay. The crowd had gotten behind a Dolph Ziggler, the crowd had gotten behind a Kofi Kingston, and they got up to a certain level, and then they were during that era, it was like, okay, then they would always kind of be pushed back down, or whatever it is. I think fans were starting to get upset by it. Even Punk, me and Punk had wrestled a match on a pay-per-view, must have been 2012 for the title. We were in the middle of the show, and the main event was John Laurinaitis and John Cena. I think the fans were ready for something new, or whatever it is. I mean, that’s just time and place, there’s a lot of my career that’s been like that. I’m of the firm belief that you could have [anyone]. I was in a very fortunate position, even winning the title. I wasn’t even supposed to. I wasn’t even supposed to be there that day. The thing that whole led to me Yes-ing was I had won the Money in the Bank, and the only reason I won the Money in the Bank is because they had two Money in the Banks. They had one for Raw and one for SmackDown. They knew for sure they wanted Alberto Del Rio to win the Raw one. The SmackDown one, they thought they wanted Wade, Barrett, Cody Rhodes or me on the day of the show, they all decided it was me because they didn’t want a bad guy to win the Money in the Bank on the SmackDown side, because they had a bad guy winning it on the Raw side. But the most important thing was the Alberto Del Rio thing. But then they gave me the Money in the Bank, and they’re like, oh no. Now Daniel Bryan has the Money in the Bank, and nobody at that point had cashed in and lost. And so, you know, we did a couple things with it for a couple weeks, and then it was off TV for like six weeks, or whatever it is. Then they inserted me in a story with Big Show and Mark Henry, which got me on TV or whatever it is. But it was great. It put me in a story, but then Mark Henry got hurt. This was at the TLC pay per view in 2011. Mark Henry gets hurt. I wasn’t scheduled to be at the pay-per-view. I had a Walmart signing that same day in Baltimore with Kelly Kelly, and came over to the building because Brie was there; I think Brie had a match on the show. So I was there, and then Vince found out that I was there, and then Daniel Bryan’s here, and then it’s like, oh! Because I had been involved in this thing with Mark Henry and Big Show. Okay, well Mark Henry’s hurt, so they had to do like a real smoke and mirrors type chair match, and then Mark gets mad at Big Show. And then, just because I happened to be there, it’ll be shocking that Daniel Bryan comes in and cashes in on Big Show. So even that was just a circumstance. If I hadn’t been booked, if Walmart hadn’t asked to have two WWE wrestlers sign at that on that particular day, that whole thing would have never happened. And Vince’s direction to me was go out there and celebrate like you just won the Super Bowl. Then that’s how the yes thing happened. A lot of these are just circumstances. If they had let me at WrestleMania go out there and wrestle Sheamus for 20 minutes, and then he beats me, I don’t know if it would have stayed as hot. I mean, it was more angering that they just had him beat me in 18 seconds with one move. So it’s like all of these things are things beyond my control. I have nothing to do with any of these things. And they’re just these weird little gifts, right?”

On being told he was winning at WrestleMania 30:

“I don’t even remember. I honestly don’t. WrestleMania 30 was a very difficult time period for me, because my neck was really bad. I had gotten a concussion that I had to hide, not had to hide. But I realized I was in this thing, this trajectory of going to WrestleMania 30. I had gotten a bad concussion, but I had to hide it, and was doing live events with the concussion. Then I was wrestling one match. After the match I was in the shower, and I couldn’t even stand. I was riding by myself, and I had to ask a friend to drive me to the next town. So WrestleMania 30 happened. I was not in a great headspace, to be honest. I got married on Friday, my wife and I went on a honeymoon. I’d never been to Hawaii before, so we went to Maui, and we stayed at this eco retreat, and it was awesome. But I was looking up, and you had this portal to the moon, but the room just wouldn’t stop spinning. At this point, the Chris Nowinski concussion book had come out, and I knew that I’d been lying about concussions for a while. Then we get back from our honeymoon on Saturday, we fly to Baltimore, which is the place where I first won the World Heavyweight Championship, cashing in that Money in the Bank. Then I found out the next morning my dad died. That’s completely unexpected. So it’s like, so people ask me about WrestleMania 30. Honestly, that whole thing was a blur. So I don’t remember them telling me.”

How many concussions have you had?

“So I’ve had 13 documented concussions. [Is the actual number more?] Who knows? I don’t know. It’s just weird, because when I started in 1999 the idea was, Oh, you just got dinged. You got your bell rung. So, with all the stuff that they’ve discovered about concussions since then, it’s probably too many. I would say it’s probably too many.”

Did you have an inkling in 2016 that you had too many concussions?

“So what had happened is I’d had some post-concussion seizures that I never told WWE about. So then Brie who had been there to witness a post-concussion seizure. She said, ‘The next concussion you have…’ and she was worried about me when we were on our honeymoon, the room was spinning, and this is supposed to be the best week of our life. There was also a semi-funny incident, but she became worried that it was because of concussions, rather than just my overall aloofness. We were in Maui, and we had rented a car. You’re going along the east side of the island, you’re doing this drive, and then we stopped at this beach. We made a million stops just to see all the different things. We stopped at this beach, and the waves looked great. And I’m like, I’m gonna go body surfing. So I got in the car, and then Brie took this picture of me as I’m emerging from the water, just like, Oh Bryan must be the happiest man alive. And then she goes, where are the car keys? And then I was like, Oh no. And we lost them to the Pacific Ocean, and then I had left him in my pocket. I don’t think that was because of concussions. I think it’s just my overall aloofness. But after that I had neck surgery, and I was gone for nine months. But she said, the very next concussion you have, you need to tell them about this.'”

On a possible Brie Bella return:

“Yeah, only in certain contexts. She doesn’t want to come back and do a singles run or anything like that. If she comes back, she would want to do it with Nicole. But I think there’s something in her too, and I can appreciate this, because our kids see her as just a mom, just a mom, as if that isn’t the hardest job in the world. Part of her, I think, has a desire to have the kids see her in that light too. I didn’t realize it until later, how amazing my mom was, right in the sense of, okay, we didn’t have any money. She was a single mom. She was working two jobs, going to college. I don’t know if it was my junior year or senior year of high school. She was going on a walk with a friend, and she just collapsed from exhaustion. She had to be taken to the hospital, to the emergency room. She was somebody who probably needed food stamps, but we lived in a small town, she didn’t want to [use them], she was ashamed. She didn’t want to go to the grocery store and pay with food stamps, all these sorts of things. My mom is also an inspiration to me. She went to college, got her master’s degree in psychology, and ended up working with underprivileged kids. She worked with the Native Americans. She worked in the prison. She got attacked in a prison being in a room with an inmate. You think about that, and you think of like, okay, I grew up knowing I was loved. Which is like, okay, Brie and I can fail at everything else in this life, but if we let our kids know that they’re loved. But all of that to say, I don’t understand how my mom did it. Now I’m in amazement, right? Because financially, we’re doing okay. We didn’t have any of the financial stressors that my mom had, and she still made a lot of time for us and like I said, made us know that we were loved. With Brie, this whole mom thing, one day our kids will realize what a great mom she is. But it’s fun to see when they don’t appreciate it. So it’s like, I was FaceTiming her and the kids this morning, and then just our son being as wild as he is, and then our daughter and part of me, but you never say that as a parent. You never say, “Do you realize how much I’m doing for you?””

What is Bryan Danielson grateful for?

“Family, the trees, and this experience right now.”

Lana: Rusev Day, WWE Legends Deal, The Rock Segment, Bobby Lashley Wedding, Romantic Storylines

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

CJ Perry (@TheCJPerry) is a professional wrestler and valet best known for her time in WWE as Lana. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss the launch of her new podcast “Identity Crisis”, taking time away from wrestling, her husband Rusev and his return to WWE, how the Lana character was pitched to her, being part of a hilarious moment with Nia Jax, being involved in multiple romantic storylines, and more!

How the first episode of her podcast went down:

“It went shockingly well. People are subscribing, people are commenting, people are invested. Our editor actually reviewed everything. They were shocked. They were like, This is the best podcast, the highest we’ve ever performed. So it’s really encouraging. You’re actually a big inspiration to me.”

What do you mean?

“I’ve studied your podcast like no other. Probably about two years ago, I really wanted to start a podcast. I shot my first pilot, and it was not up to par. I was like, Ooh, I need to go and do more research. I’m a big person that when I decide to go after something, I dive in full-heartedly. So for two years, I would spend about four hours a day watching podcasts, dissecting it and everything, what works, what doesn’t work. I’m always amazed, because you do mainstream media, but you also do wrestling, and yours just always perform so well. I’ve been following you for five years.”

On being the host of the show:

“I thought, oh, it’d be easier, because I love talking, I love being on podcasts, but I’m always on this side. So I always felt like I could almost control my own interview, even though I was the guest. I’ve already done 10 episodes, art edited them in the process, just to have some ahead of time, and I noticed I was having challenges controlling it.”

On taking time away:

“I was really unhappy for a long time, and I think I first got triggered when I got released in 2021 from WWE. It was like my whole life. It was my dream, and I loved it. All my friends are there. You spend 300 days of the year with these women and men, and then you can’t even come backstage again. I struggle with being very ADHD and severely anxious, and it just triggered me into this manic time of my life that I didn’t understand that was an issue for me. So, actually it was Kendall Jenner on Jay Shetty’s purpose podcast that she was talking about anxiety in 2021 and I was like, wow, that’s me. I didn’t realize how much my relationships were suffering from anxiety, and my marriage was suffering from me being severely ADHD and severely anxious. I think divorce rate is 50% more in ADHD people, depression and anxiety is 50% more in ADHD people, and suicide is 50% more in ADHD people, because nothing’s good enough and you get bored and you want to move on. And so WWE was the perfect storm for me, because I was go, go, go, new city. Stimulation, stimulation, dopamine hit when you go and perform. Then when I didn’t have all that and I had to make myself happy, I was turning to all the wrong things. I was even turning to Miro too much to make me happy, and also he was turning to me to make him happy. In reality, the only person that can make us happy is ourselves, and I had to do some severe changes. In 2023 I got MRSA, remember, with my finger. It was so bad. I think a lot of it was because I was so stressed and so anxious, and it shows you that your body, stress can kill us. And so we really have to take care of our mental health and our emotional health first, because that will affect our physical health.”

Did your WWE release in 2021 come as a surprise at the time?

“I was shocked. I was on television and in big, big storylines the whole time. Had a great relationship with Bruce and Vince, everyone. I was devastated. But now looking back, I’m thankful, because that’s life, and sometimes our hardest moments is our moments that teach us. Now looking back, I realize, not in a mean way, but nothing’s guaranteed in life. We can’t compare ourselves to other people, because we all have a different journey. And also, we don’t live forever, so everything has to come to an end, so let’s focus on all the great things I was able to have, versus it may be finishing too soon.”

On her relationship with Miro:

“Things are really good [now]. He did file for divorce. We were very much like on, off, on, off for about a year before that [the separation], got separated and almost divorced several times before that. Yeah, the story on my podcast is true, according to me, he served divorce papers. Wanted them to get to me on my birthday, for whatever reason. I know it sounds so insane. I don’t know what I did to my brain, the kind of the whole time I thought he was doing a storyline or something. I know that sounds so weird, like, now looking back, I’m like, I think I did that to protect myself, like, oh, he doesn’t mean this. He doesn’t mean this, he just wants to be separated. That was really hard for me, but it was one of the greatest moments of my life, because that was when I really cut myself off from the world. It was right after I got released from AEW, so it was like divorce papers, AEW release all in like a week. That was really hard because I felt like and me, Miro even talked about that, even if we got divorced, we want to work together still. So he had gone to Bulgaria. I was waiting for him to come back, and I was like, okay, I love Miro. He’s my family. Even if we maybe at different moments, didn’t see eye to eye, we weren’t on the same page. We wanted different things there for a moment, we still had incredible love for each other, because I don’t know, we’re family, we’re best friends. We wanted to work together regardless. So Miro was really unhappy too when I got released, because he was also looking at AEW as like, take care of my wife, you know, ex-wife. So it got really complicated, but everything happens for a reason, and that’s when I decided to take time off and not do any anything in wrestling. I wanted to go into the indie scene because I love wrestling, but I just felt like I needed to focus on my mental health and my health. And that was when severe change started.”

