Episode 1408 - AEW (Chris Jericho, Tony Khan, Colt Cabana, Bryce Remsberg, MJF, Eddie Kingston)
Marc:Hey folks, you've been with me through the whole process of making this thing happen.
Marc:You know the ups and downs of creating the thing.
Marc:Some of you came to see it in different cities throughout the world and country.
Marc:But this Saturday, February 11th at 10 p.m.
Marc:on HBO, my special from bleak to dark premieres.
Marc:All the work, all the hours, all that condensing, all that road time, all comes together this Saturday, February 11th at 10 p.m.
Marc:on HBO and On Demand on HBO Max.
Marc:So watch it.
Marc:Watch From Bleak to Dark.
Marc:I think you know why it's called that, don't you?
Marc:Let's do the show.
Marc:Oh!
Guest:So,
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening what is happening huh how are you look this is a special episode there's some real production going on here people real production yep well there always is but this is like this is above and beyond listen listen
Marc:My buddy, Brendan, who's also the producer of this show, decided to teach me about wrestling.
Marc:Professional wrestlers came over to teach me about wrestling.
Marc:The owner of a wrestling company taught me about wrestling.
Marc:Then we went to the L.A.
Marc:Forum to watch wrestling.
Marc:I already know what some of you are thinking.
Marc:What's this wrestling stuff?
Marc:I know.
Marc:Believe me, I get it.
Marc:Why should I care about this?
Marc:I know.
Marc:Believe me.
Marc:I understand where you're coming from.
Marc:Here's the thing.
Marc:We've been documenting this in a five-part series for Full Marin subscribers called Wrestling with Mark.
Marc:And there are people who probably thought the same things before they heard the series.
Marc:But here's an email we got from one of our Full Marin listeners.
Marc:Subject line, loved Chris Jericho episode.
Marc:I've always loved what you guys do with WTF.
Marc:I've been listening weekly since the beginning.
Marc:Since 2009, that would be.
Marc:With all due respect, I really thought the wrestling stuff on the Full Marin episode
Marc:was a silly idea, but I just listened to the Chris Jericho episode and I'm ready to go back and listen to it again.
Marc:It was a fascinating discussion that not only helped me to appreciate wrestling, but also helped me to further appreciate the creativity and inspiration that drives all types of performers and writers.
Marc:Chris, Brendan, and Mark's analysis of wrestling as a formal constraint slash conceit alongside opera, film, and even figure skating liberated me from the common it's all fake and it's all for teenage boys attitude.
Marc:Chris's sharing of the meta-awareness that drives wrestling, such as his eliciting boos by insulting the crowd during commercial breaks, and Brendan's comments on his hopes going into a match that it will fulfill his expectations of what the perfect beats would be really enlightened me.
Marc:Thanks for your continuing efforts and evolution, Robert.
Marc:Yeah, right?
Marc:So even if you're not a wrestling fan, we think you'll enjoy this episode today.
Marc:We're presenting a shortened version of the Wrestling with Mark series, including all the interviews we did.
Marc:That's with wrestlers Chris Jericho, MJF, Eddie Kingston, and Colt Cabana, plus referee Bryce Remsburg and AEW owner Tony Khan.
Marc:But it all started, people, this whole thing started in my living room, on my couch.
Marc:This is a mission.
Guest:It is a mission.
Guest:It's a mission that I was excited to undertake.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because, well, you know, we were talking about, and you've been talking about it a lot lately, especially as the new year has turned, that you're kind of looking to, I don't want to say you're making life changes, but you're looking at your life in a way that you're trying to not pin it all to... Stand up and three people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and like obligation and like things that you have to do or in the intensity of, you know, having a list of things, of achievements that you have to tick off, right?
Marc:Yeah, well, I think it's just, you know, I make the choices of what I have to do, but I always do them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, I don't think I make choices to do things I just want to do because I'm not always clear what those things are.
Marc:So everything becomes this chore after a certain point.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, yeah, I've decided I'm going to spend more time maybe with people, having dinner parties or whatnot.
Marc:That seems to be a big factor, a big part of it.
Marc:And just doing things I enjoy, playing music.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I guess the idea here is that, you know, maybe wrestling.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, maybe, but you know what I think?
Guest:It's more, to me, I think this was as much a feeling that I had of wanting to share something with you as a friend of yours, as someone who, like, okay, well, what do you do?
Guest:You're friends, you want to hang out?
Guest:Well, I actually am not sure that you even know how important this stuff is to me.
Guest:It's super important.
Guest:You know how you say sometimes, and I'm very flattered when you do, it's a very nice thing for you to say, that you're like, oh, Brendan's the smartest guy I know.
Guest:He knows everything about everything.
Guest:I know more about this.
Guest:than I do about anything on earth.
Guest:And I'm not joking about that.
Guest:I do think that it'd be fun to go to the matches and that, and you just experience the thing.
Guest:But I do want you to kind of take in how wrestling is made and done in a way that I think you as a performer can appreciate.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:Like, you know, the idea that, you know, you're building these matches based on the stories that they're telling, right?
Guest:Some guy hates another guy or whatever reason that you're having the fight.
Marc:But sometimes these beefs go back years, right?
Guest:They can go back years or it can be brand new.
Guest:It could be just this.
Guest:Oh, these two guys have to have a fight to see who's going to be the next in line for the title or whatever.
Guest:Well, what do you do with that once you're doing it?
Guest:You have to have a match.
Guest:These matches...
Guest:if they're good, have to tell a story in the match.
Guest:And it's actually much like a standup set where you kind of know a certain scaffolding of how to build the set.
Guest:Like these matches have a scaffolding that you have to kind of follow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:almost you know they they teach it to you when you're training to be a wrestler yeah but the best ones can do it and they can do it without even talking about it beforehand they say let's just go out to the ring we'll call it in the ring and then they know they have the intro which is how they're going to kind of set up the match yeah
Guest:Then there's a part called The Shine, which is where the baby face, the good guy, gets his moves in, gets to look like a winner.
Guest:Then you call The Heat, which is when the heel takes over and hope looks lost.
Guest:You give some what they call hope spots, where it looks like the guy's coming back and then he gets waylaid or whatever.
Guest:And then there is the comeback.
Guest:And then the comeback builds to a climax.
Guest:And then the climax ends with one of them winning.
Guest:The heel...
Guest:cheats and wins or beats the guy clean, which tells you that heel is better, right?
Guest:Because the general premise of wrestling is the babyfaces are better than the heels.
Guest:That's why the heels are heels, because they need to cheat.
Guest:And all of this has kind of Joseph Campbell-y hero structure stuff.
Guest:And so once you can kind of notice that, you can start to watch these things and go, well, that guy's really good.
Guest:Because he made me really believe he was going to lose there, and then he didn't.
Guest:And you start to see these dudes play people like a fiddle.
Marc:So what's interesting about it is that it is sort of an improvisation in this... Totally.
Marc:In this structure.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:It's so funny because I did this wrestling show for years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I don't think I had any sense of any of this.
Guest:Well, I think also when you fictionalize wrestling, it becomes very easy to cut all of this out, right?
Guest:Someone watching GLOW is not interested in how they're building a match or putting it together.
Guest:You're just...
Guest:dealing with the characters yeah and it wasn't really talked about even though we did matches maybe it was talked about with the girls but i i didn't hear any of it yeah um i i didn't come empty-handed to do this today is there a wrestler in the car i recruited some help no we'll get some food and when we come back here chris jericho is coming over
Guest:no way yeah Chris Jericho's coming over and he's going to just talk wrestling with us yeah but then also talk about like this guy's been doing it since he's 19 yeah he's a real road dog yeah he was involved in every promotion in the world WWE WCW New Japan so he can give you a real sense of what it's like to be basically a guy who's seen it all and he's gonna come by and we'll do that with him
Marc:Get on the mics out in the garage?
Guest:Get on the mics out in the garage, yeah.
Marc:Okay, man.
Marc:So, as Brendan told you, I started in a wrestling-themed TV show.
Marc:Yeah, I loved it.
Marc:Glow.
Marc:Oh, thanks.
Marc:But my character didn't need to know about wrestling.
Marc:And I've continued that.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, I was in the wrestling world for a while.
Marc:And certainly, you know, I've interviewed a few wrestlers.
Marc:I learn more as we go along.
Marc:But this is really the first time tomorrow that I'm going to go to the show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Now, do you guys all converge on this place together or you meet here?
Marc:Like, how do you travel as wrestlers?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, so it's a weekly show every Wednesday all across the country.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So usually everyone flies in like on a Tuesday night and then we do the show on Wednesday and people leave on Thursday.
Marc:So you just go have your lives and this is your job.
Guest:You do.
Guest:And this week was different though because we had last Wednesday was Seattle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then we went to Portland on Friday.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then we have Wednesday here in LA.
Guest:So a lot of people just stayed out here.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Well, there's stuff to do here.
Guest:Well, yeah, and rather than traveling back and forth, that's a long flight to go back and forth.
Marc:And how were the shows on the last week?
Guest:Well, they were great.
Guest:So we've never... First time in Seattle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:First time in Portland.
Guest:And this will be our second time in L.A.
Guest:with this company tomorrow.
Guest:So it's great when you go to a new city because the people have never seen you before.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they're always crazier.
Guest:They're always loud and...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Usually, usually sell the most tickets in a market the first time you go.
Guest:And then you have to, you know, if you put on a great show, then people will come back like in LA.
Guest:We sold out the first show.
Guest:We didn't sell it tomorrow night, but there's still going to be over 10,000 sold.
Guest:So that's a great, that's a great night.
Marc:But you don't worry about people not coming back.
Marc:I mean, what is it?
Guest:Sometimes, I mean, but like, you know, we go to certain markets where you're just there like every three or four months and then you start to burn it out.
Guest:So you got to get away from it for a while, you know?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Why?
Marc:Because it's the same crew?
Marc:You guys are doing different matches?
Guest:It is, but just, I mean, it's like anything else.
Guest:If you're a rock and roll band, ACDC, you can't go to LA every month.
Guest:I'll skip this week.
Guest:I mean, it's like, think about your tours, too.
Guest:Right, your comedies.
Guest:You have noticed, like, you'll go to a place, and then if you go back, you're like, oh, I can't do the same stuff.
Guest:I can't.
Marc:Well, that's it.
Marc:But like, you know, I mean, but I it's you know, but I have to write a whole new act.
Marc:It would seem that the stories are the matches of this, you know, the evolution of characters within the.
Guest:I think the best way is to go to a market like like twice a year, unless it's a New York or an L.A., then maybe three times a year.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:That's what you should be doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because, you know, to play the big venues like this, I mean, like I said, that's a good way to keep the product fresh.
Guest:And plus, yes, you're always doing new matches and newer because even if you're not in the same city, our show is every Wednesday night live.
Guest:So you have to hook people with the storylines, much like GLOW.
Guest:What happens this week leads to next week, leads to the week after that, drama, you know, all that sort of thing.
Guest:So how long have you been in it now?
Guest:32 years.
Guest:And you seem well.
Guest:I feel well, but I lost my fucking mind 15 years or 20 years ago.
Guest:But yeah, 32 years in the biz.
Marc:And physically, you can still take it.
Marc:I just watched a match from a couple weeks ago.
Marc:When was that?
Marc:From New Jersey.
Guest:Yeah, we watched Full Gear this morning.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And so we watched your four-way.
Guest:The four-way, gotcha.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, like, let's see, about 10 years ago, I started doing yoga.
Guest:Really?
Guest:That helped out a lot.
Guest:Did it?
Guest:It really did.
Guest:I don't do it now, but that was kind of the gap that bridged for me to continue to do this.
Guest:Because before that, it's a lot of weightlifting and how much you bench.
Marc:So no stretching?
Marc:You weren't stretching properly?
Marc:I wasn't stretching.
Guest:Yeah, now I don't really weightlift anymore.
Guest:I do a lot of kickboxing now.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:A lot of cardio stuff.
Guest:I really watch my diet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I lost a lot of weight earlier this year.
Guest:about 30 pounds.
Guest:So that kind of helped a bit as well.
Guest:So yeah, as you get older, you have to just morph your training and how you live.
Marc:Yeah, I'm trying to do it myself.
Marc:So you stopped lifting just because it was counterproductive?
Guest:I guess.
Guest:I mean, like I said, when I had a really bad back issue that yoga helped me through, and yoga was a really physical transformation just from doing that.
Marc:You feel your core lock in.
Guest:Your core locks in, even the different muscles that you use and all that sort of thing.
Guest:There's a lot of kind of isometrics in this yoga approach.
Guest:You're basically lifting weights without lifting weights.
Guest:You're slowly moving your arms back and forth, which gives you a pump, that sort of stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that kind of took me away from the weight training.
Guest:I'm really hurting my joints now.
Guest:My shoulders are kind of fucked.
Guest:My knees are kind of fucked.
Guest:But if I don't lift weights, I don't put extra strain on them.
Guest:So that helps, you know?
Marc:Yeah, I'm finding the joint thing is happening.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:As you get older, it's a thing.
Marc:Like I'm 59 and I just started like a year or so.
Marc:In the last year, the joints.
Guest:And for me, the stretching of the yoga really helped with all of that stuff.
Marc:Yeah, I just started doing it again.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The balance is a bitch.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One leg up, one leg behind, falling all the time.
Guest:It's embarrassing sometimes.
Guest:But, you know, I never stretched, ever, never stretched.
Guest:And I couldn't even bend over and touch my toes.
Guest:Oh, that's bad.
Guest:And as a pro athlete, why am I not doing this?
Guest:You got to stretch.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:So, it really made a difference.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So when you started, where were you?
Guest:So I started in, I'm from Winnipeg, Canada.
Guest:You're Canadian?
Guest:I'm Canadian, yeah.
Guest:You lucky fuck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can just leave.
Guest:I can just leave whenever the fuck I want.
Guest:Oh, that's the best.
Guest:I can go on both sides of the border.
Guest:But Winnipeg, you want to get out of?
Guest:Well, I was freezing up there, yeah.
Guest:So I was in Winnipeg.
Guest:I moved to Calgary.
Guest:That's where I trained.
Guest:Calgary, another not great place.
Yeah.
Marc:I love Canada.
Marc:But Winnipeg, it's just blown out tundra.
Marc:And Calgary is like a bunch of yahoos.
Guest:Well, yeah, the West, the Cowboys.
Guest:The Cowboys are all there.
Guest:So that's where I trained, though.
Guest:Before Vince started the WWF, which existed before he took it national, there was territories.
