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Stephanie Vaquer: La Primera, Devil’s Kiss, First Year In WWE, Women’s World Championship

in LATEST EPISODES on September 16, 2025 January 30, 2026

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Stephanie Vaquer (@Steph_Vaquer) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Las Vegas, NV to discuss her incredible first year in WWE, winning the NXT Women’s and Women’s North American Championships to become a double champion, her quick call up to the main roster, Booker T’s reaction to her Devil’s Kiss move, the meaning behind her horns and face paint, her Clash in Paris title match being canceled, facing IYO SKY for the WWE Women’s World Championship, future dream matches, and more!

On her past year in WWE:

“Crazy. Really crazy last year. Many people can say is quick for many things for me. But before WWE, I have 11 years in my career. So for me, it’s a long time working really hard, and for that reason I think of every sacrifice before and now I can see the rewards now, because it’s really crazy here.”

On her 2018 WWE tryout and why she did not feel ready then:

“That was seven years ago. And that moment I really knew I’m starting pro wrestling, I don’t feel good, and no good time in my life, personal life, and I’m not ready and in no good condition. I know I’m not ready in that moment, but when WWE called me for the try-out, I said, Yeah, I need to go and really learn about the WWE try-out, it is my dream. But in that moment, I feel like, okay, I’m brave. So I said, Okay, let’s do it. But I know I’m not ready. But, yeah, the thing happened for one reason, the important thing because there I say, I’m not ready, but I really know one day I go to WWE. So after the try-out, I travel all the planet. Learn more and different companies, different styles. I learn with the best coaches. So for me, after the try-out, I now I feel like, okay, this is over for me after the tryout. I say ok, I know now I know what I need to do, and one day I go to WWE. So seven years after, I’m here.”

On her jobs before WWE:

“Mesera [waitress], fixing shoes. Yeah, many things, because I need money for training and travel. So many weird things.”

On learning English:

“Yes, now I have been here 10 months. So I know my English is not perfect yet. I try, but I think for 10 months it’s good. I try to learn every day.”

Did you know any English before?

“A little bit, because I understand a lot, but I can speak fast, or sometimes I need to take my time for translation. Because, to be honest, for me, it’s hard. But I love it. Let’s do it. I try to be brave and say, Yeah, let’s do it. Because I know my English is not perfect, but if I try every day. I need to learn more.”

On her favourite wrestler growing up:

“Trish [Stratus]. At Evolution, we talk about that and I said, Trish. I grew up and experience a lot because you start this, you’re amazing. And now I know Trish personally, and it’s like, wow, she’s amazing. And yeah, when I was 15, I told my dad one day I will be WWE Champion, and my dad, yes, you’re so sure. And now my dad is my big fan, and he like amazing, yes.”

On meeting Rey Mysterio:

“I think I was 12, and WWE was in Chile for the first time. I talked with my sister, and I said, I really want to go. My sister said we don’t have money, so I talked with my parents and they said, No, we don’t have money. We need to buy the ticket and go to the capital, because small town. So I started to sell hot dogs in my neighborhood. When I take all the money and save the money for that ticket. I cry like for three days. I cry a lot and say, No, I really want to go and see Rey Mysterio. I’m big fan, and I remember three days after WWE say, Okay, we have a new day, but one day before that show. So I buy the ticket and I go and I see Rey Mysterio, but the cheaper ticket. Now I talk with Rey Mysterio, and I say, yeah, when I was 12, and now I can talk with Rey Mysterio. I’m a big fan, he’s amazing. He made me believe you can take your dream and really do it.”

On Rey Mysterio’s influence:

“That’s the reason, because I’ma woman. Many people say you are a woman in a tough sport. Skinny, short, and I was born in a country with no professional wrestling. So everybody says it’s impossible. No, if Rey Mysterio can have a match with Big Show, big guys, and win. Why can’t I do that?”

On a WWE show in Chile:

“I really hope soon. Because I’ve never had a professional match in Chile. So if I go to Chile, my first match, professional match with WWE in my home. I hope soon, I wish.”

On winning the NXT North American Championship:

“It’s a really nice experience. Because when WWE called me, they asked me if I want to go main roster or NXT. And I say, main roster. But after I think a lot I say, okay, maybe I know I need to learn how everything works here. So after I say no, I go to NXT, and many people say, What are you doing? You’re crazy. And I say no, because I’m in no rush. I like to do things step by step, no rush, and I need to learn English. I need to learn the style. I need to learn that WWE style, how they train in the PC, different training. So I started NXT slow, take my time and try to learn every day. But I really enjoy NXT because it’s like family. I really miss the people there and I had the NXT title and the NXT North American Title at the same time, in the best women’s division. So now I’m so happy. I’m so happy. Make history is my first title in WWE, yeah, so it’s the beginning of the big dream.”

Did you think it would happen so quickly?

“No, I think because before WWE always take a long time to take a title. But I know it takes more hard work. But before WWE, every company, I take the more important title before WWE. So when I come to WWE, I say, okay, the beginning, I’m here, but now I will be champion. So the first step is the NXT Championship, and after, yeah, double champ.”

On the meaning behind the horns:

“So you know horoscopes? I’m an Aires, and they didn’t start for that reason. I say, okay, for our show, something different. And people love the horns. So I say, Okay, I keep this forever. And actually, the truth is I hit. Yes, so it’s true, horns hit hard.”

On the story behind the makeup on her face:

“When I start in pro wrestling, my second match, I broke my face here and my nose. Knees in my face, so my nose broke, and my orbital bone. So I take one year and rest. It was a hard time for me, because in that time I live in Mexico, I didn’t have family there. I don’t have money. I couldn’t do work.”

How did you survive?

“I worked in a restaurant, and I talked with a boss and said, Can I sleep in the kitchen? And he said yes. I slept in the kitchen for almost six months, and recovery and waiting for my bone to finally heal and start training again. So really hard time in my life. More hard time in my life, and after my dream is to go to Japan. So I went to Japan. And in Japan, I learned about the Kintsugi. Kintsugi in Japan is when you break a plate and they put it together again with gold and silver. And for Japanese people that that means higher, stronger, it’s more special, because you broke and you make again. So when I learned about the history of Kintsugi. I say, Okay, I make my makeup, and I remember I literally broke my face. And then, yes, it’s something in Japanese culture. I try to add something for Japan, because I learned many things in Japan. I really love Japan.”

On nearly losing her NXT theme song:

“I remember when I went to Raw, they said, change my music. And I said, please. I talked with Shawn Michaels and said, Shawn, please, I love my music. I don’t want to change. And he was like, Okay, let me see what we can do. And, yeah, I think people love the music too.”

On Booker T’s reaction to The Devil’s Kiss:

“I love Booker T. I miss Booker T on Raw. Because he really made people feel my move.”

On pointing to Booker before doing the move in NXT:

“In my last title match in NXT, I saw a Booker and was like, this is for you.”

On future dream matches:

“One-on-one with Asuka. I really want because it’s not been one-on-one. Asuka or Rhea, Mami versus Mamasita.”

On saying wrestling is her first language:

“I think people need to understand it’s hard when you speak all the languages. It’s so hard. And sometimes I know my English is not perfect, so sometimes I say something wrong, and sometimes people can be really mean on social media with that. I don’t care. I speak it anywhere I can, because I need to learn. If I don’t do I can learn. But, yeah, people can see that. People really can see that wrestling is my first language. Because in the ring, don’t care if you speak English, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, it’s wrestling. And wrestling, you feel your life. You don’t need to speak the language. It’s wrestling.”

On her match with Naomi being cancelled:

“Yeah, everything changed about that. So I’m sad for the match, I’m so happy for Naomi. But everything I think is better because I have more time for training, focused on the next match with IYO. Amazing. She’s amazing. So versus IYO and ESPN, big show with WWE Wrestlepalooza. So it’s like, amazing. It’s really, really amazing. Sometimes everything changes for one reason as my birthday, my dad’s birthday, and he come for first time, watch my match live. So everything is perfect.”

What is Stephanie Vaquer grateful for?

“Fan support, WWE and the people who could say I could do it.”

Quotes have been edited for clarity.

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MVP On Leaving WWE For AEW, The Hurt Syndicate, Matt Hardy Feud, Getting Emotional About KofiMania

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

MVP (@the305MVP) is a professional wrestler currently signed to AEW and known for his time in WWE and TNA. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Las Vegas, NV to discuss leaving WWE in 2024 and signing with AEW, reuniting The Hurt Syndicate, how close he came to becoming World Champion, his signature entrance tunnel, his emotional reaction to Kofi Kingston winning the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 35, and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right.” – Henry Ford

On wrestling tribalism:

“I realize how fortunate I am. You know, over 20 years in this space, and I think about some of the people who haven’t had that opportunity. I have friends and colleagues that work for all the wrestling companies. Why would you want somebody to lose their livelihood? I want all the wrestling companies to be successful, the more successful they are, the better it is for us, the wrestlers, and you, the fans. So I just don’t understand that mentality, that kind of almost pure hatred, the tribalism, between brands. But one thing I do get, I do get the kids that want to be extra cool, [who say] ‘I don’t watch that mainstream stuff, dude, I watch the cool niche companies.’ Which I think that’s dope, because I was one of those guys before people knew what New Japan was. I was a tape trader, and wrestling was only WWE and WCW. They had some Japanese guys on there. Well, those guys have a whole career in a whole other country that you’re not aware of. So I’ve always just been hungry for wrestling. Whether Japanese wrestling, Lucha Libre, European wrestling, it’s all wrestling, just sit back and enjoy it.”

On some fans not realising MVP is a wrestler:

“There’s a whole sector of our fandom now that has no idea MVP was a wrestler. You got these young kids that never saw me wrestle. They just think I’m the guy with the cane and the suit that runs his mouth.”

On his son not knowing he was a wrestler:

“My son, Camden, he’s 10. He’ll be 11 next month, he discovered wrestling, and he didn’t know daddy was a wrestler. But he discovered wrestling, and he liked it. For me as a dad, it was just crazy that my son would teethe on my action figure. He has no idea, but for me, it was pretty cool. And I remember one day we were in the store, and we were in the toy aisle, and he’s pointing out, ‘Daddy, that’s Samoa Joe!’ He’s just pointing them out. He’s calling him by name. I’m like, when did you start watching wrestling? Then I felt some kind of way, because these were my colleagues, and I was still working independents and things like that, but I wasn’t on TV, and I thought man, I want my son to see daddy on TV. I want him to be able to walk down the toy aisle once and see, oh, look, there’s daddy. So I put in a call to Paul Heyman, because I knew that the Royal Rumble was coming to Houston that year, and there had been a couple times since I left the WWE. Let me make that point, because a lot of people thought I got fired. I didn’t get fired. I had a year left on my deal, and Lauriniatis was asking me to re-sign a five-year deal, and at that time, I was burned out on the WWE machine. That was 2010.”

On why he left WWE in 2010:

“I was talking with Vince one day, and I said, ‘Vince, I didn’t go to superstar school to become a professional superstar. I went to pro wrestling school to become a pro wrestler.’ [He said] ‘Well, you’re a superstar around here, pal.’ We laughed about it, but Japanese wrestling was my passion. For me, my dream was the Tokyo Dome, my goal was WrestleMania. Usually people go to Japan, get over and then come to the WWE or WCW, whatever. I needed to recharge. I needed to rekindle that flame, that passion for wrestling. So I asked for my release, and they were kind enough to give it to me with the promise that when you’re ready to come back, come back. And I never came back. I ended up going to Impact, and that was a business decision, because just the amount of dates that I had to work versus the income, so I could make more at WWE, but I’d work three times as much. So my son had no idea that was part of life for me.”

On his WWE return in 2020:

“I got to be one of the surprise entrants in the 2020 Royal Rumble. And my son was in the crowd. It’s so cool, because he even made it into one of the highlight commercials where you just see him going, ‘Yeah!’ That gave me something emotionally, because I never wanted to be a dad. I wanted to be single forever, my son was an oops, and now I’m so grateful for him in my life, because he makes me a better human being, and to be able to share that with him. And Rey Mysterio was his favorite wrestler. So after that, we went into the back and Rey being the just incredible human being that he is, took some time to pull my son to the side and gave him a mask, and he spoke for a minute. After that, Paul Heyman asked me if I could make it to San Antonio the next day. And I was like, Yeah, sure. Easy pay, quick drive. I went and again, Paul E booked me to be in a match with Rey Mysterio on Raw, just a cool match. I wasn’t even under contract, but my son’s mother sent me a video of my son standing underneath the television during my entrance, so my son got to watch daddy wrestle his favorite wrestler. And again, that’s all I wanted. That was it. And then after my match, Laurinaitis just pulled me to the side and said, Hey, we want to offer you a position as a producer. And at that point, I was contemplating retirement anyway, I just felt like getting pretty close to the end here, and we talked about it and what the ins and outs would be. And I said, let’s give it a shot. Let’s see what happens. And I enjoyed it. It was pretty cool, the creative process and learning about how that machine works.”

On his signature entrance tunnel:

“That was me and Dusty Rhodes. So we used to have these afternoon workouts as they were grooming me getting ready for my debut. It was me, Dusty Rhodes and Chris Benoit, and he was coming back from his neck surgery, so I was the guy that he picked to have private workouts with, because we had had a relationship before that, and we were talking college football, and I’m a Canes fan, 305, you know, U of M, all the way back to Howard Schnellenberger days. I was talking about the Hurricanes coming out of the tunnel with the smoke, and I just said, off the cuff, ‘Oh man, that’d be cool if I could do something like that.’ Not really understanding how the machine works yet, like we can do whatever you want if it works. And I’ll never forget Dream, he looks at me, goes, ‘Oh yeah, baby, that’d be something special. We have the hurricanes, we have MVP come out the tunnel with the smoke and everything.’ And I was like, yeah, that’d be dope. That was American dream, Dusty Rhodes. He did that. I just came up with it, not thinking that it would really be a thing like that would be kind of neat, you know. And he said, Yeah, as a matter of fact, that’s exactly what we’re gonna do.”

On taking the Twist of Fate from Matt Hardy off the ladder:

“Matt and I were having an amazing program, and we carried SmackDown for a while when we were doing the odd couple partnership. We were having so much fun, because again, something I’ll never forget being in Baltimore, Maryland, when I just got called up. Matt came to me that afternoon and goes, ‘Hey, man, how you doing?’ We talked to just a little chit chat. He goes, ‘Yeah, we gonna do a little business tonight. You and me, we gonna do some business.’ And I was like, Yeah, all right, cool. I’m like, Oh, wow. I work with Matt Hardy, this is dope, not knowing that that would be the beginning of a feud that turned into a rivalry that turned into a very close friendship. Matt and I are very tight to this day. During that time, that rivalry that we were having on SmackDown, Matt had a really bad, I don’t know if it was like a ruptured hernia or some really bad internal injury that took him out for a while. So at the time it wasn’t supposed to have ended the way it did, but Matt got hurt. So with Matt being hurt and me turning on him during our tag team when we lost the titles, and I’m beating with the US title, taking him out. For him to come through the crowd as I was just about to grab the briefcase, I was there, I could hear the rumble as the people saw Matt Hardy come running down. And when everybody saw and he came up, that sound, that moment, every professional wrestler wants to have that moment under those lights, on that stage, where everybody gives you that explosive pop for that moment. And in pro wrestling, people forget a lot of the time. People don’t remember who won and lost the match. They remember moments. And that was definitely a moment.”

On how close he came to becoming World Champion in WWE:

“I don’t know this for an absolute fact, because I wasn’t in on the meeting, but I was told by some people that were. As a matter of fact, one of the writers, [said] there was talk about MVP being World Heavyweight Champion, but there was reservations because of my felony conviction. So for those of your viewers who don’t know, when I was a teenager, I was coming up in Miami, rough gang violence. I was an armed robber, and I did a robbery, and I ended up going to prison for several years. Nine and a half years. I served from 16 to 26. [Originally sentenced to] 18 and a half with a mandatory three for the sawed off shotgun, meaning for three years you can’t get time off for good behavior. And consequently, it was as a result of that, when I was at work release, getting out of prison, I met a correctional officer [called] Primetime Daryl D, he was an indie worker, and that’s how I got into the business. Because he would bring in videotapes for us to watch in the morning before they would open up the center to let us go to work. So guys couldn’t leave till seven, so it’d be like, 10 15, minutes, people just kind of milling around. And he’d bring in tapes. And I would be, Hey, man, how do you guys do that without really killing each other? And he’s like, Well, I see you out there playing basketball, working out. You got a good physique. You’re athletic. When you get out, if you want to give it a try, I’ll show you something. So that’s how I broke into wrestling. But going back to my conviction, it was at work release that I met the correctional officer who introduced me to my career. But now I’m a convicted felon.”

So they didn’t want to make you the World Heavyweight Champion?

“Because there were potentially countries that I couldn’t get into. So how can you be the World Heavyweight Champion, but you can’t go to this country? Like going to Japan. Japan is very strict about people who [can enter], like James Brown, they wouldn’t let into Japan. But because I went over for a Japanese company, they were able to smooth it over with the visa process. Canada. I couldn’t get into Canada for a long time. I had to go through a process there where people had to write letters of recommendation. It costs 1000s of dollars in legal fees to get something in Canada. They call it a letter of rehabilitation. They said, Okay, you’re rehabilitated. You can come to Canada. You always have to bring this letter with you, because if they ask, ‘Have you been convicted of a felony?’ And I say ‘Yes, but here’s my letter of rehabilitation.’ Then I can get in. Australia, the last time I went to Australia was with Tommy Dreamer’s House of Hardcore. It literally took an act of Congress, and at the 12th hour, some Parliament official, nobody wanted to sign off on my document to let me in. And somebody knew somebody, and some member of parliament or whatever, signed off on it, and I was able to get in Australia. Now England, the United Kingdom, just started the electronic transfer authorization, and they ask the question, ‘Have you been convicted of a felony that required you to have a 12-month stay or longer in a correction?’ Well, yeah, I did nine and a half years, so I answered truthfully, and that’s why I wasn’t allowed in for Forbidden Door. So coming full circle, as it was told to me, there was a conversation about me being a World Champion. But there were reservations because of my convicted felony.”

On footage of him reacting to Kofi Kingston winning the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 35:

“Well, here’s a double whammy here, right? Because Shad is no longer with us, and Shad tragically passed away. Dude, his final words, he was swimming out in Venice Beach with his son. They were at the beach, they got caught in an undertow. The lifeguard said he made it out to Shad first, and Shad told the lifeguard, ‘Go get my son.’ And Shad went under and didn’t come back up. He washed back up, I think three days later. Me and Shelton, we used to verbally beat Shad up so much. He was a big, goofy little brother. I used to tell Shad all the time, ‘Dude, I can handle you in small doses.’ But what a great guy. And I was mad at him for posting that, because I felt that was very personal, it wasn’t for everybody. But when I saw the response to it and what my response meant to other people, then I apologized to Shad, ‘I owe you an apology, man.’ And we laughed about it.

But race is a very touchy subject, especially in our current society, and race in wrestling has always been an issue. When you look at various companies that have been around for decades, they’ve never had an Asian champion or a Hispanic champion or a black champion, then that just comes from the mindset that existed. Because if you look like old WWF back in the day, the champion was meant to be marketed to his people. Bruno Sammartino, the Italians, other people liked him too, but the Italians came out for Bruno Sammartino. Pedro Morales, the Puerto Ricans came out. That was marketing. It was done that way. But representation matters. When you have an opportunity to see somebody on the screen that looks like you, that means something to little kids, and lots of people say, ‘Oh, well, I don’t see color.’ Well, you’re wrong for saying that, you should see color. We should celebrate our differences. Different foods, different music, our complexion is different. Don’t ignore it, let’s address it. Let’s talk about it. Let’s celebrate our differences.

Growing up, I’m 51, I’ll be 52 in October. When I went to the toy store, there weren’t toys that look like me. If you’re a little girl my age or older, you had Barbies with blonde hair and blue eyes, they weren’t Barbies that had black curly hair or brown skin, and it matters. And what really drove that point home to me was when I took my son to see Spider-Man Multiverse, Miles Morales. And I asked him, as we were learning about the Marvel Universe and the different characters and everything, he was four, maybe five, and I asked him, ‘Which Spider Man do you like?’ He goes, ‘I like the black spider man, daddy.’ And I thought, yes, that’s cool. His costume is real cool because Peter Parker’s blue and red, but Miles Morales was black and red. I thought he was referring to the costume. And my son said, ‘No, no, no, daddy, Miles Morales, because he looks like me.’ Wow! So in that moment, wrestling has always been this beautiful space where you can celebrate your hero, but there are wrestling fans all around the world that never had a man of color with dreadlocks hold the coveted championship. There are little kids that love wrestling and have their heroes, and I’m not taking anything away from that, but just the fact that when you have somebody like The Rock, who’s a man of color, who I took to right away, I’m like, yeah, me and that dude. It was a moment in time, and I knew that there are little kids everywhere who love wrestling, who could look and see this guy who looks like them. And not just that, but I love Kofi. Kofi is an amazing human being. He’s an awesome husband, he’s a great dad, he’s a wonderful friend, and we were in developmental together, and we laugh about it, because when he walked in the door, I was one of the first people he saw. I was in the ring with somebody, and he had his low haircut. And I remember a little while after us, we were interacting. I told him,’ Man, you gonna be all right, man, you gonna make some money in this business.’ Early on, when we would go out on the road, I was a guy that I’m going out after the show. I want to go to the bar. I want to go to the club. Kofi wasn’t that guy. He wasn’t antisocial, he’d hang out here and there, but Kofi didn’t want to be out partying or whatnot. He was married, he had a family and he didn’t get any flack for that, we didn’t drag him over. Well, I don’t say we because I was still a rookie, but the older vets, they saw something in him, and they didn’t give him a hard time for not drinking shots and hanging out at the bar. It just wasn’t his thing. But they respected the fact that he was talented and a professional. So there were a whole bunch of emotions going on at once. To see this guy that I hold so much respect for, who’s an awesome human being, tremendously talented, and the role that he was filling. Booker T was somebody for a lot of people. But here’s a whole new generation. And it was just such a beautiful, organic moment. There was just a lot of emotion going on. And I was just proud and happy for my friend.”