What did that look like for you?

“So when I got the papers, I literally couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks. I Then finally, I was watching Jay Shetty again, and Jay Shetty is like, if you’re depressed, change your music, get outside in the sun for 15 minutes, take a walk, maybe move, if you can, be around new people. I literally did all of that, besides moving, I got out of bed, I started walking every single day for 30 minutes in the morning, and that already helped my mood. That already helped me become happier. I just think when I really focused on wellness, like going to therapy, acupuncture, working out better, eating very organic food, taking more vitamins, and then, just like really pushing myself to have an active life in nature, like go to the beach, go hiking, get into nature, that really helped me get so much happier. I also got sober. I stopped drinking. That was a huge part. I was prescribed prescriptions for my ADHD, and I had to come off of that. That was also a really big change. It’s hard for me to read. I’m very dyslexic, so I do have other challenges, not having medication, but my happiness and my well-being and my relationships are so much better now.”

On signing a WWE Legends deal:

“I’m still processing it. It’s funny, because I would say it’s been kind of controversial. One of the biggest things that I had on my podcast last week was announcing that I’m a WWE legend, and you thought I stole their Christmas presents or something, people were so mad. People were like, it’s a stretch, and they’re fighting, and then other fans are coming in and defending me. So I just want to acknowledge I understand, I was that shocked too. I absolutely understand that there’s a huge difference between the character Lana and Randy Savage on the legend scale. I get it, but this is what WWE calls their contracts, being a full WWE superstar. My agent called me. I was crying. I was shocked. Yeah, they gave Miro a contract, and they gave me the WWE legend contract at the same time.”

On how she got on WWE’s radar:

“So in college I was the most downloaded screen saver.”

What photo is this?

“Just me in bikinis on the beach, I know it’s it’s crazy. I was shocked, too. And then I was on a big calendar, the cover of it and the big poster in there. And WWE saw that, and so they recruited me. They brought me down to Miami to a show. I was 22, I was amazed.”

On how the Lana character was pitched:

“So Lana in NXT would come to promo class with Dusty Rhodes with at least five different characters and promos, not even kidding, with boards of storylines. I don’t know if you ever saw GLOW, when I watched it, I was like, I think she took my real life story, because that’s what I was doing. And Dusty loved it. Because, I don’t know about everyone else, everyone else was like, You’re doing the most. But was just working hard and Dusty loved it. He’s like, you’re going to have a very long career in this business. Because I was always like, Oh, you don’t like this idea. What about these other five? And so me and Rusev started working. One of the five ideas I was working on was me and Rusev, but we were doing more comedy, and he was the Bulgarian trying to un-brainwash me. I was the Russian that became Americanized, and he wanted to un-brainwash me, and it was very comedy and fun.”

Were you guys dating at the time?

“No, no, we were just friends. He would come over and we would shoot a bunch of promos, and I guess that’s how we became close. Then the next thing I know, Dusty said to me, ‘We only want you to do one promo. We want it to be serious and see what it looks like.’ I did it, and then the next thing you know, Miro was like, let’s do something serious. And then we were put together. We did one serious promo. He’s like, let’s not do comedy, let’s do serious. And then next day, I was on NXT with him. I was just serious without an accent. And then Hunter pulled me aside. He’s like, ‘I want you to only talk Russian. Let’s start this and we’ll see how far [it goes.’ And then it was just an evolution. Triple H was very hands-on. He’s a genius. And he was like, ‘Okay, let’s try a different hair, a different suit or something.’ So that’s how the suit and the bun came about.”

On the negative reaction to the Russia storyline:

“It was insane. People booing you, in comments, people telling you to go back to Mother Russia, it was crazy. I think I did notice a lot of hate. Partly the reason why I don’t post on my family on social media too much is because I would post it like my little nephew, and people would just come for the child, like, ‘Move back the Russia, you stupid child.’ I was like, Oh my God, that’s so inappropriate right now. So you know, I have to just remember I’m that character. It’s kind of like Game of Thrones. Everyone hated the king or Cersei, right? And people see us as that character. They don’t see me as CJ with my little nephew. They see me as the evil Lana who’s being mean to their children in America. So we’re going to be mean back.”

On an early Joe Hendry segment:

“I remember he was better than the Americans that were trying to play it. His accent was way more believable. So we did something in America for a ceremony with American actors. I was traumatized, because I’m like, that is very bad. We need to work on your accent. I was actually really impressed by him, and I’ll never forget. That’s what I said to him, and he brought that up. He was like, ‘You put my accent over.’ I was like, ‘Because I was impressed with how well you were doing.’ So I thought he was very believable as our lawyer, and I was so happy to see him at WrestleMania, I couldn’t believe it. It’s those stories that just make me love this business and make me love life, because it’s like, yeah, you had a dream, and you persevered. Chelsea Green the same way, they played these little parts on the show years ago, and then they kept going, going, going. And the see their payoff now is so beautiful.”

On wrestling Nia Jax in the “My Hole” match:

“I had no idea that it was gonna become an international meme. That was nuts. I push her through the table, she goes through the table, and I believe it was Triple H and Johnny [Ace], I can’t remember exactly who gave [the line] about joking about “my hole” in rehearsal, and then that’s what she did. I did hurt her hole, and it became an international meme, which I’m very proud of. It’s so funny. I honestly can’t believe that I put her through a table and hurt her hole [laughs].”

On getting put through the announce table every week:

“I was just the biggest heel at the moment in the business because of the Bobby Lashley story. I was teaming up with Nattie, and we were heels. Vince wanted to have his new schtick for Nia that she was going to put someone through commentary every single week, and he was going to turn her into a massive babyface. So I was like, ‘I want to go. I’ve always wanted to go through a table. It’s my dream.’ That was told to Vince, and Vince thought that was so hysterical that I ever dreamed of going through a table. He thought it made the most sense if they were trying to make her as a babyface, to put the person that was hated the most through the table. Because everyone, Liv wanted to go through it, a whole bunch of other girls were like, No, me, me. So she put me through [the table], and it was the same day that Miro had an AEW interview on a podcast, and it was just something with his interview and me doing that at the same time that the fans assumed I was being disciplined because of Rusev, but it wasn’t that way at all. It just really worked into my favor that the fans really had my back like that. One second they hate me and like that, they turn. God, I love our fan base. You guys are the best. So then the following week, I think originally, the plan was to put another girl through the table. And Vince was like, No, I want to try again, Lana. And then by the third week, I had become a full-blown babyface online. And it was so much heat for Nia and Shayna, he was like, I think this is going to make them a bigger heel and you have bigger babyface. So let’s run with it and see where it goes. So that’s what happened.”

On her romantic storylines:

“Yeah, it was a little awkward when I had to practice that kiss with Dolph and my, at the time, boyfriend was in the room. The whole thing was so funny, because Johnny Ace and Vince show what we need to do, and they get up real close, real super close.”

To each other?

“Yeah, showing how it needs to be done. We’re giggling, and Vince is like, ‘No, we’re all professionals here. We’re all grown adults.’ So that already helped me go, okay, these grown men are very, you know, it is very professional. I come from a performance background, and I can easily pretend to be a friend, assassin, lover, mistress, and then leave work and turn it off, go back home, do chores, and do life and be together with Miro. We both understand that. He takes acting class. He’s been in movies. He’s been a husband in different things as well. So I think we always had that understanding. He’s very confident, though, he’s a man who feels totally secure and confident in me playing something that is believable, and I give him his props and flowers, because maybe for me it would be a little bit harder vice versa, but he understood that was what was bringing good money into the household.”

On Liv Morgan interrupting her wedding to Bobby Lashley:

“So this, again, was a Paul Heyman story, and I thought it was great, because I thought someone was going to interrupt. I thought Liv was gonna interrupt for Bobby Lashley, and I liked the spin on it. I didn’t know it was gonna be Liv Morgan. He originally said, we’re thinking about maybe Ruby, Liv, Daria. All of them really made sense to me. All of them, yeah, it really connected to me. We were just told that week by week, we’re gonna figure it out. And so me and Liv wanted to commit to it fully. We are very close friends. We had spent a lot of time together, and yeah, I had, throughout my life, dealt with my own sexuality. Not issues, what’s the right word? I guess, not being fully straight, questioning my own sexuality throughout my life. So to me, I identified to it completely. The fans [thought] it was polarizing. Some people really loved it, and other fans didn’t. And so who knows how the fans’ reaction affected it, I don’t know. But it leaves the door open, anything can happen. It’s wrestling, anything can happen.”

What is CJ Perry grateful for?

“That I am still married to Miro, my sobriety, and that I am a WWE legend.”

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Swerve Strickland On Making AEW History, Hangman Page Feud, Brutal Matches, ALL IN, Sting, Bryan Danielson

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

Swerve Strickland (@swerveconfident) is a professional wrestler currently signed to AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Houston, TX to discuss becoming the first black AEW World Champion, levelling up in AEW, wrestling Sting at All In 2023 and Bryan Danielson the year after, his brutal matches with Adam Page, the needle spot in his steel cage match, why he re-signed with AEW, and more!

On bulking up:

“I am definitely bigger, and it’s miserable maintaining it. Because there’s times where I’m in bed, and I’m like, I gotta get one more something. Because Applebee’s is my go-to, at like, 11:45-12, most places are closing down. So let me order just a salmon and asparagus and rice. It gets there, and I’m like, I don’t even have the energy to use a fork. I’m just picking at it with my hands to my mouth and, in bed, just feeling like [crap].”

How big are you looking to get?

“I don’t even know. I didn’t even know I could get to this. Honestly, I got to a point where it was like, I didn’t know I could do this. What more can I do? So it’s like that’s the addiction to it.”

On getting out of his comfort zone:

“It’s facing fear, in a sense, but it’s not always the feeling of fear. It’s just a feeling of discomfort. I think people confuse the two. It’s like you’re not afraid of it, you’re just uncomfortable. There’s nothing to fear in any of this stuff. That’s why I relate to Fight Club, it is my favorite movie, I relate to it so much, because once you hit rock bottom, now there’s everything you can do. Once you go so low that you can’t go any lower, all the fear is gone. What’s the worst that can happen? It already happened. You’ve experienced it. And if you’re still around and you’re still alive and you can still make money, you can still make things happen at rock bottom, now you have no ceiling.”

What was the rock bottom point for you in your pro wrestling career?

“I would say just the independent grind between 2011, 12, 13, it was the point of just spinning wheels over and over again. That’s also when my both my daughters were born. So it’s just like, Okay, now it’s making very little money, no car, two daughters to feed, two different households. I still had the military, but I have all these commitments. But it took me a good couple of years to really find my footing and my groove, to really get into, just to maintain okay, that’s settled, that’s handled. All right, this is still behind, but I can figure something out. I think that’s where it was. It was just the process of figuring it out.”

