Flagrant - Andrew Schulz & Akaash Singh - Cody Rhodes on Roman Reigns “Beef”, Finishing Fathers Legacy, & Vince McMahon Story
Aired: 2024-10-30
Duration: 02:44:23


=== The Undertaker's Magical Escape (14:12) ===

[00:00:00]  One of the most magical things I've ever seen is the Undertaker showing up to choke slam the rock.
[00:00:05]  In the moment, I'm laying in the corner.
[00:00:06]  So I see this man roll in the ring like a wild animal.
[00:00:10]  But then no one sees this.
[00:00:12]  He looked over at me and just went, and as soon as he winked, I kid you not, the lights went out.
[00:00:17]  And he escaped.
[00:00:18]  And I thought like, oh, he's magical, you know?
[00:00:22]  Did anything go wrong?
[00:00:23]  Everything.
[00:00:25]  Is it true?
[00:00:26]  That Vince flies to your house to pitch you on coming to WWE.
[00:00:30]  He scribbled on a piece of paper the amount of money the contract would be for and just slid it across it.
[00:00:35]  15 times more than what I had been making.
[00:00:38]  I always say like it's a peck well spent.
[00:00:40]  I kept my jacket on the whole day and I remember Michael Hayes, he asked to see it.
[00:00:44]  I started to unzip my jacket a little bit and he goes, no, no, no.
[00:00:47]  Save it.
[00:00:48]  Did you feel like you were spearheading it or do you feel like there was other shit?
[00:00:57]  What's up, everybody?
[00:00:57]  Welcome to Flagner.
[00:00:58]  And today we are joined by the motherfucking champ, man.
[00:01:01]  Cody Rose is in the family lady.
[00:01:03]  Oh, wow.
[00:01:03]  Yes.
[00:01:04]  Yes.
[00:01:05]  Okay.
[00:01:05]  Thank you.
[00:01:06]  As I was saying to you before, DePod, you know, we are we are guys that were very much wrestling casuals.
[00:01:12]  Okay.
[00:01:12]  In my younger life, obviously there are certain waves that you couldn't escape it, but it wasn't like I grew up here in the city.
[00:01:20]  It wasn't like I felt ostracized if I wasn't completely locked in.
[00:01:25]  Vince Doc comes out.
[00:01:27]  It's like mind-blowing.
[00:01:28]  It's one of the most amazing things that I've seen on TV.
[00:01:30]  Like it truly incredible.
[00:01:32]  I feel like left out.
[00:01:34]  I feel like I missed 20 years of reflection of American culture through wrestling.
[00:01:39]  And I think it really portrays wrestling as incredibly highbrow.
[00:01:44]  And a lot of times the people that don't watch it, I think think it's lowbrow.
[00:01:48]  The people that do watch it understand it for the story and this reflection of culture.
[00:01:53]  And I think the doc like smashed them together.
[00:01:55]  I love that you referred to it as highbrow.
[00:01:57]  Okay.
[00:01:59]  Because in terms of pro wrestling, sports entertainment, however you look at it, whichever generation you popped in, or if you were a fan, if you weren't a fan, there is a reason that I wear a suit everywhere I go.
[00:02:10]  There is a reason I try to represent wrestling at the highest level.
[00:02:14]  It's because having my dad in it, that was a unique conversation as a kid with, hey, what does your dad do?
[00:02:21]  Or when you meet their parents, what does your dad do?
[00:02:24]  And my dad told me, I feel bad even when he told me this, even at a young age, I thought, no way.
[00:02:29]  But he told me, he goes, hey, if you want to tell people I'm a salesman, that's okay.
[00:02:34]  And I thought like, no, no.
[00:02:37]  Or because he thought you might be embarrassed.
[00:02:39]  Well, just people would judge it.
[00:02:40]  People to judge, like, not everyone says highbrow.
[00:02:43]  So when I try to engage with people or meet people or even the classic on a flight, what do you do for a living?
[00:02:49]  I want to make sure they leave and they're not thinking like it's not the best example, but they're not thinking macho madness all the time.
[00:02:59]  Like I'm not sitting there snapping into Slim Diddy.
[00:03:01]  Like that's all awesome and wonderful.
[00:03:03]  And it was for the time amazing, one of the greater performers ever.
[00:03:06]  But I want them to understand that it is a very large business.
[00:03:10]  If it makes you feel any better, you know what imagine made me realize that was when I saw your wrestle mania going crazy on Twitter.
[00:03:16]  I started watching the last five minutes of it.
[00:03:18]  My brother broke down the whole story.
[00:03:19]  My brother's a big wrestling fan.
[00:03:20]  And I was like, oh, this is some of the greatest storytelling I've ever heard of years.
[00:03:25]  Yeah, I want to get into like your whole full story because that's kind of insane how it's culminated.
[00:03:30]  But there is one thing that I want to like fast forward and ask you about.
[00:03:34]  There's this term that, you know, we learn when we're watching the dock and everybody probably already knows this.
[00:03:38]  So a lot of the parlance I'm going to use is going to seem like pedestrian to you, but to us, you know, we're learning about.
[00:03:42]  Quite all right.
[00:03:43]  So babyface, right?
[00:03:45]  Yes.
[00:03:46]  Are you the first unanimously supported babyface since Hulk Hogan?
[00:03:52]  I'm knocking on, I think that's wood.
[00:03:56]  I've been very lucky.
[00:03:57]  But can you maybe even describe what that means?
[00:03:59]  Babyface, I mean, Babyface is a good guy.
[00:04:02]  Babyface is a good guy.
[00:04:04]  Heel is a bad guy.
[00:04:05]  Those two terms are usually used pretty correctly.
[00:04:08]  Yeah.
[00:04:08]  It's some of the other terms you'll feel that it's always good being a casual fan because some of the most hardcore fans, they'll start throwing these terms around and they're, no, not the use of it.
[00:04:19]  Like, we don't talk that way.
[00:04:21]  But babyface, good guy.
[00:04:23]  I've been very lucky that something about my return set in with all the different demographics in a way where there was not, there's usually a good chunk of fans who rally against the babyface as well.
[00:04:36]  Well, I like the bad guys.
[00:04:38]  Something happened.
[00:04:39]  And I'll give him the first person who really let me in on it, that this is wild.
[00:04:44]  There's no one going against this.
[00:04:46]  This is wild was a Hall of Famer Mr. Paul Heyman, who without giving me credit in a moment, gave me a lot of credit.
[00:04:54]  He said, you've opened the door for traditional babyfaces to come back.
[00:04:59]  Yeah, that's, I was apparently, yeah, post Stone Cold or whatever.
[00:05:02]  He was always like an edgy Stone Cold event.
[00:05:05]  It was the anti-hero.
[00:05:07]  And the more I kind of like try to watch and analyze wrestling, I'm like, wrestling is this reflection of whatever Americans are rebelling against.
[00:05:15]  So the Hogan areas may be like, this is the rebellion against the guy who wears the suit and does everything proper and has the family and the dog in the yard.
[00:05:25]  And then Hogan's like, fuck that.
[00:05:26]  I do whatever I want.
[00:05:28]  Exciting.
[00:05:29]  Then once you have that guy as the good guy, the rebellion is the guy who doesn't really give a fuck.
[00:05:34]  And you see this like anti-heroes pop in, the stone cold.
[00:05:38]  But you're pure babyface.
[00:05:41]  That's the term we use is white meat babyface.
[00:05:46]  White meat.
[00:05:48]  And like by the time this comes out, I don't know if that'll, it's very risky.
[00:05:53]  It's a, I would never be mad if I started to hear the booze.
[00:05:57]  I things would have to change a little bit.
[00:05:59]  You'd have to pivot.
[00:06:00]  But my model in the industry and a guy I drove around for a few years, God bless him, one of the best locker room leaders the company ever had was John Cena.
[00:06:08]  John is the virtuous, the goodest of good, but he had a really unique thing with the audience where half the people were there to see him win and the other half were there to see him lose.
[00:06:18]  And that still means they're all here for John.
[00:06:21]  They didn't realize it at the time because he told me once, he goes, if they're chanting, let's go see Na Cena sucks.
[00:06:26]  Well, I feel bad for the other guy in the ring with me.
[00:06:29]  That's not even saying his name.
[00:06:30]  Right.
[00:06:30]  And then they found moments where like CM Punk and him would wrestle against each other and they started chanting for CM Punk.
[00:06:34]  And that's where you started to realize, okay, guys are starting to click.
[00:06:36]  They're starting to get to his level.
[00:06:38]  Yeah, no, the babyface is a wild thing.
[00:06:40]  But again, tonight, I'm at Barclays.
[00:06:42]  I could walk out there and it could all end.
[00:06:45]  It could all end.
[00:06:46]  So I don't take it for a grant.
[00:06:47]  What do you think makes you think?
[00:06:50]  Was it anything you did intentionally?
[00:06:51]  Was it just something that happened wrestling with the Peck or whatever?
[00:06:53]  What do you think it was that really flipped everyone?
[00:06:57]  The story, you know, we went into WrestleMania 40.
[00:06:59]  We're saying, we got to finish the story.
[00:07:01]  Everything about what I have done and my return to WWE and where I went and all of that is real.
[00:07:08]  So when our industry is at its best, it's when you're just reflecting real.
[00:07:12]  And that's not always easy if you're playing like an astronaut or a really crazy out there character or Stardust, for example.
[00:07:19]  But when you were telling them and telling them willing into existence, first promo I did, returning to WWE was on Raw and no one looked at it.
[00:07:27]  Not a single writer.
[00:07:28]  Nobody asked.
[00:07:29]  They had a full trust in what I was going to say.
[00:07:32]  And here's the time, please hit this time.
[00:07:35]  And I just wanted to will it into existence.
[00:07:36]  Here's the story.
[00:07:37]  My dad held this up in the garden in the late 70s.
[00:07:41]  Then due to the nature of pro wrestling, he didn't get to leave with the title.
[00:07:45]  And at eight years old, you don't know the difference between what's real, what isn't real.
[00:07:48]  I just looked at it and I wanted it.
[00:07:50]  I wanted it for him and just told him that story.
[00:07:53]  And I think that's the thing that maybe people identify with is that it's real because so many things go against traditional babyface.
[00:08:01]  Like wearing a student tie is not babyface.
[00:08:04]  That's that's Ric Flair.
[00:08:06]  That's flaunting your wealth.
[00:08:08]  All that.
[00:08:09]  But it's none of it's mattered at this point.
[00:08:11]  And there's always people like they're going to start booing them soon.
[00:08:13]  They're going to start booing them soon.
[00:08:14]  At this point, you've been saying it for three years.
[00:08:17]  Like, of course you're right now.
[00:08:20]  I feel like what is white meat babyface is earning your spot.
[00:08:26]  Sure.
[00:08:27]  And everything about your name should show you didn't earn.
[00:08:32]  You're a Nepo baby.
[00:08:33]  You did all the like anybody else a Nepo baby?
[00:08:36]  Or no, everyone's in the game?
[00:08:38]  I mean, we're all born in America in the greatest time of the empire.
[00:08:40]  So I've got a couple advantages.
[00:08:43]  But is there not one Nepo hire in the whole operation?
[00:08:47]  Not one?
[00:08:48]  Not a brother, a cousin?
[00:08:50]  There's a lot of cronyism.
[00:08:51]  Well, I will say it's all crony.
[00:08:53]  It's all crony on you.
[00:08:53]  You're all friends.
[00:08:54]  None of it merit.
[00:08:56]  If you bring in a family member, I bet you they do really well.
[00:08:58]  Yes.
[00:08:58]  I believe in the Nepo babies.
[00:09:00]  Oh, I can't wait to Nepo my daughter into whatever.
[00:09:03]  Yes.
[00:09:03]  She wants to do it.
[00:09:04]  But my point is, I think this is at least again outside casual perspective, but I think the idea was you really earned it.
[00:09:12]  And I think people are looking at their lives and maybe they're not feeling like they have the opportunity to do certain things.
[00:09:18]  And you just kind of want to see somebody who deserves it get the shot once.
[00:09:24]  And I think they can root for that.
[00:09:26]  But before we get into that, I want to go to the beginning because this is okay.
[00:09:30]  I watched your father's Hall of Fame induction speech.
[00:09:35]  Oh, gosh.
[00:09:36]  Okay.
[00:09:37]  You come out.
[00:09:38]  I think I became a Cody crybaby in that moment.
[00:09:40]  Yeah, right there.
[00:09:41]  That was my first time on camera for the company.
[00:09:43]  I worked for him at the time.
[00:09:44]  I don't know if you guys have seen this, but it's unbelievable.
[00:09:47]  So this is your first time on camera.
[00:09:49]  Do you have aspirations of getting in the business when you go up there?
[00:09:53]  Yeah.
[00:09:53]  Okay.
[00:09:54]  So you're going up there.
[00:09:54]  So I'm already working for WWB at the time.
[00:09:57]  But nobody else knows.
[00:09:58]  I've been in developmental.
[00:10:00]  Yeah.
[00:10:00]  Ah, great, great, great, great.
[00:10:02]  Okay, so this is the introduction of the next generation, obviously your brother, but the last, I guess, generation of Rhodes in the business.
[00:10:12]  And you do this amazing, like, I got a little like emotional at the end of it.
[00:10:15]  He'd be a Hall of Fame father if there was a.
[00:10:17]  Man, he would.
[00:10:18]  Yeah.
[00:10:18]  That's the, that's, so that people look at that and they always ask, like, gosh, bring that.
[00:10:25]  You know, you have these speaking times where you do something, whether it's a promo or an interview, and they're, hey, bring that.
[00:10:30]  Sometimes you can't bring that because I wasn't talking about anything artificial.
[00:10:34]  Yeah, you really felt that.
[00:10:35]  This is my father.
[00:10:36]  This is an easy one, guys.
[00:10:37]  Yeah.
[00:10:38]  You know, this is real.
[00:10:38]  Like, there are plenty of times we're talking about something that's like very fabricated and we're creating a narrative.
[00:10:45]  That one was as simple as could be.
[00:10:46]  Set the bar very high because I really worked on it.
[00:10:50]  Yeah.
[00:10:50]  I wanted, I was going to be in front of some of my favorite wrestlers, some of my peers, my bosses.
[00:10:55]  I really worked on it.
[00:10:56]  And my brother, I hadn't seen him in quite some time.
[00:10:59]  Did he know what you were going to say?
[00:11:00]  No.
[00:11:00]  Because he felt like really touched when you gave him props.
[00:11:05]  I always try to impress Dustin with my professionalism.
[00:11:10]  And I only give him a little, the best in wrestling, give him a little hint.
[00:11:13]  I might say this.
[00:11:15]  This might happen.
[00:11:16]  Don't give him the full deal, you know?
[00:11:18]  Yeah, that was a really significant moment.
[00:11:20]  And that moment, though, also caused a little bit of an issue.
[00:11:24]  I wasn't ready to come up yet.
[00:11:26]  It wasn't good.
[00:11:27]  I had like body wasn't there yet.
[00:11:30]  I didn't have.
[00:11:31]  The audience wanted it, so you got to give them what they want.
[00:11:33]  And the downfall of being a Nepo baby.
[00:11:35]  Like, oh, this is easy.
[00:11:36]  He bring him out.
[00:11:37]  He was with his dad.
[00:11:38]  And it's the whole, that's the downfall.
[00:11:40]  The door is wide open.
[00:11:41]  The money is right there.
[00:11:43]  Some others are struggling for it.
[00:11:44]  But then the idea is like, well, in some people's eyes, your dad's a Mount Rushmore guy.
[00:11:49]  Good luck.
[00:11:50]  And then that's that point.
[00:11:52]  I wasn't ready at all, but I'm so thankful I came up when I did because I mean, I literally grew up in front of the audience.
[00:11:58]  That might be another reason why they took to everything.
[00:12:00]  I grew up in front of them.
[00:12:01]  Okay.
[00:12:02]  Yeah.
[00:12:02]  So you start, you're doing pretty good in W, but not like super stardom.
[00:12:07]  I wouldn't even say I'm doing pretty good.
[00:12:09]  Don't you win the Intercontinental?
[00:12:10]  So yeah, along along the way, I had what I'll call them is small bones.
[00:12:14]  Okay.
[00:12:14]  And I feel like anyone in entertainment gets this.
[00:12:16]  Like the opportunities that you want the biggest opportunity.
[00:12:19]  You want this.
[00:12:19]  You want that.
[00:12:20]  Your dreams are what they are.
[00:12:22]  But at the time, it was little bones.
[00:12:24]  Hey, here's the Intercontinental Championship, which by no means is a little bone, but it wasn't something at the time they were really featuring or spotlighting.
[00:12:32]  Like Gunther recently had it, and it was such a bigger deal there.
[00:12:35]  But, anyways, it was little moments like that that they'd kind of fill your gas tank up.
[00:12:41]  And then it was highs and lows, man.
[00:12:44]  Highs and lows wrestling, especially if they've not, and I don't want to say they, but if a company, like any company in entertainment, like any show that they're involved in, you have to pick who's your number one.
[00:12:53]  Who's your number two?
[00:12:54]  Like, who, who's number one on the call sheet?
[00:12:56]  Who are we investing in?
[00:12:57]  It still is a show.
[00:12:58]  Who was number one at the time?
[00:12:59]  Gosh, Intercontinental Championship?
[00:13:01]  No.
[00:13:01]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:13:03]  I'd say John still.
[00:13:04]  John's number one.
[00:13:05]  John's the guy.
[00:13:06]  And then everything trickles down from that.
[00:13:08]  And yeah, so it was these moments like that that validated me and made me feel good.
[00:13:14]  But at a certain point after that, I realized I was very much blocked in.
[00:13:19]  They didn't see me growing.
[00:13:21]  I mean, I was a child.
[00:13:22]  I was 20 years old when I went to OVW to be in developmental, couldn't order a drink, like 20 years old.
[00:13:28]  Yeah.
[00:13:28]  Didn't know anything about anything.
[00:13:30]  And my dad didn't train me either.
[00:13:32]  Didn't want to train me.
[00:13:33]  So this was me just doing it with everyone assuming I knew what I was doing.
[00:13:37]  But yeah.
[00:13:37]  Didn't he want to train you?
[00:13:39]  He was really good about, hey, you want to do this?
[00:13:43]  Great.
[00:13:44]  I want you to be the best.
[00:13:45]  And he was confident that I could do well, but he didn't want to touch it because he felt if he did anything, he even left.
[00:13:52]  He was on the writing team at the time for SmackDown.
[00:13:55]  He left the writing team before I got called up because he actually went to full sale Orlando and started that.
[00:14:00]  He didn't, he thought it would be against me, you know, if he spoke out in any way like, well, Cody should do this or conflict of interest for sure.
[00:14:08]  And there are some dads, I've seen it work both ways, who are so in on their kids.

=== My Dad Didn't Train Me (02:49) ===

[00:14:12]  So in.
[00:14:13]  And it works just as well.
[00:14:14]  Yeah.
[00:14:15]  But our strategy worked the same.
[00:14:16]  It did.
[00:14:17]  That was the best.
[00:14:17]  He hadn't, he had never had to push for me.
[00:14:20]  He never had to be in an awkward conversation or anything like that.
[00:14:22]  He let me just do it.
[00:14:23]  Okay.
[00:14:23]  So what are they feeding you storylines?
[00:14:26]  And then what is the process?
[00:14:28]  And this is during like the harder time.
[00:14:30]  Yeah.
[00:14:31]  What is the process when you get a storyline that you don't fuck with at all?
[00:14:35]  Well, it's like I refer to him as little battles.
[00:14:38]  Again, it's not, it's not our sandbox.
[00:14:40]  So who's ever promoting, booking, whoever it may be, like right now, Triple H is in charge of the creative.
[00:14:47]  I love that because most of the things that Triple H says, yes, great.
[00:14:51]  I will run that play.
[00:14:52]  All you can do in that position is say, hey, I don't love this.
[00:14:56]  What about this?
[00:14:57]  You always should have an alternative, too.
[00:14:59]  That's something that when you're younger, you don't realize.
[00:15:01]  You can't just say no.
[00:15:02]  Can't just say this sucks.
[00:15:04]  Hey, I don't love this, but what about this?
[00:15:06]  How do you manage up?
[00:15:07]  How do you influence your own storylines?
[00:15:09]  And what I tell people about the little battles every day is you can only, most of them you won't win, but you'll feel much better going home if you at least fought the little battle.
[00:15:18]  If you said, hey, I don't want to say this.
[00:15:20]  And then it becomes, hey, we really need you to say this.
[00:15:22]  All right.
[00:15:22]  Well, at least said it.
[00:15:24]  Versus letting it all bottle up.
[00:15:25]  Oh, I hate everybody.
[00:15:27]  And you know, just all that angst and all that because that happened to me during Stardust during the younger run.
[00:15:32]  I wasn't speaking up.
[00:15:33]  So they change your character to Stardust so you and your brother can kind of be this unit.
[00:15:40]  It's awful, man.
[00:15:41]  Yeah.
[00:15:41]  Awful.
[00:15:42]  And it actually was okay.
[00:15:43]  Like crowds were kind of fun with it.
[00:15:45]  We won the tag titles.
[00:15:46]  There's some significant moments, but it was just what This was so, but it's like if the Williams sisters only got to play doubles.
[00:15:56]  You know what I mean?
[00:15:57]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:15:58]  I think at the time, I learned this from when I went away, is absolutely some of the behind the scenes aspects out of my control weren't my fault.
[00:16:09]  And this was something I had been tasked to do.
[00:16:11]  And I did give it my 110%.
[00:16:14]  However, I found that a lot of it was on me.
[00:16:19]  A lot of it.
[00:16:19]  So wrestling is the suspension of disbelief in it.
[00:16:23]  It's entertainment.
[00:16:24]  There's, you know, we have writers, we have our show, whatever it may be.
[00:16:27]  However, it's a lot more fair than people think.
[00:16:30]  If you put yourself in the best of shape, if you invest in your, your gimmick or your character, if you work on your promos, if you are the go-getter who goes and, you know, especially in this era of social media, if you go out and you create a little empire, you work with the digital teams.
[00:16:46]  Again, small bones.
[00:16:48]  If you just take advantage of all that, somebody sees it eventually.
[00:16:52]  And that's where things can pick up for you.
[00:16:54]  And I wasn't doing all that.
[00:16:56]  There's certainly parts of it.
[00:16:57]  I can say this was just a bad idea, guys, because the original Stardust also had a hat.

=== Wrestling Is Suspended Disbelief (02:08) ===

[00:17:02]  I only say hat.
[00:17:03]  It's supposed to be a mask, but it looked like a hat.
[00:17:05]  And it's like the original electro from your 90s Spider-Man run.
[00:17:09]  But it also had the, like, basically, I don't know what you call it.
[00:17:14]  It had the look of a condom that had just been yanked on your head.
[00:17:18]  And I went and I showed it to Creative at the time.
[00:17:22]  And I remember as showing, I was like, I can't wear this.
[00:17:25]  That's okay.
[00:17:26]  And this was the part where my heart broke is I had long hair at the time or longer.
[00:17:32]  I didn't have a shaved head.
[00:17:33]  I never wanted to have a shaved head.
[00:17:35]  And gosh, they were like, well, no mask, but cut your hair like your brother.
[00:17:39]  And at that point, that heart broke.
[00:17:41]  I remember sitting there in that chair and just like cutting my hair and no idea what I was getting into.
[00:17:46]  It's Cleveland, which used to be the Quick and Loans Arena.
[00:17:48]  But that arena, poor thing.
[00:17:50]  I've had some great moments in it since.
[00:17:51]  But when I walk in there, it's just a dark feeling.
[00:17:56]  Tour announcement.
[00:17:57]  First of all, New York City, thank you so much.
[00:17:59]  I love you.
[00:18:00]  Okay.
[00:18:00]  That was absolutely incredible.
[00:18:02]  Okay.
[00:18:02]  We got kicked out of that shitty Brooklyn theater.
[00:18:04]  We stepped it up, went bigger, we went better, and we blasted through four shows in an hour.
[00:18:10]  Unbelievable.
[00:18:11]  Thank you guys so much.
[00:18:12]  Y'all helped me down.
[00:18:13]  I cannot wait to go film the special there.
[00:18:15]  I'm very, very excited.
[00:18:16]  I'm glad that you all are all going to be there.
[00:18:18]  Anybody who could not, you know, be there that day, we're going to have more shows, you know, eventually in New York City.
[00:18:24]  We're going to have more shows.
[00:18:24]  We got a lot going to focus on these right now.
[00:18:26]  The rest of the tour, these are the shows that we have left.
[00:18:29]  We added a second show in Reno.
[00:18:30]  San Jose, both shows are sold out.
[00:18:32]  Portland sold out.
[00:18:33]  And then Honolulu, Hawaii, the Blidesdale Arena.
[00:18:37]  That's the final show of the tour.
[00:18:38]  It's kind of crazy.
[00:18:40]  It's really almost wrapped up.
[00:18:42]  I can't believe it.
[00:18:43]  But thank you guys so much.
[00:18:44]  Theandertrolls.com.
[00:18:45]  If you want to get any of the tickets to those remaining shows, I appreciate y'all so much.
[00:18:49]  See you soon.
[00:18:50]  Peace.
[00:18:51]  Also, guys, quick show announcement.
[00:18:53]  November 1st and 2nd, Lexington, Kentucky.
[00:18:55]  That might be the home of the Klan, or maybe that's Louisville.
[00:18:58]  Either way, I would love for you guys to all show up.
[00:18:59]  Let's talk things out.
[00:19:00]  Let's see what our differences are.
[00:19:01]  Maybe we can make amends.
[00:19:03]  November 22nd and 23rd, Rochester, New York, December 4th, announcing this right now.
[00:19:07]  I'm coming to Long Island.
[00:19:08]  I've never headlined in Long Island.

=== Goldust At WrestleMania 12 (02:08) ===

[00:19:11]  I am mostly scared of you guys, but now that we interviewed Donald Trump, I feel like you're going to love me.
[00:19:16]  I'm one of the good ones.
[00:19:17]  So I will be at Governor's in Levittown.
[00:19:20]  Come through all those dates and more at Akashing.com.
[00:19:23]  Also, we're still doing our thing on fan bases, dropping content there.
[00:19:26]  So check that out as well.
[00:19:27]  Now let's get back to the show.
[00:19:29]  Did your brother like doing the Gold Dust character?
[00:19:32]  It really depends on the day you ask him.
[00:19:34]  I know he's extremely proud of it.
[00:19:37]  Extremely, especially during the androgynous run of the late 90s and him and Rowdy Piper going into WrestleMania 12.
[00:19:45]  Like he got that.
[00:19:46]  WrestleMania 12.
[00:19:48]  Here was a moment that I, again, I'm in middle school at the time that Gold Dust comes out.
[00:19:52]  Okay.
[00:19:53]  So there's a lot of kids and Attitude Era is extremely popular.
[00:19:56]  So now all these kids who didn't watch wrestling with me in elementary school want to ask questions.
[00:20:00]  I'm like, fuck.
[00:20:02]  Well, you know, that's, I don't have a lot of answers on Gold Dust.
[00:20:05]  And at the time, him and my dad.
[00:20:07]  You can't say now.
[00:20:08]  Right.
[00:20:09]  Like him and my dad weren't speaking.
[00:20:11]  And I, one of the cooler moments where I realized no matter how bombastic and ridiculous and out there the Goldust character was, I watched that Rowdy Piper match at WrestleMania 12 and how much it was a thread throughout the show.
[00:20:23]  It was one of the bigger stories of WrestleMania 12.
[00:20:26]  And my dad, who hasn't talked to Dustin at that point in three or four years, I could see him just smiling ear to ear.
[00:20:32]  And he was so happy that he got that moment.
[00:20:36]  And he had went out and did it on his own.
[00:20:38]  He wasn't Dustin Rhodes.
[00:20:39]  He was Goldust.
[00:20:41]  And it's a very unique character.
[00:20:44]  It's so funny.
[00:20:45]  I went to a comedy show in LA a few years ago, and they were talking about if Goldust came out today, how he wouldn't be a bad guy at all.
[00:20:56]  There was so funny.
[00:20:59]  For example, the guy's doing this Goldust bit.
[00:21:01]  He's like, I'm Gold Dust and I'm going to kiss this man.
[00:21:04]  And then they had a plant in the crowd stand up, go, that's totally cool, man.
[00:21:07]  We love it.
[00:21:08]  We love it.
[00:21:09]  He's like, no, no, but it's going to get me heat.
[00:21:11]  And he's like, no, man.
[00:21:12]  They like threw a rainbow across the street.
[00:21:14]  It was really, really special and fun.
[00:21:16]  And like, yeah, Goldust was just a unique character.