On leaving WWE for AEW:

“Everybody knows that The Hurt Business got shut down in WWE for reasons that have never been made clear to me. No one has ever said, and I begged Vince, Bobby begged Vince, but please don’t do this. Vince had his ideas of what he wanted to do, and everybody genuinely agrees that we got shut down way too soon. So when it came time for our contracts, I made it very clear that I don’t want to be there anymore. There are people there in management that I dislike immensely, a person, and I wouldn’t even bother to get into that. But I just knew that with certain people in charge, and that’s how the wrestling game is, that’s how life is. I don’t care where you work. When management changes, some people are out, other people are in, and I knew it was time to go. I wasn’t gonna re-sign. I was in Bobby’s ear constantly like don’t re-sign. Shelton got released. Don’t re-sign. Let’s you me and Sheldon get back together. Let’s go to AEW. I know we can go to AEW and we can pick this thing back up. I’m grateful to Tony Khan for seeing the value in us and giving us an opportunity to come over there and continue to tell our story and help some of these younger talents. Because contrary to what the internet tells you, there are a lot of young guys that come up and ask us for advice and ask us to watch their matches and ask us for insight, and I love being able to pay it forward because people gave it to me. So thank you to Tony Khan for seeing something in us and believing in us and giving us an opportunity to end The Hurt Syndicate in AEW, and for us to finish telling our story.”

What is MVP grateful for?

“My health, my son and the career that I’ve had.”

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Dan Soder’s PERFECT Macho Man & Andre The Giant Impressions, WWE, Roman Reigns, Stand-Up Comedy

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

Dan Soder (@DanSoder) is an actor and stand-up comedian. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Los Angeles, CA to discuss his lifelong wrestling fandom, his perfect impressions of Macho Man and Andrw The Giant, the similarities between stand-up comedy and pro wrestling, dealing with hecklers, possibly doing more in the wrestling world, being a massive fan of Roman Reigns’ transformation, and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.” – Charles Kettering

On WWE angles in early 2000s:

“Yeah, they used to do stuff in the early 2000s where you’d go, that’s just ends the story, you just killed a guy. That’s blunt force trauma. The Rock promo, where he cut on nWo when they first show up, where he goes through Hall, Nash and Hogan, unbelievable. I think it’s when Hogan asked to take a picture with The Rock. It’s unbelievable. Those promos are so great. They had magic backstage then, the ability of the end of the Attitude Era of like, floating into a promo.”

On who was Dan Soder’s guy growing up:

“Hogan, I was a massive Hulkamaniac. I mean, growing up an American boy in the 80s, Hulk Hogan, a dad that wasn’t around, you’re just like, Oh, that’s my dad, yellow and red, let’s go drop the leg on him, brother. And then as I got older, I started really loving the way Bret Hart worked. And I thought Bret Hart was cool with the leather jacket and long hair, but I think for me, it went Hogan, Austin, and then Savage when I got older, and I would start watching his matches, being like, Oh, he’s the best. He made everyone look like a million bucks.”

On his perfect Macho Man impression:

“Thanks to my roommate, Vic Garcia. He’s a huge wrestling fan, and he’s the one that brought me back. I had like, five years of not watching wrestling, didn’t have a DVR.”

On how he got it so perfect:

“I think it’s how deep my voice is. I think naturally I have a deep voice. Well, my back to my buddy, Vic. We used to cut promos on each other about roommate stuff, where it’d be like, [Impersonates Macho Man] ‘Yeah, electric bill hasn’t been paid, gonna be a little bit of a problem. Gonna be a little bit of a problem when they shut the lights, that’s the night that the lights went out in Georgia, yeah!’ It’s all fingers for me. If I get the little finger wag, if I’m standing up, you’ll see me grab my belt. But that’s always the like, he was old school Macho Man promos. He just whispers in a whisper, yo. And that’s what I always thought was funny when I was little, where he’ll just be like a dad getting mad, but he doesn’t want to yell in front of his friends, where he’s like, ‘I told you to pick up your toys. Yeah, I told you to pick up your toys. And those are all over the floor, yeah?’ Just like that, was always was what he reminded me of, of like a parent that wasn’t trying to lose his sh*t in front of company.”

On his favourite modern match:

“There are modern matches that do strike that chord with me, specifically Omega Okada. But then I loved Omega Ospreay. Those to me were what I love about New Japan. New Japan for a while felt like music in Williamsburg in like, 2006 where you’re like, Oh, you don’t know about New Japan? You’re like, you don’t know about Wrestle Kingdom? That was what Chris Jericho did going over and have that match with Omega. It just brought in a lot of fans. Where you’re like, oh, New Japan is unbelievable. And then you watch Osprey climb the rankings, and then that Omega Ospreay match, I was like that might be my favorite match of all time.”

On potentially doing more in wrestling:

“In my career, I’ve been very, very careful not to get too involved with wrestling because I enjoy it too much as a fan. There’s been ideas of me hosting a show about wrestling or something, or doing something more like a structured show, and I’m a kind of always just like can I just keep that for myself. I just like going. I like watching it, turning my brain off on the road and watching. I get so excited when I know there’s a pay-per-view and I’m on the road and my openers have to just sit there and watch a laptop. Well, that’s what happened with SummerSlam. I’m in a comedy club green room watching SummerSlam on my laptop. And they’re like, ‘You’re up in five.’ I’m like, ‘Hold on, I gotta see who gets this.’ I love it. It’s just like a thing where I’ll love it the rest of my life.”

On possibly teaming up with Will Sasso:

“Sasso’s Hogan. I’m waiting for the day we can do Mega Powers. We’ve DM’d about it, about doing his Hogan. I would lose it, because his Hogan makes me laugh Because what he does the funniest is he does social Hogan. He does, like, ‘All right, dude.’ He does the very like, I’m having a casual conversation Hogan. And that makes me laugh. Sasso makes me laugh so hard, because he can do them all. I can only do Andre and Macho Man. I want to learn how to do Hawk from LOD.”

On similarities between comedy and wrestling:

“I think there’s also a big thing about wrestlers. A lot of times we’re wrestling fans, and a lot of times comedians are comedy fans. So they get into it and they go, I remember this guy doing this and this. I think there also is borrowing, you see comics take stuff that you go, Oh, he got that from this guy, or he doesn’t realize he’s doing this guy. Because you look at Superstar Billy Graham and you’re like, oh, he was the prototype for the entire generation I grew up on, and I didn’t know who Superstar Billy Graham was. And then you start watching these old promos, and you’re like this motherf*cker had everything. He had the rhyming, you know, like you see a little bit of Billy Graham in Macho Man. You see a little Billy Graham in obviously Hulk Hogan, but other ones too, and you’re like, Oh, this guy just took all that stuff. And I think that’s similar to comedy about how, like, certain comics can influence you.”

On dealing with hecklers:

“Sometimes I think of the old school clips. There’s one where a guy jumps in the ring and on Nitro, and Scott Hall beats the hell out of them with Kevin Nash, which is a great clip. But that’s kind of what it is where you go, all right, I’ll give you a little, I’ll do some talking back and forth, kind of like when a heel is walking to the ring, and someone’s yelling, and they yell back a little bit, and then you go to the ring. But then if they jump the barrier, they’re gonna get receipts, then you just kick them out. You’re like, I don’t want you here right now, because we’re all trying to enjoy something. You know how a wrestler must feel, it’s like you’re trying to get actually violent with me. I’m not being violent, we’re having a match. Then they come over and you’re like, but I could get violent with you, you know? And that’s kind of what it is like with a heckler where you’re like, I’ll give you a little bit, but if you start messing up the show, well then now we have a problem.”

On the fear of bombing onstage:

“I think it’s just kind of like probably in wrestling taking a hard bump. You just take a hard bump and you go, all right, do I like it? Or do I want to stop doing it? That was just never in me. I was like, This is so fun, because when it’s good, it’s great. Then I also really love comedians. I like being one of the boys, like in the locker room, I really do love it. I love talking about it. I love breaking down comedy. That’s why what I was saying earlier about wrestling, fandom is so important to me. I want to keep that fandom because comedy, it is hard on comedy fandom when you’re in it. But I still love it. I love when a new special comes out and I get to watch it, and I haven’t seen whoever’s run any of that material. It must be how wrestlers watch other companies pay-per-views. I imagine people in the WWE watch All In, it was unbelievable, Hangman Page and Moxley. That finale, just matches like that, where you’ve got to probably watch your buddies and go, Oh, I haven’t seen him work in a while. This is unbelievable! I love this.”

On Cody Rhodes vs. Dustin Rhodes:

“Unbelievable. I’m an only child, and I wanted a brother at that moment more than anything. And it was that match Cody Dustin Rhodes at Double or Nothing. And Jericho Omega was unbelievable. That whole pay-per-view was great. So great. And there was a moment, we were with a bunch of comics. We were supposed to do the Ric Flair roast that weekend, but he had heart trouble, so they cancelled it, but we still got tickets to Double or Nothing. So we were like, there’s a bunch of comics. There was me, Mike Lawrence, Dan St Germain, Ron Funches, and we’re all hanging out. We go backstage after the pay-per-view in the meet and greet area, and we’re talking. And then JR walks by, and we all get quiet. And as he walks by, you just hear Ron Funches go, ‘Man, we’re f*cking nerds.’ We all just went quiet like the President was walking by, because we’re all like, as JR walked by, but that pay-per-view Moxley showing up, which again, like you said, there were rumors, but everyone was like, I don’t think so. And then he shows up. And yeah, gives I mean, DDTs omega on the casino chips. That was great. I love wrestling. It’s the best we get to go and, like, we just went to the Raw after SummerSlam, and I just loved it.”

On Roman Reigns:

“That’s been my favorite thing is watching Roman Reigns go from being a guy that everyone was like enough to everyone being like, I can’t get enough. I need more, The OTC. And you gotta give credit where credit’s due. Paul Heyman, baby. You wanna make someone legendary? I was on the same flight as Paul Heyman. I was working the club in Winnipeg, and WWE had a show up there. This is when Brock was still touring. So Heyman was with Brock, and our flight was Winnipeg. There’s no direct Winnipeg to New York. It went Winnipeg, Minneapolis, New York. Heyman and I were on both the same flights. Didn’t say anything the first flight was very early in the morning. In between flights, I went up to and I was like, ‘I just think you’re like, an elite manager and one of the greatest of all time. Anyway, thank you’. And that was all I needed from the advocate. And I was just like, yeah, that’s all I wanted to say. But you want to nerd out. You want to be like, can I ask you 20,000 questions? But you could just see it was like a guy traveling in the morning, but he looked great. But Heyman is the guy. Look at his career. Paul E. Dangerously, all the stuff to giving Austin the confidence to talk in ECW and cut promos and become Stone Cold like that.”

What is Dan Soder grateful for:

“Wrestling, comedy, and I get to be a fan of both.”

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Maven: “Hey Guys, Maven Here!”, YouTube Channel, Who Does He Have Heat With?, One More Match, The Undertaker

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

Maven (@MavenHuffman) is a retired professional wrestler best known for his time in WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in New Jersey to discuss the success of his YouTube channel, whether he has gotten any heat for his videos, beating The Undertaker to win the Hardcore Championship, whether he still sees himself as a professional wrestler, if one more match could be possible, wrestling Ric Flair, taking the first televised F5 from Brock Lesnar, and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” – Theodore Roosevelt

On the start of his YouTube channel:

“The biggest thing to me is doing your interview led to the YouTube channel. I know you’re not going to take credit for it, but my partner, Zach, you’re the one that put me in his mind. And maybe if he doesn’t see the interview with me, he thinks of just someone else. But I always say it on my channel, out of sight, out of mind, and I think him seeing me on your channel helped tremendously. He’s admitted it to me.”

On whether there has been any heat from his videos:

“So one question we get almost every video we put out, shockingly, no. None I can think of. I’m looking at my partner, Zach over there. We did the AEW video, we were obviously backstage, and I told anybody we walked up to you don’t have to do anything with us. And there were a few people that were nah, kayfabe. But it wasn’t like heat, it was just I preferred not to do it, and our answer is no problem, we’ll cut the footage. But as far as hearing from anybody that Maven needs to stop what he’s doing, no, not one person.”

On the most painful move he took in his recent video:

“Power Bomb, the Power Bomb still hurts, and the choke slam. You can’t fake gravity. You can’t fake the impact. Now, we had some submissions, some easy stuff. What’s Charlotte’s move? Figure eight? That hurt. Because, you know, we’re trying to knock two out at once. Brian [Myers] put the figure four on me, and then figure eight, and when he bridged back, it was immediate pain and I was like, Okay, enough. We got it.”

On the Buff Bagwell video:

“I think for what Buff has went through the last five years. And make no mistake about it, Buff Bagwell put himself in that position. But even still, I mean to go from what he was circa 1990s to the way he is now, I don’t think I could go into it with that attitude. I would be in the biggest depression of my life, and he just wasn’t. He was excited for new opportunities. I was honored that he chose us to tell his story. The job was easy for me. The job was lead Buff where we need him to go on our end and get out of the way, because Buff is going to tell his story.”

On beating The Undertaker to win the Hardcore title:

“It’s big for me because it was The Rock. He’s [Undertaker] got me in the dragon sleeper, and you can physically see my eyes looking up the ramp, because I knew that was the spot when The Rock was coming out with the chair. It’s just crazy again, how life works out. A year and a half prior to that, I’m a sixth-grade school teacher with a ‘The Rock says…’ bulletin board in my classroom, and they just a year and a half later, I’m in a match where he’s hitting The Undertaker with his finish to allow me to beat him. How does life work out that way?”

How loud was that pop when The Rock came?

“Insane, and you’ve been to shows, tell me if this is incorrect or correct. I remember because I used to go and listen underneath the ramp, back when they would elevate the entrance and the stage. I would go under there and listen to everybody’s entrance, The Rock and Austin, theirs was different. The moment you would hear that the place would come [unglued], it was a little bit different. And then even from that, that glass break, just pandemonium.”

On possibly taking YouTube full-time:

“I will always hold a little bit of just loyalty, and I might get to that point where I go, yeah, you’re not gonna see me anymore, but if you need me, I’ll be there. Like a few weeks ago, every year in New York they have what’s called the Broker Fair. That one, the owner called me up, and he’s like, Hey, he’s like, Listen. He’s like, I need you. I need you to represent and 100%.”

What does your business card say?

“It’s something like something manager, like, project manager, or whatever. Somehow I have my own office.”

On what happened to the Tough Enough trophy:

“Two years ago, I was at a dinner, and the guy who has the Tough Enough trophy was there, and he came up to me. He was like, ‘I’m the one that bought your Tough Enough trophy.’ I was like, Oh, that’s cool. He’s like, ‘Yeah, you want to buy it back from me?’ I’m like, Nah, keep it. He wanted 600 bucks for it. I’m like, You keep it. And then I’m thinking, I’m like, What am I gonna do with it? I tell Zach that and he’s like what?! What I would do with it? I don’t have kids, so there’s no one to leave it to. If I did that, I would do something where I made a video about hunting it down, getting it and then I would figure out a way to give it to a fan.”

On whether he still sees himself as a wrestler:

“No. In a grocery store a few months back, and normally somebody comes up to me [and says], ‘You’re that guy who won Tough Enough.’ Yeah, yeah. I had somebody come up to me and say, ‘You’re that guy that talks about wrestling and answers questions on YouTube, aren’t you?’ And I was like, I suppose I am. But I’m fine with that. I’m okay with ageing. I’m okay with I just can’t do what I used to do, and I’m okay with advancing into just the next parts of my life. I’ve watched these guys now. They’re so much more athletic than I was, and obviously am now. Yeah, I’m perfectly fine with not being a wrestler anymore.”

Would you have another match?

“I mean, if the situation was right, of course. And last night, taking 70 bumps proved that physically, I could at least get through it. I don’t think if somebody said, Hey, we got a three-year storyline, I don’t know if I could do that, but I definitely would keep it open. As far as in this business, you know, never say never.”

On a previous issue with Shawn Michaels:

“I don’t know if it was an issue. As far as obviously, I was never going to be on Shawn’s level. You’re Shawn freaking Michaels. But every time I would go out and do anything, and mostly it was when he and I were tagging together, we would get backstage and obviously, if I’m doing a philosophy seminar and I got Aristotle beside me, I’m gonna want to ask him afterwards, did I get anything wrong? Tell me. How can I be better? So I’m like that with Shawn, and he would berate me backstage, ‘Man, you can’t be like The Rock. Everything you try to do looks like you’re trying to be like The Rock.’ And if it was, then it was subconscious. I think it’s we idolize people, so we then emulate people. I wouldn’t mean him to, but yeah, he shook my hand because he had to, not because he wanted to.”

On the promo with Ric Flair where he said ‘I’ve had more championships than you’ve had women’:

“What was it, 16? He’d be wrong, but it was a great line. And Ric was so good at just riffing, even in the ring. I remember wrestling Ric, because he would always do the punches, and we didn’t go over this earlier in the night, but we’re in the ring and he’s got me in the corner, and he says, one, two, one, two, which means he hits me, and then I hit him back. And I was just listening to him, and he would tell me, one two, that means I’m gonna punch you. You punch me back. And just knowing this man’s probably done a the one two 1000s of times, against countless opponents for 30 years, and now he’s doing it with me. It’s just that’s the stuff I hold on to. That’s the memories Chris, that to me bring a smile to my face.”

On breaking Snitsky’s orbital bone:

“Yeah, I was amped, because we’re coming in and pay-per-view. I’ve been in the back selling and they told me, before I went out. They were like, this is your spot to shine in this main event match. They told me they were like, we need you to be a house of fire. And, man, I just overdid it. I had thrown endless number of flying forearms, and that one, I still remember hitting him and feeling the crunch and being like, Oh God. Vince jumped my ass backstage for that too. Soon as I came back through, Vince meets me, he jumps up from the monitor, meets me at gorilla just yelling at me for being dangerous. And he’s like, ‘You better go check on Snitsky now!’ I’m sitting there bleeding, just got took a chair shot. You know, I’m fine. Vince, thanks.”

On taking the first televised F5 from Brock Lesnar:

“There was no telling me how I’m gonna take it. It’s ‘I’m gonna grab you, put you up on my shoulders.’ ‘What do you need from me Brock?’ ‘Nothing, just lay flat.’ He’s like, ‘I’ll do the rest.’ And he did. I even asked him while we were working on it during the day. I was like, ‘Do you need me to hoist myself up? You need me to boost?’ He laughed at me. He said, ‘No, I got you.’ And then once he grabbed me, I realized I’m a child to him. Literally, the way you probably run and grab and pick your two-year-old up, that’s how he was with me.”

What is Maven grateful for?

“Loyalty, hope and opportunity.”

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Kelly Kelly Talks Possible WWE Return, Why She Missed Evolution 2, Divas Era, Being A Mom To Twins

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

Kelly Kelly (@TheBarbieBlank) is a professional wrestler best known for her time in WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Los Angeles, CA to discuss a possible return to WWE, why she turned down the invitation to appear at Evolution, teaming with Maria Menounos at WrestleMania 28, defending the World Heavyweight Championship with Edge, dream matches with current members of the roster, and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein

On being a mom:

“My whole life revolves around my kids now. I turn down so many things because I just know that I’m only gonna have this time with them for so long. I prioritize things. If my kid has something, or some event, I’m like okay, I can’t do the signing, they just come first right now, and that’s fine. I definitely feel like it’s changed me as a person too. I don’t even know who I was before kids. I look back and in my 20s I’m just like, oh my gosh, I don’t even know that person, but I think it’s probably a good thing. But I am finding that I think it is still important to have my own stuff, but finding a balance between it, because the mom guilt is real.”

On WWE stars still competing while having kids:

“It’s wild. I commend them. I see Becky, who has her daughter on the road, Alexa, and they have their nannies. They’re able to bring them on the road, which I think is so amazing, because not a lot of people are able to do that. So I think what they’re doing is really cool.”

Do you think you could do it?

“Not with two. I don’t know. I think with two you’re pushing it. I just think it’s already so much whenever I try to go out of town with them and we do vacations.”