Guest:So you'd have a Calgary territory.
Guest:Dallas, there'd be an L.A.
Guest:territory.
Guest:So guys would just go around the country and stay in this territory for a year or two.
Marc:But were there gigs within each territory?
Guest:Is that how it worked?
Guest:They had their own little running company where you do six shows a week traveling all around the area.
Guest:So you would get a little bit stale and then you'd move to the next territory.
Guest:So it was a very nomadic lifestyle back in those days.
Guest:How long would it take to get stale?
Guest:It depends on how hot you were and how you got your character over because wrestling is all character.
Guest:The moves are important and the matches are exciting, but you have to connect with the audience.
Guest:Just like comedy or acting or anything, you have to connect with the audience.
Guest:If you can do that to a high level, the audience will pay to see you and they'll be interested in what you're doing.
Marc:And that's a combination of things in terms of character.
Marc:Character.
Guest:Charisma.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Stories have a lot to do with the stories that we're telling.
Guest:Because that's the number one thing of wrestling.
Guest:It's storytelling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's why people are.
Guest:And you'll see tomorrow night there's going to be some crazy matches that the athleticism is through the roof.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But the stories behind them are the most important thing.
Marc:Before watching it with Brendan, it wasn't that I judged it, because I talked to a lot of wrestlers.
Marc:I understand that it's an art and that it's a performative art.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But, like, I didn't really believe that I'd necessarily get past the knowing that it's not really about whether—it has to be convincing—
Marc:Sure, it has to be good.
Marc:Yeah, but you know that there's an orchestration of moves.
Marc:But it very quickly just became about... I became invested in the characters.
Guest:Well, and you'll see.
Guest:For example, tomorrow night, my gang, the Jericho Appreciation Society, I had a match against this up-and-coming guy, Ricky Starks, who's getting really popular with the crowd.
Guest:He beat me.
Guest:And then after he beat me, my gang...
Guest:kicked the shit out of him and throw him through a table and really kicked his ass right oh yeah so tomorrow night we're gonna come out to gloat about how great we are so you guys are the heels we're the heels yeah and then ricky will come out and action andretti will come out and there'll be a little confrontation which will lead to the next week's storyline so some weeks you wrestle yeah some weeks you do the storytelling there's also a huge comedic ridiculous preposterous side to it as well yeah
Guest:which is something I've always been attracted to also.
Guest:I can go have the five star match and I can also do a song and dance routine and see me and my shadow on the show, which we did last year a couple of years ago as well.
Guest:All of that stuff to me is wrestling.
Guest:Wrestling is all things to all people to me.
Marc:So you started doing it.
Marc:How old were you?
Marc:I was 19.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then, you know, but how, when did you sort of get into the American territories?
Guest:Well, so at the time, this is 1990.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So at the time, like the biggest, the guys were all huge.
Guest:Hulk Hogan and that stuff.
Guest:He was six foot eight, 300 pounds.
Guest:That's when he was a kid.
Guest:That's that.
Guest:And that's, and I was 5'11", you know, 195, 200 pounds.
Guest:So I always knew I wouldn't be the biggest guy on the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I could have the biggest character and the most charisma and the biggest personality.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's what I did in Canada.
Guest:But then where I really started getting my break was overseas in Japan and in Mexico because they didn't care as much about size.
Guest:They cared about match quality.
Guest:They cared about charisma, connecting with the crowd, connecting with the audience.
Marc:How's it different, though, over there?
Marc:Like in Japan, what are the expectations?
Guest:Japan is a little bit more hard-hitting.
Guest:A little bit less of the interviews and the American... They just like the physicality?
Guest:The physicality of it, the art form of it.
Guest:Mexico was the other side.
Guest:Way much more cartoon character.
Guest:For kids, everyone's wearing the mask, the Lucha Libre thing.
Guest:So America's kind of a combination of the two.
Guest:Japan's much more hard-hitting.
Guest:Mexico's much more of the cartoon side.
Marc:It's sort of broad.
Marc:Because I noticed that a little bit with some of those luchadors...
Marc:that we watched today that you were fighting with, right?
Marc:The Lucha Brothers.
Marc:The Lucha Brothers, right.
Guest:But what I'm saying is I became a big star in Japan as a bad guy and a big star in Mexico as almost a teen heartthrob.
Guest:Like I was on the cover of the teen magazines and all that stuff.
Guest:So by the time I got to the States, which is your question, it was probably 96, so I was six years in, but I'd already become a pretty big star in other countries before I came and became a star in the States.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're paying some dues.
Marc:Did you do those gigs that comics do, like hell gigs?
Marc:All of them.
Guest:I did a kid's birthday party once for a hot dog and an orange juice.
Guest:Really?
Guest:That's my best payoff, yeah.
Guest:But yeah, you do all those ones.
Guest:I mean, I remember in Mexico, some of the places we worked were so shitty.
Guest:I remember a guy taking a shower out of the back of a toilet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's like, no, it's okay.
Guest:It's clean water.
Guest:I'm like, dude, it's from a toilet.
Guest:Like, I don't care how clean it is.
Guest:A toilet is a toilet.
Guest:But they always had a ring?
Guest:They always had a ring.
Guest:Sometimes there are boxing rings, which are hard like this table.
Guest:You're not doing any, we call them bumps and not bumps of cocaine.
Guest:Bumps are the falls that you take in wrestling.
Guest:You're not taking a lot of bumps in a boxing ring because it's just too hard.
Guest:So you would just go out there and just pantomime and just fuck around because it's not on TV and there's 50 drunks in the crowd.
Guest:Just get the hell out of there and get your 200 pesos and go home.
Marc:Was there like ever nights where there was like 10 people?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:The smallest crowd I think I wrestled was in Rimby, Alberta, seven people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's hard.
Guest:Listen, I could wrestle in a stadium tomorrow in front of 70,000 people and be less nervous than wrestling in front of seven people.
Marc:You got to hold seven people.
Guest:And you can see it.
Guest:You see each person in the crowd.
Guest:You actually get to know these people.
Guest:I'm sure you've done the same gigs.
Guest:Like, oh, the guy with the dark hair is getting bored.
Guest:I better do something.
Marc:And then there's the war against embarrassment.
Marc:Because when there's seven people there, it's already a little sad.
Guest:It's terrible.
Guest:And the people that are there are embarrassed.
Guest:Yeah, everyone's embarrassed.
Guest:It's like we made the wrong decision to come to the wrestling tonight.
Guest:That's the same with the band sometimes.
Guest:You play and it's like, oh, fuck.
Guest:Not anymore, thankfully, but we played the games with seven people with the band, too.
Guest:That sucks also.
Marc:I never understood it.
Marc:You'd go do the show, but when I'd get there, I'd be like, do you want to go?
Marc:Do you want to just leave?
Marc:You can go?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm really, I feel bad for you.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:It's so embarrassing.
Guest:It's a little weird, but they always stay, dude.
Guest:They do.
Guest:And then once again, that's the real secret.
Guest:That's paying your dues.
Guest:If you can get a crowd of seven interested in what you're doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's a hell of a talent to be able to have.
Marc:Well, they're also, they don't want to hurt your feelings.
Guest:So they're going to say.
Marc:If you walk a crowd of seven, even two of them, that's got to be worse.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Because you don't know if you walk anybody when there's 20,000 people in there.
Guest:And that was the thing, too.
Guest:During the pandemic, we had to wrestle in front of no people because we have our weekly TV show.
Guest:It's like, listen, pandemic or not, you got to put on a show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember a lot of the people like, I feel bad for the young guys.
Guest:There's no crowds.
Guest:I was like, fuck the young guys.
Guest:They feel bad for me.
Guest:You know how long it's been since I wrestled in front of no people?
Guest:It's been 30 years.
Guest:It's really hard to wrestle in front of no people.
Marc:So you need the crowd that badly?
Marc:I mean, not need, but I mean, you, you pace yourself with the crowd.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You, a lot of times, at least for me with the experience that I have is I base my match around the crowd that we have.
Guest:You know, I know of like, for example, last week in Seattle with Ricky Starks, I knew the Seattle crowd was going to be crazy.
Guest:I might've put together a different style match if we were in, you know, Washington DC where the crowd is not as crazy.
Guest:or Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Marc:What would you do?
Marc:Do you make them crazy?
Marc:Just more the drama.
Guest:For example, if I put them in the submission hold, I know I can hold it for five minutes.
Guest:And the crowd will be excited about it and cheering and hoping that he gets out and we can mess with it.
Guest:You just know.
Guest:So yes, you do use the crowd to base your performance on.
Marc:The flow, yeah.
Marc:The flow.
Marc:So you don't make the transitions as quickly?
Marc:If you can milk a crowd... Oh, I will milk them till the cows come home.
Marc:So you can just keep doing the different parts of the story.
Guest:I did a match in Chicago right before Thanksgiving with Ishii.
Guest:And he's a Japanese guy.
Guest:He doesn't speak English.
Guest:He's really hard-hitting.
Guest:And I said, we're going to chop each other, slap each other in the chest for like five minutes straight.
Guest:Let's just see what happens.
Guest:And dude, our chests were blood.
Guest:My eye was actually bleeding.
Guest:My black and blue.
Guest:And for five minutes, this crowd was going nuts.
Guest:And then they go down a bit.
Guest:And I said, just keep going.
Guest:You know, it's like a comedy.
Guest:Repetition always gets a laugh.
Guest:Wrestling, repetition always.
Guest:And they came back up.
Guest:And now they're just going bananas for this chop fight.
Guest:And I was like, this is great.
Guest:We don't have to do anything.
Guest:Just chop each other for five minutes.
Guest:Hit you with the finish.
Guest:And the match is done.
Guest:It was awesome.
Guest:And like I said, the drama of it worked because the crowd was so hot.
Guest:So all of that stuff plays in.
Guest:You know this because you're a live performer too.
Guest:There is a trick and a way to play a live crowd.
Guest:And if you can do that, you'll always have the best shows.
Guest:And it takes a while to learn, but once you got it, you can do it every night.
Marc:So when you were in that, the four people, what do you call that?
Marc:Oh, the four-way match.
Marc:The four-way, like, I mean, do you, all you guys just know those moves in terms of synchronicity and movement, even when there's two on one, you just know those instinctively and you just call them and you know what to go to.
Guest:Yeah, you talk about it beforehand.
Marc:Oh, you do.
Guest:Especially for a match like that because there's four different players.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's always something going on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But if you remember that match, the biggest reaction of the whole match is when my guy Sammy and I were – Yeah.
Guest:When he turned on me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That there, when I spun him around and that drama was – Oh, after you hugged him and then he went at you?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because we made a deal like, you know, you're not going to go after me.
Guest:You're going to help me win.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right, Sammy?
Guest:And he's like, all right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was the story we told going into it.
Guest:So that when I finally hit him with a move – Yeah.
Guest:didn't care a thing about it and then he was kind of like well this is fucking shitty so then he turns on me and that moment was so dramatic that people went nuts for it and I'm like that's the best that's wrestling right because they I mean like someone like Brendan knows everything that can happen but you don't know what will happen or I think of the way I put it to you is that I come into it in it I come into every match um
Guest:hoping that the that they will make the right dramatic choices in that scenario and then when and and i know that they're professional so so uh especially like you're in a national promotion like this they're not gonna half-ass this they're gonna do the full match it's gonna be good no matter what they're good performance yeah but like the perfect example is the main event of that pay-per-view like going into that uh
Guest:pay-per-view following the story of MJF and Moxley and Regal, like me and my friend who went to that event in Jersey, we thought, well, he's got to cheat and he's got to be helped by Regal.
Guest:That's the story.
Guest:And look, I would have gone, I would have had a great time in any other way watching those matches.
Guest:It was a great night, you know, really well done show.
Guest:But that was the key because I was like, they hit the best emotional note that you could hit.
Guest:Is that...
Guest:It was all laid out for weeks, if you got to that point.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, we did something just a few weeks ago.
Guest:I saw this kid back in October.
Guest:Good-looking kid, pretty agile.
Guest:And then I said, well, let's do a promo, an interview with him.
Guest:He was a good talker.
Guest:I said, let's hire him, but just keep him at home.
Guest:I got an idea.
Guest:Action and ready.
Guest:Two or three weeks ago, I lose my title, and I'm going to have a tune-up match against some jobber, and I'm going to get back on track and go back after this title again.
Guest:So this kid comes out, and we have a match, and I'm treating him like a jobber, like a squash match.
Guest:I'm just throwing him around, beating him up against really no offense.
Guest:People are chanting, let's go, jobber.
Guest:They're behind it.
Guest:They're laughing along.
Guest:Hit him with my finish.
Guest:One, two, he kicks out.
Guest:And that moment there, people were like...
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:And then the buzz starts coming.
Guest:What's going to happen now?
Guest:We've never even seen this guy on TV ever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we continue forward and then suddenly he gets me and he gets me again.
Guest:He gets out of this.
Guest:He gets out of that.
Guest:Bam, boom, boom.
Guest:Hits me with a move.
Guest:One, two, three.
Guest:He wins.
Guest:The crowd goes fucking crazy.
Guest:He's running around slapping hands.
Guest:He's jumping up and down.
Guest:People are going nuts.
Guest:It's one of the greatest moments that we've had maybe in AEW history.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because no one knew this guy.
Guest:And by the end, we had made a new star.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Doesn't hurt me to lose.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But we made this guy.
Guest:And that's what it's about.
Guest:It's about making stars and about making people react.
Guest:And no one and nobody...
Guest:would have guessed that he was going to win well especially this there's a uh you know watching it week to week you you know pick up certain cues and that these are kind of things i have picked up since i was a kid that if you introduce a guy chris jericho for instance will be inaction no name of an opponent or whatever that's going to be a squash match that's a jobber yeah uh i don't even know if this was on purpose they might have been it might not have been but when he was introduced they put the graphic was messed up it said your name my name yeah and
Guest:And it just looks like they don't give a shit about this guy because he's just going to lose.
Guest:And that was a mistake, but it was a happy accident.
Guest:Oh, it's so perfect.
Guest:Amazing.
Guest:And there are also, there have been matches where a guy will get a little shine on a big star.
Guest:I'm thinking of Triple H and Takamichi Noke.
Guest:Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it had that formula where you could plausibly see that this guy was going to get an upset victory, but in your head you knew there's no chance.
Guest:We know it's not going to happen.
Guest:So you're just waiting to when the finish actually happens.
Guest:And the amazing thing with this match was that Chris has conceivably three finishers.