=== Goldust Was A Comedy Bit (15:29) ===

[00:21:19]  But I think if you ask him, it kind of depends.
[00:21:21]  You know, here's this, you know, country boy from Austin, Texas.
[00:21:25]  And then this is the thing he wanted to do, but he really put like dove into it, dove into it.
[00:21:30]  He's got, he's a cinema buff because of Goldust.
[00:21:33]  Because I'd always want him to quote these lines.
[00:21:36]  So it's something that, you know, we're two, you know, kids in our family who didn't, we didn't go to college.
[00:21:42]  Our education is this.
[00:21:43]  Yeah.
[00:21:43]  You know, our worldly experience.
[00:21:45]  And I think Dustin got a lot of a good experience out of it.
[00:21:48]  I think the rumor was that Vince was upset at your dad or something, so gave him this rough character.
[00:21:54]  That's always the story of the families didn't like each other.
[00:22:00]  Yeah.
[00:22:02]  I think it's a good story.
[00:22:03]  Okay.
[00:22:04]  It's helped me.
[00:22:05]  You know?
[00:22:06]  Yeah.
[00:22:06]  But I don't maybe there's some truth there here and there, but I never experienced it so much.
[00:22:13]  I was too young to.
[00:22:15]  I think maybe Vince and my dad had some back and forth just because my dad went on and did his own thing.
[00:22:21]  He wanted to go back to Florida.
[00:22:23]  He wanted to run Jim Crocket promotions, which was the rival promotion.
[00:22:27]  So, yeah, I don't know if there was a rivalry that existed.
[00:22:30]  It really didn't come down to me.
[00:22:32]  Unless, of course, the moment they say, hey, you're Stardust.
[00:22:36]  Unless that was it.
[00:22:37]  And I just didn't read between the lines.
[00:22:39]  I'm very naive, so it's possible.
[00:22:41]  Okay.
[00:22:41]  So you're tired of being Stardust.
[00:22:43]  You're like, I got to get the hell out of here.
[00:22:45]  You asked for your release.
[00:22:48]  What's going on emotionally right there?
[00:22:50]  Are you going, my career's over?
[00:22:53]  Do you believe there's a path to redemption on the Independent Circuit?
[00:22:56]  What's happening?
[00:22:57]  I apologize to any wrestler today in any company who thinks they're going to get a release because I ruined it for a lot of people.
[00:23:09]  And here's why.
[00:23:11]  I didn't ask.
[00:23:13]  I told them in a very like, hey, I'll see you next week.
[00:23:16]  I said, no, you won't.
[00:23:17]  I remember telling the talent relations guy, I said, no, you won't.
[00:23:19]  And of course, everyone has their emotional, dramatic-filled weeks.
[00:23:22]  And, you know, maybe they just thought it was that.
[00:23:25]  But I actually put my statement out on social media that, hey, thank you so much.
[00:23:30]  Done.
[00:23:31]  And once it was out in the ether, there was nothing.
[00:23:36]  It was a huge gamble because I could have been sued.
[00:23:38]  You know, to this day, I don't think I've ever signed my contract.
[00:23:43]  What's it called?
[00:23:44]  When you get the basic non-compete control.
[00:23:47]  I never signed anything after that and it was sent to my house.
[00:23:49]  Like, I could have been sued, probably should have been sued, but I needed to take a very big risk and a very big gamble in that moment.
[00:23:57]  I felt I'd earned it.
[00:23:58]  I thought, hey, the respect they have for my family, all that I've done, never slipped up here once, done everything you asked.
[00:24:05]  Give me this one.
[00:24:06]  Let me ride off.
[00:24:07]  And okay.
[00:24:08]  We're not going to chase him.
[00:24:10]  Your dad wanted you to leave, right?
[00:24:11]  Oh, but so he just got tired of hearing me like complain.
[00:24:14]  Right.
[00:24:15]  Yeah.
[00:24:16]  And he, and I think as a dad, it just became, well, then quit.
[00:24:19]  Then quit.
[00:24:19]  And, you know, he, I don't know how much he meant it, but I know if I always tell people this, if he was like, wake up today and come back in this room, he would be, I'd have so much to explain to him about what happened.
[00:24:37]  Like everything that happened.
[00:24:40]  And yeah, like we're all, I think if I started it with, well, I've may invented WrestleMania twice.
[00:24:47]  I think he'd all right.
[00:24:48]  All right.
[00:24:49]  What else happened?
[00:24:50]  Like, don't worry about it.
[00:24:51]  You know, but yeah, no, it was, I needed to, I tell people all the time, it wasn't just a burn the bridges.
[00:24:55]  It was a full burn the boats.
[00:24:57]  Okay.
[00:24:57]  I need the idea that I may never come back.
[00:25:00]  You accepted.
[00:25:00]  You might never go back.
[00:25:01]  That's a lot of money to walk away from.
[00:25:03]  That's a part that I don't know if people always realize.
[00:25:05]  Why?
[00:25:05]  What is like you had a guaranteed life?
[00:25:07]  Yes.
[00:25:08]  You could be Stardust forever.
[00:25:09]  You could even potentially go back to Cody Rhodes and the way that it was and make great money for the rest of your life and go off in the sunset.
[00:25:15]  Oh, I didn't know that the, I thought the financial conversation was based on like how often your character was used.
[00:25:20]  No, no.
[00:25:20]  So at the point, you know, the attitude era brought out guaranteed contracts.
[00:25:24]  So guaranteed contracts, it was, and not only that, a Nepo baby contract.
[00:25:28]  Good money out of respect for the family and what they've done.
[00:25:31]  Good money.
[00:25:32]  But I didn't care about like the respect for my family.
[00:25:35]  I love that.
[00:25:36]  I cared about the respect for me.
[00:25:38]  Yeah.
[00:25:38]  Like I never went anywhere.
[00:25:39]  I've been here this whole time, guys.
[00:25:40]  Like I've done, I've been part of WrestleMania Angles, Intercontinental Title.
[00:25:44]  Like, why are you getting me so close to the top of the ladder?
[00:25:47]  But you're never going and not going to take it.
[00:25:49]  And again, I put a lot of that blame on myself looking back at it in hindsight.
[00:25:53]  But at the moment, I was, you mentioned the emotional state.
[00:25:56]  I was, I don't know how I could possibly describe that emotional state other than I was scared to death, but couldn't let my wife know I was scared to death.
[00:26:09]  And financially, this is the thing that no one knows.
[00:26:12]  I wasn't the best with my money.
[00:26:15]  So I tell people all the time, like, oh, I'm fine.
[00:26:16]  I worked there for 10 years.
[00:26:17]  I'm good.
[00:26:18]  I got a good net.
[00:26:20]  Wasn't the case.
[00:26:21]  How bad?
[00:26:21]  So, well, basically, I'd still be working.
[00:26:26]  If I started working immediately after the WWE deal ended, I would be check to check in terms of check to check.
[00:26:34]  I just bought our first house in Den outside of Dallas.
[00:26:38]  And it wasn't as I always tell people, I'm the one Rhodes who's good with his money.
[00:26:43]  No, not necessarily.
[00:26:46]  Yeah, yes.
[00:26:48]  And it's gotten better.
[00:26:49]  It's gotten better.
[00:26:50]  But that was a very scary moment because I had a wife.
[00:26:54]  Yeah.
[00:26:54]  You know, and like, that's the number one thing is I didn't know how to spend it.
[00:27:00]  Well, like, she worked for WWE too.
[00:27:02]  Yeah.
[00:27:02]  She was a ring announcer.
[00:27:03]  And she, of course, because she's super loyal.
[00:27:08]  You know, the number one thing you want, she's, I didn't think she was going to leave.
[00:27:12]  And then a week later, she's like, oh, yeah, I'm out too.
[00:27:14]  No, don't.
[00:27:16]  We need you.
[00:27:16]  Don't do that.
[00:27:18]  One of us needs a job.
[00:27:20]  I needed her far more than she realized in that point.
[00:27:24]  You know, everyone, there have been some imbalance in terms of one time I think she was the lead and pulling the wagon.
[00:27:32]  And other times I was able, but I had the best partner in the world.
[00:27:35]  I mean, ballsy and bold for her to leave.
[00:27:38]  She left and she needed to because she was getting really when I was gone, she was saying some wild stuff.
[00:27:43]  She was yelling at people.
[00:27:44]  Yeah, she was just very much a wonderful wife.
[00:27:47]  Love it.
[00:27:48]  Yeah, ready to fight at all times.
[00:27:50]  So I'm like, you know, she's from Detroit, Michigan.
[00:27:52]  She's, yeah.
[00:27:52]  So, okay, so you go into the independent circuit.
[00:27:55]  Yeah.
[00:27:56]  Okay.
[00:27:56]  But you do this thing where you post, I think, what is on Twitter.
[00:28:00]  The list.
[00:28:02]  Explain.
[00:28:02]  That's five.
[00:28:03]  Like, okay.
[00:28:03]  So.
[00:28:04]  The list is five.
[00:28:04]  Explain like the thinking behind this.
[00:28:07]  Are you creating your own storyline?
[00:28:08]  Are you using the heat of leaving and trying to propel yourself in the independent circuit?
[00:28:13]  Is it purely financial or is there like a long game for this as well?
[00:28:19]  The list was, I'd found when people got fired a lot.
[00:28:22]  I hate saying it so strongly, but when people got let go, that they would say something like, Hey, that's great.
[00:28:28]  Thank you.
[00:28:28]  Stay tuned for the next chapter.
[00:28:30]  I always stay tuned for the next chapter to me is the kiss of death.
[00:28:33]  That to me almost reads as you don't have the next chapter.
[00:28:36]  You don't so I wanted to have a next chapter.
[00:28:39]  Stay tuned to the next chapter if you haven't planned anything.
[00:28:42]  Right.
[00:28:42]  This means, hey, this is my plan.
[00:28:45]  I'm in control of my fucking destiny, and these are the names I want.
[00:28:48]  And I wanted to mobilize.
[00:28:49]  So at the time, social media is really, really strong.
[00:28:53]  I mean, it's you could build a brand on there alone.
[00:28:56]  So I wanted to mobilize those fans who did rally behind.
[00:28:59]  I can't believe this is happening.
[00:29:00]  Like, this was one of your guys, and he's out there.
[00:29:03]  So I wanted to mobilize.
[00:29:04]  And I went to Kevin Owens, who I work with at WWE.
[00:29:08]  And Kevin Owens was the one who kind of proofread the list in a sense of that one's not going to do anything.
[00:29:16]  Do you really want that one?
[00:29:17]  Yeah, I think I do want that.
[00:29:18]  And these were the biggest names on the independent circuit.
[00:29:20]  I guess it wasn't so much the biggest names, some of the biggest names, but it was more a real diversity to the list.
[00:29:26]  And what I mean by diversity to the list is I trained through WWE as a WWE type wrestler, old school, TV style, a different style of wrestling.
[00:29:35]  And at the time, the underground scene, it's almost better to label it underground than independent, was the coolest stuff you could imagine.
[00:29:42]  This is Ring of Honor, Ring of Honor, every independent.
[00:29:44]  I mean, like big, crazy high spots, athleticism out the roof, a bunch of psychologically nonsensical stuff from my training.
[00:29:54]  But I wanted people to know, like, I'm not above that.
[00:29:56]  Like, F it.
[00:29:57]  I'm, I'm going to come and I'm going to try what I would consider some stupid stuff.
[00:30:02]  And I don't want to wrestle anybody.
[00:30:04]  I don't want to do a WWE versus WWE guy.
[00:30:07]  No, like, put me against the youngest, dumbest guy who does really fun stuff.
[00:30:12]  Like, put me against that person.
[00:30:13]  I want to see and test myself.
[00:30:15]  And that was.
[00:30:16]  So everybody on the list is just an idiot?
[00:30:17]  No, no, no, no.
[00:30:20]  They're all smart in their own ways.
[00:30:22]  You know, like that's a code for an idiot.
[00:30:27]  White meat baby face comes out.
[00:30:30]  All right.
[00:30:31]  So you were beating up these retards.
[00:30:33]  No, no, they're all smart.
[00:30:35]  There's only one guy I never got.
[00:30:36]  There's one name I didn't check off the list.
[00:30:38]  Yeah.
[00:30:38]  Wait, who?
[00:30:39]  It was a guy named Roderick Strong, not an idiot.
[00:30:42]  We just, I mean, sounds like Roderick Strong.
[00:30:45]  We just never, we never crossed paths.
[00:30:47]  Like, I thought, we got to get this one on the list.
[00:30:48]  Wrestling.
[00:30:49]  Some days of 41.
[00:30:50]  Yeah, hey, man.
[00:30:50]  We got to get it.
[00:30:51]  Get it off the list.
[00:30:52]  But yeah, that was a really fun time.
[00:30:54]  Every one of those people offered something huge to what I was doing.
[00:30:57]  Okay.
[00:30:58]  Are they aware of the list?
[00:30:59]  Are they hitting you up on the side?
[00:31:00]  Like, hey, this is a brilliant idea.
[00:31:01]  Let's make this happen.
[00:31:02]  Yeah.
[00:31:03]  Okay.
[00:31:03]  Well, most of the people on the list were really, I mean, not to like, most people on the list were like, yes, we'll make this.
[00:31:10]  There's like five different indies I work for who want to book this.
[00:31:13]  Where do you want to do it?
[00:31:14]  And I'll do promos.
[00:31:15]  I'll do that.
[00:31:16]  Most people were really excited.
[00:31:17]  So you guys are both cutting your own promos.
[00:31:19]  You're starting up these stories and then they're happening on the indie circuit.
[00:31:22]  Do you immediately notice crowds being a lot bigger than they would normally be at some of these indies?
[00:31:29]  When does it feel like there's the undercurrent?
[00:31:32]  Well, the second weekend I did independent wrestling, I did it for a company called Northeast Wrestling that's Connecticut based.
[00:31:38]  And they were more of a mom and pop indie.
[00:31:40]  And they did softball fields for their big summer shows.
[00:31:44]  And I noticed, you know, I did three in a row.
[00:31:48]  I noticed we were at like 1,500, 2,000, 4,500.
[00:31:52]  These aren't indie crowds.
[00:31:54]  Indie crowd is 50 to 200.
[00:31:57]  And a smart indie is going to book a building that only holds.
[00:32:00]  So it looks nice.
[00:32:01]  Yeah, and it's loud and they're excited.
[00:32:03]  And that's your core group.
[00:32:04]  But I noticed there we were having numbers.
[00:32:07]  It's not.
[00:32:09]  Two things are happening at the same time.
[00:32:10]  I've helped mobilize me and get people, hey, please come check me out.
[00:32:14]  If you've never seen an independent before, we'll do some cool stuff.
[00:32:17]  You might find some people you like.
[00:32:18]  But also at the time, independents were on the rise.
[00:32:21]  So because of guys like Matt and Nick Jackson or two people, I use an example, but that happening, that happening was the perfect storm because some TVs at the time for WWE were doing 4,500.
[00:32:34]  Some, you know, it's not easy.
[00:32:36]  I mean, in all worlds, it's not easy to sell tickets on a regular basis.
[00:32:40]  Crazy.
[00:32:41]  So the fact that that was happening really opened my eyes.
[00:32:44]  I was in Manchester in the United Kingdom and there was a show at a kid's ice arena.
[00:32:49]  But it held about, I think, 6,000 people.
[00:32:53]  And I never will know the full number.
[00:32:55]  And I could give you the wrestler exaggeration of like, we had seven there.
[00:32:58]  That's a great part of the Vince talk where he goes, we had 93,000 people in Detroit.
[00:33:02]  We had 93,000 people.
[00:33:05]  And some guy goes up.
[00:33:06]  There was 70,000 people.
[00:33:09]  It was Silverblades Arena.
[00:33:10]  And I remember thinking, this is like a mini.
[00:33:12]  This is actually what I thought in the arena mini WWE show.
[00:33:16]  There's signs for the locker rooms.
[00:33:17]  There's catering.
[00:33:18]  There's every seat is full.
[00:33:20]  And that was a big one for me where I thought there's a thing happening.
[00:33:23]  I wonder who else is in on this thing.
[00:33:26]  Who else knows?
[00:33:27]  Who else can drive this?
[00:33:28]  What is the next steps?
[00:33:30]  And I didn't know, though.
[00:33:31]  Did you feel like you were spearheading it?
[00:33:33]  Or do you feel like there was other people?
[00:33:36]  Talk that shit.
[00:33:40]  Deal for us, Cody.
[00:33:42]  I felt like there were two huge fronts to it.
[00:33:44]  And I think I was at the lead of one of those fronts.
[00:33:47]  I think the other front was a group called New Japan Pro Wrestling.
[00:33:50]  And New Japan was doing mind-blowing athleticism and storytelling.
[00:33:56]  They had Kenny Omega and they had the Young Bucks.
[00:33:59]  And I don't think we have anything in common amongst the four of us other than we wanted it.
[00:34:04]  We wanted it.
[00:34:06]  We would fight for each other.
[00:34:08]  We would pair together.
[00:34:09]  I went over there and saw exactly the Bullet Club was happening.
[00:34:13]  What's the Bullet Club?
[00:34:14]  So the Bullet Club was this faction, you know, great factions in wrestling.
[00:34:18]  DX, the Four Horsemen, whatever.
[00:34:19]  It was a faction in New Japan, but they had the sickest merchandise.
[00:34:23]  It was this skull.
[00:34:25]  And it got so big that actually this rep from, I think it was Hot Topic or somewhere came to a WrestleMania and he asked somebody, he said, where are the Bullet Club guys?
[00:34:34]  Whoa.
[00:34:34]  And they were like, oh, that's an independent thing.
[00:34:38]  And again, I was so lucky to, their wave was going and my wave was going.
[00:34:43]  And that's where we collided.
[00:34:45]  And from there, it was, it was different.
[00:34:47]  There it is, the Bullet Club.
[00:34:48]  Yeah.
[00:34:48]  Yeah, it's fire.
[00:34:49]  I was the leader for a short period of time.
[00:34:51]  There's a whole online argument about was I ever a Bullet Club leader?
[00:34:55]  It is official.
[00:34:56]  I did lead it.
[00:34:57]  You heard it here.
[00:34:58]  I did lead.
[00:34:58]  I won against Kenny to get leadership of the Bullet Club for a brief time.
[00:35:02]  But guy in WWE, I have to shout him out for that logo.
[00:35:05]  It's Finn Balor.
[00:35:06]  He's probably owed millions of dollars for the success of Bullet Club.
[00:35:10]  He started it, and I don't think he's ever seen any of that.
[00:35:13]  I know he's just happy.
[00:35:14]  As a former leader, you should.
[00:35:16]  That's right.
[00:35:16]  That's right.
[00:35:17]  Hey, man.
[00:35:18]  I just put him over on the left.
[00:35:23]  Shout out.
[00:35:24]  You, Kenny, the Young Bucks, you start talking about this event.
[00:35:28]  Yeah.
[00:35:29]  Right?
[00:35:30]  Can you tell us how All In ends up happening?
[00:35:33]  All in is the craziest.
[00:35:35]  The original All In was an independent show.
[00:35:38]  Oh, no, no, no, no.
[00:35:39]  Back even for the Meltzer tweet.
[00:35:41]  Yeah, he said we couldn't do it.
[00:35:42]  So there's a guy, he's a wrestling journalist.
[00:35:44]  He is.
[00:35:45]  Meltzer.
[00:35:45]  It was his birthday yesterday.
[00:35:46]  Oh, Hat.
[00:35:47]  Well, let's, because he, I think, plays a really important part.
[00:35:51]  As in all wrestling stories, there are all these side factions that influence the.
[00:35:55]  He's the biggest observer, is what his newsletter is called, but he's been covering wrestling and mixed martial arts for 40 years.
[00:36:04]  And it went from being a newsletter that fans got the inside scoops, but also a lot of the financial aspects of this, that.
[00:36:12]  He just always covered it.
[00:36:13]  And I feel almost forever this tether to him.
[00:36:18]  We're not, I wouldn't say we're close or anything like that, but I always feel this tether because he made that tweet.
[00:36:23]  And here I am.
[00:36:24]  He tweets that they asked, could ROH get 10,000 people in an arena?
[00:36:28]  Ring of Honor.
[00:36:28]  This is, yeah.
[00:36:30]  At the time, I've been on these shows.
[00:36:32]  I know we can.
[00:36:34]  Buddy, I've seen it.
[00:36:35]  Have you done the show with the Young Bucks and Kenny with Ring of Honor yet?
[00:36:39]  So we have, we've done together with Ring of Honor in New Japan.
[00:36:42]  We did a show at Lakefront that was for Ring of Honor specifically that did as many seats in the building.
[00:36:47]  It was 7,000 people.

=== Can ROH Fill An Arena (04:25) ===

[00:36:49]  So what are we, what are we talking about here?
[00:36:50]  You're feeling the bus.
[00:36:51]  Yeah.
[00:36:52]  I'm not only feeling the buzz, I'm pre-workout up at the gym.
[00:36:55]  I'm loading.
[00:36:57]  Let's go.
[00:36:57]  I'm loaded.
[00:36:59]  Niacin is like pumping through my veins and saying lifetime.
[00:37:03]  I'm fitness in Woodstock, Georgia.
[00:37:04]  And I saw this tweet and I thought, no, man, like, this is, again, let's just will it into existence.
[00:37:10]  So he goes, I don't think anyone in America outside of the WWE can do 10,000.
[00:37:15]  Can do 10,000 seats.
[00:37:16]  You tweet.
[00:37:17]  I'll take that bet, Dave.
[00:37:19]  I said, I'll take that bet.
[00:37:20]  And then what is the, what is the like underground feeling?
[00:37:23]  Or does it cross over from underground to just WWE fans?
[00:37:26]  Like, what, what's happening?
[00:37:27]  Well, immediately upon tweeting it, I had to call everyone.
[00:37:31]  And hey, are we interested in this?
[00:37:34]  Because I am very, very worried.
[00:37:37]  And I would, I would, not worried that we couldn't, but at this point, I'm wrestling for one company, pretty exclusive domestically in the United States, that being Ring of Honor.
[00:37:47]  And Matt and Nick, we're all making the same rounds.
[00:37:50]  Kenny's in Japan the whole time.
[00:37:52]  We need financing.
[00:37:55]  Can we go to Ring of Honor for some assistance with financing?
[00:37:58]  And he just passed away.
[00:37:59]  A wonderful man named Joe Koff was, he's far more instrumental in it than people ever know because he saw what we were doing and thought, okay, it's definitely not in your contract, but we can help with production.
[00:38:13]  We can help you.
[00:38:14]  Here's the number to call.
[00:38:15]  Here's Gary Jester was his name.
[00:38:17]  Because again, I'm now calling buildings.
[00:38:19]  Hey, Ontario, California.
[00:38:21]  You know that building out there?
[00:38:22]  Is it U.S. Bank Arena or something like calling these buildings?
[00:38:25]  Like, hey, we want to run a show.
[00:38:27]  Like, I have no cold calling.
[00:38:28]  I'm cold calling.
[00:38:30]  And so we get what we need in place to be able to do it.
[00:38:35]  We're also told, I think it was Labor Day or Memorial Day weekend, and they give us the September, which one's September?
[00:38:41]  Labor Day?
[00:38:41]  Labor Day.
[00:38:42]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:38:42]  They told me that's the worst date for wrestling.
[00:38:45]  It's never like everybody have plans.
[00:38:46]  They're part of the beach.
[00:38:48]  Why would they go to Leviticus?
[00:38:48]  Yeah, why would they come out?
[00:38:49]  That's why it's available.
[00:38:50]  And I thought, okay, it's cheap.
[00:38:52]  It's available.
[00:38:53]  Here we are.
[00:38:54]  We're going to scale.
[00:38:54]  This is one of my favorite things in my brief management run was to be able to scale tickets.
[00:38:59]  So, okay, front row, $150.
[00:39:03]  You know, just like this bowl, like $25.
[00:39:06]  I thought it was so cool.
[00:39:07]  I got no clue what I'm doing.
[00:39:10]  And Matt, Matt, Nick, Brandy, Dana, Kenny, we're all kind of in on this together.
[00:39:17]  We're paying people the most, you know, PayPal, demo, cash.
[00:39:23]  But the big rule we wanted to break was there was rules even for all the companies that you can't cross the streams.
[00:39:27]  Like this is before the term forbidden door was coined.
[00:39:31]  But can such and such from CMLL in Mexico be in the same ring with a guy from AAA in Mexico?
[00:39:37]  And we were of the thought there are no rules to the show.
[00:39:39]  We're running the show.
[00:39:40]  Me and these two other guys are running this.
[00:39:42]  So if you want to be on it, it's going to be huge.
[00:39:44]  And how we knew it was going to be huge is we put the tickets on sale.
[00:39:47]  It crashed.
[00:39:48]  We're on the drive from this press conference where the mic didn't even work.
[00:39:52]  We're already as bush league as we could be.
[00:39:54]  And it crashes and it sold out in, I think it sold out in 23 minutes, 11,236.
[00:40:00]  United Center.
[00:40:01]  Yeah.
[00:40:01]  Chicago.
[00:40:02]  Not United.
[00:40:02]  It was United holds like 20,000.
[00:40:05]  So it wasn't 11,000.
[00:40:06]  Now Arena in Schomburg.
[00:40:09]  Oh, this is Chicago.
[00:40:12]  But also, there's like a plaque on the outside of it to this day with me and Matt Nick's faces that I had never seen in person.
[00:40:18]  Just because they were doing graduations, some minor league games here and there.
[00:40:24]  They hadn't had something fill it up like that either in a long time.
[00:40:27]  And yeah, 23 minutes or 11,236 people and everything at that point, everything, everything in my life changed.
[00:40:33]  Do you tweet anything at that moment?
[00:40:36]  Do you tweet anything?
[00:40:37]  I think I tweeted a lot of stuff.
[00:40:39]  A lot of free workout.
[00:40:41]  Yeah, it was always my best ideas under pre-workout.
[00:40:43]  I actually tell Triple H whenever I send him a creative idea, I always will say this is, I'm caffeinated up because I'll look at it 10 hours later and be like, why was this important?
[00:40:55]  The post-pump clarity.
[00:40:56]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:40:57]  Unreal.
[00:40:58]  That's where the tweet should go out.
[00:40:59]  The text.
[00:41:00]  But at that point, it was the first thing that happened with All In isn't just the show itself.
[00:41:05]  The best way I can describe it, it was like Woodstock for wrestling.
[00:41:08]  Because this guy who does a series of podcasts, he's super successful.
[00:41:12]  He's helped rehabilitate a lot of the older wrestlers.