On whether she misses the fan reaction:

“I do, and I think that’s why I come back for the Rumbles and I come back for the Evolutions and stuff like that, because it’s like you miss that and you crave that, and it’s just in the back of your mind, you’re also worried. Are they gonna remember me? Are they gonna cheer for me, is my pop gonna be big? So that’s going through your mind too, and you’re just hoping that they remember you.”

On turning down an invitation for Evolution 2025:

“I wanted to talk about this, because it was a thing. So when I got the call, it was in Atlanta, obviously. Again, it was one of the weekends, the only weekend I had off, and my kids, I think they had something going on. And I feel like when I come back, I want my kids to see me there and they wouldn’t been able to make it. I don’t know. There were just a lot of different things that were kind of keeping me from going. Of course, you read the dirt sheets and this is another thing. Somebody on the dirt sheets was like, ‘Oh, somebody in the higher ups said that she only wants to come back if she has a match’, which could not have been farther from the truth. I didn’t need a match to come back. If it was in LA, I would have been there no questions asked. But to fly across the country to do that, like I said in the beginning, with my kids, I’m very picky about what I say yes and no to right now. Maybe when they’re six or seven, and they’re grown or bigger and stuff like that, then I probably would have done it. But it’s just, like I said, that was the one weekend I had off. I didn’t want to get them on a plane and do this. There was just a bunch of different things.”

Was it a last-minute call?

“It was. It was a last-minute call.”

So it would have been possible if the call came six months ago?

“Probably. I would have been able to clear everything and make sure. I think my husband had to work that weekend too, so then I was gonna have to figure out my nanny situation. Like I said, if it was on the West Coast, I could have made it work. I could have figured something out. But my husband was having to work, he’s an engineer. He’s building the underground subways here in LA, and they were doing a night thing, so he was having to work. It was just a lot, and that’s the thing, it had nothing to do with wanting a singles match. WWE knows exactly why I said no, and they were totally [fine with it]. They were like, ‘When we’re in LA, you’ll be there?’ And I’m like, Yes, I will be there. So that was never a conversation like, ‘Kelly has to come back, she has to be in a match.’ Never, never. And it’s like, they [dirt sheets] said, ‘Oh well, the higher up said she hasn’t been in the ring in 13 years.’ When I’ve done battle royals and stuff, I’ve gotten the call a week before, and I got in the ring and I wrestled every day. So it has nothing to do with that. Everybody that I talked to in WWE knows the reason. So it’s just like for people to come out and be like, ‘Oh, she thinks she’s better than sitting in the crowd, and she thinks that she deserves a match.’ No, I would have gladly [appeared in the crowd]. When they came for the Netflix thing. I wanted to go to that, because it was in LA. So it’s just different circumstances that happen, and life, right? At the end of the day, I have to thank WWE for my career. They’re who made me, I wouldn’t have the career that I have if it wasn’t for them. I am so appreciative of them. That’s why I signed a legends deal, and that’s why I still come back all the time. But yeah, I think hopefully a few years down the line, when my kids will be able to sit next to me if I’m in the crowd, and cheer me on.”

On her last singles match:

“So TV was Eve Torres, but the last one was Nattie on a house show. I remember the TV match because it was a secret, because I had been out for a while. I’ve been out because I had hurt my neck, and so I was taking some time off. They called me and they were like, ‘Are you ready to come back?’ And I was like, Yeah. And they were like, ‘We want you to be a surprise.’ So they didn’t announce me, and I had my Match with Eve and came out, and I think that was it, because after that, I think I was like, I don’t know, I think my neck was hurting. There was, like, a bunch of things that happened, but I can’t remember the house show.”

On whether she got the chance to say goodbye in WWE:

“No, I know I got a call on my off day, yeah. I was like, I get it, I feel like I kind of have been slacking off too. And they were like, look, we know you want to do other things, go do them. We want to see you happy. We can tell you’re not very happy here right now, and because I was happy not being on the road because I was seeing somebody. So I was like, Okay, I want to put time and effort into this. And it’s like in your 20s, I was so young when I started that. I was 19, right? So I grew up in front of the WWE. I feel like my college experiences would have been in the WWE. So I had fun. I look back and I don’t regret anything. I was like this was how I was meant to grow up. I grew so much in such a young age and I saw the world. I got to do so many things. And, yeah, it was just so lucky and blessed to be able to do that. I think when I was about 25-26 it was like, Okay, let’s kind of see what else is out there and explore.”

On WrestleMania 28:

“Well, I remember Maria was flying in that morning too, so we didn’t really have time to figure out the match, probably a few hours before. I know me, Beth and Eve had practice, and then we were gonna fill her in, this is what you need to do. But she was coming off of Dancing with the Stars, and she was in a lot of pain. She had broken her something ligament or something, but she was supposed to take the heat in the match. She’s like, I got it. She was such a trooper. She’s like, I’m gonna do it. I got it. I can do this. And we’re just like, Okay. And that was the match I wanted to do the Molly go round. I had never done it, but I was like, I’m gonna make this match memorable. I’m gonna do this, and I wanted to do it for a long time. So I remember bringing it up to Fit, ‘Hey, I want to.’ He’s like, ‘All right, let’s see, we’ll pull the mat out. Let’s see if you can.’ I nailed it. And he was like, All right, let’s do it. And Beth was like, You got this. So I only practiced it like two times, and just like praying to God everything went okay during the match at Mania. So we rehearsed it. I was so nervous. I just remember being so nervous like before every match, I was always so nervous. I would throw up, I threw up before every match, just go to a trash can on the side, and just, that’s how I release my nerves. I was so nervous, I would say a prayer and throw up.”

On defending the World Heavyweight Championship with Edge:

“I don’t think I realized at the time how people [talked about it]. They were like, No, you were the only woman to defend the World Heavyweight Title in a match like that. It was a big deal, and I remember when they brought the idea to me, I think the night before I found out that I was doing I was like, Oh my gosh, I think we main evented that, which was really cool, too. And then they told me, Well you’re getting fired that night. So Michael Hayes, this is such a funny story. The day of, they were like, ‘Okay, you have all these pre-tapes, you’re gonna end up winning at the end, but then Vickie’s gonna come out and she’s gonna fire you, and you need to cry. I need you to cry on command. Can you cry on command Kelly?’ I’m like, ‘I guess?’ He was like, ‘If you don’t cry, it’s all gonna go to sh*t. The fans need to feel this. They really need to feel like you’re fired.’ I’m like, Oh my gosh. I’m getting goose bumps thinking about it, because I had so much pressure. The match was so intricate, there was so many things in it. So right before going out, I’m like you’re crying. You got this. So I told Michelle and Layla, I said, ‘Okay, I need you to beat the sh*t out of me. I really need you to lay it in.’ Because I can internalize it, and I can hold it all in until it’s time for me to cry. I’ve done it before. So I was like, okay, I can do this. So they were like, Okay. So in that match, all that sh*t that they’re hitting me with, they’re laying that in. And I was like, Okay, I was building up. I was like, Okay, I’m gonna be able to do it. So I just remember doing the spear and just being so happy. And I just was like holding it in, because I knew she was coming out. Then as soon as she’s like, ‘You’re fired!’ It was like the ugliest cry you could cry. It was so good. I was like, Yes, I’m doing it. The eyelashes and mascara is coming down. So I go to the back, and they’re like, so it was really good.”

On Santino calling her Kelly Kelly Kelly:

“He would do it every time we were in the ring or pre-tape. I tell people all the time, his goal was to make people break character and start laughing, and he would do it and you’re just trying to turn away. Oh my gosh, he is so funny. And, yeah, we were all always dying. He is just a riot.”

Did he tell you the nickname beforehand?

“No, on the spot. Because he wants that genuine reaction, right? So if he tells you before, you’re like, Oh, that’s funny, and then whatever. But if he waits till it’s the camera’s on, you’re like, Oh my gosh.”

On dream matches on the current roster:

“Oh, there’s so many amazing women. I love Charlotte, I think she’s amazing. I think Tiffany is amazing. Chelsea Green, I just love that she’s bringing the Divas kind of era back a little bit. It’s so cool to see that.”

What is Kellly Kelly grateful for?

“My kids, my husband and my health.”

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Mike Chioda On Refereeing WWE’s Biggest Matches, Taking Ref Bumps, When Fans Attack Wrestlers, Rock vs. Austin

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

Mike Chioda (@MjcChioda) is a professional wrestling referee best known for his time in WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Tampa, FL to discuss being the official for some of the biggest matches in WWE history, Shane McMahon’s scary bumps in his match with Kurt Angle, the Brock Lesnar shooting star press, saving Triple H and Steve Austin from a fan attack, the worst ref bump he took, advice for aspiring referees, and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. – Lou Holtz

On whether he has retired:

“Pretty much, yeah. I mean, if there’s a match or two, or something like that, I’ll do here and there. Ric Flair’s Last Match I did, I had done a match in the Jersey Shore for Fight Factory and for New Jersey. So it was nice to get down there, and those guys are great at Fight Factory. So it’s really pick and choose, but I’m doing seminars, training refs in Orlando, doing a bunch of and signings and stuff. And the podcast, yeah, Monday Mailbag with Mike Chioda, with Conrad Thompson, on ad-free shows. They’ve been great to me for four and a half years, five years almost.”

On the biggest advice he tells aspiring referees:

“It’s to definitely make sure you apply all the rules and regulations. To me, I’ve been learning a lot of referees on the Indies that just don’t get respect, they don’t. You just gotta apply the rules and regulations and make it seem like you’re there to do your job, not just to count the three. There’s so much to tell these referees, and it’s stuff I’ve been training them and teaching them is how to implement stuff, working with a heel and trying to have a heel outsmart you instead of just burying you. Because a heel doesn’t want the heat on a referee. He wants the heat on himself. So there’s just different ways where I always tell referees to make sure you go to the babyface, ‘How do you want me to work with you?’ Go to the heel and say, ‘Hey, how do you want me to work with you?’ And if you can implement some of the things that you’re learning in this class, they will want to use you again. I’ve had several students come here,. I’ll say, ‘Okay, what kind of bump do you guys take on the Indies?’ I’ve never worked in these before in all these years. So they would tell me, ‘Oh, we take the old squash in a corner.’ It’s like, oh my god, it’s the oldest bump ever, right? And that doesn’t look really that good, it’s a weak bump, depending how long you have to sell. So I said, Okay, we’re taking Spears today. And I have workers there, wrestlers that work the matches, and we do things. Are you taking a spear today? You’re going to do this. You’re taking this super kick, you’re taking this bump. They’re like, ‘You don’t take that on the Indies.’ I’m like, Yeah, but if you’re called upon to take that bump, would you want to tell them, No, I don’t know how to do it, or I can’t do it. Or you just really screw that bump up, and then maybe they’ll never want to use you again? They’re like, oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense. So we’re going over drills like spears and how to walk into something like a spear, how to do a super kick, make sure, because to be in position as a referee is so important, man, because if you’re not in position, it could really look screwed up. A couple of guys were like, ‘I took the spear the other night. I was called upon to do the spear. Oh, I was called upon to do the Super Kick.’ And I’m like, Oh, you were? How did it go? And he sent me the video.”

On referees being named again in WWE:

“I like that. I’ve been seeing that lately on TV and stuff. So that’s awesome. I think the referee should be recognized. I mean, come on, everybody has a name, and there’s, there’s nothing wrong with that. If you don’t want to say all the referees’ name, at least say the major players, Charles Robinson, Chad Patton, Shawn Bennett and certain guys, or whatever they’ve been around for quite a minute. I don’t know. I mean, I think all referees, you know, women and men, should be mentioned or recognized.”

On the worst bump he took:

“I’d have to say in Tampa, Florida. It was Triple H and Ahmed Johnson. Ahmed had to throw me over the top rope, and he was blown up, man. He was in the center of the ring. When he lifted me up, I looked how far I was, and he started going towards the rope. He couldn’t really get me over the top, and I remember hitting the top rope, boom, boom, hitting the end of the apron, the hardest part, and hitting the floor. I couldn’t feel anything from the neck down. It was a stinger. I remember Triple H in my face. He was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re going to get the paramedics here right away. Hang tight Chioda, Hang tight.’ We’re getting some help. And it was I want to say, about an hour or so later, 30 minutes later, it started coming back, and everything, some kind of stinger I took, so kind of just numb me out for a little while.”

On becoming the referee for Shane McMahon matches:

“Me and Shane, I guess it was just from ring crew. Shane used to tour with us. When he first came out of college, he was on the road with me and Tony Chimmel for almost a year straight. He’d drive the ring truck. We would teach him. Shane wanted to know everything from the bottom up. What was it like to be on the ring crew? What was it like to set that ring up? He set the ring up, he did everything. He wanted to know everything from the bottom up, not just come out of the office and go, Okay, I’m Shane McMahon. He wanted to learn how things were done.”

On Shane McMahon vs. Kurt Angle at King of the Ring:

“I knew Shane was a tough cookie. He’s always been a tough kid, always a tough guy. I know he was gonna be all right, beside the cuts, the glass and all that. I wasn’t calling that match. Vince was screaming in the background, cussing. Jerry Briscoe, everybody was cussing, but I wasn’t going to stop the match, that’s for sure. They’re like, ‘Don’t throw him through the glass.’ I’m yelling at Kurt. I’m screaming at Kurt, ‘Don’t do it again. Don’t do it again.’ And later on, I said, ‘Kurt, I was screaming at you.’ He goes, ‘Was it on this side?’ I said, yeah, it was on the right side. He goes, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m kind of Deaf in that ear.’ I’m like, so the other ear didn’t hear me?

“That glass was not breaking that easy I tell you that. I mean, Vince was so hot. I remember Vince left Shane. Shane had to take his own ride back to Connecticut. I remember Linda coming up because I held that board up top when he gives Shane the angle Slam, he had this little piece of board and was slipping off the rope with both of them up there. And I’m over there holding it like this as much as I can, just so they can get that spot off. And I remember Linda pointing that out to me, and she goes, Great job, Mike. Thank you for holding that board, because I seen that. She was you didn’t hold that board. They were collapsing. And I’m like, no problem. And that’s it’s my job to be out there and do what I got to do, you know, to help out Shane and the match itself.”

On the Shane McMahon body check bump:

“Shane rocked me, man, I remember maybe I was like a foot away from the steps. And same with Charles. I was like, holy sh*t. I’m like, you know, they bought that bump back. So that was awesome.”

On his favourite matches he has wrestled [not counting Rock vs. Hogan]:

“There’s a lot of them. There’s matches with Triple H, Batista WrestleMania. I did that one as well. Taker Shane, Brock Lesnar Kurt Angle, Seattle WrestleMania. Shawn Michaels John Cena.”

On the Brock Lesnar shooting star press:

“Kurt was far out. I was like, Holy sh*t, but Brock’s a hell of an athlete, right? There’s no way you could say Kurt, move over like a fish out of water, that would look so stupid. I remember being in the corner with Brock up top, and I’m like, hit that MF, hit it. And it’s just he was just a tad short. I mean, as big as Brock is too, I’ve seen him do some stuff off that top, man, it’s just amazing. Hell of an athlete, but it just didn’t pan out that night. But yeah, that was an amazing match for them two guys to finish that off the way they did, and going in banged up. I mean, Kurt Angle was banged up going into that match. I think Brock had a couple of issues going into that match too, being banged up, and they finished strong.”

On refereeing Mick Foley vs. Randy Orton at Backlash:

“So that match, hardcore match all the way. Randy’s kind of been in the business for a while, so he’s got this big match with Mick Foley. I don’t think Randy, at that time, has never done those type of matches, like those straight out hardcore matches. So we’re just full blown I remember, and I remember all the thumbtacks and Randy’s back. It was like, 50 or 75 maybe 100 thumbtacks in his back.”

On Chioda getting tacks in his hand:

“I had one or two thumbtacks and it stung like a son of a, because I count really hard, right? I remember, boom. I was like, oh sh*t. I’m thinking Orton got like 75 of these things in his back, I can’t be complaining here.”

On the fan storming the ring during a match between Triple H and Stone Cold:

“I remember when the guy in Germany came into the ring and Triple H got him Stone Cold selling. Triple H is like, bang, bang, bang. He was kind of a husky German guy, we were in Germany. Security didn’t do their job at all because they thought it was part of the show, it was weird. I remember, I’m trying to kick the guy in the head and everything, and Hunter is like, Yo Chidoa, you’re kicking me. I’m like, oh sh*t, sorry, Trip. I’m trying to try to get him Triple H is giving welts on the head. Just, boom, boom, boom. And then I remember they get him backstage. We’re carrying him, security has got him finally, we’re yelling at security, get in here and get this guy. So I remember bringing him backstage, and then he’s got juice, a little bit and everything, he’s got some welts on his face and his head from Trip. And if Trip had one on his head, that was for me, kicking him. Stupid ass me, I’m trying to help, but I’m kicking Trip. So they were carrying this guy in backstage and then next thing you know, Chyna is pissed, and boom, she kicks him straight in the nuts. He drops down. He goes, Chyna, I only tried to protect you. And I’m like, oh, then I kind of felt bad for the guy as he is selling the nut shot.

I really didn’t know. I kind of knew he was a little bit, but not the whole match where he says he doesn’t really remember most of it. I was calling spots, and Cena was calling spots. I’m calling spots to him and I remember him thanking me so much for helping him out. But I was just like, holy sh*t. All the spots we called, how did you execute it if you were so concussed. He executed everything, which was amazing to me.”

On receiving a bonus for taking a ref bump.

“[The biggest was] $2500. Yeah, it was a chair shot that Stone Cold gave me [at WrestleMania 15]. Because I started the match for the first 5-10 minutes, and I take the chair shot and I get knocked out. Yeah, my head rang for like three days, ears were ringing, it was pretty cool. He [Jim Ross] goes, ‘You’re getting a bonus for that Mike.’ I was like, oh my god, thanks, JR. Got that bonus on top of the WrestleMania pay.”

What is Mike Chioda grateful for?

“My health, my family and the fans.”

Jake Hager Is Done With Wrestling, Jack Swagger, Leaving AEW, WWE World Heavyweight Champ

in LATEST EPISODES on August 26, 2025 January 30, 2026

Jake Hager (@RealJakeHager) is a retired professional wrestler best known for his time in AEW and also WWE where he went by Jack Swagger. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Tampa, FL to discuss leaving AEW and his new trucking business called “Haulin’ Oats”, appearing alongside Chris Jericho on Dynamite, the “I like this hat” segments, winning the World Championship in WWE and the criticism of his reign, the origin of the “We the people” catchphrase, being slapped by Michael Cole, and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard” – Tim Notke

On memories of being World Heavyweight Champion:

“The first one that comes to mind is right after WrestleMania. The next day we were in Phoenix, and I did a tease with Cena. Then I was supposed to be off, and then Tuesday morning, I get a call. I’m still in Vegas. Because I was there. I had just proposed to my ex-wife now, but anyways, I was off, and they called me to go to Las Vegas for the thing. And they had an idea. [Because they were taping SmackDown at that time?] Yeah, and they were taping it there, and then it was gonna air on Friday. I got to the building early, and I go stand outside Vince’s office. Chris is in there. Edge is in there. John Lauranaitis is in there. Vince is in there. And I can just hear Chris yelling. Because Chris and Edge just had that epic. It was a great Heavyweight Championship match at WrestleMania two nights before. Then obviously, wherever they were heading, the plans shifted, and so they got me waiting in the hallway. And I still to this day don’t know if they were just f*cking with me, because I just hear Chris yelling and yelling and yelling. He’s always professional, but I still think that at the back of my head they’re like, Hey, let’s f*ck with the rookie a little bit, put them out in the hallways. Because why was I in the meeting at all? Anyways, we get in there and Chris says, ‘You better not f*ck this up.’ Great advice, right? Took him at his word. So it all worked out great. Chris did the thing where he took his shoe off a little bit before the gut-wrench Powerbomb, and the shoe went flying into the audience. That was something that he wanted to do. So I appreciate both those guys and I had matches with Randy Orton after that. It was awesome. Worked with Big Show. So many times I worked with Big Show. I loved working with him. We did live events, I could just kind of be an idiot. I can remember this one time at Fort Myers, my uncle was in the crowd, and I really looked up to my aunt and uncle, and they had a beer, and so they were sitting front row because I got them seats. I’m selling on the outside, working the crowd, and I take their beer and I take a big swig of it and Show already knew what to do. I hop up on the apron, I got my back to him. I’m just talking to the crowd. As soon as I turn around, he just punches me and goes everywhere into the crowd, chokeslam, match is over. Sometimes that’s all you need. So I always remember that he will always give me sh*t. He’s got a bad knee, and I blew it out during that heavyweight title run. We did this certain spot 100 times, and for some reason one night when he called the spot, I just stopped short. He was like, ‘Take out my knee.’ He was expecting me to do the front chop block that I would do. I just stopped short, and I kicked him right in his knee for some reason, I don’t know, and he always gives me crap about that. I’m sorry Show, please forgive me.”

On the rumour that John Cena refused to put him over:

“Oh yeah, he absolutely refused to do it.”

Did he tell you that?

“I was told that was what happened. Because the original plan was I was gonna beat him Monday night on Raw and not do the tease. But I’m a young guy. I’ve been there for a cup of coffee, so what are you gonna do? But I’m not the only guy he’s done that to, he did that throughout his career. I was surprised to see what happened with him and truth lately, because usually he tried to take that glory. But I feel like this time, he’s the one who said we better go with Truth and get him back here.”