On splitting the time between wrestling and music:

“I feel like they’re kind of one in the same now. I’ve done so much with wrestling that’s kind of got me into the doors with the music in a lot of different ways. Artists look at me a little bit more in a unique kind of space, because I know what I’m talking about, because I do it weekly on TV. So I was like, okay, he’s not full of sh*t, there’s something here to it. Now, we just got to see if he’s good. But I’ve done all the work and all the writing camps. I’ve studied and performed, and I’ve actually competed in songs with super MCs, like Mickey Factz, who’s literally teaching college courses on hip hop with Lupe Fiasco and competing against some of the greatest lyrics that’s out there in the world, getting nurtured and tutored by him and John Connor, who’s a Shady Aftermath former artist. Just all these guys, like Benny the Butcher, I have to compete on songs with these guys lyrically. So once again, it’s uncomfortable to step in a booth or I’m really not that seasoned yet, but these guys have been doing it for like 15-20 years, have gold plaques and are on songs with J Cole and songs with Eminem and Dr Dre produced records. These guys is who I’m on songs with. So that’s an uncomfortable room I have to put myself into to feel like I can compete, to have these dreams and aspirations to do like the stuff that I really want to do.”

On saying he wanted to be the first black AEW World Champion:

“I wasn’t sure, but that’s something I was just putting in the universe because I felt the momentum that I was gaining at the time. I was like, it has to be some point soon, has to be. I was never sure. I was never reassured. It wasn’t even written in my contract that I had to be World Champion by X amount of time. I didn’t have any of those specialties, I didn’t have any of the commitments. I didn’t have any promises. It was just like, that’s something I have to believe. And if I believe it, the fans will believe it. And if the fans believe it, that’s what gets you to those championship moments.”

On why he is presented differently in AEW compared to WWE:

“I would explain it to somebody like this. It’s like, you can have a talented quarterback drafted number one, if he’s not in an organization that allows him to be a franchise quarterback, he’s not going to play like a franchise quarterback. Your quarterback and your talent on a team is only as good as your organization allows you to be. If they don’t allow you to be as great as you possibly could be, then you’re not. Imagine a lot of these great quarterbacks that came through in franchises, if they had Bill Belichick [they’d be even better].”

When did you feel like that about yourself:

“It takes losing the job to really believe it. I also felt like I was too giving, especially when they handed me Hit Row. I felt like Triple H wanted me to be LeBron in the [Miami] Heat, scoring, not passing the ball. That’s why I don’t think we did as well. I think I should have gotten the ball and been the LeBron with the team. Like when he lost it in the finals with the Mavericks, I felt like I should have been like, No, give me the ball. I felt like that was one of those moments. I didn’t take that initiative enough, strongly enough, and have been the franchise guy.”

On not being that well-known when he signed with AEW:

“Which worked in my favor, because they didn’t have anything to compare me to. A lot of people were like, ‘Who’s that?’ ‘Who’s this?’ On the day that I did the contract signing at Revolution, I was just like, I can take this as a disrespectful way and be bitter about it and feel petty, or I could use this in my favor and be like, okay, they know me, this is a fresh start. Once again, that rock bottom feel, there’s nowhere else to go but up. I’m not having to compare myself or work towards what I did in the past; I felt like that was so tough for a Bryan Danielson, because he was coming from being Daniel Bryan. He’s a Hall of Famer, just that in itself, is a Hall of Famer. So Bryan coming into [AEW], and for people that only know him as being Daniel Bryan to doing what he did as Bryan Danielson in AEW, that’s a whole other Hall of Fame career. Just like 2 to 3 years of him doing what he’s done here in AEW, so I feel like he had huge shoes to fill. Moxley the same way. Moxley reinvented himself three, four times here in AEW. Those guys had it harder than I did, I feel like, because they had this huge reputation. They had the big names when they came in. They’re coming in and already had super successful careers in WWE to like, Oh, I hope he’s better than what we’ve seen there. Or like, Oh, he’s not as good as what we saw over there, they already had the comparison.”

On wrestling Sting at Wembley:

“Wembley was great, but it was like, Sting, and one of my good friends, Darby, and a legend I grew up watching with Christian as my tag partner is just like, man, I couldn’t [imagine] that scenario in my career, once again. It’s exceeding what I thought I could do.”

On the moment where Sting’s bat saved him from the coffin shutting:

“Because we always get the tease of, like, no, no, no, no, no. So I was like, the speed of, especially if you’re watching from way up there. Oh, it’s over. Yeah, it’s done. Wait, what?”

Do you ever feel like you push it too far?

“Not to a point that’s overly dangerous, as far as I go.”

You’ve never felt uncomfortable?

“No, no. Like I said, I’m in the ring with the best in the world. There’s no reason to ever feel uncomfortable with these guys and girls.”

On Bryan Danielson saying their match was his favorite:

“Which always blows my mind to even being considered, even in a top five or 10 or 15 of Bryan Danielson’s matches. After what he did with Will [Ospreay], after what he did with Kenny [Omega], and rest in peace, after what he did it with Bray [Wyatt]. After what he did with so many greats, Orton and Triple H and Batista, then over here, this it blows my mind. But once again, telling moments and making stories and playing the role that I need to play to get the most out of it. I always like to go into any match like, What elements do I have to play with that can make this match not better, but just different from those other great matches that I named, and I had Brie Bella sitting right there with the kids, that was the key element to the match, was the fact that he wanted to wrestle in front of his kids, and he never got to do it. So I was like, I get the honor of being with the guy to face off and take advantage of that. But that’s where the story elements of Swerve the character always uses family against the opponent. I always pick at the heart of the opponent. That’s what took Hangman down, playing with his child. They know the elements of teasing him with that. I beat Darby because of Nick Wayne. I’ve played with that. I played mind games with The Acclaimed with Billy Gunn. Always tug at the heartstrings, which is something that Shawn Michaels told me. So I tug on the heartstrings of Bryan Danielson’s family being there, but Bryan used it as a strength, as his power, and it turned against me. So that’s what actually fired him up and got him to turn it back against me. I’m the only one that’s been able to actually tell and carry that story all the way through that whole year.”

Why do you and Hangman have such great chemistry?

“Because we are both sick individuals. The thing is, the chemical romance between us is that we need each other. I think that’s why it works.”

Hangman burned down your home:

“Well, the whole point was I wanted to drag him down to show him that you’re just as bad as I am. And I proved it. It’s like Joker with Batman saying, you’re no better than me. They just glorify you for what you do. Deep down, you’re just as willing, or just as dirty as I am.”

On handing Hangman the chain at All In:

“To me, when we had the conversation right before All In on Collision, I don’t extend to the world title without him, but I also don’t lose that all in without him. So we kind of need each other. We hate each other, but we need each other. We also made each other better. People were talking about Hangman being done as a main eventer, as a World Champion in 2023. They were like, we got to look past Hangman, it’s Will Ospreay’s time now, because he just wasn’t there. Mentally, he just wasn’t there. I broke him, but I also did it intentionally, because I know Hangman is that guy. The character of Swerve respects Hangman. That’s why I went after him. I wouldn’t go after anybody that I wouldn’t get anything from, because I had motive. I want to get to the World Championship. I wanted to make history and be the first black world champion in AEW, he’s how I can get through to it. So I’m not talking him down. I’m actually talking him up, because I know if I move him out of the way, I can get there.”

What do you think broke Hangman?

“Oh, his child, because he’s a family man. Because the week prior to that, I had a number one contendership match with Bryan Danielson, which is the two times I’ve lost to Bryan Danielson because of Hangman. So I had the crown, he takes the crown from me, and Bryan Danielson beats me, so he took me away from a title opportunity. So I’m going to take something from him. All’s fair in love and war, in this whole thing. So that’s what caused me to go into his house and invade his house. Because people remember the moments, but if they go back and watch closely, there’s a reason why we got to that moment.”

What made you think you could do the syringe spot:

“It was just something that I don’t think has been seen on American soil, television-wise, in a major promotion like that in a while, because it’s something that’s like, why would you do that? Why would anybody do that? Good, that’s why I’m doing it.”

People have a fear of just seeing needles:

“That’s the point. If you’re sitting at home, you’re already getting uneasy, which we have so many little, small things that make people uneasy. I knew a syringe would make people feel uneasy. [It went through your cheek] Yeah, all the way through. I think I still have the needle.”

It got a lot of reaction online:

“[People said] “That’s dumb.” “Why would you do that?” Well you’re talking about it, it’s the moment, and I wouldn’t do that with anybody else. Right there, unsanctioned cage with Hangman, like, somebody that, like, I was just already depleted because I got power bombed on a cinder block right before that. So I’m like, it’s just punishment. We’ve already took it so far. He already burned down my house. Where else further do you go with someone that you hate? And it was just like he hates me that much to just do something like that. That came out of his boot, he had that. So that was something he just wanted to just punish me with.”

On the chair shot that followed:

“It felt like I got punched in the head from two fists. It was like from two different sides of the skull. Honestly, it was very John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, end of a movie, pow, you’re dead. It’s just as simple as that, there’s nobody coming to help you. We’re off in the middle of nowhere. You’ve gone so far as doing bad things. From doing bad things to earn the success. It’s going to catch up to you, and that’s what happened to my character. I’ve done all these bad things, invaded people’s homes, kidnapped people, beaten an 18-year-old kid up to a bloody pulp in this ring where his dad passed away, done horrible things, just despicable things, all for my own glory and all my own success. I did it for selfish reasons. I made history but it was ultimately for the wrong things. It’s like the character at the end of a movie, a drug movie, you’re doing horrible things to make it to the empire. We’re rooting for you because deep down, we understand why you’re doing it, but ultimately, you’re ruining the community. You’re hurting people, innocent people. There are people that are getting hurt from the things that you’re doing that you don’t even know about. So there’s all these residual effects from what you’re doing as well. Dude, it’s just so much bad karma. It’s got to come back to you. And that’s basically what it was.”

On why he re-signed with AEW:

“Everything. Me and Tony Khan were bonding as well. I didn’t get that trust yet from him, and once I finally did, not only just to trust to do what I want on TV. I think people think it’s like, oh, just do what you want on TV. It’s like, No, it’s not like that. It’s trust to be like, I need something done on TV that will work. You’re the guy to do it. That’s a different trust. I got this information from Paul Wight, Big Show. We’re sitting at catering one day. Also one of the times I was just coming off tagging with Keith Lee. So I was like, in that little singles void, which happens to everybody. It doesn’t happen just at AEW, it happens everywhere in wrestling, when a tag team has been tagging, then you split off into like, alright, what are these two guys do? Who’s going where? So he was just like, you know, one thing that I’ve always respected about John Cena, and you talked to the man, I was like, he always brought Vince what he wanted. He always made sure Vince got what he wanted. He’s the only guy I’ve ever seen, I sat in Gorilla and watched him, where before he would go out there, he would say, ‘Vince, what do you want? What are you looking for?’ And he would go out there and gave him exactly what he was looking for, exactly what he wanted. He came back, and Vince was like, ‘That’s what I was looking for.’ So Vince was like, That’s my guy to get exactly what I’m looking for, whether you agree with it or not, whether you like it or not, he’s going to come back and give this guy what he wants. And that’s why Cena is where Cena is. I was like, You know what? Let me flip my mindset for like, always thinking, I know what the best thing is. Let me just find out. What does he want? Tony, what are you looking for out of this? And if it’s just a good match, cool, simple. You got it. Hey, Tony, what do you need out of this promo? I need these things. You got it. No bickering back and forth. No, I don’t think it should go this way. I was just like, No, what do you need? How do you see it happening? How much time do you want? You got it. And that’s where I started building the trust with Tony. And that’s where things start opening up more and more and more.”

On a future dream match:

“Kyle O’Reilly. Man, I’ve been asking for Kyle O’Reilly for so long. We interacted in a battle royal, the two-ring battle royals and stuff. But that was it, and that was when Bobby Fish was still here. Buddy Matthews, rest up, hope he comes back soon, because he’s a beast.”