=== Creative Ideas Under Pre-Workout (08:28) ===

[00:41:14]  His name's Conrad Thompson.
[00:41:16]  Conrad told us, he's like, hey, can I run a convention?
[00:41:19]  People are going to piggyback off this destination event you guys have created.
[00:41:23]  This is unheard of.
[00:41:24]  Can I do a convention at the Hyatt and I'll take care of it?
[00:41:27]  You give me the rules, you know, because we were really big on it's not going to be a legends deal.
[00:41:32]  Right.
[00:41:33]  This is young.
[00:41:33]  This is up and coming.
[00:41:35]  You're going to see the next generation of superstar and wrestler.
[00:41:39]  And once he said that three-day convention, every vendor applied.
[00:41:43]  Every booth was filled.
[00:41:45]  I remember walking into that hotel and there's just an entire lobby full of wrestling fans all in that bullet club shirt.
[00:41:51]  And they've got a live radio set up in the lobby.
[00:41:54]  And when we walked in, everyone just stood up and clapped.
[00:41:57]  Wow.
[00:41:57]  And I felt like royalty.
[00:42:00]  I couldn't.
[00:42:01]  Then I went by the bar menu and the bar menu is labeled with like Pharaoh's Fry's American Nightmare Cheeseburger.
[00:42:07]  I was like, yes, this is happening.
[00:42:08]  Like we made it.
[00:42:10]  Oh, man.
[00:42:10]  Did anything go wrong?
[00:42:12]  Everything went wrong.
[00:42:13]  Everything went wrong.
[00:42:14]  Like minutes leading up to the event where you were like, oh, we got to cancel it.
[00:42:18]  So I almost, I wouldn't be sitting in here, sitting in this chair had this gone the other way.
[00:42:23]  And this is not a fun story to tell or anything like that, but it's the truth because some people know the story.
[00:42:27]  I got into a slight tussle the night before because I'm walking Pharaoh, my beloved husky who's always a part of what I do.
[00:42:37]  And I had him off a leash.
[00:42:39]  I was in the wrong.
[00:42:40]  But Pharaoh is chill.
[00:42:41]  Pharaoh's not ever going to be a problem.
[00:42:43]  But this man got in my face over it.
[00:42:46]  So you shouldn't, that's dangerous.
[00:42:47]  Probably right.
[00:42:48]  He's probably had a bad experience with a dog.
[00:42:50]  I'm not even.
[00:42:50]  You're probably right.
[00:42:51]  But something about it, maybe I had some caffeine in my system.
[00:42:54]  I don't know what it was.
[00:42:55]  But he got so close that I felt like he had encroached on my space.
[00:42:58]  So I did shove him.
[00:42:59]  And when I shoved him, he rolled back into the bushes.
[00:43:02]  Like he took this enormous Homer Simpson, you know, Peter Griffin style fall.
[00:43:08]  And the next thing I knew, it's like, oh, no.
[00:43:10]  He's a wrestler.
[00:43:11]  Oh, no.
[00:43:13]  So, you know, like, oh, and he, he, he had called the cops.
[00:43:18]  I decided, hey, I'm going to stay in the lobby.
[00:43:19]  I'm not going to try and run.
[00:43:20]  I'll stay in that lobby.
[00:43:21]  So it really had he said, like, I'm pressing charges.
[00:43:24]  It's over.
[00:43:26]  And that was the first, the next day was the first day in my career I had a security detail.
[00:43:31]  And my wife was, you do not leave this room without this.
[00:43:35]  His name was Sam.
[00:43:36]  He's like, Sam is going everywhere with you.
[00:43:37]  Like, I had like I was a problem child all along or something.
[00:43:39]  At least one incident happened over our dog.
[00:43:42]  You got put on a leash.
[00:43:43]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:43:45]  They put me on a leash, but I got to the building.
[00:43:48]  Yeah, it was touch and go for a second.
[00:43:50]  In addition to that, we lost one of our producers.
[00:43:54]  There's a little pyro hijinks that went off at the beginning where we were trying to show people that we were the first company to have pyro again and it didn't explode, but then it did as I was starting to go into the next bit.
[00:44:05]  Jesus, it was like the fucking Joker.
[00:44:09]  Randomly, I got an email.
[00:44:10]  Again, I've almost been arrested now, so I can't go to sleep.
[00:44:13]  I got an email in the middle of the night from John Mayer's publicist.
[00:44:17]  And I thought, no, it's clearly not real.
[00:44:19]  Like, it's like, hey, John would like to come with his friends who are doing a bachelor party, but there are no seats.
[00:44:24]  Like, it's a true, true sellout.
[00:44:26]  Like, yeah, whatever.
[00:44:27]  Like, I'm not replying to this.
[00:44:29]  Again, I'm already in the doghouse.
[00:44:30]  The next morning, I wake up and Dana Massey was her name.
[00:44:34]  She tells me, like, hey, did you get back to that email?
[00:44:36]  Like, no.
[00:44:38]  Well, I did.
[00:44:39]  John Mayer is coming to this show.
[00:44:41]  I'm like, wait, John Mayer, like the actual John Mayer, like, he's coming.
[00:44:44]  And we legit didn't have a seat.
[00:44:46]  So we put him in the middle of the aisle.
[00:44:48]  So he's just in the middle.
[00:44:49]  So the whole show, you can see him.
[00:44:54]  Like every match.
[00:44:56]  There he is, man.
[00:44:57]  John.
[00:44:57]  That's so cool.
[00:44:58]  It was, it was really like touching that he wanted to come, but I just didn't believe it.
[00:45:01]  But yeah, it's just a series of little calamities.
[00:45:04]  But when we got there, everyone was so excited to be on it.
[00:45:08]  Yeah, how was the wrestling that night?
[00:45:10]  Other, the main event got super rushed because one match went over, but even super rushed.
[00:45:15]  It was fireworks.
[00:45:16]  Rey Mysterio was part of it.
[00:45:18]  Just him giving us the rub is like, here's a former world champion and WWE Hall of Fame or Rey Mysterio wants to be part of All In.
[00:45:26]  And again, I'll never forget Ray is heading to the ring, taking pictures with other wrestlers who are backstage, shocked that they're in the same locker room as Ray when the show has eight minutes left on the air.
[00:45:36]  I'm like, buddy, in his little Wolverine outfit.
[00:45:38]  I'm like, please go to the ring.
[00:45:40]  Come on, please go to the ring.
[00:45:42]  But I think the most fun I had was after my stuff was over.
[00:45:45]  I got to sit down in the producer chair and just put the headset on and call a few shots here and there and say, hey, check this out.
[00:45:52]  This is coming.
[00:45:53]  And it just felt like the job I always wanted, the moment I always wanted.
[00:45:57]  But I'm real greedy.
[00:45:59]  I am.
[00:45:59]  I'm super.
[00:46:00]  White meat.
[00:46:01]  I'm super greedy that the moment it was happening, I just was thinking, what else are we going to do?
[00:46:06]  I bet we can do this again.
[00:46:08]  I bet we can go double or nothing.
[00:46:10]  I bet we can do this again.
[00:46:11]  And yeah.
[00:46:12]  When do you get the call from Tony Khan?
[00:46:14]  He was at the original All In.
[00:46:16]  Okay.
[00:46:16]  Yeah.
[00:46:16]  So he needed some help.
[00:46:18]  So I needed help flying Chris Jericho.
[00:46:21]  Matt Nick me needed help flying Chris Jericho there.
[00:46:24]  And Tony offered to use his plane.
[00:46:27]  And Tony's a big wrestling fan.
[00:46:28]  Yeah.
[00:46:29]  Yes.
[00:46:30]  Okay.
[00:46:30]  But he also comes from some money.
[00:46:31]  I think his family's involved with the Jaguars and stuff.
[00:46:34]  Yeah, they own the Jags.
[00:46:34]  They own the Jackson.
[00:46:35]  Okay.
[00:46:35]  Yeah.
[00:46:35]  So he, you and him connect.
[00:46:39]  He sees what the four of you guys are doing.
[00:46:41]  AEW sprouts out of that.
[00:46:43]  Yeah.
[00:46:43]  Do you have to pitch him?
[00:46:44]  Is he pitching you guys?
[00:46:45]  No, I think, and I think that's one of the more why maybe I don't, I wouldn't say I hope there's no tension between all of the four on the ground, but everyone's got a different story a little bit.
[00:46:58]  Okay.
[00:46:58]  And everyone's story puts them in the driver's seat for sure.
[00:47:03]  And I think he already had in his mind because he had scribbled down the name Dynamite for TV.
[00:47:08]  I think he'd already had in his mind what he wanted.
[00:47:11]  I think what we offered was proof of concept.
[00:47:14]  Yeah.
[00:47:15]  And that, hey, we can show this to somebody.
[00:47:18]  Because I remember sitting in the upfronts for at the time, Warner Media before Discovery.
[00:47:24]  Upfronts are like an advertising showcase.
[00:47:26]  So you can just for anybody who's watching right now.
[00:47:28]  So basically, you talk to all the people that would potentially advertise on your programs and you pitch them what it's going to be.
[00:47:34]  Yeah.
[00:47:35]  And it was at Madison Square Guards.
[00:47:36]  It was the blue carpet, all this.
[00:47:38]  And I remember, so I'm sitting there, and this guy is going on and on about the show we're doing, but he's never seen it.
[00:47:45]  And they're using photos from all in and photos from like our independent run.
[00:47:49]  They're just plastered up there.
[00:47:51]  And there's like Daniel Radcliffe sitting in front of me.
[00:47:53]  Shaq is in the corner.
[00:47:54]  I'm like, please take my picture down.
[00:47:56]  This guy spent a lot of time on us.
[00:47:58]  Like, I hope we do well.
[00:47:59]  But that's where it all started.
[00:48:01]  And everybody had a different again.
[00:48:02]  Mad Nick can claim to be in the driver's seat.
[00:48:04]  I have a claim to it.
[00:48:05]  Tony for sure has a claim to it.
[00:48:07]  Kenny, everybody.
[00:48:08]  I think that's why it worked.
[00:48:09]  Yeah.
[00:48:09]  I think that's why it worked.
[00:48:10]  I look forward to everyone's books being out where it's like, ah, it was me.
[00:48:13]  I did it.
[00:48:14]  There's a great book called The Dirt, which is like Motley Cruise story.
[00:48:17]  Yeah.
[00:48:18]  And it's told in four different ways.
[00:48:21]  So each member of the band has their rendition of the story.
[00:48:25]  Yeah.
[00:48:26]  And how different these four fucking stories are.
[00:48:28]  Oh, yes.
[00:48:29]  That's the best.
[00:48:29]  That's true.
[00:48:30]  Like, there's one story where a guy's like, yeah, I fell in love with this girl.
[00:48:32]  And then the next guy is telling the story.
[00:48:34]  He's like, this guy was fucking my girl.
[00:48:36]  And I didn't realize.
[00:48:39]  And they all truly believe that's what's happening.
[00:48:42]  That's why I never, I when I never try to go in absolutes on anything because I know everyone truly believes their part in this.
[00:48:52]  Chris Jericho coming in and given the rub, you know, having had such a successful WWE career, having main evented WrestleMania, he has a rubber guy in the driver's seat.
[00:49:02]  The rub means what?
[00:49:03]  Like a legitimizing passing on.
[00:49:05]  The rub, the rub from us, you know, when we're talking about Ray on all in is when you have someone who has all this equity, all this fan support, and they're making you legit.
[00:49:14]  You know, I legitimacy rubs off on y'all in wrestling, you agree.
[00:49:19]  You know, I had this wonderful moment where it was as simple as, here's this guy I drove around, and now he's peacemaker and a movie star, John Cena, just bringing me out on a Monday night roll to introduce me and holding my hand up.
[00:49:32]  And that's a rub, you know?
[00:49:34]  And the rub works both ways.
[00:49:36]  So me going on the independent scene, I got the, I got to give a little WWE guy TV, but I got the like the underground rub.

=== Your First App On Odoo Is Free (02:18) ===

[00:49:43]  I got, especially, hey, I'm going to try this stupid stuff.
[00:49:46]  Some of it's dude.
[00:49:47]  I'm going to go like Drake giving out a bunch of features on like independent audience strategies.
[00:49:52]  Yeah, it's your cosine.
[00:49:53]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:49:53]  That makes sense.
[00:49:54]  Wow.
[00:49:55]  All right, guys, let's take a break for a second because I got to tell you about Odo.
[00:49:58]  All right.
[00:49:58]  You're going to take your business to the next level with Odo.
[00:50:01]  Odoo, in a nutshell, it is simplicity and organization.
[00:50:05]  Put everything in one place.
[00:50:07]  Right now, you're probably going to one place for your website design, one place for your e-commerce.
[00:50:12]  You know, you're going to one place for your accounting.
[00:50:15]  You're going everywhere.
[00:50:15]  You're going all over the place.
[00:50:17]  You got 15 different people to manage.
[00:50:19]  Stop it.
[00:50:19]  Odoo.
[00:50:20]  Okay.
[00:50:21]  Odoo puts that all under the same umbrella.
[00:50:25]  Just give that all to Odo.
[00:50:27]  Let's say you want to start a website for your business.
[00:50:29]  Very important.
[00:50:30]  You don't have a honestly, you don't have a business if you don't have a website for it.
[00:50:33]  I mean, that's a 100% fact.
[00:50:35]  Okay.
[00:50:35]  You go to Odo, you start with a few of the prompts.
[00:50:38]  You figure out, you know, what you want to build.
[00:50:40]  You can choose your color.
[00:50:41]  You choose all those kind of things.
[00:50:42]  You pick the palette out.
[00:50:44]  You go do that.
[00:50:44]  All right.
[00:50:45]  You get to choose from three different versions of the site.
[00:50:47]  Then you could use AI and basically generate the site.
[00:50:52]  It's beautiful.
[00:50:53]  And this gives you a great starting point from which, remember, this is just a starting point.
[00:50:57]  You can really start to, you know, build off and make the website look exactly how you want to differentiate it perfectly.
[00:51:02]  And here's the beautiful thing: this is all free.
[00:51:04]  Okay.
[00:51:05]  Your first app on Odo is free for life with unlimited hosting and supports and the free personalized domain name for the entire year.
[00:51:13]  That's a lot of free.
[00:51:15]  I think I need you to know what I just said one more time.
[00:51:18]  Your first app on Odoo is free for life with unlimited hosting and support and the free personalized domain name for an entire year.
[00:51:25]  If this sounds useful to you, go to odo.com/slash flagrant.
[00:51:29]  If this sounds useful to you, go to odo.com/slash flagrant.
[00:51:34]  Is odoo.com/slash flagrant to get started with odu for free.
[00:51:40]  Now, let's get back to the show, all right, guys.
[00:51:42]  Let's take a break for a second because you need your delta h, you need your delta 9, and deltaclouds.com has you covered.
[00:51:49]  Okay, they got all your favorite brands of gummies, ham products, pre-rolls, disposables, and cartridges at incredibly discounted prices, which is absolutely lovely.
[00:51:58]  The price of this stuff has been going crazy, skyrocketing.

=== Use Lies To Tell The Truth (13:32) ===

[00:52:02]  Delta Clouds dropping it down.
[00:52:04]  They're currently offering $35 off plus free, fast, and discreet shipping on all orders over $125.
[00:52:10]  On top of this, we've hooked up something special for our viewers.
[00:52:13]  You'll get an extra 15% off your order when you use the code Flagrant at checkout on purchases of four or more products.
[00:52:22]  That's right.
[00:52:23]  You'll end up paying around $76 for $125 worth of products and you will get free shipping.
[00:52:29]  This coupon applies to every order, not just your first.
[00:52:31]  So take full advantage.
[00:52:33]  Okay.
[00:52:33]  They also mentioned to throw in a free 700-milligram XXL THC welcome gummy with your first order when you use the code Flagrant.
[00:52:44]  Don't miss out on this amazing deal.
[00:52:45]  Visit DeltaCloudsWithaZ.com and start saving.
[00:52:50]  Disclaimer: You must be 21 years or older to purchase.
[00:52:53]  And Deltaclouds.com only ships Delta products to legal states.
[00:52:56]  Now, let's get back to the show.
[00:52:57]  All these indies were so great and like you could feel them kind of coming up.
[00:53:01]  Were there any that were depressing?
[00:53:02]  Like you go from an arena every single night to then within a week, you're in like a ballroom at like a Marriott.
[00:53:10]  Okay, so there's I always say I did because we did an absurd amount of every weekend and the schedule was where I'd have to fly every day because it wasn't like a normal loop where I could travel and the logistics weren't coordinated.
[00:53:22]  I got from all pro wrestling and NorCal to one in Corpus Christi.
[00:53:27]  Yeah, there's one bad indie I did, but every indie had its unique charm.
[00:53:31]  For example, there's no pyro, there's no explosions, there's not a lot of production on independence.
[00:53:35]  I remember I did this really good one actually called VIP Wrestling and I stood up on the second buckle to do something, flex, stick my arms out, just g up a little.
[00:53:44]  And this dude shot like a pop gun of confetti up into me.
[00:53:49]  And I thought, that's okay.
[00:53:50]  Something.
[00:53:51]  That's where we're at.
[00:53:52]  Yeah, like, you know, I appreciate it, dog.
[00:53:54]  Like, thank you.
[00:53:56]  How do you honestly react to that?
[00:53:58]  No, I remember thinking, like, a lot of times in my mind, I'd say, like, yep, this is where we're at.
[00:54:03]  This is, I knew what it was.
[00:54:05]  And as long as the seats were full, I'm not mad, you know.
[00:54:09]  So as long as that's the one you didn't want to be at.
[00:54:10]  And I am lucky I did not have one of those where you see these horror stories online.
[00:54:15]  And I didn't have the second row was empty.
[00:54:17]  I didn't have it.
[00:54:18]  I was lucky that every place I went, we got to fill up or near fill up.
[00:54:23]  The only bad one I ever did, I was doing a guest role on Arrow at the time.
[00:54:29]  Stephen ML, who I'd worked with briefly at WWE, gave me this huge opportunity to come and do Arrow.
[00:54:36]  And I lied to the production.
[00:54:38]  Again, money.
[00:54:40]  I, again, needed to get serious about this.
[00:54:43]  So the production was like, you got to stay in Vancouver.
[00:54:45]  You can't leave.
[00:54:46]  Well, I know I'm not shooting on this day.
[00:54:48]  I know for sure.
[00:54:48]  I'm double confirmed.
[00:54:50]  So I'm going to go to this random independent in Connecticut, which is a hike to get there from Vancouver.
[00:54:55]  Connecticut on the way.
[00:54:57]  And I'm going to do my normal bit, have this big match, and I'll stay in the ring.
[00:55:01]  And if you want to come in the ring and take photos, because always for me, that was the best part of the night at the end of the night.
[00:55:05]  So I go to Connecticut to this Independent.
[00:55:08]  And the night before I'm in Vancouver, and it's legit three in the morning, and they haven't done, they're not done with me yet.
[00:55:14]  And I'm laying in a pool of water and they've got just the gun from the scene pointed at me.
[00:55:20]  And they're just trying to frame the shot up.
[00:55:21]  I'm in the middle of like cold winter in Vancouver, laying in this water in full gear and the whole deal.
[00:55:28]  And I told the lady at the production, I was like, have that van ready to take me to the airport?
[00:55:31]  Like, just don't say anything about where I'm going.
[00:55:33]  Have it ready to take me to the airport.
[00:55:34]  So I go to the airport.
[00:55:35]  It's just a stressful day.
[00:55:37]  I'm putting on spray tan in the bathroom at the Sky Club.
[00:55:41]  I'm just having a stressful day.
[00:55:43]  But I wanted to make this show.
[00:55:45]  And I get there and we do the match, and it's great.
[00:55:48]  And then I'll remember the promoter had promised me for an after-party.
[00:55:53]  And that didn't, I didn't, that didn't seem right.
[00:55:55]  I didn't feel like that was part of the deal.
[00:55:57]  And I had, I'd said, like, hey, I'll sign a bunch of stuff, whatever you need.
[00:56:00]  But like, no.
[00:56:02]  And then he got a little aggressive with me on this was part of the deal that you do this after party.
[00:56:09]  So at this point, out of spite, like, you got it.
[00:56:11]  I'll be there.
[00:56:12]  So the guy's driving me.
[00:56:14]  I come to the after party.
[00:56:15]  I get carted outside the door, which has been a long time.
[00:56:18]  Big marker on my hand.
[00:56:19]  I'm like, oh, this is great.
[00:56:20]  I sit down.
[00:56:21]  There's nothing to this.
[00:56:22]  I did not need to be here.
[00:56:23]  There's not a fan engagement to it.
[00:56:24]  There's nothing to it.
[00:56:25]  And I guess it was his birthday or something.
[00:56:28]  So when he walks in, everyone clapped for him and had this big moment.
[00:56:32]  And I thought, this is the one bad one I've had.
[00:56:36]  And a lot of other factors went into it.
[00:56:37]  It wasn't just his birthday party.
[00:56:38]  But yeah, other than that, I had no bad experiences.
[00:56:41]  I knew what it was.
[00:56:42]  Yeah.
[00:56:42]  I knew where you level set the expectation.
[00:56:44]  Oh, also, my mom, she's, she has the best quote of all.
[00:56:48]  When I told her, I'm, I'm going to go do independent wrestling and I'm going to make something of it.
[00:56:51]  And I'm going to make it.
[00:56:53]  I remember telling her, she said, great, you'll either end up dead or in jail.
[00:56:58]  Dead or in jail.
[00:56:59]  And now Mama Rhodes is a fixture on WWE television.
[00:57:03]  Gets her front row seats every show.
[00:57:05]  So just does a little rage.
[00:57:08]  I don't laugh when you tell a story because it's like dead or in jail.
[00:57:11]  Mom, it's wrestling.
[00:57:13]  Dead or in jail.
[00:57:14]  Selling drugs.
[00:57:15]  Dead or in jail.
[00:57:16]  She's fucking corners in Baltimore.
[00:57:17]  It seemed a bit extreme.
[00:57:19]  Dead or in jail.
[00:57:20]  Also, like, how do you get dead or in jail?
[00:57:22]  Hey, the independent wrestling didn't work out.
[00:57:24]  So I got murdered.
[00:57:26]  So I started crying.
[00:57:27]  Like, I don't know.
[00:57:28]  Dead or in jail.
[00:57:29]  And now she's loving it.
[00:57:31]  How different was the bag?
[00:57:32]  Like when you left WWE to doing the independent circuit?
[00:57:35]  Like, how much financial drop?
[00:57:38]  Yeah.
[00:57:39]  So the biggest thing you've got to do, and I think it's the same to this day, is you can't outprice yourself on an independent.
[00:57:45]  So I noticed some guys who come from WWE and this promoter, remember, they might have 200 seats to sell.
[00:57:50]  They're probably all $20, $30, maybe.
[00:57:53]  And they're going to get some from the tables if they have guys like merchandise element to it or whatever it may be.
[00:57:58]  So I'd see guys price themselves at $4,500 a show.
[00:58:02]  I mean, let's just do the math.
[00:58:03]  Like you got 200 people, $20.
[00:58:05]  What is that?
[00:58:05]  $4,000?
[00:58:06]  $40.
[00:58:07]  Yeah.
[00:58:07]  Yeah.
[00:58:07]  So that's, so this is one guy.
[00:58:09]  So if one guy prices himself at $45,000 over three days, unless you have a sponsor or somebody's there, it's like a set.
[00:58:16]  There's all these little like loopholes you could find.
[00:58:18]  I didn't want to be that guy because I knew they won't bring me back.
[00:58:21]  But I also can't price myself too low.
[00:58:23]  So we ended up, there were shows I did for, I mean, there were some shows I did for free.
[00:58:29]  Wow.
[00:58:30]  There were some shows I would do for like $1,500 and some shows I did for $750.
[00:58:38]  It was all over the map.
[00:58:40]  But the point was, they're going to have such a good time.
[00:58:43]  I'm not going to be involved in your storyline here so much.
[00:58:45]  So you don't have to worry about that.
[00:58:47]  I'm going to do so much with them at the end of the night and throughout the meeting greet that you'll keep me coming, keep me coming.
[00:58:53]  And they never, I always stayed booked.
[00:58:55]  It's one of my things I hate the most about modern indie wrestling is the inflation.
[00:58:59]  The money is now huge in our game.
[00:59:01]  So guys are saying, oh, I need first class and six grand.
[00:59:05]  Like, buddy, again, there's 200 people there, man.
[00:59:09]  Like, take a look at the room.
[00:59:10]  You know, do you want to do this or do you not?
[00:59:12]  And yeah, it's, I was, I was lucky that it was definitely a far beneath where I was at with the WV in terms of the bag.
[00:59:20]  But if you hustle, and there's a guy on the independent scene now, Matt Cardona, who had been with WWE for if you hustle, you will, you will find a lot of a lot of money.
[00:59:31]  It's just new to you.
[00:59:32]  Matt Cardona spoke about an interesting concept with you.
[00:59:35]  It's called the Cody Lie.
[00:59:37]  Cody Lai, yeah, yeah.
[00:59:37]  He's famous for the Cody Lie.
[00:59:39]  What is the Cody lie?
[00:59:41]  Cody Lai is this is your heel term right here on the flavor of buttons.
[00:59:45]  If the story needs a little extra, then you just throw it.
[00:59:49]  You got to keep it.
[00:59:50]  The rule of the Cody Lai has to be true, but there's just got an added element to it.
[00:59:54]  You know, he talks about his first meeting when he had come to talk to us at AEW and how he blew that meeting, and he claims he didn't say the things he did.
[01:00:01]  He said two of the three things I said he did.
[01:00:04]  The third is just an added for the color, you know, for give it a little something.
[01:00:08]  You know, but he does say these lies are outside of entertainment.
[01:00:12]  These lies are just in life, right?
[01:00:14]  Well, what's the difference?
[01:00:17]  I would say it's never a lie.
[01:00:18]  It's just you got to put a little, like a little something on it.
[01:00:21]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:00:21]  Like it's a, if you've ever seen the man who shot Liberty Valence, it's a classic, like, once the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
[01:00:28]  Yeah.
[01:00:29]  Come on.
[01:00:29]  I deal.
[01:00:29]  I grew up under the tree of the storyteller, man.
[01:00:33]  You know, like, I'm not going to, you know.
[01:00:35]  Oh, we're comedians.
[01:00:35]  We know about lives.
[01:00:36]  Yeah, if I'm reading my book, if I'm reading a book to Liberty and it's not as great, you know, like Mother Gothel may not be the heel in this story.
[01:00:43]  Maybe she had her own problem.
[01:00:45]  You got to use lies to tell the truth.
[01:00:47]  That's a good way to put it.
[01:00:48]  Cody Lai has been exaggerated in the business now to the point where I have to be very firm about, hey, dead serious.
[01:00:55]  Please understand, this is not a bit.
[01:00:57]  This happened.
[01:00:59]  And I hate that.
[01:00:59]  What is the action figure lie that you told us?
[01:01:05]  So he did some reason.
[01:01:07]  He claimed Hasbro WWF action figures, which were famous.
[01:01:11]  There's a rumor that there's a yellow boots variant, Dusty Rhodes.
[01:01:17]  And the reality is there isn't.
[01:01:19]  There's a sun-damaged Dusty Rhodes where the boots have become yellow.
[01:01:23]  And that's what people are talking about.
[01:01:25]  The yellow boots.
[01:01:26]  But I told him, and I would be the expert on this, being that's my father, that I did have one and that I had spoken to someone high up at Hasbro and they wanted it, but I wanted him to get the first look at it.
[01:01:39]  Matt Cardona.
[01:01:39]  Matt Cardona.
[01:01:40]  And he asked, Well, where is it?
[01:01:41]  I said, I'll bring it to TV.
[01:01:43]  And I had it in my bag.
[01:01:44]  I had nothing in my bag.
[01:01:46]  This is, I'm seeing how long I can go.
[01:01:49]  This is not a Cody lie.
[01:01:50]  This is a lie.
[01:01:51]  It's just a regular.
[01:01:52]  Well, here's where the truth might be.
[01:01:54]  There might be something that's dusty.
[01:02:01]  So I told him, I said, just go, go, it's in my bag.
[01:02:03]  Just go get it.
[01:02:04]  But the whole point of this was, I wanted him to get caught going through my bag so that I could tell the locker room, here, this guy's going through our bags.
[01:02:12]  We need to kick him out of the locker room.
[01:02:16]  Look at his bag.
[01:02:17]  That's what's everybody doing.
[01:02:18]  That's a cardinal rule.
[01:02:19]  You don't steal shit.
[01:02:19]  You don't go in someone's bag.
[01:02:21]  That's an instance.
[01:02:22]  Why is he in your bag?
[01:02:23]  So I went right in on him.
[01:02:25]  Like, you can't trust this guy.
[01:02:26]  He's going into people's bags.
[01:02:28]  And he was, how he didn't know.
[01:02:30]  Why would I, A, put it in my bag?
[01:02:32]  Like, if it's this valuable piece, is it just loose in my bag?
[01:02:35]  But yeah, I told everybody it went through my bag.
[01:02:37]  And that's a problem in the locker room, you know.
[01:02:40]  But we got over it.
[01:02:41]  We got over it.
[01:02:42]  Okay.
[01:02:43]  AEW, you're the VP.
[01:02:45]  You have everything.
[01:02:46]  Once again, life is great.
[01:02:48]  You're making money.
[01:02:49]  You took all the risk.
[01:02:50]  No reason to leave.
[01:02:52]  You're killing it.
[01:02:53]  Everything's going great.
[01:02:54]  Right.
[01:02:55]  Why on earth would you shake the cage again?
[01:02:58]  Hmm.
[01:02:59]  There's a, I don't want to give you a Cody lie on the Cody lie.
[01:03:03]  There's so many factors that went into it, but this is one small example because when I start talking about this, people try to cite, oh, it was this.
[01:03:13]  Oh, it was this.
[01:03:14]  It was this.
[01:03:15]  Here's what I can tell you: it wasn't.
[01:03:17]  It wasn't anything to do with Tony and Brandy.
[01:03:21]  That's a big one you hear all the time that Tony didn't sign Brandy.
[01:03:24]  No, Brandy had been re-signed.
[01:03:26]  Roads to the top.
[01:03:27]  We had a nice show on TBS that had been renewed for a second season.
[01:03:31]  Go Big Show, which I was doing with Burt Kreischer and Snooze.
[01:03:34]  You're killing it.
[01:03:35]  So we're at you have all these other things you're also leaving.
[01:03:38]  I don't know if people realize that, but you have the reality show, the show that you're hosting with Bert.
[01:03:42]  And obviously, you're a fixture and part of a VP of this wrestling organization.
[01:03:48]  So to leave all of that.
[01:03:49]  Yeah.
[01:03:49]  It was just a situation that felt icky.
[01:03:52]  And this is how I kind of look at it in the end.
[01:03:55]  I had really great memories with all of them, all the way back to all in, like the Woodstock of Wrestling.
[01:04:01]  I had a really beautiful experience for a while, and I wanted to keep the memories good.
[01:04:08]  I wanted to be able in 10 years, if I see those guys, or I wanted to keep them good.
[01:04:14]  Yeah, I also wanted them to know, this is the Louisiana Purchaser Wrestling Dog.
[01:04:19]  I will, I'll make sure.
[01:04:20]  But I had great memories with them, and I wanted them to know.
[01:04:26]  Is it true that Vince flies to your house in Atlanta to pitch you on coming to WWE?
[01:04:35]  Yep.
[01:04:36]  Yeah.
[01:04:37]  He found out through the dirt sheets, as we call them.
[01:04:41]  We need a better name for our wrestling media, but that's what we call in the dirt sheets.
[01:04:45]  Sounds like a Diddy party.
[01:04:46]  Oh my God.
[01:04:48]  Yeah, we really need a better name.
[01:04:49]  He found out that I was free and free-free.
[01:04:53]  Nobody wanted to dabble.
[01:04:55]  If you're not free, if this is a storyline, if this is a bit, we don't need to be talking because that's trouble.
[01:05:01]  So I found out I was free-free and came to my house in Atlanta.
[01:05:06]  And it was really old school in terms of, hey, there's no promises beyond this is what we are considering.
[01:05:15]  You wrestling Seth Rollins at WrestleMania 38 in Dallas.
[01:05:18]  Seth Rollins was somebody I felt like I'd been chasing when I was there the first time and really old school scribbled on a piece of paper the amount of money the contract would be for and just slid it across which was unnecessary.
[01:05:31]  What was it?