On whether he has retired:

“Retired baby, Hall of Fame. I used to say before I would go through the curtain in gorilla, ‘You want me in the Hall of Fame?’ Right before the music would hit. That would just be my mentality.”

On the decision to retire:

“I had done it since 2006, dedicated a lot of my best parts of my life to the sport, roughly 17-18 years, very grateful. Had a good gig for most of that and blessed to have done it. Because pro wrestling is very tough to get into, and there’s literally hundreds of thousands of people who want to become pro wrestlers, and it’s grown every day. Like I said, I don’t watch it anymore. So I think for me, I had accomplished everything that I really cared about and wanted to move on for the longest time. I always was like, what am I going to do after pro wrestling? What trade do I have? And this is a great story, I rode with Dutch Mantell for years, and I’ll put winning the World Heavyweight Championship up there with riding with Dutch Mantell, it was that important to my career, the things that I learned, the things that he taught me, and just his f*cking funny phrases. The guy has just a way with words. He could insult you and you’re like, Thank you Dutch. But he was always like ‘Jack, whatever you do from here, you gotta use what you did in pro wrestling at the WWE, the way they use you. You gotta use that background in whatever you venture into next.’ And if you think about it like that, advice always stuck with me. Okay, I could be a salesperson because I can talk on the mic in front of live people, or I could be endearing and be vulnerable at the same time. So that could help me with something else, but pretty much with pro wrestling, you’re a professional driver. You are gone Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and then you’re home Wednesday, home 36 hours, and then you’re back out on Friday, and every single one of those days, you’re in a rental car, and you are driving town to town, making the town. So that really stuck with me, and it kind of like influenced me to go into the truck driving business, because I’m already a professional driver. I told Vince this once, the wrestling I’ll do for free, you got to pay me for the driving. And so it kind of led me to where I’m at now, and I’m excited.”

On his new trucking business and what he is hauling:

“A bunch of bullsh*t. It’s like warehouse to warehouse. Crates, palettes, it could be anything. I hauled the forklift the other day. Paper cups are in the truck right now. They’re gonna be dropped off tomorrow. I own the trucks.”

Why trucking:

“You know what, you have a great interview with Mike Chioda coming out soon, and he’s kind of the reason why I got into it, because I met his buddy like 10 years ago, 12 years ago, his buddy is very successful at trucking, he lives in Tampa now. And so I kind of found my position, what am I going to do? And I always say this, like, America needs more apprenticeships. We need to work with someone who’s done it, and to learn the ropes, and then you can really kind of make it your own. Less universities and the high tuition, don’t get me started. But anyways, I kind of found myself in that role where he was like, Hey, let me show you the ropes and what to do. And, like, get started, and I’m very grateful for it. So I had that opportunity to learn from someone who’s done it for years. This guy’s got 100 trucks, so who better to learn from?”

On when he fell out of love with wrestling:

“I’m very jaded from my exit at AEW. I’m very proud of the stuff I did there. But at the same time, I find myself questioning right now. I wish I would have just stayed in MMA at some point. Inner Circle was one of my favorite things to do in pro wrestling. I love those guys. JAS, Daddy Magic. I mean, I just really loved working with Chris. He’s number one on my Mount Rushmore, Chris Jericho, because he can just constantly reinvent himself. He can not only do that, but he can see what he has around him, and he knows how to elevate us, bring it up and make it look good. Chris Jericho is the reason why that purple hat was so over.”

What do you mean?

“It was his intuition. We did that backstage promo, and it was live to the crowd, and where I first said, ‘I like this hat!’ The crowd just popped. Once he heard that pop, that’s all he needed to know.”

On why he re-signed with AEW at that point:

“I didn’t know what I was gonna do next. I mean, I will say that AEW paid well. So I re-signed to give me more time to figure out what’s next. We negotiated the contract a little bit longer, but the writing was on the wall, and I could see that from the way he treated me. Even when it was me and Daddy Magic and Jeff, and we’re doing that little threesome. We had a little stint against Billy Gunn and his boys, the tag team, and we did that rap off, we went out and rapped in the ring. I mean, who doesn’t want to see white guys rap on television? But it’s Daddy Magic. So you’re gonna love it. You’re gonna tune in. Right before that happened, like the beat started, and he was like, ‘I’m gonna forget. I’m gonna forget.’ I was like, Dude, it’s just a promo. Just remember a promo. He turns to me and goes, ‘I f*cking forgot!’ And so I say the first word that starts his little lyrical conquest. And he had it from there, but, man, I loved working with those guys.”

On whether there were any conversations about joining UFC:

“There was a big-time agent that I spoke with in 2014, I can’t remember his name. I went to a UFC Orlando pay-per-view, and my college football coach works for UFC now. He’s good friends with Dana. I sat right behind Shaq, I had great seats, and I got to meet Dana and whatnot. And then after that, I met this agent. He was like, Brock had just started doing it. Brock was really the idea behind it, because I saw how he came back to wrestling, and it made him a bigger star. I’m like, what if I do that, and I wish I had done it sooner. I wish I had done it in 2014. But I didn’t know the path when I first decided to do it, when I left WWE in 2017 I called my friend Josh Rafferty. I met him through Dave Bautista. And I was like, Hey Josh, who was Dave’s MMA coach. He was like, Oh, that’s easy. It was me. I had a lot of beers with this guy throughout the years, and I never knew he was an MMA because he didn’t put it out there. He’s a very humble guy, and we would just hang out and have a good time. And turns out Josh Rafferty was on UFC contender number one, like the season that built the UFC. So we started training together, and I wouldn’t be here without him. 100%.”

On criticism of his World Heavyweight Title reign:

“I mean, I’m on a list, a very elite list, of World Heavyweight Champions. I don’t really care what people think. Hindsight is 20/20. I got into this for me, I’m glad you guys like me, I don’t care if you hate me. I’m not gonna sacrifice my happiness to worry about that stuff, especially in this day and age with social media. It is what it is. I’m a World Heavyweight Champion, whether you like it or not.”

On the “We the people” catchphrase:

“So I win the Elimination Chamber, and they’re trying to put some heat on me. And they’re like, All right, let’s come up a mouthpiece. And we just so happened to be in Nashville, where Dutch lives. I’ll be honest at the time, I didn’t really know that much about him. Of course, I heard the name Dirty Dutch Mantell before. I knew he was from Memphis, but I didn’t know everything. Triple H brought him in. Triple H was a big fan of his, and so we bring him in, and this is before Raw that night that he comes out. And we’re like, cutting promos, and he did one, and we’re like, okay, do this. Then he did another one, do this. And then when he did the second one, this wasn’t written, it wasn’t planned, he just felt it and he said, ‘We the people’ at the end of it to close the interview, and everybody in the room just knew, oh sh*t. And this was originally my storyline that I pitched to them, John Piermarini and I wrote it together. And anyways, after that, we were like, okay, that just felt right. And we would go out there at times, and we do live events, Dutch is great at promos, he just has a way with words when he would say some pretty insulting things. And at the time, still now, it was very scandalous to be talking about these things. Then still, at the end, no matter how much they would boo us, they would say, along with us, we the people again. And so we knew Okay, this is big. And I don’t think that was my point earlier, when I pitched the angle I was like if they go for this, this could be big. I don’t think WWE really got on board with how big it could be until later down the line.”

On the rumour that Chavo Guerrero was the eagle:

“Number one in your heart, number one in your program, Chavo Guerrero. He did it for most of it, and he did the best. It was amazing. He was not happy doing it, but he was amazing.”

Why was Chavo Guerrero the soaring eagle?

“I think it was just one of those timing issues where we needed someone with experience. Obviously, he played to the crowd so well with everything, and he didn’t have something going on at the time. Also, [I was] a young guy pair me with an older guy, so I can learn and get a little wisdom from it. Chavo, thank you. You will always be my soaring eagle.”

On being involved in the Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler storyline:

“I had Jim Ross put me in an ankle lock. But it’s all worth it if you get to take a stunner from Stone Cold at WrestleMania, that’s the payoff. It was worth it for me. Got a WrestleMania match out of it and it’s all part of the career. This is something I learned from Jericho. You always got to evolve. Like I said earlier, you got to be vulnerable. So if you’re this big, tough guy, you can only do that for so long. Nobody wants to watch Goldberg now. He can’t run a spot. He sucks. Yeah, I said that bitch.”

You think Goldberg sucks?

“He can’t run a spot. The only thing he could do is a f*cking spear and get paid $600,000 for it.”

He’s 58 years old:

“Then stop pro wrestling! Stop coming in and taking our money. Sorry. I’m not sorry.”

On the Michael Cole slap:

“He hits like a girl.”

Who hits the hardest?

“I do [laughs]. I always enjoyed working with Sheamus, even though it was sometimes difficult to put the match together. We could go out there and we could hit each other, and we knew this is how we work.”

What is Jake Hager grateful for?

“My kids, the career that I’ve had and my family.”

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Roxanne Perez Is The Prodigy! Judgement Day, Training With Booker T, NXT Championship, WWE Main Roster

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

Roxanne Perez (@roxanne_wwe) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in New Jersey to discuss training at Booker T’s Reality of Wrestling at a young age and how it led to WWE, deciding on the Pop Rox as her finisher, getting called up to the main roster and if she thinks she was ready at that point, being the first wrestler younger than SmackDown to wrestle on the show, and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “We didn’t realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun.” – Winnie The Pooh

On when she knew she wanted to be a wrestler:

“I feel like it was a bunch of moments combined into one. But just everything about wrestling, the storytelling, the athleticism. I was big into sports when I was a kid, and then I loved theater and acting, so seeing them combine the two was really cool to me.”

On the storyline that got her into wrestling:

“I definitely remember one of the biggest storylines that made me really just love wrestling so much was The Rock versus John Cena, that once-in-a-lifetime match. Just the whole story, everything that went into it, all the things that came out of it. The Fruity Pebbles, The Rock going out there and singing songs on a guitar and all of that. It was just so cool to me.”

How old were you when you started training with Booker T?

“I was about 16.”

Where does school fit into all this?

“I was doing my homework on the bus, so yeah, I’d be with my laptop or all my papers, and then once I got to 17-18 years old, is when I was a senior in high school. So I was also doing college classes at the same time. That was tough, because it was like I was doing an indie show and then finishing my match and running to the back and trying to finish a test online in the back with everybody around me. I’m like, I gotta finish this by 11:59.”

On first working with Booker T:

“That was really, really cool. Because I was a big fan of Booker too, and so starting to work with him at 16, and then having Sharmell there too. I love Sharmell. I was still a kid, so going over there and not really knowing anybody, but having Booker and Sharmell, they’re basically kind of like my second parents. She always says, ‘Yeah, I’m like, your mom.’ But yeah, it was awesome. I am really grateful that Booker saw me as a scrawny, 16-year-old kid and was like, okay, I see something in her, and I feel like she’s taking this seriously. I’m gonna take her seriously too.”

On an early Booker T memory:

“I have a memory of him being really upset at me. So this was a few years back. I think I was probably like 17 or 18, me and my friend Rachel Rose on the Indies. We had a match that night, and we were not at Reality of Wrestling. We were at a different venue, and in that venue, it was closed doors like this, and you couldn’t really hear what’s going on in the audience or anything. So we had a really hard time planning our match that day for some reason, which was weird, because we wrestled all the time. But we’re in the back and I can’t multitask, so I’m trying to tie one of my boots, my other boot is off, trying to tie it while also calling the match. And I was like, ‘Wait, do you mind checking what match is on right now?’ And she’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah. Let me go check.’ She goes, ‘Your music’s playing’, and one boot on. I’m like, ‘No way you’re lying. You’re kidding.’ And she’s like, ‘No, your music’s playing right now!’ I was like, Oh my God. I can’t go out, my boot is not on. It’s like every wrestler’s worst nightmare, not having your boots on. So I’m like go tell them that I’m not ready. She runs out, and I just hear Booker go, ‘What the hell?!’ I was like, Oh my God. I’m trying to tie my boot as fast as I can. He slams the door open. He’s like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ I’m like, uh, we were just having a hard time calling the match, and I couldn’t get my boot on. He starts screaming, he’s walking out the door, and he’s like, ‘This is what happens when you think you’re over!’ I was like, what? So then, yeah, Rachel goes out, has to cut a promo while I finish tying my boot, claw clip in my hair, make a path done. Going out there, I’m crying and Sharmell comes in and she’s like, ‘Don’t ever let him talk to you like that ever again.’ Then we went out there, wrestled, had a good match. So when we walked to the back, Booker was like, ‘Okay, kid, you redeemed yourself.'”

On joining The Judgment Day:

“I think it’s the perfect way for me to come into the main roster, especially with the history they have. And I think it’s one of the biggest factions in WWE history, they’ve been able to do so much in such a short amount of time.”

On inspiration for her heel persona:

“Eddie Guerrero is probably my top one that I always watch, and just his mannerisms and the way he wrestled, and even in his entrance. It’s like he’s not doing much, but he is with his face and so him for sure. CM Punk, he was one of my favorite heels growing up. AJ Lee, Alexa Bliss’ Goddess era, so many but I think those are like my top inspos.”

On the pressure with her Prodigy moniker:

“I think now it’s good pressure. I think how I said before, it was the pressure of okay, am I the Prodigy? Can I live up to that? Am I as good as I say I am when I’m surrounded by all these people? Now I’m like, Yeah, I am the Prodigy. I’ve been doing this for 10 years now. I can hang in the ring with Alexa Bliss. I can hang in the ring with Meiko Satomura, with Asuka, with all these women. And I’m like, yeah, I feel like I finally solidified myself as what I say I am.”

On Pop Rox becoming her finisher:

“So it was actually a name that Shawn Michaels and Matt Bloom came up with, with me. So the very first match that I had, I think I was doing a Level Up match against Sloane Jacobs, and they were like, ‘Okay, we need a finish for you.’ So at first I did the code red, and then I transitioned into doing the old education, you land like a sit out. So I was like, ‘Oh, what about this?’ And I tried it, and they were like, ‘Well, you can’t do that to everybody. So no, we don’t like that.’ I’m like, okay, yeah, that’s true. I can’t pick up like Nia Jax or Jade Cargill, so that’s out of the picture. And then I said, ‘Oh, I used to do the code red on the Indies.’ And they were like, ‘Yep, that’s perfect. You use that. Do you have a name for it?’ I was like, ‘No, I don’t. Code Rox?’ They were like, no. So we’re sitting there trying to come up with names, and Shawn says ‘Pop Rocks’, and we were all laughing, we thought he was joking. And then we were like, Wait, that’s actually kind of cool. I was a babyface at the time, so it was like, yeah, that works.”

So what happens now? Zelina uses Code Red.

“So, I mean, we’ve kind of talked about it, and it’s kind of okay. Let’s say if I’m on SmackDown, I won’t use it if she’s gonna use it. If she’s on Raw, she probably won’t use it if I’m gonna use it.”

On making history:

“I think someone said that I was the first person to be younger than SmackDown to wrestle on SmackDown. I feel so weird telling people yeah, I grew up watching you, because then I make them feel bad because they’re like, You’re calling me old? I’m like, no, no, no.”

On Booker T having a direct line to WWE:

“Yeah, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t necessarily get me into WWE, which a lot of people may think that. But it was like he was gonna have me work for it, just like everybody else has to work for it. So that’s what I did. I did Reality of Wrestling. I became their youngest champion, the youngest Diamond Champion, and then I got noticed by Ring of Honor. I went to Ring of Honor, and they had a whole tournament that they did end up doing once COVID kind of died down a little bit. And I did that, and I ended up winning the Ring of Honor women’s tournament and becoming the inaugural Ring of Honor Women’s Champion, and I think that that got me more noticed by WWE, and then Ring of Honor went out of business. So I remember getting that call and being like, yeah, sorry, you guys are let go. We’re letting everybody go early, because I think my contract ended in December or January, and that was in September.”

Was that scary?

“It definitely was scary. Because I was getting paid by them, and then it was like, Okay, well, I don’t know if WWE has fully seen everything I can do yet. I don’t know if they’re super interested in me yet, and now it’s kind of like, where do I go from here? But I knew that everything would work out regardless. I just had to figure it out. I remember the very last taping of Ring of Honor. We were all sitting in one of the rooms watching the monitor, and I got a random call. I answer it, and I just hear, ‘Is this Rok?’ And I was like, I’m sorry. He’s like, ‘Is this Rok? This is William Regal with the WWE.’ And I was like, oh, yeah, sure, this is Rok. And he’s like, ‘You know, we’ve seen a lot of your work, and we would love to have you down here for a tryout.’ And that was crazy. I literally just started crying immediately, because I was like, oh my God, this is the call that I’ve always dreamt of, and it’s on the last taping of Ring of Honor. Who would have thought, you know, it was perfect timing. I was like, yes, absolutely, I would be there. I called my mom, and she was crying too. She was like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. So yeah, my tryout was in December, like, two months after that.”

On not getting called up to main roster last year:

“Last year, obviously, I wanted to get called up in the draft so bad. Part of me thought it would happen, and it didn’t. I was like, oh, like, I could have let it just make me really upset and and just kind of not fully give up, but just make me not as driven but I feel like it made me even more driven, because I was like, I’m gonna work on my promos. I’m gonna become the best heel that I could ever be. Because people thought that I couldn’t be a heel, and a year later, I was called up.”

Did you think you were ready at that time?

“I thought I was ready as a babyface. But now that I think of it, I feel like I wasn’t as ready as I was when they called me. I feel like I could have been ready at any point. I could have gone and just executed what they wanted me to execute. But I wasn’t at my full potential, my full character, the Prodigy character, and it was different being the Prodigy as a babyface. Calling yourself the Prodigy when you’re like a good guy, then calling yourself a prodigy when you’re a bad guy is more fun. You got to tell people like, I’m super young and I’m really good. What are you gonna do about it?”

What is Roxanne Perez grateful for?

“A roof over my head and food on the table, this job and my loving boyfriend.”

Spike Dudley: His Most HARDCORE Moments, What He Said NO To, ECW, Brutal Chair Shots, Life After Wrestling

in LATEST EPISODES on August 19, 2025 January 30, 2026

Spike Dudley is a retired professional wrestler best known for his time in ECW, WWE and TNA. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Providence, Rhode Island to discuss his many brutal bumps and which one hurt the most, taking the first-ever 3D from The Dudley Boyz, his matches with The Undertaker and Steve Austin, his appearance at TLC 2 at WrestleMania X-Seven, the moment he decided to step away from wrestling, a possible Hall of Fame induction, and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Wrinkles will only go where the smiles have been.” – Jimmy Buffet

On getting on ECW’s radar:

“It was Paul, because they wanted to do the Dudley [group]. It was Paul, it was Raven. Taz knew me from the House of Hardcore, and if anything, Taz just looked like, Okay, here’s a guy that obviously is shorter than me, it makes me look good. Let’s bring him in. I’m only kidding. But no Taz wasn’t the creative mind. It was always Paul, it was Raven, it was Dreamer. Bubba liked me, and at the time, thrown with the Dudley characters we were talking earlier, there was so many Dudleys, but at the time that I got there, it was down to Bubba, D-Von, Big Dick, and Sign Guy, Devon was the heel, Dick was a character, he wasn’t a worker. So by tagging me and Bubba as the baby faces, Bubba was in the feud with D-Von. We worked that for a couple months, until Bubba and D-Von said, hey, the two of us, we can go places. So they turned on me. They joined their alliance, and then I became the babyface blown person.”

On Spike being a major part in The Dudleys getting over:

“Well, they could beat the sh*t out of me, and I say that with love. They didn’t take advantage. Having worked with them so much, especially Bubba. He knew how much I could take, and that was my gift, was I could take a hell of a beating, and he pushed it to the limit. He never injured me. Bubba never injured me, but he beat the sh*t out of me. D-Von was a little bit more gentle, but D-Von did some stuff too. In fact, got time for a story? This was hilarious. During that debut, Bubba was the face, D-Von was the heel. Dick was a face, and I forgot who else was involved. I think Axel was involved as a heel with D-Von. So I pop out of that bag and get knocked out of the ring and disappear. Now, to get to that balcony, it was like a schmoz through the crowd. D-Von was mixing it up with someone with Bubba on the floor, and he drops Bubba with something, and I just improv. I see D-Von and I jump on his back, and I start wailing him. He had just met me. He didn’t know who I was, and he thought it was a fan. So he grabbed me by the neck, over his shoulder, and did like that Judo throw onto the concrete with everything, I was just like, oh. He looked down at me and was like, ‘Oh sh*t Spike, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you.’ He thought he was getting jumped by a fan. So, yeah, that was the only time he really, really layed it in. But that was a shoot because he thought he was protecting himself from some idiot fan, had no clue that it was me.”

On being thrown into the crowd by Bam Bam Bigelow:

“It’s strange, yeah, I think it’s a part of wrestling history, and I’m not trying to brag. But it always comes back, and this was a few years ago. I don’t watch too much of it. Occasionally, I’ll mark out and search and stuff like that, and I saw something, it was like, five, seven years ago. They were showing the new WWE guys. It was some vignette, and they were like, This is old ECW stuff. They showed this thing. They didn’t even know who I was, of me getting thrown in the crowd. And these kids were just like, ‘Oh my God. Did they throw him in the crowd? That’s insane!’ This is from these new guys that do all of these crazy high spots and all that sort of stuff, and they watch that and they’re like, holy sh*t. And a lot of that you could only do with ECW, because you need the crowd to catch for one thing.”