Guest:So he hits the finish that he mentioned, and it was one, two, kick out.
Guest:He's still got two more in the chamber.
Guest:And each time this guy gets some shine, gets ready to build, then I forget he went for a move where maybe it was his moonsault he missed, and he gets up and Chris is going like this.
Guest:He's going to hit him with this.
Guest:Spinning elbow.
Guest:Spinning elbow, right?
Guest:And the crowd immediately is booing the shit out of the match because they're like, now we know the end, right?
Guest:This is it.
Guest:Now I can boo Chris because he's going to win and he's the heel.
Guest:And it fucked up.
Guest:He didn't get the move.
Guest:The kid gets out of it again.
Guest:And now it's all over.
Guest:You're ripping up the crowd again.
Guest:It's like, this is what I've been trying to let you in on my enjoyment of this as to why I like it so much.
Guest:And it's this, exactly this.
Guest:But once again, like we said, it's the story that we're telling.
Guest:You called it as a fan watching.
Guest:There's no way this guy is going to win.
Guest:But what if he did?
Guest:And then suddenly it's like, this guy could win, but he still won't.
Guest:We know what's going to happen.
Guest:Jericho's going to make him look great, and then the next week we've got a new guy.
Guest:But then he gets out of this move.
Guest:Okay, well, this is what he got out of that move.
Guest:And then he wins.
Guest:It's like that drama and that reaction, that's what wrestling is for me.
Guest:It gives a shit about the fucking moves.
Guest:It's creating the story to get people to go, ah, this is great.
Guest:Like the best movies, the best TV shows, whatever it may be.
Guest:But now this guy's got to do the job, right?
Guest:Well, the thing is now – and everyone was like, oh, what's the follow-up?
Guest:You just put this guy over it because everyone's a know-it-all now too, Mark.
Guest:They go on fucking Twitter.
Guest:I know what the follow-up is.
Guest:The next week he comes out and rescues another guy.
Guest:So then I do this thing where I throw fireballs in guys' faces.
Guest:So I fucking throw a fireball in his face.
Guest:Okay, you got the big one over Chris Jericho.
Guest:Quit while you're ahead.
Guest:Go home.
Guest:Never come back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the guy that I beat up that he came to make the save for, Ricky Starks, we have this match last week.
Guest:And once again, Ricky's probably not going to win.
Guest:He's a bigger star, but he beats me.
Guest:Clean.
Guest:Clean.
Guest:He wins.
Guest:So then my guys come to beat him up.
Guest:Who comes down to fucking save the day?
Guest:The guy who I threw the fireball in a couple of weeks ago.
Guest:Now he's back again, but we fuck him up too.
Guest:So now the storyline is these two guys, Ricky Starks and Action Andretti are like these kind of two partners that are thrown together just by the fact that my guys beat them both up.
Guest:So now they create an alliance.
Guest:This guy Ricky's getting higher up the food chain.
Guest:Action's getting higher up the food chain.
Guest:My guys are getting some great shit.
Guest:It all fucking works together.
Guest:I'll give Chris some praise here too because one of the things that hooks me into watching is do they get the little details right?
Guest:And, you know, I think Tony is very, you know, meticulous about a lot of things.
Guest:And, you know, this is only 30 seconds of airtime.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they came back from a break after Chris lost this match.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he is destroying everything in the backstage.
Guest:a tantrum just breaking and you know it's like that sells the story yes because if you were like whatever there's a fluke i don't care you know you laugh it off or whatever that diminishes the story but you take 30 seconds of the show and all it's very simple just have him go tipping over you know electrical boxes or whatever backstage against the wall it helps yeah it worked because then it's like he really is pissed off yeah
Guest:And that's a good thing too, Mark.
Guest:Being the bad guy, it's like there's no rules.
Guest:I can color outside the lines as much as I want.
Guest:Now, I'm a good baby face, but it's always so much more fun to be a heel.
Guest:How could it not be?
Guest:I've always been better as the bad guy.
Guest:I've never been world champion as a good guy.
Guest:The Ocho every time has been a heel.
Guest:But that's, I mean, like you said, that's the art form to it.
Guest:And the heel is usually leads the match.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like the guy leads the girl in the dance.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:The heel leads the good guy.
Guest:Why is it?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's just always the way it's been since I came into the business.
Guest:I think maybe because the heel used to have more experience than the up-and-coming, good-looking baby face.
Guest:So you could help run the match better.
Guest:The old beat-up guy?
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:And I'm the old beat-up guy with the hot young upstarts.
Guest:So I think I like to be in that position of controlling the match a little bit more.
Guest:And you can work together.
Guest:But the heel just always has more of a say in what's going on.
Marc:When you were coming up, were there guys that you looked up to or that you learned from?
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:I mean, there's regional guys that never made it out.
Marc:Yeah, it's the same with comedy.
Marc:Right?
Guest:The geniuses.
Guest:You go, and it's like, fucking this guy.
Guest:Why did he never make it?
Marc:What's the answer usually?
Guest:Timing, probably.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Or they got that thing inside, and they're not going to let him get famous.
Guest:You're a guitar player.
Guest:How many guitar players do you know who are like, how the fuck did this guy never make it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you're right.
Guest:The thing inside of them that prevents you from taking a chance to go to that one thing that's just not quite.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:There's a combination of things.
Marc:Timing is one thing.
Marc:But, you know, some people just don't ever come into their own.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you got to do that to actually have an honest shot at it.
Guest:You do.
Guest:You have to have a little bit of arrogance, a little bit of fearlessness, a little bit of foolishness to make it.
Guest:You really do.
Guest:I mean, think of all of us that I mean, you've made it huge in your career.
Yeah.
Guest:just to take that step the first night you stepped on stage with three minutes of material.
Guest:Like I tried standup comedy when I was, and I didn't, I sucked.
Guest:It was terrible.
Guest:Thankfully I was good at music and wrestling.
Guest:So I stuck with that, but like you tried it.
Guest:I like that was in the mix.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, I remember I did a big routine on a golden topping is what they call butter on popcorn in Canada.
Guest:Golden topping.
Guest:I can't remember exactly, but I relate it to sex in a golden shower.
Guest:So maybe that will tell you why my routine didn't do so well that night.
Guest:But I mean, just to take that chance to make it, it's not easy to do, right?
Guest:And maybe some guys weren't able to...
Guest:Right.
Marc:But what's also hard is if you get the opportunity to keep doing it is then you realize, like, well, fuck now, I'm in.
Marc:Yeah, there's no choice.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there's no going back to anything.
Marc:So you got you got to ride it out.
Marc:I think it's one thing if a regional act doesn't quite get it, because I bet you some of those guys are still working.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, and they did, yeah.
Guest:I mean, not now because they're probably so old, but because the guys were probably 10, 15 years older than me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But they probably worked much longer.
Guest:They probably had 25-year careers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then they were probably driving a taxi, and on Saturday night, they're out to go do a match.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I wonder if they're okay.
Marc:I always wonder about those cats.
Marc:If they give it up gracefully.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Did you ever see that movie called The Wrestler with Mickey Orr?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:I know so many of those guys throughout the years, of the guys that made it big, and now they're working back in the community center after literally playing Madison Square Garden.
Guest:How does it get to that point?
Guest:Thankfully, I never had that.
Guest:I never...
Guest:From the moment I started wrestling, I think I had a bar gig for the first year and a half.
Guest:I have never had another job.
Guest:Of course, I had a million jobs.
Guest:But I never had to get a day job since I was probably 21.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But do you think, Chris, that maybe you also, because you have a kind of spirit of entrepreneurship and you've set yourself up with a lot of gigs.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:And I do think, like I was saying that to Mark, like that, you know,
Guest:You're one of these guys, and I wouldn't call you a survivor in the business.
Guest:You're still a top star, but you have done what a survivor would do to set themselves up so that they're not in that position.
Guest:You're still wrestling, and you're wrestling in the highest possible way, having long matches, big bumps, all this stuff, but you still have three or four or five things at any given time that you can rely on.
Guest:Well, I never wanted to...
Guest:Get the day job.
Guest:Get the day job or have someone tell me what I have to do.
Guest:Obviously, I have a boss.
Guest:We all have bosses.
Guest:But I really work for myself.
Guest:And I think one of the things I've always been good at is I'm not afraid to take a chance.
Guest:I left WWE to go to Japan and then went to AEW.
Guest:We didn't know what AEW was going to do when it started.
Guest:Do you know how many upstart wrestling companies there's been?
Guest:Has there been a lot?
Guest:Been a lot, but not major ones.
Guest:But you hear it all the time.
Guest:For just the thought of AEW to leave and for us to be as big as we are right now to actually be a legit competitor with WWE, no one could have guessed that.
Guest:So it took a lot of guts to give it a try.
Guest:Like, fuck, if this works...
Guest:My legacy is even bigger.
Guest:If it doesn't, then tail between the legs probably go back to WWE or whatever.
Guest:But I didn't want to do that.
Marc:Well, how do people like, again, you know, but I don't know.
Marc:Like, how do they treat guys who are getting older at WWE?
Guest:Well, I mean, it's weird.
Guest:Like, back probably in the 90s, there was a company called WCW that became very popular because Hulk Hogan went there, Macho Man Savage, Piper.
Guest:Because Vince got rid of all those guys.
Guest:Because in his mind, when you hit 40, you were done.
Guest:Meanwhile, regional, like Mick Bockwinkle, I think, was the world champion when he was 50 and still awesome.
Guest:You know, I'm 52, and I was just one of the world champions.
Guest:And I'm still, like you said, doing some really great work.
Guest:So I think...
Guest:And WWE had that mindset, but then they kind of got away from it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because the adage of age is just the number.
Guest:It's so true.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it really is.
Guest:And to me, people say, well, how much longer are you going to do this?
Guest:It's like, I could end tomorrow.
Guest:I could end five years from now.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Or who cares?
Guest:Sting is 63.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And still doing great stuff.
Guest:So who knows, man?
Guest:To me, as long as you can still compete at a high level, like I have a high standard for myself.
Guest:If I went out there and like two, three, four times in a row, I felt like, oof, like I'm starting to fucking phone this in.
Guest:I would quit.
Guest:That happens with guys too.
Guest:I mean, you see it happen.
Guest:You can lose it in a second.
Guest:Who knows, man, right?
Guest:So that's why I never thought wrestling would last forever because it can't.
Guest:But I can play music until the day I die.
Guest:I can do a podcast the day I die.
Guest:I can act until I die.
Guest:I can do a crew, whatever, all these different things that I do.
Guest:It's show business, right?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So the physical aspect might go away.
Guest:But in the meantime, I built all these other avenues that it's like, dude, I'll just step.
Guest:I'm looking at Mick right now.
Guest:You've got this great poster.
Guest:Give me shots over here.
Guest:I saw Mick in London this summer.
Guest:He was 79, almost 80.
Guest:He's still fucking great.
Guest:Not for an old, no, for anybody.
Guest:He's Mick Jagger.
Marc:He's Mick Jagger.
Marc:I saw him.
Marc:But, you know, you can see that, like, God knows what he has to do to get up into that mind to do that.
Marc:It's kind of amazing.
Guest:It's amazing.
Marc:But he does it, right, Mark?
Marc:He does it.
Marc:He does do it, you know.
Marc:Well, I've been talking about it.
Marc:I saw the Stones do their last show here in Florida, the last tour.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:At the Hard Rock?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And people are like, was it great?
Marc:I'm like, no.
Marc:It was the Stones, though.
Marc:It's like you're excited to see them, and they put the effort in.
Marc:And Mick is like, Mick is carrying the whole goddamn thing.
Marc:He's overdoing it.
Marc:Dude, completely.
Marc:And it's kind of like you almost feel like saying, just take it easy, man.
Marc:Take a rest.
Guest:He gets two songs rest per show where Keith sings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at that point, that's all you can take of Keith.
Guest:And Keith, like, yeah, you don't even know if he's going to make the.
Guest:He's croaking it out.
Guest:Yeah, you don't know if he's going to make the chord.
Guest:Dude, he was sitting down for a while when I saw them in Atlanta last November.
Guest:He just sat down on the chair.
Guest:Like, listen, dude, I get it.
Guest:It's fine.
Guest:But I see Mick Jagger.
Guest:And to me, it's like, I look at pictures of my dad when he was 40.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He looked like an old man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, sweatsuit, big glasses.
Guest:That's just how it was back in the 80s.
Guest:Now I see Mick at 80 and I'm 52.
Guest:It's like, there is no way I'm ever going to stop doing what I'm doing.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Why would I?
Guest:If Mick can do it, I want to do it too and stay in shape and be cool.
Guest:And like you said, how much he has to do to get into that mindset, but he does it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And to me, like, that's life.
Guest:Like, I don't want to be this guy.
Guest:Oh, he's 70 and I'm growing carrots now.
Guest:And if you want to do that, that's great.
Guest:I don't want to fucking grow carrots.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't want to grow carrots, but I might want to not do anything.
Yeah.
Marc:There's some part of me that's sort of like, how long do I have to keep doing shit?
Marc:But you can still do podcasts.
Marc:Why can't you do stand-up?
Marc:It's not like I have to train to do stand-up.
Marc:But it is a matter of, in the same way, it's a matter of relevance and whether or not you're still popular.
Marc:And we can podcast for as long as we choose to do it.
Marc:But for some reason, there's still part of my brain, even though I'm my own boss as well, that's sort of like, is there a way to enjoy life without doing this?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, but my thing though, Mark is, is, is how old were you when you first started doing standup?
Guest:21.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So you just told me you're 59.
Guest:So you're, you're looking almost 40 years.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I'm done with it.
Guest:Now you tell me after those three months or six months, it's going to creep back like, fuck man, I want to go back out again.
Guest:Like, yeah, I'll just go to the improv for one night.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I'll take the book and I'll go to Seattle.
Guest:Next thing you know, you're all the fucking round again.
Guest:That's right, but you don't want to be the guy that's sort of like, well, he's still doing it.
Guest:I see that as well, and that's what I was saying about wrestling.
Guest:People already say that about me.
Guest:You've got to have a thick skin to be in show business because just by the fact I exist, whenever I lose a match, it's the greatest match ever.
Guest:Whenever I win, it's Jericho holding down the young guys.
Guest:Which is so ridiculous because I was mentioning that to him today that it would not be a good win for someone else if you lost all the time.
Guest:If I didn't win.
Guest:You know, I was the champion and won a bunch of matches and people were bagging on me for winning.
Guest:It's like, I'm the champion.
