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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.”

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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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Sonya Deville: WWE Exit, Almost Shaving Her Head, Slapping Adam Pearce, Scary Home Invasion

in LATEST EPISODES on July 24, 2025 January 30, 2026

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

Daria Rae Berenato (@TheDariaRae) is a professional wrestler best known for her time in WWE as Sonya Deville. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss her WWE contract not being renewed, whether a return to wrestling is on the cards, the scary home invasion that occurred in 2020, her work as a WWE General Manager and slapping Adam Pearce, why she didn’t enjoy her SummerSlam match with Mandy Rose, being injured while reigning as Women’s Tag Team Champion, her upcoming acting roles and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “Maybe, it’s not too late, to learn how to love and forget how to hate.” – Ozzy Osbourne

On her WWE contract not being renewed:

“I’m not one to sit in things and sulk. It’s very hard for me to do that, I think, because I want to be doing stuff all the time. I have a high work ethic and work rate, and so there was no part of me that was going to sit home and cry about not getting my contract renewed. I have my family, I have my stepdaughters and my wife at home, I have so much I want to do. I have a legacy that I still want to leave. As much as I’m proud of the work I did in WWE, I very much feel like I’m just getting started in my footprint that I want to leave in this world. So I was excited. I was like, wow, now I get to go pursue those things, because I wouldn’t have left the safety net of the company. I had a steady paycheck coming in. I loved everybody there, I loved what I was doing, so I wouldn’t have left. But I think it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

On whether anything could have happened to lead to the contract being renewed:

“I can’t even comprehend thinking of it like that, because it’s so serendipitous and it happened so beautifully like that chapter closed, and now I’m doing all these things that I’ve wanted to do since I was 12 years old. So I can’t even look at it like that, my brain won’t let me, so maybe? I don’t know. I was training my ass off. I was always on point with my look and my character work. So I think it was just time. I will say transparently that I was feeling like I was in a rut for the past few years of my career there, I felt a little like I needed a change of pace, and I didn’t know what it was. I never would have left on my own merit, but I felt a little bit like I was in a loop, kind of in Purgatory, like I wanted an opportunity. I got the title with Chelsea finally, then the injury, got back from the injury, was finally getting my footing again in the ring after coming back from the ACL [tear], and then I got released. So it’s hard to look back and regret any of it, though, because I really feel like everything happens for a reason.”

On how long it took to process:

“To be completely honest, I probably haven’t processed it because, like you said, I was right on to the next [thing]. I didn’t sit and sulk or really feel it that much. I’ll have moments where I’m like, wow. Being a WWE superstar became my identity. I was Daria, the WWE superstar, in my personal life, to my family, to my friends, like that was my identity. Probably because I started when I was 21 it was who I was. So that like mindset took a minute to get rid of. Now, you know, when I talk to people and they’re like, What do you do? It’s so weird to not say I wrestle for WWE.”

On whether she has retired from wrestling:

“Definitely for now. Never say never. But right now I feel at peace with that. I’m not gonna lie, and I haven’t said this, but it almost is like an open wound, and if I think about wrestling somewhere else, it’s like I was so loyal to the company, it was my only home from 21 years old to 31. I’m a ride or die type of person in general. So it’s weird to even think about doing that, but not there.”

On acting dreams:

“My first dream was to be an actress. I was 12 years old. My mom found an acting school like 45 minutes from our house, and she would take me every Tuesday and Thursday night for three hours. It was in this woman’s basement, which sounds really creepy, but my mom would sit outside and wait for me and take me home because I wasn’t obviously old enough to drive, and I was obsessed. My dad took me to Vegas for this acting convention where I was doing monologs on stage, that was always what I wanted to do. Then I fell in love with MMA as well, and so when I was 19, I moved to LA and I was like, Oh I can pursue my acting career here, and I can fight MMA here. So that’s what I was doing when WWE found me.”

On possibly returning to MMA:

“I can’t say no, because it has such a spot in my heart, but I will say acting feels more true to what I want in this very moment.”

“I do think Bare Knuckle is badass. So yeah, I can’t say never. I have a really great relationship with Invicta and Shannon Knapp, the owner of Invicta, which is the only long standing all female MMA promotion. So I’ve been doing a lot of fun stuff with them. I will say being around the girls and being like in that atmosphere again gives me some crazy nostalgia. [Are you training again?] I will be training while I’m out here. I will say that, yeah, I am training. The only time I trained MMA in New Jersey was when I first started when I was 15.”

On the scary home break in:

“Well, it’s funny because me and Mandy [Rose] are sitting on the front lawn being interviewed by the police. Then once we were done, they were like, ‘Why don’t you take some stuff that you need and go find somewhere else to stay, because it’s a crime scene now.’ It was insane. So I’m like, okay. So me and Mandy went in, and I packed a bag, and then we talked to WWE, and they were great. They were like, we’ll book you a hotel. I was like, I want to sleep in my bed. I was under the impression that I would be right back in that house. Then nightfall came, and we ran back there for something and I couldn’t even open the front door. It took me by surprise, because earlier that day when my adrenaline was high and I was still probably in fight or flight mode, I was under the impression I would go right back to my house as soon as the caution tape was down. Then yeah, nightfall came and I couldn’t even go in my front door. It was too close to home.”

On the situation potentially being much worse:

“I’m the luckiest person on the planet. I tell people all the time, and when I retell the story, people often have the opinion of, ‘Wow, you got really lucky.’ Because if one thing went differently, me, or Mandy, or both of us would not be here right now.”

On his motivation:

“His whole thing was he wanted to be my boyfriend, I guess. And he was mad that I wasn’t into his gender as a whole, and so he had no shot, and he was angry about.”

Had he contacted you before?

“So essentially, my ex-girlfriend at the time had gotten some creepy messages from a fan, and she was able to see her messages because she wasn’t getting a ton of fan messages. He was deep in my request folder. I’d never seen his messages to me, which he had been sending for three, four years. But she saw a message, and she was like, ‘Hey, Daria, this is concerning.’ He has my address. He had her address, her mother’s house, and he had sent the address and said, ‘I know where you live. I’m coming to get Daria, and I’m gonna kill you.’ So I saw that, I actually sent it over to WWE, and was like, ‘Hey, this is concerning.’ I guess they tried to trace it back, and nothing came of it. So we all kind of thought nothing of it. This is another scary fan. And then two months later, he was in my living room.”

On the night of the break in:

“So I had responded back to him on my ex’s account, saying, ‘You have the wrong address, idiot.’ Because I was so scared that this guy was going to show up at her house and try to hurt her. But by doing that, I let him know that he had the wrong address. So when he broke in two months later, it was to my address, and Mandy slept over that night. We were filming in Tampa or Orlando at the time, it is during the pandemic. So Mandy slept over and we went out to dinner, we went to Ocean Prime, we had a great night. We come back to my house and we’re watching Bates Motel on the couch, which was not the greatest show to be watching right before that, but we’re just hanging and Mandy fell asleep on the couch. It was like 1 am or something like that, and I was dozing off on the couch. I was about to just let us both sleep on the couch, because it was a very comfy couch, and we were so tired. I was like, no, let me wake Mandy up and tell her to go to the guest bedroom. I went to my bedroom. Thank God. I grab my phone, as I’m falling asleep, I turn on the alarm system from my phone. I throw my phone on the bed, and it was pitch black. 2:43 am I think it was, I hear my alarm system going off, and I’m like, What the f*ck now? My room’s pitch black. My phone is somewhere in the bed and I can’t find it. I’m freaking out. So I get up and I run to the alarm panel on the wall outside of my room, and it says, living room door open. So my immediate thought was, Mandy must have went outside. She must have not thought I set the alarm. Maybe her boyfriend called or something, and she ran outside. So I run into her room, and she’s f*cking dead asleep, and I’m like, Okay, well, if Mandy’s not outside, and it says, living room door open, what the f*ck is going on?

So I started screaming. I’m like, ‘Mandy, get up!’ She’s like, coming to and she’s like, ‘What?’ I’m like, ‘Stay there!’ So I leave her there because it’s the back of the house, and I run to the living room by myself. I turn on all the lights, and my blinds are drawn over the two sliding glass doors, so I don’t know which one’s open. There’s two different doors. They’re kind of perpendicular. So I’m like, f*ck. Well, let me check the one that I always use, that’s probably the one that’s open. So I go to the small one, and I peel back the curtain, and the door shut, but I’m just checking the lock. It’s locked. Sorry I missed a part. When I’m going to check the lock, I look up and the man is standing right at the door, as close as you are to me right now. So he has a black mask on, a black backpack, all black clothes. I’m looking at him, and I scream. ‘What the f*ck do you want?’ At first you’re thinking did a neighbor lose its dog? Then I see the mask, and I’m like, something’s off. Then he advances towards the door, and if it was a burglar, it was a robbery, alarms going off, the homeowners there, you would run, right? You don’t want to get caught. I’m like, Well, it can’t be a robbery. So as soon as he advances, I run to grab Mandy to tell her ‘Holy sh*t, there’s someone in the house.’ We run out the garage door next to Mandy’s bedroom and take off in her car that was parked behind my car.”

Did you call the police?

“The ADT system called the cops automatically, but we also did call the cops, they were there within like three minutes. So we circled around the neighborhood, and then we saw the cop cars come, but they came in lights off, sirens off, quiet. Now, I don’t know where this guy is at the time. The whole time I’m running to Mandy’s room and out the garage door, I’m waiting to get hit over the back of the head with a bat or something, I don’t know what’s happening. Well, what actually happened was when I ran he already had the other door open, but he had a little blind spot when he had to cross through the curtain. So he thought I ran up the staircase, but I ran behind the staircase to Mandy’s room and out the garage. So when the cops got there two minutes later, he was waiting at the bottom of staircase with a knife in one hand, pepper spray in the other hand, looking up, and they f*cking tackled him and got him out. So when they asked him, ‘Why were you waiting at the bottom of the staircase?’ His response was, ‘I thought she went up there, and I know she has MMA training, and I didn’t want to get my ass kicked, so I was gonna wait till she came down and pepper spray her.’ So like this whole thing’s unfolding, I’m still not understanding what’s happening. So the cops come up to me, and they’re like, ‘What do you do? Who are you?’ Because they didn’t know anything about wrestling. It’s like, ‘Oh, I wrestle.’ [They ask] ‘Do you know this guy? He’s saying he knows you.’ And I’m like, No. [They say] ‘Well, he says he messages you on Instagram.’ So they’re having me look up his name, and then I find his messages, and it’s like four years worth of obviously unresponded to scary DMs, all the way to the extent the last message was that night when he was on my patio and it said, ‘I’m here, baby girl, I’m finally here. Look outside.’ While me and Mandy are watching Bates Motel He said, Look outside, baby. He’s watching us through the blinds. So, you can’t really see out, but you can see in kind of gimmick, he’s watching us through the blinds watching TV.

If one thing happened differently, like, had we slept on the couch? He had the door open, the doors right behind the couch. We would have both been maced before we could even wake up. Had I not set my alarm that night because I was being lazy and just went to sleep, which I’ve done many nights, we would be dead. Like one different move in any scenario, we wouldn’t have made it.”

On escaping serious harm:

“I’m very grateful. I’m very lucky, and I think about it all the time. I often feel bad for victims of stalking that don’t have that ending, because some people, stalking is a serious issue in the United States, specifically, where these women specifically are hounded and stalked by these people for years, but if they don’t cross a certain legal threshold, you can’t get them detained. So they’re leaving stuff in their mailbox, they’re showing up at their front door. You’ve heard the stories even with other women wrestlers, but you can’t do anything about it unless, I know it’s weird to say, but like him breaking into my home and actually attempting something allowed me to put him in prison for 15 years.”

On her new podcast:

“So it’s just supposed to be a modern lifestyle, relatable podcast, but with two women. So the irony is, we aren’t so traditional, but at the same time, we are so normal. So we talk about parenting, we talk about our chickens and our ducks and our homesteading. We talk about relationships and love and marriage and sex and all the things that people, I think, have been wondering about me for years, because I think I’m still a bit of like a phenomenon to some people, like, Oh, she’s in this lesbian relationship, especially in the wrestling world, it’s not that prevalent. So we’re answering a lot of the questions people have been asking for years.”

Did you think it was a big deal when you were on Tough Enough and you were openly gay?

“No, I was scared at first, because I was like, Oh, are they going to want a lesbian in the WWE? I was so naive at the time and young, and I just didn’t know what it meant when they asked me the question on Tough Enough, ‘Are you in a relationship?’ I was kind of sh*tting bricks, because I was like, Is there a wrong answer here? I wasn’t comfortable with myself at that point, so I didn’t know if it was gonna tarnish my chances. But then it became just this thing that was a big deal to a lot of people, and it didn’t feel like a big deal to me. I was like, oh, okay, it’s cool. I’m getting all these amazing messages, and people feel seen, and I’m now becoming, unintentionally this safe spot for other wrestlers or other younger people watching me. But it was a very unintentional path. It was kind of just me starting to become confident with myself, but it happened to be in front of live cameras.”

On being known as a former MMA fighter when she debuted in WWE:

“Yeah, it very much was so and because it was the natural fit, right? The notion behind my hiring was kind of explained to me that we’re legitimizing the women’s division, and with that, we want athletes and fighters. And so I was kind of the first female MMA fighter to be brought on. So I was like, Oh, I just gotta be me, and that’s what I did in NXT. Then when I got to the main roster, and kind of felt like I had done it, and it was time for a change. So I slowly started getting in touch with a different side of myself and kind of creating the Sonya Deville character that you came to see. But really it was funny, because when I got hired, I was this ass kicker, right? There was no need to give me a mic, because I was just there to kick ass. And then I started asking for promos, because I knew I had taken acting classes, and that side of it was actually where I was more comfortable. So I was like, I want to do that. I want to be a character. And so Vince finally gave me the opportunity during the pandemic era in the Mandy storyline, and I was able to cut some lengthy promos. And that was kind of when Vince gave me the nod of approval and was like, Oh, she could talk.”

On the head-shaving storyline with Mandy Rose:

“Bruce Pritchard pitched it to me, and he’s like, we’re gonna do hair versus hair. You and Mandy, you’re gonna shave your head. You’re gonna turn into this GI Jane character, and you’re gonna just plow through the division.”

How did you feel about shaving your head?

“I was scared. I just didn’t want to be ugly. I was like, I don’t know what I’m gonna look like with no hair. This is before AI was that big, but I was using this editing software to edit a bald head on myself, and it was all very traumatizing, but I was down. I told him, yes, let’s go. Let’s do it.”

On neither Mandy nor Sonya liking their SummerSlam match:

“Yeah, it’s not my favorite match. It pisses me off still, because it’s my favorite storyline I’ve ever been a part of, and I think it’s some of the best work I’ve ever done with promo and character work and even the whole lead-up. But yeah, we were a f*cking mess. Not to make excuses, but the attempted kidnapping happened two nights before SummerSlam. Vince wanted to scrap the match on our behalf. I told him absolutely not, we worked this hard, and this motherf*cker is not gonna ruin our moment. So we scrapped the hair versus hair because I had to go to court and testify the next day and I was like, I’m probably not in the right frame of mind to be bald right now during all this, there was too much to process. He agreed. And he was like, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ And I was like, I don’t know. I got to think of something equally as high-stakes, another stipulation. So I came up with the loser leaves town. So we get to work that day, and the producers come up to us, and they’re like, ‘Okay, it’s now a loser leaves town match, but Daria is going to go over.’ And it’s weird, because the producer and Mandy felt like that wasn’t the right move, because Mandy was supposed to be the babyface coming out of this. I was obviously the heel, and I had been kind of kicking her ass the whole angle, so I agreed with them. So I actually went to Vince and Bruce and got the ending changed. I said, ‘Sir, I think Mandy should win, because I have a way to get me back from a loser leaves much better than we could get Mandy back. Why don’t I come back as like a schizophrenic the next week? And you’re trying to tell me that I don’t work here anymore, and I lost, but I’m under the impression that I’m somebody else, and we go with this whole angle.’ Vince’s exact words were, ‘I f*cking love it! God damn it. You can be hanging from my chandelier in the office, swinging around.’ And I was like, Okay!