=== We Need A Better Name (11:34) ===

[01:05:34]  I can't tell you exactly how much it was.
[01:05:36]  I can tell you it's, I mean, 15 times more than what I had been making in WWE the first front.
[01:05:45]  It was a different layer of.
[01:05:48]  Of course, well, you've earned it.
[01:05:49]  It was a different, it was a different, even with everything I'd done with all those other shows, but this, this was hilarious.
[01:05:55]  It was slid across to me.
[01:05:57]  You guys are alone in your house.
[01:05:58]  Yes.
[01:05:59]  Say it out loud.
[01:06:00]  You can say it.
[01:06:01]  Slid it across.
[01:06:02]  Yeah.
[01:06:03]  You can't get out of character.
[01:06:04]  It's impossible for them.
[01:06:05]  But that happened.
[01:06:06]  I looked at that and I actually didn't as much, again, not the smartest.
[01:06:11]  It wasn't really a money thing.
[01:06:13]  It was, I thought, this is huge.
[01:06:16]  If I'm, I own all this stuff, you know, the logo, my music, my look, my, most of the times you get caught in the aspect of that's ours, you know, these creations of yours.
[01:06:26]  So many of little things I created don't belong to me.
[01:06:29]  However, this was created outside.
[01:06:32]  This is one of the most random things here.
[01:06:34]  So I can bring this actual whole thing.
[01:06:37]  So that was my concern.
[01:06:38]  This meeting the American Nightmare.
[01:06:39]  The American Nightmare.
[01:06:40]  The music is a big part of it.
[01:06:42]  Every aspect of what I do.
[01:06:43]  The fact that I'm not going to say title, I'll say belt.
[01:06:47]  The fact I have to be me.
[01:06:49]  And one of the quotes that was given to me in that meeting was, it's not broke.
[01:06:54]  That's why we're buying it.
[01:06:56]  And I thought, okay, then we're on the same page.
[01:07:00]  You know, because I really wanted them to know I was not, you know, hey, I'm a grown-up now, but I wanted them to know, like, I've done a few things here.
[01:07:07]  I've got a good command of what I can do and what I cannot do.
[01:07:11]  And almost overcompensated in explaining that to people so that they get like, he's not to be trifled with these days, you know?
[01:07:17]  And I played my cards that way, I suppose.
[01:07:20]  And the next thing you know, there's like this three-month period where now I'm off.
[01:07:26]  Shockingly, I have left this baby of mine, this thing that I really loved, um, to go back and go after the burst dream I had in the business, which is what's been awkwardly sitting on my lap the whole time.
[01:07:38]  Um, was that interaction with Vince when he's at your house different than every other interaction you've had with him that you know, growing up or even in the promotion the first time?
[01:07:46]  No, he was always really again, I had a great experience because maybe it was respect for my family and not so much respect for me.
[01:07:53]  So I was always treated with equality.
[01:07:57]  I think this one, maybe it was different because I could talk to him about things that I had been educated on.
[01:08:04]  You're a big boy now.
[01:08:04]  Yeah, well, like I can talk to you.
[01:08:05]  I'm not even talking about his shoes.
[01:08:07]  You know what it's like to run a promotion.
[01:08:08]  I can talk to you about a format.
[01:08:09]  I can talk to you about this silly, we timed this.
[01:08:12]  I can talk to you about the overhead on Bill.
[01:08:15]  I can talk to you about a few of these things.
[01:08:16]  You're not just an actor.
[01:08:17]  You're a director, you're a producer.
[01:08:19]  Right.
[01:08:20]  Yeah.
[01:08:20]  Which is one of the quotes from my original run in WWE.
[01:08:24]  I think it was Bruce Pritchard who told me this, but he said, you know, if you really get good at this job, you have to be your own wrestler, your own referee, your own commentator, your own cameraman.
[01:08:33]  You have to know everything you're doing at all times.
[01:08:35]  And these people with you have to know because then you'll be in control.
[01:08:39]  And that was very much, it felt like one of those moments.
[01:08:41]  I thought in that meeting, I wasn't coming back, though.
[01:08:43]  Wait, why?
[01:08:44]  I thought in that meeting, it would be good to have a moment of, okay, I appreciate that.
[01:08:52]  Thank you.
[01:08:52]  It feels good to be wanted.
[01:08:54]  It feels great to be wanted and wanted by the place that helped raise me, my home.
[01:08:59]  But I thought I was still going to go out.
[01:09:02]  Again, my plan looked like I had a plan.
[01:09:04]  Everybody else, I was a total bluff.
[01:09:06]  I didn't know what the plan was.
[01:09:08]  I certainly could have gone back at that point.
[01:09:10]  To AEW.
[01:09:11]  Yeah.
[01:09:12]  Yeah.
[01:09:12]  We certainly could have figured that out and been fine.
[01:09:15]  But I just, something inside was pointing a different direction for me.
[01:09:21]  I think it was the slide.
[01:09:22]  I think it's the camera.
[01:09:24]  Yeah.
[01:09:25]  It's really funny how you keep pretending it's not the money, but you got 15x what you got before.
[01:09:30]  And you're like, I'm the one Ethereal.
[01:09:32]  That's always force was pulling me towards security.
[01:09:36]  Driving banker.
[01:09:37]  I have no idea.
[01:09:38]  It's always a great call, though, when you can, like, for example, I called Brandy.
[01:09:41]  I was like, hey, this was, you got to know what was just slid across on a piece of paper.
[01:09:47]  You got to know.
[01:09:48]  And, you know, just my wife is, she's a stone.
[01:09:52]  Very little breaks her.
[01:09:53]  And it's fun when you can hear, like, wait, what?
[01:09:55]  Yeah.
[01:09:56]  Oh, you know, like, oh, yeah.
[01:09:58]  And just, we had to be really sure it was the right thing.
[01:10:00]  Cause remember, I'd left there not on the best of terms.
[01:10:02]  So here's my curiosity.
[01:10:04]  Are you getting pitched a storyline in that moment?
[01:10:07]  No.
[01:10:07]  So people think there's a storyline.
[01:10:09]  People think there's a contractual $1 figure.
[01:10:14]  Wow.
[01:10:14]  That's it.
[01:10:14]  Under the idea that I would come in and be there for three years.
[01:10:17]  So, okay, they have the rights to you for three years after that.
[01:10:20]  You get to take all your IP into WWE, which is kind of unheard of.
[01:10:24]  Super complicated, too.
[01:10:25]  Nobody can do that now.
[01:10:26]  WWE's legal team.
[01:10:28]  There's Disney World, right?
[01:10:29]  Oh, my gosh.
[01:10:30]  Wait, what do you mean?
[01:10:30]  Well, no, just it was so complicated for them to be like, wait, he owns the song, but we don't, do we like?
[01:10:36]  It was just because they're used to creating the character and then owning the IP.
[01:10:41]  Even when those characters leave, they can't be their WWE version in other organizations a lot of times.
[01:10:47]  Today, you probably could because Nick Con and Triple H are kind and open to the idea that, yeah, go take that.
[01:10:54]  But back in the day, it used to be very much, hey, if we, if your finisher was, you know, the crossroads and it was named on our show and Michael Cole was the first to say it, you have no claim to that whatsoever.
[01:11:04]  Yeah.
[01:11:04]  So, but I brought everything of my own into it.
[01:11:07]  And just to see them have to work it out, to see them all have to kind of work hard legally.
[01:11:11]  I thought, oh, that's cool.
[01:11:12]  We're really kind of fun.
[01:11:13]  They're really doing everything they can to get this to make this work.
[01:11:17]  So take, go, go, out.
[01:11:18]  Go.
[01:11:18]  One thing I don't understand about your time in AEW as a VP, how come you couldn't challenge for the championship again?
[01:11:25]  Like who's idea?
[01:11:26]  Oh, it's a great this.
[01:11:27]  So I, I, that's a great question.
[01:11:29]  I had done two full storylines that I would say I completely oversaw.
[01:11:35]  One was with Chris Jericho for the championship, and Chris collaborated on that, offered hugely to it, Tony as well.
[01:11:42]  But that was like, here was my week one, week two, week three, week four.
[01:11:46]  I was terrified of winning the championship, even though there's kind of these revisionist history.
[01:11:52]  The last year, I was a bad guy.
[01:11:55]  They were booing me left and right.
[01:11:56]  But those first two years, and especially those first few months, I was the hottest thing they had.
[01:12:01]  And that was a great spot to be in.
[01:12:04]  But my fear was if I win the title, I'm abusing this.
[01:12:07]  You're abusing your power.
[01:12:08]  I'm the executive vice president.
[01:12:09]  And my dad, who was the executive vice president and executive producer of Jim Crocker Promotions, he had won the championship and the people loved it.
[01:12:18]  But later, the Meltzers, the different, and I'm not knocking Dave by any means, but the industry journalists, that's something they looked at and they would judge.
[01:12:26]  And I would say it's a huge mistake that I went that route because I was hot and the fans were happy.
[01:12:31]  Oh, huge mistake.
[01:12:33]  So in my mind, I didn't want to do it.
[01:12:35]  And we put ourselves in a situation where I can never challenge for it again.
[01:12:38]  I remember it's wrestling.
[01:12:40]  Clearly, you can go back on it.
[01:12:41]  And I told them, like, nope, this is a never go back on.
[01:12:44]  I want to make it clear.
[01:12:46]  I want to make my stories just as big as the world title, which was a problem in itself.
[01:12:50]  You might as well be world champion.
[01:12:52]  But that story was the one I had a good control on.
[01:12:56]  I'd look back at it and say, perhaps that decision was a mistake, but my heart was in the place of I didn't want fans to think I'm going to abuse this position.
[01:13:04]  Clearly, I'm juiced into the office and helping lead this forward.
[01:13:08]  I didn't want them to think I was that, even though probably from a creative standpoint, it would have been just fine.
[01:13:15]  Kitchen holds you that you can never go for the title again.
[01:13:17]  Yeah, it's like, and once you're there, once you're there, I didn't realize how much of a ceiling that is for certain fans.
[01:13:24]  To me, I thought, no, you'll be fine with, I'll do these really great stories that just don't revolve around the title.
[01:13:29]  Wrestling, end of the day, sometimes it's not rocket science.
[01:13:32]  It's mistakes.
[01:13:33]  It might just be about the title.
[01:13:34]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:13:36]  It's not about the side, but having an end goal is exciting to people.
[01:13:39]  100%.
[01:13:40]  And knowing you can't ever get there, I think removes a little bit of that journey.
[01:13:44]  And the only way I could get there is by being a bad guy, fully like, ah, screw that.
[01:13:48]  That was a self-imposed, you know, and I wasn't.
[01:13:52]  Okay, I understand that as the misstep.
[01:13:54]  I do think not being able to get the title adds to your lure.
[01:13:59]  For you know what I mean?
[01:14:00]  So I think, hey, I think it worked out.
[01:14:02]  It all worked out because we constantly are rooting, right?
[01:14:05]  Like, give this guy a fucking chance.
[01:14:06]  Why can't he get it?
[01:14:07]  And then, well, coming back to WWE, again, it was all about the title.
[01:14:09]  WrestleMania 39 in LA at SoFi, everyone's thinking, this is it.
[01:14:13]  Well, I want to get to that.
[01:14:14]  So after 38, the Rollins match, like, I mean, there's just this awesome moment where he's standing there.
[01:14:19]  He's kind of sitting there and like, does he know how long the delay is going to be?
[01:14:23]  I don't think.
[01:14:24]  I don't think Seth knew he was going to be in the ring that long.
[01:14:27]  I mean, before the lights go out, he's there.
[01:14:29]  And then it looks like he's like, and then he starts going, stop making me wait.
[01:14:34]  But he literally, I feel like it's going, guys, what the fuck?
[01:14:37]  Anyway, he said it.
[01:14:39]  Yeah, 100% meant it.
[01:14:40]  Let's go.
[01:14:41]  And then the lights go out.
[01:14:43]  And then people, I feel, thought it might be you, but they didn't believe that it could be.
[01:14:49]  To me, I didn't believe it could be.
[01:14:52]  I just went out and did all this.
[01:14:53]  Yeah.
[01:14:54]  And also, I was worried you're going to boo me.
[01:14:56]  Like I started the I started the other place with my buddies and then we went head to head with NXT and really took a lot of shots.
[01:15:04]  I mean, my first PLE there, I smashed a facsimile of Triple H's throne just to let people know, hey, this is the direction I'm going.
[01:15:13]  And, but when I walked out, it didn't matter to him.
[01:15:16]  It was, it was weird.
[01:15:17]  When I walked out at Mania, you can see for about 40 seconds, I am in a trance.
[01:15:24]  Yeah.
[01:15:24]  I'm blown away that they're jumping, like not just cheering, but jumping up and down.
[01:15:28]  Yeah.
[01:15:29]  I am wanted that my whole life.
[01:15:32]  I don't know.
[01:15:33]  Like, I haven't been in a WWE ring.
[01:15:34]  There are different types of rings.
[01:15:36]  I haven't even trained in a WWE ring.
[01:15:37]  I haven't been in one in eight years at this point or whatever.
[01:15:40]  Just every step, I'm in this trance.
[01:15:42]  And the feeling I got was it just felt like the brother, our kid who was part of the family, hadn't been home, just walked back in the door.
[01:15:51]  That's what it felt like.
[01:15:52]  Like young and old fans were like, nah, he's cool.
[01:15:55]  He's cool.
[01:15:56]  He's, he grew up here.
[01:15:57]  Okay.
[01:15:58]  You know, so you get the positive reaction for the fans.
[01:16:00]  Do you, in that moment, go, okay, I'm a face?
[01:16:04]  Or are you still, are you unsure of what you're going to be?
[01:16:07]  Like, so I uh, I'm, I'm forever unsure.
[01:16:11]  So we starting this whole conversation, like, yes, 100% wipe me, babyface.
[01:16:16]  I am forever unsure.
[01:16:17]  And I tell people in charge that Triple H, who's been so good to me.
[01:16:22]  I tell him this all the time.
[01:16:23]  I say, hey, I don't have a good compass anymore because I don't know what's right, what's wrong, because I did it all now.
[01:16:31]  I've gone around the spectrum.
[01:16:32]  Maybe I do and I don't admit it, but I feel like my compass isn't as great.
[01:16:36]  So I rely on you.
[01:16:38]  If you think this is the play, that's where the quarterback terminology came up.
[01:16:42]  I'll run it.
[01:16:43]  And the play hasn't been wrong yet.
[01:16:45]  So I like going that strategy just because in that moment, I had lost a lot of my compass.
[01:16:50]  Even that great reaction, that moment, I still thought, well, this story will evolve.
[01:16:55]  Seth has every right and every reason to gripe.
[01:16:57]  He's been here waving the banner.
[01:16:59]  One of the greatest ever do it.
[01:17:00]  WrestleMania 40s MVP is Seth Rollins.
[01:17:03]  He has every right to chew me up and spit me out on the mic, and I'd have to just take it.

=== Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (06:08) ===

[01:17:08]  I'd have to just take it.
[01:17:09]  And they just, again, the fans didn't care.
[01:17:12]  And, you know, a lot of little kid fans, they're not in, that's not their, they're not interested in it anyway.
[01:17:16]  It's not war and peace.
[01:17:17]  They just, you know, let's blow some stuff up and hit some cool moves.
[01:17:20]  You know, but yeah, no, um, I was very lucky.
[01:17:23]  Guys, this is very important.
[01:17:24]  I need, we need to stress something right now.
[01:17:26]  This is the last episode that comes out before the end of our democracy.
[01:17:29]  Yeah.
[01:17:30]  Okay.
[01:17:30]  I don't know who's going to end it, but according to the internet, no matter who wins, the democracy is ended.
[01:17:35]  MAGA.
[01:17:36]  Yeah.
[01:17:37]  It's done.
[01:17:38]  No.
[01:17:40]  You can feel your girls cooked, right?
[01:17:41]  When CNN is fighting, we got it.
[01:17:44]  Bro, when CNN, when Anderson Cooper is out there struggling, the best man or woman will win.
[01:17:51]  Say again.
[01:17:52]  The best man or woman will win.
[01:17:53]  You mean that?
[01:17:54]  No.
[01:17:56]  Dude, it's not looking good.
[01:17:58]  It's not looking good.
[01:17:59]  And Trump is on the same rogues today.
[01:18:01]  Apparently, Trump is on Rogan today.
[01:18:04]  We're recording this Friday.
[01:18:06]  Let's see it.
[01:18:07]  We got to see it when these things happen.
[01:18:08]  Kamala was supposed to go on Rogan, and then something happened.
[01:18:11]  What do you think happened?
[01:18:12]  Pussy.
[01:18:12]  Or she wants to stay in the battleground states where it actually matters because that's going to win her the election.
[01:18:19]  That actually is a good point, being that she's in Texas and specifically Houston and Austin this weekend.
[01:18:25]  Maybe she is.
[01:18:26]  Also, I think I love it when people, though.
[01:18:30]  She's in Friday.
[01:18:31]  She's in Houston.
[01:18:32]  She's supporting the guy who's going up against Booger Lip.
[01:18:36]  What's his name?
[01:18:36]  Booger Lip.
[01:18:38]  Cruz or whatever.
[01:18:39]  Oh, yeah.
[01:18:41]  And then she's going to be in Austin as well.
[01:18:43]  So she's there.
[01:18:44]  She could literally go down the block and just make it happen.
[01:18:46]  Also, who's ever not voted for someone because they don't spend more time in your state?
[01:18:49]  Yo, I felt the same thing, but.
[01:18:51]  No, that shouldn't affect.
[01:18:52]  That really?
[01:18:53]  If it didn't affect it, they wouldn't all be there.
[01:18:54]  But what is the thinking?
[01:18:55]  Like, oh, they weren't in my state for two weeks.
[01:18:58]  I don't get it.
[01:18:59]  So there's still people that are undecided.
[01:19:01]  So it's like, imagine you speak to somebody face to face.
[01:19:03]  That might win you over.
[01:19:04]  It does with this guy every time he meets a person.
[01:19:08]  President of the moment.
[01:19:09]  Exactly.
[01:19:09]  Cling, cling.
[01:19:10]  Why are you voting for Billy Rhodes, bro?
[01:19:12]  Yo, I'm voting for honestly, The Undertaker.
[01:19:16]  That's what should happen.
[01:19:18]  And the winner is lights go out.
[01:19:20]  Undertaker there.
[01:19:21]  Choke slams button.
[01:19:23]  Kamala.
[01:19:24]  Oh, God.
[01:19:24]  Fire, um, yeah, I don't know.
[01:19:27]  I mean, but listen, you can bet on it with steak if you want.
[01:19:29]  You know, put your money up, put your money where your mouth is, bro.
[01:19:32]  Put your money where your mouth is.
[01:19:34]  Let's go.
[01:19:34]  You put your money, put your money in Kamala's mouth.
[01:19:39]  That's the president you're talking about.
[01:19:40]  That's first of all, the vice president.
[01:19:41]  But what her mouth is, is saying she's going to win.
[01:19:43]  So put your money on her mouth.
[01:19:47]  Put your money on her mouth.
[01:19:49]  Are you annoying?
[01:19:51]  You're saying that people wouldn't put money on Donald's mouth?
[01:19:53]  I'm just saying.
[01:19:54]  Some say that her mouth got her place.
[01:19:57]  Wow, I can't believe you even think like that.
[01:19:59]  So close to the election.
[01:20:00]  You've been watching CNN.
[01:20:02]  CNN has turned into alt-right news network.
[01:20:04]  Yeah, right.
[01:20:05]  CNN is an alt-right news network.
[01:20:07]  Unlike this show, not this show.
[01:20:09]  Unbiased down the middle.
[01:20:10]  No bias whatsoever.
[01:20:11]  We're straight down the middle.
[01:20:12]  Yeah.
[01:20:12]  We just put our money on ourselves.
[01:20:13]  Does the heel turn or become liberal?
[01:20:15]  That'll be fired.
[01:20:16]  There's a bunch of liberal cucks over there.
[01:20:18]  Fox.
[01:20:19]  Let's go.
[01:20:19]  Yeah, that's fire.
[01:20:20]  Just cucks.
[01:20:22]  It's just so cucky over there.
[01:20:23]  Sweet, soy boys.
[01:20:25]  Wait, wait.
[01:20:25]  So CNN's going face.
[01:20:27]  Yo, CNN is going.
[01:20:28]  Well, it depends how you view the world, Mark.
[01:20:31]  But the fact that you just said that because you think Hillary Clinton's going to try to fuck it.
[01:20:37]  Dude, wait, what?
[01:20:39]  That was a sexual joke about Hillary Clinton, bro.
[01:20:42]  I'm sorry.
[01:20:42]  That was a foreign first lady.
[01:20:44]  I'm going heel.
[01:20:45]  Don't go heel, Mark.
[01:20:46]  You go too far when you go heel.
[01:20:48]  Sorry.
[01:20:48]  Yeah, you need to really rein it in.
[01:20:49]  We just need to be calm, cool, and collected.
[01:20:51]  Yeah.
[01:20:52]  You know, like out right now, it's calm, cool, and collected.
[01:20:54]  Ready to take an L.
[01:20:56]  I take no L's.
[01:20:58]  Do you really think that Kamala can win?
[01:21:00]  Yeah, I do.
[01:21:01]  This is the one.
[01:21:05]  Do you really think that the person that has a 50% chance of winning can win?
[01:21:09]  Do you really think Tommy and Kamala are running in this?
[01:21:11]  Do you really think?
[01:21:12]  Oh, I think Trump has a chance too, bro.
[01:21:14]  Now you're talking.
[01:21:17]  Everyone in Dallas, I think you're so fucking dumb.
[01:21:20]  You say the most genius shit.
[01:21:23]  Okay, Lloyd.
[01:21:24]  Yeah.
[01:21:24]  Yo, let's put our money on.
[01:21:27]  Yo, I'm trying to put my money on Kamala's mouth.
[01:21:29]  Yeah, I'm trying to put it on Trump's mouth, too.
[01:21:32]  This is why we didn't get the Kamala hood into it, right?
[01:21:35]  You think this has something?
[01:21:37]  Yeah, I think so.
[01:21:38]  Your jokes about her giving fillets.
[01:21:42]  I would never.
[01:21:42]  You had jokes about that.
[01:21:43]  I know.
[01:21:44]  Yeah, I would never.
[01:21:45]  What do you mean?
[01:21:45]  I would never two minutes ago.
[01:21:49]  Listen, people take this show very seriously, bro.
[01:21:52]  So we need to act, we need to act correctly.
[01:21:55]  We need to have a little more decorum.
[01:21:56]  Yeah, if you want to bet on this election, you're obviously doing with steak.
[01:21:59]  Steak is the leader in global betting, and you are social casinos, bet on top sports and political events, and use the promo code Flagrant for your welcome bonus.
[01:22:07]  Now, we could get back to the show, but right now, I think we're kind of like moving and grooving talking about politics, even though we should get right back to the show.
[01:22:14]  But there is a little fun little political talk that we can have right now.
[01:22:18]  You like to see me get cooked in the comments.
[01:22:20]  I don't like that.
[01:22:21]  That's what you are.
[01:22:22]  He knows what he wants.
[01:22:24]  I'm going to be honest with you.
[01:22:25]  The amount of engagement.
[01:22:27]  I was shocked.
[01:22:28]  And you mean in every single fucking week, you try to piss them up.
[01:22:32]  Whatever they're upset, you dress like a China set.
[01:22:34]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:22:35]  You can't.
[01:22:36]  Trump's least favorite country.
[01:22:37]  Exactly.
[01:22:38]  You're trying to ril them up in the coffee house every single day.
[01:22:42]  And you're the elephant in the China shop right now.
[01:22:44]  I'm about to destroy some shit.
[01:22:45]  It's a cool, but I'm about to do that.
[01:22:48]  It was close.
[01:22:49]  It was close.
[01:22:50]  We were so close.
[01:22:51]  I'm surprised I got China shop out there.
[01:22:56]  All right.
[01:22:58]  We got to get back to it.
[01:22:59]  China.
[01:23:00]  China.
[01:23:01]  All right.
[01:23:01]  We got to get back.
[01:23:02]  Yeah, what?
[01:23:02]  Yellow shoes.
[01:23:05]  Nothing to say.
[01:23:06]  I know.
[01:23:07]  Why do you say I got nothing to say?
[01:23:10]  Shit.
[01:23:10]  Yellow shoes, Al.
[01:23:12]  What do you think then?
[01:23:12]  But I'm wearing them inside.
[01:23:14]  Whose side am I?
[01:23:15]  Right down the middle.