Guest:How dare you win as the champion so that when someone beats you and becomes the champion, it's a big deal.
Guest:Also, Chris lost the title to that giant swing move, which was, I thought, fantastic.
Guest:Oh, thanks, yeah.
Guest:That's just like a gimmick that that guy does.
Guest:I pointed it out to Mark.
Guest:The Italian guy?
Guest:Yeah, or he's Swiss, but he's got an Italian name.
Guest:And Chris tapped out to it, which is hilarious.
Guest:We have for years been trying to figure out a way to get out of that move because when he does it, people react.
Guest:The old tiny swing in a circle thing.
Guest:But then when he stops, the people come down again.
Guest:I've been working with him since WWE.
Guest:We always could never figure out what are we going to do.
Guest:And finally, it's like, this giant swing.
Guest:What?
Guest:Fuck.
Guest:And then I was like, can I tap out?
Guest:So I actually had him do it where I was trying to see when you're swinging, can I move my hand around to tap it?
Guest:You were tapping the mat as you were moving.
Guest:I'm just hitting anything I can as I'm spinning around.
Guest:But what a great fucking way to go out.
Guest:That was amazing.
Guest:You also took that swing on the top of that cage, which you're fucking nuts for.
Guest:You couldn't have paid me to do that.
Guest:I took that giant swing...
Guest:what 40 feet up on top of a cage oh man and the only reason i did is because claudio the guy we're talking about is the strongest guy and i knew there is no way in hell he's ever going to even have one wavering second of dropping me yeah but as soon as he started giving it to me and all i'm up there and all i see is people upside down down this far i i took about six i'm done
Guest:I'm done.
Guest:Stop, stop, stop, stop.
Guest:Now I watch it back on camera.
Guest:I could have taken it 50 times, but when you're up there, it was terrifying.
Guest:It was freaking me out, man.
Guest:He's got this uncanny balance when he does it too, but there's no way you could be in it that you would think, oh, he's not going to fall.
Guest:And when you're in it, I'm just going to fall right off the edge and I'm just freaking out.
Guest:Stop, stop.
Guest:Yeah, but would you have always thought that?
Marc:Or if you were younger, do you think?
Guest:I just think just the situation that you're in being that high up, I don't care how old it is.
Guest:It wasn't an age thing.
Guest:It was just a freak out thing.
Marc:How often do you feel like you might get hurt?
Marc:I mean, it looks like it's kind of easy to get hurt.
Guest:I mean, all it takes is one false move and you get hurt.
Guest:So that can happen at any point in time.
Yeah.
Guest:But there's a few things that I'll see that I do that I'm a little bit nervous about.
Guest:That was one of them.
Guest:Getting thrown off the cage in the first one was one of them because it's a pretty far fall.
Guest:A couple things, if you see the match I did with Bandito, there's a couple moves he did that I knew were going to hurt, a little bit nervous about.
Guest:But it's also kind of a little bit of a daredevil thing.
Guest:I don't not want to do it because it's a little bit scary.
Guest:That was what you said while we were watching it.
Guest:You were like, there has to be a certain level of some kind of masochism to this.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:There is.
Guest:And it was in that four-way.
Guest:Of all the matches we watched, too, that one, and it's funny, I was there and I've watched that pay-per-view since.
Guest:It wasn't until sitting there watching with him that I realized of the matches on that pay-per-view, that one was the most physically violent.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Hard hitting.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And it was really a heat point in the match.
Guest:And Mark was like, there's just no way these guys feel good after this.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, I think a lot of it, too, is it's just almost like a body callous.
Guest:You just get used to it.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I used to wrestle four times a week.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Every week, four times a week.
Guest:Now it's once a month, once every couple weeks.
Guest:So it's almost a little bit harder to wrestle less.
Guest:No, I couldn't do four matches a week schedule now, nor would I ever want to.
Guest:But when you only wrestle once in a while, you think, oh, it's probably a little bit of an easier schedule.
Guest:It probably hurts a little bit more because you're not as used to it.
Marc:You don't have the kitchen hands.
Guest:I guess so, right?
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But, I mean, have you gotten injured badly?
Guest:You know, I've been actually really lucky.
Guest:The only injury I ever really had, I had a bulging disc, which is fine, but I broke my arm in 94.
Guest:I had a steel plate, but I missed seven weeks, and that's the only injury I've ever had.
Guest:White's still in there?
Guest:Still in there, yeah.
Guest:I've never missed a match due to injury.
Guest:And you were young.
Guest:That's 94?
Guest:94, yeah.
Guest:You know, something you mentioned, Chris, that, you know, a guy that Mark knows well is Mick Foley.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah, great guy.
Guest:And we used to work with him on the radio, and we...
Guest:We did some stuff with him.
Guest:And one of the crazy things about Mick was, you know, the hardcore legend, as he's called, and he's in all these death matches.
Guest:But really, his biggest earning period of his career was as a guy who pulled a sock out and put it in your mouth.
Guest:And it was essentially leaning into comedy as a character.
Guest:And it was something I heard you say on your show once.
Guest:I think you guys were reviewing, like, Piledriver, the album or something.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you were like, this is part of why I got into wrestling.
Guest:Big time.
Guest:Was, like, that it's goofy and silly.
Guest:And you can't do it all the time.
Guest:And you can't just be a clown about it.
Guest:Like, bad comedy is bad comedy.
Guest:And, like, we were talking about that before, too, that if you watch some of this stuff when it's, like, if it's acted badly or it just can get embarrassing.
Guest:I'm always curious where that comes from.
Guest:Does it come from, like, a promoter?
Guest:Like, is it a Vince?
Guest:Or is it the people on the staff writing saying, we're going to lean into this being funny?
Guest:Or is it actually just a performer who's turned it up?
Guest:It's the person.
Guest:It's the person.
Guest:Like I said, like, I grew up in the 80s watching wrestling and WWF had that campy side to it, the Slammy Awards.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Vince McMahon singing stand back and guys fighting back through catering, hit each other with giant salmon and punch bowl.
Guest:Like I always love that side of wrestling and I still love it to this day.
Guest:Now wrestling has kind of changed where it's much more of a hardcore five-star match.
Guest:But yet, like I said, we did that song and dance routine, MJF and I, me and my shadow, let's Busby Berkeley.
Guest:Like we were arguing, so we're going to meet for dinner and we're going to work this out.
Guest:And then we'd go into a song and dance routine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I fucking loved it.
Guest:It actually even won some kind of award with the New York Times.
Guest:Yeah, it was the New York Times, yeah.
Guest:New York Times.
Guest:People hated it.
Guest:Not all people, but the hardcore.
Guest:They are killing wrestling.
Guest:Dude, this is what wrestling had this element to it when I was a kid that got enthralled with it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, the difference is, and this is something, like you said, there's nothing worse than bad comedy, and Mark knows this.
Guest:There's nothing worse than bad improv.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did the groundlings for a year.
Guest:I learned don't try and be funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you try and be funny, it's never funny.
Guest:The best way to do improv is to play it straight.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:That's how all of my guys will tell you, inner circle guys, Jericho appreciates.
Guest:My rule is play it straight.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't care how...
Guest:Either serious it is, how outlandish, how goofy it is.
Guest:If we play it straight, it always fucking works.
Guest:That's the way to do it.
Guest:Were you doing the Groundlings while you were wrestling?
Guest:I took a break from about 05 to 07.
Guest:I studied acting.
Guest:I did improv with the Groundlings.
Guest:Did you do that specifically?
Guest:So when you were back in wrestling, you were knowing that this is stuff you could— I didn't know if I'd ever come back.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I was just really burned out in wrestling.
Guest:I didn't know how much farther I could go.
Guest:And you think about that, 2005, I didn't become Chris Jericho until probably 2008.
Guest:I'd done a lot of cool stuff.
Marc:So how long had you been at it, 2005?
Marc:15 years and I was just burned out.
Guest:I was done.
Guest:That's interesting though.
Guest:You are already a funny character.
Guest:Like you, you were, I think the first, I was going to say, I think the first time I noticed you and it's not true.
Guest:I might've seen you at one of your first ECW matches in Queens.
Guest:It was like 1996 or something.
Guest:I was, I was living, growing up.
Guest:I might've even worked Mick Foley that night.
Guest:I think he did.
Guest:It was his last show.
Guest:Yes, it was.
Guest:At the Rego Park Hall.
Guest:And once again, he put me over.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I beat him as he's the guy leaving, the big star.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm the young guy and no one thought I was going to beat him.
Guest:But when I win and he leaves, now I got a little bit of steam.
Guest:That's how it works, right?
Guest:And so you were babyface there, and then you went to WCW as a babyface, fresh-faced, Lionheart, Chris Jericho.
Guest:And it really started to turn with the Losing Street gimmick, which always can help you turn to a heel, right?
Guest:Yeah, tantrums, yeah.
Guest:And he turns heel and is going at this guy, Dean Malenko, who is—his gimmick is a wrestler's wrestler, and they would call him the man of a thousand holds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Chris comes out.
Guest:He's the cocky heel.
Guest:And he has a roll of paper with him.
Guest:And I remember watching this on TV as it was happening.
Guest:He says, Dean Malenko, he may be the man of a thousand holds, but I'm the man of what?
Guest:Was it a thousand three?
Guest:A thousand four.
Guest:A thousand four.
Guest:I know four more than he does.
Guest:And now I'm going to read them to you.
Guest:Rolls it out.
Guest:This list rolls down to the ground.
Guest:And he starts reading them out loud.
Guest:This is terrible, the announcers.
Guest:Let's go to break.
Guest:They go to break.
Guest:Full commercial set.
Guest:Back from break.
Guest:He's still in the ring reading the list of holds.
Guest:And every, like, fifth or seventh hold was armbar.
Guest:It was the same one.
Guest:He's just repeating it.
Guest:The funny thing for that was is that we went to commercial break.
Guest:We were in Chicago.
Guest:So I'm reading my holds.
Guest:We go to break.
Guest:As soon as I know we're in break, I just start insulting Chicago sports teams.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was saying.
Guest:Fury.
Guest:Fury.
Guest:So when they come back from break and it's like, you got 10 seconds.
Guest:The Blackhawks suck.
Guest:The Chicago sucks.
Guest:Three, two, one.
Guest:The Russian pile driver.
Guest:So they're really booing.
Guest:So it looks like for three minutes.
Guest:He's been doing this for three fucking minutes.
Guest:You know, a little showbiz trick.
Guest:That's funny.
Guest:But that's, you know, I don't...
Guest:I don't want to be presumptuous about this, but I do think that got you over in a way that probably then got you hired by WWF when it was time for you to jump.
Guest:And like, that is the kind of like, so this idea that, and it goes back to something you said right when we started talking was that it's all about the character, the character, the character, the character.
Guest:Well, another thing about wrestling too, is it's really a lot of similarities between WWE and SNL, Siren Live.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Guest:If you look at it, Lorne has created this entire pop culture phenomenon that changed the course of history in a lot of ways.
Guest:Vince did the same with the WWF.
Guest:But they're both based on talent and making stars.
Guest:Then those stars become big stars and then they leave.
Guest:And now he has to build new stars.
Guest:So sometimes you get a shitty season of SNL because there's just nothing there.
Guest:Same in WWE.
Guest:Sometimes they're trying to build these guys like this guy just doesn't have it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then the rock comes or Steve Austin comes or, or, you know, Adam Sandler comes out and suddenly you got a guy who's hot.
Guest:Then the show is hot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then the guy leaves.
Guest:Brings new life to it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, but that's always the secret.
Guest:Like you were saying, who's the next hot guy?
Guest:And you never know the acclaimed.
Guest:We never thought the acclaimed, well, we never, I'm not saying you didn't think it, but the fact that God is big, they're a tag team that does a little rap act and they come out.
Guest:They're great.
Guest:And they're so popular.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You never would have guessed it if you just saw them two years ago.
Guest:Oh, they're a decent little team.
Guest:And now they're like one of the biggest acts on our show.
Marc:Is there some sort of scouting apparatus to wrestling?
Marc:I mean, it seems like with show business, everyone kind of knows, can see people developing.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And they call them indies, independent companies.
Guest:And...
Guest:pre-pandemic and then now post-pandemic they're finally getting back to where you'll see a lot like that PWG there's still dozens of great wrestlers that aren't signed to WWE or AEW and so then you get the word out about them like oh the guy like Michael Oku I worked or speedball Mike Bailey you hear about this guy so there's all these names that you hear and then sooner or later they'll get to the point same with like with me oh who's this Lionheart Chris Jericho he's really popular in Mexico we'll keep an eye on him
Marc:Well, it's interesting because it seems like there's a never-ending appetite for it in terms of folding these guys into either of the big franchises.
Marc:But if they can't cut it, they just won't cut it.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:You're right.
Guest:They just go away.
Guest:And that's exactly the truth.
Guest:And you get that with any time.
Guest:I mean, do we see it with studios putting a guy in a leading role part?
Guest:It just doesn't work, and you're gone right away.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Bands, you know, bands that just go through bands.
Guest:If you don't get that hit right out of the gate, you can be done.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At wrestling, you get a little bit more time, but if you get put in that top position and you don't draw, people don't watch your matches.
Guest:Like, TV ratings are so important.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I read the minute-by-minute TV ratings every week.
Guest:Of your show?
Guest:Of my show to see who's – how did I do?
Guest:But how did this guy do?
Guest:Who's drawing every week?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, and you can kind of see this pattern whenever he's on –
Guest:The ratings go up.
Guest:Swerve Strickland is one of those guys.
Guest:He's not a ratings bonanza, but every time he's on, the ratings go up.
Guest:Do you have a theory about that?
Guest:Connection?
Guest:That's right.
Guest:With that guy, I would say, is his presence.
Guest:If you look at him on the screen, Jade Cargill is similar in that if you see her on your screen, you think, well, that's an interesting person.
Guest:Yeah, I want to see what this person is doing.
Guest:So that matters.
Guest:And if you don't draw – my boss, Tony Khan, is a numbers fanatic.
Guest:If you are put in a position and your ratings go down, you won't be put in that position anymore.
Guest:So that's part of it is you have to connect –
Guest:People have to watch you when you're on screen.
Guest:If not, you won't be on screen in that position or maybe you won't be on the main show.
Guest:You get put to the next show.
Guest:So it's all kind of there's levels to that, too.
Guest:So what made you decide to start learning a little bit more about wrestling, Mark?
Marc:Well, Brendan's sort of hopping on this idea that I want to sort of enjoy my life more.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I don't have enough.