On some people thinking the staples were fake:

“Not one staple has ever been false. Not one thumbtack has ever been trimmed off. All of that stuff is legit.”

What is Swerve Strickland grateful for?

“The experience I’ve had, the flaws, and the ability to care.”

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Sal Vulcano From Impractical Jokers Is A HUGE Wrestling Fan! Drinking With Stone Cold, Roddy Piper, WWE Appearances

in LATEST EPISODES on November 20, 2025 January 30, 2026

Sal Vulcano (@SalVulcano) is a comedian best known for his role on “Impractical Jokers.” He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss the success of the show and how it was pitched, how the show’s rise to fame made filming more difficult, getting to meet Steve Austin and sharing a beer with the WWE icon, why he wasn’t a part of the AEW segment with Chris Jericho, which punishment was the worst, why he doesn’t like cats, and more!

On being able to watch any episode of Impractical Jokers at any time:

“I think that’s what led to a lot of its successes. They play it all the time. But also, it’s like, I think the perfect thing to just have on. So many people tell me this. I hear all the time. I hear it plays in prisons, huge in the prison population, huge in hospitals. And everyone tells me, which sounds weird, but it’s like, oh my god, I fall asleep to it every night. They can’t follow a narrative or a prison in a hospital.”

On the pitch for the show:

“So we had gotten some pitch meetings. They call them general meetings. I’ve had many general, they feel like a waste of time. They have bullsh*t meetings, right? It’s like, go and they’ll meet you, and they’ll keep you in mind. And then you establish your connect, your relationship, get on their radar. I mean, these things are such bullsh*t meetings. You go, and it’s people that you’ll probably never talk to again, and you’re all trying to make nice and be funny for them, and show who you are in a 10-minute meeting. So we have a bunch of generals lined up, and this is after a long time, we just happened to get an agent, because we won this online sketch competition. One thing led to another, and then we got an agent, and then they’re like, alright, let’s meet some of these networks. So we decided, why don’t we go on with some ideas? Even though these aren’t necessarily pitch meetings, we have them in a few days. There are a few days away. So we met for lunch, and we thought of like three ideas over lunch. One of them was Impractical Jokers, and we called it Mission Uncomfortable originally, and it was kind of the show, an iteration of what you see right now. We went out into Times Square, two nights later, the four of us with our cell phones, and we filmed each other doing like three or four bits, just with a little lav mic and our cell phones, we cut it together, and then two days later, we had a meeting with MTV and a bunch of our networks, and a few days later, with Tru TV, and MTV offered us to buy it in the room, which for people that don’t know how this industry works, that never, ever, ever, ever, ever happened. It’s never happened before or since. I’ve pitched 500 things. I’ve only sold like a couple of other shows out of like 500 never, never in a room again. So they offered it. They wanted to make it a strip show, which is like a game show that they film every single day. They didn’t want us to be involved. They wanted to have contestants competing, different contestants, and then comedians rotating, any comedian, just telling them regular people what to do. And we were like, we kind of like, are an improv troupe, and we kind of wanted to do it ourselves, so people can, like, learn our characters and be rooting for someone, and kind that creates a stake of interest in the show, and they didn’t see that vision. Then two days later, we met with TruTV, and they offered to buy it in the room. And we’re like, we had an offer. And they were like, is it MTV? They kind of knew. We were like, Yeah. And they were like, Oh, don’t go to MTV. They don’t have any budget over there. They won’t do it the right way. And we said, well, they want to make it a ship show. They’re like, We’ll do it how you want to do it. And we said, okay, and like, it was sold, it in the room, the idea didn’t exist five days before.”

On raising the stock of TruTV:

“So when we got on TruTV, there was no comedy on there. There was three towing shows, a pawn show or two, the storage shows, the dumbest criminals, and that’s all it was. It was just trash reality TV. And we were the first show that actually had that kind of thing, and then we resonated right away. Then, lo and behold, they changed the angle and focus of the brand and the network based on that, which I never really talk about or think about, but it is mind-blowing that that happens. They then competed as one of the only other comedy-exclusive networks with Comedy Central. It’s kind of wild.”

On pranks being more difficult now that the crew are more recognisable:

“On a bad production day, that delays stuff. So if we’re on the streets, it’s anybody’s call. We’ve learned what neighborhoods to avoid. People know us everywhere, but there are certain areas that are hot spots. Like, if you go to Times Square, like a tourist neighborhood like that, we can’t film there anymore. It’s hard to film in Central Park anymore. Those were [possible] in the beginning seasons. But now it’s really tough. But if someone knows us, the next person doesn’t, or if the first three people know us, the next three don’t. If we infiltrate an office, or do a focus group or something like that, we have so much in place to avoid people knowing us. We wrote the book on this now. So we have a Bible, we have innovation in hidden camera between audio and video. Our crew has been pushed to innovate because of the creative that we’ve done and hiding stuff. We have other hidden camera shows come to our people now to try to hire them or to ask how to do things, because our crew have set the bar on how to do this stuff, which is wild, but we also have all these techniques on how to vet and weed out people that might know us. They get questionnaires a month ahead of time, saying everything. It’s like a book this big, where they talk about what foods they eat, what entertainment they like, what stations they watch. And we weed it out. Somewhere deep in that thing is like, do you watch TruTV? Do you watch this? If they check that, they’re gone. When they come, we have way more people than we need because of this. There’s a burn rate. So if we have to have, let’s say we want 10 people in there. We’ll book 25 and then they’re in a holding room, and then we take them one by one to seat them. And then as they come down the hall, individually, one of us is in that hallway. And when they turn the corner, they’ll see us. And if they have zero recognition, you know? But you’d be like, No one can hide when they know us and they and they just turn the corner and they’re like, Ah! They’re gone. We pay them. Because when you pay someone for focus group, they don’t come in vain, we just cut them and we say, yeah, sorry, here’s the pay you would have got today.”

On meeting Steve Austin:

“Yeah, that was wild, too. So he had a show a couple of years ago where you spent the day with him, so I got a call saying he heard I was a fan, I wanted to be on the show, and I was like, Yes! I flew out to LA just to do it, just for a night, just for a day, just to do it. I was like, I don’t care, I’m doing it. They wanted us to meet for the very first time on camera. So he picked me up at my hotel in a Jeep that had cameras on it, so it’s just him. It was all outfitted already, so there’s nobody there. I met with the crew ahead of time. They followed us in another car. But he picked me up and I met him on camera. So on the show is when I actually met him, and it was surreal. I’m like, this is insane. This is Stone Cold. I can’t believe [it], because I mark out. [He seems like the coolest guy ever] That’s what makes it so great. Some of the guys, yeah, little hesitant to meet. Now that I am in the public and I’m a known wrestling fan, go all the time, and I go backstage, and I met all these wrestlers, and so many wrestlers are my friends now, which young me would never believe, it would be mind-blowing. Even now, when I’m backstage, you never lose that. You still feel like a kid back there. It’s like, when you watch sports now, every single athlete is half my age, but I still look at them like, Oh, I was such a big [fan], it’s just that whole dynamic. So he picked me up. He’s a lunatic. He picks me up, and we were in this Jeep, and we just started. He goes, I’ll just cruise around and we’ll talk. So I’m like, Alright, so we’re driving around and and we’re just BS-ing and stuff, and talking about stuff, having some laughs. Out of nowhere, we’re on a road, and the beach is to our left. He cuts the wheel, tops the curb, goes onto the beach, he’s driving toward the ocean, and he steps on the gas. I’m just thinking, Oh! I’m holding on to the bar, the tops open and everything so and then he just starts driving toward the water, and he just steps on the gas. I’m like, what? This is crazy. But I thought he’d just hit the brakes and like he was messing with me. He didn’t. He drives straight into the ocean, and the Jeep turns into a boat. They didn’t tell me that. So I literally was like, what the f*ck is going on? And then we just slam into the water. The wheels go up, and it turns into a speed boat, and he just starts driving around, and we just start driving around in the water on a speed boat. And I was like, this is already exceeding expectations. And then we went to a gym, and I took bumps from the ring, I held the Intercontinental belt. He just showed me how to do the stunner and everything. And then after that, we went to his actual brewery, and we sat down and had flights of all of his different beers, and literally got drunk together, he literally got tipsy. He was so nice. It was his first time filming in like a year or something, and it was his first episode filming this series. He was like, I’m a little rusty, and I was like, No, I love this! He’s like, you were a perfect first guest, because you were so easy to talk to, and you really helped keep it light and stuff. And I was like, please. I love you so much.”

On how that led to sharing a beer with Stone Cold at Raw:

“We kept in touch, and I’m at a Raw and I texted him, I’m here tonight, and he was coming out. No one knew he was there. So it was like the last match of Raw, his music hit. He comes out. It’s a crazy match and everything. And of course, at the end, he’s up there slamming beers, whatever. And unfortunately, it just went off air. I think it was at, he was either at MSG, or is at a Barclays. He grabs the mic, and he goes, ‘My buddy Sal Vulcano from Impractical Jokers is here. Wherever you are, come to the ring right now!’ And I was like, Oh my god. So I walk to the ring, and he takes me, and I go right up to the gate, and he’s like, takes two beers. He throws me two. We slam them in front of everyone and just drink them. They put it up online on socials after, but I did also slam beers with them on the show too. So of course, I kept those cans. I have four cans at home on my shelf, just, you know, like, I got to get a lot of this in my mouth, you know, but it’s just all over me and everything. It’s like, it’s like Make-A-Wish come true. If I had a genie lamp, that’s what I would wish for.”

On missing an AEW opportunity:

“I unfortunately got ill and wasn’t able to do a spot that the guys did, where they got jumped on AEW by Jericho and his crew with a bat and everything. It’s so funny, because Murray’s not a wrestling fan, Q is, but I got really sick, and this is a dream of mine, and I couldn’t go, and I had to watch them do it. But Murray was no selling getting hit with a bat. He didn’t know, but they were hitting him, and he didn’t realize that. He was no-selling it, which is so funny to me.”

On MJF being on the show:

“MJF, I think, is a throwback for me. He’s one of the most exciting things that happened in wrestling in quite some time. He’s such a big wrestling fan. I mean, really, every wrestler is a big wrestling fan. You just don’t become a wrestler unless you’re in love with wrestling. That’s how it works. But I have friends like Bayley or MJF, who just really respect the passion, they’re marks for themselves. And he just was, was so cool. I met him through somebody, and got on a text chain with him, and we joked around and really liked each other. Then I met him at a show and stuff, and we invited him on. He’s great. He just stays him. He was really, really good, and he really played off us well. And he was definitely like, heeling it up. I don’t know what happened, but it just happened that he was gonna chop all of us. And he did. I took a real chop from him, it’s not good. It really hurts. One is like, Oh, man. But like, you know, you see them do it to a job, 5, 10, 15 times in a match, like, you know, you’ll see Bryan Danielson get the palm of blood on their chest.”