I didn’t see it like that. I didn’t see me hanging from your chandelier, but sure, and so we were on the same page. It was all good. Mandy was gonna get her comeuppance. I was gonna get an amazing character arc out of it, and all was gonna be well. And then the loser leaves happens, and I’m not needed for TVs, like, one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, a month, two months, like, all this time’s going by, and I’m texting Bruce from texting Vince. I’m like, ‘Hey guys, what’s the deal? I thought I was coming back right after. It’s the only reason I agreed to lose was because we had this cool angle to come back and bring me back.’ They were like, ‘Oh, just, just stay tight. Hang tight.’ Then all of a sudden, finally, Bruce says, ‘You know, after a second thought, when we do a loser leaves, we have to honor the stipulation, so you have to stay gone for a while.’ I was like, ‘Oh, why didn’t you tell me that when we discussed this? I would have much rather have won.’ I don’t have many regrets in life, but booking myself to lose that match is probably my only one. And it was like a running joke when I came back in the writers’ room with, like, the head writers, they kind of busted my chops and were like, ‘Remember that time you booked yourself to lose a match that when we were trying to push you?’ And I was like, so much you don’t know behind the scenes, because you’re not having these conversations like, ‘Hey, when you win this one, we’re going to push you, and we want Mandy to go in a different direction. You’re going to go in a different direction.’ So it wasn’t that transparent. So I didn’t really know what I was doing to myself at the time. So I ended up sitting home for five months. Then I come back, I go into Vince’s office, I’m like, ‘Hey, sir, what are we doing? Like, what do we do now?’ He’s like, ‘What do you want to do?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know. I have these really cool suits in my hotel room, and I think it’d be cool to have a boss vibe to me.’ He kind of looked at me and was like, ‘Where are the suits?’ And I was like, they’re my hotel room. He’s like, send a runner to go get them. I was like, Okay, what the f*ck is going on? He didn’t tell me anything. He’s like, ‘You’re gonna walk down the hallway in a suit and superstars lined on both sides, and they’re gonna be clapping for you.’ And he just walked down. And I’m like, and then what? ‘That’s it.’ Okay? So I put my suit on, getting hair and makeup, and if you go watch it back, my return was I walked down the hallway in a suit with superstars lined on both sides, and then that slowly evolved into the GM character with Pearce.”

On working with Adam Pearce:

“I had so many crazy pitches for that character. Vince would always say, we’re not booking Adam Pearce vs. Sonya Deville at WrestleMania. Because I always wanted to push the limit with Adam, but there was no payoff for him. He couldn’t get a comeback, so we couldn’t go too far with it, but I did get to slap him that one time. He’s tough. He was, like, lay it in. I was like, Okay, careful what you asked for.”

On not revisiting her partnership with Chelsea Green:

“They just didn’t want to go back to it. They didn’t want to go back to it. I had pitched that it would be a natural angle to go after Piper and be like, What the hell? Bitch, that’s my f*cking championship! Very natural angle. But they had this idea for this faction, and so that was where we were gonna go. I will say, while I was out, I did pitch coming back in my MMA gimmick, like a modified version, but I did pitch going back to my roots, and I think Triple H had the same kind of idea. He was like, Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Let’s do this group. When he told me the group, I was like, Okay, interesting. I didn’t know how the three of us were going to blend together, me, Zoe and Shayna, in PFC. So I was open minded to it, and of course, whatever he wants. I saw myself more as the mouthpiece in that scenario and I was like, okay, but we couldn’t get our footing. And then we were given the name Pure Fusion Collective, and I thought that was terrible. I don’t think it was ever going to be the thing, but we tried to make it work.”

On an upcoming film:

“So I’m doing a holiday film. You might see a fellow WWE legend in his own right, Mick Foley in there. So yeah, Mick Foley and Sonya Deville in a holiday film together. Who would have thought? So I don’t know if it’ll get out before this Christmas. Actually, I don’t know, but we just filmed it. I was just in Nashville filming it, really, really fun. It’s called Heartbreak, there’s some really funny, if you know, you know things in there that I think wrestling fans will like.”

What is Sonya Deville grateful for?

“The health of me and my family, the ability to spend these moments with my family, and the ability to pursue my dreams.”

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D-Von Dudley: “Get The Tables”, Dudley Boyz Reunion, One More Match, TLC Matches, Hardys

in LATEST EPISODES on July 22, 2025 January 30, 2026

D-Von Dudley (@TestifyDVon) is a professional wrestler and WWE Hall of Famer. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Orlando, FL to discuss The Dudleys reuniting at Impact 1,000 and why a reunion looked to be out of the question at one point in time, losing 85 pounds with the help of Diamond Dallas Page and DDPY, being open to one more match with the Hardys, his time in WWE as a producer, The Usos using the 3D as their finisher, the creation of “D-Von, get the tables!” and “Testify!”, his scariest moment in ECW, the success of his YouTube channel, saving Maven from disaster and more!

Subscribe to D-Von’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@d-vondudley

On how much weight he has lost:

“I would say about 80 something pounds. Yeah, I was almost 300 pounds, and basically what happened was I had an issue, even after the back surgery, where everything was tight, I could barely walk. I was walking with a limp, like some of the old timers used to see, who never really took care of their bodies, and they paid for it in the end. It got to the point where I couldn’t even go out with the family without hanging onto something. Then someone told me, maybe you should try to call Dallas. Look at what Dallas did for so many people, and he basically helped out Scott Hall, Jake Roberts, so many people. Butterbean was the last one that I saw before I called him. I said, You know what? Let me call him. I called him and I said, ‘Dallas, I’m in trouble. The back surgery was supposed to make me walk straight, make me do things, and it’s not doing it.’ He was like, ‘D-Von, I’m going to send you something. I’m going to send you the DDP Yoga. I want you to do it, but I want you to watch it.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, what am I watching?’ He said, ‘There are two documentaries on food, and I want you to watch it.’ And I watched it and realized just how bad food is nowadays, how we think what we’re doing is healthy, but it’s not, even when we call ourselves being on a diet. Some of the foods, because of the HMO that’s inside the foods. When I started watching the documentary, I said, Man, all this stuff leading to cancer, elderly dementia, all of that stuff. I didn’t realize it how much even stuff as simple as corn, because corn is not when you eat the corn, and I hate to say this, it sounds disgusting, but you ever eat corn and poop and it’s still in a solid state. Same coming out. It’s like, it’s not real. So you think it’s healthy to eat that, and it’s not. I cut out so much stuff, wheat, dairy products, fried foods. I don’t eat it no more, and I don’t go out to fast food restaurants anymore, because the meat is not real meat. So everything has to be organic or grass-fed. And I enjoy it. It’s hard, because not everywhere is going to have that. So sometimes you do have to sacrifice and get a burger with nothing on it. Even though you know that meat’s not good, you still got to do something.”

On his kids:

“Everybody knows about the twins, Terence and Terrell, who are doing extremely well. They’re in Booker’s division now. They’re working with Booker now at Reality of Wrestling. They’re doing very good there. I have my son Matthew. So the twins are 30. My son Matthew is 23, my other son, Preston, he’s 17, going on 18. And then I have the three younger ones. I have Taliyah, who’s 6, about to be 7. I have Amaya, who’s 6, and my 17-month-old son. As far as I’m concerned, if I was 10 years younger, I’d have nine more kids. I just love kids. I love the stages. People go, oh my god, I can’t handle this stage. I love that stage. So it doesn’t bother me at all when I had seven. Now I understand, four are already grown and out of the house, so all I have left is three. So when you hear the word seven, it’s not like I have seven at one time, or what have you. It’s just that I spread it out, which was great for me.”

On why a Dudley Boys reunion looked unlikely at one point in time:

“No, it wasn’t my health. It was two reasons. Number one, it was the back surgery and that I didn’t know if I could, because the back surgery was supposed to make things so much better, and the rehab helped, but it didn’t help as much as I thought it was going to help.”

What kind of back surgery was it?

“They had fuse L4 and L5, and S1 when they fused L4 and L5 they cut open some more, and they saw S1 was collapsing. So they didn’t even tell me they were doing three. They saw it collapsing, so they fixed it.”

On how effective the procedure was:

“It made the pain running down the leg better. The hamstrings weren’t pulling as much, but the awkwardness of walking and doing things was very [painful]. For instance, you know I can swim. I got in the pool, and this was maybe four or five months after the back surgery, and I couldn’t move my legs. Couldn’t do it. It was so hard. It was like somebody had an anvil on my legs and was holding me down. And it was only until about maybe four months ago, after doing DDPY for almost two years, that I was able to get in the pool and start moving my legs where I could swim. It was very hard at one point. So that was a factor. That was a major factor. The stroke really wasn’t a factor like everybody thought it was going to be, because that was stress-related.

I was so stressed when I was a producer in WWE because, number one, I wasn’t ready to become a producer. I didn’t want the producer’s job. And I remember when the final night, when they said farewell to the Dudleys, Triple H pulled me aside, and he says, ‘Listen, we want to bring you in as a producer. Would you like that?’ And I looked at him, and I said, ‘Well, Hunter, thank you, but I’m not really ready to be a producer. I still have more to take.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, but the old man, he wants both of you…’ and this and that. I said, ‘Okay, I get that, but at the same token, I’m not ready.’ I said, ‘Let me ask you a question. What happens if I say no, I don’t want to be a producer?’ And he says, ‘Well, we gotta let you go, D-Von.’ And I went, damn. And at the time, I was going through a divorce, my second marriage. I was going through a divorce, and there was a lot of stuff that was going on during that time, and I did not want to have to go to Japan and make a living and fly all over the place, so I just said, okay, and I took the producer’s job. It worked for about a good year and a half or so. In other words, I didn’t really care for it. Let me retract that statement. I didn’t care for it at all. I didn’t want to do it, but it held everything together, and I’m still getting a paycheck. I got benefits, I have insurance. I got everything. A 401K now. I’ve got everything.”

On whether he would consider a return to producing:

“I would do it again. I’ve never worked with Triple H in that part of the business, but yes, I would come back as a producer and I would do it again. I spent seven good years as a producer in WWE, had a great time, and great moments. But there was always that urge to get back into the ring and to do something one more time. I don’t want to be in the ring at 60 years old or 70, but I just wanted that one send off, something that would put the final nail in the coffin and say okay, I did this. I’m complete, now it’s time to just enjoy retirement. So again, to go back to the original question, the health wasn’t a concern so much. It was more of what I wanted, because I got comfortable in that producer’s role. I got comfortable with not taking bumps, getting paid without having to be in the ring, and that was just a rewarding feeling.”

On the Impact 1000 reunion:

“Well, Bubba called me as usual. ‘D-Von, let me ask you a question, could you go again? And of course, my ego, ‘Yeah, of course I can. I can do it, not a problem.’ And when he said it I said, ‘But why are you asking?’ He says, ‘Well, TNA is doing a 1000 episode, and we were thinking about maybe doing one more match for the Dudleys.’ I said, I could do it, it’s not a problem. But I’m going to tell you right now, I don’t want to do the wazzup, I don’t want to go up on the top rope and jump off the top rope into some guy’s crotch. Either you do it or we’re going to find another way of doing it. [He goes] ‘Can you go on the second rope?’ I go ‘No, Bubba I can’t go on the second rope. I’m not doing it.’ And of course, you know, when you watch the match, I did it anyway. I remember when I did that I went Oh, I ain’t doing that no more.”

How did he convince you to do it?

“It was more of him saying and asking, and then the adrenaline at the time, it was like my ego got in the way. And I was like, Okay, I’ll do it. Yeah, I can do it. I remember looking down at my family, and I went sorry before jumping. [Do you regret doing it?] No, I don’t regret it. Because, I mean, again, nothing happened. If I would have got hurt, then yes. Is there moments where I feel like if I get back in the ring, I’m gonna get hurt? No, I don’t. I have the wrestling school in Winter Park Florida, which is doing extremely well. And the great thing about that is that I roll around with some of the guys sometimes in the ring, so every once in a while, I take bumps, and I feel good when I’m in there. So there’s no hesitation in how I think or feel about what I do in that ring now. But at 50 years old, I don’t want to go in here and do it, like I said, until I’m 70 and 80. That’s not going to happen. If we were to do one more match, it would be the last one, and that would be it. There is no one more can you come back one more time? No, because, and I tell this to everybody when they ask, I go every time I do one more time, that one more time is over. Let a year go by. Hey, you guys look great. You can go another match. No, we can’t, stop.”

On how many more matches he has left:

“I would say, if I was to do one, it would be one. I would say one more.”

Would it have to be in WWE?

“I don’t think the powers that be would let that happen. Because the way WWE is now, they go through so much to get somebody to a point where you have to prove that you’re healthy. I mean, there’s guys that have a cracked rib, and they gotta go through hell and back to try to get the okay to be able to come back. Would it be WWE? I would do it definitely for WWE. WWE is my home. It always has been, just like ECW, those two companies have been my life. No other company would come before that.”

On the opponents being The Hardys or Edge and Christian:

“If I was to do anything in the ring again, it would have to be with Matt and Jeff. I would say Edge and Christian too, but they’re in the other organization, AEW, and I don’t think that would ever happen. When the opportunity came, when Edge left WWE and went to AEW you had Christian and Edge there, and then the Hardys were there, and it was like we were wondering why Tony, who is a huge fan of the business and always has been, why wouldn’t he take the opportunity to be the one to put those three teams together and to do that? But he never did. So I think that opportunity is lost. But you know, if I was to come back and do something, it would have to be with the Hardys, and those are the only two I trust, even though I think Jeff is out of his damn mind. But those are the only two I would trust for my body on the line, and go in there one more time.”

On the Swanton Bomb being the most painful finisher he took:

“Jeff, and you know it to be true. Oh God. You know sometimes Jeff can overshoot it a little bit where his back, his upper back, and his neck and stuff lands on you, which takes a lot out of you. But the man, when he gets his whole back and his ass and it just comes down on you, good night. You’re either sh*tting on yourself, farting or passing out.”

On ‘D-Von, get the tables!’

“Because it was my mess up. It happened, and I don’t know why Bubba always is like, every time I tell a story, he’s like, really? I’m like, Yes, I remember. We were somewhere at Raw and I had forgotten in the match to get the table. And he goes, ‘D-Von, get the table.’ I was like, oh sh*t, and I ran outside and got the table. I had, you know, a little bit of those moments where I would forget certain things. I had so many things going on in my mind, not to mention just a match. But just everything in WWE, and he would say it again. ‘D-Von, go get the tables.’ Alright, I got it.

So then the next few times he was saying it over and over again, I was getting mad. And I was like, ‘Okay, the first couple of times I get it, but now you’re overdoing it. I’m not a kid, I’m not a baby, I can remember things, so don’t tell me to get the tables.’ So we got in the back, and he goes, ‘Why’d you get so mad?’ I said, ‘Because I understood get the tables when we talked about it in the back at what part of the match I should do it in. So stop telling me to get the tables.’ He was like, ‘Alright, fine. Just know that I’m telling you not to get on you, but I’m telling you to just so you don’t forget.’ I was like, ‘I don’t forget, I’m fine! Stop!’ And he basically said, Okay. And then the next night, what happened? I forgot. I go, okay, okay, I got it. And then some nights after that, Bubba started listening, and I guess it was picking up on the cameras that he was saying, ‘D-Von, get the table.’ And he goes, ‘D-Von, I think we got something here.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He goes, ‘I’m going to try something out, and I want to see if it works.’ And we did something to where we did the What’s up spot. And then all of a sudden he went, ‘D-Von, get the tables! Then it was like, people would pop the crowd. He was like, ‘I think we got something.’ I was like, ‘I think you’re right.’ And it started from there. It was all because of a mistake that I forgot to get the tables.”

On The Usos using the 3D:

“The Usos wanted to do the 3D. I was producing one of their matches, and they had asked me about it, and I was like, ‘Well, you want to do it tonight?’ They were like, ‘No, not tonight, but we want to know if we can go forward doing it?’ I was like, ‘Hell, me and Bubba don’t do it no more, I’m retired, so why not do it?’ Then WrestleMania, I think my last WrestleMania where I produced, and I can’t remember which one it was. It might have been in Dallas, okay, so had to be 38, because Bubba and I were in 32 against The Usos. I believe Jey had said something about ‘Man, I would love to do 3D. Would you be okay if I did?’ I said, ‘Jey, I told you before we would love that for you to do that. You’re paying homage to us, and you’re keeping us relevant. Because you know people are going to say that’s the Dudleys. So for those that might have forgotten about us, will now remember us.’ So we don’t get upset, they’re paying homage. They’re giving you respect. So I don’t get angry or mad about that, neither does Bubba. We actually like it that they do that because, again, they’re giving us respect, they’re paying homage. And we were proud of it.”

On helping Maven out:

“I saved his life in England. We were basically out drinking at a party and whatever, and Maven had way too much to drink. I had to take him to his room, and he passed out. I said, ‘Maven, where’s your key? Give me your key, just in case you’re not downstairs when the bus leaves and I have your key in my pocket, I’m coming in to get you.’ He gives me his key. He’s passed out, just face-first, right in his pillow, passed out, arm spread, everything. So I go to my room. I don’t even go to sleep because I’m wired. Even though I had been drinking, I was wired. I just couldn’t fall asleep. But I knew I had to get up in two hours, three hours. So I went, took a shower, packed my bags and everything.