Marc:Diversions to hobbies.
Marc:Yeah, hobbies.
Marc:And I don't always know what's a good time.
Guest:What we were trying is I worked too, because we thought it would be like good podcast material if he got into something that he had no interest in.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was like we started like trying to get him to watch like the Marvel movies.
Marc:Yeah, I didn't do it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And that was the thing.
Guest:And then the thing was, like, for me, I didn't give a shit.
Guest:So I was like, okay, then don't do it.
Guest:I'm not going to, like, force you to do this.
Guest:And it was literally at that full gear.
Guest:Like, I was just having a blast.
Guest:And I was like, Mark should be here.
Guest:We should be doing this together.
Guest:And I'm a lifelong fan, so I can actually bring some passion to it and convince him, like, this is a good hang.
Guest:Like, we can enjoy this, you know?
Guest:But it's interesting, too, though, because all the time you were doing Glow, you didn't want to...
Marc:Well, I mean, you know, I took that, you know, I got that part and I knew what my position was.
Marc:And I thought that to some degree it would serve me better if I didn't.
Marc:Gotcha.
Marc:You know, that this guy didn't plan on being a wrestling director.
Guest:Which is kind of the story, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, he saw himself as a director-director.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then, you know, sort of took, you know, he grew to love them and he grew to, you know, sort of get involved with it.
Marc:But still, throughout that series, you don't get the feeling he knows about wrestling.
Marc:You know, it's the other kid.
Marc:It's Chris Lowell.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:He seemed to know.
Marc:The rich kid, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:He was the fan.
Marc:So it didn't compel me.
Marc:And Brendan's been booking wrestlers on one show or another that we've had for years.
Marc:I mean, we did bits with Mick Foley when we were on radio, when I was on radio and he was producing me on radio.
Marc:And then I interviewed Colt Cabana years ago.
Marc:I interviewed Punk.
Marc:I interviewed his wife.
Marc:What's her name?
Marc:AJ.
Marc:AJ, yeah.
Marc:So I've talked to all of them.
Marc:But I don't think I really got...
Marc:you know, what it means to watch it or enjoy it until today.
Marc:Oddly.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because, like, you know, he's real into it.
Marc:But, you know, maybe it's something to do with where I'm at in my life or whatever.
Marc:But I was just able to watch it today with him saying, like, it's about the story.
Marc:It's about all these things.
Marc:And, you know, I sensed it.
Marc:I got it.
Guest:When you come at it with that idea, it'll really open up to you.
Guest:It's like, it's like, like walking dead.
Guest:It's not a show about zombies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a show about society and about relationships.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Zombies are the background.
Guest:Wrestling's almost the same.
Guest:It's not about the body slam.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:That's a part of it, but it's the storyline that matters.
Guest:It's awesome.
Guest:All that matters.
Marc:And it's also just not being condescending, right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, you know, just let it happen.
Marc:I mean, if you're going to bring all that baggage to it, like, this is stupid.
Guest:And there's such a stigma about wrestling phenomenon.
Guest:All that shit is fake.
Guest:Every single movie.
Marc:No, I get it.
Marc:But, like, it seems like that stigma is, like, not...
Marc:as prevalent anymore.
Marc:Like, it seems like, you know, there's been so much pushback over the years against people saying it's fake.
Marc:It's like, of course it is, but so what?
Marc:Right, right, right.
Guest:That was ultimately it.
Guest:It's a live stunt show.
Guest:It's a modern day Shakespearean.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It really is, you know, and that's, if you look at it that way, you can really appreciate it so much more.
Marc:Well, it's great talking to you, man.
Guest:Yeah, great talking to you, man.
Guest:I'll see you tomorrow.
Guest:I'm excited.
Guest:Yeah, I'm excited to see what you think.
Marc:Right after Chris Jericho came over, came into the garage, then Brendan was excited again and said, wait, there's more coming.
Marc:And the CEO of All Elite Wrestling, Tony Khan, walks in.
Marc:Basically, what's happening in this conversation is Tony is going to explain to me his job, which is...
Marc:Not unlike any show, he's the showrunner.
Marc:He's the one who decides how it's all going to play out week to week.
Marc:And there is continuity to all this.
Marc:And also, as I mentioned before, Brendan is here as well.
Marc:Brendan is in the room to give me some perspective.
Marc:As a fan, I can hear him engaging with Tony as a guy who knows what's going on and then feel more of that excitement, get a little more of that contact buzz from Brendan's excitement about everything unfolding.
Marc:So this is me and Tony and Brendan on the mics.
Music
Guest:So where do you come from?
Guest:I originally am from Champaign, Illinois, where the University of Illinois is.
Guest:That's where your family's from?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Originally, my parents met there.
Guest:My dad's from Lahore, Pakistan, and my mom's originally from around Chicago.
Marc:And you're not unlike Brendan in that... How old were you when you started to love wrestling?
Guest:Probably about seven years old.
Guest:Seven.
Guest:Same.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And that's when it happened.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:But where do you... How do you...
Marc:Like, what do you do in school?
Marc:How do you manifest this?
Guest:Well, I always wanted to write wrestling shows.
Guest:And actually, the show we do every Wednesday on TBS is called Dynamite, Wednesday Night Dynamite.
Guest:Dynamite is a show that I started writing in notebooks and on the back of pieces of paper in middle school in 1995.
Guest:Dynamite.
Guest:Yeah, Dynamite.
Marc:And it was wrestling scripts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wrestling scripts like, you know, matchups every week and stories that go week to week.
Guest:It was a weekly wrestling show called Dynamite.
Marc:With the guys that you were watching on TV.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The people at the time.
Guest:And now it's, you know, the biggest stars of today every Wednesday on TBS.
Marc:So how'd you like what's your old man's in the auto parts business, right?
Marc:Yes, sir.
Marc:But in a big way.
Marc:In a big way.
Marc:So you were expected to follow suit, right?
Guest:Not exactly.
Guest:I don't think my dad ever really even wanted that because, first of all, my dad is really a very, very lively person.
Guest:He's just as active in the auto business as he was when I was a kid.
Guest:He's in his 70s now, and he's one of the healthiest, most vibrant people you'll ever see.
Guest:And I don't think that's really ever what he wanted for me.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's certainly not ever something he tried to force on me.
Guest:And I think he wanted me to do what makes...
Guest:Me happy?
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I'd like to think, yeah.
Guest:You didn't get that pressure?
Marc:Because a lot of times I've talked to people that come from immigrant parents primarily, and the pressure is relentless.
Guest:I was under a lot of pressure, but not necessarily pressure to work in auto parts.
Guest:But I think I was definitely under a lot of pressure to succeed in some meaningful way, but not necessarily do the same thing as my dad.
Marc:Yeah, what were you expected to do?
Marc:What did you think you were going to do?
Guest:I really wanted to work in sports my whole life.
Guest:And I've had this great opportunity for over a decade to do it now.
Guest:My dad, you know, his dream was to buy a football team.
Guest:And just like I think my dream was to launch a wrestling promotion.
Guest:And so I got to be a part of that.
Guest:And for 11 seasons now, I've worked in the NFL and been working on football stats, which is something else I really love.
Guest:Wait, so your dad owns a team?
Guest:Yeah, my dad owns the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Guest:You're doing that as well?
Guest:Well, I do football statistics and put together scouting reports based on data and put together information on the draft and our games for the coach and for the general manager.
Guest:I do that.
Guest:Also, I'm the general manager and sporting director of Fulham Football Club in the Premier League.
Guest:That's in the U.K.
Guest:?
Guest:So he's literally going, he's got a team in Europe, a team in Jacksonville, Florida, and this National Wrestling Federation.
Marc:So wait, so now is the wrestling like a hobby?
Guest:No, not at all.
Guest:It's a full-time thing.
Guest:It's like I juggle all this work, but I really love it.
Guest:And I used to be in the NFL office like 80 hours a week before I started working in English football for Fulham.
Guest:And then I was really splitting my time.
Guest:And now I've got a great team I work with at Jaguars that really a lot of the scouting reports and data, they generate week to week.
Guest:So I'm not having to do that every single week anymore.
Guest:And I'm still working on the data, but I'm not in the office 80 hours a week in Jacksonville anymore because I'm on the road.
Guest:We do 52 weeks a year wrestling.
Guest:It's a never-ending tour, so I'm in different cities every week.
Guest:And it's great.
Guest:I'm just working all the time, and I love it.
Guest:Do you have a life?
Guest:No, not as much as I would like, but I love the stuff I do.
Guest:And it's fun.
Guest:I'm very obsessed with wrestling and football, and that works good for what I do.
Marc:Well, it seems like you've gone as far as you can go for someone obsessed with wrestling and football.
Marc:Yeah, I've gone far.
Marc:You know, there's who knows.
Marc:In the sense that, like, you can feed that obsession without necessarily playing or getting hurt.
Marc:You can live in it.
Guest:It is very sustainable, I think, what we have going on.
Guest:And I love working in it every week.
Guest:And during football season, it's pretty crazy because you have the games every weekend.
Guest:And then we have wrestling every week on TBS and TNT.
Guest:But I love it.
Guest:When did you start putting together the wrestling federation?
Guest:About four years ago, I started working on it.
Guest:And I started working on it about five years ago.
Guest:And we launched actually four years ago this week.
Guest:What made you think you could take it on?
Guest:Well, it's interesting.
Guest:I was at a party with the president of TBS and TNT at the time.
Guest:For football?
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:It was actually – it's a great question because a lot of those events where you see those people, it wouldn't normally be at like a big football event.
Guest:This wasn't.
Guest:It was like a social thing out here in L.A.
Guest:And my friend Kevin at the time was running TBS and TNT, and I saw Kevin.
Guest:I knew him socially, and he's a great guy.
Guest:And at the time, he was running the two networks, and he –
Guest:started having a conversation with me and I mentioned wrestling TV rights.
Guest:And he said he was actually looking into that at the time.
Guest:And I mentioned, you know, it could be a great time for me to start a wrestling company and for you to carry it.
Guest:And that turned into a real conversation.
Guest:And then we had meetings and followed up on it.
Guest:And then it ended up happening.
Marc:So you judged interest by that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like I kind of felt him out.
Marc:What could you deliver at that point?
Marc:You didn't have wrestlers.
Guest:That's a great question.
Guest:So there were a number of big stars just off the top of my head that were going to be free agents that next year.
Guest:So I was able to build a great roster taking like Chris Jericho, who's a huge name that was going to be available as a free agent.
Guest:And then a lot of the top young wrestlers.
Guest:And there were a number of people competing for a company called Ring of Honor at the time.
Guest:Now that's actually I bought Ring of Honor pretty recently.
Guest:Well,
Guest:What was that?
Guest:It's a management company?
Guest:That was a wrestling company that was probably at the time the number two company in the U.S.
Guest:In terms of promoting?
Guest:In terms of, yeah, in terms of attendance and pay-per-view buys and stuff.
Guest:I think they were, at a time, they were a number two, but they never rose to the heights of AEW.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's one of the reasons why I thought there was an opportunity for AEW to come in and be a strong challenger brand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's an expression that Kevin and the people at the time at TBS really taught me and we've used in our marketing.
Guest:For example, like a challenger brand, a good example, Pepsi is the new generation.
Guest:Pepsi is a challenger brand like AEW.
Guest:And when I launched this, I was like, okay, I'd like to be the Pepsi of pro wrestling.
Guest:Would you be interested in that?
Guest:Everyone said yes.
Guest:Then they showed me a marketing deck about what it means to be a challenger brand.
Guest:And the best examples they gave me were like Burger King.
Guest:What's their marketing?
Guest:A lot of it is like, hey, McDonald's sucks, guys.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's when people ask why I go out and talk about the competition and wrestling.
Guest:I mean, that's why, because it was handed down on high to me from the network.
Marc:So in terms of business, I mean, you're doing well.
Guest:Yeah, we're doing really well.
Marc:With WWE, is there an active rivalry?
Guest:Yeah, I think there is.
Guest:And week to week, it's very competitive, but we're a challenger brand, and I think nobody's come into the space and done as well as us taking on the industry leader for many, many years, for decades.
Marc:But when does that war become part of the Scripps?
Guest:Well, I mean, it's complete.
Guest:I think it's to some extent, I do think like, at least on our end, we try to acknowledge it.
Guest:That's like I said, the DNA of a challenger brand.
Guest:You have to acknowledge that there's another big player in the industry, but that we're a major player, too.
Guest:So a challenger brand is not the industry leader, but it's also not a niche brand.
Marc:But it seems like it's inevitable if you're going to honor the sport that you compete with them, like in an active way.
Guest:But that would require a cooperation that them as the dominant brand are not going to want.
Guest:Yeah, until they're hurting.
Guest:Well, I don't think that's really the case.
Guest:I think right now it's such a strong time for the wrestling business.
Guest:So, you know, who knows?
Guest:But it's something I would certainly be open to.
Guest:And I think it's an interesting thing for the future because it's not something that's ever really been done.
Guest:They've kind of existed in their own space.
Guest:We are working with a lot of wrestling promotions, and at times they've done stuff like that.
Guest:But it would be a really interesting thing to see it.
Marc:That's because there's so many of the wrestlers have stories in both places, in both spaces.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And rivalries that are like, you know, decades old, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:But I think it's like same as, for example, now this is, I'll get killed for making this comparison.
Guest:So, you know, what I usually say is...
Guest:Pepsi and Coke and I think you wouldn't really see them working together just like I think it's like Marvel and DC like you know you don't see those superheroes really crossing over very much and haven't seen that and probably I think there'd be a lot of jostling for who's going to be positioned stronger it would get very political and that's why typically these things exist in their own universes and they try to build their own universe as they have as they call it or as I'd call it maybe a galaxy
Guest:Well, something Mark wouldn't know about, though, is that you did this with New Japan Pro Wrestling and you had a pay-per-view in June of last year that, well, for my money, was a great show just as a show.
Guest:I know that it was difficult to put together just because of injuries and losing certain guys at certain times, but it does seem like it was a successful show to co-promote and you got...
Guest:Guys from AEW to be victorious over guys from New Japan and vice versa.
Guest:And it did feel like a real kind of crossover cooperative environment.
Guest:And I know that it's different with them being an international company.
Guest:And, you know, they're also trying to get a foothold here in America.
Guest:But it does show a kind of blueprint of how it can be done.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:That's a great point, Brendan.
Guest:And that now is a great example of two companies collaborating and coming together and that it really can be done because we worked with New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Guest:But again, that might be more akin to...