On the worst Impractical Jokers punishments:

“I would say in recent memory, there were two. One was Murray. We had this idea to punish Murray. He writes books and he does his own audiobooks. So I was like, why don’t we strap him to the roof of a race car that’s going around a race track, tie him to the hood of it, and make him do his audiobook on the hood. So everyone loved that idea, so we did it. We got this racetrack, we got a stunt driver, we got a race car driver. We tied him down to the hood, put a helmet on him with a GoPro, and he had the book, the car is doing donuts, racing on track, and he’s reading the chapter of his book, and that’s going to be his real audiobook. We’re filming this thing for like, 15 minutes. It’s amazing. It’s fun. It’s exactly like we planned, this guy’s doing hairpin turns, the tires are smoking, Murray’s screaming, and he’s reading his novel. And then the car is going down a stretch, doing 90 miles an hour, and makes a turn, and Murray flies off the hood and just goes rolling into the grass. We’re like, 300 yards away, and the whole crew just stops and like, Oh my God. Everyone just freezes. And then it’s like get a medic, get an ambulance right now, and everyone just stops the cameras and starts running toward him. And I was like, oh my God. So we start just running toward him. And dude, I’m running as fast as I possibly can. It was so far away. Halfway through a car pulled up like, ‘Get in, get in!’ We all jump in this car, and we’re flooring it to him. We jump out right before it, and we’re running up to him, he’s surrounded by the ambulance and the medics, and I hear someone say, ‘Get a bird.’ I use that to mean a helicopter, thinking he’s about to get airlifted out of here. Someone yells out, ‘He’s not responding. He’s not moving.’ The feeling that I felt in my stomach was I didn’t know if he was gonna be paralyzed, I didn’t know if he died. I didn’t know how severe this was. I had such a knot and pit in my stomach, and I charged up to him, and he’s not saying anything. I thought my friend died. I thought he was paralyzed. And then one of the medics turns around, pulls off a wig, and it’s Murray. The person that was dressed as Murray on the floor was just a stunt person. When they took a turn around the stretch, they went past a bunch of trees. The car stopped really quick, he jumped out, and the stunt car came. A guy jumped on the hood, then the car kept going. He jumped in an ambulance put a wig on. He had the clothes underneath. That guy rolled off the thing, and then Murray pulled up, and was one of the medics. It was my punishment all along. Honestly, when he turned around, I actually had to take a knee because I literally felt like I was gonna vomit, because my stomach was in knots. I was like, How is this funny? I thought you were paralyzed? It turns out that that was the lesser of the two evils, because he was going to pretend to die in another punishment, and that got waved off. There was an idea, he’s afraid of heights, so we were going to put him in a room like this, but smaller. He was supposed to do zoom interviews over zoom in an office, and what he didn’t know was it was going to be one of those storage containers made to look like an office, and the bottom floor was going to be Plexiglas. And the idea was it was going to be attached to a crane. And when he got in and sat at the desk and the Zoom started, the crane was gonna lift him in the air, and he was gonna see underneath him was just clear, and then he was gonna have to do these Zoom interviews, hoisted in the air. He found out that that was the idea, and then pitched to double-cross me. He wanted, at one point, the crane to drop the box, and the box to come down and just smash onto the ground. And me think that he got crushed and died. And that was in play for a year and a half because he kept pushing it until they kiboshed it. And then this was the settle for that. So he was going to make me believe he died. That was very this was a traumatic one to go through.”

What was the other one?

“Another one was they locked me in a room with a 600-pound Bengal Tiger. They locked me in a motel room, I didn’t even know we were filming. I thought we were taking a break at a roadside stop, and Joe went to speak to me about something, and we were outside of a door of a motel room, and it’s actually on camera. We’re just BS-ing, I didn’t know what camera was on me, and he shoved me and slammed the door closed, and I turned around, and there was no handle on the door to get back out. And I was like, what? I didn’t even know we were filming. And I just heard a growl, and I just turned around. I was like, I could not move an inch. And then a tiger walked out of the bathroom and it was on a chain, but that chain was tied to the bar of the shower, so it was just tile and sheetrock. I mean, if the tiger wanted to rip out of that thing, I believe that it could, and then the chain was long enough so the tiger couldn’t get to me, but it was only six feet short of me. And I honestly didn’t think it was funny then, and I don’t think it’s funny now. The first thing I say on camera is, I understand what it means to be frozen in fear. I don’t know if you’ve ever had where your body won’t move and you can’t speak. I was frozen, and I just the first thing I said was, ‘How did we get insurance?’ And then I don’t know how they got it. And I just was like, this isn’t going to be airable. I was so angry and couldn’t express it because I didn’t want to show any emotion whatsoever. I was so scared, and I felt that the tiger could sense my fear from their instincts or whatever, it’s a sense how scared I was, because then I thought it would try to attack me, and so I was in disbelief that they did this. I was as angry as could possibly be. They put me in this position, and I was as scared as possible, and all three of those things were bottled up because I couldn’t move or speak. I didn’t think we would be able to use it, because I didn’t think it’d be funny. It turned out, people thought it was funny.”

On not wanting to do malicious pranks:

“No, that’s not what we’re really going for. My favorite sentiment in the show like to evoke from someone is confusion. Confusion, bewilderment, mildly entertained, wary. When we are interacting with someone, they don’t know what to make of it. I think is the funniest thing for me. I love to live in that space where I’m towing the line of is this guy kidding me or not?”

What is Sal Vulcano grateful for?

“My family, that I am a comedian, and that I have people I love.”

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David Otunga on NEXUS, John Cena, Theme Song, Commentary, Vince McMahon, One More Match?

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

David Otunga (@DavidOtunga) is a professional wrestler best known for his time in WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his journey from NXT Season 1 to the main roster, the Nexus’ shock debut on Raw, whether John Cena winning at SummerSlam buried the group, winning the Tag Titles with Cena, how the coffee cup became a part of his character, getting to wrestle Bret Hart, the transition to announcing, what he is doing now, and more!

On being in better shape than he was in WWE:

“I would say so. Well for me, because from a physique perspective, I’ve always weighed 235 since I was 22 years old, no matter what. But my body fat percentage is way down. The detail, the condition used to be all just about size and just getting big for me, and I did that, got really strong and all that. But then it’s like, all right, been there, done that. I want to refine. I want to look like a superhero. So it’s like, I want to maintain the size, but just lose fat and etch in the details. I love it.”

On sharing a moment with Arnold Schwarzenegger:

“That is one of the crowning achievements of my life. It’s one of the best moments. Because the reason I got into working out was looking at Arnold on the cover of Muscle and Fitness and just seeing his physique and saying, Man, I want to look like that. Then fast forward, I am at Gold’s working out. He comes up to me and wants to work in. But then he’s messing with me and he tells me how I’ve got the greatest physique, I’m better looking than him, bigger than him. He’s like, Get away from me. And then I was like, Wow, he really said that. Then it’s like man, I wish I had that on camera so that he let me record it. He did it again, which was the coolest thing, man. I mean, 10-year-old, going crazy right now, never imagined this.”

So what are you up to these days?

“Well, I’ve just started my YouTube channel, which I’m really passionate about, has been so much fun. I did a video covering the Raja Jackson incident, and covered it from a lawyer’s perspective and a wrestler’s perspective, because I’m probably the only person qualified to talk about this in that regard, because I understand the wrestling lingo, the definitions, all that, what was going on behind the scenes, the setup, and then talking about it from a legal perspective. Anyway, I did a complete breakdown on that, the video blew up, and I realized I really enjoyed this and was getting great feedback. So since then, I’ve started making more, and people have been asking me to cover different cases that were famous in wrestling that would apply to the legal standards, and just being able to break all of those down, which has been awesome.”

On how the coffee cup became a part of his WWE character:

“I’ll tell you. I had just started doing the lawyer character, and I was getting ready to go out for a promo. I think it might have been during People Power with big Johnny. I was getting ready to go out to do a live promo. I had my coffee with me in the back, as I always do, and I started to walk out through the curtain. Then I was like, wait a minute. I went back and I grabbed it. I was like, something tells me, just bring it, because I just wanted to be natural. It’d be as like I wanted it to be as obnoxious as I could. At first I would take really loud sips with it and stuff. But anyway, I went out with it, and then Vince loved it, and I came back in. And ever since then, it was part of my character, backstage shots, you name it.”

On whether he considers himself to be retired:

“No, I just consider myself as having not wrestled in a long time.”

On when he knew it was time to step away:

“It wasn’t necessarily my last match. That’s the thing, in my mind, I’ve never had my last match. It’s just where I was in the company and becoming an announcer and doing all that they didn’t really want me doing in ring stuff. You actually get a different contract where you are on an announcer’s contract instead of a talent one. So it just was they weren’t even thinking about me, booking me creatively, although I did pitch some ideas, and was gonna have my own stable. I wanted to, got a little bit of traction.”

Who was gonna be in your stable?

“Well, I don’t know. I pitched something, I don’t know if I called it The Firm or what it was, but it was kind of what The Hurt Syndicate ended up becoming. But it was before that, so it was three years before that. I don’t know when they came out. It might even been longer, because it was 2019, this is before COVID, at least. But anyway, I was going to be the leader of that as a heel lawyer. And, yeah, they liked it, but it obviously didn’t [happen], they liked me better as an announcer.”

On transitioning to an announcer role:

“Okay, so it went like this. I’ve never even talked about this, but I stepped away from the ring in probably 2013 or so. My son’s mom was my fiancée at the time. She was going through some stuff, and they needed me at home. That’s what I’ll say about it. So it was a choice I made on behalf of my family, where I put my career aside for a while to be the man I needed to be in our relationship, for her, for my son, and it was what it was. So then Vince and I always had a great relationship, and they liked me enough as a talent. So it’s like I want you to see what you can do announcing. I always cut a good promo well, so they say. So anyway, I started doing the Raw pre-show every week, and I do it with Corey Graves, Scott Stanford, shout out to Scott, that’s my guy, Booker T, and we had so much fun doing this. We’re laughing all the time, like nobody even watches this, and then the office would tell us, ‘Yeah, but there’s one person who watches this every week. It’s Vince, and he loves it.’ So then I did that for maybe a year or two, and then I get a call one day like, ‘Hey, we want to try you out as an announcer on Raw.’ Whoa! I never considered that. I never saw myself as an announcer. That was never something I wanted to [do]. The whole time I was doing the pre-show, I was thinking, I’m doing this now, and because it allowed me to have more time at home, that was the thing, and how I was able to do that still, but eventually I’m going to get back in the ring. But then, when they gave me this option to be an announcer, they’re like, ‘We really want you to do this. Try it out.’ Alright, I’ll try it, and I did. Announcing is tough. It’s fun, but that’s a tough job. But anyway, they liked my work in that so much. That was it. It’s kind of like they tell you be careful, if they offer you a gimmick when you first start out, be careful how well you do with it. Because if you do really well with it, that’s going to be your gimmick, and they’re just going to go from there. So it’s one of those things where I gave it a shot. I did well enough, and then they just saw me as an announcer after that.”

How much was Vince in your ear as an announcer?

“Well, he’s always there. So, personally, he might give me something funny to say, to rip on Cole, or somebody, whoever was out there with me. He never yelled at me, but I heard him get a hold of some of the other guys, but he was right there the entire time.”

On his WWE exit:

“Until COVID. Ultimately, I was laid off with COVID, the grand layoffs in that. But before, so I called my last match on SmackDown, and then I was doing the pre-shows up until COVID.”

Do you want to go back?

“I mean, if they called, yeah, absolutely. Like I said, it was so much fun, although, now I’m still doing announcing with 4th Rope, which has been awesome. And I’ll tell you what, it’s pretty cool, because of the training that I received at WWE, like, prepared me so much for doing that. But the difference is there. I really can say anything I want. I’m still pushing forward the stories, but there’s nobody in my ear. So really, hey, that’s kind of how I really feel this.”

On Dawson Alexander:

“So Dawson Alexander was my first ring name at FCW, because when you’re in FCW, whatever your ring name is down there isn’t necessarily going to be the same when you get up to the main roster. So I was a babyface for the first part of the run and but I chose Dawson Alexander because I wanted his initials to be DA, like a district attorney. He was all lawyer themed, yeah, but he was my very first character.”

On getting to use his real name in WWE:

“Well, I pushed for that too. That’s where being an actual lawyer comes in. Because, yeah, I knew what I was doing, and I wanted to own my own IP, although technically they own it in regards to wrestling. Which is fine. I have to get into that on a video on my channel.”