I’m sitting down at my table in my room watching the news, and next thing, okay, it’s time to go. I get to the elevator, I go Maven ain’t downstairs. So because he’s like three doors down from me, I go check. I go in. I put the key in, and he’s still the same way I left him. I said, ‘Maven, get up!’ He said, ‘Huh? What?’ I said, ‘Let’s go now! We gotta be downstairs in 25 minutes.’ He said, ‘Alright, D-Von. Let me take a shower.’ I said, ‘You’re not taking a goddamn shower. You’re going to get up and get your stuff.’ I’m throwing stuff in his suitcase and everything, because I’m trying to make it downstairs before he’s the last one down there, last one down there on a WWE bus back then is the wrong thing to do, especially when you’re a rookie. I just remember throwing everything in his suitcase. He goes, ‘D-Von, I gotta take a shower.’ I go, ‘No, you’re not taking a shower. Let’s go.’ He goes, ‘Well, can I at least brush my teeth?’ I said, Fine, go. So he goes. He gets in the bathroom, he’s leaning over the thing. I’m like, ‘Maven, if you don’t brush your teeth faster, I’m gonna brush them for you.’ And he’s like, okay, D-Von, okay, okay, okay. And he’s still not brushing fast. I said, ‘Give me the goddamn toothbrush!’ I took it. I start brushing him. Blood’s coming out because I’m hitting him. I’m brushing his teeth. He’s like, ‘D-Von, okay, okay. Can I just spit this out?’ I was like, ‘Fine, spit it out.’ So now we get to the elevator, we get downstairs, the door opens, we have to go to the front desk to handle all of our incidentals from the room. Who’s there? JR. He says, ‘Hello boys.’ As I grab Maven I go, ‘Don’t you open your goddamn mouth. Don’t you say a goddamn word. I swear to God, I will drop you right in front of JR if you open your mouth.’ He [Maven] goes, ‘I promise I won’t say a word.’ I was like, ‘If he says hello, just nod your head.’ And that’s exactly what happened. He [JR] goes, ‘Boys out last night?’ I go, ‘No, JR. We had a couple of drinks and we went upstairs to our room, and that was it.’ He goes, ‘Okay. Maven, how you doing?’ I said, nod motherf*cker, nod. JR’s like, ‘What’s the matter? You can’t talk?’ I was like, ‘He lost his voice, JR.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, okay. Are you going to be okay to do the promo tonight?’ I said, ‘He’ll be alright. Just the less he talks, the better. We’ll get him some tea and lemon. He’ll be fine.’ He goes, ‘Alright. Well, I’ll see you guys on the bus.’ I said, Okay. Maven goes, ‘D-Von, thank you.’ I go, sh*t, this ain’t over yet. I said, Now we gotta get past JBL, so we get his stuff on the bus. JBL is not on the bus yet. I put him way in the back. I put sunglasses on him. I said, Just act like you’re sleeping. He passed out.”

On the worst bump Spike Dudley took:

“I think it was two. One was in WWE on SmackDown when we set the table on the outside and we whipped him off and launched him from the inside of the ring to the outside through the table, and he landed perfectly through the table. There’s no way in hell I can have anybody convince me to take that bump, but he did it. And then I think the second craziest bump was the first 3D. We nearly killed him because we were trying to perfect that move ourselves, and we hadn’t gotten it down yet. After we saw what we did to Spike, I was like, Okay, I know what I have to do on my part and Bubba knew what he had to do.”

What’d you do wrong in the first one?

“I held him up too long. In other words, I get him up, and instead of going to get him and start falling backwards, I just stood him up like this, and then I started going backwards. But it was too slow. Bubba was already coming down as he starts to come down. Now, I gotta force him down quicker. And Bubba grabbed him at the last minute and jacked his neck right into the mat.”

On actually being ordained as a reverend:

“Yeah, got my collar and everything downstairs. I’ve married people. I think I was about to do a christening, and it got canceled. But, yeah, I’ve been doing all of that. I go around, when I teach at schools, or what have you, it’s kind of like I’m doing my sermon in a sense, you know, I haven’t done it in a real pulpit yet, but I’ve done little things here and there.”

On the origin of “Testify”:

“That actually came from Paul Heyman, because Paul Heyman knew my background of being a preacher’s kid. I’ve said this numerous times, he took my character from Pulp Fiction, Samuel L Jackson and Mr T because I love Rocky III. So he combined those two together, and that’s when he said, ‘You know what, let’s make your tagline testify, because it coexists with your background and your beliefs in God.’ And I said, Okay, Let’s do it, and it just took off from there with the commandments as well. Because I had a little bit of problem doing the ‘Thou shalt not F with the Dudleys’, because, you know, biblically speaking, I shouldn’t say that. I remember when I told my father, I said, ‘You know about the gimmick?’ He said, ‘You know what? Let me tell you something, son, don’t listen to anybody. You go do what you’re doing, but when you’re done hooping and hollering in that ring, bring it to where it really counts, and that’s in the pulpit.’ I said, okay, and I hope I made him proud, because again, I go around speaking the Word of God. Am I a man that has followed every rule in the book when it comes to the Bible? No, I’ve fallen just like the next man, and I’m still falling in certain aspects, but my belief is strong. When I do mess up, I repent and I ask God for forgiveness, and I try not to make the same mistakes.”

On being in a TLC match despite being scared of heights:

“When you have Vince McMahon in the back, he’s writing those paychecks, and you know the world is watching, you suddenly get over your fear real quick. You just go, you know, if I’m gonna die, then I’m gonna die.”

What is D-Von Dudley grateful for?

“My family, health and my faith in God.”

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O’Shea Jackson Jr. On CM Punk, John Cena’s Final Opponent, The Rock vs. Roman Reigns, Underrated Theme Songs

in LATEST EPISODES on July 15, 2025 July 15, 2025

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

O’Shea Jackson Jr. (@OsheaJacksonJr) is an actor and podcaster. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studios in Hollywood, CA to discuss his podcast “No Contest Wrestling” with TJ Jefferson and interviewing CM Punk on the first episode, dream guests for future shows, why The Rock vs. Roman Reigns is looking less and less likely, who will John Cena’s final opponent be, possibly training to be a wrestler, the one wrestling moment from history he wishes he was there for live, his dream bar fight team and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “The big lesson in life, baby, is never be scared of anyone or anything.” – Frank Sinatra

On starting a wrestling podcast:

“I had always thought about it. I had always, like, pondered it. I was gonna do something with my sister on Twitch or something like that. But then, yeah, Rich Eisen called and he gave me this offer. Even said if I wanted to bring my sister along and laid it all out. Then TJ Jefferson, my podcast partner, the way that our show is balanced is I’m new school, he’s old school. So he’s a bit of a historian, because he was literally there. I remember when we first started talking. He asked me when I started to watch. I was watching weekly about 98 you know, early 2000s and then he goes, ‘All right, I started watching in 1982.’ That’s what I’m saying. That’s a running joke on our shows. We don’t know how old TJ is. Gotta cut him in half and count the rings. But yeah, when it came time for it, it was like, I’m doing it on Twitter for free every day anyway, I might as well possibly get paid for it.”

On having CM Punk as the debut guest:

“To be able to get Punk, he shot our show up the charts like the first day. And, yeah, we kind of been riding that wave. So it was like this before, but especially now, no one can ever say anything about CM Punk, greatest guy in the world.”

On the dream guest:

“I really want a longer talk with Roman, because at the Rumble we had like six minutes with him. So to have a real sit-down 45 to an hour with Roman, that would probably be the white whale. But of course, Dwayne, too. Dwayne or Austin? That would be fun, just to get stories from there.”

On watching movies more critically:

“No, that’s been ruined for me for about 10 years now. I watch things and go, that was probably annoying the film, like a movie where I’m supposed to be able to just turn my brain off, like Godzilla vs Kong. You’re just going, it’s Godzilla vs Kong. I’m sitting here critiquing it. But when I saw the scene where Godzilla flips the ship over and the lady is underwater, and she has to hit the button. I’m like, that was probably annoying as hell. Are you kidding? Because I was in Godzilla, so I know King Ghidorah; whenever he’s on screen, they had to bring a hurricane. So I’m getting doused with water all day. I can’t explain, you have to be there to see how much water they use on you, and it’s terrible. It’s terrible.”

Can you give an example from one of your movies?

“Den of Thieves, for example. You start, you see all this heist information, and you’re like, All right, yeah, they’re probably gonna shoot that like this. And then when I get there, Christian Gudegast goes, ‘All right, now, put on your rappel rope and jump down this elevator.’ I’m like, ‘Whoa. I’m pretty sure you know how to fake this a little bit better than me.’ They made us rappel down this elevator shaft. There’s certain shots where if they don’t show the face, you can get a stunt guy in there. But Christian be real up on you all the time. So yeah, me and Gerard [Butler] and everyone else, we had to rappel. It’s so weird. I thought we were playing pretend for money.”

On his upcoming projects:

“I got something funny on the way that I’m really excited about that I go to film in August with my man, Dave Franco, who’s one of the best friends that I’ve gotten from acting, and Peter Dinklage, who I can’t wait to talk to about Game of Thrones. I know he’s tired of talking about Game of Thrones, but it’s stuff I gotta know. It’s really gonna be fun. It’s a road trip comedy. We’re gonna have a ball on that. What I’ve been doing lately, in between, because before I just used to wait for majors. But I remembered after Straight Outta Compton, I didn’t get work for a year, and I was shocked by that. I was like, just had the number one movie in the country, number one on the call sheet, I’m expecting, at least, that’s what I thought it was going to be my phone was going to be blowing up. So I kind of had to find what the next thing was. And I did Ingrid Goes West, and Ingrid Goes West kind of fell in my lap, because I had saw Aubrey Plaza at an award show where I was presenting, and she was presenting too, and I went to go say hi to her, and these ladies, bless them, stop me and like, wanted to take pictures. Tell me how their grandson loves Compton. I’m like, I’m trying to get to Aubrey Plaza. Look up, Aubrey Plaza is gone. Get on Twitter, as I do, talked about how I almost got to meet Aubrey, but of course, that didn’t happen. So the night’s going well. She sees that, DMs me, tells me she’s got this movie and she wants me to play in it. I’m like, Alright, here’s my number, or she gave me hers. But anyway, I text her and say, ‘Hey, it’s Batman.’ From there she goes, Great. And then we set up a meeting. We get to the spot that the meeting is, she goes, ‘How do you like the script?’ I’m like, ‘What script?’ She’s like, ‘The script for the movie.’ I said, ‘You didn’t send me a script. What’s my email?’ She was like, ‘Well, then why did you say you were Batman?’ I mean, I’m Batman. I don’t know, I love Batman. And then she goes, ‘Well, your guy in the script loves Batman. And I kind of already told everybody that you said, yeah.’ So I was like, All right, so I gotta do it now. So that’s how I got Ingrid Goes West, and Ingrid Goes West has done more for me in circle wise then I would say Straight Outta Compton, which obviously still backed me, but I’ve gotten maybe four roles strictly because they watched Ingrid Goes West. I got Obi Wan Kenobi because of Ingrid Goes West.”

On some fans calling him a nepo baby:

“What do you do? It’s not nothing I chose, but it’s not nothing I’m gonna throw away either. It’s like, you there’s no way to make me feel bad about that, and I wear that with such a badge because, number one, how much I love my dad. But then number two, like, there’s no real disrespect there. There’s no real anything that can really affect the person you’re telling is a nepo baby. So I’m like, yeah.

I’m sorry I hit the baby lottery. What do you want me to do? Yeah, bro, don’t yell at me. Yell at your dad. I don’t know. What do you want me to do? What do I do with that information?”

On now being a great time to be a wrestling fan:

“Yeah, it’s such a [great time], and with this time, they found this pocket right now. Because with social media, with just how much access people have, it’s so hard to put things behind the curtain now, and when they do flip things on their head, it’s got to feel good. Whether or not we the fans are loving it or hating it, the fact that they still can do that is like, that’s got to be the best feeling for somebody who’s really behind there.”

On The Rock vs. Roman Reigns looking less and less likely:

“After the [WrestleMania] 39 thing, and it was kind of like The Final Boss situation when him joining The Bloodline, the thing that they did with Solo in the new bloodline. Kind of felt like what they were supposed to be doing with The Rock and Roman of having just like The Rock with the New Bloodline, Roman with the OG Bloodline. But then it kind of felt like Rock dipped and they gave it to Solo. And Solo has been doing great. He’s hilarious. But yeah, I don’t know if we get it now, and it’s always going to be there, but it’s so important that they put it in at the at the right spot and then get the proper buildup. Because if fans nowadays, when they can feel when it’s just thrown together, it just doesn’t have the build-up that it needs. So yeah, they have to treat that right.”

On who will be John Cena’s final opponent:

“The Punk thing hurt because I thought in my mind and my fantasy booking that all fans do, I thought they were going to save that for the Saturday Night’s Main Event in Boston. Because, you know, rewind a little bit when Punk and Cena were going at it, when the roles were reversed, and Punk was the one that was trying to take the belt and leave it was in Punk’s hometown. So I thought they were going to do that same thing in John’s hometown and have it that way, but they just did it in Saudi. So, man, I don’t know, but I think if I know how John is, it’s going to be somebody to pass a torch to a little bit, he’s going to put somebody over, as opposed to somebody who’s a vet, and who’s been doing it. So like a Randy Orton or any of his past rivalries, I don’t think it’s going to be the person. I think it’s going to be someone of the new school that he’s going to put over and kind of have that traditional wrestling look up at the lights for your last match.”

On John Cena not retiring as a heel:

“I was a part of the crowd who didn’t like Cena, because I was like, he’s so such a goody two shoes guy. Rey Mysterio, I never want to see Rey Mysterio turn heel. There were moments when John was the Doctor of Thuganomics, where I was like, this dude is dope, this guy is cool. Then once you do a couple of Marine movies, he just became this guy who just never veered. He was always face, face, face, face. And then the super Cena. So I had my issues with it. And even now, once he has turned heel, I agree he has to at some point give a nod to Cenation, they’re lost without you, right?”

On wrestlers taking time away:

“That go away sometimes is what you need. I remember Baron Corbin, who is my guy. Love Baron Corbin, man. When he poured dog food on Roman, I was like, This is crazy, this is insane. Then the next time I saw Roman, he didn’t lose forever, 1,316 days as champion. Usos did get a pin on him before that. But like, yeah, that go away is so pivotal, and sometimes they don’t want to accept that. They’re like, you know, maybe you should be off TV for a little bit. Get you some time with the family. But during that, that time, though, John was in your face all the time.”

On possibly training to be a wrestler:

“Right now I’m doing training for Den of Thieves 3. There is no date yet. I’m just getting training in right now. So when I get that, when I get ready, I’m definitely going to be hitting up Booker T, because Booker T every time he sees me, he’s like, when you coming to Reality of Wrestling? I’m like, Alright, chill out. It’s your birthday. I’m trying to tell you Happy birthday. So I’m definitely gonna check out book, and I want to, I definitely want to, but I don’t want the celebrity spot, because I don’t earn wrestling fans’ respect that way. You know, I don’t want the Jon Stewart spot. No disrespect to Jon Stewart. I love Jon Stewart. But like, I don’t want that type of spot. I want to go and Logan and Bad Bunny have kind of set the bar right now, so I gotta go, just so wrestling fans can give me that nod.”

On the most underrated theme song:

“They changed it a little bit. Alexa Bliss’ theme, bro, that bana, bana, bana, that if you listen to that, whoever was in the studio was on one killing it. It has a bunch of different layers to it, it’s all over the place, she’s so tiny, and the beat is so big. Shout out to Alexa Bliss, five feet of fury. It’s called spiteful. I think the name of the song is spiteful. But that song is a banger!”

On his bar fight team:

“Brock Lesnar, 100% because I took my sister to the Raw after Mania 39, and she had never seen Brock in person. We’re like, second row. We ended up getting bumped up to first row, and she saw Brock, and she goes, Shay, Brock is big as hell. I said, this dude is a refrigerator walking, and he will fight you, and he’s okay with that. So Brock Lesnar number one. Number two, because I just had a conversation with Rey Mysterio, and I’m gonna pick Eddie Guerrero, because Eddie will have your back. Eddie will have your back like none other, and Eddie will go. I gotta go, Jacob. Now four was Kurt. I’ve been picking Kurt because wherever I watch a few times during that week, I’m like, oh, yeah, he should be on my bar fight team. Now, if my man TJ was here, I would pick Andre, because nobody’s messing with Andre. But I don’t know what age Andre I’m getting. So I’m going Kurt Angle. Yeah, I’m going athleticism, speed, and then like, Jacob, I know, got my back.”

What is O’Shea Jackson Jr. grateful for?

“The No Contest Wrestling Podcast, my nephew and health.”

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Saraya On Returning to WWE As Paige, Neck Injury, “Fighting With My Family”, Sobriety, Mercedes Mone

in LATEST EPISODES on July 10, 2025 January 30, 2026

Saraya (@Saraya) is a professional wrestler best known for her time in WWE as Paige. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studios in Hollywood, CA to discuss the decision behind leaving AEW and what’s next, her current contract status, if returning to WWE could be possible, wanting to wrestle as Paige again, being cleared to wrestle after suffering a career ending neck injury, the movie “Fighting With My Family” being made based on her life, winning the Divas Championship on her main roster debut, being in promo class with Roman Reigns while in NXT, her book “Hell in Boots: Clawing My Way Through Nine Lives” and more!