Guest:Pepsi and RC or, you know, Burger King and Subway coming together, Burger King and Arby's or something like that.
Guest:Because I think there's one player in the industry fighting against a lot of different players.
Guest:We've came together, put a show together that a lot of people thought was the best wrestling show of the entire year.
Guest:And it's won a lot of the polls already for the 2022 show of the year was when AEW and New Japan did a show.
Marc:What will happen is eventually WWE will want to engage because they need the juice.
Marc:I don't know if they need that.
Marc:Not now.
Guest:We'll see.
Marc:But if you keep doing this, eventually they'll be like, well, fuck you.
Marc:I hope.
Guest:I hope, man.
Guest:That would be really cool.
Guest:But on the other hand, it's been all these years, and I don't know if you'll ever see Pepsi and Coke doing anything together, not to keep making that comparison.
Guest:But it's like...
Marc:Yeah, but the truth of the matter is that there are Pepsi people and there are Coke people.
Marc:There's only one wrestling people.
Guest:That's not true.
Guest:No, there really are camps.
Guest:It's really for real.
Guest:Tribal?
Guest:Oh, yeah, big time.
Guest:It's so tribal.
Guest:It's funny you say that word, too, because that's the word they use to describe it.
Guest:It's very intense rivalry, and there are people who watch both, but there's a lot of people that are very loyal, like a sport where it's like a fantasy.
Guest:the team well what i would say it's for me i was a so i'm very much like tony in that i got into this as a kid and so for me it's not a tribal thing i god bless wwe i grew up on it i love it it's been in my heart but i don't watch it anymore it's just not for me and so like when you talk about is there coke and pepsi people like i would be like i'm a pepsi guy and it's like no no offense to coke people but i don't like the taste of it
Guest:Right.
Guest:It would be the same thing for me with AEW and WWE.
Guest:I don't dislike anybody for watching it.
Guest:It's wrestling, but I'm not going to watch it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I do feel like there are a whole tribe of Coca-Cola drinkers who really hate those Pepsi people.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:I mean, that's like there's going to be people at war till the end of time because they don't like.
Guest:They look for a reason.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:They don't like the thing the other person likes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or they have to not like it.
Guest:Yeah, but I really love all pro wrestling.
Guest:And no matter what company it is, we respect the people who come in.
Guest:And if people wear shirts from a different wrestling company, you know, that's cool.
Guest:I have no problem with that.
Guest:I'm getting older in my years.
Guest:I don't have time to worry about like fights over wrestling.
Guest:I just want to watch the show that I want, which is why I could have introduced Mark to wrestling in any way.
Guest:We could have went back and watched old Ric Flair matches or something.
Guest:But what I wanted him to watch was what I was engaged with now.
Guest:And I'm engaged with this product because it's telling good stories.
Guest:Thank you so much, Brendan.
Guest:That's awesome, man.
Marc:And when you conceived of the Dynamite stories...
Marc:So you didn't have any wrestlers in mind, and now you have how many wrestlers at any given time?
Guest:Oh, dozens of wrestlers across both shows.
Guest:Dynamite, we have a second show now on TNT on Fridays called Rampage.
Guest:So we have two shows, and we have dozens of wrestlers, men and women, now across both shows.
Guest:The roster is much bigger now, in part because we have more programming than we started.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We started with two hours on TNT.
Guest:Now we have two hours on TBS plus one hour on TNT.
Guest:And we have quarterly specials on TNT.
Guest:We had four big pay-per-views.
Guest:And I'm trying not to oversaturate the pay-per-view market.
Guest:We still have those big four pay-per-views.
Guest:And we added a fifth, which is, like Brendan said, the partnership with New Japan, the Forbidden Door, we call it, where we go through the Forbidden Door is the name of that show and fight each other.
Guest:And who does all the writing?
Guest:I put the matches together and I try to work with all the different wrestlers to put their stories together.
Guest:So I don't hand them scripts.
Guest:I think that's one of the things that makes the two shows really different.
Guest:There's writers and including people, you know, like, like, you know, a lot of people that are names in Hollywood have written for WWE and it's great.
Guest:And I think like Brennan said, it's just a different feel of show because you're more likely to get like handed a script from
Guest:When Chris Jericho, who you just talked to earlier today, came to AEW, he told me, he was saying, this is really trippy because I haven't done an interview without a script in 20 years.
Guest:And all I was giving him is the bullet points.
Guest:It's like, look, here's who you're wrestling.
Guest:Here's the date and time.
Guest:I think we know there's been an issue.
Guest:There's a brawl here, but we're building to this big match.
Guest:At the time, it was Chris versus Hangman Page that summer in 2019.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were fighting to be the first ever AEW world champion and just kind of setting up the story of it.
Guest:And Chris really did a lot of digging into his own psyche and used his own words.
Guest:Because I think one of the things you hear in wrestling interviews when they're completely scripted for the wrestler, word for word, is people using words, vocabulary that they would never use themselves.
Marc:Yeah, and they may not be very good actors.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah, sure.
Guest:There's that, too.
Guest:I think wrestlers have great acting chops, really.
Guest:In a different style.
Guest:An improv style.
Guest:Like Curb, Your Enthusiasm, or a lot of things where there's an outline, and then you're able to use
Guest:your own words as opposed to somebody telling you.
Guest:And so I would much rather give somebody an outline because I know that when I grew up, I feel like the wrestlers had more freedom to give their own interviews.
Guest:And it was, you know, you heard people speaking in their own words more freely than today.
Guest:And I believe in the late 90s into the early 2000s, they got into a habit of scripting.
Guest:So I still put outlines together, but I really want the wrestlers to feel good about what they're saying and believe what they're saying.
Guest:So that's why we do it that way.
Guest:Well, when you used to do these scripts for, I'm gathering when you're saying scripts, you mean for like e-feds, right?
Guest:My friends and I, it wasn't as much, it was sort of, yeah, we would like kind of draft up the world of wrestlers.
Guest:Sometimes we would change up what it was.
Guest:Sometimes it could be anybody from any era or it would just be present day.
Guest:But that was the idea.
Guest:We would draft out and each build our own federation, our own company, and we would write shows.
Guest:And mine was always Dynamite.
Guest:And it was on different nights.
Guest:Now it's like in real life, it's Wednesday night Dynamite.
Guest:And I came up with it when I was 12 years old because it rhymed with night.
Guest:So it was a cool title.
Guest:And never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be a real show that's on every week on TBS.
Guest:But that's some reps.
Guest:Like, it's funny, because we had Chris in here talking about, you know, paying his dues and getting his reps in Japan, in Mexico, in, you know, northern territories and that.
Guest:And, you know, there's no...
Guest:There's no training for being a wrestling promoter other than just doing it.
Guest:And so here you are in a world where there is no secondary national wrestling promotion.
Guest:You're creating it from scratch.
Guest:The only reps you have at your advantage are, you know, things you wrote for fantasy purposes.
Guest:which would be the only thing available to you at the time.
Guest:But that's no crazier, I think, than a lot of people in Hollywood, right, who just wrote stuff in their own home and worked their way up.
Guest:So I think it's like, to me, it's a very different situation because in wrestling—
Guest:It's not just one person building their own act, building their own repertoire, and starting their own career.
Guest:You need to build it and really launch a lot of careers all at the same time.
Guest:It's like starting a sporting league and starting almost like a Broadway show where you have a cast, but also people fighting for the spots.
Guest:It's competitive for the spots, but it's also a sporting enterprise, like a team.
Guest:So I think it's a combination of the two.
Guest:So, I mean, it was really, like you said, it was the only reps available.
Guest:But really, I didn't become more hands-on until really the second year.
Guest:And it was really at the end of 2019, I decided to get much more involved.
Guest:I was already kind of overseeing a creative process, but I really became a lot more hands-on with it going into 2020.
Guest:So it was Christmas 2019.
Guest:I was kicking myself because I really didn't like...
Guest:The way the show went the week before, and I really didn't like the rating and I felt like we could do better.
Guest:And I just wanted to hold myself and everyone accountable.
Guest:And so did you think it was that it needed there needed to be a consistency to it?
Guest:There was continuity problems and there was a sense of things that it just needed to flow through one person.
Guest:And then that one person was going to be you because that's where the buck stopped.
Guest:I do think there's some of that, but I do think I just felt like, yeah, I could put together, and it was going to be good for everybody because I thought that I could put together a better flow and get the shows going into 2020 could be stronger, sharper, and that building to the first revolution pay-per-view, I really believed we had this great opportunity because we had great ideas and stories in place.
Guest:Like you said, we were not far off at the end of 2019.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we had great interest, but I felt I didn't like the direction we were heading at the end of 2019.
Guest:And I felt like, look, 2020, this is a great opportunity.
Guest:And to this day, the shows that we did at the start of 2020, people still talk about that as one of the strongest periods, because I think we came back January 1st with a renewed sense of energy.
Guest:I haven't had a Wednesday off since Christmas 2019.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then the COVID hit.
Guest:And then the COVID hit.
Guest:And that was really interesting because fans at the time were saying, God, AEW just got all this momentum.
Guest:They had really at the start of 2020, they did their best shows.
Guest:And the company's in such a hot period.
Guest:What are they going to do?
Guest:It ended up becoming – you don't look like a Star Trek guy to me.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah, you're not a Star Trek guy.
Guest:Don't stop the flow, though.
Guest:Do you want to be given – I've said this – Brendan, you look like more of a Star Trek guy to me.
Guest:In a way, yeah.
Guest:Somewhat.
Guest:Okay, good.
Guest:I am also, although I don't know if I look at it.
Guest:I might.
Guest:But so there's like this –
Guest:An analogy or comparison I've given before, where there's a moment where in Star Trek, Captain Kirk's ship is really beat up, the Enterprise, and they're outgunned, and their ship is a lot more depleted than their opponent's ship, Khan, in the Wrath of Khan.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Star Trek, too.
Guest:And so he steers the ship into the nebula where there is a it's a much more uncertain thing.
Guest:Nobody's nobody's viewing.
Guest:Nobody's scanning.
Guest:None of it's going to work.
Guest:It's just it's the same level playing field in a lot of ways.
Guest:And that's what the pandemic was, because we were not as big of a company at that point.
Guest:But really, the pandemic allowed us a level playing field to put on shows in a lockdown environment.
Guest:So neither wrestling company really stopped.
Guest:We kept doing shows and I made it completely voluntary.
Guest:for everybody to come in.
Guest:So we only had the first week, maybe half the roster.
Guest:And then by week three, we only had 29% of the wrestlers there.
Guest:What I did is I set it up at first for the first few months.
Guest:Our shows were different.
Guest:And I think they were better because there were, you know, as opposed to being in a completely empty environment, I took the wrestlers either that were not participating in matches and in a lot of cases out of work, independent wrestlers that couldn't get any work because there was no independent wrestling.
Guest:The only wrestling was TV wrestling.
Guest:The whole indie scene, all the live shows shut down.
Guest:All there was was TV studio wrestling.
Guest:And the only three sports or sporting shows really that kept going were AEW, WWE, and UFC.
Guest:But I think you guys probably were a boon to the respective networks that you were signed with at that time who were...
Guest:hurting for any kind of production there's no there's no live production right and they're they've got they know that even when stuff gets back to production unscripted it was going to take time to ramp up the content so they had you guys going every week for what was a very dire time we never stopped and it was like to this day people all over the world especially in places where there were strong lockdowns yeah canada or even here in california but especially in canada and england
Guest:so many people come up to me all the time and say and come up to the wrestlers all the time and they still talk about like you got me through the pandemic like you got my family through the i notice your your performers wear it as a badge of honor like i'm noticing it more and more on the air too like that it'll come up in promos and around character that you know you have certain characters saying like i was here during the pandemic i was i stay i fought every week or whatever and and i i don't take it lately like i think they they
Guest:really feel like, hey, that was an important time for my growth as a performer.
Marc:It was also an important time for an audience.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, you know, if you were out doing anything, that's where that Instagram Live stuff started to happen is that people were so needing to engage with something happening in the present that wasn't horrible.
Yeah.
Marc:And it made a big difference.
Marc:Right.
Marc:In their lives.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, just to to sort of like it was it gave them hope somehow that, you know, it was going to be OK that people were working that, you know, somebody had the the courage to sort of like, you know, just do it.
Guest:Well, we tried to do it safe, and we really did do it safe.
Guest:We came back with a bubble, so we tested everybody coming into the show as far as all the wrestlers.
Guest:And, you know, the couple times, very rarely, couple times where people did show up, we'd send them home and quarantine them, like put them, you know, either in their car or where they weren't going to expose anybody else and tested people before they came into the production bubble where we would shoot the shows.
Guest:But then when it was time to get fans back, we were the first people to bring fans back safely because we were outdoors.
Guest:And my thought was like the drive in movie theater was back.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And so I thought we could bring that to pro wrestling.
Guest:My first idea was like, should we actually do a drive in show?
Guest:But then I realized we have the outdoor amphitheater.
Guest:We could just space it out.
Guest:And then that's really what became the standard for sports was the socially distant show, the outdoor show where people do 25 percent capacity.
Guest:the whole section of seats is just you and there's nobody around you, behind you or in front of you.
Guest:And that became the standard.
Guest:I mean, literally that, you know, the Jaguars and the Chiefs were the only teams in the NFL that had that the first two weeks.
Guest:Our team, the Jaguars, we really took that model from AEW and both in football with Jags and with AEW.
Guest:We had zero known COVID transmissions from doing this because it was...
Guest:You were in your own bubble, effectively.
Guest:And so it really brought the energy and the fans back.
Guest:And that was also really cool.
Guest:So some of our best memories and some of our most important memories were made there.
Guest:Well, I have a couple nerdy questions for you.
Guest:And Mark, you can follow along here, but I know you're not going to know exactly what I'm talking about.
Guest:But what I have noticed lately...
Guest:is some real focus and cohesion of the kind of top-line stories, and they really kind of seem elegantly laid out.
Guest:And I wonder what you would attribute that to for yourself, if you agree or disagree.
Guest:I agree.
Guest:If you agree, then do you feel that's a... Since you're the guy at the helm of most of this, is there something that you... Like, I just feel like it's a creative question.
Guest:How do you...
Guest:Find your juices so that all of a sudden these things are popping as stories and feeling really coherent and focused.
Guest:Well, I have an answer, and sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
Guest:There's no cameras in here, right?
Guest:No.
Guest:There's no cameras.
Guest:What I'd like to show you, I'll cover it up so you don't see anything for the future, but I'll show you what I've been doing since Full Gear a little differently.