Isn’t that the same with John Cena?

“I remember this clause vividly is that they control your name and likeness in relation to professional wrestling. So let’s say John Cena wanted to go to AEW, he couldn’t just use the name John Cena, because WWE has the rights of that in wrestling.”

On knowing how big Nexus would be:

“No, not at all. None of us had any idea how big the Nexus was going to be. In fact, I think part of what made it work so well is it was so real because we were the guys who were on NXT the first season, which I don’t know if people remember, but it was a reality show.”

On the viral Nexus debut segment:

“I think part of it was too, because it wasn’t that well-staged. They just told us, ‘Go down there. Tear the place up. We’re gonna leave box cutters for you and different things, all right, tear up the ring. We have another one. I don’t care what you do to this one.’ It’s like, wow, this is the first time we got to expose what’s under a ring, and how it’s made, and it was something. I remember, for me, I was really green then, and at the time, I had to be the one to kick this off. I had to punch the referee when we first got in the ring. That’s a lot of pressure to put on me, because this is the first shot. This is gonna set the tone. If this does not look good, we’re done. We’re done. I was just learning how to throw good punches, so I was like, I’m just gonna have to haul off and hit Chad Patton. He might just have to eat one. Sorry, Chad, but it looked great, and luckily, that was probably the best punch I ever threw. He didn’t lose any teeth. And it looked awesome.”

And Justin Roberts got taken out

“And that was the first time that had really happened, and anything on that level. A story I heard that I think was so awesome is, while this is going down, you can hear somebody ringing the ring bell, that was a fan in the audience who really thought these guys went crazy. ‘Hey, get some people out here to help!’ They bought it that much.”

On interacting with legends:

“Every week they would threaten us, ‘Hey, you gotta beat up Ricky Steamboat. If this doesn’t look good, you guys are fired.’ And the thing is, at that time, he was at FCW with us helping us train. This is one of our coaches, and he’s an older guy. I don’t want to hurt him. They’re like, ‘No, this has to look bad.’ So every week, it just ratcheted up, we became those guys, and then they wanted us to stay together, make this real, which I thought was awesome. They wanted us to maintain kayfabe outside of the ring. Wherever we were, we had to have our arm bands on, and so it was kind of like a fraternity, you didn’t want to be caught without your arm band on, because there could be repercussions. I didn’t want to take a photo with a fan and not have my arm band on. Then we weren’t even supposed to take photos with fans, we were serious heels. I remember one time I was with my nephew, and a little boy came up and wanted a picture, and I turned him away, and oh my gosh, I felt terrible. It’s like, no pictures. I ended up doing it anyway. I felt too bad. I just snarled at the picture something badly. I can’t do that. But it was so real. And you’re right. I mean, the push was amazing. It’s too bad that you know what ended up happening to it, but what could have been, never know.”

Do you think John Cena buried The Nexus?

“Oh yeah, that’s 100% accurate. I mean, that’s what happened, that is what happened.”

Is it because Cena wanted to go over in that match?

“Yes. And I don’t know why he wanted to go over, but we knew all day we were supposed to go over, and then things started getting weird, and then they tell us, no, the finish changed, and it’s because John wanted to go over, and we weren’t happy about that. The other guys in the match weren’t happy about that. And if I’m being honest, I think John probably knows that wasn’t the right idea. I mean, maybe obviously, at the time, he thought that was the right call, but in retrospect, I don’t even think he would agree that that was the right thing to do.”

So what was the finish supposed to be?

“I know we were supposed to go over. I don’t know how. I don’t know how many of us there were [supposed to be left in the match], but there were some shenanigans [planned] and ultimately, we went over.”

For those that don’t know, Cena takes a DDT on the concrete, it’s 2 on 1, and he still wins:

“But either way, you spend six months or however long it was building this faction, and we’re the strongest thing, we’re the hottest thing they have. Then now, why would you have us lose that? This is the main event. To really build these new stars, you want us to keep going. We could have rode this all the way to Mania, but then after that, we’ve now lost and that took us down a few pegs. After that, we never regained the steam. They ended up separating us. Even then they started to have a good storyline going where we were gonna oust Wade Barrett, and I was gonna take over. I remember, I kicked him out of the group. I think it was Raw, and then the next week, I was supposed to then become the leader. However, then it’s hey, surprise guys, we got a new leader for you, CM Punk. Wait, what? How does this fit in? And I guess he needed a faction. Straight Edge Society was done and he needed a new faction. So I don’t know why they decided just to give him Nexus. So then the storyline that we had going just stopped, and now we’re The New Nexus with CM Punk, which, eh. It never really took off, I think, because it was a disconnect for the fans too.”

On the rumour that Vince wanted SummerSlam to end on a happy note:

“I’ve heard that before too, because I know on house shows they would do that, have the babyface up at the end, but not necessarily on pay-per-views. Maybe that did come into play, and they thought about that, but that still wasn’t the right idea. That’s like, you know, winning the battle, but losing the war ultimately.”

On how much potential The Nexus had:

“I think we would have had a major run kind of like The Shield. Because if you ask me, I feel like The Shield was Nexus 2.0. What they did with The Shield, everything they did wrong in Nexus, they made sure they did it right with The Shield. That’s my opinion. So I assume we would have had a run kind of similar to that.”

On winning Tag Team Championships with John Cena:

“Well, that was part of the Nexus storyline when we’re gonna make John Cena join the Nexus. So we went over on Cody Rhodes and Drew McIntyre. The whole story of the match, it was pretty cool was that Cena was supposed to do all the work, but I took all the credit for it. So that’s what happens, and then we win. I think Cena gets a pinfall. Obviously, I run in, I get both belts. I’m going crazy, this is awesome. It was awesome too, it was really, really cool. Then I get down off the turnbuckle, and he AA’s me, completely ungrateful. And then, takes both titles and walks out. But the thing of it was, we were only supposed to have it for 24 hours. So for me personally, it was an awesome moment. But I never really felt like I earned the Tag Team Championship yet. My second win with McGillicutty was much more satisfying, because I felt like we’d earned it, like at that point, whereas this was just a cool story we’re doing for 24 hours. So I never really celebrated it like when you win a championship.”

But you still won the titles with John Cena:

“That’s the thing. It is Cena. Which was cool, but he tried to rib me over that. So he didn’t really let me enjoy it, to be honest. Because he tried to rib me by taking the titles, and then he told me, ‘Hey, make sure you grab the titles and take them to the next town.’ Because there’s the TV titles, and then there’s the live event ones. So the TV ones travel, he wanted me to get the live event ones, which I had to go get from Cody and Drew. I was like, okay, all right, I’ll do it. But then he got on his bus and took off, but I guess he had already taken the titles, but didn’t tell me what his plan was. He wanted me to go crazy backstage, searching for it, and freak out. So I went and asked Drew for the titles, and he’s like, ‘Oh, I already gave them to Cena.’ Okay, that was the end of that. So I got in my car, I think I was with Heath Slater or something. We drove to the next town. I get to the building the next day, ‘Oh, man, what did you do? Cena is pissed at you!’ What? ‘Yeah, he’s mad. He’s looking for you. You gotta apologize to John Cena.’ For what? ‘Well, apparently you didn’t get the titles last night.’ Yeah, I know, but he has them. They’re like, ‘No, he said you should have looked for him, and then you should have looked for him and been upset you couldn’t find them.’ What? So hold on a second. You’re telling me I need to go apologize to him and tell him I’m sorry that I wasn’t upset about not finding him and I didn’t look hard enough? I’m like, You do realize this sounds nuts. I can’t remember who’s telling me this. This must be an agent or somebody, because they actually give me advice, ‘You need to go talk to him.’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, I know, but just do it.’ So I literally went and apologized to John. ‘Hey, John, I’m sorry, I looked for the title. I didn’t understand. You know, I thought you had them.’ He was shoot mad at me though, [because his prank didn’t work out?] That’s the thing. That’s what I always said, which is always kind of funny to me. Hey, yeah, your joke didn’t work and you’re mad at me about it. But doesn’t that kind of fall on you playing your joke a little bit?”

On who could be John Cena’s final opponent:

“I could see Bron Breakker, I think that would be a great one. Really, just give him an amazing push, somebody like that. Dominik Mysterio would be a good one too, absolutely.”

On sharing the ring with Bret Hart:

“That was awesome. Just to share the ring with him, and getting to talk [to him]. Bret is one of my favorite people in WWE, period, in all of professional wrestling. So just getting to talk to him, getting to know him, that was awesome. He’s so humble and so knowledgeable, and then being able to share the ring with him, it was awesome, but it was nerve-wracking a little bit because we didn’t want to hurt him. We know that he’d had some injuries and some health problems before. So we were very, very careful with him. But it was awesome.”

On the possibility of a Nexus reunion:

“I mean, there is, somebody just has to call for it. We still have a group thread. We still talk. We have a Nexus group chat.”

Who’s in it?

“Everybody but Daniel Bryan. I mean, he turned on us at SummerSlam. Everybody else is in it. We’re all for one. You’re either Nexus or against us. But in all seriousness, we went through a lot together. We knew each other in FCW, became friends, and then started on the road together, went through NXT, we formed real friendships. Also, it was nerve-wracking and stressful, and we were rookies, we’re in a class together, we felt like we were being hazed and whatnot. But going through all that together, it makes you bond.”

What is David Otunga grateful for?

“My health, my son, and great memories.”

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Paul Walter Hauser: Emmy Winner To Pro Wrestler, AEW, Hardcore Matches, Playing Mick Foley In A Movie?

in LATEST EPISODES on November 13, 2025 January 30, 2026

Paul Walter Hauser (@paulwhausergram) is an actor and professional wrestler. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his roles in “Cobra Kai” and “I, Tonya”, why he turned down the opportunity to be in a movie with John Cena, having wrestling as a side quest, not being discussed in the celebrity wrestling conversation, taking bumps through glass and onto thumbtacks, working with AEW and MLW, which spot hurt the most, his upcoming role as Chris Farley, potentially starring in a Mick Foley biopic, and more!

On the Jamie Taco sketch in “I think you should leave”:

“It was like a nine-page sketch. It was so long. We shot for like a 13-hour day. It was like the last day of shooting before they shut down for COVID back in 2020. He’s a line stealer, he’s so fast, and I’m so emasculated by it, you know, as a man and as an actor, which is also funny the way they cast it, because the guy looks like he’s a senior in high school and he’s the mouthy guy working behind the snack shop or something after school. He just doesn’t seem like a real threat. It’s so funny the way Tim Robinson had me play it. He literally gave me line reads like, Tim Robinson would be like, say it like this, honey, I auditioned for a play, and I got the part, and it’s like, when you see him do it, you’re like, oh, and then you see me doing it’s like, clearly there’s Tim’s DNA in the delivery.”

On playing Chris Farley in a biopic:

“We’ll see. The movie is not greenlit. The script is great, though, dude. They sent me a brand new draft. This is like the fifth draft or something. I read it on the plane ride here to come here this week, and I was like, Oh, it was like this funny feeling in my belly. It was like, Oh, wow. Based on where the script is, it’s like there’s nothing else to do. It’s truly ready. Now it’s like the baton is about to get past to me, and it’s all my responsibility to not screw it up.”

On which role he is the most associated with:

“It’s definitely Cobra Kai, the stingray character, that would be number one. Number two is probably Richard Jewell. That movie’s really grown on people in a sense of like, I think people found that on Amazon Prime to rent, or it was free if you have the subscription. And then Airplanes, people were watching Richard Jewell on Airplanes. It’s still on Delta. I was flying Delta the other day, and they had, I Tonya, Richard Jewell and Luckiest Man in America.”