Subscribe to Rulebreaker With Saraya here: https://www.youtube.com/@RulebreakersPod

Quote I’m thinking about: “Gratitude is a biological intervention. It lowers cortisol. Boosts serotonin. Rewires your nervous system. It’s as simple as taking two minutes in your car, on a walk, or in bed, to list 5 things you’re grateful for. And it will literally change the chemistry of your brain.” – Dr. Josh Axe

On her podcast Rulebreakers:

“It was actually my idea. Because going into the podcast space, it’s really oversaturated, obviously, but then you have people that are successful, like you, and The Bellas do really good and stuff. So you really have to try and figure out ways to make you stand out. I’ve always loved Jackass, Simple Life, anything that’s kind of physical and putting someone in an uncomfortable position, because then you see their true self. So I love that kind of stuff, because we could do a sit-down interview and I can be a success like you, but then I’m like, okay, but then I’m going to be just like you. So I need to find something that makes me just a little bit different. So I was like, we should incorporate torturing our guests a little bit. So we’re still adding more to it, but we’ll be doing the talking, and it’s really fun, then we go into a segment where we give them electric dog shock collars, or make them eat something weird. It’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger, this stuff that we’re trying to incorporate, but we also have to make it translate to the audio space, which makes it a little bit more difficult.”

On a prank on Titus O’Neil that backfired:

“Jeff Tremaine is the creator of Jackass, and he came to WWE once and was like, I want to do this prank show backstage with the WWE wrestlers. A lot of people didn’t want to be on the list. They were on a no-prank list or whatever. I love that stuff. I will do anything. I had to do this fake speed dating thing where everybody was on in on it apart from this one guy who I was doing a speed date with. So he just thinks he’s talking to a regular girl, that’s just part of this thing. The whole time I have the dog shock collar around my leg, and then he’s trying to chat with me and stuff. Jeff is zapping me, and I’m just like this [twitching], and he’s wondering why the f*ck I’m twitching like this. Then the waiter comes over, who is part of the crew too, and Jeff’s like, ‘Punch him in the face.’ I was like, Okay, I’m doing this. It was in my ear. I’m so old school, it was in my ear. So the waiter comes down, I pop him in the face and stuff, and then the guy was like, ‘What the f*ck is your problem? This chick is f*cking crazy!’ I was like, sorry, I just got out of jail and stuff. it was a whole thing. But, yeah, he would put me in uncomfortable positions all the time and I just loved it. I actually turned into a menace because they gave me a cattle prod. I was a nightmare with that. So they gave it to me and I was going around backstage and just zapping everybody with it. It was really bad. Then I got Titus O’Neil, who I didn’t know was on the no-prank list. So I zapped him, and he f*cking lost his mind, and he’s the nicest guy ever. Just an angel. I’ve never seen so mad. He didn’t speak to me for a couple of weeks after that, but he ended up going up to Vince and telling on me. And then Vince brings me into the office, and he was just like, ‘Paige, please stop assaulting people backstage.’ He thought it was hilarious, but I got scolded for a second. He was like, ‘Please put the cattle prod down. Don’t do it anymore.’ I was like, okay, that’s fine.”

On making up with Titus O’Neil:

“A couple of weeks later he was back to being an angel to me. I was like, ‘I’m so sorry, Titus. I didn’t realize you were on the no prank list.’ He was like, ‘But why would you want to shock me with a cattle prod?’ And I was like, sorry. I was younger. I was 23 or something like that. But I was like, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. I assaulted a lot of people that day. It was really bad. I remember Neville. I did him, and he was like, ‘That’s assault. That’s assault.’ And I’m like, Oh, stop it. And then we run around doing it to everybody else too. Oh, my God. I was a nightmare. So anyway, that was the inspo for the podcast too. Because I was just assaulting people. It’s my favorite pastime.”

On thinking she would never wrestle again after retiring:

“Well, they told me I’d never wrestle again. So the first neck surgery I had, that went really well. Then they said, ‘Okay, you need to take a year or so out.’ So that’s what I did. Then I came back, and I didn’t want to look like I missed a step. So when I came back, I was like I’m gonna go full throttle into it, and I was back for like six weeks before I got kicked in the back of the neck again. But I had these newer girls up with me, which was Mandy and Sonya at the time. For some reason, the producers wanted me to keep taking the comeback bumps. I was like, well, we have these new girls. Maybe they can take the bumps for me, because I’m still fresh out of surgery. But they’re like, ‘No, we think you should do it.’ I was like, okay, and I didn’t say no. I should have said no, but didn’t say no, because I just wanted to be like, yeah, I got this. I’m fine. My neck is fine, whatever. So yeah, the second kick I remember, and there’s a video on YouTube of it, I lost all the feeling in my legs at first, and then I kind of stumbled, and I fell down. Then I lost all feeling in my arms. You can see me try and grab Mercedes’ legs at the time, and I just could not grab them. Then I remember just being completely paralyzed in the middle of the ring, and then just knowing in my head, I was like this is it. I’m never gonna wrestle again. I already knew. I was like, I’m done. There’s no way, because just the feeling in my body, it was like an electric shock, and then everything went numb. I was scared, but I just knew at that point that was going to be it. Then the ref threw up the X, and then they started bringing out the stretcher. I said, ‘I’m not going out of this ring on a stretcher, just give me some time.’ I’m sure the feeling will come back into my body again. So I’m just like, laying in the ring. This is not televised, but it is on the internet so you can see it. But the crowd were just dead quiet, there’s 1000s there, all just watching, and they’re dead quiet, just watching me lay there. And then all sudden, I started getting pins and needles. I was like, oh my god, the feelings coming back. So I get pins and needles. And then I sat up, and then the whole crowd started cheering, which is really sweet. They were just like, Yeah, she did it. There’s the girls on either side crying. Then I’m like, just take the stretcher away. I can walk out. I’ll be perfectly fine.”

“So I end up getting out, I did walk back, and I was so proud of myself for doing that. A lot of pride there. If this is it, I’m not gonna be stretched out. I’m gonna walk my ass out the ring. I get back, the first person who saw me was Bray Wyatt, our boy, Bray. And he instantly just came up and gave me a hug. He’s like, ‘What happened?’ He was so stressed out for me. He’s like, ‘What happened? You’ve only been back a little bit.’ I was like, ‘Bro, that’s it. I don’t think I’m wrestling anymore.’ Then he was devastated for me, him and Mercedes both walked me to the doctor’s office. The next day I went to Pittsburgh, they did the whole [appointment with] Dr Maroon. They checked out my neck, and he was just like, ‘You should be completely paralyzed. That should have been it.’ It was like the equivalent to an awful car crash, like I got in a really bad car accident. The fluid around my spine, there was just none, there was no cushion there, and that’s what the fluid is for, is to protect your spinal cord. They didn’t have it, it pinched so tight, because my neck just snapped all the way back. It was crazy. He just said, ‘You’re never gonna wrestle again. There’s no way.’ I remember calling my mum and dad, and I was crying my eyes out. I was like, done. I’m done. And they were crying, because that’s my whole family’s life is wrestling. I’m just devastated. Then I remember just coming out of that year and a half, whereas, drinking, on drugs and stuff like that, I was like, I can’t go back to that. So WWE were amazing, and they instantly put me in a position of General Manager, which I was so grateful for. And Vince gave me the opportunity to say goodbye on TV, which is not something a woman usually does within the WWE back then; no one really got to say goodbye. It was always like, go to WWE.com and you’ll see Eve Torres saying goodbye for the last time, you know what I mean. So it was amazing. I had the opportunity to be like I am retiring guys, devastated, cry my eyes out in the ring, and the crowd were amazing, and then the next day, I was the GM. But I knew at that point, okay, I’m never gonna wrestle again. That’s it. I’m done.”

On being open to wrestling again:

“I was never open to the idea of wrestling again, because I just assumed I wasn’t going to do it. So when me and WWE parted ways, I was like, What the f*ck am I going to do with my life now? I can’t wrestle, what the hell am I going to do? I was a little stressed out, but then, within a couple of weeks, WWE was calling me again to come back. Hunter was the one that called me, and then AEW called me at the same time. So I was just like, well, what the f*ck do I do? Who do I go with? And then WWE was like, if you want to wrestle again at some point, we can check your neck and we’ll keep that coin in your back pocket. And I was like, Okay. Then I was just gonna do a GM role again there. So I was like, Okay, that sounds great. But then AEW called me, and they were just like, we’ll sign your brother. And I was like, ok.”

On her brother Zak Knight:

“The one thing for me is that I’ve had an incredible career, but my brother’s never had the opportunity to do it, and that’s been his dream since he could tie his boots. So I just knew at that point, I was like if I take this opportunity, I don’t know if WWE will ever sign my brother, but I know AEW has given me the opportunity to bring my brother in, and he can finally get his moment. That’s one of the big catalysts of why I went to AEW is because, obviously, you get freedom to do whatever you want. But they were going to bring my brother in finally. I was out here by myself for 13 and a half years without my brother. We grew up like twins, because we’re so close in age, 14 months. So I was so used to him being around, and then I got the opportunity, and he didn’t, and it always f*cked with me. I felt so bad for him that he never got the opportunity. So having this, I was like, Okay, I’m going to AEW, that’s it. My brother’s coming with me. He’s going to move over, I’ll have my brother back. So yeah, that was the biggest thing why I went to AEW. Then Tony was like, let’s see where your neck is at and stuff, and I’ve been dying to see where my neck is at. It’s been over five years at this point. So I was like, hell yeah, dude, let’s do it. But I said, I don’t want a wrestling doctor. Not saying wrestling doctors are biased, but you want someone that is a little bit more timid when it comes to physical activity. So I went to one here in California, and he does massive celebrities. I mean, like huge singers, you go into his office and they’re just A-List everywhere. I don’t realize how many people have f*cking neck surgeries around here. So I was blown away. So I was like, Okay, if he says, Yes, I can go back, that means I can go back, because he’s not going to put his career on the line here for me. Because, again, he has a roster of just amazing people.”

On whether Mercedes Mone felt responsible for what happened:

“I feel like she does, and she went through a really bad depression too. Because the fans, they can get really hardcore. I have always said, It’s not her fault. It’s wrestling. We’re not going out there and dancing. It’s a physical sport. So accidents happen all the time. It’s like doing a live stunt and expecting not to trip and fall sometimes. So I never blamed her for it. I was always very outspoken about how it was never her fault, but she got attacked a lot. It doesn’t feel good to be the one responsible for an accident like that. So she went through a rough time, depression and stuff like that. A really, really rough time. So she was one of the first people I called because I was like, you don’t have to feel bad anymore, I’m back. She was over the moon for me. Then at that point, I was like, Okay, so I’m gonna f*cking wrestle now. This is crazy, this is wild. I wish I trained more, because Tony was like, All right, you’re gonna be wrestling in like, two weeks. And I’m like, I’ve had five years out. How do I get back in the ring again? I didn’t have much time to train or anything. So I was traveling for AEW, and then I was working when I was at home, and I was like, When can I physically go in a ring? My brother Zak flew over, and he took me to a ring a couple of times, and we just tried to get some of the ring rust off, but it was really hard. The only thing I regret about my AEW run is that I wish I tried harder when it comes to the wrestling side of things. I think I went too easy on myself, because I was a little bit worried that something would happen like WWE, where I would f*ck up and my neck would get hurt again. And I was too overly cautious.”

On leaving AEW:

“It got to a point, I loved my time there, I really did, but there was nothing really much for me to do. When I was there, all I wanted to do was help elevate the division. So I’m like, ‘I’ll eat a pin here and there, I’ll do it, whatever someone needs.’ I don’t think there was much room for me there. You have big stars there, and I just decided that this is probably the perfect time for me to take a step back, because the only thing left for me to do there would be to wrestle Mercedes. But she already had stuff lined up all the way up until All In that they’re about to do. So I was like, What am I gonna do, stay at home? It’s nice to collect a paycheck sometimes, sure, but I’d rather be active and doing something I’m really enjoying. That’s why I wanted to do the podcast, my book came out, all that kind of fun stuff, so I can put all my energy into that, rather than being like, well, when am I going to be on TV next? I don’t want to have to stress about that. So it was just easier, and Tony was great. He was agreeing too. He’s like, okay, yeah, let’s do it. So it was a very nice split, and great business, which is wonderful. And like I said before, the door is always open for these places, which is really nice. I leave on really good terms. But yeah, I feel like my time came to an end, what else do I do?”

Are you a free agent?

“I’m a free agent now. I could pop up anywhere. No, my contract’s done, done. That’s one thing that helped is because they gave me the opportunity to walk away from this contract. Not a lot of companies or businesses would do that, but Tony was really, really great about it. So I was like you can keep paying me, or I can just take a hike.”

Is there a non-compete?

“No, Tony was great. It was a clean split.”

On if a WWE return would be as Paige or Saraya?

“Paige, 100%. I miss Paige so much. I tell people all the time. So again, when I went to AEW, I didn’t want to be close to my character in WWE because of the comparisons. I was like, Okay. And then I ended up being like a chicken sh*t heel with AEW, which is all fun and good, but there’s a ceiling to that. Whereas Paige, I mean, she’s generational. I love her. She’s bad ass, tough as nails, just screaming all the time. I loved being her. She was a f*cking badass, and that felt more like an elevated version of myself, rather than doing what I was doing in AEW. But again, that was my decision to be like that. But then I was like, Damn I wish I leaned more into my original character, but it is what it is. You live, you learn.”

On whether she misses wrestling:

“I do. Wrestling, if you haven’t wrestled in a while, it really hurts your body, and you forget how much it f*cking hurts, because before I took the long break with my neck, I never had time off. So I was wrestling nearly every other day. Since I was 13 years old, I was constantly in a ring training, having wrestling matches, traveling, all that kind of stuff. So my body became one giant callous. I was just one giant scab, pretty much. So once my body healed and I took a bump, I was like, Oh, this f*cking sucks. This hurts like a bitch, especially when you have no adrenaline. So yeah, having a match after you’ve had time off, you feel like you’ve been hit by a car, you’re just like, Oh my god. So I do miss wrestling. I miss the adrenaline rush. I miss entertaining. I miss getting in the ring and feeling like Paige. But yeah, it’s just the feeling that you get afterwards, once the adrenaline is worn off.”

On possibly appearing at WWE Evolution:

“It’s like a bittersweet thing, because the first one, I couldn’t be on it because of my neck. So if I had the opportunity to be on this all-female pay-per-view, of course, yeah, I would think about it.”

On her favourite wrestling moment:

“So obviously, NXT was amazing. I got the opportunity to be the first ever NXT Women’s Champion, and I so thankful for it. I was 20 years old. I was a kid, it was incredible, and I’m so f*cking grateful for it. But my ultimate moment was my debut and winning the Divas Championship, because that’s all I ever wanted to be. I wanted to be a WWE Diva, and to do it at 21 too. And the day before, Dwayne is in his office backstage, and he’s like, ‘I’m gonna make a movie on your life.’ And I’m like, what? Then he’s like, ‘And you’re gonna debut tomorrow, and you’re gonna win the Divas Championship.’ And I was like, what? I’m just f*cking sobbing, dude. A lot of crying, obviously, but I’m sobbing because I can’t believe this is happening at such a young age. I never thought I’d get a movie of my life. I never thought I was actually gonna debut on the main roster. So to have Dwayne The Rock Johnson tell you these things too, he’s a f*cking real-life superhero, an icon in wrestling and in movies. And you’re just like, This is f*cking insane. Then he’s like, ‘But you can’t tell anyone the day before.’ So I’m walking around like, trying to keep my sh*t together, waiting for someone to tell me that I’m actually gonna be debuting. It was so emotional. And then I finally got Fit Finlay telling me 10 minutes before doors were opening, ‘Come to the side of the ring. AJ and Tamina need to speak to you, you’re gonna win the Divas Championship.’ And I was like, Okay, Let’s f*cking do it. And he’s like, but no one knows. And I’m like, Why do I have to keep f*cking secrets, dude? That’s insane. So I’m crying again, and then I go to the side of the ring, and AJ was just amazing. Obviously, everyone knows that I was really close to AJ. She’s like my fairy godmother, is what I called her for so long. And, yeah, she just kind of took me under a wing and protected me. She was like, All right, this is how it’s gonna go. And she was like, ‘What kind of finish do you want to do?’ And I was like, ‘Well, I do have a submission.’ She was like, ‘No, you need to 3 count me, solidify that sh*t.’ So I was like, okay, so then we did the Paige Turner in the ring, but I didn’t explain how to do it properly, because I was just too nervous. So I ended up looking like a Leg Sweep. And I remember coming back and Randy Orton’s just like, ‘Did you just beat her with a Leg Sweep?’ I was like, ‘Absolutely, yeah I did, but it’s supposed to look different.’ But I’m like, Who gives a f*ck? So yeah, that was probably the most magical moment for me, is finally getting what I’ve wanted. And I’ve been traveling since I was 13 years old by myself to all these different countries, because all I wanted to do was get experience for WWE to take notice of me and to finally come over to America. So yeah, I was traveling solo since I was 13 years old, and now eight years later into my career, which is crazy, because I was only 21. Eight years later into my career, I finally got that moment that I’ve been dreaming about.”