=== Trump's Least Favorite Country (15:24) ===

[01:23:16]  That's what I hope.
[01:23:18]  Right down the middle.
[01:23:19]  Just when you think I'm one of them.
[01:23:21]  What's that?
[01:23:22]  Oh, a Tim?
[01:23:24]  A yellow shoe.
[01:23:25]  A yellow shoe.
[01:23:26]  A Timberland?
[01:23:28]  That's crazy.
[01:23:31]  See, we got to go back to the show.
[01:23:33]  Why?
[01:23:33]  What's his head?
[01:23:35]  You know.
[01:23:35]  Tell me.
[01:23:37]  Too much synergy right here.
[01:23:38]  Tell me.
[01:23:39]  You know.
[01:23:40]  Tell me.
[01:23:41]  We can't tell the people.
[01:23:42]  We can't.
[01:23:42]  Tell the people.
[01:23:43]  No.
[01:23:44]  The camp shirt with the honey bee on it.
[01:23:46]  Yeah, with the honeybee.
[01:23:48]  Why?
[01:23:48]  What's happening?
[01:23:49]  Can you guys tell me?
[01:23:52]  I feel like I don't know what's happening.
[01:23:53]  I feel like I'm on the outside.
[01:23:55]  You are.
[01:23:56]  You are.
[01:23:56]  Because me and Alex have already made thousands of dollars gambling on the future of our democracy.
[01:24:01]  We are.
[01:24:02]  Yo, put some money up, though.
[01:24:04]  Put some money up.
[01:24:05]  You put money up.
[01:24:06]  I am putting money up.
[01:24:07]  All right, I'll put money up.
[01:24:08]  I bet.
[01:24:09]  So we really don't want to hang with our wives today, huh?
[01:24:13]  Let's get back to that show.
[01:24:15]  When do you get pitched the storyline that at 39, you are finally going to wrestle for the belt and lose?
[01:24:27]  It's weird how it went.
[01:24:30]  I hope this doesn't ruin it for anybody, but this is a, we've peeled the curtain back here.
[01:24:35]  You don't have any four-year-old fans.
[01:24:37]  Yeah, I bet you there's a four-year-old watching this.
[01:24:39]  He's going to be in the comments like, hey, no, I, it really.
[01:24:44]  But this is 39.
[01:24:45]  They already know this happened.
[01:24:46]  This is all news.
[01:24:46]  It's really, I was told I'm winning the Royal Rumble.
[01:24:50]  And at the time, I was rehabbing my peck.
[01:24:53]  I was going to be gone.
[01:24:54]  I'd never been injured before and I had the peck injury.
[01:24:57]  I'm out for a full seven.
[01:24:58]  I could have come back at four.
[01:24:59]  I could have come back at five.
[01:25:01]  We really waited until the Royal Rumble for me to come back and try to get in the best possible shape of my career.
[01:25:07]  Real quick, you tear the peck.
[01:25:10]  You still fight Seth Rollins again.
[01:25:12]  Yeah.
[01:25:13]  If you want to pull up a picture of me, we'll make sure that they, you guys can put it up there.
[01:25:16]  It's pretty gross.
[01:25:17]  I apologize.
[01:25:18]  But it's blue all over.
[01:25:19]  It's insane.
[01:25:20]  It's a dumbledoor arm.
[01:25:21]  Yes.
[01:25:21]  Yes.
[01:25:21]  Yeah.
[01:25:22]  But I think it adds to the lore.
[01:25:24]  Yeah, it does.
[01:25:24]  Right?
[01:25:25]  It's like, this guy's actually earning it.
[01:25:27]  It's not just nepotism.
[01:25:28]  It's not just a last name.
[01:25:29]  He's actually earning his stripes.
[01:25:31]  And it's a rare moment in wrestling where something real is happening in something fake.
[01:25:39]  Do you know what I'm saying?
[01:25:40]  To me, that's my whole story.
[01:25:43]  Perhaps this is an artificial world.
[01:25:44]  Perhaps.
[01:25:45]  But I'm real.
[01:25:47]  I'm real.
[01:25:47]  And this was a case of, so many people were really cool to me about like, I can't believe it.
[01:25:53]  And I feel like, truthfully, anybody who's got a competitive spirit at all would have done it.
[01:26:01]  I love that people are like, this is crazy.
[01:26:03]  I can't believe you did it.
[01:26:04]  But I just feel like there was a sold-out crowd.
[01:26:06]  There was all this interest in that PLE via Peacock that, of course, they had told us about, hey, we're 40% up on this Hell in the Cell.
[01:26:13]  And it's Seth against someone I have such a respect for.
[01:26:18]  Here's the part they don't know.
[01:26:20]  Had somebody seen it, I made sure nobody saw it.
[01:26:24]  The only person who saw it was a guy named Peaches, who's the trainer at WWE.
[01:26:31]  And Peaches, I think, wasn't under the impression I was wrestling.
[01:26:35]  We'll tape you up.
[01:26:36]  WWE doesn't even know that you.
[01:26:38]  They know I tore it.
[01:26:39]  They know I tore it.
[01:26:41]  And the doctor, the doctor, the doctor who had looked at it said he can't hurt it any worse.
[01:26:46]  It's gone.
[01:26:47]  He has strength in his arms.
[01:26:48]  It's gone because they did double check over and over.
[01:26:51]  Like, is this even possible that he can do it?
[01:26:53]  They went through every little, they went to an outside doctor even who ended up doing my surgery.
[01:26:58]  Like, yeah, he can wrestle.
[01:26:59]  At the end of the day, they're liable if you can't hurt him.
[01:27:02]  If something happens, right?
[01:27:03]  And I just, but I kept my jacket on.
[01:27:06]  I kept my jacket on the whole day.
[01:27:08]  And I remember Michael Hayes, who is a legendary producer at WWE, has been very helpful in my career, especially this latter half of it.
[01:27:16]  But he asked to see it.
[01:27:18]  And I started to unzip my jacket a little bit.
[01:27:20]  And he goes, no, no, no.
[01:27:21]  Save it.
[01:27:22]  Save it.
[01:27:22]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:27:25]  No, no, no.
[01:27:25]  So the first time, though, the first time everyone's seeing it is when the jacket gets unbuttoned.
[01:27:29]  And at this point, it's healed enough for you to fight, but it still looks this bad.
[01:27:33]  I mean, it's not healed at all.
[01:27:34]  It's like three A's actually.
[01:27:35]  So this is, I have the progression of the bruising throughout.
[01:27:38]  It was like a tiny bruise in my armpit, and then it was coming down my arm.
[01:27:41]  And then it just got bigger and bigger to the point where I thought, well, there's a lot of blood in there.
[01:27:47]  The only thing that came of the match I was told, and again, could be a Cody lie, but it didn't come from me, was that when they opened me up on the table in Birmingham after the match, and when we got surgery immediately after, the blood squirted up like for a prolonged three or four seconds, not just the normal amount.
[01:28:04]  Definitely Cody Lybo.
[01:28:05]  I love that.
[01:28:05]  That's great.
[01:28:06]  I'm a huge fan of that.
[01:28:07]  Blood squirted to the ceiling.
[01:28:09]  It's still on the ceiling, right?
[01:28:15]  But yeah, that was, I wasn't not going to do it.
[01:28:19]  I had to this day, I would.
[01:28:21]  Fans really appreciate it.
[01:28:22]  Yeah.
[01:28:22]  And if they weren't on the fence, like if they were on the fence and weren't sure about me, I always say it's a peck well spent that this was what they said.
[01:28:30]  Like, yeah, no, he's cool.
[01:28:31]  He's okay.
[01:28:32]  So you keep on building this trust and appreciation in the fans.
[01:28:35]  And in these like real moments, in this thing that everybody accepts that is fake.
[01:28:40]  I think one of the Sam Roberts, who's a fucking awesome friend of mine.
[01:28:42]  I hate Sam, but I'm sure you do.
[01:28:44]  He's dead to me right now.
[01:28:45]  Yeah.
[01:28:45]  He went on a whole rant about my title run, and he technically works for WWE.
[01:28:50]  He's trying to play that line of like, nah, I'm independent.
[01:28:52]  No, you're not, Sam.
[01:28:56]  Not Sam.
[01:28:58]  So I'm a Rosenberg guy right now because Sam's dead to me.
[01:29:01]  Who's Rosenberg?
[01:29:02]  Peter Rosenberg.
[01:29:02]  I don't know who that is.
[01:29:03]  Peter does a radio show in New York, and he also, Sam and him do our pre-shows and our kickoff panels.
[01:29:09]  Because they do have an element of like this is their own flavor, and they've been covering wrestling.
[01:29:13]  That's cute.
[01:29:13]  He's a wrestling guy.
[01:29:14]  Yeah.
[01:29:14]  Oh, wow.
[01:29:15]  Peter Rosenberg.
[01:29:16]  He's really good.
[01:29:17]  Doesn't say anything mean about me.
[01:29:18]  Yeah.
[01:29:20]  Yeah.
[01:29:20]  White meat, guys.
[01:29:21]  Okay.
[01:29:22]  So, so basically, you have this situation where he says, what I thought was really interesting about rubber wrestling is that like we know everything in life is fake, right?
[01:29:32]  We know politics is fake, people lie, whatever.
[01:29:35]  But they pretend it's real.
[01:29:36]  Wrestling is the thing that they admit is fake.
[01:29:41]  So we don't have to feel gaslit at all.
[01:29:45]  We just get to have pure enjoyment in it.
[01:29:47]  And then every once in a while, in it, there are these real moments.
[01:29:51]  And then the audience feels way more real.
[01:29:53]  Way more real because it was supposed to be fake.
[01:29:55]  So when you see the armpit, you see the story, finish the story.
[01:30:00]  When that is said for the first time, who says it for the first time?
[01:30:02]  Michael Cole.
[01:30:03]  So Cole goes, He's here to finish the story.
[01:30:06]  Yep.
[01:30:07]  Now, all of a sudden, the fans go, Holy shit, this is a real true story.
[01:30:11]  He could finish the story, he could bring the belt to the Rhodes household.
[01:30:15]  So now they're on board on something real within something they know is fabricated.
[01:30:21]  I like fabricated, but did you see me wince every time?
[01:30:24]  Yeah, I'm sorry.
[01:30:25]  I no, no, I don't mean anything.
[01:30:29]  No, no, I so I never get as a kid.
[01:30:31]  That was like the and my dad didn't smarten me up to the business.
[01:30:35]  So multiple fights as in an elementary school where hey, Cody got into a fight and why?
[01:30:41]  Because Tommy said, you know, what his dad does for a living is the F word.
[01:30:45]  And of course, my dad would not just help that.
[01:30:49]  Instead, he had a weird three-strike rule: like, hey, tell him, you know, okay, next time tell him, hey, that's how we make a living.
[01:30:55]  Please leave me alone.
[01:30:56]  Third time, you just punch him in the nose.
[01:30:57]  And he's like, always the nose.
[01:30:58]  There's a really violent thing for a kid to think about, like, punching a guy in the nose.
[01:31:03]  But so the reason, yeah, wind up.
[01:31:09]  The big roundup crossroads.
[01:31:12]  It's not that when people use the word, it doesn't, it doesn't bother me.
[01:31:16]  For me, and I mean this in the utmost sincerity, I always tell people it's 100% real.
[01:31:21]  And what I mean to like extrapolate on it, what I mean is whatever I do tonight in Barclays, by the way, or whatever I do at any show, if I see a dad with his son, if I see a family, if I see casual fans, this is their first time, their experience is real.
[01:31:39]  That's why that's always worked for me.
[01:31:42]  And like their experience is real.
[01:31:44]  And yes.
[01:31:45]  Every now and then wrestlers get super defensive about it.
[01:31:48]  You've seen so many like news news interviews going gone wrong.
[01:31:51]  Oh, I broke my neck for this.
[01:31:54]  I mean, the David Schultz one.
[01:31:55]  Right.
[01:31:56]  Oh, slapping the guy back there.
[01:31:58]  I slapped him pretty hard, too.
[01:32:00]  Knocked him down.
[01:32:00]  Yeah, I never get mad at it as much as it's just for me, like maybe I'm different in our world where it's just because I'm not playing anything but myself, it just feels as real as anything else.
[01:32:13]  I think one of the best things that happened to wrestling is for the public to know that it is what is the word, fab show, organized predetermined.
[01:32:24]  Because now we can submit ourselves to the fun and focus on these storylines.
[01:32:30]  And the storylines are what always would drive it, in my opinion.
[01:32:33]  Whereas before, you could be like, oh, this is, I mean, I have video of this.
[01:32:37]  I don't even know if I can share this because my wife will be embarrassed.
[01:32:39]  We were watching the Vinstock and my wife is like kind of on her phone overhearing it.
[01:32:43]  And she goes, wait, it's fake?
[01:32:46]  This is like two weeks ago.
[01:32:48]  Got her.
[01:32:49]  This is two weeks ago.
[01:32:52]  Okay.
[01:32:52]  I have video of this.
[01:32:54]  I don't even know who I'm blaming her at all the episode.
[01:32:56]  She goes, wait, what do you mean?
[01:32:57]  I go, what did you think?
[01:32:58]  What's that?
[01:32:59]  I don't blame her at all.
[01:33:00]  You think there's a guy named The Undertaker who just comes back to the watch?
[01:33:04]  She's on the tower.
[01:33:09]  I get it, though, because I remember being a kid and then someone, you know, making me feel like Santa Claus isn't real that moment with wrestling.
[01:33:17]  But I'm so invested that even after, I'm like, nah, some of it's real.
[01:33:22]  I'm like, some of it is.
[01:33:23]  It liberates the art, though.
[01:33:25]  It makes it, I think, so much more special because you get to focus, instead of trying to focus on convincing people that this thing is 100% real, you get to focus on convincing them, what they're feeling is real.
[01:33:37]  Forget what they're seeing.
[01:33:38]  I don't care if the punch lands.
[01:33:40]  When that person comes out or you hear that music for the first time or this story is actually realized, that's the fucking reaction you're going to get.
[01:33:47]  Sean Michaels is really good and he heads up NXT now.
[01:33:50]  And I'm blown away by the next generation of wrestlers all going to be the best ever because they're being trained by Sean Michaels.
[01:33:56]  But he always was of the thought that if they think that match that went on second or third wasn't real or if they feel disconnected from it, I'm going to find something in mine that makes them think like, oh no, everything else that wasn't, that wasn't, that was fabricated.
[01:34:11]  That was artificial, everything else.
[01:34:12]  But that, he was mad.
[01:34:14]  He really, you know, like Sean is the master of that.
[01:34:17]  And I wish more wrestlers, and again, it's a hard skill set to make, but there's so many, if you look at Sean's career, there's all these matches where you'll see stuff like, oh, I heard they were really having a problem with this.
[01:34:28]  I heard there was a behind the scenes.
[01:34:29]  No, he was that good to make you think.
[01:34:33]  I mean, every like the greatest, again, when the lie, you know, when the fact becomes legend, print the legend.
[01:34:39]  But Sean is really special at doing that.
[01:34:41]  Really special.
[01:34:42]  Okay.
[01:34:42]  So you get this.
[01:34:44]  At what point are you pitch the storyline of winning the Royal Rumble and then losing to Roman?
[01:34:50]  So it was never said.
[01:34:51]  It was never said you'll be winning or losing.
[01:34:53]  And I think.
[01:34:54]  Wait, against Roman or?
[01:34:55]  Yeah, that was the discussion was something that those discussions happen within days of WrestleMania.
[01:35:02]  So you're constantly reacting to what the audience wants and not by you.
[01:35:05]  I mean, like the writing team.
[01:35:07]  Yeah, I mean, we have the, again, I don't know, like, we have the greatest focus group every week.
[01:35:11]  It's a literal live audience.
[01:35:13]  It's, you know, one of the things I talked with Bert about on the Set Ago Big Show was he would find that there was this parallel between pro wrestling and he'd try these jokes out and try these bits out and he'd know where they landed, what landed.
[01:35:25]  He'd build, do his big finish, all this.
[01:35:27]  And it's very similar in terms of every week.
[01:35:30]  We have them to, we want to lead them for sure, but also every now and then they'll yank you.
[01:35:35]  Like, yeah, we're not into that.
[01:35:36]  That's not it.
[01:35:37]  And, and it's a nice balance.
[01:35:39]  They are playing the backup to you if you're the lead singer.
[01:35:42]  They're right there.
[01:35:42]  It's very different from any other artistic medium that there is in terms of they we depend on them.
[01:35:48]  COVID wrestling is the worst.
[01:35:51]  It's the worst.
[01:35:51]  There might be no fancy stuff.
[01:35:53]  There might have been good stuff that happened, but none of us will ever want to go back and watch it.
[01:35:56]  Nobody would have to.
[01:35:57]  It's hard to predict what they want, what they say.
[01:35:59]  You need that live audience.
[01:36:01]  They're the lifeblood.
[01:36:02]  And right now, WWE is in this unbelievable renaissance where these crowds are absurd.
[01:36:07]  You know, we were talking about 10,000 for all in and how special that was.
[01:36:11]  Now we're dealing with every show is 10 plus.
[01:36:14]  Every like, I, you know, again, and don't take it for granted.
[01:36:16]  Who knows when it's going to end?
[01:36:17]  But they're a really great metric to determine they're the number one.
[01:36:21]  More than, you know, the guy who trained me, his name's Al Snow.
[01:36:24]  I remember him telling me, he's like, you can get over with your boss and that's cool.
[01:36:28]  That'll get you places, but you could also get over with the people and that'll get you everywhere.
[01:36:33]  And I love because that's honest.
[01:36:35]  Like, great.
[01:36:35]  Yeah.
[01:36:35]  I didn't have to politic or be your buddy, but you know, I play the game a little, but if the people are vibing, we're good.
[01:36:42]  You'll, you'll, I'm going to move forward.
[01:36:44]  Um, but yeah, those discussions happen within days.
[01:36:47]  So you win Royal Rumble.
[01:36:49]  You don't know if you're going to realize this dream, if you're going to finish the story at 39.
[01:36:54]  Yeah.
[01:36:54]  And I don't even mean to give this answer is going to sound like a Cody lie, but this is a true answer.
[01:36:58]  We didn't really know for sure what we were doing until hours before that match.
[01:37:03]  Do you talk to Roman?
[01:37:04]  Does H come in and talk to you guys?
[01:37:05]  Like, what?
[01:37:06]  That was, that was one where that's, again, you call the play.
[01:37:09]  That's Triple H in terms of you, you lead the charge.
[01:37:13]  That's not something he or I can determine, Roman or I or Mr. Heyman.
[01:37:18]  That's that he is, he is directing this film.
[01:37:21]  Are you fucking heartbroken?
[01:37:22]  Like, I did everything to get here.
[01:37:24]  We can give the fans what they want.
[01:37:26]  You're going to take that away from me.
[01:37:27]  What are you feeling before that, even like when you're not sure what's going to happen?
[01:37:30]  What's that whole process?
[01:37:32]  I think I went to a place in my mind, and maybe I was feeling really positive.
[01:37:35]  Maybe I maybe I had experienced enough heartbreak in the business to not be heartbroken again.
[01:37:41]  But what it became was I truthfully told myself, and I had a really good individual step in and speak to me about this.
[01:37:49]  I told myself, great, I'm still going to be the champion.
[01:37:53]  I'm going to be the champion for the next year because Roman had select dates and he had done the full-time schedule before.
[01:37:59]  So he earned his select dates, but he's not there every week.
[01:38:02]  I will be there every week.
[01:38:03]  I'm at every live event, every house show, every tour, every appearance.
[01:38:06]  I'm at everywhere.
[01:38:08]  So I'm going to be the champion of WWE without the title.
[01:38:12]  And that became the task.
[01:38:13]  And the hardest part of the task was they care so much now.
[01:38:17]  No way with the attention spans being, will they care at 40?
[01:38:21]  No way.
[01:38:22]  I know you think you're wrestling him at 40, but no way can you get there.
[01:38:26]  And then, of course, the greatest hurdle of all hurdles, right?
[01:38:30]  When it does look like, no, we're going.
[01:38:33]  Won the Royal Rumble again.
[01:38:34]  Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels, here are back-to-back Rumble winners.
[01:38:37]  I won it twice, pointed at Roman.
[01:38:40]  We're going.