Did you know they were going to catch you?

“There’s no way of knowing. We were fairly confident. And one of the things that Bam Bam did, especially at the arena, the one that’s played is from the Philadelphia ring, that was the best image was prior to him throwing me, he’d beat on me, and I’d be down selling. He’d look at the crowd, he’s like, ‘Do you want me to throw him to you?’ And they’d all go, ‘Yeah!’ And then he’d go to the other side, yeah, yeah. So he fed the crowd. Hey, he’s coming, not are you gonna catch him, but do you want it? And they’re all like, yeah. And at the arena, they caught me like a baby. It was like crowd surfing, where everybody puts their arms up and cool, all right, this is great. Go for a ride. Yeah, it was pretty amazing. I always go back to the biggest influences. Bam Bam one, he got me over, because the whole gimmick behind that and the storyline has been lost. All everybody sees is the throw. But the storyline behind that was, I just did a match with him. The first time I wrestled was on TV, ECW TV. I beat him with a nutshot, and I rolled him up. And he was like the big beast with the triple threat with Shane and Chris Candido and all of that. And he wasn’t supposed to lose the little job or Spike Dudley. He put me over. And then the revenge was the throw. And after I beat him, I probably wrestled him like 20 or 30 times for the next three months, and I never beat him again. Obviously, didn’t matter. The ECW crowd saw me pin him one time. Now I had the credibility to beat anybody at any time, and he put me on the map.”

On his current relationship with wrestling:

“I don’t really have one. When it’s time to get out, it was time to get out. My wife was pregnant and Okay, so this is what happened. This is how I officially got out of the business. My wife was a few months pregnant with our first daughter, that’d be 2010. I was working for 2CW in Syracuse, New York, which is a great promotion. It’s no longer there, but at the time, it was an awesome promotion, just great, great guys, truly, aside from like ECW, this group is the group that’s closest to my heart in terms of the boys and all of that. And they use me a lot at that company, but they booked me in a match against Sabu again, RIP. I drove up there, it’s about a five-hour drive. Drove up and I did the show, and I got my arm sliced. It wasn’t bleeding that bad. It was a slice, it was just from a gimmick. Honestly, going into it, I was like, it’s gonna be my Sabu match. I was like, I’m gonna do my arm, so self-inflicted. So I saw it, and I just taped it up, and I got into my car and I drove home, and I got home at like, four or five in the morning. My wife, she’s like, ‘Are you okay? Everything all right?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ I fell asleep, and I woke up at like nine the next morning, and I start to peel the tape off, and blood just starts gushing. I was like, ‘Honey, I think we got to go to the emergency room.’ But then that was the moment where I realized, Okay, I’m gonna be a father. I can’t be doing this crazy stuff anymore, because physically, that’s what I did, was take bumps. And no matter how indestructible we all think we are, you hit a wall where you cannot do that anymore. So I was 40-41, something like that at the time, and that was the eye opener that okay, I can’t do this and be a responsible parent any longer. So I got my stitches and I called it quits. I had a couple of matches after but that was the signal that you’re done with the business.”

On The Undertaker chokeslam:

“Okay, so I’m new in the WWE. He’s the Hardcore Champion, and they book Spike vs. Undertaker. We always went through the match a little bit because TV time, and this is what we’re going to do. So he’s like, ‘Hey, okay, you know, beat me up. I’ll give you this little spot here, and then I’ll give you the last ride and choke slam.’ I looked at him, I was like, ‘Is that it?’ I didn’t mean it in the sense of ‘You need to do more, because I’m not going to sell for you.’ But I was like, ‘That’s all you’re going to do with me?’ He’s like, ‘What do you mean?’ I was like, ‘Dude, I’m Spike, I’m 140 pounds, you can do something with me that you can’t do with everybody else because of my size.’ And he said, ‘Well, what do you have in mind?’ And I didn’t really have anything in mind, but I started to think for a second, and I was like, ‘Well, dude, you choke slam me out of the ring?’ He went, ‘No!’ I was like, ‘I’m serious. I can take it. I understand it’s going to the pad, which is over concrete, but we can do it.’ He goes, ‘You’re an idiot. No, I’m not doing that.’ I said, ‘Taker trust me, I can do this.’ He’s like. ‘Well, let’s get the crash pad out and try it.’ This is obviously before the show, and so we had these crash pads where you could play and test out stuff. So he tries, he’s spacing it, and he’s seeing how much he can control me and all of that. And he’s still not sold. Bubba happens to walk down to the ring while we’re doing this, and he looked at Bubba, and he’s like, ‘This kid wants me to choke slam out of the ring! Is he insane?’ And Bubba looked at him. He goes, ‘Taker, if Spike says he can take it, he can take it, it’s okay.’ He was like, Okay, and he conceded, like, I had to wear him down to do that, and we pulled it off. But taker saw it and, I mean, it was whatever, 20 years ago, and he didn’t remember that. I had to convince him to do it. He was apologizing to me [years later], like, ‘I’m so sorry. I was such an asshole for making you do that.’ And I was like, ‘I’m an asshole because I made you do it.’ He remembered the spot, he didn’t remember that I convinced him. He thought in his head he was looking back as like, Hey, I’m the Undertaker, and I’m going to do whatever I want, so I’m going to take liberties on little Spike. So he was apologizing for me, going, ‘I can’t believe I made you do that.’ I’m sitting there, going, ‘No, I made you do that.’ So it was a relief off of him. He was like, Oh, thank God. I feel so much better now that I wasn’t that much of a dick. But it was a cool spot. It was no big deal.”

On his Beyond the Mat clip:

“This is what’s great. Barry Bloustein [director], I saw him a few years ago. He came up. He had this idea to do the movie, and I think he had like Jake the Snake and Terry Funk. He already got that part of it down, but he wanted to tell the story of beginner wrestlers getting into the business. He was in LA and we were in Hayward, California, where our school was, and he came up and did some filming, and he saw me in the ring, and it was like, ‘Oh yeah, I like Matt.’ It was cool. So he started filming me, and he brought me down to his home for about a week, maybe three, four days, something like that. I don’t remember. But he took me to Cauliflower Alley, like the Hall of Fame meeting, and there was a bunch of people there, then he took me out for a day with Ted DiBiase, and he filmed all of this stuff. Then they were getting ready to shoot the movie, I made it to ECW, and they couldn’t use me because now I was a known wrestler. They wanted somebody who hadn’t made it. So all of that footage was not used, but he did that one little clip, but he’s got hours like that from Cauliflower Alley. I remember I was with Ted DiBiase, and Ted introduced me to Stan Hansen, and Lou Thesz was still there, there was all of these old timers. And when I was hanging out with Ted, Barry, showed him a couple of my matches, my indie matches, and he introduced me to Stan. I’ll never forget this, because Ted it was like, ‘Hey, here’s Matt Hyson, and he’s a worker.’ And Stan looked at me, was like, ‘Get the f*ck out of here!’ And Ted was like, ‘No, Stan, this kid can work’, which was like the biggest compliment you could possibly imagine. And Stan was like, ‘Okay, Ted vouches for you, that’s cool.’ But I met a lot of really cool people. People during those couple of days. And I’d love, like, I ran into Barry a few years ago in Florida, and I should have asked him, What happened to that footage? I’d love to have it, or at least see it. But it was pretty cool. So yeah, so I had a bigger role in Beyond the Mat. So what happened was they wound up focusing on O think Mike Modest, and Robert Townsend, who, I think they had some clips in there of them getting tryouts and stuff like that.”

On whether there were any spots he said no to:

“No, not really. But here’s the thing, that was all taken with consideration. I never did anything I didn’t think I could walk away from. There were things that I could not do. I’m not a moon salt guy. So doing like any sort of 180, 360, wasn’t even on the table. But nobody ever asked me to do something that I can think of that I went, No, I’m not going to do that. If I knew I could do it, I was willing to do it. For me, it wasn’t the physical pain a bump is going to hurt. It was, am I going to get injured doing it? And no, I can’t really think of anything. I mean, on the Indies after WWE, I’d go to these indie shows with kids with light bulbs and shit like that. And I’d say no to that stuff, but in ECW, WWE, TNA, nobody ever asked me to do something that I didn’t feel comfortable with.”

On his most painful bump:

“I’ll be honest. That one bump that I was telling you about when Bubba and D-Von tossed me over in ECW. That was my idea. So the setup is it’s me and Balls against Bubba and D-Von in the ring. Bubba and D-Von are standing next to each other. Balls picks me up and tosses me at them and in theory, they’re supposed to take a bump, but I’m so small, they catch me. They catch me in their arms, cradled side by side, and they just back straight up to the ropes and blind chuck me over the top. This was my bump. I called this bump. But what happened was, when they tossed me, the guard rails were those metal things, my heel hit the top of the guard rail, and exploded. I didn’t think I got hurt. I certainly didn’t need X-rays, but I was like ow! That hurts, and I was kind of hobbled the rest of the time. But that was the one I remember as like, ah, can I go on? Am I able to finish the match? As the most painful I would say, yeah, definitely. I’d go with that one.”

On possibly becoming ECW World Champion:

“I couldn’t give a sh*t about the titles. Titles were a pain in the ass, to be honest with you. I did not like having the titles in ECW because you had to carry, well, you always had to carry the belts around. Actually, the ones in ECW, me and Balls, when we were tag champs, that was significant to me and the WWE, I had a bunch of these titles, and it’s all bullsh*t, you know what I mean.”

On the chair shot from Lita as part of his WrestleMania 17 cameo during TLC 2:

“I never realized the noise volume. Because when I look back at WrestleMania 17, that was my first time in one of these giant mega domes. What I remember about volume was it was so loud, you could not hear anything. Even when somebody was like, right next to you, you couldn’t hear, it was like white noise, because it was just [loud]. So the sound of the chair shot, I don’t recall. It was TLC 3. Lita had been in ECW, and she had obviously jumped in with the Hardys, and was huge star and all of that. But when it was time, as you go over the matches, and it’s like, ‘Okay Lita you take out Spike with a chair.’ I told her, ‘Don’t try to fake this, you swing that sh*t with everything you’ve got. I’ve been hit with the chair by guys 300, 400 pounds. There’s nothing you can do swinging as much as hard as you can that’s going to be heavier than the stuff I’ve already taken. You swing that with everything you’ve got, because I don’t want it to look bad.’ And she had no problems. ‘Okay, Spike, that’s what you say. No problem.’ Lita was great. That’s one of my proudest matches, it was a match with Lita. Right after that, I worked with her. I don’t know if it was like Raw or if it was Sunday Night Heat but it was one on one, me and her and I put her over. But that was actually a match I’m very proud of, because I put her over. I gave her a lot of the spots that I do with big guys, but I had her do them with me, and it was a fun match. And then Bubba and D-Von came down, and Jeff and Matt came down. It was just like a quick little 10-minute match. But I would say I’d put that up there as one of the matches that I’m most proud of.”

On taking the first-ever 3D:

“We practiced it at House of Hardcore, at the school, different variations of it forever, for weeks before we debuted it. Yeah, that first 3D is not the way 3D is supposed to go. And thank God for Bubba. He was at 400 pounds or something like that, because I landed on his chest. My head never hit, but it was a straight spike pile driver. Had he not been so big and my head hit, I would have broke my neck. But, yeah, that was ugly. That was not the way the 3D was supposed to be. I mean, honestly, because that was the big thing. When Bubba and D-Von decided they were going to do the tag team it was like, we need to have a finisher. And we would go to the gym coming up with variations of some sort of the diamond cutter, it was the thing. So yeah, I sat there and took, try this, try this, try this, try this, try this. For hours, me as the crash dummy, testing it. And yeah, the way it came off on that first one was not really the intention. That wasn’t what they were looking for. But it did look devastating, I will say, but yeah, then they said, Okay, we can’t do this with everybody, so we got to figure out a different way. And then they figured it out where D-Von picks the guy, but if they flatten out versus head straight into the ground.”

On his confrontation and match with Steve Austin:

“So I was doing the thing with Molly, and here’s what’s kind of funny about that. I always resent myself for not taking the reins with that. So it was a couple of weeks build up of Stone Cold was the heel, and he was getting the petition going so everybody would sign for him, but the babyfaces wouldn’t sign it, and all of that. Then he insults Molly, and it winds up that we have a match. But the promo, the in-ring promo, this is one of my resentments of myself in the business, was not standing up to the office. You practice everything, and Vince came down and was like, ‘Tell me what you’re going to say and do it right now in the ring the way you’re going to do it.’ And it’s grab the mic and you recite the words, but that’s not what I would have liked to have said. So the promos and all of that were very much me playing a script which didn’t feel real or sincere. But the match, the one match that I had with him, the one-on-one match that I had with him, was an awesome experience. You’d show up at Raw at like, 12 o’clock, 1 o’clock, and they’d have the board up so you knew what match you had. And it says, SCSA vs. SD, and I didn’t know what the f*ck that meant. So I look at it, all right, yes, I don’t have a match tonight because I don’t see Spike. And like, an hour later, someone comes up to me. He’s like, ‘Hey Spike, what are you gonna do with Austin tonight?’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ [They said] ‘You got the main event with Austin.’ What? Oh SD, that’s me? Oh, okay, cool. Steve and I really got along. I had a lot of time with him on the road, where he was just cool as sh*t, but at the TV time, he’s like the big star and whatever. 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock, I don’t see him. 4 o’clock, he walks by me. ‘Hey, Spike, I’ll get with you later.’ Okay, cool. They start filming the pre-show. We’re getting close to the 9 o’clock Raw time, and it’s like, 8:30 or something. I see him, and he’s like, just listen to me, and I’ll hit you with a stunner. Okay. That was it. And that’s the way the business should be. Just call it, because he knew what the f*ck he was. I mean, he’s brilliant in the ring, on the mic, to me he’s the epitome, he’s my favorite everything. Okay, now I’m nervous, obviously. Match starts, all I know is stunner. At the end. I come down. I do my intro. He comes down with his thing. The match starts. He starts kicking the sh*t out of me. I know how to sell. Okay, I work. He’s beating me up. He throws me outside. And when you get outside, he’s like, ‘I’m gonna throw you. Reverse me. Take over.’ So it’s a squash match. There’s no anything. He throws me outside. He tries to shoot me into like the announce table, and I reverse him, and he takes this giant bump, and I jump on and start pounding him, And the crowd goes ape sh*t, and it’s all my cheesy punches, a few of them in the head, and I throw him back in and he kicks me, stuns me, end of story. But that pop when he let me reverse him and beat on him. that’s the art of the business, there was nothing called, it was just follow his lead. Now you fire up on me, and when I fired up, the crowd went ape sh*t. I don’t think they ever thought I was gonna win, but they went ape sh*t because he had heat, then it was over. That’s one of the matches in WWE, if not the one that I’m most proud of, because there was nothing called, and we were the main event of their TV show, where everything was called, everything was scripted, but he didn’t work that way. And he just said, ‘Follow my lead.’ And that was it. And it was just like that pop. I mean, there’s a pop, if you want to talk about an audience pop that I remember was when I reversed it and the place went ape sh*t. That’s one that I have watched, Paul is doing commentary, and there’s some line in there where he’s like, ‘Spike Dudley can tell his grandkids that he got a two count on Stone Cold Steve Austin’, and I love that line.”

What do you wish you had said to him in that promo?

“I don’t know about the verbiage, but I followed the script they wrote for me. I wish it had just been more kind of natural from the heart. I don’t even remember, I think it was just like, hey, he was talking about the petition, and I just wish I had just called it from the heart versus following their script, because I think that’s one thing that Vince, he gives you scripts and all that, and says, Do this, do this. But if you change the script and it works, he’s not going to complain. So I just wish I had the balls to just do it my way versus their way.”

On a possible Hall of Fame induction:

“I have no idea, and don’t really care. That’s not for me to decide. I mean, my body of work, probably not.”

Was there talk of putting you in when the Dudley Boyz went in?

“I have no idea, I’m not around.”

What is Spike Dudley grateful for?

“My wife, my kids and my health.”

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Sheamus: “Burger After Burger” Was His Idea, Beating John Cena, Hardest Celtic Warrior Workout, Grand Slam Champion

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

Sheamus (@WWESheamus) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at Insight LIVE in New York City to discuss beating John Cena early in his career to become WWE Champion, cashing in his Money in the Bank contract on Roman Reigns, who has been the toughest guests on Celtic Warrior Workouts and who is the dream guest, why he hates the 1-800-FELLA vignettes, Drew McIntyre’s “Burger after burger” line, whether his old theme could return, and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure.” – Jim Rohn

On possibly bringing back the Written in my Face theme:

“I would if I could. I love that song. I miss it, but it’s just that’s a no, that’s a fight for another day. I’ve fought that battle a couple of times, and it’s been a difficult one to try and push over the line.”

On Drew McIntyre:

“Can I ask everybody here, when you have left the United States and gone anywhere in the world outside of America, what is the first thing you put in your bag when you leave the country? What’s the thing you need more than anything when you leave the country? A passport, right? Someone needs to tell that bleeding, big Scottish haggis that you need a passport when you leave the country to get back into the country. He’s blaming everybody, having a go at the people at the desk, [saying] it’s their fault. Drew, you forgot your bleeding passports! What were you thinking? Sorry Drew, I know you’re a big, big, huge, international star, and that everybody knows you. Here’s the story. We’re traveling together. We’d go to the gas station close to the show or whatever, stop and get some protein shakes. He would go in, he puts the hoodie on and he was walking around. I just walk in. I think at this stage I get noticed because red hair and a beard. But I just think, what are you doing? What are you hiding it from? There’s like six people in the place. I just turn around one aisle over and go, ‘Is that WWE superstar Drew McIntyre over there at the fridge?’ He’s like ‘Stop!’ I’m like relax. You’re not bleeding Tom Cruise, man, you know what I mean, as much as you want to be.”

On his mohawk:

“The great thing about that was I pissed the brass off on that one, because I didn’t ask for permission, I just did it. I think I’ve been off with an injury, and I just kind of felt stagnant, and I’d done that babyface. I was just like, I need something different and cool, right? So I did it, and I think Vince was pissed big time because I didn’t tell him I was doing it. But I did all this stuff, my beard and all the braids and everything, and I thought man, I look cool, dude. I look badass. I look like a bleeding ass kicker again. I’m gonna go out there. I think I attacked Wade and Bryan. I was going out, I looked badass and I thought people are gonna go, this guy looks cool. I walked out, and then some bollocks in the audience started a ‘You look stupid chant’, and that was it. It just carried across all the arena. I was like this is not what I was expecting. It was not the reaction that I was going for. It was great, you know, I leaned into it, and it was class. It was fun.”

On his match with Gunther at Clash at the Castle:

“I didn’t know I was a heel going into that. I was a heel before that, and I didn’t know what to expect from that. And I went over, and I really didn’t know how that was going to go. Then at the end, it was incredible, man, I got goose bumps. That was probably the most emotional time in the ring that I’ve ever had in my whole career. It was incredible, unbelievable. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me.”

On the toughest Celtic Warrior Workouts:

“The girls are the hardest. They kick my arse. I almost killed Lyra by the way, does anyone see that clip of me trying to do the handstand against the wall? I almost killed that poor girl. Maxxine, oh my God, the yoga stuff, Jesus, I didn’t know what was doing. I actually know what childbirth is like after doing that. So Ivy Nile is a f*cking lunatic. She is a sweetheart, but we did this workout, she crushed me. But then afterwards, I found out she had the flu. She had the flu in that episode, she was dying of the flu. If you listen to episodes, you can barely talk because she’s got the flu and she still destroyed me. Her, obviously, Becky, Xia Li is another crazy workout girl, unbelievable. Then, of course, Roxanne Perez as well.”

On the dream Celtic Warrior Workout guests:

“Roman, obviously, would be a huge one. Rock obviously, Stone Cold. I tried to get Stone Cold during Mania, but I guess he just had knee surgery or something like that. But I want to start doing a lot of the legends now as well. I’d love to get Sting on there, or Taker. Taker keeps running away from me. He’s been scared of me his whole career, keeps calling me Stiffy all the time. Triple H, we talked about that. Stephanie McMahon, listen what really works for me if you guys absolutely spam their Twitter handles out of it and tell them you want to see them in Celtic Warrior Workouts, that makes my job so much easier if you guys just go out there, because then it helps me when I go to them and they agree. So spam them guys, spam the hell out of them.”

On beating John Cena to win the WWE Championship early in his career:

“It was mental, because I didn’t know what was happening. So a quick story. I was on ECW. When I went to ECW, I had the honor and opportunity of working Goldust, Dustin was awesome, dude. We went in there and we beat the sh*t out of each other, and we just got into it, dude. That feud fella, put me on the map right away. I mean, ECW, for what it was, it made everybody in management look around and go this guy not just looks different, but he’s bringing a really aggressive, physical side, and that Goldust feud for me, that’s really up there as important to my career. Because if I hadn’t had that, who knows what would have happened? That was huge for me.