On the hardest part of her book to write:

“The childhood abuse, probably. Because I didn’t really talk about it. I got brought up in a family where you kind of just dusted yourself off and kept going, right? You don’t just sit there and bitch and complain or talk about your problems. So it’s been really hard for me to fully open up when it comes to trauma, especially. I’m like, it happened, but I need to focus on other things now. So, yeah, it took me years and years to open up to my family about it, and it only happened when I was about 30, and my brother called me. He was crying his eyes out because it affected him really, really bad for a long time. He called me crying. He was like ‘Saraya, we need to talk about this.’ I was like, Okay, let’s do it. So we spoke about it, and he was like, I’m gonna talk to mom and dad about it. And I was like, Okay, do it. Then we had, like, these heart-to-hearts, and they were really bad. Because there was a couple of times, this part is really hard for me to talk about. It was really hard, because I was trying to do the audio for it, and that was probably the hardest chapter to go through. It took me all day to get through that f*cker, dude. I was like, Oh my gosh, it’s so hard. But yeah, that was probably the hardest chapter.”

On what’s next for her:

“I don’t know. That’s the exciting part is that is everything so unexpected that comes along. So I’m excited. I didn’t think I was gonna be taking another break from wrestling and to focus on a podcast.”

On how much longer she wants to wrestle:

“I think I can squeeze 10 more years out of me. Yeah, 10 more years on and off.”

On possible WWE dream matches:

“I always get Rhea to either be a tag team partner, the original goth sister to now, the ultimate goth sister. So I’d love to be in a team with her or wrestle her, because that’s what people want. I would love to wrestle Mercedes down the line, because it’s a built-in storyline. All the girls now, they’re all superstars, dude. I would get in the ring with anybody at any point in time. They’re all amazing. Probably Nattie again. I love Nattie. I’ve wrestled her a billion times, but, oh my God.”

On being in promo class with Roman Reigns:

“Oh, my God. Rest in peace, Dusty. I f*cking loved him so much. But the promo classes were difficult, and you had to learn to adjust on the fly, which I am grateful for. Because I had that experience once I got on the main roster. But we’d have promo classes where we’d have to cut these promos. But then he’d be like, ‘Yeah, it wasn’t good enough. So here’s something you talk about, go.’ And so he goes, ‘Leeake [Roman Reigns] baby, get up, go sit next to Paige.’ So he gets up and sits next to me. And then he was like, ‘Okay, Paige, baby, he’s your ex-boyfriend. He dumped you and stole your toaster.’ So I’m like, Oh, f*ck, what do I say to this guy? I just met him as well. I’ve already been with WWE within two weeks or something, I was already cut these promos. ‘Hello, stranger, I have to pretend you’re my ex-boyfriend who stole my toaster.’ So I just start talking to him, and I’m so embarrassed, because he’s a big, strong guy, he’s f*cking Roman Reigns, dude. He’s like, f*cking Hercules. And like, I’m so sorry. He made me do a bunch of stuff like that. He was like, ‘Okay, Paige, baby, you open a letter, and then he was like, you have to go through all your emotions while reading through this letter.’ Again, I’m getting dumped constantly, apparently, because he’s just like your boyfriend is dumping you. I’m like, f*ck all right. So he was like, ‘You have to go through happy, sad, emotional, angry and stuff.’ So I’m like, okay, but I’m not allowed to say a word either. So you have to do it all through facial expressions. So I’m just like, looking through it, and I think I’m doing a good job. I was so embarrassed.

I was in it for a year at that point. So I was really comfortable with Dusty. And he was just like, ‘Okay, I want you to limit what you say. I want you to be more mysterious.’ So I was like, Okay. So he wanted me to cut these certain length promos, but then I couldn’t say anything. So I was just like, well, what the f*ck. How do we do this? So I remember I was so tired one day, so f*cking cranky, and I was f*cking done with this, so I come in, I cut a sh*t promo, and then in front of everybody, he was like, ‘I asked for chicken dinner. You give me chicken sh*t?’ And I was like, ‘F*ck you Dusty!’ I f*cking walk out, f*cking stomp up to the girl’s locker room, slam the door, and like, I just heard a knock on the door. He was like, ‘Is my porcelain princess in here?’ [I said] ‘Go away Dusty. I don’t want to talk to you.’ He was like, ‘Get out here.’ So I was like, Okay. And I was like, ‘I’m really sorry.’ Because he’s my boss. ‘I shouldn’t have talked to you like that, Dusty. I’m really sorry.’ He was like, ‘It’s okay, baby, come sit down.’ So we sit on the steps. And he just said to me, ‘I want you to be a success. You have to give 110% every single time, even if it’s in front of your peers, even if it’s in front of five people in the crowd, you have to give 110%.’ He was like, I’m always gonna be honest with you, whether you like it or not. And I understood. I was like, ‘I’m sorry, you were completely right.’ I was out of line, I came in, half arsed my promo and did a bad job. He said that I was like his broken toy compared to the rest of the Divas, because I was like the little misfit of everybody, again, the women with beautiful blonde hair, tanned. I was this pale, little f*cking goth chick. He was like, ‘You’re my broken toy, baby. I just want to fix you and put you back together again.’ I was just like, Yeah, you’re right. I miss Dusty so much, rest in peace. Been like 10 years. That was it. He goes to me, ‘Nobody calls me a motherf*cker.’ And I was like, ‘You’re so right. I’m so sorry, Dusty, I should not called your motherf*cker in front of everybody.’ But I was very mad at him. I love him.”

What is Saraya grateful for?

“My health, my happiness and my dogs.”

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Steve Blackman: The Lethal Weapon, Shane McMahon Fall, JBL Airport Fight, Hardcore Title, Brawl For All

in LATEST EPISODES on July 8, 2025 January 30, 2026

Steve Blackman is a retired professional wrestler best known for his time in WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Harrisburg, PA to discuss being known as one of the toughest wrestlers in the locker room, becoming seriously ill and coming very close to dying before he signed with WWE, his match with Shane McMahon at SummerSlam 2000 and McMahon’s fall, showing his comedic side with Al Snow as part of Head Cheese, the real story behind his fight with JBL at an airport in St. Louis, being a part of the infamous Brawl For All tournament, what he is doing now, whether a WWE return could be possible and more!

Quote I’m thinking about:
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein

On what he is doing now:

“After I got out of wrestling, I had an MMA school. I had that for about 13 years, and then once my kids were born, I just didn’t have the time for that. But I had also started a bail bonds business two or three years after the MMA started. So I’ve been focusing on my bail bonds business for the last 17 years now. They pay a percent, you put up enough assets to write a certain amount of bails, or you write through an insurance company, and they license you to do a certain amount of bails. But I mean, when I first started, it was all on your own. Then the insurance companies got involved six years ago, and don’t even get me started on that, that kind of screwed everything up. But nevertheless, I’m fortunate in Harrisburg, because I know everybody at MMA school here, Bail Bonds business. I’ve lived here many years, so I get a lot of bails out of this county.”

What if they don’t pay?

“We’re supposed to go track them down. And in the beginning, that’s actually why I started the bail business. When I had the MMA school, there’s fighters of mine, which I had dozens and dozens of fighters. They’re always broke. So they’re like, ‘Blackman, what can we do to make some money?’ I’m like, let me think on it. So I came up with, well, let’s start doing bounty hunting. So when I did my homework and I saw I can put up more money and make a lot more money doing bails than I can just tracking people down. Plus, I don’t feel like sitting there and staring at somebody’s house for a week either. So that’s how that came about.”

On the terrifying thought of being chased down by Steve Blackman:

“Well, in the beginning, don’t hold me to it, but this number is close. In the first few years, I took in 88 guys myself and my other bounty hunters took in the same number. It was funny, because we took in almost the exact same number together, 176 guys we took it in the first three years. That’s just brutal. Then you start learning how to get better co-signers, more co-signers, get people to post bails that own something, have something to lose. So if the person doesn’t show up, you go after them for it, or you just hound them till they turn the person in.”

On whether he would have been interested in UFC if it existed earlier:

“Probably. I would have loved to have done it, and I would have even liked to have done it when I was in WWF. I just had so many neck issues. I was so tired of having migraines every other day. It wasn’t the fact of going out there and fighting. I’m not being funny, but any of us can go out there and just go balls to the wall for a minute. It’s just being able to train properly. And every time I go out and train for a couple of days hard, I get headaches, my neck would hurt even rolling with the guys in my school, I would roll hard with them the whole time. But I tell them, let’s avoid the guillotines for this match, and we’ll go for everything else, just because it would kill my neck all the time.”

Did you look into it when you were in WWF?

“I had talked to [Ken] Shamrock about it and stuff before, and he had said that someone had enquired to him about it, see if I want to come out there and do it. And I did it desperately, especially the days when I had a day where my neck didn’t feel bad, and I’m banging cardio up that day and stuff, it’s like, Man, I’d like to get out there and do that, but they just didn’t work out. I mean, I had neck issues.”

On wrestlers saying he was the toughest in the locker room:

“I appreciate that. I will say this. There’s a lot of tough guys in WWF. When you look at the size and speed of most of the guys, most guys that played football, wrestled, have that athletic ability. Most of them have the ability to hold their own. It’s just how hard they want to go. One thing with me I always had in my head. When they say that I never cared who it was, if there’s a problem, I don’t care who you are, we’re going to go. And that’s just the way I’ve always looked at it. If you don’t like me and I have a problem with you, we’ll do it every single day, I just don’t care. It happens. You know, it’s happened before, but that’s one thing, no matter who it is, I don’t care if you got a problem, just walk up, lace your shoes up and let’s go.”

On looking like he could still wrestle:

“Sometimes I feel good, especially after my second neck operation. I don’t have those headaches all day, every day, where I sit there and just do this, because I had four bone spurs digging in nerves in my neck. So every time I’d land or move, it was like pencil points digging in. So once I had those removed, [I used to] sit there all day just trying to find a spot where I could sit in where it wasn’t jagging me. So now that that’s been fixed, some days I feel good. I’m like, Man, I could go out there and do a couple matches. It crosses my mind.”

On his early days in wrestling and battling illness:

“I started wrestling in 86 in wrestling school in Connecticut. I was there for about a year, and then I went to Japan. Spent six weeks over there. I went, but I was still green, so to speak, because I had just done small promotion matches all across Connecticut and those places. I wrestled in Eastern Canada for four months, where you wrestle every day you’re there for four months. I had been in contact with Owen [Hart] because in Japan, ‘I said, What do I have to do to get to WWF?’ He goes, ‘You need to come to Calgary, wrestle with us up there and my dad and polish up.’ So after that four-month run in Eastern Canada, Owen got me over there with his father, and that’s where I wrestled. When I say every day, you wrestle every day, you don’t have days off. I don’t remember having a day off period. We did have one, but his brothers, being like him, scheduled us in a charity race three hours from Calgary, and we all wanted to kill him. So that was our one day off. I’ll never forget it, because we were so mad. I was up there with Pillman, Benoit, Gary Albright, he wrestled up there. Norman the Lunatic Mike Shaw was up there. The British Bulldogs were with us for six months because they were taking a break from WWF at that time. This was 88 and so we had a hell of a crew up there back then. We’d wrestle long matches, and non stop moving. It’s funny, because when I finished up there, and I was starting with WWF, I was supposed to start with them in 89 and I said to the office, I told this guy I’d wrestle for him in Africa. I gave him my word that I come down there for three weeks. And they said, Well, just go ahead start with this when you get back.”

“So for me to keep my word, I went down there, became deathly ill, came home, long story short, spent five and a half years till I got better. I was two and a half years on my deathbed, another two and a half years on medicine. They said I probably had dysentery and malaria. It was so bad. When I landed in Africa on Thursday, I weighed 267 the next Thursday, when I left the hospital and Gary Albright helped me get to a flight and finally make my way home, I weighed 232. I was 35 pounds lighter in six days. I started getting sick Friday, and it was insane, and it felt like I had sand in my mouth. I had to carry drinks everywhere I went. I thought I was gonna die from just complete dehydration, which is pretty much where you die from with dysentery, just it’s one end to the other nonstop. I drink, go, drink, go, drink, go. I went through IV bag after IV bag. I said to Gary, he came to the hospital, ‘Gary, you got to get me out of here, I’m going to die here. I can’t keep anything down here.’ Well, he got me to the airport. I was down in Durban, South Africa. I flew from Durban to Johannesburg. Once I got there, I had to wait for a ticket from home to come through. That came through 15 minutes before my flight left, where I’d been stuck in Johannesburg with nothing, and that came through. Then, don’t hold me to the exact hours, five hour flight to Kenya. We get to Kenya, we had a nine-hour layover on the runway with the doors open. It was 120 degrees and no air conditioning, and I’m feeling like I’m dying every second. All I do is keep grabbing every sodium bottle of water I can do and drink, drink, drink. Then we leave from Kenya and we fly to Amsterdam. We get to Amsterdam, I have a 12-hour layover. I’m laying on the floor. I just crawl into the bathroom, crawl out. They took me to the medical station in that airport, and they’re like, ‘We’re not gonna let you fly.’ I said, ‘Look, dude, I don’t have anything contagious. If I’m going to die, I’m going to die in the States. I’m not going to make my family come halfway around the world to retrieve me anywhere I’m getting home.’ So they let me get on the plane. I flew to New York. I had a five-hour layover. I’ll never forget some kid wheeled me off in a wheelchair. I don’t even know what money I had in my pocket. I don’t even know what currency it was. I just gave it to him. I said, ‘Get me as much to drink as he can and something to eat.’ He comes back with a big bottle of water, some juice. I don’t know what I remember what it was. I was delirious. I remember he brought me a sub. I ate the whole sub and drank the water. And I sat there for 5-10 minutes. I’m like, it stayed in my stomach. That’s the first time in seven and a half, eight days. Now I actually kept something in there, and so I fly from there to Harrisburg, I go to the doctor and all that. I weighed 232 the next day at the hospital. But you gotta remember now I’ve eaten and drank stuff while I’m at home before I even got to the doctor the next day. I might have been lighter than that, but it was pure hell. And then I was just sick for years, and then eventually, I finally started getting better, and I went and saw Vince, that’s how I got back in.”

Did you think you were going to die?

“There were many nights where I went to bed, where I felt so sick. I’ll give you an example, if I tried to do push-ups one day, I would do as many push-ups as I could. For one set, I would literally stand up, crawl over, lay down, and sleep till the next day. It was so debilitating, I couldn’t even function because it turned into some sort of infection in my intestinal tract after I got over that stuff, and it just lingered and lingered till one doctor figured it out.”

On the name The Lethal Weapon:

“That was when I was up in Canada. So I used that for a while, and then came down. And then when I started doing the sticks with my entrance I started doing routines with those. And then I would use a kendo stick and the matches, or the nunchucks, stuff like that. So it was, it was fun doing that.”

On wrestlers trying to test him:

“Well, there are people that try to test you in wrestling and out of wrestling. I can give you examples with numerous guys I wrestled with that went through that. One guy tested Shamrock. Shamrock dropped him. He gets sued. Another guy tested British Bulldog, just harassing his wife for 15 minutes. Finally, Davey Boy drops the guy on his head. And then they’re looking for him to arrest him and sue him, and their wives are just being hounded. I think Big Show was tested at a hotel one time, dropped the guy. I didn’t see this. I heard that the guy just wouldn’t leave him alone, and finally, Big Show dropped him, but they had a tape of that one, and he got out of it. That I heard through a couple of the other guys. The one with Bulldog and Shamrock, I rode with those guys all the time, so I know it does. I mean, people would test me. I walk into the Cleveland arena one day, and I don’t know who it was. A guy was seven feet tall. I’m just walking in and he’s like, ‘I think I can take you.’ I never even saw the guy in my life. I dropped my gym bag. I said, ‘Let’s go.’ I’m like, Is this guy a basketball player or something? I don’t even know who he was, but that’s just how people are. It’s like, as soon as it doesn’t go their way, and they get cracked, now they want to sue you. Well, then don’t start it to begin with. I’ve had people come up to me and start mouthing. Look, dude, just sign a waiver and we’ll go. [So what happened with the seven-footer?] He walked away.”

So if everybody has you at the top of the list for being the toughest guy in WWE, who’s on your list?

“I think, to me, there’s a lot of tough guys in there. Because, like I said, when you’re a big guy and you can move, you can usually throw a good punch, and you’re usually not that easy just to tie up with and take down, they can usually fight back pretty well. But obviously, when Ken was younger, he would bang with anybody, even when Severn was in with us for a while. Dan never had fast hands or feet, but he was tough on the ground. And anybody that has 100 cage fights has a set on him, because you have to have a lot in you to go through 100 cage fights. But even when you look at Taker and Kane and Farooq, a lot of those guys, all of those guys were athletic, and they’re big guys, so they can move, they can throw you. Obviously, Kurt’s a hell of a wrestler, he was great, the best in the world at one time at that. But you can look at a lot of the other guys in there, obviously Brock. But most of the guys in there have a pretty hardcore attitude, so I think most of them can hold their own pretty well.”