=== Brock Lesnar As People's Champ (12:49) ===

[01:38:41]  This is as real as real gets.
[01:38:43]  And The Rock shows up.
[01:38:48]  And that may be, I don't want to use the term heartbroken, but that might be the most dejected for a moment.
[01:38:55]  Explain what happens when The Rock comes in.
[01:38:57]  I can't believe we've jumped over getting you, building you back up after 39.
[01:39:02]  Like, you got to go in with Brock.
[01:39:04]  They have to design a way to make people believe, no, he can go after it.
[01:39:09]  You have these legendary matches with Brock.
[01:39:10]  So Brock, what gives you the rub, right?
[01:39:12]  He very much so.
[01:39:13]  He very much puts you over three, three with him.
[01:39:16]  Again, like the F word is terrifying when discussing him because that's like basically, if you, if we all left this room and you stood in there, we're like, all right, man, we're sitting in a bear.
[01:39:25]  See if you can just get behind the bear.
[01:39:28]  Just get behind the bear.
[01:39:28]  That's like what wrestling Brock was like.
[01:39:30]  Just see if you can get, just if you can grab him, just grab him once for team.
[01:39:33]  He kicked you in the stomach once that looked very buddy.
[01:39:36]  Did you feel so?
[01:39:37]  Yeah.
[01:39:38]  I like the lore of him is that he is the most just crazy, outrageous, strong, greatest athlete.
[01:39:46]  He could end anybody in a moment.
[01:39:48]  Yeah.
[01:39:49]  I'll ruin it for some.
[01:39:51]  His professionalism is so underrated.
[01:39:54]  Oh, wow.
[01:39:54]  He is, he is one of, if not the most professional and understanding of what we wanted.
[01:40:02]  And I, uh, he sent me some of his he has a farm in Canada.
[01:40:09]  I hope, I hope you're not mad at me for sharing this, but he sent me an entire cow worth of steaks.
[01:40:17]  And he took a picture of himself with the cow because he does it all.
[01:40:23]  He's a real farmer.
[01:40:24]  I love it.
[01:40:25]  So I thought, this is what a just a legend.
[01:40:28]  But yeah, no, he was the utmost professional with me.
[01:40:31]  I was, I was, I was blessed to have been in that role.
[01:40:33]  And again, like the bear conversation about I, I had to find something, you know, like he's not giving anything easily.
[01:40:40]  And that's the best.
[01:40:41]  The best guys don't give anything easily.
[01:40:43]  So they put you against the meanest, baddest dude.
[01:40:45]  Yeah.
[01:40:46]  The audience sees you in these battles.
[01:40:49]  They start to support you again.
[01:40:51]  You know that you have to show out in these battles.
[01:40:53]  Oh, you have to show up more than you did because now they're seeing you every week.
[01:40:56]  Like I said, there's a downside to seeing you every week, too.
[01:40:58]  That's right.
[01:40:59]  We really, this is our end.
[01:41:00]  I just, they stayed in it all the way, including winning the Royal Rumble, having gone through matches with Brock.
[01:41:09]  Jey Uso and I had formed a partnership, and that was the first little tease that we might go to Roman again.
[01:41:15]  And then Roman WrestleMania 40.
[01:41:17]  And the next thing you know, that's when Rock showed back up.
[01:41:20]  And that was a match a lot of fans had wanted to see for a long time.
[01:41:23]  So Rock says what?
[01:41:25]  When he throws the wrench, he comes out.
[01:41:27]  Well, the way we designed it, and now everyone blames me for this.
[01:41:32]  But I thought I'd done the best I could.
[01:41:35]  I was still going to wrestle Roman, but it wasn't going to be a WrestleMania.
[01:41:39]  So I was going to do just a handoff amongst myself.
[01:41:43]  And, you know, Rock is revered.
[01:41:45]  Who doesn't love the Rock?
[01:41:47]  And it was Birmingham, Alabama.
[01:41:50]  And I went out and said, Hey, I am coming for that title, but not a WrestleMania.
[01:41:55]  One of the guys I took counsel with.
[01:41:57]  This guy's, you know, we didn't really say he's going to be a WrestleMania moment, but we clearly framed it up.
[01:42:01]  Rock's music hits, the place loses their minds.
[01:42:04]  You know, Birmingham, Alabama's going bananas.
[01:42:06]  And him and I had an embrace.
[01:42:08]  He told me something super sweet in my ear.
[01:42:12]  I'm sure he doesn't mind me sharing, even though we're not best buddies.
[01:42:15]  But he said, We're going to make both our dads proud.
[01:42:20]  Oh, and I like smiled for a brief moment.
[01:42:23]  And then he stole the title from you.
[01:42:25]  Well, then I left.
[01:42:26]  And for some reason, I'm not blaming anyone in production.
[01:42:29]  They kept filming me.
[01:42:30]  Like, guys, I'm not going to be like, go get him.
[01:42:33]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:42:34]  Like, I didn't have a face.
[01:42:36]  So I got kind of like a resting B face.
[01:42:39]  Like, it's just everyone judged and picked apart every like his he's heartbroken.
[01:42:43]  He's dejected.
[01:42:43]  And I guess I was.
[01:42:45]  But also, I didn't want them to know that.
[01:42:46]  And I did this thing where a gorilla position, which is right before you go out, the backseats position.
[01:42:51]  I didn't want anyone to see me like that.
[01:42:53]  So this might have been, I skipped around it and went right to my bus.
[01:42:57]  Just I told Triple H and everybody, hey, I'm just going to be private.
[01:43:00]  I don't want to have a meltdown.
[01:43:02]  I don't want to have a moment.
[01:43:03]  That's it.
[01:43:04]  They're going there.
[01:43:05]  They're going there.
[01:43:06]  When they film me on my bus after this documentary, because WWE films everything at any point, a story could be taking place.
[01:43:13]  When they film me, I'm sitting there with a giant bottle of Wheatley vodka.
[01:43:18]  And that's because Wheatley sponsors the bus.
[01:43:21]  And we do a podcast with Wheatley.
[01:43:23]  It's not because I was drinking this bottle just straight up, but the way it looks is like all that was missing was like me eating pizza over the sink.
[01:43:30]  It's just like it was just a Cody lie.
[01:43:33]  It was a sad image.
[01:43:34]  It was a sad image.
[01:43:35]  Yeah.
[01:43:36]  And then that's the point.
[01:43:38]  What does the audience do when The Rock says craziest thing that's ever happened?
[01:43:41]  And so here's the best part about it.
[01:43:45]  In my mind, I'm thinking, what can I do?
[01:43:48]  Right?
[01:43:49]  What can I do?
[01:43:50]  Should I pursue being angry about this?
[01:43:52]  What can I do?
[01:43:53]  Should I just move on to the next thing?
[01:43:55]  At this point in my life, I think I just need to be a professional.
[01:43:58]  It's a rare moment of maturity.
[01:44:00]  Like, they've got some plan.
[01:44:03]  I'm going to go with their plan.
[01:44:04]  And almost defeated.
[01:44:05]  And now I hate thinking of myself thinking that way.
[01:44:08]  My wife is like, burn it down.
[01:44:10]  You know, I love that.
[01:44:12]  But I did nothing.
[01:44:14]  And there's little movements started.
[01:44:15]  And I say little movement because it was just a social media thing at first.
[01:44:18]  It was just this We Want Cody thing on social media.
[01:44:21]  I thought live they even reacted to it.
[01:44:23]  So that's where it became real.
[01:44:25]  The We Want Cody thing was happening online.
[01:44:27]  The video of them becoming WrestleMania opponents had the most dislikes.
[01:44:31]  There's these little metrics, but in my mind, my mind being Roman Reigns and The Rock.
[01:44:35]  Yeah.
[01:44:35]  Right.
[01:44:35]  So they set up this match.
[01:44:36]  Yeah.
[01:44:37]  In my mind, I thought, like, oh, that, you know, digital and social is where people go to complain anyway.
[01:44:41]  So, you know, maybe it's just that.
[01:44:44]  Then first night on Monday Night Raw, live in the arena there in St. Louis, is where Seth, of all people, is talking about The Rock.
[01:44:53]  And that was where the booze came in.
[01:44:55]  People started booing.
[01:44:57]  And that's where we saw all the We Want Cody signs.
[01:44:59]  And I mean, had this been a marketing plan, it would have been genius, but it wasn't completely organic.
[01:45:03]  It was a real thing provided by the fans.
[01:45:06]  And it's over the course of that week that it could have really emboldened me, but I was still of the thought, like, guys, as sweet as this is, nothing we can do.
[01:45:14]  There's nothing we can do.
[01:45:15]  It's done.
[01:45:15]  I have to find it's done.
[01:45:17]  And then I feel comfortable sharing all this because we have the behind the curtain WrestleMania documentary, but it is Rock and Triple H who decided, okay, we're going to go with him.
[01:45:30]  Oh, wow.
[01:45:30]  Now we're going to go with Cody.
[01:45:32]  They want that.
[01:45:33]  We're going with him.
[01:45:34]  Important variable in this story.
[01:45:35]  And this is where wrestling has these real moments.
[01:45:39]  Yeah.
[01:45:40]  A few months before that, The Rock gets named to the TKO board of directors.
[01:45:45]  Yeah, he's the director of the board.
[01:45:46]  He's the director of the board.
[01:45:47]  TKO is the company that owns WWE and UFC.
[01:45:51]  So the perception of The Rock is no longer just this wrestler.
[01:45:56]  He's, what is it now, the final boss.
[01:45:59]  I mean, he's the boss.
[01:45:59]  And then he became the final boss.
[01:46:00]  The final boss.
[01:46:01]  But he's the boss and a boss swooping in using his power position to take away the opportunity from a hardworking guy that has truly earned it.
[01:46:11]  And the people reject that.
[01:46:14]  They're like, fuck, I've been in that situation where the fucking boss takes this opportunity or hires some random friend instead of me and I'm busting my ass at this fucking company.
[01:46:23]  So the people project The Rock in this new position.
[01:46:27]  I wonder if The Rock is just a wrestler, how they react.
[01:46:30]  But seeing him in his power position abusing his power creates this empathy and like desire for you to fulfill the audience's dream.
[01:46:41]  Ironically, a smart thing you didn't do is react it all.
[01:46:45]  Let them react.
[01:46:46]  So I, in his, you know, again, not the best, best of buddies, but in his defense, I think Rock has become so busy.
[01:46:54]  The amount of stuff, his output is incredible, like his work ethic, his output.
[01:46:59]  I don't think he knew so much about the current landscape.
[01:47:04]  He knows that company backwards and forwards.
[01:47:07]  It's a company that he, I mean, the show's called SmackDown because he said that word.
[01:47:11]  Yeah.
[01:47:12]  He is, he had set the table for everybody, but I don't think he was always keeping an eye on the table.
[01:47:17]  And I think over the course of that week, and I could be wrong, again, I'm so glad that he did see, oh, oh, okay, that's bigger.
[01:47:26]  He leaned in, right?
[01:47:27]  He called your fans the Cody Crabby.
[01:47:28]  He leaned fucking on Pat McAfee, called them Cody Crybaby, and then not just turned into a bad guy.
[01:47:35]  A lot of people thought, oh, we're getting Hollywood Rock back.
[01:47:37]  Hollywood Rock was one of his great iterations.
[01:47:40]  He, no, he went a whole nother way with the final boss, which again, in our world of suspension of disbelief, is not remotely untrue.
[01:47:51]  He is the boss.
[01:47:54]  He dictates the shots.
[01:47:56]  And yeah, I'm glad that's a byproduct of the WrestleMania 40 situation because it was a mess.
[01:48:04]  That week was a mess.
[01:48:06]  At that point, anything could have happened.
[01:48:08]  One of those lists could have showed up back on social media again.
[01:48:11]  Anything could have happened.
[01:48:12]  The world was, I didn't know.
[01:48:15]  I wanted to be mature.
[01:48:16]  I wanted to be different.
[01:48:17]  I'd, hey, I told you guys I'm different.
[01:48:18]  But also, I was just, I was in my mind getting more reckless, getting more, you know, no, I did earn it this time.
[01:48:24]  I did.
[01:48:24]  And again, it's entertainment, but it just felt like WrestleMania is a Super Bowl.
[01:48:28]  Imagine you're the team and you win every game and you're supposed to go to the Super Bowl.
[01:48:31]  And it's like, no, you, you, that's the part where I just, I couldn't understand.
[01:48:35]  Like, so what is my plan?
[01:48:36]  Because I can't understand this one.
[01:48:38]  Uh, because winning the winning the title, maybe the second hardest thing in the business.
[01:48:42]  The hardest thing is manipenting WrestleMania.
[01:48:44]  That's that's like getting elected into the highest office in our business.
[01:48:48]  It's just a very big task.
[01:48:50]  And I had done it once and was so proud, but again, greedy.
[01:48:53]  I wanted number two and I wanted to finish.
[01:48:56]  Yeah.
[01:48:57]  Number one was Empire Strikes Back.
[01:48:59]  Let's get to Jedi here.
[01:49:01]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:49:01]  Let's finish this.
[01:49:02]  And it was a tricky week.
[01:49:04]  So you devised this thing where you and of all people, Seth Rollins, my guy, have this tag team match against The Rock and Roman Reigns.
[01:49:13]  Yeah.
[01:49:14]  And then you end up fighting Roman, of course, but the winner gets to decide what that fight is going to be.
[01:49:22]  Yeah, it was if the final boss and Roman won, it would go into bloodline rules, which just means there's no rules, no rules, which is awesome.
[01:49:29]  Yes.
[01:49:30]  You said this twice.
[01:49:31]  You and The Rock aren't the best of friends.
[01:49:32]  Like, you guys have some beef behind the scenes?
[01:49:34]  No, I just, I just, I think when a situation like that happens and it's very real about, hey, the fans have made a choice.
[01:49:42]  Yeah.
[01:49:42]  And, you know, it's very real.
[01:49:44]  I think there's just a lingering, a lingering tension, perhaps.
[01:49:49]  And he's probably used to being, he's been universally loved for decades straight.
[01:49:53]  I universally love him.
[01:49:54]  I'm, I grew up.
[01:49:55]  There also might be some wrestling going on here, Al.
[01:49:58]  I grew up over.
[01:49:59]  I grew up around.
[01:50:00]  No, I, I sincerely.
[01:50:02]  There might be some storytelling happening.
[01:50:04]  I grew up.
[01:50:04]  I grew up.
[01:50:06]  I say somebody's.
[01:50:08]  You never know.
[01:50:09]  I think I'd like to be.
[01:50:10]  But the reason I might say that is because I'd love to.
[01:50:12]  We have yet to debrief on WrestleMania and what happened.
[01:50:17]  Because I bet you his story is a little different.
[01:50:19]  I feel like there was probably people like, no, they're definitely, you're their guy.
[01:50:22]  They're going with you.
[01:50:23]  They're going.
[01:50:24]  I think maybe some bad advice came or maybe didn't get a good knowledge of, hey, here's the current layout.
[01:50:29]  Here's who's sitting at that table.
[01:50:30]  But I'd love that.
[01:50:31]  One day if we can ever have this little debrief just to explain, because I never wanted to do anything in secret.
[01:50:37]  I never wanted to do anything behind the scenes.
[01:50:38]  Because truth is, when that happened, you start thinking, oh, I could, what if I told such and such this story?
[01:50:45]  No, no, you can't.
[01:50:46]  You know, I got very defensive.
[01:50:48]  It's crazy.
[01:50:49]  In that moment, he was the people's champ.
[01:50:52]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:50:54]  I'm a skill of rock has rock has that people's champ title, too.
[01:50:58]  It's very popular in the locker room.
[01:51:00]  It's people's champions because it's his title.
[01:51:04]  You might need to fight for that one, you know.
[01:51:07]  Okay, okay.
[01:51:07]  So, the main event happens.
[01:51:09]  You guys fight.
[01:51:10]  Seth plays this pivotal role.
[01:51:12]  I thought this was like great storytelling.
[01:51:13]  His knee completely shredded, too.
[01:51:15]  No way.
[01:51:15]  If you watch it in slow-mo, when he gets hit with a chair, have you ever had like MCL, PCL, ACL, any of that?
[01:51:20]  Your knee wobbles.
[01:51:21]  Yeah.
[01:51:21]  So when he falls on the rope, his knee literally wobbles horizontally.
[01:51:25]  It's absurd.
[01:51:26]  His knee was toast.
[01:51:27]  Oh, really?
[01:51:28]  Yeah, that guy's the man, dude.
[01:51:29]  No, his knee was toast.

=== Fight For That One Title (05:30) ===

[01:51:30]  Yeah.
[01:51:30]  The matches with you and him are great because, and I wonder if this happens naturally.
[01:51:34]  The more you wrestle with somebody, the better the chemistry.
[01:51:37]  Yeah.
[01:51:38]  It's a rep. Yeah.
[01:51:39]  So you're getting reps.
[01:51:40]  Yeah.
[01:51:40]  The first time you wrestle with somebody, you hit each other square in the face.
[01:51:42]  Like, oof.
[01:51:43]  Buddy, how are we doing this on a regular basis?
[01:51:46]  Yeah, no.
[01:51:47]  It's when you're in there with someone who's as good as him, then you have the best dancing partner on earth.
[01:51:53]  You can feel where they want to go.
[01:51:54]  You know, your dad trains him.
[01:51:56]  Yeah, my dad trained Seth to a degree, helped them with promos.
[01:51:59]  He was their promo coach and character coach at NXT.
[01:52:03]  So it was him, Roman, Becky, Sammy, Kevin Owens, and they all had this name that I effing hated, which was Dusty's Kids.
[01:52:11]  Because I'm thinking like weird that kids.
[01:52:14]  It's weird because I'm his son.
[01:52:15]  Yeah.
[01:52:16]  But yeah, no, I got over that after a while.
[01:52:19]  All of them have now been told.
[01:52:21]  Like, I hated this by the way, guys.
[01:52:23]  You know?
[01:52:23]  All right, guys, let's take a break for a second because sleep is very important.
[01:52:27]  Okay.
[01:52:28]  I mean that sincerely.
[01:52:29]  I know how important it is because I haven't gotten any of it in about eight and a half months, ever since my wife brought our beautiful baby girl into this world.
[01:52:38]  I would love to get some sleep.
[01:52:39]  Okay.
[01:52:39]  How do you maximize sleep?
[01:52:40]  How do you maximize the amount of sleep time that you have?
[01:52:45]  Okay.
[01:52:45]  Eight sleep has figured it out.
[01:52:47]  Eight as in the number, eight sleep.
[01:52:48]  Their buzzworthy sleep technology is called the pod.
[01:52:51]  Let me just explain this.
[01:52:52]  Okay.
[01:52:53]  It is so important when you're sleeping that the temperature of your body is regulated.
[01:52:57]  And they've basically figured out some people make these mattresses.
[01:53:01]  They even have a mattress option.
[01:53:02]  The problem is most people aren't going to buy a brand new mattress without trying.
[01:53:05]  It's an uncomfortable thing for them to get into.
[01:53:08]  They've developed a sheet that does all of that.
[01:53:11]  I can get into technical details, but essentially it is monitoring and adjusting your temperature and the body temperature that you have throughout the night to maximize your sleep.
[01:53:22]  It can end up giving you how much more sleep does it end up giving you?
[01:53:25]  Potentially.
[01:53:26]  One more hour of quality sleep every single night.
[01:53:30]  Think about that.
[01:53:30]  One more hour.
[01:53:32]  Now, there's also an adjustable base that fits between your mattress and your bed frame to add reading and sleeping positions for the best unwinding.
[01:53:39]  Like if you snore, for example, the pod can detect your snoring and automatically lift your head by a few degrees to improve the airflow and stop your partner snoring.
[01:53:47]  It's absolutely amazing.
[01:53:48]  Okay.
[01:53:48]  Plus, with Pod 4 Ultra, they have imperceptible sensors that track your sleep time, sleep phases, HRV, and heart rate with 99% tracking accuracy.
[01:53:57]  Just add the Pod 4 Ultra easily to any bed.
[01:54:00]  And they also have their own beds.
[01:54:02]  If you want to take it that next step further, you get after that as well.
[01:54:05]  So if you head to 8Sleep.com/slash Flagrant and use the code Flagrant, you're going to get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra.
[01:54:12]  That's 8Sleep.com slash Flagrant.
[01:54:14]  And use the code Flagrant to get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra.
[01:54:19]  8 Sleep currently ships to the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.
[01:54:24]  All right, guys, we got a big announcement.
[01:54:26]  You know, last year, Flagrant collabed with Extra, the best wallets in the game, number one, without a doubt.
[01:54:31]  And we had that Flagrant Extra wallet.
[01:54:33]  Absolutely just a fucking pussy dripper.
[01:54:39]  I know that sounds like a wrestling move.
[01:54:41]  It's not.
[01:54:42]  It's literal vaginas dripping all over the street.
[01:54:44]  It's a problem.
[01:54:45]  There are some like flood areas, like what do they call them?
[01:54:48]  Like, I think Red Hook, Brooklyn is like a flood zone, right?
[01:54:52]  And there was a thing where they were banning the extra wallets because there were these girls that would just puddle up these sections of Red Hook.
[01:55:00]  I mean, the buses couldn't even stop.
[01:55:01]  I remember watching an old lady nearly drowned in pussy juice on the side of the street because of the puddle that was created because one guy took out his extra wallet, right?
[01:55:13]  Just took it out and then fuck the faucets.
[01:55:16]  It was faucets out there.
[01:55:19]  Hurricane Sandy has nothing on what an extra wallet will do to a Brooklyn girl's vagina area.
[01:55:26]  We're doing it again.
[01:55:27]  That's right.
[01:55:28]  But much better this time because the new Extra Flagrant Collab wallet exclusively features the Blue Chew tray.
[01:55:33]  This is a big deal.
[01:55:34]  You know, you're getting these vaginas all drippy.
[01:55:36]  If you're getting these vaginas super wet, and obviously, you know, as winter approaches, maybe I'm, you know, they'll probably do some sort of like skating rinks or whatever.
[01:55:42]  There's going to be plenty of different things that they can do.
[01:55:44]  I don't know the temperature that vagina juice freezes at.
[01:55:47]  I imagine it's very close to water.
[01:55:49]  It's possible that because of the saline content, it might be even colder.
[01:55:52]  We might need winter to get down into like the 20s or even teens to freeze up all that coochie juice that's, you know, in Red Hook.
[01:55:59]  The point that I'm trying to make is while those pussies are crazy wet, you might need those boners that are only delivered by Blue Chew.
[01:56:07]  And they got the Blue Chew tray.
[01:56:08]  The Blue Chew tray perfectly fits your Blue Chew as part of the extra wallet.
[01:56:15]  I cannot tell you how genius we are.
[01:56:21]  It might have been the smartest thing.
[01:56:23]  See, a lot of people do, you know, they'll create a cultural phenomenon, right?
[01:56:26]  They'll have women literally drained out on the street.
[01:56:28]  They think these girls are zombies because there's no water left in their body.
[01:56:31]  But they're like, now what do we do?
[01:56:33]  Oh, we'll just leave it there.
[01:56:34]  We'll just have the vaginas be super wet all around us.
[01:56:37]  Shucks.
[01:56:38]  Not us.
[01:56:39]  We're going to fill up those things that you got slip and slide.
[01:56:43]  It's time to try the number one rated smart wallet in the world.
[01:56:46]  Stop fumbling for cards and never lose your valuables again.
[01:56:49]  Try a wrist-free for 100 days for a limited time.
[01:56:51]  Get 30% off your extra flagrant collab wallet at partner.extra.com slash flagrant with the co-flagrant.
[01:56:58]  That's partner.extra.com slash flagrant.
[01:57:00]  Now let's get back to the show.

=== They Think These Girls Are Zombies (08:50) ===

[01:57:01]  I mean, the storyline is great.
[01:57:02]  Seth comes on.
[01:57:03]  He stands up.
[01:57:04]  Roman has to make this decision, right?
[01:57:07]  Between pinning you or taking out Seth.
[01:57:11]  And Roman has been so disciplined, right?
[01:57:13]  This guy's been on a reign of terror.
[01:57:15]  It's just amazingly methodical.
[01:57:18]  Wasn't always loved.
[01:57:19]  Like they really tried to like shove him down the fans' throats initially as like a hero.
[01:57:24]  And I think anytime the WWE like tries to make somebody here, the fans naturally reject it.
[01:57:29]  They're like, you're not going to tell us who to like.
[01:57:32]  Kills at his heel.
[01:57:33]  Unbeatable.
[01:57:34]  Makes the decision to go hit the one fuck up in this rain, the one time he gets emotional.
[01:57:42]  So Seth, in a way, creates this opportunity for you.
[01:57:45]  Great storytelling.
[01:57:47]  Also, a throwback to Seth had hit Roman with the chair when he left the shield.
[01:57:50]  So this is a...
[01:57:51]  And Seth is dressed in the shield.
[01:57:53]  There's all these stories vibrating together.
[01:57:55]  Beautiful.
[01:57:57]  You do the finisher.
[01:58:00]  You do the crossroads.
[01:58:02]  Three times.
[01:58:04]  Then you pin him.
[01:58:05]  And then as the one, two, three is being said, the guy who's announcing.
[01:58:10]  It was Sam.
[01:58:11]  Michael Cole, yeah.
[01:58:12]  It was Cole.
[01:58:13]  Cole, Cole, yeah.
[01:58:14]  Finish.
[01:58:15]  Oh, yeah.
[01:58:15]  Cole was great.
[01:58:16]  Story.
[01:58:18]  I mean, it's like everybody's storyline came to this perfect ending in that moment.
[01:58:24]  Even Cole's, right?
[01:58:25]  He starts this finish the story idea and then he counts it out.
[01:58:30]  There's a moment where I think, who is it, Stephanie, that's calling what happened?
[01:58:34]  Ms. Samantha Irvin, the Samantha.
[01:58:35]  Sorry, sorry.
[01:58:36]  Samantha.
[01:58:37]  Her voice cracks.
[01:58:38]  Yeah, she was crying.
[01:58:39]  She's like, this is real within fabrication.
[01:58:43]  This is the real moments you're looking for within what is orchestrated.
[01:58:47]  She's like visibly or like auditorily.
[01:58:50]  Oh, yeah, they had to mention it.
[01:58:51]  She was shaking on her voice was shaking.
[01:58:53]  And she has a booming announcing voice.
[01:58:55]  She's great.
[01:58:56]  Yeah.
[01:58:56]  I mean, Samantha, sorry.
[01:58:59]  But it was like this beautiful moment.
[01:59:02]  What happens?
[01:59:05]  What is the feeling?
[01:59:06]  I'll tell you a fun thing that happened that I don't know if I've shared this, but it's one of the most magical, again, the artificial world, what's real.
[01:59:13]  One of the most magical things I've ever seen is the Undertaker showing up to chokeslam the rocks.
[01:59:20]  Yeah.
[01:59:21]  So in the moment, I'm laying in the corner, and a blackout on TV isn't always a blackout in the arena.
[01:59:27]  There's kind of a your eyes adjust.
[01:59:29]  So I see this man who is older now in his life and hasn't done this a minute roll in the ring at a speed like a wild animal, like roll in the ring, like, oh my God.
[01:59:39]  And Undertaker's huge.
[01:59:41]  So just the athleticism in this role is, and so I'm totally in the dark.
[01:59:45]  And then I see him stand up.
[01:59:46]  Then I feel the lights come up.
[01:59:47]  And now the whole world knows he's in there and they have their moment.
[01:59:50]  And he chokeslams the rock and kind of as in the sheriff of WWE shows up and makes something right.
[01:59:56]  But then no one sees this.
[01:59:57]  He looked over at me and I think he wanted us to have a moment, but I was still reeling from this whole match.
[02:00:04]  So I'm just kind of in no man's land, not really looking.
[02:00:08]  There is no like clear-cut camera shot, but he looked at me and just literally just went and winked.
[02:00:15]  And as soon as he winked, I kid you not, the lights went out.
[02:00:18]  And he escaped.
[02:00:19]  And I thought, oh, he's magical, you know?
[02:00:24]  He did it.
[02:00:26]  It was, it was, it was so unbelievable.
[02:00:29]  And then after the chair shot, um, there's like the brief moment.
[02:00:35]  I saw John.
[02:00:36]  So Cena's got his back to the wall.
[02:00:38]  He had been part of it.
[02:00:39]  He's on the floor.
[02:00:40]  He's staying small, as we say, when like you kind of can't get out of their arena.
[02:00:44]  So you're still out there.
[02:00:46]  And I got to make eye contact with him.
[02:00:48]  And this is his spot.
[02:00:49]  This is his spot that Roman has now.
[02:00:52]  And any minute now, it could be my spot.
[02:00:55]  And to have that moment with him was, I don't know what he was thinking, but in my mind, I was hoping there was a belief that I could do it.
[02:01:02]  And just a, hey, I wasn't wrong about this kid.
[02:01:04]  He actually went and got it.
[02:01:06]  But those were all very real moments.
[02:01:10]  Charles Robinson, legendary referee, he had tears in his eyes.
[02:01:14]  I, again, I going from WrestleMania 39, where I'm looking at this dejected fan base and trying to make eye contact with as many of them as I can, basically saying, it's going to be okay.
[02:01:24]  It's going to be all right.
[02:01:24]  It's going to be cool.
[02:01:25]  Things happen.
[02:01:26]  You know, it doesn't always end the way we want.
[02:01:28]  To be able to have that celebration and euphoria, and it was like unlike any other celebration.
[02:01:33]  The closest I can think of is like WrestleMania 10, where all the guys came down and put bread on their shoulders.
[02:01:38]  And here's, here's, guys, don't ever like helping each other out, by the way.
[02:01:42]  If you ask somebody to be in a lumberjack match or do a pull apart, nobody wants to, no, I don't want to be part of your segment.
[02:01:48]  For them to want to be part of it, and like Randy is out there.
[02:01:52]  Randy, Randy doesn't roll out of bed for anything.
[02:01:54]  For him to come out and put me up on his shoulders, I like it's all what you're seeing is all 100% real in that in that moment.
[02:02:03]  And that was just, I don't rate it as like, hey, what's your top three matches?
[02:02:08]  Because it wasn't, I don't think of it that way.
[02:02:11]  And it's, and I've never watched it back.
[02:02:13]  I've never watched it back fully.
[02:02:14]  You've never watched it?
[02:02:15]  No, The Undertaker winked at me.
[02:02:16]  I don't want to see him not wink at me.
[02:02:19]  I want my memory of it.
[02:02:20]  Print the legend.
[02:02:21]  Print the legend for sure.
[02:02:22]  So I remember it that way.
[02:02:24]  And it was just the wildest, great, like it sets the stage for WrestleMania 41 because we have to do that every time.
[02:02:32]  Yeah.
[02:02:33]  Right.
[02:02:33]  And it sounds unrealistic.
[02:02:34]  Sounds undoable.
[02:02:35]  But that's why I was in Allegiant Stadium this week for the on-sale.
[02:02:39]  And I'm thinking, like, what do we do?
[02:02:42]  Yeah.
[02:02:42]  What do we do?
[02:02:43]  You know, like, Hunter is the same way.
[02:02:44]  Like, what do we do next?
[02:02:45]  Also, very different landscape because Roman is your buddy.
[02:02:49]  I don't know, buddy is the real one.
[02:02:52]  He's a face now.
[02:02:53]  He's a face.
[02:02:54]  But is he his buddy?
[02:02:56]  I got to tell him something for the first time.
[02:02:58]  I got to say something to him for the first time because you'd be shocked.
[02:03:02]  If you came backstage, you'd be like, are they wrestling me right now?
[02:03:06]  Like, is this because we just don't have any interaction.
[02:03:10]  Oh, really?
[02:03:10]  We don't, it's not, there's nothing, I'm not saying anything negative about him.
[02:03:14]  He, I've never heard him say anything negative about me.
[02:03:17]  Um, we understand where we play at in this world.
[02:03:22]  Uh, but I did get to tell him one thing before Bad Blood in Atlanta, um, which is to me, like, I didn't, it's that the thing every wrestler wants to hear, which was thank you for the house.
[02:03:36]  Because that's, I mean, tickets were really good for Atlanta.
[02:03:40]  We had sold out, but then we sold out again, you know, just because you open up, you open up, you open up when he was introduced to the fray.
[02:03:47]  So I got that moment.
[02:03:48]  Uh, I got nothing back, which, which, uh, which, you know, it's a unique relationship.
[02:03:54]  Everything.
[02:03:54]  What are you going to thank you for?
[02:03:55]  He did the house.
[02:03:56]  Well, I thought the tickets were pretty.
[02:03:58]  I was maybe I was waiting for a thank you for the house.
[02:04:01]  No, it's fine.
[02:04:02]  It's he's incredibly special and done so much for WWE.
[02:04:06]  And when people get on to him about the limited dates and stuff, they don't realize he, like, he was the thing.
[02:04:11]  Yeah.
[02:04:12]  He did all this.
[02:04:13]  He's earned everything he's got right now.
[02:04:15]  So, sorry, what's a not limited date schedule to let people know how much y'all are really going at it?
[02:04:19]  Because I don't think people get in two days this month.
[02:04:22]  Two days.
[02:04:23]  Yeah.
[02:04:23]  And you're wrestling.
[02:04:24]  Wrestling because we did a full tour.
[02:04:28]  So we did five, you know, five matches overseas, maybe two TV matches.
[02:04:33]  Wrestling far less than you're actually out on the road.
[02:04:36]  If you're not doing that, you're doing a promo.
[02:04:38]  If you're not doing that, it's a meet and greet.
[02:04:40]  If you're not doing that, it's on sale.
[02:04:42]  All stuff we used to call it the John Cena schedule.
[02:04:44]  It's all stuff you just want to go out when you, when you hold the North Star to the game, you want to go out and represent it the best you can.
[02:04:51]  And, you know, that's, thankfully, my, my wife came from the business.
[02:04:56]  She gets it.
[02:04:57]  She gets it.
[02:04:57]  And man, if she didn't, she gets it.
[02:05:00]  Plus, you know, whenever she wants to come on the road and everything like that, but yeah.
[02:05:04]  You said you haven't spoken to Roman.
[02:05:06]  You guys never squashed the beef when you were in AEW, like the tactical NV comments and the tweets.
[02:05:11]  Oh, that was even pre.
[02:05:12]  I don't think.
[02:05:13]  No, we've never talked about any of that.
[02:05:15]  Other two conversations.
[02:05:17]  I've wrestled this guy at two WrestleManias.
[02:05:20]  Two conversations.
[02:05:22]  One telling him that I was coming on board and I was looking forward to it and maybe even apologizing about that and just saying, hey, the time's real.
[02:05:33]  Yeah.
[02:05:34]  And then the other was thank you for the house.
[02:05:38]  Yeah, it feels like there's some wrestling going on.
[02:05:41]  You would be shocked.
[02:05:43]  I wish more people could come backstage and see just how real some of these relationships are.
[02:05:48]  Your relationship with Seth, your relationship with Roman Reigns.