Do you put it on and look around?

“No, can you imagine? I did it once with I, Tonya, though, where I did purposely, but it was me going, Oh, I haven’t watched this in a minute. So I threw it on. Was like, it’s such a weird little movie.”

On turning down a John Cena movie:

“I got offered Ricky Staniki at one point, the Efron Cena movie, and it just wasn’t a lot of money. They didn’t want to fly my whole family first class to Australia. I was like, that’s a long flight. That’s not mad chill. I kind of had that Matt Riddle moment, he had that thing where he’s like, You guys put me in second class with a ham sandwich between three people squished like he had that. But this was me seven weeks out, going, I don’t think that makes sense for me. I passed and I felt horrible because I think Zac Efron is really fun.”

On wrestling being a side quest:

“My pay differs based on the company too. If I were to do something with TNA, and they were like, Hey, come do a match with AJ Francis, or a tag match, you’re gonna be paired with the Rascalz against three heels. I would want 10 grand for that match, because, to me, you’re also getting eyeballs and press and whatever else comes with it, and I’m going to go out of my way to make it as good as it possibly can be, at the risk of hurting myself. But if Action Wrestling down in Georgia is like, Hey, do you want to come fight, take an L to Adam Priest or tag with your buddy Darian Bengston, I’m not going to charge them more than three or 400 bucks. I still got to drive down there and drive back. I don’t know if I’m selling merch or not. I don’t know if they’re not going to have catering, there’s X amount of things that you give up to just wrestle and have fun.”

On not being considered a celebrity wrestler:

“I know, and it’s frustrating. I’m not gonna pretend it doesn’t bother me a little bit. I’m working really hard, and I’m, you know, not every match is a banger. For goodness sake. I’ve had some smelly ass matches. There’s probably six or seven of those 22 that I would like to hide somewhere and never show anyone. But there’s probably four or five, even six that I’m very proud of. You should watch me and Joey Janella at DEFY, you should watch me and Steve Maclin at Revolver. You should watch this promo I cut in MLW.”

On what his wife thinks to it:

She does not like it at all, but I also tell her the truth. I take calculated risks. There was a time when I was taking edibles and drinking scotch and partying around this city in Hollywood, and that was way more dangerous than wrestling.

So this is your outlet?

“It’s one of them. Yeah, I think cooking, screenwriting, wrestling, I have a couple different outlets that really serve me. I would love to take up golf at some point. Wahlberg helped me get my first pair of clubs, and was really sweet and gifted something to me. But I just haven’t gotten out there yet. I need to do that.”

On the conversation that if he gets injured, it could delay shooting:

“I did a pre-tape in 2024 for MLW. We did a match that was famously panned by the online community. They despised it. I had a match with Tom Lawlor, and it was cinematic. Re watching it, there were a couple of things I would do differently. I would shave off three or four minutes, and I would also make it more 60 or 70% of him, I would change the ratio a little bit on who takes what. But that match, we had already shot, and I was doing whatever I was doing that summer. It must have been the Wahlberg movie, because I was in Australia, and they’re like, Is Paul fighting a match tonight? Because they saw it on Instagram or something. And my manager is like, no, he already taped that. They’re just gonna air it. But they were freaking out, ready to read me the riot act, because they thought I was wrestling while I was shooting.”

On which weapon hurts the most:

“First off, that kendo stick hurt like hell. Kendo sticks, the only way to fake a kendo stick is for a guy to hit you very lightly. And nobody does that because they know you can’t sell that. So that hurt a lot. The thumbtacks, I didn’t even feel. The thumbtacks were my idea. They’re all like, Are you sure you want to do this? I’m like, Yeah, I’m gonna be doing this in match. Just wait. But when I poured out the thumbtacks, I didn’t pour them out in the middle of the ring, which I should have, because that’s the softest, bounciest part of the ring. Not thinking. 15 minutes into a match or blown up, I poured them near the turnbuckle, which is arguably the hardest part of the mat, pretty equivalent to the apron that everybody’s like. That’s the hardest part of the mat. The turnbuckle is too. So when I took that Power Bomb, well, for one you can see me pulling up my shirt. I was hoping he was going to pull up my shirt like a hockey fight, to expose the back, and then we could see the tax, see the blood. That was the plan. He didn’t for whatever reason. So I’m literally trying to pull up my shirt as I’m in the Power Bomb position. It looks so goofy and stupid. He powerbombs me, and the wind got knocked out of me. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t talk, so him and the ref were like, Let’s close this up. And then he didn’t want to get thumbtacks in his hands or body, so you see him roll me up with my legs, but it was weak, so I could kick out easily, and and then I was trying to set something up in the corner, and of course, he hits me in the ball bag and got me with the diamond cutter, which was more offensive, because I’m dear friends with Diamond Dallas Page.”

On what will happen if WWE tickets keep rising:

“It’ll become this douchey, uppity thing that only a bunch of rich tech bros and investment bankers go see. Average people won’t be going to that.”

So the hardcore fans are being priced out?

“I think that’s factually happening. Yeah, not, not, not that everybody’s destitute, but the country, if you look at the trends, because I’m only going off trends, I’m not saying like I’ve arrived at this knowledge. It’s more me tracking and with AI and with job loss and us being on the verge of another recession, all the trends tell you that people have less and less disposable income, and it will be more necessity-based income. So the way the world’s going, people aren’t going to be able to afford it.”

On possibly working a match with Mark Wahlberg:

“I’ve talked to Mark about it. He’s talked to Ari Emanuel about it once or twice. So you never know that could happen. I’ve met Jelly Roll. We got along really well. We got a lot of commonalities with being Jesus guys, being wrestling fans. I could see doing something with him. He and I do a no dq, you know, hardcore tag team match where we get to be these big burly white dudes showing up, looking like we came off the couch, but still doing some cool stuff.”

On his favorite storylines:

“If that’s a story or a movie, the movie of McMahon Austin is kind of like R-rated Looney Tunes, almost. It’s kind of just bizarro set piece, absurdity stuff, but it’s also hyper violent woth the stuff they’re doing to each other. I think for me, I always go back to, can I say a handful? I don’t think I can choose one. But I would say, like, Ric Flair and Vader in 94 at I think it was SuperBrawl. Flair is saying goodbye to his kids and being documented in the car, in the limousine, going to the fight. And it’s kind of like him saying, like, I might die in that ring, that’s the best acting Ric Flair ever did, you believe everything he’s saying, and you believe that Vader is this other worldly power that kind of can’t be beat, and that he’s the savior at WCW, in this moment. That I think was tremendous, albeit kind of brief. I don’t think that dragged out longer. I honestly think that my favorite story lines have been Sting and Darby Allin teaming up and him having that third act in wrestling. I think that is an awesome story, and how it started as one cinematic match, and then it just grew and grew and grew. Another one I’m obsessed with is Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa. That lasted a while, and I never got sick of it. I always liked it. I always cared about both guys, even if I was mad at one or the other.”

On the match that hurt the most:

“The elbow drop I delivered onto BRG at Battle riot for MLW, [off the ladder?] Yep, that hurt. And by the way, it wouldn’t have hurt that much. There was a padding outside next to the ring. We weren’t on the padding. Had we just moved it slightly and I landed on the padding would have been fine. I hit the elbow perfectly in the middle, but then my butt cheek, my right butt cheek, and my hips slammed into concrete, seven, eight feet off the ground. Hard to recover from that and fake that, that sucks. Also, I didn’t want to put too much of my body on him to crush him. I was like, just hit the elbow. Maybe you’ll twist your ankle or something, but you’ll be fine. In the moment, you’re not thinking totally you’re just like, I believe I’m going to be okay. That’s a, that’s a big belief thing, too. I believe these guys are going to catch me if I do a Senton off the apron. You know. The other thing is, of course, the Power Bomb from Qt Marshall. Maven, who I’m a big fan of his YouTube page, I loved your interview with him recently. Maven, I want to see him make some form of a comeback in a company, and be an active member of a company. I would like to see that. But Maven said, of all the moves he took in his video, where he takes all the finishes, he said the Power Bomb still hurt the most. And I was like, You’re telling me, man! I took one Power Bomb and I felt like I was out of commission. So, yeah, falling on a concrete and getting a hematoma in my ass cheek and being power bombed in the corner turnbuckle area, that was the worst.”

On his Mount Rushmore of future stars:

“So you named you named two that I knew for sure were gonna be in there, which was Dom and MJF. I was gonna say them for sure, and I was going to say Kyle Fletcher and Bron Breakker are the other two sure. But I now have a little hesitation and pause because I’m like Rhea Ripley man. But who do I eliminate from that group? Rhea Ripley deserves to be up there. I’m gonna have her replace MJF, because I could see MJF not wrestling in the future because he’s enjoying Hollywood, it’s way safer and he can make the same amount of money eventually.”

On possibly playing Mick Foley in a biopic:

“I won’t get into details, but I’ve been approached about it, and we’re talking to the producers right now, and we’ve been in discussion for a while. I also got approached to play two other people in the wrestling world in the last couple of months alone. So I’m just kind of like waiting it out to see what what rises to the top. Because movie making is so weird. It might seem like a sure thing, and it goes away, and then sometimes something just pops up out of nowhere. The way we’re talking about it, I want to do a Mick Foley limited series, do like a four to six episode thing, and be able to tell the story a little more fully and not just be like, remember the time you fell off the cage? It’s like, the guy’s done so much more than that. He deserves more respect than that, too.”

What is Paul Walter Hauser grateful for?

“The dinner I got to have with Sting, and my wife and kids.”

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Mick Foley: The Truth About Hell In A Cell, Crazy WWE Moments, The Rock, Randy Orton, Triple H

in LATEST EPISODES on November 11, 2025 January 30, 2026

Mick Foley (@realmickfoley) is a professional wrestler and WWE Hall of Famer. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Irvine, CA to discuss how his career could have been different without the Hell in a Cell match, winning the WWE Championship on WWE Raw, his legendary hardcore matches with Randy Orton and Triple H, getting The Rock with his “It doesn’t matter” catchphrase, if November is too early to put up the Christmas tree, and more!

On whether November is too early to put up the Christmas tree:

“No, because I’m working on a year-round, not just a room, a year-round cabin. It’s going to look incredible when it’s done. I won’t be there all the time. The secret is, don’t overdo it. You don’t have to turn the lights on all the time, because then you get tired of it. But it’s there for you if you want it. And that’s why the cabin is actually too small to live in full-time, but it’s a great place to visit and get recharged out there in nature and see animals, things like that.”

On his current health:

“The crazy thing is I’m moving better. I dropped like 90 [pounds]. At one point I’d gone from 372 to 273, and then I may have taken it too easy for the next four or five months and crept up towards 300, but I think I’m down around 275, and hip and knee replacements, those were game changers. I remember talking to Kevin Nash and saying, Kevin, something amazing happened to me today. I said I passed somebody in the airport. I was always the guy where people were like, ‘Hey, sir, you move to the side.’ And I was starting to pass people, which didn’t mean I was fast, and I don’t want to over exaggerate the amount of pain I was in, but I think I’ve got a pretty high threshold. So when I say it was, I don’t want to say agonizing, but it was more than severe. If it was not agonizing, it was agonizing at moments. I would need five minutes to get going after I got off, I stood up out of my seat on a plane, or when I was driving my car, and my kids said that this is what I would do for hours at a time, I punched my right thigh to try to get some feeling in my nerves. When I went at a friend’s request, who’s a physical therapist, she said, I think that’s your hip. And I was like, but the pains in my lower back. But then she explained something about the piriformis muscle gripping onto the nerve, mimicking sciatica. And when I went to that doctor, orthopedic guy, and I saw the hip, I wasn’t dismayed, I was actually happy, because I saw, you can fix this. He said, ‘I’ve been doing this for 25 years. It’s the worst hip I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how you’re walking.’ Once I realized there was hope, and then once I had the hip followed by the knee, it was like a new lease on life. Now, if you were to suddenly transform someone else into my current body, sure, they might think it was hell on earth, but compared to how I felt for like, 10-15, years, yeah, I am doing a lot better.”