Guest:Because I think we were on a really strong run going into full gear.
Guest:So I started doing something a little differently going in and coming out of full gear.
Guest:And it's the same thing I was doing, but it's maybe a little more cohesive on a macro level.
Guest:And so I can show you actually, because it's what I was doing before.
Guest:But I've never put it all in one place.
Guest:You know, the biggest thing before I go and pull out some of my notes to show you would be that we haven't had this stable of a roster.
Guest:We were dealing with like a major injury or crisis every other week through the summer.
Guest:And there was a period the last time I was here for the L.A.
Guest:Forum in that week, the attrition of that week.
Guest:Talk about unbelievable.
Guest:I mean, in the span of a week.
Guest:We had Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole, and CM Punk all injured.
Guest:MJF walked out of the show.
Guest:All of these major incidents.
Guest:And then through the summer, I was really proud of what we were able to do week to week with some uncertainty.
Guest:And then Adam Cole came back but was injured again.
Guest:CM Punk ended up coming back but was injured again.
Guest:Bryan Danielson came back but has been a fixture in the show.
Guest:And that's been huge to helping us build that consistency, having Bryan Danielson there week to week.
Guest:MJF coming back.
Guest:Obviously, that's hugely important.
Guest:But Chris Jericho, Jon Moxley, and so many people up and down the roster helped us keep that kind of consistency where we still did great numbers and were very competitive through the summer.
Guest:And now we've had really a stable roster for the last several months.
Guest:And I think that's really helped us.
Guest:It's probably been the most stable run of TV and maybe the best run of TV since the original revolution, the start of 2020.
Guest:That was probably the last time where I strapped down and said, like, I need to get organized.
Guest:And made a major change as big as the one I'll show you.
Guest:So I don't, and if you, the stuff you read, I would appreciate it.
Guest:I'm going to cover the future dates.
Guest:But if you see just a bit of what's on here.
Guest:So I had a process.
Guest:I already had kind of a schedule of what I had planned week to week in different stories for different wrestlers, different matches or segments.
Right.
Guest:And at some point, like I just kind of inverted it.
Guest:I realized like I should tip this over.
Guest:And instead of looking at the dates and building it out, I kind of flipped what the columns were and what the rows were and put the columns where the rows were.
Guest:And now I organize everything like this since full gear.
Guest:And I feel like I'm more organized, even though it's all the same information.
Guest:It's just looking at it differently.
Guest:And it really helps me.
Guest:So without giving anything away, and it doesn't seem like you are here, but just to kind of explain this, it looks like you're basically, the focus on this top column are your stars.
Guest:And the stories.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so you're able to, it's not just you're plugging in, here's what we're going to do, this date, this date, this date.
Guest:You're able to see the progression of the story on the chart.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's like a mini storyboard.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:And I already was doing that and we already had that, but I kind of had it the other way.
Guest:And like where it was looking at the shows and I had where the columns were now here were the different wrestlers and different stories.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But for some reason, I don't know why it shouldn't make that big of a difference flipping it like this.
Guest:It's flow.
Guest:It's the flow working down the page like this.
Guest:It looks a lot better.
Guest:It works a lot better.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's basically the same thing I was doing, but it just kind of, uh, like I said, flip the page around and it's helped me be even more organized.
Guest:I think with our shows, cause we had a great year of shows, but really, like you said, I think the last few months it's been better than ever.
Guest:So I attribute that to the great performance of the wrestlers mostly and the fans and the great fans coming to the shows.
Guest:But also I think, uh,
Guest:A lot of it in part has been we've been able to help the flow of the show in recent months by having a stable roster of wrestlers.
Guest:And that's probably most of all.
Guest:But then some small part I would attribute to being a little differently organized and having a different look at how to flow the show.
Guest:It's very funny, though, for anybody who's listening to this, that it is really just a piece of paper.
Guest:It's basically how you would do it if you were a kid running a wrestling league with your friends.
Guest:You would write it down, and it still makes sense.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, Mark, there's going to be his first live event tomorrow.
Guest:Are you a personality on the end?
Guest:Not very rarely.
Guest:And when I am, I'm more of a device.
Guest:Because I am the president and the CEO.
Guest:You're more that you're acknowledged by the talent and by the announcers.
Guest:They'll say, this match was made by Tony Khan, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:But, you know, it's not Vince McMahon who was a character on the show.
Guest:None of that.
Guest:We've done like 170 episodes of Dynamite and about 75 episodes of Rampage.
Guest:And so across about 245 TV shows, I think I've shown up five times.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And every time it was like to make a major announcement.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So when I do show up, it's usually a big thing.
Guest:And so I try to keep it brief and not be out there talking all day.
Guest:And also it sets a good example because I'm also the timekeeper backstage.
Guest:And I hold people accountable to time as you are very familiar in the world of comedy.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:People have to hit their times for the show to flow and everyone to – and really, to some extent, it's not only about respecting the company that's putting the show on and the producers.
Guest:It's about the fans and them getting to see all the matches they want to see and also for your fellow –
Guest:Performers, your fellow comedians, everyone's got to hit their times.
Guest:And for wrestling, everyone's got to hit their times, what they get.
Guest:But as the timekeeper, if I go out there and give myself a time, I usually try to keep it light to set a good example.
Guest:Like, hey, I'm going to get in and get out.
Guest:And so you can go out and focus on the wrestling.
Guest:People don't want to see me out here all day.
Guest:I'm going to make the announcement and go.
Marc:So what were you going to say about me tomorrow?
Guest:Oh, well, I was going to say this is Mark's first event.
Guest:And I guess, you know, my feeling is I just kind of want him to like, you know, take it all in.
Guest:But I'm just interested for you as a guy who runs the company, who writes the show, is going to present this tomorrow at the LA Forum.
Guest:Like for someone like Mark that it's his first time, what do you want him to take away from this?
Guest:Oh, I think you're going to have a great time.
Guest:This is an awesome show to have you be your first show.
Guest:And I think that's, you know, you're going to see some great matches.
Guest:The engagement with the fans, I think you'll, you know, for somebody who professionally engages with live fans on a weekly basis like yourself and has been doing it for decades.
Guest:And I've been watching you do it for decades.
Guest:I know that you'll have a great appreciation.
Guest:for the connection that the wrestlers have with this audience.
Guest:And when you see at the forum how many fans turn up and also all the specific things they know, like the specific callbacks and moments, it's amazing the recollection and the recall.
Guest:And to some extent, working in English football, when people go for the first time, they don't necessarily understand it and they don't necessarily...
Guest:even know the chance the fans are doing or the connection the fans in England have with the football matches.
Guest:But, like, you can say, wow, these people are so into it and connect with it.
Guest:And then it makes you want to learn and become a part of it.
Guest:And I do think that's what we have with our audience.
Guest:When we're watching it on TV, like, the both of us, we start laughing any time there's, like, you know, something that's deliberately done to, like, pop the crowd or get a big reaction.
Guest:And then there's just reaction shots of fans.
Guest:And, you know, I'm a wrestling fan for 35 years.
Guest:And I'm like, I still love that.
Guest:I still love when you see somebody just react genuinely to it.
Guest:And on a macro level, when you see the whole place come unglued for a moment, I mean, there's nothing better.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Well, I'm looking forward to it.
Guest:It's good talking to you, man.
Guest:You too.
Guest:Thanks for having me in your home.
Guest:You bet.
Guest:Thanks for coming.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Guest:I can't wait to see you tomorrow.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:The next day, we went to the AEW Dynamite Show in Los Angeles.
Marc:And while we were backstage, we caught up with our old friend, Colt Cabana.
Marc:Colt was a guest back on episode 334, and he was also on my IFC show, Marin.
Marc:Now he works for AEW, and we had this conversation in catering.
Marc:Check, check.
Marc:Cool.
Marc:Utah.
Guest:Hey, man, one, two, one, two.
Marc:Colt Cabana backstage.
Marc:Yeah, good.
Marc:Hey, Colt Cabana.
Marc:Unreal.
Marc:I mean, jeez, how long has it been since I talked to you?
Guest:This is like the update.
Guest:This is what everybody wanted.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, it's been years.
Marc:When did I talk to Colt, man?
Guest:2012, 2013?
Guest:If I was to guess, it was 2013.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we're keeping the streak alive of never being to the garage.
Guest:Because it was in like an Evanston Hotel, do you remember?
Marc:That's right, dude, when I was playing that little theater.
Marc:The main stage.
Marc:Main stage, which I don't think is a theater anymore.
Guest:And when you did Marin the show, you were in the fake garage, right?
Guest:Fake garage.
Marc:That is correct.
Marc:Well, what are you going to do?
Marc:But the point is, the last time I talked to you, you were kind of like a little star of this groovy, hip, indie wrestling network.
Guest:And it's wild that you heard this is the baby.
Guest:Now you're the baby, but this is big time.
Guest:Yeah, but it was from the scene of my group of guys.
Guest:Now, it wasn't necessarily me, because it was the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega, essentially, that kind of got with Tony.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:you know, the Young Bucks wrote a book and in their book they said, like, they took the blueprints of Cole Cabana of, like, selling t-shirts of, like, of one, you know, one-on-one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they, like, I thought, I remember I thought I was doing good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I watched the Young Bucks get so big and I watched their line, their merch line, literally, like, like,
Guest:700 people around a building just for merch.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so then it became this thing, and now it's this thing.
Guest:And luckily, I'm along for the ride, and it's fun.
Guest:Well, yeah, I mean, you got in under the wire there, huh?
Guest:I really did.
Guest:Especially, like, at my age, as my body's falling apart.
Guest:I told you that.
Guest:Yeah, but what happened?
Guest:Like, so how did it happen?
Guest:How'd you get the gig?
Guest:I mean, I'm just part of the community.
Guest:Like, I'm part of the cult.
Guest:Like, this is, like, the opposite of what the other wrestling, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:Like, this is...
Guest:This was the young, hungry guys.
Guest:It's counterculture of counterculture.
Guest:So that's interesting.
Guest:So this is all the guys that you were wrestling with on the Indies.
Guest:Yes, in front of 100 people, 200 people, sometimes 10,000 in Japan.
Guest:They wouldn't let us in America.
Guest:Right.
Guest:For years we were saying, like, why won't you look at us and think that we're good?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anybody.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Tony Khan, like, wasn't able to do that.
Guest:And now there's another Jew.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, I feel bad.
Guest:Like, Max is such a star now, MJF.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm like the sad older Jew now.
Guest:Well, I mean, but it's good that we're represented.
Guest:There's a new upstart Jew and a sad older Jew.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Guest:It is...
Guest:Fun to represent the chosen people.
Guest:Sure, man.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:I'm happy for you.
Guest:Well, I'm happy for you.
Guest:First of all, I love that you got thrown into wrestling.
Guest:I did, dude.
Guest:And when I heard you talking to Kia and to Chavo, and I'm like, oh, he gets it now.
Guest:He's been doing the wrestling show.
Guest:But I didn't fully get it until yesterday.
Marc:Because he sat down with me as a fan, a lifelong fan.
Marc:of pro wrestling, and we sat down and watched some of these matches.
Marc:I never did that with GLOW.
Marc:I never felt the pressure to because I wasn't really supposed to know about wrestling.
Marc:But just to sort of see how it all worked in real time, I've never been to one of these, but we watched them, and I was sort of like, oh, okay, I get it.
Marc:It all locked together.
Marc:I understand how you can be emotionally attached.
Marc:To wrestling.
Guest:And you appreciate the performance.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:You have to.
Guest:Yeah, it's real show business.
Guest:Especially as a performer.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It's real show business.
Guest:Yeah, and so you're going to watch it in person tonight.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Which I think you'll get a whole new... So I can't wait to hear the after part of this.
Guest:Because you'll get a whole... To be up front and really watch the people as they're sweating and watch how they direct the crowd in the ring.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You'll get a whole new appreciation, which makes me happy.
Guest:Do we have good seats?
Guest:We better have good seats.
Guest:If you don't, I can...
Guest:All right, thanks.
Guest:I know a guy.
Marc:We might text you.
Marc:Please do.
Marc:Thanks, buddy.
Marc:Hey, congratulations on all your successes.
Marc:Thanks, buddy.
Guest:You too.
Guest:It's the best.
Guest:It's the best.
Marc:We found out some behind-the-scenes secrets about how AEW operates.
Marc:For example, sometimes a referee is not just a referee.
Marc:We met Bryce Remsburg backstage, and on camera he's a ref, but his work doesn't end there.
Guest:What would you say your title is while you're here?
Guest:Are you one of the senior officials?
Guest:Oh, one of the more senior officials.
Guest:One of the top six we have.
Guest:So what you saw Bryce do was he refereed the steel cage match with Jungle Boy.
Guest:Oh, that's true.
Guest:That's a true fact of that.
Guest:When he dove off the cage and shattered his hip.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And Bryce, I mean, we made note while we were watching it.
Guest:You're like, wow, this guy's really reacting to everything, even though he's not allowed to do anything.
Guest:It's a cage match.
Guest:I'm the voice of the audience.
Guest:If someone's jumping off a cage in front of me, I feel compelled to react, I guess.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I mean, but you don't have to stop anything.
Guest:oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Guest:They signed up for this.
Guest:Who would want that, right?
Guest:Who wants to see me stop this?
Guest:Let them go.
Guest:I'm also the travel manager for AEW, which is a harder job, which involves higher numbers than 10 or 20.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:Making sure everyone gets here on time, booking hotels, booking flights, shuttles, car service, et cetera, all
Marc:You've got to do all that shit and get in the ring?
Marc:Get in the ring.
Marc:Is the payoff to get in the ring?
Guest:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Guest:100%.
Guest:That's what I want to do.
Guest:You're a wrestler.
Guest:I was a referee on the independents for 17 years, and this started.
Guest:So if I also have to talk to some hotels on the phone and able to get in there and do that, that scratches the edge.
Marc:Wait, so you arrange travel for all 50 of these guys?
Guest:150 is our number, yeah.
Guest:150?
Guest:About 90 wrestlers, 60 staff, a referee, social media, medical, security, all that.
Guest:That's all.
Marc:That's all you?
Guest:I have a team, but I'm the manager, yeah.
Marc:And you do the reffing.
Guest:And Tony's car service and Tony's planes and everything, yeah.
Marc:But do you, are you sad you're not wrestling?
Marc:No.
Guest:No, I'm fragile emotionally and physically, Mark.
Guest:I don't want to do any of that.
Guest:I have a proxy.