On the SummerSlam 2000 match with Shane McMahon:

“That was pretty much the plan. I don’t remember much being discussed differently than what we did. Most people don’t realize, it was rare that I’d go out there and talk about the match and stuff in the ring before we go out and do an appearance. I didn’t really walk through much with people. That was a rare one when we went out there to go up to the Titan Tron, we actually climbed up and that’s high. And the worst thing was, there was nothing on the floor from the TitanTron until you’re seven feet, eight feet away. Then there was a mat the size of a bed way out here. And I’m like, he’s going to land on that backwards from up there? What if he falls straight down? This one guy, he’s one of the stunt coordinators, goes, ‘If he just steps back and falls this way, he’ll land out there.’ I’m like, You’re kidding me, right? I said, well that’s insane to me. So they said, ‘Okay, we’ll do it.’ He didn’t drop, but he said, Okay, he’ll do that. And I said, All right.

So we get up there the next day, I hit him with my stick, and he drops. Well, I’m supposed to drop an elbow on him, and I’m like, I have two feet to land there. How am I going to drop an elbow on this guy from 50 or 60 feet, whatever we were, I shimmy down. I might have still been 25 feet up. So I shimmy down halfway and jump from there and landed. But what happened is, overnight, somebody encased the mat with three-quarter-inch plywood around it. So if you have a limb sticking out, it’s just going to snap off. So I had to land right there, drop an elbow on him and try not to completely pancake him. So I landed there, hit him with the elbow and pulled it off. But during the match, our runners would grab props anywhere, and sometimes they were real street signs. I’d be like, Guys, where are you grabbing this stuff? This is a real street sign. Well, don’t ask Steve. So he gets out there, he hit me with a street sign one time. If you watch that match, it felt like it ripped the nose off my face. That metal thing just went peeling right down my face. I thought, Holy hell. Then Test and Albert interfered, you know, we had a good match. You know, everybody was getting beat on in that one.”

On whose idea it was for the Shane fall:

“Well, it had to be him. I don’t think it was his dad. It had to be Shane. And never forget we were out there going over it and talking about it. I’m like, I’ll crack him, crack him, crack him. But the worst part was that I was so sweaty from the match for 15 minutes, trying to hold on to those bars. I was just drenched in sweat. I kept worrying about slipping and dropping, so that’s why I stopped where I did, held the bar and then cracked him because I just kept sweating so bad. And we were out there. I’ll never forget, Vince is like, ‘You need to get that stick out of the way. If you crack him and your stick’s here, and he drops, he’s going to [fall differently].’ I said, You know what, you’re right. So it’s good you thought of that. I had to crack him and make sure I got the stick out of the way so he didn’t land on it and flip or something like that. It hits me, because you think of crazy little things like that that you wouldn’t most of the time.”

On Steve Blackman’s elbow drop afterwards:

“Well, I mean, he dropped twice the distance. I had a narrow area to land in, and even at that 25 feet I was at, that’s still hard to land right in that spot. But yes, he overshadowed it with the way he dropped. But I thought the match was pretty good. We did a lot, we hit hard in that match. We hit with all the weapons hard in that match and stuff like that, and took hard bumps. So I thought it went well.”

On being pitched the Brawl For All:

“[Rolls eyes] All right. I’m at home on one of my days off, the office calls me and they go, ‘We’re having this Brawl For All and it’s a real fight. You wear boxing gloves and you can do whatever you want.’ I thought it was just somebody in the office ribbing me, because you got to remember those wrestlers do nothing but rib each other. So I’m like, ‘Yeah, sure we are.’ Then, I think it was Bruce Pritchard, he’s like, ‘Steve, we’re having a Brawl For All, and you can do whatever.’ I said, ‘Let me get this straight, we’re gonna have a Brawl For All. I can kick, shoot, punch, knee, elbow…’ And they’re like, yep. I said, ‘What’s the prize?’ And they said, Well, you get an extra five grand a week and then the prize at the end, whatever it was. I said, ‘Well, I don’t believe you, but go ahead and sign me up.’ I didn’t believe him. I thought the whole thing was a rib, one of the guys playing a joke. So we get to the next TV, I haven’t trained for this in a while, and I never forget. We get there, and they’re like, you’re fighting Mero tonight in the Brawl For All. I’m like, this thing’s real?! Okay. So we go out in the ring, and there were 16 of us in it, we’re going over the different things we could do. I said, ‘Well, he told me I’m allowed to kick when he called me.’ When we were out in the ring, Vince is like, ‘What kind of kick do you mean?’ And I should have thought faster. I stood there, and you know how in the MMA, most of us do fast, hard shin kicks. I flew with one and Vince was like, ‘No, no. ‘And Bradshaw’s like, ‘There’s no way we’re taking those.’ I’m thinking, why didn’t I just do a slow side kick or front kick or something just slower? I went out there and flew with it because I was warmed up. I’m like, Oh! So now they insisted no kicking, because I’m the only one out of 16 that wants to kick. Well, there’s no knees, there were no elbows, there’s no head butts. It’s a boxing match with takedowns. So they put me against Marc [Mero], who in boxing was probably the best in there. I think he won New York Golden Gloves five years. So, great. So we go out there and they said, ‘What are you gonna do?’ I aid, ‘I’m gonna take him down every 10 seconds.’ Well, if you counted, I took him down 13 times in three minutes. I shot a jab. I threw a jab. Shot through a jab. Shot the third or fourth time I threw the jab, I faked the shot, and it came over top with a bomb. He was pretty quick. He ended up dropping his chin just a hair because I caught him here, and his feet staggered, or I finally caught him on the chin a couple of inches lower, I dropped him. But it was funny, because those gloves were massive, brand new. It was like wearing mittens like this to box with. I’m like, Who came up with this idea? Then three of the guys got hurt, and it just was horrible for the business. The people didn’t even know what the hell was going on. I keep taking him down. People in the crowd are like, what is this?”

On at first thinking he could win the Brawl for All:

“I did think that. And then after I fought Marc, I’m like, Okay, let me go home and train now, and let’s get moving here. So one of my friends at home was about 6 foot 3, 300 pounds, amateur wrestler his whole life. So I started working, we started training, and he waist locked me, and just as he waist locked me, I wasn’t expecting him to sit so fast, he sat on the side of my leg and tore the cartilage in my leg. I’m like, Oh, my God, this can’t be happening. We were just starting to do warm-ups. I was going to throw, he’d throw, I’d throw, and he just sat on the side of my leg. I couldn’t believe it. I had to get my leg worked on then, and I couldn’t finish the thing. And I was livid, because I wanted to get out there at that point. And so that’s what happened there.”

On whether he has put wrestling behind him:

“I did at the time because, again, knowing I needed a couple, they told me up front, I need a couple of neck operations. Because when they go through the front, they can only do a certain amount of area one time. Had one done, cut my headaches down about 40%. Had another one done, cut it down again, so now I can function. I’m not in pain all day, and if I am, I can still work through it and go about my business. I can do sprints again, do stuff again. But at that time, for those years, it’s like I didn’t even want to think about it, because I knew I couldn’t go back, knew it wasn’t going back. And I thought, You know what, it’s time to move on. And I just started focusing on my other stuff.”

On being in pain throughout his WWE career:

“Yes, I think it would be like Monday I’d wrestle and get a migraine, and I don’t mean a little headache where, oh, I have a headache. No, I mean feels like you’re being stabbed in your head. Throw up, lay down, throw up, lay down, go to bed. The next day, sleep all day, wrestle the next day the migraine again, go through that next day resting. So it’d be like every other day I’d have a migraine. I’m not being funny, but you can’t imagine what it’s like getting forearmed or body slammed when you have a migraine, you feel like a grenade went off in your head. I wrestled Kane one night in a hardcore match. I landed on the back of my head on the floor. My foot got caught. I jumped off the rail, kicked him, my shoe hit him on the chest, and I landed on my back. The migraine kicked in in one second, just shot up through my spine. Every time he hit me, I felt like a grenade was going off. And that was the beginning of the match. We had 15 minutes more to go, and I’m like, Oh my God. I’m just fighting through it, fighting through it. I’d sit out in the hall and just squeeze my head. And then a night in a hotel, I’d literally lie on my side. Sometimes I’d have a baseball in my bag. I’d put a baseball under my back, try to lay on it. I’d find a spot where I could pinch off the nerve going to my head. So finally, after about an hour, I could fall asleep, and then sleep the whole night and the next day I would just be tired from the pain, but I’d wrestle again, and that’s what I went through for years.”

“I’m going to say, 80% of my run. It was brutal. I’m like, Man, if I had that stuff done before I went back, what got much worse in there. But if I’d had that done and then gone back, I just could’ve done a lot more. There were nights where I wanted to do more crazy stuff, and I just couldn’t. My head hurt too bad. So I just do what I could to get by. But the hardcore stuff worked out great for me, because I could just showcase weapons and speed and things like that. It sounds funny, but I was getting cracked as much as them, but it was still easier on my neck.”

On Head Cheese:

“I don’t know how that came about, but it got over, the vignettes were comical. People pop like crazy on them. It’s funny because it got over great for three months, here’s another one, we were going to get the tag belts at that time. And one of the guys in the office said something to, I don’t know if it was Vince or whoever was pulling the shots that night, it’s usually Vince said, ‘I don’t think we should give him the belts yet.’ And they just squashed it and squashed our gimmick. I don’t want to say who it was. That’s not me, but I’m like, Really, dude? I didn’t find out till a year later. But I’m thinking that’s brutal. So he goes up there and uses some clout to put a stop to it.”

On whether he realised it would be that popular:

“I did not. It did. It got a heck of a pop. That place popped. Al was a comical guy, so the stuff that he would have me do and stuff, it was entertaining. I’d get to the arena and they’d be like, ‘Steve, you’re going to milk a cow tonight.’ I said, ‘Yeah, sure, I am.’ I’d walk to the locker room, then I’m on the farm milking a cow. The next week of TV, they’re like, ‘Steve, you’re doing a comedy skit at a retirement home.’ I’m like, Yeah, sure, I am. And yeah, that woman’s yelling that unscripted ‘Blackman, you suck!’ You remember that? I just remember her yelling that at me.”

On possibly making a WWE return:

“I haven’t even really discussed anything with anyone. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, there’s times where I thought, oh man, it’d be fun to go back there and do a hardcore match or something like that, and just flow with it, and just to do it again. You know, it’s been 20 years, but I don’t really bring it up. I haven’t talked to anybody about it.”

What is Steve Blackman grateful for?

“My wife and kids, to be healthy again and the way my business worked out.”

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Christopher Daniels On His Retirement Match, FAKE Eye Injury, AEW, TNA, Higher Power, Tiffany Stratton

in LATEST EPISODES on July 3, 2025 January 30, 2026

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

Christopher Daniels (@facdaniels) is a retired professional wrestler currently signed to AEW where he is the head of Talent Relations. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss his retirement match against “Hangman” Adam Page, the terrifying spot during TNA Ultimate X where he almost died, competing in the Unbreakable 2005 triple threat match against Samoa Joe and AJ Styles, the rumor that he was going to be The Higher Power in WWE, the inspiration for the Best Moonsault Ever and his thoughts on Tiffany Stratton’s version, the origin of Curry Man, the true story behind his gruesome eye injury in AEW and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

On knowing it was time to retire:

“So at the beginning of 2024, I knew my contract as a performer was coming to an end. I sort of said to myself at the beginning of the year, All right, you’ve been doing this for a while. Your body feels eh, and you’re not wrestling that often. So let’s try and make this a good year and see how we feel at the end of the year. So I said to myself that I’m gonna try to make this a good year for me. So I started working with Cezar Bononi to try and get in good shape, and I just said, let’s see how we feel at the end of this year. I’m gonna wrestle this year like it’s my last and see how I feel. But one of the things I sort of kept in mind was I only wanted to wrestle if Tony wanted me to wrestle. I didn’t want to go to him and be like, ‘Hey, please can I wrestle?’ Because I felt like if Tony needed me for the show, or if Tony wanted me for the show, then he would think of something for me to do on the show. But I didn’t want to be that guy that was like, ‘Hey, I’m not doing anything this week. Can I do something this week?’ And have him possibly feel obligated to give me something and then jam it into a show that’s already [full]. We’ve got a very wide roster, and we’ve got two hours of time on a Wednesday, two hours of time on a Saturday, and I didn’t want to conceivably take time away from something that was important just to scratch my wrestling itch. I wanted to sort of be cognizant of like, hey, this isn’t good for the show. If he doesn’t want it, if you’re just getting on to get on, that’s not fair. Especially as someone who I felt like was sort of like in the office, it felt wrong to try and take time away from stuff that Tony really wanted.”

“So I didn’t ask Tony. I never went to Tony and was like, ‘Hey, can I do this? Hey, can I do this?’ I just wanted him to organically go, ‘Hey, I need you to wrestle this person tonight. I need you put this guy over tonight.’ Whatever, if he wanted me, I would do it. So one of the last things we did, or one of the last times he asked me to wrestle, was the tag match with me and Matt against the Young Bucks. Going into that, I knew the finish should be on me. And right before that, I said What would happen if they pinned me and then they fired me? In my head, I thought the natural progression was okay, they would fire me. They’re misusing their EVP powers. Tony would hire me back, and I would wrestle them again, whatever. But then once it happened, I thought, Oh, wait, what if they made me an EVP to sort of like offset them, I’m the babyface version of what Matt and Nick were doing as EVPs. And so we pitched that. And I think once I sort of got that position, I think Tony didn’t want me to wrestle and be an EVP. In my head, the EVPs wrestled all the time. So I was like, Oh, I’ll wrestle every once in a while. But I don’t think Tony had that same mentality.”

“So it then turned into me only being an EVP and from May to almost the end of the year, he didn’t ask me to wrestle again. The last match I had before the end of the year, I actually volunteered for the one with Jack Perry on Collision, because it was Jack Perry versus TBD. And I was like, ‘Hey, what if that was me?’ And he was like, Oh, that’d be great. That’s better than an enhancement match, whatever. I was like, okay, cool. But then, I felt like he already didn’t really need me to wrestle as often. So right around that period of time, I would be pitching different ideas to different guys, but not to Tony directly. It was like, I remembered going to John Morrison once, and ‘I was like, hey, what if you and I were like a tag team, like an LA tag team. What if we were called like, the LA riots?’ Then he started to get more involved with mXm. And I was like, Okay, well, that’s a good thing for him. I don’t need to be weighing him down. And I went to Hangman one time, and this was in the middle of the time when he was getting booed out of the building. He was in the midst of the thing with Swerve. He was just starting this thing with Jay White. And I was like, ‘Hey, man, what if you ended my career? That would be great heat for a heel to be if you crippled me so bad I couldn’t wrestle anymore, that would be cool.’ I didn’t think anything of it after that, just Oh, that would be cool. That’d be a good way to go out. And then, near the end of the year, he was like, ‘I went to Tony, and I think we’re going to do this thing with you and me.’ I was like, oh, okay, cool. So, I mean, if it wasn’t for Hangman asking for that, I don’t think it would happen. I might have ended my career with that match with Jack and just said, I’m done.”

On going into his retirement match:

“I also didn’t want people to know it was my final match. To me, you watch television. You watch dramas or whatever. They never advertise okay, this is the last episode for this guy, because he’s gonna die at the end. Tony had asked me too. He’s like, ‘Hey, why don’t we call this a retirement match?’ I was like, ‘No, you’re missing the point. I don’t want people to know it’s a retirement match. I want people to be shocked.’ It’s more heat, even though it wasn’t really heat on Page at that time, because by that time, he was sort of turning babyface again. But to me, I thought it was more meaningful, and it sort of lent itself to the reality of professional wrestling that we don’t always know when our last match is. So what I wanted was to have the match and then announce the retirement the week later and say, ‘Hey, man, I got so messed up I can’t do this anymore.’ It’s funny how the original idea went from not putting heat on him, but when I pitched it to him what if at the end I say, ‘Hey, I can’t wrestle anymore. Are you happy now?’ I said to him, ‘We can do this one of two ways. Either you start to feel bad, or you double down and you say, “No, I wish I killed you.” And they’re dependent on where he was going to go. You could go either of those routes.’ So, yeah, I went into it thinking this is a good way to go out. And the surprise of it would have been cool. Then the night it happened, I read online, ‘This may be the last match for Christopher Daniels.’ I was like, who told everybody? It was like oh, Sean Ross Sapp told everyone this might be my last match. So I wish he hadn’t done that, but I guess that’s sort of the danger of pro wrestling at this point is everybody wants to know the secrets behind so we don’t let stuff happen organically. People have to know what’s this? What’s going on. Where are we going? But I mean, honestly, I was really happy with how it played out, and happy that I got to do it with Hangman. And honestly, I don’t feel like it was the starting point of where he’s going now, but I feel like it was a step towards what’s happening with him now, which I think is pretty cool.”