So before that, I went to Raw, and I had to wrestle Jamie Noble. But the first match we had, we thought it went well. Then all of a sudden we get told I sh*t the bed. So the match was so bad. So that’s what we had the second match, where I Powerbomb him on the floor, yeah, but the first thing was I was told, You better bring the next one, or you’re going to be dead in the water. That’s what I was told from certain people in positions, who knows what’s gonna happen next, whatever. So it was they hated it so much that I think Patterson really hated it, so it just got back. Then I was freaked out, and I had to go to ECW wrestling Shelton the next night. And then I had that match was physical as well. So it was, like all of a sudden a serious pressure. Then we had the second Jamie Noble match with the Powerbomb and all. It was a rough bump for him to take. But then after that, then I got to the races. Then the next week or two, I’m in Survivor Series. And then all of a sudden we’re going off towards this breakthrough battle royal thing, and I’m wrestling John, I had no idea. So the day at the day of TLC, I drove into San Antonio, and I fully expected I was told I was losing, and I was in the car with I think Arn Anderson and Scott Armstrong, and Scott was saying what an upset would be if you won. And Arn was like, ‘No, no, it’s too early.’ Then all of a sudden, got pulled into the room, and Vince is there, and I’m nervous as hell, right? Because all of a sudden I’m going into a WWE Championship match. Vince he turned around to me and John and Arn. He said, ‘John, what if we…’ John goes, ‘Put the kid over?’ Vince is like, ‘Yeah, no problem.’ And that was it. And he walked out, and I’m just sitting there, what the f*ck is happening? And then when we went out there, that was John, though. Right away, straight up was like, let’s do it.

On cashing in his Money in the Bank contract on Roman Reigns:

Happened on the day again, that was the day of, that wasn’t the plan. We were in Atlanta at the time, and then they obviously Seth got hurt on the European tour, hurt his knee, and then I’d won the money in the bank, and then they’re obviously having that tournament. Then that was the final, it was Dean against Roman. So obviously, that was to prolong that kind of thing, to make Roman really try to earn that time, have him be so close and then get taken away from him. So that was again, the same day in a room discussing it. And it happened like two hours [before] because I had a match. We had a Survivor Series match where I think it came to me versus three other guys. I got power bombed a couple of times by Ryback. Ryback loves power bombing people man, Power Bombed me out of my shoes. And then that was it. And then, of course, I came back at the end. That was awesome too. That was a great moment. People hated Mohawk Sheamus. They absolutely hate it. Like, really, my mother called me crying when she saw the pictures of me with a mohawk on, literally crying. What have you done to your hair? It was a fun time. I had so much heat, man, like I’d so much heat as Mohawk, Sheamus, people hated me.

On slamming Mark Cuban through a table:

“I didn’t even know who Mark Cuban was. I’m serious, I didn’t. I only came over from Ireland a couple of years [before that]. So I don’t know. Obviously now I’m more invested in American sports; I watch basketball and watch American football and baseball. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about who Mark Cuban was. So all I heard was, here this fella has had a vasectomy. Be careful you don’t put him through a table. I’m like, Who is this guy? [They said] ‘Just don’t hurt him. He’s a billionaire.’ And I was like, okay, all right, grand. That was the story there. I didn’t know who he was. And then there’s a whole thing about that, by the way, when he shoved me to the ground, some of the producers were mad, you shouldn’t be shoving Sheamus to the ground. But that’s what came from the top. So when he did that and all, I got up and I put him through the table. It was a fun segment, but I had no idea who this guy was. I’m serious. I didn’t know. Then I’m watching Shark Tank later, I go, ‘That’s the fella I put through a table!’ I’m not making that up.

On another case of unknown identity:

“Here’s another one. Nikki Bella got really mad at me one time. We’re in FCW, Nikki Bella comes in, and as this lad walks in. He’s a baseball player for the Yankees. Ok, grand. I’m probably in the country about eight months, and we’re standing in the facility, in the ring, and she goes, ‘This guy is my friend.’ I said, ‘Hey, I’m Sheamus.’ He goes, ‘Nice to meet you.’ I said, ‘And you are?’ He goes, ‘Derek.’ ‘Oh, nice to meet you, Derek, nice to meet you, Derek.’ So he walks off. Nikki comes up to me, she goes, ‘Oh, my God Sheamus. Why did you do that?’ I said, ‘Do what?’ She goes, ‘Why did you say “what’s your name?”‘ Because that’s what you do when you meet someone for the first time, you ask them what your name is. And she goes, ‘That’s Derek Jeter from the Yankees!’ And I said, ‘All right, yeah, grand, cool. How am I supposed to know that?’ She was furious with me because she said I made her look stupid. I don’t know who he was. I don’t know anything about baseball. I saw a Babe Ruth movie when I was 12 with John Goodman. That was basically it. And Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner, I saw that one as well, but she lashed out for no reason.”

On the 1-800 Fella vignettes:

“I remember that being the end of my babyface run. I could see it happening. I was brogue kicking trees. I don’t know who came up with that idea. I know Vince was really excited about it. ‘This is great. This is gonna make you a super babyface.’ I’m like, No, it’s not. I brogue kicked the tree and got a cat out of a tree, there was a hiccup thing, what else was there? I don’t know. I think I blocked it out of my memory. That is a lot of PTSD. I remember being at Raw I was just watching them going, Oh my God. I’m looking at the crowds. One thing that John Cena always does, it’s very smart, actually. You learn a lot from him. But before the show starts, he sits in Gorilla. There’s a table with a monitor, so you can see the show before Gorilla gets too crowded. He sits in the chair, and he looks as people pile in. So he’ll sit there, and he’ll watch who’s coming and sitting in the front row. He’ll watch the T-shirts they wear, and he’ll watch the first match and see how to react. So he’s already figured out what’s working and what’s not working on the show. That’s just who he is, man. He’s dialed in all the time. So I did the same thing with the 1-800 Fella thing, and I was just like [groans], [Unenthusiastic] Yay, it’s me, Sheamus. Fella, let’s go.”

On the burger after burger line:

“So I wasn’t happy with the way I came back after the whole thing happened when I tried hard for the Gunther match, it didn’t happen. I kind of just said, I don’t give a sh*t anymore, so I’m going to eat what I want and not really work out. So I kind of just didn’t care. When I came back with my new biker shorts, booty shorts, it was not good. I got absolutely slaughtered online. I mean, slaughtered. At first I was like oh my God, I was like, Oh no. Then I was like well in fairness I did kind of like to go party like it was the end of the world. So, anyway, I leant into it, it was great. But the promo me and Drew did the burger after burger line, what’s that show on WWE now, behind the scenes, Unreal? So I’m gonna give you my own unreal moment. I gave Drew the burger after burger line. Because I was gonna lean into it. He was like, ‘You want me to say that?’ I was like ‘I want you to say it, it’s everywhere, bro, it’s everywhere. Have you not seen Twitter in the last seven days? Have you not seen I’m getting slaughtered?’ So we did it, I gave him the line of his career. And you know why? Because that’s what it is, fella, it’s entertainment. That’s what it’s about.”

What is Sheamus grateful for?

“My wife and family, that I get to do this again, and for all of you guys for showing up.”

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Zilla Fatu On His Legendary Father Umaga, The Bloodline, TNA Debut, Wrestling Booker T, WWE Tryout

in LATEST EPISODES on August 12, 2025 January 30, 2026

Zilla Fatu (@Zillafatu) is a professional wrestler who has competed in TNA and Reality of Wrestling. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in New York City to discuss being the son of the late Umaga and memories of his father, what it means to have the surname Fatu and the pressure that comes with it, how a match with Booker T came together, the possibility of signing with WWE, his TNA debut match at Slammiversary and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: You are not what you have done, but what you have overcome. – John Geiger

On memories of his father Umaga:

“Oh, man, just eating everything [laughs] and telling me, son, can you go grab that food right there? But yeah, I just remember him eating everything, and just him being a big teddy bear. Because I know everyone thinks that due to his character, he would be cocky, or arrogant, or just mean, but my dad was totally the opposite. My dad was very loving, caring, obviously he was very family-oriented. And, man, he was the glue.”

On his favourite memory:

“It was for football. I used to play for a little league football team, and one day, I didn’t know he was gonna pull up to the game, and he surprised me. I remember right before the football game, I was stretching, and he was like, ‘Hey, son, I got a little proposal for you.’ I was like, ‘What’s up, dad?’ He was like, ‘Look, every touchdown you get, I give you $20.’ I said, really? He said, ‘Yes, I got you.’ I remember, after the game, scored five touchdowns the whole game. As soon as I saw him after the game, he already came with the money and gave it to me. But that wasn’t the most surprising. After that, he brought his T-shirts, he brought eight by 10s for the team, and he just showed love, man. He was signing autographs, taking pictures with my friends. My friends knew who he was, but they never met him. They saw him on TV, and when they saw him there, they embraced it. And me as a kid, having my friends, go, ‘That’s your dad?’ So overwhelmed and overexcited. It hit home for me, and I was just so happy. And I remember after that, man, everyone at school was talking about it, and that made me feel good.”

On following in his father’s footsteps:

“I think obviously, when I came home from prison, from jail, I had my back against the wall. Growing up, our family always told us to do something else. Wrestling is always gonna be an option. Just try to do something else. And then, not only that, my dad used to tell us every Thursday, we had a family meeting, he always used to tell us, ‘I don’t want you guys doing this. I need you guys to be better than me. I don’t want you guys going through what I went through. I don’t want you guys putting your body on the line or whatever, I need you guys to do something more safe.’ And at that time, I didn’t really understand it. But now, obviously, since I’m in the business, I definitely understand why, and there’s a lot that comes with this that I feel like people don’t see, the media don’t see. Just being able to kind of embrace it, and then not run from it. I’m happy that I chose to wrestle, because it brought me closer to him, and now I’m learning who my dad was through wrestling. So I’m so happy that I started wrestling.”

Do you feel like he’s still with you?

“Oh, yes, talking about that debut, I was talking about those butterflies earlier, it went away as soon as I hit the curtain. Speaking of the debuts, when I went out there, there was a moment, if you guys go watch, there’s a moment that I wasn’t trying to be like The Rock, but I was smelling everything. I was embracing everything. And soon as I did that, everything just went away. And, like I said, I found my purpose that day and my debut.”

On thinking wrestling would be easy at first:

“That’s exactly what I thought it was. I was like, Well, my dad’s Umaga, he makes it seem so easy, I can do it. But after the few months of training, man, it definitely gave my respect. I was like, Man, this is harder than I thought it was. But through the foundation of Reality of Wrestling, they have such a great core there. They were able to just help me with anything that I need. It’s a good village to bring me up, and it still does.”

On who he saw as a father figure after Umaga’s passing:

“To be honest, Shelton [Benjamin]. I used to look at Shelton as a father figure, obviously, because he was our neighbor, right next to this. But he was always on the road. So there are those times where I don’t see him, I’m always, you know, going to chill with the wrong people. And then obviously, when we move away from him, it was a culture shock for me, because we then went from living in a nice area, to the hood, and I think that transition was a culture shock for me. Then that’s when I fell into the streets, and that’s when I started hanging around the wrong crowd. One thing led to another, and I started just doing bad stuff and skipping school, and just doing what all the juvenile delinquents do.”

On connecting with Booker T:

“Oh, we definitely did. He shared his story. He told me, ‘Hey, man, you’re not alone. Even though we have a different story, we have a lot of similarities.’ I think Booker T was also one of the ones that, obviously, I looked up to, but we were never that close growing up. But when I came home from prison and I got with him, when we connected, it’s like I wish that I’d been connected with him when I was in the streets, because I think just having someone, the person that he is, and the stuff that he went through, I could connect to. So all I needed to hear was his story. I think that’s what helped me too with being in prison, I was listening to all the OG story. I was listening to everybody’s story, and I always used to take that one positive thing that I learned from each and every story, and I applied it to my story, and I applied it to my mind. I think that’s what helped me with all the decisions I make today.”

On what it means to have the surname Fatu:

“It means everything. And to be honest, I don’t know if you know Fatu means heart in English, so it’s all love, and our culture is just built off love and respect. I think, you know, obviously me growing up, I didn’t see that, but I felt it. And now that I’m grown up, everything now just makes sense. All the questions I had growing up that was unanswered, it’s answered now, because now I’m grown. Now I understand, I’m wise now. So it just hit different for me. Because obviously I’ve been in and out of jail, and then now it’s like, okay, this is who I am, and it’s just love, man, that’s it.”

On pressure from the famous last name:

“Oh, yeah, even leading up to the debuts. I knew that there was going to be an expectation so high, not just because of my family, but of my dad. He set the bar so high. In my mind, man, I want to be able to excel at that. I want to be able to take whatever my dad did to the next level. And I think that’s a challenge for me now. I think it’s a challenge for me to kind of separate Zilla Fatu from the Samoan dynasty. I was just talking with my team this morning. Maybe that’s not in my plan. Maybe it’s not to separate the Fatu from the Samoan dynasty. Maybe it’s time to embrace it and put on for it.”

On possibly joining WWE:

“Yes, that’s so obvious. Yes, I would love to.”

On whether he has had a try-out:

“I literally have just been training, man. Just being patient. I’m not in a rush to get anywhere, like I said previously, I have a long way to go, and I’m still growing. I’m still trying to figure out as far as within this business, I’m trying to figure out who I am, and I think that’s just going to take time. It’s just going to take repetition, but yeah, I think I’m right where I’m supposed to be right now.”

On wearing face paint for his TNA debut:

“I do this for my mom and dad. But Jeff Hardy plays a big role in my character, and he inspires me. And I think I was just doing that because I want to have fun. I want to have fun. And that’s what it was. It was literally me and Jeff backstage, chopping it up about my dad. And not only that, us figuring out our next step, our next move. And I think it was just more of us bonding together, but I want to do this. I’m still figuring it out. I’m still trying to figure everything out, and I just want to be able to do it my way on my time. I don’t want to have anyone else try to write it out for me, because after they do, then it wouldn’t be considered my story if I didn’t write it. So I just want to be able to write my own story and be my own artist.”

On having a match with Booker T:

“I love this story. So obviously, we have a breakout show at Reality of Wrestling, and that’s where the students, people that are in the beginners class or the intermediate class. They go to this specific show, and they showcase why they should be on the platinum show, which is the show I’m on right now. And they have to prove to the people and to Booker T on why they need to be on the main card. I go to all of the student shows, I want to be able to help in any way that I can. I’m always helping the students out, if they need help constructing a match, producing a match, or also help with the producers, anything they need. I just always put my two cents in. I remember, on this specific day, I was just there and I was sitting in gorilla watching the monitors with Booker. And then Booker was like, ‘Hey, you ready? You want to go do something?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, why not?’ He was like, ‘We have no script, okay, so I need you to go out there and fill it.’ I said, ‘Fill it? Alright, let’s go.’ Then he went out there, he cut his promo. Have in mind none of this is the plan, not even previous days leading up to this show. I was just there, right? And Booker T went out there, cut his promo, and then as soon as my music hits, I go out there, and I basically was just going off, we were just going off each other. And soon as I think that the promo and the segment was gonna be over, I forgot what date it was. And then he was like, January 11, be ready. I look at the fans, they all go crazy. I’m like, I should cut something. I’m like, ‘I’m there.’ Then we get backstage, then he pulls me to the side and said, ‘Man, I don’t know the idea, I don’t know what I did, but we’re gonna rock with it. We’re gonna rock with it.'”

On whether he thinks he is ready for WWE:

“No. I thought I was. No, I think I still have more time to grow. I’m still green. I still have a long way to go, man. So I think when the timing is right, and not only that, when I feel right, just like the same feeling I had in prison, that I was tired, that I didn’t change my life, I’m just waiting for that feeling, and once that feeling pops up, that’s when I’m gonna start pushing for it. But for right now, I’m just being patient and just waiting, just grinding, enjoying the process, enjoying the journey, and just learning as I go and always be the student in the game. And I think, time will tell, and I think the fans will play a big role in that. So I’m just working like WWE never had their eyes on me. I think having that mindset, I think I’m gonna get there. I know I’m gonna be there. I think it just takes repetition, and it takes time, and I think where I’m at today, my brand is only going to excel. It’s only going to excel because, like I said earlier, we’re still figuring it out every day and brainstorming every day.”

What is Zilla Fatu grateful for?

My mom, the support I have received and my team.

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Ivy Nile On Her New Look, El Grande Americano, Chad Gable, American Made, Insane Workouts

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

Ivy Nile (@ivnile_wwe) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in New Jersey to discuss how competing on The Rock’s Titan Games led to her being signed by WWE, how she was paired with The Creed Brothers and Chad Gable, her insane workout videos with Julius Creed and Jordynne Grace, her match with Rhea Ripley shortly after her main roster call-up, who El Grande Americano could be and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” ―Vincent Van Gogh

On working out from a young age:

“So it started when I was homeschooled my whole life. So my whole life, never went to school at all. I did martial arts my whole life, I think when I started I was six or seven, so I started Taekwondo, and I was super young, and then when I got into my teenage years I was getting my head knocked off. And I was like, How can I get better at this sport? I just learned how to be faster, learn how to be stronger. So I was like, I need to get myself in the gym and learn how to put some muscle on me. Because at the time, I was tiny. I had muscle, but I was tiny. I didn’t know anything. So I just got myself in the gym. I learned from everywhere, from a meathead to a girl that learned how to eat healthy. I learned from all walks of life, and then I kind of figured out what was best for me.”

On becoming a part of Titan Games:

“For a little bit after I got out of Taekwondo, I got involved in Jiu Jitsu, and I fell in love with it. It’s awesome to fight these big dudes, because if anything, if anyone’s ever going to attack me, it’s going to be a big dude, not like a small whatever. So loved rolling around with bigger guys. Got into MMA for a little bit, boxing, all that stuff. I got my hands on everything because I just wanted to be someone who was well-rounded. So when I did my first MMA fight, and I lost. At the time, I was a massage therapist, and I was like this is a crazy life, because I was massaging during the day, and MMA at night, totally different world. I’d show up to my massage job with busted lips and people thought I got lip injections or something. I was like, No, I got punched in the face. This is nuts. Anyway, so after that first MMA fight, it was rough. Fight camps are rough. Cutting weight is rough; it was a rough time. So shortly after that, I was watching Jimmy Fallon or something, and my sister and I were watching it, and The Rock was on there talking about his new competitive show, the Titan Games. That was like, six, seven years ago. That’s crazy to think it was that long ago. My sister was like ‘You should try out for it.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean? Just fill out a form or whatever?’ She’s like, ‘Yeah, do it.’ I was like, ‘No, that’s ridiculous, that’s absolutely ridiculous.’ So at the time, I filled out the form online, and then I just put it down, I didn’t finish it, this is never gonna happen. This is silly. So a couple of days later she asked me, ‘Did you fill it out?’ [I said] ‘No, this is crazy, they already are picking people or whatever.’ So a couple of days later, I finished filling out the form, and not even a day later, LA called me, and I half assed it. I sent in pictures and videos I already had on my phone, it wasn’t anything crazy. And they called me and said they loved my story. They loved the stuff that I sent, and I thought it was a prank. I really thought someone just got my number from the website, and they were just pranking me, like this is mean, whatever. They said, let’s set up a Skype call. So went to my gym, I did a Skype call, and I still thought it was a prank. I was like, whoever this is, this is so mean, but I’m going with it.”

“So then the interview was weird, because the lady was outside. It looked like she was on a roof or something. I was like, this is a prank, this is silly. Next thing you know, I was getting legit emails from the Titan Games. And I was like, Oh, this is actually [happening], someone living in a tiny town in Tennessee, you’re going to pick me? This is crazy! So they had a big combine thing, sent me out to California. Never been to California. I was like a Beverly hillbilly walking up to California. I was like cool, no one knows my story. No one knows me. No one knows I’ve barely been on a plane, barely been to California. I don’t think I’ve ever been to California at this point, and I was there competing on a show with Dwayne Johnson. I was like, what is happening right now? I went out there, there’s over 100 people, and I made it through to the actual show. Then once I was on the show, I did really well. I didn’t win the whole thing, but I was crowned one of Dwayne Johnson’s Titans. Went on the show, and it was the best life-changing experience I ever had. I think people just forget to be grateful about opportunities, because there’s a lot of people there that were just like, Oh, it’s just another thing I’m doing, and I was like, someone who’s come from nothing to California for the first time and competing on a show with The Rock. It’s like, wake up, this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I was just so over the moon happy about it. Even though I didn’t win, I didn’t care. Dany Garcia, who’s the lady that ran the show, she changed my life. Every time I see her, I tell her, you changed my life because she picked the people who she wanted on the show and stuff. And I remember how kind she was to me. I tell her every time, she changed my life, because it led me to here, and I’ll get to that in a second. But yeah, The Rock and Dany Garcia absolutely changed my life, if anything, I want them to know that forever, because they changed my life. So when I did the show, it was all great. I came back to Tennessee with the biggest head. I thought I was it. And I couldn’t tell anybody, because we filmed it, but it didn’t air for another six months or something, and we couldn’t say anything about it. So I had this big attitude of I’m finally getting out of here, you all suck. But nothing happened, duh, because the show didn’t air. So I had like this weird attitude, I regret all those attitudes, because it didn’t really help me at all. Then when I came back, I didn’t have my job, so I didn’t have my massage job, because I had to leave for so many months and come back. And this is the cool part. So having that attitude, I still needed a job. I couldn’t just do nothing, it’s not how you pay your bills. So the only job I had at the time was cleaning offices, cleaning toilets, mopping the floors, cleaning up after people at night, like all hours of the night. So I remember, this is crazy. I was cleaning the cafeteria area, mopping up the floor. How did I get here? I was just a big shot in California shooting this show. Now I’m here, mopping the floor or whatever. Then I realized what night it was, one of the episodes was airing on the TV, and turned it on. I was watching myself on TV as I was mopping the floor.”