=== Never Squashed The Beef With Roman (14:11) ===

[02:05:52]  It's a very unique environment.
[02:05:53]  It really is.
[02:05:54]  And I think it's the best environment because right now WWB is doing the best business it's ever done.
[02:06:00]  So if this tension and this competitive, we want it, you want it, I got whatever is good for business.
[02:06:06]  I'm about it.
[02:06:07]  You hear about this with actors sometimes.
[02:06:08]  Like I hear this story that Meryl Streep, who plays like this giant bitch in Devil Wars products.
[02:06:12]  Yeah.
[02:06:13]  Really nice Anne Hathaway the first time she meets her.
[02:06:15]  And then she goes, I need you to know this is the last time I'm going to be nice to you for the next nine months.
[02:06:19]  She says she complimented her.
[02:06:20]  Like, I think you're great.
[02:06:21]  I think you're awesome.
[02:06:22]  Also, I'm not going to be nice to you at all.
[02:06:24]  Off camera, on camera.
[02:06:25]  I'm barely going to speak to you for the next nine months, just letting you know.
[02:06:27]  Great movie.
[02:06:28]  Yeah.
[02:06:29]  Great movie, too.
[02:06:30]  Yeah.
[02:06:30]  No, that's the, if that's the way you go into it, that's the way you go into it.
[02:06:34]  Yeah.
[02:06:34]  Understood.
[02:06:35]  Yeah.
[02:06:36]  Hmm.
[02:06:36]  That's interesting.
[02:06:37]  So you have to kind of commit to the character.
[02:06:39]  And yeah, I think when we say that's why I get why you guys bristle when people say it's fake, I do think it underplays the talent you guys have as athletes.
[02:06:48]  You do put your body through a lot.
[02:06:50]  And also the character development and storytelling you guys have to do is insane.
[02:06:54]  It's on par with any actor comedian.
[02:06:57]  Like it's it's really fucking impressive.
[02:06:59]  Well, he gave it the big high compliment, highbrow.
[02:07:02]  Yeah.
[02:07:03]  I grew up in a neighborhood where, you know, I was talking about being a little kid, where people didn't look at it that way.
[02:07:08]  Yeah.
[02:07:08]  They look, they looked at, like, I always refer to my family in my neighborhood as like we were the Adams family.
[02:07:13]  There was just, they thought we were unique and weird.
[02:07:16]  And like, there wasn't enough wrestling fans in that neighborhood to be like, no, he's, this is awesome.
[02:07:20]  These guys are cool, you know?
[02:07:21]  And my dad didn't help matters, used to go to the pool and his trunks and ray vans that barely fit his head.
[02:07:28]  There's 300-something pounds.
[02:07:29]  I remember he got on this diving board and he literally, I think, did it just to show the neighbors and did this like picture-perfect dive up, down, got out of the pool, went and sat there, ordered pizza.
[02:07:39]  Like, he always made a scene of himself.
[02:07:44]  And I thought, okay, you know, mowed the grass, Randy Oregon in his trunks as well.
[02:07:47]  Like the Adams family thing was probably pretty accurate.
[02:07:50]  We were unique, you know, unique family.
[02:07:53]  The grass in his trunks.
[02:07:55]  It's so good.
[02:07:56]  So pre the generation of tanning beds, every wrestler under the sun would find an excuse to take their shirt off, whether they were in shape, not in shape.
[02:08:03]  You had to be tan.
[02:08:04]  Yeah.
[02:08:04]  That was like a thing.
[02:08:05]  So a lot of these old school wrestlers, if there's one thing that happens outside for five minutes, you'll turn around and like Arn Anderson's got his shirt off.
[02:08:11]  Like, what are we doing?
[02:08:13]  Oh, tan.
[02:08:14]  The tan.
[02:08:15]  Come on, man.
[02:08:16]  You know, I was, I was watching a lot of, you know, just clips in general.
[02:08:20]  And there's something I picked up on.
[02:08:23]  There's the high-flying, like acrobatic moves.
[02:08:26]  Yeah.
[02:08:26]  Right.
[02:08:28]  And I don't know if those are as satisfying as like the moves that kind of tell a story.
[02:08:35]  Sure.
[02:08:36]  So you were talking about the Undertar choke slam.
[02:08:38]  Yeah.
[02:08:39]  To me, that is cooler than someone doing like a triple back flip.
[02:08:45]  And I'm trying to understand why that is.
[02:08:48]  You know, yeah, go.
[02:08:49]  I think it's so I'm of the belief it's both.
[02:08:52]  I love, especially with you can do both.
[02:08:55]  But there's some that are too acrobatic.
[02:08:57]  Well, if you just do so, again, the guy who trained me, Al Snow, he said, like, I love fireworks.
[02:09:02]  We go see fireworks once a year.
[02:09:03]  It's awesome.
[02:09:04]  Fireworks once, twice a year, whatever it may be.
[02:09:06]  He would look at high spot wrestling, the bigger flips, the we call them high spots, really crazy stunts.
[02:09:12]  And he'd say they're fireworks.
[02:09:13]  It's not that they're not good, but if there's no attachment to them, it has to be an attachment to them.
[02:09:18]  So this is the big argument that wrestlers have.
[02:09:20]  Like a lot of young and Gen Z, and I have a wrestling school in Georgia, and I find this with a lot of the kids.
[02:09:26]  They want to do all the crazy stuff.
[02:09:28]  And I don't want to be the old, like curmudgeon.
[02:09:30]  So I don't discourage, do it.
[02:09:32]  Do it all.
[02:09:32]  But please also work on how you speak.
[02:09:35]  Work on what that character might be.
[02:09:38]  Open yourself up because if you do the moves, make them worth it.
[02:09:42]  Make them worth it.
[02:09:43]  If you do this really crazy move that could risk your neck and your back and you want to do it on every night, at least let them love you or let them hate you so that it works for you.
[02:09:52]  And I feel the more linked you get to the crowd, there's a term in our business, over.
[02:09:58]  You know, I don't think any of the young generation is over minus Roman.
[02:10:04]  I think over is the can't step out of here without 50 people.
[02:10:08]  Like I think there's a quoting everything you say.
[02:10:12]  I think there's a groove, like a group of people who are getting over and they're on their way.
[02:10:17]  And what I've noticed, hopefully kind of being in that group, is that they care enough that you can do less and get more.
[02:10:25]  But when you say less is more to a 19-year-old kid at the Nightmare Factory or someone who's been hustling on the indies for 10 years, they think you mean be lazy.
[02:10:33]  I don't mean mean be lazy.
[02:10:34]  I mean, find you're great at that flip.
[02:10:37]  What's your catchphrase?
[02:10:39]  What's your thing?
[02:10:40]  What's your do something?
[02:10:41]  You know, like promos used to be all the business was.
[02:10:44]  Now it's the combination a little bit of it all.
[02:10:46]  But yeah, it's tricky how you verbalize it to others.
[02:10:49]  There's an interesting thing I also noticed with some of your moves, right?
[02:10:54]  The crossroads move specifically.
[02:10:57]  It's, I don't even know the terminology for this, but you can reverse somebody's move into it.
[02:11:03]  Yeah.
[02:11:04]  Which is very exciting.
[02:11:05]  Yeah.
[02:11:06]  Like somebody's putting you in a suplex or whatever like that.
[02:11:08]  The opposite reaction is the crossroads.
[02:11:12]  It's the quickest path between two divergent stories, right?
[02:11:15]  It's like he's about to get crushed.
[02:11:17]  It's over and he's on top.
[02:11:18]  He definitely missed.
[02:11:20]  Yeah.
[02:11:20]  It is.
[02:11:20]  It literally is a misrep.
[02:11:22]  So I've been trying to like reverse engineer a wrestler in my head.
[02:11:27]  Yeah.
[02:11:28]  Has WWE figured this out?
[02:11:30]  Like what are the things that make a wrestler good?
[02:11:33]  Or does there always have to be some authentic organic flair?
[02:11:37]  Yeah.
[02:11:38]  I think recruitment is where you think authentic organic flair.
[02:11:43]  Recruitment.
[02:11:44]  And this is all on Shawn Michaels, Triple H, and Nick Khan.
[02:11:47]  This is kind of making up the future of WWE.
[02:11:50]  If they recruit a gymnast and they see Tiffany Stratton's a gymnast, we'll use an example.
[02:11:57]  They see her do her athletic stuff, the gymnast element of it.
[02:12:00]  Great.
[02:12:01]  They can code.
[02:12:02]  They try to coach the person.
[02:12:03]  But one conversation can also say, oh, no, there's a thing here.
[02:12:07]  There's a thing.
[02:12:07]  That's the most, you can't just take, we've actually had some athletes come in who were the greatest athletes.
[02:12:13]  You're getting D1 guys now.
[02:12:14]  Yeah, but they didn't have that little, that little thing personnel.
[02:12:19]  Kurt Angle is the greatest example of all.
[02:12:21]  Olympic gold medal.
[02:12:23]  But what did it for Kurt and people don't realize, they don't look back, is Kurt behind the scenes in these pre-tapes and in all kinds of promo segments was one of the funniest entertaining.
[02:12:35]  But the other thing is you knew like, hey, if I get into a fight, Kurt Angle wins the fight.
[02:12:40]  He's an Olympic gold medalist.
[02:12:41]  He's just qualified.
[02:12:42]  So he literally had it both.
[02:12:44]  So Sean and Hunter, that's the thing.
[02:12:46]  You can't coach the IT.
[02:12:49]  You can't, the thing that's in there.
[02:12:50]  You can't coach it.
[02:12:51]  IT, you can't do it.
[02:12:52]  Like the it factor.
[02:12:53]  You can't coach it.
[02:12:54]  But I think you can maybe take a chance and, okay, they've got this, they've got this.
[02:12:58]  And I think they've got something.
[02:13:00]  When you're creating your moves, your signature moves, are you thinking that?
[02:13:04]  No, I just steal my stuff from other guys.
[02:13:06]  Okay.
[02:13:06]  No, no, no, no.
[02:13:07]  So like the crossroads already existed before you.
[02:13:10]  Yeah, it's called roll of the dice.
[02:13:11]  So it works for me.
[02:13:12]  It was called the roll of the dice.
[02:13:13]  And at the time, they were trying.
[02:13:15]  That's the thing.
[02:13:16]  I had a lot of the mental, hey, I know the psychology.
[02:13:21]  I was raised in the business.
[02:13:22]  So I had the stuff that people get later ingrained in me.
[02:13:26]  But the stuff that most people get early, like a physicality to being in great shape, a good move set, I hate that term, but hey, do some cool moves.
[02:13:35]  That stuff was, I didn't have any of that.
[02:13:37]  So WWE was backwards in how they, hey, there's, try this.
[02:13:40]  So I remember Jamie Noble gave me crossroads.
[02:13:43]  Try this.
[02:13:43]  It was always, you know, you got a match tonight.
[02:13:45]  It's six minutes.
[02:13:46]  It's you win it.
[02:13:47]  It's always like moving really quick and you've got to keep up with it.
[02:13:50]  But then I also have like the Mega Man rule.
[02:13:52]  If I wrestle with you like 50 times, I'm going to use some of your stuff out of respect for your stuff.
[02:13:58]  Oh, okay.
[02:14:00]  That was the other thing.
[02:14:00]  What is the etiquette with that?
[02:14:01]  Like, can you?
[02:14:02]  Oh, I'm breaking all etiquette.
[02:14:04]  Somebody eventually is going to be like, hey, dude, please stop.
[02:14:07]  Are they annoyed?
[02:14:08]  So you're wrestling a guy who has a signature powerbomb or whatever.
[02:14:11]  Do you do it within the first few minutes?
[02:14:13]  Do you tell him you're going to do it?
[02:14:14]  Oh, no, you got to put it.
[02:14:15]  If you're really going to do it, you got to put it in the greatest of spots.
[02:14:18]  You've got to respect what you're thieving here.
[02:14:21]  I'll give you the most old school, respect-earned, you know, firm don't mess with wrestler in the current locker room is Randy Orton.
[02:14:32]  Yep.
[02:14:32]  I do what's a Cody cutter, which is like an RKO.
[02:14:36]  Yeah.
[02:14:37]  Never flinched.
[02:14:39]  He was, he was my mentor when we were in the group legacy.
[02:14:42]  He watched me grow.
[02:14:44]  We always stayed in contact.
[02:14:45]  I asked him about it.
[02:14:46]  I think that's a big part, asking about it.
[02:14:49]  You see all these other cutters.
[02:14:51]  There's one in NXT that's amazing.
[02:14:52]  And I wonder it may not be the same experience for you.
[02:14:56]  You might get the old, hey, that's my thing.
[02:14:59]  That's my thing.
[02:15:00]  I have feel, I feel like I've peppered it in and layered it in a way that it's done with love.
[02:15:07]  Again, I'm a gold dust uppercut.
[02:15:09]  It's my brother.
[02:15:09]  Fair game.
[02:15:10]  I can have that.
[02:15:11]  Bionic Elbow.
[02:15:12]  It's my father.
[02:15:12]  Fair game.
[02:15:13]  I can have that.
[02:15:14]  Bob Holly, Alabama Slam.
[02:15:16]  He was my first tag partner.
[02:15:17]  And I kind of de facto retired him from WWB.
[02:15:20]  I can take that.
[02:15:21]  That's the Mega Man.
[02:15:22]  You know, you beat the boss and you get these.
[02:15:23]  There are certain things you do.
[02:15:25]  Little things.
[02:15:25]  Roman hit me with a crossroads at WrestleMania 40.
[02:15:27]  You know, it's all Austin and Rock did was just each other's stuff.
[02:15:32]  You know, like there's a charm in that.
[02:15:34]  We've gotten away from it because you can get a little overkill with it.
[02:15:36]  But you talked about the technicality of the moves.
[02:15:39]  I remember in terms of emotional attachment, The Rock would just do his elbow when the elbows went to so much flare that it became a finisher.
[02:15:47]  And they called it the people's elbow, which is so funny.
[02:15:50]  But it's exactly what he said.
[02:15:51]  The Stone Cold Center is not like a technically insane move.
[02:15:54]  It's just this and this, but I'm so attached to you that I fucking love that.
[02:15:59]  The trick with the people's elbows in the time, too.
[02:16:01]  You have to remember you got an audience sitting there.
[02:16:04]  They want to take the ride.
[02:16:05]  If you're moving so fast, they can't catch up.
[02:16:07]  He's going to make you take, we're going to have a whole, we're going to look at one another.
[02:16:11]  I'm going to throw you my elbow pad.
[02:16:13]  I'm going to hit both ropes when I only need to hit one.
[02:16:18]  And you're going to every step of the way be there.
[02:16:21]  That's just genius.
[02:16:23]  And I think that's something that actually happened for him on the fly as he was growing.
[02:16:26]  Like, oh, they're, they're biting on this.
[02:16:29]  This will stay.
[02:16:30]  Yeah.
[02:16:30]  How do you, how do you work the, um, how do you learn to work the crowd like an instrument?
[02:16:35]  It seems like the people who are really good at this business can, it's energy in, energy out, right?
[02:16:42]  Energy out, energy.
[02:16:43]  They are working that audience.
[02:16:46]  I think you have to always remember your audience is really sophisticated.
[02:16:50]  Some people think, they'll think like, and not saying Monster Truck's audience are not sophisticated, but they, they, again, they don't think of it highbrow.
[02:16:58]  So the first thing you need to know is your audience is not an idiot.
[02:17:00]  The second thing that I have noticed is you have to really look at them.
[02:17:05]  So I can always tell a young and like green, I guess, or naive baby face is if they go out and they're doing this and they're slapping hands that aren't there.
[02:17:17]  You know what I'm saying?
[02:17:18]  They're thinking I'm supposed to do that.
[02:17:20]  And then you can see they're nervous.
[02:17:22]  So all those things.
[02:17:22]  It's totally understandable.
[02:17:24]  But you know, look at that kid.
[02:17:26]  Yeah.
[02:17:26]  Look at this.
[02:17:27]  Actually make the hey, you're in this with me.
[02:17:30]  We're doing this together.
[02:17:31]  We're doing this together.
[02:17:32]  And it's the same when you're in the ring.
[02:17:33]  When you're in the ring, you have to really make it clear like you're, we're in this together.
[02:17:39]  If I'm hurting, you're hurting with me.
[02:17:41]  If I'm up, I want you up.
[02:17:42]  Now, now's the time.
[02:17:43]  I'm making this comeback.
[02:17:44]  I want you to get to your feet.
[02:17:45]  So it's a matter of not performing in what I would call darkness.
[02:17:49]  You are performing in front of thousands.
[02:17:51]  If not thousands, you're performing in front of hundreds.
[02:17:53]  And if you can do it in front of hundreds, you can do it in front of thousands.
[02:17:56]  Get them involved.
[02:17:57]  Nothing like an independent that's house lit where you can see everything, including the concession stand and getting them to do something when most people are self-conscious about like, do I cheer?
[02:18:09]  Do I do it?
[02:18:10]  You know, like there's no, there's no drink minimum at this thing.
[02:18:12]  Like they're coming in cold.
[02:18:14]  You know, so that's the thing you have to really look at.
[02:18:17]  And that's something that has worked for me that I got from my brother is this is not for the cameras as much as this is for everybody in this place.
[02:18:25]  Really playing cheapest seat.
[02:18:27]  I've been able to do this thing lately.
[02:18:28]  Nobody stopped me.
[02:18:29]  Hopefully nobody stops me.
[02:18:31]  I always, at the beginning of an interview, will say, hey, we got a lot of people in here.
[02:18:34]  If you're up there, say hi to the people down here.
[02:18:35]  If you're down here, say hi to the people up there.
[02:18:37]  Like let them know.
[02:18:38]  I am not doing this just for the camera.
[02:18:40]  It's not COVID wrestling.
[02:18:41]  This is for us here tonight.
[02:18:42]  We're going to have a very good time.
[02:18:44]  Or on those nights, like it might be a bad time too.
[02:18:47]  But, you know, I need you to feel something when you leave here.
[02:18:51]  In the heat of the battle, right?
[02:18:54]  The dance, how much is communicated?
[02:18:57]  Because there are certain things that are like, I'm going to reverse this, and then you're going to do this.
[02:19:02]  That can't just be improv on the fly.
[02:19:05]  Yeah, so there has to be some choreography, right?
[02:19:08]  Again, very behind the scenes.
[02:19:11]  Quality play.
[02:19:12]  He's getting it all.
[02:19:13]  Sorry, my bad.
[02:19:15]  So the what did I do wrong there?
[02:19:17]  No, you're fine.
[02:19:18]  You're fine.
[02:19:18]  Amongst the battle.
[02:19:19]  No, the dance.
[02:19:21]  Dance is fine.
[02:19:21]  Here's where dance will really work for it.
[02:19:24]  Because if you're a killer dancer and I stand up and I take your hand and I put my hand on your waist and you're a killer dancer, I don't have to discuss much with you.
[02:19:34]  Yeah, if I can move you.
[02:19:35]  I can move you.
[02:19:35]  I know also what you do.
[02:19:37]  If you've been at this long enough, it's important that I know what my opponent does.
[02:19:42]  He knows what I do.
[02:19:43]  When you are really young and or if you're wrestling someone, that might be more of an A to Z.
[02:19:50]  This is it.
[02:19:51]  This is next.
[02:19:52]  This is that.
[02:19:54]  But something in our business that's lost and it's really hard to pick up those who are good at it.
[02:19:59]  There's a lot of communication in there that no one ever sees.
[02:20:02]  I don't see it.