On if his body told him it was time to slow down:

“Yeah, and that was part of the reasoning of the beginning of the year, thinking maybe you should think about cooling this off. Because I’ve always had knee problems since maybe 2002. Then, maybe in the middle of 2023, I was realizing I was seeing atrophy on my left side, like my left shoulder my left bicep. It was always weak after I got injured in WCW, in 2001. I kept wrestling. I had to keep wrestling, obviously, but yeah, it was always weak, but it wasn’t visible. And then in the middle of 2023, I started realizing that’s a lot smaller, and it got weaker quicker when I would work out. I could tell I was getting weaker as I was wrestling on this side, I was like, okay. So that put a lot of thought into my head, like, okay, maybe this should be it. And then the way everything just sort of played out, it sort of like led to that being it.”

On possibly being the only wrestler to work WCW, ECW, WWE, TNA, AEW, NJPW and ROH:

“I think so. I had put out a tweet not too long ago because I had an opportunity to work for All Japan. I listed what I thought were the major companies in professional wrestling over the last like 20 years. I listed WCW, WWF, ECW, TNA, ROH, AEW, New Japan, All Japan, 1 Fall, Michinoku Pro, all the places that had television in the US, all of the Japanese companies that sort of made an impact in the US, and then the Mexican companies like AAA and CMLL. So I feel like I’m the first guy to wrestle for all of those. And, yeah, that was a pretty neat accolade, a neat little like badge of honor to sort of wear, especially as much as I was sort of a spokesperson, I guess, for the independent wrestling scene in the early 2000s like the late 90s, early 2000s Yeah, it’s pretty cool to be to say I did all of these places.”

On the terrifying spot with Suicide during Ultimate X:

“I was holding on so tight to Suicide that he ended up taking the brunt of the fall. And the funny thing is, that wasn’t the original plan, because Frankie and I, who’s doing Suicide, we had an idea of what we wanted to do, and I’ll tell you the story. So we had both jumped off the top of the trust before in these Ultimate X matches, we were the only ones. So I had an idea, what if we did this? I’ll get on this truss, and you get on this truss, and you jump first, and then I’ll jump and I’ll land on your back, and then we’ll stand on the ropes, and I’ll hook you for angel’s wings, and then you backdrop me, and that was what we were going to do. I was full on ready to take this backdrop from the top of the truss into the ring. Then we get to Irvine, and they’ve got a ceiling on it. They’ve got these trusses over the top that cover the X, and we couldn’t do that because every time we had done Ultimate X in Orlando, they had bolted the trusses to the floor. But we didn’t own Irvine. This was UC Irvine. So we had to have the truss on top. We couldn’t bolt it to the floor. We couldn’t use it to secure the trusses. So we had to have the X over top. So then we came up with this idea of all right, well, I guess we’ll climb down and I’ll try and do this complete shot to you, and it turned so my legs got hooked. And instead of just going flat on a flat back, which still would have been an insane bump, it ended up being like almost upside down and landing like this.”

“Joe really yelled at me that day. The actual danger was coming to the back and having Samoa Joe grab you by the neck and go, ‘Don’t you ever do that again!’ Really, really frightening. I was like, oh my God. I was fine. I literally landed, and the referee comes over to my face. He goes, ‘Oh my god, are you okay?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m good. What’s up?’ But I could hear that the air escape the room. In the end, I wish we hadn’t done that, because it literally the match just stopped right there, like poor [Amazing] Red is still fighting and trying to get the X Division belt, and the world thinks, Oh, my God, we just witnessed a death like they’re not even thinking about the match anymore at that point. So I feel bad that it ended up being what it was. But I mean, that’s the thing everybody remembers, is my near-death experience. Well, that’s not really what we wanted to get. I tell people all the time, ‘Chris Daniels almost dies’ is on YouTube.”

On why he never joined WWE when WCW got bought out:

“Well, it was a developmental deal, because I had that match with Mike Modest on Nitro, and we did the angle at the end where Scott Steiner came out and broke our legs. So the idea was going to be like, we would heal, and at some point we would come back. That was January of 2001, then by March of 2001 they had closed. And so basically, WWE took all the contracts, and they just went down the list. They’re like, All right, we’ll keep you, we’ll keep you. We’ll keep you. And like all the guys at developmental, they’re like, Oh, well, we don’t need you.”

On the rumour he was going to be the higher power in WWE:

“I didn’t hear this until years later. [So is there any truth to it?] Maybe, but it was never anything that they told me, and honestly, it was a terrible idea anyway. Because the idea would have been Undertaker is answering to this higher power, and then I unmask, and it’s me, and it’s like, Who the f*ck is this guy? It’s sort of like what was going on in my first WCW contract as well. When I first signed with WCW, they had an idea, the way they described it to me was, if Vampiro is Darth Vader, you’re the Emperor. And I was like, Okay. But also, at this point, Vampiro was feuding with Sting, and I was an unknown indie guy, so whatever the reveal was gonna be at that point was gonna be a letdown to me. And so I thought, Okay, we’ll do this. I remember going to WCW one day, cutting this promo backstage with Vampiro, I’ve got this hood, and they’re talking to me, like, ‘All right, talk about harvesting souls and things like that.’ I’m like, okay. So I cut this promo. We get it live, and then I’m back in the locker room, and it comes on live Nitro, and we watch it. And as soon as it’s done, Jeff Jarrett, who happens to be there, and I haven’t really even met Jeff at this point, goes, ‘Who the f*ck was that?!’ And I was like, ‘That’s me sir.’ Then that flopped so quickly that they didn’t go forward with that idea. Then I was just under contract with WCW. I was traveling with them for like, four months, and then they let me go. That was the first contract that I had with them that ended like, JJ Dillon called me, is like, hey, you’re not wrestling a whole lot for us. And I was like, Well, you’re not booking me, so that’s why. It’s not like I’m wasting your money on purpose, sir. But they let me go.”

On how he found out about the rumour:

“It came out on the internet. I think maybe Bruce Prichard mentioned it? But yeah, everyone was like, ‘Christopher Daniels was almost the higher power.’ I was like, was he though? I don’t think that’s true. I think maybe it was discussed because I had been going to do WWE dark matches as an extra, and Jim Cornette was always sort of high on trying to get me there early on when the light heavyweight thing was a thing, and they knew I was doing the fallen angel. So I think they thought, Oh, well, maybe this is something that we could use him as. But honestly, I think once Vince saw me, and, you know, I’m 5 10 and this is the time when everybody is six feet something, it’s like, we can do better. And I was like, that makes sense.”

On whether he knew the Unbreakable 2005 match was going to be something special:

“Yes and no. We knew we could do a good match, we had all worked with each other. I don’t know if we had done a three-way prior to this, but I know I had worked with AJ a bunch. I had worked with Joe a bunch. I know Joe and AJ had done some stuff, and we were always very similar in our mindset of let’s get the match over. Let’s show off. Let’s show our best stuff. But also, we weren’t afraid of I need to get my stuff in. None of us were like that. We were like, All right, well, is this good for the match? Great! Let’s do it. And then that day, come to find out, Oh, you guys are the main event. And we’re like, Oh, okay. And I think we might have asked, and they said, ‘Well, the heavyweight title match was Raven vs. Rhino. And while that’s got star power, and it’s a different vibe, it’s not going to be able to follow what you guys do in terms of action.’ Okay, that’s fair. So that night, as we’re going through it, and at that point too, the impact zone fan base, I felt was very protective and possessive, I feel like they felt like they had found this uncovered gem that no one else knew about and so, yeah, these are our guys, and a lot of the X-Division wrestlers were beneficiaries of that goodwill. So I feel this match sort of cements the mentality of the last component to a five-star match to me is the atmosphere and the environment. Because everything we did that night, they were there for. It sounded like the Tokyo Dome to me, the people, everyone’s going nuts for everything as it’s going 20 minutes long. Everybody was there for everything. We knew at the end. I was like, okay, that went really well. That went really well. I didn’t know that we’d still be talking about it 20 years later. But yeah, I mean, I felt like we could go out there and do something good. I just didn’t know it’d be that good until after the bell rang, and I was like, Oh, that was something.”

On his shock TNA release:

“I feel like there were times where I butted heads creatively with guys like Vince Russo. You know, sometimes it’s easier to eliminate a problem than try to solve it.”

You were the problem?

“I tried to make sense of stuff, and I never was like, ‘Hey, I’m not going to do that.’ But I also tried to make sense of things. I remember, I went to Vince and I said, ‘What do I need to do? What can I do?’ And he said to me, ‘Hey, your work is gonna get you over.’ I was like, okay. But then he would write me into these situations where he would say, ‘All right, don’t do any of these hand symbols and stop wearing ring jackets to the ring.’ It was almost like he wanted me to stop doing anything that had some sort of personality to it. He just wanted me go out and wrestle. And I tried to make the best of that. But then I would come back to the back. I would never say, ‘Hey, was that good?’ I would say, ‘Hey, was that what you wanted?’ And then with the mindset of if that’s what you wanted, and then it didn’t work, then what’s the problem here? If I went out there and I didn’t do what you wanted me to do, then I understand that’s my fault. But if I go out there and I do what you want me to do, and you tell me, that’s what I wanted, and then it doesn’t work, well, then the problem seems to be what you wanted wasn’t good. So that was sort of my issue with that. So I got let go, and then a year later, he’s okay to bring me back. I remember we had a meeting in front of the entire locker room, and he singled me out. He goes, ‘You know, Chris, the reason we let you go is because you weren’t over.’ And I went, ‘Okay. But also I’m doing the stories you’re writing, and I’m doing the things you want me to do, and I’m not over. Maybe those aren’t good ideas.’ I’m sure if he reads this or hears this now, he’s gonna pipe back and be like, ‘No, Chris, you just wanted to do high spots.’ I was like, No, I wanted to do what would work. But you never really, you didn’t really, I don’t know.”

On winning the ROH World Championship:

“It did not become a possibility until after we had the match in Boston, me and Frankie versus The Young Bucks versus the Motor City Machine Guns at that all star extravaganza where we lost the titles in basically, that TLC match, a ladder war. Maybe even the next day, Kevin Kelly said to me, ‘You know, maybe we should think about making you World Champion after that performance.’ Because I went out there and bled buckets and got my ass kicked for however long we went and took all these wacky bumps. I feel like it was one of those things where I won in losing that night. So I think that was the first time where Kevin Kelly was like, hmm, maybe we sort of ride this into you becoming world champion at some point. So it was sort of at that moment that I started to turn babyface, and then started this story. And Hunter [Delirious], who was also doing creative, had this mentality of like, okay, maybe this is the time where we actually, finally end the story of your drive to the World Championship. And along the way, I was like, Listen, if this isn’t good for us, the company, don’t do it. Don’t do it just to give me this accolade. Because if it’s good for me and not good for us as the company, it’s not worth it. Because I don’t want to be the guy that’s like, oh, look, he politicked to get the World Championship. Okay, this guy’s a world champion. I didn’t want that. So I kept telling him, if this is no good, we don’t need to do it. I don’t need it. And they’re like, No, this is good. It ended up being great. I think it ended up being great for everything. It was one of those things that we didn’t write it that way in 2002 to where I didn’t win the belt and never won the belt and never got it in 2010 and finally got it in 2017 but it ended up being that way. And I was like oh, long-term storytelling. Sometimes it just happens that way.”

On losing the title to Cody Rhodes:

“Yeah, that was fun. That was a lot of fun to be able to work with Cody. And I remember, I think me and Hunter [Delirious] at the same time decided Cody should be the guy. Because I remember going to him, I was like, hey, what about Cody? And he was like, Hey, we think we’re about putting the belt on him. I was like, Yeah, that’s right, because he’s the guy right now. And so when we were going over this thing and talking about, I remember it wasn’t until right before, I think maybe the first time I had ever called a match the night before the show was that latter war thing. And so I did it then, and then I did it the night before the title match with Adam Cole. And I remember getting with Cody the night before, and I was thinking like, Hey, man, if anybody should appreciate the romance of the idea of finally winning a world championship and becoming world champion, I think it would be you, because of his history throughout this business. I was like, I think I feel like you would appreciate this idea. And so let’s, you know, we put this thing together, and it went great. It was really fun working with Cody. I had a great time.”

On the inspiration of the BME:

“Okay, so I was always a moonsault guy. I always wanted to do a moonsault. The Great Muta inspired me to do a moonsault. And so I started to learn a moonsault, like early 94 95 I was even doing it. I remember doing it for the first time in Puerto Rico when I was in WWC. So I was training one day in windy city, and there was a Mexican wrestler that was there, it wasn’t anybody famous, I don’t even remember the gentleman’s name, but I saw him bounce from the second [rope], bounce to the top, do a cross body. And I thought, Oh, that’s cool. At the time, I was playing with this moonsault where you stand on the top rope and then you jump up and bounce. You basically turn and bounce, like Mark Mero had done. So I was doing that for a little bit and having sort of good success with it. But then I thought. Oh, maybe it’d be easier if I just did this bounce-bounce thing. And so for the longest time, I just called it the double bounce moonsault. I wasn’t doing it on television at that point, so no one was calling it the double bounce moonsault, no announcers were calling it. It was just me when I would say, Hey, okay, this, this, this, and then I’ll hit you with the double bounce moonsault. So somewhere along the lines in TNA, you know, I’m a Simpsons fan. So everything that Comic Book Guy said was like best comic book ever. And I thought, haha! So I was like best moonsault ever. So that was where I got that from.”

On Tiffany Stratton having the prettiest moonsault ever:

“Which was very, very cool of her. I don’t know Tiffany at all. I’ve never met her. But the fact that she didn’t just copy it, she sort of adjusted it, which is what the greats do. I feel like they don’t just steal. If we are inspired by something, we try to put our own little spin on it. And so the fact that she goes from the bottom all the way up and then to sort of like, pay homage, call it in that same vein, PME, I was like, that’s pretty cool. I can’t be mad at that.”

Is there a secret to it?

“Yeah. I mean, for me, the idea was using the top rope to sort of balance yourself until you bounce, and then once you bounce, it’s basically push from the top and bounce off the second at the same time to go straight. And you just got to keep your eyes on the ropes. So, I mean, I wasn’t perfect all the time, but I very rarely flubbed it. And just very lucky to be able to do it and keep doing it as long as I did.”

On how long his eye took to heal:

“So, news flash, that was never real. So I had the match with The Young Bucks, all right, and all of you that are watching now, you’re gonna feel this. So I had the match with The Young Bucks where SCU split up. I got super kicked into the post, and the next day, I had this huge black eye, and it started to fill with blood. I thought, Man, that’s pretty cool. Then three days later, it healed. I was like, Oh, that’s too bad, but then I thought, what if? So at the time, Abadon was working for us, and they wear these contacts. And I said, ‘Do you have a guy that does these contacts, because I want to do this thing?’ They’re like, Yeah. They put me in touch with this guy. I was like, Listen, this is what I want. I just want to make it look like a hemorrhage. I had pitched this idea of I had lost everything. I made this video that I presented to AEW and Tony. And I was like, Hey, here’s the story. I was the ring general, but my plans failed, and because of that, SCU is no longer a thing, and now I have this scar to show for my failure. But I’m going to come back, and all I have left is my career and my fighting. So I sent this in, and at the end of that match, I even said to Matt and Nick and Frankie, this might be my last match. I could retire from this. And if I retire because of this, cool.”

“So I didn’t wrestle for like, three or four months, and then I came up with this idea, gave it to Tony, and then I started doing a little bit of the Indies. I thought, Okay, well, this will get me back on television, but we never really capitalized on that. Then I came back six months later to do the match with Bryan when AEW bought Ring of Honor. That was my first match back from whenever I made the match with The Bucks. So yeah, so that was the mentality of let’s do this thing. So I kept it for a long time, and then later down the line, I was like, Oh, we’re not really concentrating on this. This isn’t really a thing anymore. So I was like, Yeah, you know what? Maybe it’s time for the eye to heal. I wore it for like a year and a half, and I wore it everywhere. The first time I debuted it out in public, I went to the Heels premiere, I met Stephen Amell. He’s like, ‘Oh my god, your eye.’ And I was like, yeah, man, it’s okay. And then the next time he saw me was that we were at Grand Slam and Arthur Ashe, and he comes up to me, goes, ‘Hey, your eye has healed.’ And I was like, ‘Hey, that was fake.’ He was like, ‘You son of a bitch!’ I was like, ‘Listen, we just watched a television show about a caped man. So what did you want?'”

Could you see through it?

“Oh, yeah, perfectly fine. 100%. The funny thing is, one time I was at a signing, and this lady comes up. She goes, ‘Oh, how’s your eye?’ And I go, ‘Well, you know, it’s still like this, I don’t know.’ And she was like, ‘Oh, well, that’s weird. You know, I’m a doctor.’ And I went, Yep, cool. And she’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s not really typical.’ And I go, ‘No, ma’am, it’s not.’ Sorry, doctor. I didn’t mean to lie to you either.”

On whether Curry Man has retired:

“Well, that was Curry Man’s final match. The last match for Christopher Daniels was the match with Adam Page, and that shall be his last match. And then Curry Man also decided to hang up the boots after wrestling the masked brother. So it was easy for me to decide to do a Curry Man match because it was with a friend of mine, my best friend and to have that moment be the official last time I ever take a bump in a wrestling ring for a wrestling match. That was cool. But also, I don’t feel like it takes away from anything that happened in the match with Adam, because that is the last time you’ll see this human wrestling a wrestling match.”