On getting on WWE’s radar:

“Got noticed on the Titan games. And because the other blessing was I was the first athlete [listed], my name popped up there as the first. So I think that helped me a lot. Debut episode that I was the first one. I think that because [there were] more eyes on the show. So I think I got more noticed for that.”

On whether she got to interact with The Rock on Titan Games:

“A little bit, actually. Yeah, it was crazy because I’m trying to draw a picture of how timid I was. Like I said, never been to California, barely have done anything in my life. So I was about to do my first event. It was like a tug of war with a pole, with the girl on the other side, but you can’t see the girl on the other side. And as soon as we were ready for the 3, 2, 1, go, and The Rock comes out, and then comes over, shakes my hand and says, Good luck. And I’m like [laughs] of course he did it right now. But yeah, it was nuts. And he was so nice. After I lost in the semifinals, he made sure that he talked to me, and he had so many words of wisdom for me, because he just let me know that just because you lost doesn’t mean like this is [the end], this is just the beginning for you. I think he also, since that was on to bigger better things, I’m not really sure, but he just made sure, made sure to tell me that, you know, just because it didn’t work out for you in the show, like there’s, there’s a lot more meant for you.”

On not believing in cheat meals:

“So I mean, I see the benefit and I understand them. So when I did the whole bodybuilding thing, I did that whole diet, and of course, I did the cheat meal stuff, and I always felt like crap after the cheat meals. I didn’t look forward to them, I actually didn’t want to do them, because I felt like crap. And then once I realized and I dialed in on the weekends, I cut out the cheat meals. If I needed extra calories, I just ate more of the good stuff. It’s just annoying because, I don’t know. Of course, me and my husband, we feed off each other really well. I’ll have a bite of something and be fine.”

On being paired with The Creed Brothers:

“Well, in NXT we first started off as Diamond Mine. I was just starting my career, and I think they were starting theirs too. So they’re just putting a faction together, and they wanted to add a girl to it. And at the time in NXT, there wasn’t that many girls there. I can’t really remember who I was there, but I just fit the mold. It was like a fighting style, wrestling style type faction coming together. So it makes sense. I mean, there was a bunch of other people in that group at the time, but me and The Creeds have been together ever since. People have come and gone like crazy, and me and the boys have definitely been through a lot in the past couple of years. It’s a blessing that we got moved up together as well, because sometimes that doesn’t happen.”

On Jordynne Grace:

“She’s awesome. She wanted to come work out with me, and next thing you know, we did a workout, and then we just started doing a bunch of strong lifts. It’s just nuts. We did everything. She’s insanely strong.”

On learning from Chad Gable:

“Chad has been in this business for so, so long. When I first started with the company, I kind of started unlike anyone else. I started three months before COVID hit, and then I was in the COVID era as one of those people in the audience behind the hockey windows, or whatever. So I was one of those people always there cheering and whatever. And at the time, you know, he was Shorty G at the time. It was crazy to see his growth from there, because I’ve always admired him since then, because it’s crazy no matter what you give him, he kills it. So I think once you get to that level of whatever they throw at you, they know that you can kill it and run with it. It’s such an amazing skill to have that. I aspire to be that.”

On what’s next for her in WWE:

“You know, like I said, I had a really, kind of a rough start with NXT. Started and then three months in, everything shut down. The world shut down. Basically had to start over, because we couldn’t really train as much, because we kept getting shut down, or whatever. And so it was hard to kind of get my feet running because I couldn’t consistently train at the time. It was a horrible time to start.”

On her match with Rhea Ripley:

“We got moved up, and my first match on Raw was Rhea. Because sometimes when you get to main roster, it’s like, Who are you? Can you hang? It’s a whole different playing field. The crowds are bigger, the stars are bigger. So on main roster, it’s almost like, can you hang? I kind of felt like I was treading water a little bit. But once I got that Rhea match. I was like, I deserve to be here.”

On future dream matches:

“Absolutely Asuka, she’s incredible. Haven’t had Bianca one on one, Tennessee girl from Knoxville. I’ve had Rhea. I love Liv, I would love to have the singles with her. Stephanie was amazing. Loved working with Stephanie. Lash Legend and I have had amazing matches in NXT. She’s one of my favorite people to work with ever so Lash is definitely one of my I would love to work with her on main roster.”

What is Ivy Nile grateful for?

“My husband, my job and my health.”

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Mike Santana Wants To Be The Next TNA Champion, NXT Debut, Slammiversary, Shawn Michaels, Sobriety

in LATEST EPISODES on August 5, 2025 January 30, 2026

Mike Santana (@Santana_Proud) is a professional wrestler currently signed to TNA. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in New York City to discuss his TNA return and how quickly it came together, not winning the World Championship at Slammiversary and speaking to the fans after, his WWE debut in NXT, getting to work with Shawn Michaels, his ultimate dream match, battling addiction, how close he came to signing with WWE back in 2019 and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Taking responsibility means never blaming anyone else for anything you are being, doing, having, or feeling.” – Susan Jeffers

On returning to TNA:

“So I guess a little insider. The last time we spoke and did the show, I think I told you I was already in talks with people and stuff. So it came together pretty quickly. You know, everything happened so fast. We did the sit-down in early April, and three weeks later, I showed up at Rebellion. So everything happened super quick, and I knew it was a place that I wanted to be and where I needed to be.”

On no longer being a part of a tag team:

“We did great things. The fact that today people still talk about the things that we did and what we accomplished and stuff is a huge deal to me. I was talking with a few people, and they were like, ‘Do you get upset when people bring it up?’ And I’m like, why would I get upset? That’s part of my legacy, that’s part of my career. We did amazing things, and now I’m going to continue doing amazing things.”

Did you feel like things were getting stale as a tag team or were you hungry for more?

“I was hungry for more. Sometimes when you are part of a team, and we have spoken about this before, as you grow, and as you start to become different individuals, you start to develop different mindsets and different ways of thinking. I think that was the overall thing. I like to continue growing, I like to challenge myself. As I have said before, in this business, if you are not growing, you’re dying. So that’s what I needed to do.”

You could have stayed in AEW is what you are saying?

“I could have, yeah. I care and I love this too much to just, I don’t know, man. I just couldn’t sit on my ass. I could not do it. That was honestly, that whole situation, and that whole time period was a big contributor to my addiction issues too, because I was just so unhappy. I didn’t know how to communicate that very well, because I was angry. And like they say, you can’t react off of emotion, and that was the only way I was gonna react. So me not knowing how to communicate that is what made me, I guess, drown into myself.”

So you were looking for an escape?

“100%.”

What were you escaping from?

“Everything. Unhappiness, the pain I was dealing with losing my dad, the pain of being unhappy in my personal life, and there was just a lot of things going on at the time, everything was a contributing factor. But I’m thankful that I’m at a point now in my life where, you know, because I think I mentioned this before, I never did drugs and alcohol for fun. It wasn’t fun for me. I did it to escape. I did it to fill a void, and I’m thankful that I got to a point in my life where there’s no more running. I stopped running.”

Was it every day?

“Every day. Yeah, I hated what I was feeling, and it was just an endless thing.”

On asking for his release in AEW:

“Yeah, more than once.”

What was the response?

“It was always, ‘We’ll figure it out.’ At that time, I was like, I’m going to continue doing the Indies and doing what I got to do to continue building myself and staying busy. I made it very clear when I came back that I wasn’t going to come back into a situation that I was in before, and that got me to where I was. As an addict, I put my sobriety first before anything, so I’m not gonna go into a situation that is going to compromise that. So I was like, Listen, I gotta do what I gotta do for me.”

On the main event of Slammiversary:

“What a moment. Just that whole lead-up and just the day in general, it was special. It was special. I said it after we went off the air, I got on the mic a little bit, because the crowd was just like [unhappy]. I was like, there’s a riot rumbling in here, so let me calm them down a little bit. I told them that I wrestled in that building twice before in a throwaway match, like four or five minutes or whatever. And I was like, it’s crazy. I went from the throwaway to the main event. I went from undesirable to undeniable, and what a journey it’s been. It was like a like, one of those full circle moments of, if you believe in yourself, you make anything possible.

To have my family there and my daughter there, it was special. The way the city came out, and the way that crowd just reacted, and it was one of those things. I’ll be honest, I remember the fear that I felt when I finally got my release, and it was like, it’s over, right? Because you can hope and wish all you want, nothing is guaranteed. I had a plan for myself. I didn’t put a timetable on the plan. I was like, this is the plan. This is the plan that I’m gonna follow, whether it takes two years, five years, whatever it is, I gotta do what I gotta do. But I remember in the back of my head, I just prayed that I could continue giving my daughter the life that she has and making sure that she’s comfortable, and we don’t have to struggle. So there was a lot of that, right? It could work, it could not, but that fear is what made me say, I have to do it. Real quick story, my grandmother, God bless her, she had the opportunity back in like the early 90s, late 80s to buy a piece of property in the Lower East Side. And because of her situation, it was kind of unstable. She had a fear of not being able to afford it, and she had three kids to take care of, and all these things, so she ended up not buying it. That property today is worth like $4 million. I remember her telling me that story, and I was like, I will never allow fear to stop me from anything.”

On his first day out of rehab:

“It was the scariest thing in my life. Because in rehab, you’re protected. You have this routine. You’re protected, you’re in a safe place, everything is right there for you. When you leave, it’s on you now, the world is open, it’s up to you. I remember three days before leaving, I had an anxiety attack in my room by myself, and I was just like, Oh my God. What if I can’t do it? But again, the fear is what was like, I have to do it. Because I knew if I went back, it’s a wrap. I know, I’m very conscious of what that first drink will do to me. It’s a wrap after that. Ain’t no coming back.”

On envisioning winning the TNA World Championship:

“It looks like me presenting that belt to my daughter. Because, again, that’s a thank you. I know I’m very conscious of I show her so much love. But I want years from now, when she looks back on all this, and she shows her children, I want them to all understand how much love I had for them and how much she impacted me.”

On his Eddie Guerrero tribute entrance at TNA Sacrifice:

“It happened pretty quick, actually. I was down there the week before, doing a media tour, and the person who helps run the El Paso arena. We all went to the arena, we were looking around or whatever, and also shout out, Tessa Blanchard. She hit me up. She was like, ‘Yo, they got a low rider.’ And I was like, oh, that sounds interesting. So one day we go to the arena, we’re talking to the guy, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, we could do different things in here. There’s a big entrance here.’ And I was like, ‘Yo, let’s go with a low rider.’ He’s like, we can make anything happen. I was like, ‘Don’t tell me that.’ He’s like, ‘Yo, for real.’ And he gets on the phone right there in front of me. He’s like, ‘You have one? All right, send me pictures or whatever.’ And right there, instantly. I was like, I guess we’re doing this. And what a tribute too. Like you said, that city, so much wrestling history and Eddie carried that scene on his back, you know. So to be able to do that was very special, especially in the building that his family helped build, pretty much. So it was special.”

On hearing he would be on NXT:

“I think at first, I was just in that work mode. All right, it’s another day in the office, I’m thankful that I’m getting the opportunity in the trust to represent TNA and go over there and do something cool. And also, I know that they’re not just going to bring anybody. So this has to be something special. But all that didn’t really hit me till later. I was just looking at it. All right, another day at work, let’s get to work, you know? And then afterwards is when everything hit me. And I was just like, Wow. All right, we’re on to something good here.”

On getting to work with Shawn Michaels in NXT:

“Again, I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of people, and working with people that I grew up watching, I used to play with their action figures. So it was another one of those oh man, this is cool. Then after my first match, going to him and getting pointers at feedback, I was like, damn, this is Shawn Michaels giving me feedback and stuff like that, which was really cool. But again a lot of these moments are very special and cool. But I guess now also a big thing for me is I look at this as a business now. That’s another big difference from before to now. Before I was so lin the mindset of I’m living the dream, and I’m doing all this, and I’m doing all that. I made my dreams come true already, let’s get to work. So my mindset has shifted in that aspect.”

On his ultimate dream match:

“AJ Styles. Just especially being put in this position in TNA as being that new guy and the new face, and they call me The Standard and stuff like that. I think it’d be amazing. Of course, there’s other people that I love to work with over there, and I have a lot of people that I know and that I came up on the indies with over there. But to me, AJ is the guy.”

On how close him and Ortiz came to signing with WWE in 2019:

“So we did the first Jericho cruise. That was the first time that we met The Bucks and Cody and the whole Elite and stuff. So we got to work with the Bucks and had a great match, which probably will never see the light of day, but that was our first initial interaction with them and meeting them and getting to chat or whatever. The AEW thing wasn’t a thing yet. So we just continued doing our thing in TNA. And then Cody and I always stayed in touch. We exchanged numbers. We all stayed in touch or whatever. I remember we started hearing the rumblings of the AEW, and they could be starting a new promotion, and all this stuff. So it was a very interesting time. Then I remember being in the movie theater, I forgot what movie I was watching, I was with my daughter, and I got a text from Cody. You know you’re in the movie theater, and then a text comes in, you look down, and your eyesight is trying to adjust. So I look and I see Cody [has messaged me], I’m like, Oh, damn, what’s going on? Such a Cody text, by the way, I open my phone, and it goes, ‘It’s real. It’s happening. When is your contract up?’ So then we chatted a little bit and I gave him my word, and that was that. That to me, is everything. So that was a big component. Even when we were having the talks with WWE, I remember we were sitting in a parking lot in Puerto Rico, where we finally decided and we were going to tell WWE, hey, we’re gonna go do this other thing. The main thing that we said is, listen, we gave them our word.”

When was your contract up?

“August 2019.”

On WWE’s reaction:

“They understood, they respected it. They understood. A big thing with that was the schedule. We both had young kids at the time, and we wanted to be home. We were like, best case scenario, we go to WWE and things blow up, we’re never going to be home. I was like, I want to see my daughter grow up. Thankfully, things have changed, even now, the schedule is not what it was. But back then it was like we want to see our kids grow up, and also being a part of that legacy. They were like, Yo, you’re gonna be in the main event of the very first Dynamite. No matter what I do, my name is always gonna be there. So yeah, a big part of that was being a part of something fresh and new, and that the name was always gonna be there.”

On him and Ortiz wanting the best for each other:

“Absolutely. At the end of the day, he’s a dad, he has a family, and I want him to be able to continue supporting and taking care of his family, however that looks. I wish him well with whatever he does and whatever he is continuing to do and yeah, I don’t carry anything anymore. I don’t hold on to anything anymore. I have this thing where I remember in rehab, the group leaders would always say, like, Yo, when you get clean and you finally start living that life, you’re gonna start feeling this serenity, this freeness, and that’s how I feel every day, I don’t hold on to anything.”

What is Mike Santana grateful for?

“God, my family and that I have serenity.”

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Zelina Vega: Winning The US Title, Backlash In Puerto Rico, Playing AJ Lee In “Fighting With My Family”

in LATEST EPISODES on July 31, 2025 January 30, 2026

https://cvvtix.com – See you tomorrow at INSIGHT LIVE in NYC with special guest Sheamus!

Zelina Vega (@ZelinaVegaWWE) is a professional wrestler currently signed with WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Nashville, TN to discuss defeating Chelea Green to win the Women’s US Championship, wrestling Rhea Ripley in Puerto Rico, becoming friends with The Rock and being cast as AJ Lee in the Paige biopic “Fighting With My Family”, prank calling Dominik Mysterio, the 619 that broke Chelsea Green’s nose, being the first-ever Queen of the Ring winner, being mentored by Rey Mysterio and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Winners embrace hard work. They love the discipline of it, the trade-off they’re making to win. Losers, on the other hand, see it as punishment. And that’s the difference.” – Lou Holtz

On showing a more ruthless side:

“I feel like it has been wanting to come out for a while. Because I also feel like Zelina has been held down for quite a bit, especially being a babyface. When I was a heel, I got to say whatever I wanted. I was like, let me check before I start saying sh*t. But I’m like, she’s been held down as a babyface, especially when it comes to the mic, because you hear all the time, ‘Oh my God, Zelina was so much better as a heel…’ blah blah. It’s because I could say where the f*ck I wanted, and no one bat an eyelid. Just like, oh, that’s Zelina being Zelina. But as a babyface, it was like, Oh, you don’t want to sound like a heel. You don’t want to talk like that. You don’t want to be saying this. I’m like, okay, okay, that’s cool, but now I have a reason to be mad, and now I have a reason to talk the way I want to talk to whoever I want to talk to.”

On winning the Women’s US Championship:

“Well the day of, when it actually happened, I think I was just so in work mode that I wasn’t able to grasp what was happening. Then the second I grabbed my face, when I was walking up the ramp with it, that’s when it kind of hit me. And I was like, oh sh*t, this is real right now, like work stuff and things. And then it was like, oh sh*t, this is my first singles title, what the hell? It just so happened to be the same time that the commentators putting that over so yeah, I think that’s when it hit me and I was kind of blown away by it. I wasn’t expecting to get emotional, because I hate crying. I hate it, as much as you’re like, Oh, she’s gonna cry again. I hate crying. When it was coming out, it’s like, you kind of fight it a bit, but that moment and Backlash were the two that I just let it go.”

On how she felt walking up the ramp with the title:

“Shock? I think I even said, ‘Oh sh*t.’ I think I was so in shock, but it was also excitement and some weird form of fulfillment too. I felt like things had finally come full circle in that moment. Because I think even the fans were shocked, they weren’t expecting that either. You can kind of tell by any of the fan cams or any of the clips that I saw, especially this one clip, this guy was like, Yeah, all right, 1, 2, Oh my God. So it’s cool to see that, too. So I think we all kind of were in this moment of shock together.”

On Backlash in Puerto Rico:

“Also very unexpected, just because that match wasn’t supposed to be about me. It was supposed to be about Rhea, and it was supposed to be her first title defense, she’s gonna look like a monster. That was the plan. I understood it. Everyone understood that this is what was happening, until that night before. Then once I came out with Rey, everybody was all kind of like, Oh, hmm. Because that match was supposed to be a lot shorter than what it was. Very, very, very short. And I just remember, like, after the match with Rey and whatever, mind you, I felt like an eight-year-old again in my head, standing next to him. Every time I see him, I get giddy, because it’s just like, Oh, sh*t, that’s Rey.”

On the Backlash entrance:

Well, they didn’t know that, but I knew that. I was like I wanted to be a walking Puerto Rican flag. I’ve never gotten to wrestle in Puerto Rico. I never got to westle in front of that specific part of my family that lives out there. So I was like from the hair to the nails to the shoes to the outfit, I wanted everything. And yeah, it was just in my head. I had such a detailed vision. I needed Usama [Ishtay] to do my gear and the flag. I needed Kendra do my hair. I was very specific on who was working on what. Even when I think about it now, it feels like I don’t remember exactly how it went, but I do remember the feeling of it. I remember the lump in my throat, the hole in my chest, the sinking feeling in my stomach, and just not being able to breathe all the way because I was so nervous. So it’s those feelings I remember, or I remember crying. I remember punching Rhea in the face for no reason, and she just didn’t even react. She just, and I’ve said this before, but when she gets into beast mode, it’s just like her eyes are black, and she’s not there anymore. She’s not herself anymore. She is Rhea, this entity. So yeah, I just remember little things like that. I remember, obviously, the chancla moment with my mom. And I remember, I knew I had really bad aim, so I don’t know how I hit her. No clue at all. So it’s just certain things that I remember, but I also remember having the conversation with Rey prior, and he was like, ‘You’re always so high strung, breathe, calm down right before you go out there. Just take another deep breath and just feel it. I know you don’t like feeling but just be in it if you want to be happy, be happy. If you feel like being sad or angry or whatever Zelina is feeling in that moment, let it be amplified out there.’ I felt it. I feel like everybody felt it. It’s weird because to this day, that’s the only time I can recall Rhea ever getting booed. So it was really just how passionate those fans were, and I think as much as they loved her, they also felt how much it meant to me, which made them go, all right, yeah, we’re rocking with her.”

On the reactions Zelina Vega and Bad Bunny got:

“Yeah, like, physically shaking, actually shaking. I remember thinking he is like a god here, obviously, but that was to be expected. I knew that the second that I heard his entrance music hit, I was like, oh yeah, this is gonna be insane. But for me, for Damian, Carlito, it was such a beautiful love letter to Puerto Rico and all of its wrestlers. I think that’s really what it was. It was like a love letter to them by the fans.”