=== If You Can Move Me, I Know What You Do (15:24) ===

[02:20:03]  Like, do you speak Carney at all?
[02:20:04]  Do you know about Carney?
[02:20:05]  No, no, what's this?
[02:20:05]  So Carney is how I talk almost in general.
[02:20:07]  You know how Snoop talks for Shizzle?
[02:20:10]  Yeah.
[02:20:10]  Carney, to that, like that, when Snoop started doing that, I thought, like, does he know wrestling?
[02:20:16]  Because that's a thing that's a lost art in wrestling.
[02:20:18]  What's Carney?
[02:20:19]  Carney is how you communicate like Dizzuck.
[02:20:23]  You know, exactly.
[02:20:24]  It's these little things that can be pointed out as perhaps trash talk.
[02:20:28]  You know, Jim Ross, always on Commodore, used to be like, he's talking a lot of trash in there.
[02:20:32]  It's probably somebody explaining where we need to go, what we need to do.
[02:20:35]  But the masters at it are just, you don't know how they do the trick.
[02:20:39]  You know, whether it's hair in the face, whether it's through the referee, whether it's physical.
[02:20:44]  Again, forgive me for giving some of industry secrets away, but if ever this, this means a bazillion things.
[02:20:52]  This means a bazillion things.
[02:20:54]  Like if you get the Iggy, it might mean I'm okay.
[02:20:57]  That might mean reverse.
[02:20:58]  This is the Iggy.
[02:20:58]  Iggy.
[02:20:59]  That's the Iggy.
[02:20:59]  Yeah.
[02:21:00]  The Iggy.
[02:21:00]  So the Iggy also is interchangeable, though.
[02:21:03]  So you got to really know what's going on.
[02:21:04]  Otherwise, you like, you know, if a big table bump or whatever, and you got to know what it means in context.
[02:21:10]  Everything's in context.
[02:21:12]  Are you, has somebody ever said something to you that like genuinely made you laugh, but like in a serious moment and you had to like hold it together?
[02:21:19]  On screen?
[02:21:19]  Yeah.
[02:21:20]  Oh, it happens all the time.
[02:21:20]  Like what?
[02:21:22]  There's a really famous moment where Kofi Kingston, who was not Jamaican, he was from Boston.
[02:21:30]  Yeah.
[02:21:33]  They knew it was hard for him.
[02:21:34]  Like he's doing this Jamaican character and the accent.
[02:21:37]  They knew it was hard.
[02:21:38]  So they gave him this out where they were going to be like, hey, he was going to say, listen, guys, I'm not Jamaican.
[02:21:43]  I'm from Boston because I think we're all part of one team and Triple H was leading this promo.
[02:21:48]  But they have this moment where I'm just behind him.
[02:21:51]  And you can see I'm really struggling, really struggling to keep it in.
[02:21:56]  Because years of him doing every appearance.
[02:21:59]  Do you have it?
[02:22:00]  Yeah, like every appearance.
[02:22:03]  But Kofi Kingston, it was a hell of a moment there for sure.
[02:22:08]  Jamaican Me Crazy was the whole.
[02:22:10]  Yeah, but people bring it up.
[02:22:14]  Whenever I'm just kind of leering around the back, just trying my hardest, but I think I blow a whole promo line because I'm caught in the moment of what we're doing.
[02:22:25]  But it's people think like, oh, they can't laugh or they can't break character.
[02:22:29]  If you're out there with another good guy, you can do whatever the hell you want.
[02:22:31]  You know what I'm saying?
[02:22:32]  Like, you can, like, we're friends.
[02:22:33]  We're, you know, like, it's okay to have these moments, but it happens a lot.
[02:22:38]  Sami Zayn's probably the easiest to do it to people.
[02:22:42]  Wait, why?
[02:22:42]  Sami Zayn, when he was part of the bloodline.
[02:22:46]  And get on the same page, because if we don't, it's going to be bad news for all of us.
[02:22:50]  I mean, any questions?
[02:22:51]  I got a question.
[02:22:52]  Matter of fact, I got a problem.
[02:22:53]  Aren't you supposed to be Jamaican?
[02:22:55]  What happened to your accent?
[02:23:01]  Yeah, I hit him up.
[02:23:03]  I think I'm supposed to chime in, and I'm completely, oh my God, it's happening.
[02:23:06]  Because I was on appearances with Kofi where he'd be like, ah, I'll see it eventually.
[02:23:10]  Like, he was trying to do it, and you could tell.
[02:23:12]  He's like, fuck.
[02:23:13]  This is brutal.
[02:23:14]  But Sami Zayn is the most famous with bloodline stuff because he could make those guys laugh, like Jimmy and Jay, and even Roman.
[02:23:22]  He could make them laugh.
[02:23:23]  What would he do?
[02:23:24]  Well, at the time, he was part of the, what was Sammy's name?
[02:23:26]  The honorary ooze.
[02:23:29]  He's not a Samoan.
[02:23:30]  He's not part of the bloodline, but they made him part of the group.
[02:23:33]  And he committed fully to talking like Samoan.
[02:23:36]  Here's this, you know, white kid from Montreal.
[02:23:41]  Yeah, he's not a Samoan.
[02:23:43]  And the way he'd be like, that's where I oozed.
[02:23:45]  And you could just see they were, it was real.
[02:23:47]  It went from being this funny backstage bit to, no, they ran with it.
[02:23:50]  It became a whole TV.
[02:23:51]  He really loved it and loved them, which is why it hurts so bad when Roman turns on him.
[02:23:56]  Like, it hurts.
[02:23:57]  Yeah.
[02:23:57]  Because he really did love this interaction.
[02:23:59]  But Sammy can pop a lot of people.
[02:24:01]  All the Usos can pop a lot of people too.
[02:24:03]  So there's an infamous moment where I couldn't keep it together at a press conference because of Jey Uso.
[02:24:11]  It would be widely considered the most unprofessional moment of my career.
[02:24:14]  Wait, wait, wait.
[02:24:15]  I'm sorry.
[02:24:16]  Is this the bloodline moment?
[02:24:17]  Sammy.
[02:24:18]  Yeah, Sammy's right there.
[02:24:19]  I want to get back to this one.
[02:24:20]  This is, I think, he's just not himself right now.
[02:24:23]  That's it, okay?
[02:24:24]  He's just not lately.
[02:24:26]  He just hasn't been very oosy.
[02:24:31]  Yeah, Jimmy's back there.
[02:24:47]  Honorary ooze, man.
[02:24:49]  So Sammy's trying to crack him up.
[02:24:51]  He likes it.
[02:24:52]  But it's also like he believes.
[02:24:56]  Again, the Meryl Streep thing.
[02:24:57]  Sammy's the type that he's going in on this.
[02:24:59]  Yeah.
[02:25:00]  I mean, there was a picture of all of them from high school because they all grew up together.
[02:25:03]  And somebody just photoshopped Sammy into it.
[02:25:05]  And like, as a high schooler, clearly not a member of the family.
[02:25:09]  Clearly.
[02:25:09]  But yeah, he was really good at it.
[02:25:11]  Yeah, my most unprofessional is the press conference.
[02:25:14]  There might have been other factors involved with the press conference.
[02:25:16]  Wait, why?
[02:25:16]  What do you mean?
[02:25:17]  He like yells at you.
[02:25:18]  It does something.
[02:25:19]  I think I saw this back in the day.
[02:25:20]  The press conference, we had won the tag titles of this pay-per-view called Fastlane, me and Jey Uso, which was super fun.
[02:25:27]  And we got to be opening match.
[02:25:28]  When you're opening match, you really try to like just steal that show and bang, just start that thing with a bang.
[02:25:34]  And we had this match, and then we had a lot of time.
[02:25:37]  And I did not know, it's very important that everyone knows, I did not know I was needed for the press conference.
[02:25:42]  So WWB, after these POEs, this press conferences.
[02:25:44]  So we went on my bus and in the safety of my bus, there might have been several libations passed around.
[02:25:51]  And then PA, Tommy, God bless him, comes on the bus.
[02:25:56]  He goes, you guys are going to be first up at the press.
[02:25:58]  And at that point, I still was like, I got this.
[02:26:00]  Yeah, great.
[02:26:01]  And then I had to let the press corps know who we had there.
[02:26:04]  I think it was Indianapolis.
[02:26:05]  I had to let them know.
[02:26:06]  Like, sorry, guys, we had kind of a night here because it's just disastrous.
[02:26:10]  Isn't this one?
[02:26:11]  Yeah, it's so bad.
[02:26:13]  So, you know, now that she is here, I think the elephant in the room, sorry, you've had the opportunity.
[02:26:22]  I'm thinking of you, Roman.
[02:26:24]  Pull disclosure.
[02:26:26]  Ud and I might have had a libation or two on the place.
[02:26:31]  Maybe.
[02:26:32]  But that said, I was very excited for virtue.
[02:26:39]  You try to pull it together.
[02:26:40]  Bro, it gets worse.
[02:26:41]  The whole thing falls.
[02:26:43]  There's a bunch of barking that goes on at one point.
[02:26:46]  You know what I'm saying?
[02:26:47]  You know, we keep it lit.
[02:26:48]  Ye appreciate it, though, man.
[02:26:59]  I'm not the question.
[02:27:01]  He's glutiered away from me.
[02:27:05]  Well, first off, so I tried really hard, guys.
[02:27:09]  I did.
[02:27:10]  I did.
[02:27:11]  This is a rare, like modern W2B, so different than how it used to be.
[02:27:15]  I thought, okay, not our best look.
[02:27:17]  We obviously didn't say anything stupid.
[02:27:19]  And Jay is the sweetest.
[02:27:20]  And like, we didn't know we had the press conference.
[02:27:22]  I didn't think, like, I thought maybe we would be chastised.
[02:27:25]  And I want to make sure, like, hey, okay, I understood if there's some trouble.
[02:27:29]  But instead, they just decided to put the whole thing up on YouTube the next day.
[02:27:34]  This is great.
[02:27:35]  And I thought, oh, I'm glad.
[02:27:36]  I won't do it again.
[02:27:38]  People really want him and I to, I thought about it several times when we do these pressers to maybe crash Jay's press conference just to bring it back because it was like a nice weekend update vibe to it.
[02:27:47]  So, yeah.
[02:27:48]  But those are great moments.
[02:27:49]  That was in between WrestleMania 39 and WrestleMania 40.
[02:27:52]  Yeah, it seems recent.
[02:27:53]  Yeah.
[02:27:55]  That's a big part of the resurgence, right?
[02:27:57]  Like treating it like sports teams.
[02:28:00]  Like you do the post.
[02:28:01]  Oh, yeah.
[02:28:01]  The post conference.
[02:28:02]  You do the walk-ins.
[02:28:03]  Yeah.
[02:28:03]  Leave fitting from ESPN that came in.
[02:28:06]  And man, just the way he looks at and produces television, very much of, I love that because I grew up always wanting, we're trying to emulate sports and we're trying to show that.
[02:28:15]  So I love that he brings that immersion from the sports world.
[02:28:19]  He's been a really terrific asset for WWB.
[02:28:22]  Nick Kahn feels the same way.
[02:28:23]  And again, these PLEs after this is a real moment.
[02:28:27]  The questions that come, they're not always, you know, the safest questions.
[02:28:31]  They can't be the safest.
[02:28:32]  These are real press conferences.
[02:28:33]  So it's a very different company from the one that I left initially.
[02:28:37]  It's a really cool, cool environment.
[02:28:39]  Yeah.
[02:28:40]  I have a couple of random wrestling questions.
[02:28:42]  Hit it.
[02:28:42]  Biggest pop you ever heard that either you were a part of or that you saw.
[02:28:46]  Biggest pop I ever heard?
[02:28:48]  Gosh, that is a I really want to nail it and narrow it down to it.
[02:28:53]  You know what it might be?
[02:28:56]  The Rumble provides some of the biggest pops ever, the Royal Rumble, because surprises, returns.
[02:29:03]  And I have been around some of the biggest pops.
[02:29:05]  So I'm going to kind of put this between two.
[02:29:08]  And maybe it was just how I heard it in the arena in the moment.
[02:29:11]  But they were two that drove me crazy.
[02:29:13]  One was my brother coming back to fight me at the Royal Rumble, which we had not had that interaction.
[02:29:18]  And this was, I had a mustache at the time, doing a whole nother level of character stuff with WWE, trying to make it work.
[02:29:27]  Not a character at all.
[02:29:28]  Fake about it.
[02:29:30]  It's real to me.
[02:29:31]  So it wasn't near on the level that yours is.
[02:29:32]  I can't grow facial hair that well.
[02:29:35]  So what I did to compensate is I colored it.
[02:29:38]  You colored it.
[02:29:38]  So it was like, it literally was an airport test, head scratcher.
[02:29:43]  Look like a makeup drawing.
[02:29:45]  That was an amazing pop.
[02:29:46]  Three years for that.
[02:29:48]  This took a lot of time.
[02:29:49]  Sean Michaels showing up to fight Randy Orton.
[02:29:52]  And I remember he was an all-camo and he like parted the C's.
[02:29:55]  That was an amazing pop.
[02:29:57]  I remember hearing, I think the greatest pop in all of wrestling, maybe.
[02:30:02]  WrestleMania 40 was definitely up there, but WrestleMania 18, Rock Hogan, when Hogan hits the leg drop and rock kicks out, it is everything you could possibly want about our business in terms of moves.
[02:30:18]  Do they match the moments?
[02:30:19]  Do the moves matter?
[02:30:20]  And that, again, it's not even always, it has to be a stadium because sometimes a stadium, the sound goes straight up.
[02:30:25]  Straight up.
[02:30:26]  Yeah, you don't know.
[02:30:27]  And then, but some of the smallest buildings ever, I mean, I had some significant moments.
[02:30:32]  The original all-in, that's the one for me that I'll never forget.
[02:30:35]  The original all-in wrestling and guy named Nick Aldiss, who's now the general manager of SmackDown.
[02:30:41]  Before we locked up, there was such a feeling about what had happened that weekend and how we had done this that the place is shaking.
[02:30:48]  And I remember they went around the barricade because they could see everybody.
[02:30:51]  Oh my gosh, you've got me.
[02:30:52]  Now I'm on a rant.
[02:30:54]  Here I go.
[02:30:54]  Here's my final answer on Greatest Pop: AJ Styles and Leon France just recently.
[02:30:59]  We do old school intros.
[02:31:01]  I'm champion at this point, wrestling AJ Styles.
[02:31:03]  And Leon France is the camera is going up and down.
[02:31:08]  And AJ Styles, who has been in every big match situation you could possibly imagine, you can see on his face, we knew we were in some sort of special moment because that crowd is currently the top crowd in all of wrestling.
[02:31:21]  I mean, every crowd's been amazing, but Leon, sound-wise, it sounded like they were going to bring the building down.
[02:31:28]  Unbelievable.
[02:31:28]  That was my favorite one I was ever in the ring for.
[02:31:31]  Wow.
[02:31:31]  Yeah, that's awesome.
[02:31:32]  Yeah, this building is shaking.
[02:31:34]  It's wild.
[02:31:35]  And Sam's announcing him and the camera's about.
[02:31:37]  Oh, it's such a cool moment.
[02:31:39]  Such a cool moment.
[02:31:40]  I'm curious.
[02:31:40]  You had mentioned that, like, not necessarily dashing Cody Rhodes' era mustache, but on the way up that you got, you plateaued when you had to actually switch to Stardust.
[02:31:51]  Yeah.
[02:31:51]  What is that plateau?
[02:31:52]  Why does that character plateau?
[02:31:54]  And then what is the difference when Cody Rhodes comes back?
[02:31:56]  What is the difference between that character and the initial character?
[02:31:58]  So sometimes I think it's as easy as physical, like your physicality.
[02:32:02]  So this is going to sound silly, but this is a vanity business.
[02:32:05]  There's still, you still have to, if you're robust, for example, then what do you do to subvert the expectations?
[02:32:11]  How do you use that to your advantage?
[02:32:13]  Like my father was never shredded.
[02:32:14]  He was a big, round dude, but he had the promo.
[02:32:17]  His athleticism would be like, whoa, you were shocked at the moment.
[02:32:20]  Dusty could do that.
[02:32:21]  Yeah, he knew what he used it to his advantage.
[02:32:24]  So you've got to be, if you're trying to be on the come up, you've got to get in the best shape of your career.
[02:32:31]  The guy getting ready to wrestle at Crown Jewel is named Gunther.
[02:32:35]  He used to be on the independent named Walter, and Walter was very, very, I think, I don't want to say overweight, but he was not a muscle you could see on him.
[02:32:44]  A big, hefty, chop a tree down, killer dude.
[02:32:48]  That manifestation of his goals is right there in his physical.
[02:32:52]  You can see he's gotten in the best shape of his career.
[02:32:54]  He looks incredible.
[02:32:55]  He looks the part.
[02:32:57]  And there's this weird online contingent that doesn't realize how important that is.
[02:33:02]  We are wrestling with our shirts off, folks.
[02:33:05]  We are wrestling.
[02:33:06]  You're standing next to some of the best athletes in the world.
[02:33:08]  It's okay to go to the gym.
[02:33:10]  We have like what we call effort shamers.
[02:33:13]  And then you'll hear fans like, you can't body shame wrestlers.
[02:33:16]  What are you talking about?
[02:33:17]  We're standing there half naked and you paid hundreds of dollars to sit here.
[02:33:21]  You can body shame me all you want.
[02:33:23]  But kicking back, that was the thing.
[02:33:25]  I wasn't in great shape and I was in a small, I had filled the spot as being Dustin's tag partner.
[02:33:31]  We had done really well.
[02:33:32]  At that point, I should have been focused on getting in the best shape of my career, having the best promo.
[02:33:38]  And more importantly, I should have fought the little battles.
[02:33:40]  Hey, I don't want to team with my brother today.
[02:33:43]  Hey, I don't want to come out to his music.
[02:33:44]  If the answer's you are, I still would have gotten better had I fought the little battles.
[02:33:48]  Instead, I let it all build up, which led to me just posting my, you know, resignation on social media.
[02:33:55]  And again, that worked for me, but I knew right in that moment a great deal of this was my fault.
[02:34:01]  A great deal of it.
[02:34:02]  But yeah, wrestlers, you can tell when they're in the best shape of their career, they want it.
[02:34:07]  They want it.
[02:34:08]  Currently, there's literally, I love it.
[02:34:11]  I know it might seem toxic and stuff, but amongst the boys and girls, everyone like, who does your diet?
[02:34:16]  Who's training?
[02:34:16]  Like, there's a whole nother health conscious now to WWE that I love that.
[02:34:21]  Like, we're trying to look our best.
[02:34:23]  So that was it for me.
[02:34:25]  Interesting.
[02:34:25]  Yeah.
[02:34:26]  During the Vince Doc, Undertaker talks about how many surgeries he has and how much his body's fucked up.
[02:34:33]  Like, how long do you think you can do this?
[02:34:35]  Yes, that was my exact question coming.
[02:34:37]  Oh man, that's a great question.
[02:34:40]  I don't know if the answer would be different if we've been drinking.
[02:34:48]  I feel like I'm 39 now.
[02:34:53]  I feel like I can go full-time, 100%, and be the best, be at my best and be the standard until 45.
[02:35:03]  I don't know why I've kind of put that number in my mind as I have a three-year-old daughter.
[02:35:07]  I do not want her to have a dad that can't do a lot or that can't.
[02:35:13]  And I haven't had that problem yet.
[02:35:14]  I can throw her up.
[02:35:15]  I can have, I don't want her to have a dad that doesn't have the strength and all the things she needs to pick her up, whatever it may be.
[02:35:21]  I think about that a lot.
[02:35:22]  But 45, I think for me, and I've also been really lucky, one surgery.

=== Don't Want My Daughter To Fail (08:03) ===

[02:35:27]  Yeah.
[02:35:27]  Peck.
[02:35:29]  I have been blessed to just, I just, I have not been injured much.
[02:35:34]  Again, not going what I hope is would.
[02:35:36]  It does seem like wrestlers wrestle for a really long time.
[02:35:39]  The Rock is in his 50s probably at this point, still wrestling.
[02:35:42]  Undertaker was wrestling forever, still getting in the ring.
[02:35:44]  John Cena, I see him running down the ring as a 40-year-old man.
[02:35:48]  I'm like, your knees.
[02:35:49]  Just that sprint?
[02:35:49]  Yeah, just sprinting down the ring.
[02:35:51]  Or you got too many muscles for those knees, dude.
[02:35:52]  What are you doing?
[02:35:53]  Yeah.
[02:35:54]  What is it that keeps them doing it?
[02:35:55]  How do they do it?
[02:35:56]  Why do they do it?
[02:35:57]  I mean, if you look at WrestleMania 40 when his music hits, that's the why.
[02:36:01]  That's the why there.
[02:36:03]  You hear that and that's for you.
[02:36:05]  You could probably jump through the ceiling.
[02:36:07]  What is the move where he switches from the shoulders and don't attitude adjustment?
[02:36:11]  The attitude adjustment.
[02:36:13]  His hat kind of goes off almost crooked and he takes it and he fucking chucks.
[02:36:17]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[02:36:18]  Dude, he is on fire.
[02:36:19]  Oh, no, that's the people.
[02:36:21]  He's a fed by the people type wrestler in terms of that energy, but to be so.
[02:36:25]  And he realizes he might be balding and he's like, hold on, let me just adjust all this shit.
[02:36:30]  I forget who.
[02:36:31]  I think one of the guys, Austin Theory, might have come after the balding and John's reply.
[02:36:36]  I don't know exactly what it was, but I remember John had like just such a non-sell of it.
[02:36:41]  Like, yep, great.
[02:36:43]  I'm still going to beat you.
[02:36:44]  You know, like the way he approached it and had.
[02:36:47]  No, he's been fantastic.
[02:36:48]  Yeah, John's special.
[02:36:50]  I think, though, that's misleading.
[02:36:52]  That pop can be misleading.
[02:36:54]  That pop can make you think you can do everything.
[02:36:58]  So the reason I say 45 is also selfish because my dad was an old man wrestler.
[02:37:03]  He wrestled all the way.
[02:37:05]  I mean, he was probably 60 when he had had his last match, maybe even 65.
[02:37:12]  And I hated seeing that.
[02:37:13]  I knew people liked it.
[02:37:15]  I knew he was okay, but I hated seeing him that way.
[02:37:20]  I wanted to remember him differently.
[02:37:23]  And Battleground's the match where he hits his last bionic elbow on Dean Ambrose on the floor of John Moxley.
[02:37:29]  And what people don't know about that is the reason all of it took place on the floor is because he couldn't get up the steps that easily.
[02:37:35]  Oh, wow.
[02:37:36]  And I think at that point, that's like the hardest thing to see is, you know, he knew, though, I got to call it.
[02:37:44]  Like, let me go, guys.
[02:37:46]  Let me go.
[02:37:46]  And that was the last, one of the last big things he did with me on screen, but it was a really great gift.
[02:37:51]  But because of that, I don't want ever want to overstay my welcome.
[02:37:56]  I've really enjoyed being, you know, I had the management role with my previous company.
[02:38:01]  I would say I failed at that.
[02:38:03]  I didn't necessarily succeed, but I learned a lot from that failure.
[02:38:07]  And with this company, with WWE, if that's something that comes up for me, would you like to be behind the scenes?
[02:38:12]  It's definitely something I'm considering.
[02:38:14]  Because I had a whole run at it once before where I pretty much bombed.
[02:38:18]  So at this point, I know, like, you know what?
[02:38:20]  I think I can get this now.
[02:38:21]  I think I can figure it out.
[02:38:22]  Long way off, though.
[02:38:23]  Long way off.
[02:38:24]  I want to hang on to this as long as I can.
[02:38:27]  I just want to ask one more thing.
[02:38:28]  Yeah.
[02:38:29]  The story and ending the story is ultimately you getting the belt and bringing it to your father so that no one could ever take it away.
[02:38:36]  That's right.
[02:38:37]  Did you and your mom and your brother and the rest of the immediate family ever have a moment where you kind of honored your dad with the belt because he couldn't be there?
[02:38:46]  It's right there in the ring after WrestleMania 40.
[02:38:48]  The only, I remember when Rock was like going in on Mama Rhodes and he thought it was really funny.
[02:38:56]  And I remember thinking, she doesn't watch like you think she watches.
[02:39:01]  You know, her dad was, I mean, her husband was Dusty Rhodes.
[02:39:04]  Again, dead or in jail.
[02:39:05]  She loves me, but I don't think she knows what's happening so much.
[02:39:09]  I've had to always bring her to a show to be like, look, look what's happening.
[02:39:13]  She still thinks it's real.
[02:39:14]  Yeah, a little bit.
[02:39:15]  You know what I'm saying?
[02:39:16]  And when that moment was happening, he's yelling at her and all that.
[02:39:19]  I actually had this whole epiphany of like, I could have had Ric Flair, who was my dad's greatest rival with me.
[02:39:25]  I could have had Arn Anderson, who was my manager previously.
[02:39:28]  I could have had my brother.
[02:39:29]  I could have had one of these people who was really like dad and knew enough about dad that I could share it with them.
[02:39:36]  I realized in that moment, no one was more qualified than her.
[02:39:39]  Nobody.
[02:39:41]  Sorry.
[02:39:43]  But in the ring, I got to hand it to her.
[02:39:46]  And that was the best.
[02:39:48]  It really, it really was the best because when you're a wrestler's wife, oh my God, a wrestler's kid, like you go through it.
[02:39:56]  And he went through it.
[02:39:57]  This was a, you know, now we've got the best management.
[02:40:00]  We've got really healthy company.
[02:40:02]  We're checked on.
[02:40:02]  I get a freaking cardio scan every three months because of WWE.
[02:40:06]  My dad didn't come up in that era.
[02:40:08]  It was different.
[02:40:09]  It was very different territory.
[02:40:10]  It was check to check.
[02:40:11]  It was driving all over the country, taking all these big risks.
[02:40:14]  And she rocked with it and hung with it.
[02:40:16]  And she knew the story wasn't so much about handing it to him anymore, just about us having it.
[02:40:22]  Like, nah, he's, you keep saying his name.
[02:40:25]  He trained this guy, he trained that guy.
[02:40:27]  You're using pay-per-views that he named and created.
[02:40:29]  His influence is still felt on this.
[02:40:32]  How can it be felt in the biggest way?
[02:40:33]  And his youngest son winning the hardest title to win in our game.
[02:40:37]  She knew she was the most qualified for it in that moment.
[02:40:40]  Fast forward to me getting my ass kicked outside of my bus by Kevin Owens.
[02:40:48]  And my mom is unaware that this has happened in the parking lot.
[02:40:51]  This story has happened in the parking lot.
[02:40:53]  And 10 minutes later comes out and the fans are cheering for Mama Rhodes, oblivious to what has taken place.
[02:40:59]  And she's just geeing up, slapping hands.
[02:41:02]  Like she's become a, it's ridiculous.
[02:41:04]  She's got her own shirt.
[02:41:05]  I'm positive there's probably an action figure coming.
[02:41:09]  Yellow boots.
[02:41:10]  I'm the yellow boots Essie.
[02:41:11]  Go through my bag.
[02:41:12]  You find it.
[02:41:14]  But yeah, no, she was, she was, that was the moment for us.
[02:41:17]  And I got to have a nice, you know, very small conversation with my brother before it all happened.
[02:41:23]  And that was probably the most important conversation I had that whole day, just about like, we're here, we did it.
[02:41:29]  And the fact that we went WrestleMania back to back.
[02:41:33]  The moment where you give your mom the belt after you win it as a big mama's boy crying just even yeah, it's why you do everything, you know?
[02:41:41]  Oh my gosh.
[02:41:41]  So too, like family is, so I feel like wrestlers used to, and I don't, there's wrestlers used to almost do this and it was their family.
[02:41:52]  You really couldn't have a family, especially in these old days where you're wrestling eight days a week because you're doing twice Sunday and you're traveling everywhere and all that.
[02:42:00]  The best thing that ever happened and really like the thing that was missing, the best thing that ever happened for me was having my daughter.
[02:42:06]  My daughter, she doesn't need to know this and it's not her responsibility at all, but she made me the best wrestler I could have ever been.
[02:42:14]  She made me the most responsible human being.
[02:42:16]  I don't even like cursing because I have a three-year-old daughter.
[02:42:20]  The moment with Rock and all that, I didn't lash out.
[02:42:22]  I didn't do anything stupid because I report back to this little kid.
[02:42:25]  I report.
[02:42:26]  And also like, it ain't, you know, my wife and I will roll the dice here and there.
[02:42:29]  I'm not rolling the dice with that.
[02:42:31]  You know what I'm saying?
[02:42:31]  And that's to me, like, I get to do this job because of my family.
[02:42:36]  Like they're very much a part of it.
[02:42:38]  So that was very, again, real in this world that you're not always sure what's real and what's not.
[02:42:43]  Yeah.
[02:42:43]  Fast forward, your daughter comes to you, mom and dad, both in the business, and she says, I want to become a wrestler.
[02:42:48]  What do you say?
[02:42:52]  You're going to end up dead or in jail.
[02:42:56]  I think I would tell her, because I remember I went to Waffle House with my dad when I finally told him, hey, I definitely want to pursue this.
[02:43:02]  And he took like four minutes to say anything to me, and it felt like an hour.
[02:43:07]  And we're driving home.
[02:43:08]  And I remember all he said was, okay, if you're going to do it, you're going to do it to be the best.
[02:43:13]  And then he said, I'll make some phone calls.
[02:43:15]  And that was like the coolest thing to hear.
[02:43:18]  I think I would repeat the exact same thing.
[02:43:21]  I don't think we're encouraging that route.
[02:43:24]  You know, there's so many other things you can do.
[02:43:27]  There's so many other.
[02:43:28]  Liberty Rhodes is a great wrestler name.
[02:43:30]  Liberty Rhodes?

=== Becoming A Wrestler At Thirty-Nine (00:52) ===

[02:43:31]  Great.
[02:43:31]  Oh, man.
[02:43:32]  Yeah.
[02:43:32]  No, she, which also she thinks what I do for a living is WrestleMania.
[02:43:36]  That's what she thinks I do for a living because she came to watch my entrance at WrestleMania 39.
[02:43:40]  That's the only part she saw.
[02:43:42]  So every weekend, it's Papa's going to WrestleMania.
[02:43:45]  Yeah, sure.
[02:43:45]  It's WrestleMania every weekend.
[02:43:47]  But yeah, no, if she does, then we'll cross that bridge.
[02:43:50]  Brandy might have a different answer, but my family was super supportive.
[02:43:54]  You tell them you want to be an astronaut with no education and no, yeah, we'll do it.
[02:43:58]  Where's astronaut school?
[02:43:59]  Sign them up, you know?
[02:44:01]  Cody, this has been awesome.
[02:44:03]  Yeah.
[02:44:04]  It is great when you, you know, when we have somebody that's going to come on the show that we're excited to talk to and they exceed expectations.
[02:44:11]  Thank you so much for sharing the story.
[02:44:13]  Thank you so much, bro.
[02:44:14]  Thank you.
[02:44:14]  Hell yeah.
[02:44:15]  And best of luck with every year.
[02:44:16]  Thanks, man.
[02:44:16]  Yeah, of course.
[02:44:17]  I can't wait to turn it over.
[02:44:18]  Thank you.
[02:44:19]  No, no, Wayne Heel.
[02:44:20]  Wayne Heel comes back.
[02:44:22]  Hogan Heel turned five years.