On the story behind Curry Man:

“Okay, so every four years at the time, Michinoku Pro would do a masked man tournament. It was a big round robin, month long thing, and they did it in 95. I want to say Jerry Lynn was in it. Gorgons Cross was his character. This was May of 99, so in April of 99 I do a tour with Michinoku Pro as Christopher Daniels. And afterwards, they’re like, ‘Hey, we’d like you to be in this tournament.’ Because they would have their regular masked wrestlers, Great Sasuke, Tiger Mask, and then they would make these characters for the tournament to fill it out. So they wanted me to be one of the guys. There was Jason Cross from the UK, was one of them. Jody Fleisch from the UK was one of them. And so there was a guy named Kendo, an older Mexican wrestler, and he was translating for me, but his English wasn’t great.”

“So he comes up to me the day I get there, and he goes, ‘Ah, you are Karema.’ And I go, I don’t know what Karema means. Okay, I’m Karema. And then I get to the building, and I see the t-shirt, and it has all the names of the wrestlers in the tournament, and it says Curry Man. And I go, I guess I’m Curry Man. So they explained to me there’s a cartoon in Japan called Kinicumin, which is muscle busters, muscle wrestlers, something like that. And there was a character called Curry Cook. And the gimmick was this Curry Cook had a plate of curry and rice on his head. So curry man had this plate of food on his head. And I was like, Oh, okay. And honestly, as racist as this sounds, I didn’t know how to play this character. They just said I was from India. And so at the time, being a Simpsons Mark, I became Apu, and I would wrestle like Apu. I would hit something. I’d be like, ‘Oh, so sorry’, and I was like eugh. So for a while, I thought, Oh, this is weird. I just wanted to wrestle, and so I got depressed. I’m not really feeling this thing. And finally, Grand Hamato, who is one of the older veterans, he comes up to me, goes ‘Hey, just wrestle.’ And he walks away. Then I was just like f*ck it. I’ll just have fun.

So then I came up with this idea of, like, in addition to wearing this mask and doing this nonsense, I would come out and dance, and I would do all this fun stuff, and I changed my gear from the yellow Sabu singlet and baggy pants that they gave me, and I just wore what I would usually wear. I had a cut-off T-shirt like Billy Gunn used to wear to hide the tattoo, because Curry Man wasn’t Christopher Daniels at that time. So then I started doing all this stuff, and that’s where it started to catch sort of fire in Michinoku Pro, and that became a real popular character for them.”

What is Christopher Daniels grateful for?

“Wrestling, my wife and my kids.”

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Predicting John Cena’s Final Match, Most Annoying Chant, Who The Real GOAT Is, Worst Booked Match Ever w/ Sam Roberts

in LATEST EPISODES on July 1, 2025 July 1, 2025

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

Sam Roberts (@notsam) is a professional wrestling podcaster. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in New York City to discuss whether John Cena could be the greatest of all time and his heel turn, The Rock’s work as The Final Boss, the worst worked match, Royal Rumble winner and fan chant, R-Truth showing his more serious side, his favorite Undertaker entrance and more!

Quote I’m thinking about: “A man is great not because he hasn’t failed; a man is great because failure hasn’t stopped him.” – Confucius

On what makes someone the greatest of all time:

“First of all, I think that, greatest of all time is not necessarily based on the number of championships. I do think that you’re not wrong about that, because it’s hard to think that The Rock, if he had had a longer career, it’s not like he wouldn’t have been in the main event scene. That’s the only scene you put a guy like The Rock in. I don’t see that character evolving out of the main event space. So I think that you’re right about the 17 championships. I also think the thing about the Attitude Era is that Stone Cold had the title more times than he probably should have, and a lot of people did because they were switching around that title like crazy. I think what’s amazing about The Rock is that he came up in the Attitude Era. It’s one thing for Stone Cold, who had this really nice career under him. It’s not like he was guaranteed a main event spot at all. It never looked like he was going to get there, but the fact that he had this foundation meant that once he got there, he was ready to be there, whereas The Rock was just there naturally. He’s Flex Cavana in USWA for a couple of months, then he’s showing up at the Garden, getting booed out of the building, and less than a year later, he’s quickly becoming the hottest act in wrestling, and he doesn’t buckle under the pressure.”

On The Rock being The Final Boss:

“I do wonder, with The Rock though, had he stuck around longer, and how much longer? Because The Rock, and smartly so, never gave himself a chance to get stale. We don’t know what that would have been like. Is there an ability to evolve consistently enough? And I think there is, and maybe he takes a year off here and a year off there. But yeah, I feel like The Rock is just one of those characters, and there’s very few of them that’s meant to just exist in this bottle, and it was just lightning in a bottle for the period that it was, and then he can come back. Honestly, especially once we get removed enough from it, and you and I can have the conversation when it’s time, there’s going to be a moment in time to have a real conversation about The Final Boss character and how good it was and how impactful it was, not to say it’s over, but that build to WrestleMania 40 with The Rock becoming The Final Boss, and again, what is that character around for two months? That’s it. I mean, he pops up here and there, still. But really, the run of The Final Boss is Las Vegas press conference to night after WrestleMania 40 say. People can get frustrated at the lack of Final Boss since then, but the reality is that run in a bubble, is one of those untouchable character arcs.”

On whether The Final Boss could be The Rock’s best character work:

“I mean, to me, definitely by far the best thing he’s done since being a full-time wrestler. You would have to go back to $500 shirt, people’s eyebrow, coming on TV every week with a new catchphrase every single week. It’s that, and Final Boss, and that’s your conversation today.”

On whether he saw the John Cena heel turn coming:

“The real answer is no. It was, of course, part of the conversation, in the sense that it was like in the realm of possibilities of what could happen with this build-up to Cody selling his soul, and we know that WrestleMania is next. Of course, the idea of John Cena could turn heel is one of the places where that conversation organically goes. That’s one of the sort of on-paper possibilities. But no, the reality of it, and in that moment no, and I think that’s what made that moment so amazing. There are people who put on their hindsight goggles and go, ‘Yeah, I knew. I saw that coming.’ No you didn’t dude, you did not. You knew it could happen, but you didn’t see that coming in that moment. I didn’t see it coming. I thought it was, in that moment, perfectly executed.”

On there being no real explanation for the heel turn:

“I’ve said, Let him cook a million times, and people will kill me in the comments for saying you got to let him cook. But you sometimes you do. I think that there could be a payoff to this coming. I think that to say there is no payoff before we’ve had the opportunity for a payoff beyond WrestleMania, to be upset at the end of WrestleMania, and go there was no WrestleMania payoff. I get that. But to go there’s overall no payoff to this heel turn. I don’t accept that, because we’re in the middle of it. You can’t go, ‘Hey, I’m in the middle of this thing. Where’s the end already?’ That’s not how storytelling works. And I think that there have been enough breadcrumbs throughout. Cody consistently brings up The Rock in these promos. So it’s not like they’re going, ‘No forget that Rock thing ever happened,’ because Cody is not letting us forget it happened. And then on SmackDown, John Cena said, ‘I made you think I sold my soul to The Rock? I didn’t do that.’ So we are getting these slow but sure answers along the way, and maybe this character is taking months to really flesh out, and people didn’t expect it. But I do see a payoff in the future, because I don’t see Cena leaving as a heel.”

On the possibility of John Cena vs. Roman Reigns:

“I would like to think so, but I’m not sure that we’re gonna get a Roman match, to tell you the truth. Do I want it? Yeah, I really want to see a Roman match. I think the idea of Roman coming back, I think there’s such a wonderful story to tell, because when John and Roman had that match, that was the passing of the torch match. John Cena made it very difficult for Roman Reigns. ‘You need to learn to cut a promo kid.’ You know what I mean? He made it really tough for him. And the idea that this Roman Reigns could come back and go, ‘Okay, John, guess what I learned how to do?’ This is the Roman Reigns that John has to deal with, I think would be an incredible story. I just don’t 100% know where it fits in. I think it could. I just don’t know where it fits into the timeline with the fact that Roman, his priority number one would be where he left, which is getting laid out by Seth Rollins and Bron Breakker. I personally feel like Seth Rollins and his Money in the Bank briefcase is going to be used for the WWE Championship. I don’t think it’s a World Heavyweight Championship win. I think Seth Rollins, whether it’s John Cena or Cody Rhodes, Seth Rollins is going to use his briefcase to get the WWE Championship. Then that could lead to a WrestleMania match where Seth is defending that title against Roman Reigns.”

On Roman Reigns never officially turning babyface:

“No, and I don’t think he ever will officially turn babyface, because I don’t think he’ll ever abandon that character. But I remember saying on NotSam, I was like Roman Reigns’ babyface turn is the minute he loses the championship. Because the minute he loses the championship is the minute we all get a second to breathe. It’s the minute we all get a second to reflect. It’s the minute we all get a second to appreciate. And lo and behold, he loses the championship. This new Bloodline starts to form. Next thing you know, Roman’s fighting Solo. Cody’s teaming with Roman, and Roman is a baby face without ever changing.”

On John Cena’s final match:

“I would want it to be Bron Breakker. because he’s a heel. It’s like, you’re not going to give an up-and-coming baby face a victory over a heel John Cena, because the whole point is that nobody’s going to beat him. What I would like to see is John Cena to turn babyface with enough time left that he can tell a great story with Drew McIntyre. Although now that Drew McIntyre has gone away, he may be a babyface when he comes back, because I mean the same Roman Reigns rule applies to Drew McIntyre. Everybody’s just waiting for the opportunity to express to Drew how much they appreciate him. But if he’s going to stay a heel, I would like to see Drew beat John Cena Post World Title loss as a John Cena baby face, and then the very last match is whatever that is, maybe the Saturday Night’s Main Event in Boston is the rumor, and I would like it to just be old school. I’m talking Bret Hart, Terry Funk, I mean, literally not kill John Cena. Bron Breakker just gets him with a small package. 123, John Cena made one mistake. Bron Breakker wins. Bron Breakker gets to celebrate. And then, because John Cena didn’t get killed, we can then still have a moment for the heels to leave and the babyfaces can come out and congratulate John.”

On R-Truth:

“Honestly, the thing that’s cool about it is that it is happening when he’s 53 years old makes it special. But if he was 33 it’d still be special. It’s good work, and it’s years of doing stuff that resonates with fans. That’s what it is. You’ve built that equity with the audience, and a lot of it sort of just by trudging along and making things work that otherwise wouldn’t have worked, and just taking these little moments and making them memorable, and just making it so that you talk to any wrestling fan and you go, what do you think about R-Truth? I love R-Truth. You could go back to a decade ago, and he’s trying to get in the Money in the Bank ladder match, and say my bad. You could go to more recently. I think people breeze by the fact that The Judgment Day felt like it was gonna end a little while ago, and Truth coming in and doing that whole Judgment Day run with Tom and Nick Mysterio and making a joke out of being the top merch seller and trying to give Judgment Day their share of the money and everything like it not only breathed life into R-Truth, but that life was breathed back into the Judgment Day and boosted them for years.”

On the more serious side to R-Truth:

“But you forget that he is a two-time NWA World Champion. You forget that he was literally wrestling in the Attitude Era, and has wrestled consistently since 1999. You forget that this is a guy who has seen and done everything and has somehow in this business, not only gotten the entire audience behind him, and this is not a nostalgia act, this is an audience of people who might have started watching wrestling two years ago, and they love R-Truth. But also talk to anybody who works in wrestling. Talk to anybody who’s ever shared a locker room with him. He is universally both beloved and respected. And if the audience doesn’t get you, the locker room will. And I think that that doesn’t happen by accident, and it certainly doesn’t happen just by being a fun comedy act. I think that Truth is just the type of performer where it’s like, I can do this well, and this is working. I work here. If this is what you would like me to do, I’m gonna do it better than you’ve ever seen it.”

On the worst-booked match of all time:

“It may be obvious, but it’s literally a match that bothered me when I watched it, and it’s bothered me every day since. It is in 1997, so it’s been a lot of days. I can’t tell you the amount of anger that I feel when I think about Starrcade 97. I get so mad when I think about Starrcade 97 more upset than any other wrestling match that’s ever existed, and I’ve seen a ton of them. People need to understand that the nWo was the hottest thing in wrestling, and the Hogan Sting story was the best booked wrestling story, maybe since Hogan Andre like it was incredible. They kept our attention for 16 months, over a year. Sting shows up the night after Fall Brawl 96 and says the only thing that’s for sure about Sting is nothing’s for sure. And we finally, you talk about getting a payoff. We finally get the payoff in December of 97. This is not only the payoff to Sting and Hogan, this is the payoff to this entire nWo story that we’ve been so invested in. And then this finish happens, and you’re like, What the hell was that? This finish happens where they have a standard count, Hogan just wins. Bret says it was a fast count. You go, what is he talking about? They’re going to restart the match. Why? Did the babyface screw the heel to win this thing. And then you follow that up with just the messiest, oh, okay, we’ll have a rematch here. Okay, you’ll lose the title there. I mean, the whole thing. People talk about the finger poke of doom. People talk about the Goldberg streak ending. It was already done. It was already done because you had the best story in wrestling in 97 going into 98 literally the hottest time up until that point in the history of professional wrestling. All eyes were on you. You had it all. Why didn’t WCW beat WWE Oh, I think it was because of Time Warner, the merger. I think it was Vince Russo. I think, no, it was Hogan Sting, Starrcade 97.”

On the best entrance of all time:

“It’s hard to say that The Undertaker does not have the best entrance of all time. I mean, this is an entrance that people stop watching wrestling, and it’s like they remember The Undertaker’s entrance. If you show them one thing, it’s going to be The Undertaker’s entrance. I think if I could pick one Undertaker entrance, there’s so many good Undertaker entrances, probably the Limp Bizkit WrestleMania. No, I’m just kidding. I love Limp Bizkit, though, so maybe, and maybe this is just one that I love. I’m not going to sit here and talk to fans and go, like, Nope, this is the best one fight me, like I do with most of my takes. But for me, and it was because I was in the building, is because I was a kid, it was because it was really one of the first times that they said, What can we do with this entrance? I go back to SummerSlam 92 and I go to The Undertaker entering Wembley Stadium in a hearse. And it was just one of those things in 92 you weren’t seeing that much spectacle from WWE at that time. You weren’t seeing people riding vehicles to the ring. You weren’t seeing 88,000 people all watching this show. And to see the Undertaker who was just kind of getting his feet wet in babyface territory, and how this character, because, to me, also, The Undertaker turning babyface is what made it go. Okay, is this like a short-term character that was cool, but I don’t know, we kind of ran out of ideas. Or is this a character with real lasting ability, and I think that’s why it’s so important that that guy played The Undertaker, because nobody else could have pulled that off. But yeah, I think The Undertaker is, that’s my like, fight me, The Undertaker is the best. But my favorite Undertaker might be that 92 Summer Slam entrance.”

On the most annoying fan chant:

“The most annoying wrestling chant is very easy. ‘We want tables’ is the most annoying, dumb wrestling chant that exists. And I think Bubba Ray Dudley takes this the wrong way. This is not anti-table. This is not anti-use of tables. It’s certainly not anti-Dudley’s, perhaps the greatest tag team that’s ever existed in professional wrestling. This is anti the execution of ‘We want tables’ by active wrestling fans. They will chant it in every match where tables may even be a slim possibility, if it’s a triple threat, and they’re not even really taking advantage of the no DQ, they’ll figure out, oh, wait, this is triple threat, no DQ ‘We want tables. We want tables.’ And it’s like, stop with the ‘We want tables’ for several reasons. Number one, we know you want tables. Everyone knows you want tables. There has never, in the history of professional wrestling, been the use of a table where you go boy, the fans didn’t want a table. They’re like, nobody’s ever going through a table? Boo! We don’t want a table. Everybody has always wanted a table. So it goes without saying that you want a table, okay, but understand that tables come at the appropriate times and when people are trying to tell a story in the ring that builds to a certain thing, and you’re like, Screw your story. We want a table spot now. We’ll get to a table spot, and maybe there will be a table spot in this match. But you know what? Maybe the reason there’s not a table spot in this match is because there’s gonna be a table spot two matches from now, and you can’t do table spots in every single match. But what you could do is not chant. We want tables and have it take away from what is going on in the match. It’s disruptive, and there’s no getting rid of it. And people go like this, the what chant is worse. The ‘What?’ chant is not worse. The what chant is hideous. It’s terrible, but it’s not worse, because the ‘What?’ chant is avoidable. Stone Cold Steve Austin gave the formula in interviews previously to avoid the what chant, which is just change up your cadence Don’t leave these rhythmic gaps open for that what to hit. And you’ve seen people effectively do it. ‘We want tables.’ The only way to get around it is to pull out a table. And it’s like, we’re not pulling out a table right now.”

What is Sam Roberts grateful for?

“That Sirius XM has launched a 24-hour wrestling channel and that you accepted my invitation.”

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