On prank calling Dominik Mysterio:

“So that one, okay, not that I like to compare myself to Nicki Minaj in this way. But also, when Nicki Minaj is talking, she always sounds like she’s really bored. You ever hear her talking like this? It’s very boring. But she’s bored, because she’s the queen, so most people can never understand what she goes through, but that’s how she talks. It’s a Queens thing, like she has a certain way of talking where she sounds bored. But like little personalities will start to come out. I think these little personalities are just in there somewhere, and they just pop out at random moments.”

On whether Dom knew:

“I don’t know what Dom knew, honestly. Even Rey was like, ‘Of course he stayed on the phone.’ So yeah, I don’t know. I think he was more confused than anything else, which is why he entertained it. But yeah, and the best thing was that I didn’t realize it was going to go as viral as it did. So work that next Monday was so weird, because everybody knew about it, like the writers knew about it, like TR knew about it, like everybody thought it was hysterical. And I’m like, Oh my God, I hope that they don’t make this a part of my gimmick now, because that would really suck. Because I can’t really do that on call. It just happens, I don’t know, like, especially Harold. His name’s Harold.”

On using the Code Red:

“So let’s just say when it comes to me being a smaller wrestler, especially as a smaller female wrestler, there’s not a whole lot of moves that I can do where it’s looking effective. I can’t really lift many people, so I was like, I need a move that I can do to anybody at any time, whatever. And I loved the code red. It was the code red and the basement rana, the spike rana, those are the two that I really, really loved that he [Amazing Red] did. He was like, ‘Okay, you can have them both, but you don’t have to do [what I do]’ He does his thing before he does it. He’s like, ‘You don’t have to do that, it’s mine, but it is now yours, we’re blood, you can absolutely do it.’ So yeah, and it started off as me kind of like waiting because I knew Alexa was doing it, and I was like, let me just start off with red eye, that’s what I did in NXT to Drew, to Aleister, Johnny. But yeah, that’s how that started.”

On winning Queen of the Ring:

“That’s where the weird Australian, British kind of accent started. So yeah, because Vince asked me, can you do an accent? I was like, I could do a really bad one. And he’s like, that’s even better. Do that! I’m like, All right, cool. So yeah, that’s how it started. I did talk to Booker T right before I won it and I was like, ‘Hey, are you cool with me doing an accent if I end up doing this?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, for sure.’ I was talking to him and Sharmell, he’s like, ‘Make sure you make it yours. But whatever feels natural to you, just amplify that.’ So it was cool to get to talk to them right before it happened, because for me, he’s my favorite. King Booker was my favorite.”

On thinking things in WWE might not happen:

“I wasn’t sure if it was gonna happen, but I knew I wasn’t willing to completely give up, even though I know I said it. It’s one of those things that you say deep down in your heart, there’s just something that no matter how much you hate it, you’re always gonna go back to it. I just remember when it came to there was an audition that I did and everything was going great with it, I got accepted for it. It was like we were doing the fittings, everything’s going great. Then they switched it last minute, let’s just say from a female villain to a male villain. So they had to go that route completely and I was so destroyed from that. Then at my tryout from WWE that month, they also said no. I remember just texting Dwayne, ‘I think I’m done with this, I can’t do this anymore, it’s just no after no after no, I just don’t see it happening.’ It was like eight tryouts with WWE. Every year I had a tryout and they said no until that point. So it was like they hadn’t seen me in my element, though. It was like, Okay, do a bunch of rolls, hit the ropes and do all this stuff, but they didn’t get to see me cutting a promo in front of the crowd, controlling a crowd, going and having a match in front of a crowd. And once they did, that’s when that changed.”

When WWE saw Zelina differently:

“When they saw me as AJ Lee.”

On how the Fighting With My Family Role came together:

“That was a Dwayne thing too. That same text, he was like, ‘Don’t do anything crazy. I’ve been working on something. Give me a few days.'”

On how her friendship with The Rock started:

“So I believe it was Raw when Rusev and Lana were doing with something with him in the ring. So it was in Brooklyn. That was also one of the days that I was doing tryout stuff, and I was talking to Kofi actually, right outside Gorilla, because they’re like extras could be right outside Gorilla or in catering. So I was talking to Kofi because I knew the next day I was gonna have a tryout. So I was like, how can I make this different? How can I make this stand out? So we’re having this conversation. Dwayne’s done doing his thing, and he comes back out, and he passes me, he looks at me, and he’s obviously looking down. So I just froze at first, but when someone like that is looking at you, the first thing you should do is just like, ‘Hi, I’m blah, blah, blah.’ And so I did, and he was like, ‘Oh, is that your real name?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ He’s like, ‘Thea, what?’ I was like ‘Thea Trinidad’, and he was like, ‘That’s a really cool name. Actually, my name is just Dwayne Johnson. It’s kind of boring.’ I’m like, Yeah, no sh*t. I mean, yes, dear Dwayne Johnson, yes, hmm, this is really awkward. Sorry. I didn’t know what to say, and he kind of just laughed. And then he kind of walked away, and then he turned back to me, and he went like this [motions to come here]. And I was like, Oh, sh*t, I think I’m in trouble. And then Kofi is like, ‘Just go talk to him.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know what to say. What am I saying?’ He’s like, ‘Just go there, because he’s gonna do this for a long time. Just go.’ So I went over, and he was like, ‘You look like you have something important to tell me.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, actually, yes, I do.’ But I had been waiting to tell him this for God knows how long, because I had seen him in other tryouts prior, but I never had the balls to just go up to him and say anything to him. So very short version of what I said was just, ‘You were my dad’s favorite wrestler. My dad passed away at 9/11 but I have all these amazing memories with him, going to MSG and sharing these memories with him because of you, because he loved you so much, and because we got to go to events and watch you together. I have all these amazing memories, and it’s because of you. So thank you.’ And he was like, ‘Holy sh*t, that’s not actually what I thought you were gonna say at all.’ He just hugged me and what was probably a two-second hug felt like a 20-second hug. It felt like nobody else was in the room with us. It was just us. And he was like, ‘Thank you so much for telling me that.’ And, yeah, we just became friends after that.”

On being cast as AJ Lee:

“So he knew for a while that I wanted to do acting, because I was doing acting before I started wrestling, because I thought that’s what you had to do. I loved any kind of backstage or vignettes or in-ring promos. I loved that. And he was like the godfather of it. So he knew that I wanted to do acting also. I remember one time he was like, ‘You sure you want to do wrestling? Because I just feel like acting is right there for you. You have the look…’ I’ve seen what you can do. I showed him reels and stuff. So he’s like, ‘You sure?’ And I’m like, ‘100% sure wrestling first and foremost, but I’d love to do acting at some point too.’ He was like, Okay. And then eventually he’s like, ‘I have the perfect blending of the worlds for you right now.’ I was like, okay, and mind you, so this came after I had already said I don’t want to do anything entertainment business anymore. I’m f*cking over it, blah, blah, blah. He’s like, ‘Give me a few days.’ So he calls me, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, I got this thing…’ The funny thing is, I don’t remember exactly how the conversation went, because I remember a sinking feeling the more he talks. I was like, Oh my God, I feel like something big is coming, and I don’t know what it is yet. ‘Then he’s like, so we’re doing this movie. It’s a documentary that they had on Paige’s life and her family. Basically, we’re doing the movie, but we’re continuing it, and kind of replaying this whole thing out with Paige and AJ Lee and how she won the championship and whatever, because I was the one who told her about it that day, and I need you to be my Divas Champion.’ And I was like, ‘What?!’ He’s like, ‘This is usually where people are like, super happy and say, “Thank you so much.”’ I’m like, ‘Wait, wait, I didn’t even hear what you’re saying correctly. Can you repeat what you just said? Because it sounds like you offered me a role just now, but I’m not 100% that’s what you said.’ And he’s like, ‘Yes. You know you don’t even have to audition for it. I already know that you can do it, you’re gonna be my Divas Champion.’ I was like, holy sh*t. So yeah. And then I remember just studying AJ’s voice to exhaustion, because I was like, I know I can’t wear the outfit that she obviously was iconic for.”

Why was that?

“Because it wasn’t just a movie for wrestling fans, they wanted it to be a movie that everybody can understand. Because you can’t really explain to you know, Bob at the bank that he knows this is the good guy, this is the bad guy, because they both look kind of alternative and kind of similar. So it’s like, wait, but who’s who? Then, you know, for them, they were just like, this one looks bad. She has the championship. She’s mean. This one looks this way, and she’s nice, and she’s blah, blah, blah. So they wanted to have a distinct different look. But you still get the idea of who I am, from the skipping, from the voice, which people thought I was doing a voiceover. I wasn’t. ‘For 295, days I have been your Divas Champion…’ It’s the way that she moves her face and the way that she kind of dips into a deeper tone sometimes. I had to study how she did that, and how she moved like this, and the little things.”

On the Eddie Guerrero tribute in her matches:

“So initially this was more of a Rey idea than it was mine. Because it was just for Backlash initially, it was just, ‘Can you do the Frog Splash?’ And I was like, ‘I’ve never actually physically tried it, and I’m afraid it’s gonna look more like a tadpole splash than a Frog Splash, so I don’t know if I should do it.’ And he was like, ‘Okay, well, you do the meteora anyway. If you do it, maybe you should just do the Eddie shimmy. Everyone’s gonna know what it is.’ And I was like, okay. Then after a while, it just became something I did, because it just felt natural to just do that. But yeah, it wasn’t necessarily an idea of mine. It came from Rey.”

What is Zelina Vega grateful for?

“My family, my cats and my job.”

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Bianca Belair: Injury Update, CRAZY Hair Whips, Naomi’s Heel Turn, WrestleMania Magic, Montez Ford

in LATEST EPISODES on July 29, 2025 January 30, 2026

https://cvvtix.com – Get your tickets for INSIGHT LIVE in NYC with VIP Meet & Greet!

Bianca Belair (@BiancaBelairWWE) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Los Angeles, CA to discuss her journey to WWE after being discovered by Mark Henry, becoming the EST of NXT and then WWE, the origin of the hair whip attack, her WrestleMania matches against Sasha Banks in 2021 and against Rhea Ripley and IYO SKY in 2025, the Scary Movie fight with Alexa Bliss, and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “What we fear most is usually what we most need to do.” – Tim Ferriss

On the fan reaction to the WrestleMania 41 triple threat:

“That makes me so happy to hear. So I’ve actually only watched the match back once, and it’s only because my husband forced me to watch it. A lot of times if I have a really good match and it goes well, and it goes great, I don’t want to watch it back because I know I’m going to pick it apart. So I was like, just give me a few days, let me just live in the moment and let me just be happy about it. I was like, I don’t want to watch, he’s like, ‘You have to watch it.’ So we were sitting at home, he put it on, and I watched it, and I enjoyed it. I didn’t pick it apart, but I’ll probably never watch it again, because it just takes way too much out of me, because I get nervous when I watch it again. I feel all the emotions again, By the end of watching, I just feel so exhausted. So I’m like, okay, one and done, and I’m happy with that.”

On when she felt like there was magic there:

“I just feel like I was just such in the moment. I do feel like it was the moment with me and Rhea, where we’re going back and forth with each other and all the emotions from the storyline that we had. I’m just like, hitting her and telling her I belong here, you don’t, I work harder than you. Then it’s like a moment in the match where my facial expressions, I’m just looking at her, and my hair is in my face, and that’s when I knew. I could just feel the emotions and us going back and forth. Then once we got to the finish, I was excited for that, because I was like we got them, we got the crowd, we got them.”

On her broken finger:

“It looks more like a real finger now. So I have to wear my ring finger on my right hand now because my ring doesn’t fit. It’s healed, it won’t fully straighten. I broke it in two or three different spots. I broke it up here in the middle and then down in the joint.”

On when the broken finger happened:

“So it was when we were doing the triple German spot, when IYO was on the top rope, and then it was Rhea, then it was me, and I came in German suplexed both of them off, and my hand got stuck underneath Rhea. Also I went to the wrong side of Rhea, but my hand, I thought she was gonna go further over me, we kind of just collapsed together. So when my hand went back, it got stuck under her, and she literally crashed on my hand. I knew immediately it was broken, because usually in a match, something happens, and you don’t feel it until after the match, your adrenaline wears off, and you’re like, Ow, my finger. But in the moment I thought I broke all my fingers. So the ref, you can see the ref if you watch back, the ref comes to me. He’s like, ‘Are you okay?’ I’m like, ‘I just broke all of my fingers!’ You just see me rolling around on the ground, and it took Rhea to snap me out of the moment, because I was just rolling around on the ground. And she’s like, ‘Bianca, Bianca!’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ Oh, we have to finish this match.”

How’d you finish it?

“Honestly, after she snapped me back into I didn’t feel it at all for the rest of the match. I didn’t feel it until I got to the back and I was like, Oh, I broke my finger, and I didn’t think it was that serious.”

On WrestleMania 37:

“Man, that was a crazy WrestleMania. For one it was like my rookie year. And not only am I at WrestleMania, I’m main eventing WrestleMania. It was a lot of pressure but Sasha took such good care of me. I felt so comfortable in the match with her. But that was a special one. We didn’t know we were main eventing until the day before. We kind of found out the same time as everybody else, when it was announced online. And then that day came, and it was rain. It was like a storm, and they had to postpone it. We didn’t even know if we were going to be able to have WrestleMania that day. And then I remember, before we went out, they were saying, ‘Well, if lightning strikes, you guys have to just stop in the middle of the match, and then we’ll bring you back, and then we’ll come back and you’ll finish the match.’ And we looked at each other, and we’re like, ‘No. I don’t know what to tell you, but we’re not stopping.’ There’s no way, there’s no way you can stop that magic and restart it. So thankfully it didn’t lightning, but it was raining, and it was the one match where I pressed Sasha and walked up the stairs, and I was so nervous about that, because I was scared I was going to slip and fall, but that match was magic, and people don’t even know that we had never touched before that match. We had never had a match together. We had never wrestled each other. Literally watching that match of like, bread and butter. Everything went perfectly.”

On originally wanting to be an Olympian:

“Yes, that was the goal. I grinded so much in high school, I was like, I wanted a scholarship. I want to go to college. I’m gonna be an Olympian, that was my dream. I would wake up every single morning in high school. I would do 1000 abs every single day, and 500 push-ups every single morning. So people thought I was lifting weights in high school, and it’s like, no, I’m just training. I was doing two days, I wanted to be an Olympic track athlete.”

On how things would have looked if Mark Henry didn’t get in contact:

“I don’t know. That’s what’s scary to me, and it’s crazy. I always tell I talk about to my mom about this. I had the thought of being a wrestler, right? And I just kind of threw it away. But I needed somebody else’s validation, or somebody else to push me towards it. But it scares me to think that, what if he didn’t? But I had that inkling. So sometimes that’s a lesson to listen to your gut, because sometimes you might not have that Mark here in your life. You have to be your own Mark Henry, so go for something, because you might miss out on an opportunity if you’re waiting for somebody else’s validation. Thank God I had a Mark Henry to see that in me and push me to this.”

On becoming The EST:

“So I was in NXT. I remember Mark Henry. He came down to the Performance Center and we were having a talk. It was before I knew what I wanted to be. He’s asking me all these questions that I didn’t really understand at the time. He’s like, ‘What do you want to be? What do you want to represent? What do you want your character to be?’ I’m like, I don’t know. He’s like, ‘Well, you need something that when somebody sees you, they know exactly who you are, what you’re about, before you even open your mouth to talk, before you even do anything. Everything has to make sense, from your gear to the way you present yourself, to your wrestling moves, everything has to make sense, and it has to be simple enough to make sense.’ So I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know, because I feel like I’m not just one thing. I’m a lot of things. I’m not just someone who does strong, powerful moves, I’m not just strong, but I’m the best at that. I’m the strongest, but I’m also this, and I’m also this.’ And he’s like, ‘You have to simplify it.’ I’m like, ‘How do I simplify this? I’m just the best at everything. I can’t just put myself in a box. I’m the strongest, I’m the fastest, I’m the roughest, I’m the toughest, I’m the quickest, I’m the greatest, I’m the best.’ Whoa, wait, all those things in an EST. Oh, so I’m the EST of everything. So it really all just came together in this one promo that I had on a coconut show. I was just kind of rambling, and it all just came together and it stuck. And so I just became the EST of NXT, now EST of WWE.”

On the hair braid becoming part of her character:

“So I was, again, I was trying to figure out, like, what do I want to look like? I want to have a unique look. And I was looking at all the girls that were there. They would wear their hair down. It was beautiful. I want to wear my hair down, I want to feel beautiful and I just loved how all the girls were, glamorous. But I wore a braid one time, and my husband, he was like, ‘That’s your thing. You have to stick with it.’ He’s like, ‘You have to keep the braid.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I feel like, sometimes I feel like I look better with the long hair.’ He’s like, ‘But everybody does that. The best way to stand out here is to do something that nobody else is doing. Look at what everybody else is doing, and if that works for them, go the complete opposite way. The first time somebody comes to a show, they might not remember your name for the first time, but they’ll remember the girl with the braid.’ And I was like, All right, I’m the girl with the braid.”

On the hair whip:

“Yeah, a lot of people think that production adds a special effect to it, no [there’s no sound effect]. And every time that I do it, it’s loud. I thought Sasha was the loudest. And then when I hit Becky, it surprises me. I’m like, Oh, that sounds like that hurt. Sorry. You know, every time it gets it gets louder and louder. [The welt it leaves is crazy]. So that’s why I don’t do it a lot too. For one, I don’t want the audience to get used to it too. I don’t want to just mark up people.”

On how to get the noise:

“It’s a special way that I braid it, and I can whip it in the air. This is my appearance one, it’s not braided. So when I braid a certain way, if I can hear the way that it goes in the wind, I can tell if it’s a hair whip braid. I’m like, Yep, that’s it. We’re good.”

On whether she gets nervous before a match:

“I actually get more nervous refereeing than wrestling. So when I was a special guest referee for the Rhea and IYO match, I would have rather done a WrestleMania main event than special guest referee.”

Why does that make you more nervous?

“Because I’m out of my element and it’s so many things that you don’t realize that referees do. So when they’re doing the championship introductions, and I have to stand in the middle and hold the title up, I’m usually the person that is on either side. So I’m like, Oh, we didn’t talk about this, how do I do this? Do I grab the title? Do I hold it? Who do I give it to? And then the referee is such an invisible part of the match, in a way, until it’s not when it matters the most. A referee can really mess up a match, if you don’t get the three count right, and if you’re in the way when they’re trying to do something in the corner, and I also was doing stuff in the match. I was a part of it, and I was just like I am stressed! I am so stressed. I do not want to mess this match up because it’s not my match. I’m not in the match, but I am in the match. You can mess up the finish.”

On being in the Elimination Chamber pod when Jade Cargill attacked Naomi:

“I just try to pull from just experiences that we had as Tag Team Champions, even with Naomi. Naomi and I, we were always friends before we were in a tag team. But when we got into a tag team, I feel like I just got so much more closer to her, I’ve learned so much from her inside and outside the ring. So it’s like in my heart, that’s my best friend. Then me and Jade, we were able to be a tag team, and we’re able to be Tag Team Champions, and put the put the division on the map, and do the things that we wanted to do. And just being in this position, I just try to see it as I’m literally watching my best friend get beat up. Then I just try to just hone into that and like this is awful. You have your two best friends fighting each other, and I’d really just try to, I don’t know, just tap into that and just pull the realism out of it.”

On the follow-up promo with Naomi:

“We have amazing chemistry. I can look at Naomi, it just felt so emotional. For one, when we were a tag team and us not being able to have that long run. When I was in NXT, Naomi was on the main roster, pitching for us to be a tag team from the very beginning, and that was something that was always wanted, and we finally got to have it and then it was, like, cut short. So that was emotional for me, too. And then, you know, just the realism in her promo and us being able to just hone in and click. Before we did that promo Hunter came up to us and he said, you guys are in there. This is just a conversation between you two. And just look at it that way. So I think for us, we wanted it to be something where everybody felt like they were listening to a conversation that they really weren’t supposed to be listening to. A lot of times you do promos and you’re kind of talking to the crowd, and you open up to the crowd. Never once, it was just me and her locked in. It really felt like you were watching a conversation and listening to a conversation you weren’t supposed to be listening to, and we were able to just lock in together and bring that emotion. A lot of it was real.”

On the Scary Movie fight sequence with Alexa Bliss:

“I still get tagged all the time. We were having our match, and at the time, her character, my character, it really resembled the two characters in Scary Movie. I forgot who figured it out it, I can’t remember exactly like, who came up with it, but it started out as a joke, and they were like, Wait, we could do this. We totally could do this. So we really didn’t even know if anybody would catch on to it. And right away, people caught on to it.”

On the Montez Ford frog splash:

“You know he’s scared of heights. He’s scared of heights. You ask him yourself, but every time he comes to the top rope, he’s scared. I always make fun of him, because he takes forever. Most people, they put their foot on the second rope, and then they go straight to the top. He goes, it’s like, right, left. He’s like, bottom, bottom, middle, middle, top, top, and then he’s up. I’m like, why are you taking so many steps? Just take one step and get up. He’s like, I’m scared. But yeah, I think his goal is to get out of the frame. He wants to be king of the Frog Splash. He wants the best Frog Splash in the business. Nobody can top him, he has the best frog splash.”

What is Bianca Belair grateful for?

“Family, health and my career.”

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