On if he is scared of anything:

“I’m afraid of a lot of things. I maintain Shane McMahon was fearless. You could say I was courageous. Courage is action in the face of fear. I was terrified of the cell. When I looked down the entirety of Undertaker’s entrance was spent with me thinking, How do I climb down this thing without ruining my career? I couldn’t think of it, and that’s why the match unfolded the way it did. But yeah, when I drive through the Sierra Nevadas, I get really dizzy. Anything with heights, I can’t look over, even if I’m going up to Lake Arrowhead in the mountains, I can’t look over. I’m really scared. I’m more fearful of many things that people would believe.”

On how his career would have looked if he didn’t get thrown off the Cell:

“Even though it wasn’t the end of my career, it put an exclamation point, and it gave me the moment. There are football players who are known literally for one play. Basketball player Willis Reed, great career. He’s known for playing two minutes in game seven with an injured ligament in his knee. Joe Montana’s career, great, great quarterback. But it’s the catch, I think they just called it a catch. I don’t know if I would have had one of those moments, you know, beating The Rock for the WWE title was a great moment for WWE and for me, but I’m not sure if that would be something that would be passed on to the next generation. That’s what stuns me about the cell is that half of the people who talk to me about it, and this is like, where I don’t write it down, but I would estimate half of the people that talk to me about that match were not born when it took place. There’s even a story I’ll mention from time to time, and I did it on the 20 Years of Hell tour, saying it was really powerful when my wife said my kids wanted to watch the Cell match. I said, ‘How do they even know about the Cell match?’ And she said, ‘Well, kids are talking about it in school.’ I said in preschool? But it’s something that parents have handed down, and it’s the go-to for wrestling fans to show their non-fan friends who don’t understand what it’s about.”

What hurt more, falling through the cell or the chair?

“Chair to the face. I stopped kidding myself. I stopped wearing the bottom flipper. Because my feeling is, I know it’s not a good look. My son, Huey, broke it to me this way, like eight years ago, ‘Dad, don’t take this the wrong way…’ and first of all, you know no sentence ends well [when they say that]. [He said] ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but you still kind of cool with your top teeth missing. Now you look like a crack addict.’ I said, ‘Son, I believe you were thinking of a meth addict, but point well taken.’ But my feeling is like, I know it’s not a good look, but it’s my look, and I earned it. So I don’t mind at all. And plus, you know, Jay Lethal and Kurt Angle could attest for the fact that I was, I would say, was more than an interrogation in Amsterdam, where apparently I was suspicious, because these teeth, one of them was knocked out. The other was knocked in and chipped in half, but they put the other tooth back in. When I got back from that match, it was in a glass of milk to keep it vital. And on the 20th anniversary of the cell, when I did my show in Pittsburgh, the dentist or orthodontist, whatever it was, who was on call said he was there that night. They said, we’ve had an accident at the Civic arena, and the first thing he asked me was, how long did they last? About eight years. I was like, yeah, yeah. Then they started turning [a different] color. And you probably heard how people, guys in our business, will say, Well, I would do it, but would my character? And so my version of that is, I don’t mind having gray and blue gnarly teeth, but would Santa have gray and gnarly? No. So I pulled one out with a ball peen hammer and a pair of pliers. Because even though dentists will let children keep their teeth, for adults, it’s considered medical waste. I was like, No, I don’t want to lose these. I want to make jewelry. I took one of them out, but I’ll admit the other one was too tough. And then my son found a dentist. But yeah, I got interrogated in Amsterdam. I mean, if you have Jay Lethal on, ask him. My memory is that guns were at the ready. I finally was like, ‘Do you have a computer?’ And they said, Yeah. I said, ‘Can you Google Mick Foley Hell in a Cell.’ That’s my tooth. So you can tell, if this was 15 years ago, I probably would not want to talk about the cell. You know, I had a love-hate relationship with it. And then as you get older, I think it’s in the same way that Adam West accepted that he was Batman, guys who feel like their career was pigeon holed because of an iconic role. Even Norman Bates, Anthony Perkins, couldn’t get work, you know, outside of a few like knockoffs and sequels. But you come to appreciate it. And I realized, wow, this is even before I started really doing the conventions. I’m so lucky to have anything people remember me for after the fact, let alone, probably two or three things.”

On his greatest match:

“My favorite match was Backlash against Randy Orton. Crazy thing is, if he has a new favorite, I don’t want to know about it. He’s technically, probably had better matches. But the idea of being in that spot, people ask me, you will just say you made somebody. No one person makes anybody. It takes a lot of people, a lot of factors, and even if the bases were loaded for Randy, it’s still up to him to knock it out of the park. And he did, and one of the wisest decisions I ever made, much wiser than working at the Huntsville auto show the day before my street fight with Triple H, much wiser than catching a red eye and getting into New York City at 6 am for the Royal Rumble. I did a lot of stupid things that way, as far as travel, I actually canceled a talk at a community college so that I could come in the night before, as opposed to the day of the show. I like people to be able to read between the lines, rather than just spill the [beans]. But in this case, I think it’s beneficial to know Randy came up to my room, and for only the second time my entire career, I had an A through Z plan, and I’ll never forget, he was just taking it all in. I’m getting the tingles here, because you’re talking about a moment that changed his career, and I don’t know if we could have had that type of match if I’d gone through that speaking engagement. And the other key factor is that Michael Hayes heard some of the things we want to do. He goes, ‘You’re going to need more time.’ So instead of rushing through, we had time to let things breathe. And it just felt really good. Even though I had many trials and tribulations getting back home. My luggage was delayed for four hours. I did throw up in the parking lot of Tim Hortons in Edmonton, because my brain had jogged a little bit, but I made it back in time for Raw the next night, and it was like the fans looked at him like he was a completely different guy. And it really made me feel good. Now, they turned him babyface in two weeks, which I thought was a big mistake, but it was hard not to like somebody who’d been through that type of ordeal.”

What was the other match you went through?

“The street fight with Triple H. So when two of my five favorites are on that list, maybe I should have done more that way. The only other one that was A to Z was when I got to Japan. I only worked two FMW shows. A lot of people think I worked FMW. I actually worked IWA and I did two anniversary shows for FMW. So. It was Wing Kanemura, and he was a good worker, and he did a lot of crazy things, and he had like five notebook pages written out in English. And I’m a guy who likes to have a lot of say, because, it’s not a matter of pride, it’s, I think I have something to offer. And then when I looked at this thing, I just, I like it. If you watch that match with Wing Kanemura, I had zero input in the creativity, but then it’s up to you as a performer, to pull everything off. I asked my kids, ‘Hey, see if AI can just come up with a hardcore match.’ And a minute later they’re telling me the, you know, the spots, the moves. I was like, it’s not a bad match, but it’s all dependent on how it’s carried out. And you see some guys who can do so much with so little, and you see other guys do so much, and it doesn’t mean anything.”

On taking a Pedigree on thumbtacks in his match with Triple H:

“I knew if I turned my head when I landed and closed my eye really tightly, that the chances [were good]. This is the infamous Foley instantaneous risk reward ratio analysis, where, first of all, we weren’t supposed to do the tacks. Mr. McMahon said, no thumb tacks. And as soon as he walks away, Triple H says, Did you put the tacks under the ring? I was like [yeah], so we weren’t sure whether we’re going to do it or not. But then when I kicked out of the pedigree, I don’t think anybody had at that point, maybe the tacks were already out, I’m not sure, but it was like, Yeah, we’re going to go for it. And I thought to myself, Okay, okay, you could lose an eye, but imagine the pop. I just closed my right eye as tightly as I could, turned my face, and so there was a few sticking in there. But again, trying to compare that risk to the risk of doing a no rope barbed wire match with Terry Funk, you’re going to probably come out better with the tacks than you will with the barbed wire.”

On the origin of Have A Nice Day:

“I mean, that was just a throwaway. Jim Ross told me, you know, do your promo and just have a nice day. We might want to edit that in case Jim wants a piece of that marketing pie.”

On the mandible claw:

“I apologize to every younger sister or brother who had that happen. Jim Cornette gave me the idea, and it’s based on Dr Sam Sheppard, who was the physician that both the TV show and later the movie The Fugitive was based. I’m not a historian like Corny is, but I believe that he was not guilty, but in that state, that wasn’t the same as being exonerated. So whether he would not practice medicine or could not, I don’t know, but he wrestled for a while in a couple of the Southern territories, and kind of slight a build, and they explained away his lack of physique by amplifying his knowledge of the human anatomy. So the idea is mandible claw, two fingers under the tongue. They press down simultaneously on the nerves lying underneath the tongue while also simultaneously pressing up with the thumb on the nerve underneath the chin. And if you do it, you cannot move. So that hurts. And if a guy like Danny Hodge had that incredible hand strength, if Danny Hodge were to put that on somebody, that person’s life would change.”

On his I Quit match with The Rock and it being featured on Beyond The Mat:

“Plan was yeah, for five. But I was still in the ring at five. I didn’t realize that your body has the ability to give with a chair shot. That doesn’t make it fake. It’s just like anything. It would be like all of a sudden now, instead of having an ability to give, somebody’s punching you square in the face while your head is up against the wall, the impacts would be so much worse. This isn’t an exact analogy, but once my hands were cuffed and anyone at home could do that be like, Oh, I can see why. If you were hit in the head, it would be far more painful. So I literally could not believe how much that first chair shot hurt, more than any one I’d ever taken. And so instead of being halfway up the aisle on five, I was still in the ring. And so I wanted to do the best job I could. But even as I was getting there, I did not know my children were crying. The original finish, which was supposed to be the camera sees my family crying, I see my family crying, and I quit. I don’t want to do that. Now, if you go through history, it was like, within two weeks, Triple H did the same thing that I wanted to do with Chyna, but it was just done so quickly, there’s so much in wrestling you can’t digest at all, and that wasn’t something people were able to sit down and, like, really enjoy. But that was the original idea. And my worry was that I’d spent their whole lives telling them that I was just playing and that dad that couldn’t be hurt. I thought they’d come over to the kids, they’d be like, reading. I didn’t know they’d be crying, but to borrow a line from John Candy in Home Alone. Kids are resilient. They came around and started talking after a couple of weeks.”

On getting The Rock with a “It doesn’t matter…”

“I’d like to say it was his idea. I don’t know. I don’t know if I would have been bold enough to say, Can I use your catchphrase against you? But part of the fun of being with Rock is that nobody gave us a script, we went out there as the Rock and Sock Connection. So even when I started playing off his catchphrases, it worked so well because it was live, whereas if I’d said, ‘Hey, how do you feel about this?’ Maybe it would have gotten shot down. I remember I was doing a signing somewhere, and they were playing like the best of Rock and Sock Connection. And I had to remember, I’m at a signing, because I was marking out so much for our own work. And by the way, I only use the word mark in a positive way towards myself. I think the idea of referring to your fans in negative terms is self-defeating. You’re talking about your fans, people who like what you do, and then you’re going to give them a name based on them liking what you do? What does that make you? I consider what I do to wrestling is an art form, it really is. It’s anything you want it to be, and if you take pride in what you do, then you should not be criticizing the people who like it. So when I say marking out, I only do that in happy terms, and usually about myself.”

What is Mick Foley grateful for?

“Family and fans.”

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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.”

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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.”

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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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