Guest:I refereed on small stuff.
Guest:It's kind of like stand-up, I'd imagine.
Guest:You work through the smaller stuff, and now you get to do the big-time stuff, but I don't want to get hurt.
Marc:You're always just a ref?
Guest:Yes, sir.
Guest:I'm short.
Guest:I make guys look tall.
Guest:I'm 5'5", so if I stand next to Darby or Jungle Boy, they look like giants.
Guest:That's my job.
Marc:So now, these guys don't travel together, though.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:They all fly from wherever they live at home, and they come to wherever we are.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Sometimes LA easy.
Guest:Next week, Fresno.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Not as easy, but we get there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, what are you doing tonight?
Guest:I am going to referee Jungle Boy and Hook's tag team match.
Guest:And the aforementioned Darby Allin is wrestling on Rampage, I believe, later tonight.
Guest:So I'll be in there.
Marc:I'll be in there.
Marc:Where are you going to be?
Marc:I'll be wrestling.
Guest:The main event.
Guest:You'll be wrestling with your emotions.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I don't know where we're sitting, but I'll be here.
Guest:All right.
Guest:All right.
Guest:What a time to be alive.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Do you find a great crossover from wrestling psyche and self-doubt and stand-up comedians?
Guest:Even when you get to the highest point of everything...
Marc:I don't know, you know, just from talking to these guys, I don't know that many wrestlers, but it seems like some of the dues-paying process is similar.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:In terms of venue size and sort of getting your act together.
Guest:You feel like you earned it.
Marc:You feel like you earned it, but also you learn how to do it, you know, in smaller rooms and in smaller crowds.
Marc:And after talking to...
Marc:Chris Jericho, just learning how to work off the crowd and how that sort of feeds what you're doing.
Marc:So I think more of a similarity in knowing that this is all show business and the do's process is very similar.
Marc:It's a lot less physical to be a comic.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But the crummy hotels and flight delays, and that's part of the gig.
Marc:All that's part of it, yeah.
Marc:But these guys are kind of solo operators as well.
Marc:But ultimately, the show is with other people, whereas that's not the case.
Guest:I'm so jealous of you.
Guest:You just need a mic stand and a stool and a bottle of water.
Marc:That's it.
Guest:And we have this whole production with the ring.
Marc:Did you get in the ring?
Marc:Did you get in the ring?
Marc:I didn't get in the ring.
Marc:But some guys these days are doing pretty big productions.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:Stand-ups.
Marc:Oh, yeah, sure.
Marc:Good for them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Kevin Hart, that's a big operation.
Marc:Good for him.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Another short guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Good talking to you.
Guest:Good talking to you.
Thank you, sir.
Marc:So the day after the show, Brendan came over to the garage and we got on the mics to talk about the whole experience.
Marc:You'll hear that now along with our talks with wrestlers MJF and Eddie Kingston.
Marc:You know, to be honest with you, the whole experience backstage, watching the stuff first, and then being there at the show, I mean, I totally get it.
Marc:And I totally was invested in it.
Marc:Even when we watched...
Marc:The stuff in the living room, like just you telling me the background of the people and something quick for me.
Marc:And I think did we talk about it on the mics?
Marc:I something quick for me in that I can understand not unlike a musical, like with my weird thing about musicals is that when you see a lot of people executing something that they're doing.
Marc:properly it's moving right yeah yeah so even when we were watching it in the living room i i sort of got the beats and when you explain the structure of a match i got that but just the fact that you know like oh he made it you know he landed on the thing you know uh there's something exciting about that but watching it live
Marc:I felt the same kind of emotions, I feel, that are not really explained when an arc sort of worked.
Marc:Like, they have a build to it, right?
Marc:So when they're doing the finale of moves, you know, I could feel like, you know, almost tear up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, like, and I also noticed when we were backstage that the thing that struck me, even talking to the wrestlers, is that they're...
Marc:I'm intimidated by athleticism, by that competitive nature of sports.
Marc:I wouldn't really know how to be in a locker room.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's like your old joke about how if you see a teenager walking with a varsity jacket on one side of the street.
Marc:It should be cool.
Marc:But, yeah, but there's that.
Marc:But also just it's so not my world.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, I don't even understand, you know, why it's important in the sense that, like, I get they're going to go win.
Marc:And there's, you know, the goal is the sport.
Marc:And these guys are in top shape to do a sport.
Marc:But these guys, you know, they're big guys.
Marc:And I'm sure they have sports in their past, some of them.
Marc:But they're very aware that they're part of show business.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You know, you're not going to have that vibe in a football locker room like, you know, we're just putting on a show.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, like these guys are very much we're putting on a show.
Marc:They're not backstage psyching each other out.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, it's just like it's like a fucking circus back there.
Guest:Well, we should tell people how we saw all of this, how it kind of developed for us as as witnesses to it.
Guest:When we when we were, you know, showed up to the arena.
Guest:The first thing we got to see, we were in the bowl of the arena, the forum.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was, you know, pre-show.
Guest:It was about three hours before they opened the doors or before the show started.
Guest:And the wrestlers, a lot of them, were in the ring talking through what their match was going to be that night.
Marc:Specifically that closer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It looked like that was what was happening when we got there.
Marc:They had the ladder in there.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And there was a lot of discussion.
Guest:And so we watched that for a while.
Guest:We watched just kind of what they were setting up.
Guest:Then we went backstage to the Forum Club where there was a kind of sitting area so that we could sit and do some of the interviews.
Guest:And that was with Max, MJF, who is the champion.
Guest:And we knew he was going to come in and do basically a gimmick interview, in-character interview.
Marc:funny though he's talking normal yeah and and uh and i'm like so this is going to stop right when we go on he's like oh yeah i'm going to be the biggest douchebag jew from long island that you ever met yeah right the worst jewish person from long island now hold on a second i'm salt to the earth you don't get to say that about well i mean the fans can say that you don't get to say that yeah but i mean aren't you helping jews i i'd like to think so yeah you know when you think about jewish people normally they're very schleppy yeah already looking kind of like you yeah but you know i'm trying to break the mold like
Guest:Wait, wait.
Marc:Back up.
Marc:Back up.
Marc:Back up.
Marc:I think that I'm half nerdy, half stocky.
Marc:I'm like a hybrid Jew.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Hybrid Jew.
Marc:Not full nebbish.
Marc:Not full nebbish.
Guest:You're not like all the way to the right athletic like Goldberg.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:But you're not all the way to the left Don Rickles.
Marc:Well, I'm not a math Jew.
Marc:I'm in the middle.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Let me tell you something, I'm definitely not a math Jew.
Guest:I can tell you that much.
Guest:Besides counting my money.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:Now, how do Jews respond to you?
Marc:Jews love me.
Marc:You kidding me?
Marc:I'm the mensch of the cinch.
Guest:You kidding me?
Guest:I'm over as fuck with the trash.
Marc:How about Israelis?
Marc:Do Israelis like you?
Marc:Israelis?
Marc:Yeah, dude.
Guest:If you're a Jew, you love MJF because if you think about it, I'm really the first prolific world champion that just so happens to be Jewish.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:in the history of the business that is good at talking and wrestling.
Guest:Love Bill Goldberg to death, but you put a mic in front of his mouth, he kind of has a bit of a panic attack.
Marc:Now, how many Jews, is there a history of Jews in wrestling?
Marc:Not really.
Guest:There's not a lot of us, as you would imagine.
Guest:Most of us are known for being dentists, doctors, lawyers, or stand-up comedians.
Marc:That's right, but there's been a few sports Jews, no?
Marc:For sure.
Guest:Actually, my great, great uncle, Benny Friedman, is in the NFL Hall of Fame.
Guest:He was a quarterback.
Marc:I know there were Jew boxers.
Guest:Chewbacca's?
Guest:Jew boxers.
Marc:I'm just fucking with you.
Guest:Yes, there were definitely Jewish boxers for sure.
Marc:Was this the dream?
Guest:Pro wrestling?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:From the jump.
Guest:My two biggest things I wanted to do since I was a child was professional wrestling and then parlay that into acting.
Guest:But when did you start watching wrestling?
Guest:I started watching wrestling probably when I was six.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember what had happened was...
Guest:My father took me to my uncle's house and there was just a party going on on a Friday.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Smackdown was playing at the time, WWE Smackdown.
Guest:And I remember just seeing these gigantic men and I was just so enamored by it.
Guest:These dudes just beating the shit out of each other.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember I just grabbed my dad and I was like, take me to Hollywood video.
Guest:So now if anyone's listening and you don't know what Hollywood video is.
Guest:Yeah, I remember.
Guest:I'm shocked somebody's listening that's younger than me.
Guest:I was born in 96, but yes, now Hollywood videos don't really exist anymore.
Guest:So he took me to Hollywood video.
Guest:I grabbed one of the DVD box sets and there was a guy on the cover that looked like a zombie.
Guest:And I watched it and that guy turned out to be The Undertaker.
Guest:And my first match I ever watched in full was a Hell in a Cell match.
Guest:Now, I don't know if you've ever seen this March match, but...
Guest:It was intense.
Guest:Mick Foley got thrown from the top of the cell to the floor.
Guest:Is that what did him in?
Guest:I mean, I think a lot of things did that guy in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's definitely, he's wrote some great stuff.
Guest:He's a great author.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But his brain is mush.
Guest:We talked to him a couple times.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's just beat up physically.
Guest:Oh, for sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Beat up physically, mentally, emotionally.
Guest:Hot daughter, though.
Guest:I'll give him that.
Guest:Noel's hot.
Marc:But aren't you concerned that you're going to get beat up physically, mentally, emotionally?
Guest:Mark.
Guest:What?
Guest:Please.
Guest:Listen to me.
Guest:Let me explain something to you.
Guest:All right.
Guest:I don't wrestle often.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm what they call a special attraction.
Guest:Kind of like Andre the Giant.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Just not necessarily as tall.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I think he was a Jew, wasn't he?
Marc:Andre?
Marc:Definitely not.
Guest:Definitely French.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Not Jewish.
Guest:All right.
Guest:But we can forget about that.
Marc:So you're not concerned about your well-being?
Guest:No.
Guest:i'm really not i wrestle i wrestle very rarely uh i get paid very well yeah uh because when i do wrestle people really tune in because i'm such a hot commodity and i rarely wrestle i mainly if i'm being honest with myself yeah i run my mouth a little bit right that's what i'm known for but but not wrestling i mean you wrestle i mean i'm very good i'm the world champion of course i'm good at professional how do you do that by not wrestling often
Guest:Well, now I have the title, so I don't have to defend the belt unless somebody becomes number one contender.
Marc:Isn't it my understanding that guys like you eventually get schooled?
Marc:What are you talking about?
Marc:Me?
Marc:How could I possibly be schooled?
Guest:I'm the smartest man in professional wrestling.
Marc:But someone's going to beat you, right?
Marc:Mark, that's impossible.
Marc:All right.
Guest:You sound very foolish, right?
Guest:No, I apologize.
Guest:Maybe I'm just, I don't know enough.
Guest:You're just, you're a little green around the ears when it comes to professional wrestling.
Marc:That's fine.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But what guys like me are known for is we win the world title and people chase us forever in a day and then we retire and we, you know, we retire undefeated.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that's it.
Guest:I mean, that's pretty much tale as old as time.
Guest:Bad guy not getting his comeuppance.
Marc:What about the acting future?
Marc:Is that going to happen?
Guest:So actually, I had just booked a role and just finished rapping with a movie called Iron Claw.
Guest:Is it a wrestling movie?
Guest:It is.
Guest:It's about the Von Ericks.
Guest:It was me and Zac Efron and Colt McAllister and Jeremy Allen White.
Guest:Did you play a wrestler?
Guest:No.
Guest:I did, shockingly.
Guest:Did you play a douchebag?
Guest:So you would call the guy that I played a douchebag.
Guest:His name was Lance Von Eric.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he may or may not have held up the promoter for money.
Guest:Who's to say?
Guest:Oh, this is like old-timey wrestling?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:This is back in the day.
Guest:This is retro wrestling in Texas.
Guest:It's based on a true story.
Guest:Did you do a Texan accent?
Guest:no absolutely not all right no i don't mess around with i don't i don't want to sound dumb personally i don't know if you're from the south i apologize that you're dumb but i don't like sounding southern um you grew up on long island of course what town most magical place in the world i grew up in plain view yeah and now i own an apartment in the uh the golden coast over at glenn cove what oh is that nice oh it's kidding me i had i had cousins in hewlett oh yeah i like that okay so you don't come from horrible stock no i come from jew stock jersey stock
Guest:city jews well it's uh maybe we don't talk about that maybe we'll talk about where you come from yeah you know they moved to where you came from exactly yeah exactly what they want their life to get better what was your dad a doctor did you grow up with a porsche my well my first car was a camaro not a porsche i'm actually about to get a porsche in february yeah it's a uh gts tycon oh really neon green what you ordered it
Guest:Of course I did.
Guest:You ordered the neon green one?
Guest:Neon green.
Marc:Tycon.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Green like money, baby.
Marc:I don't know what that means.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So a Tycon, it's their only electric vehicle.
Guest:Oh, you got an electric port.
Guest:Yes, I did.
Guest:Good luck with that.
Marc:What?
Marc:What?
Marc:It'll be fine.
Guest:I think it'll be fine.
Marc:I mean, you just seem like a gas guy.
Guest:That's the thing, is a lot of people would think that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I'm very smart with my money and gas prices these days.
Guest:As you would know as an L.A.
Marc:boy.
Marc:Through the roof.
Marc:Terrible.
Marc:Terrible.
Marc:Horrible.
Marc:First car was a Camaro though, huh?
Marc:First car was a Camaro.
Marc:So what kind of business was your old man in?
Guest:So my father made Paleo Bagels.
Guest:Really?
Guest:He works for me now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He works for you making bagels?
Guest:No, now.
Guest:Now he's done with the bagels.
Guest:He's sold the business.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:God bless him.
Guest:What do you mean Paleo Bagels?
Guest:They're called Pagels.
Guest:That was his big idea?
Guest:That was his big thing, and he made a decent chunk of change off of that.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Jewish people love their bagels, and Long Island Jews love their diets.
Guest:So if you mix those two things together, we're talking a lot of money.
Guest:So how do you make a paleo bagel?
Guest:So we found out about this stuff called cassava flour.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he would use that.
Guest:He would utilize that to make the bagels.
Marc:And now is it a kind of bagel where you've been into it, and you're like, not great, but it's paleo.
Marc:Let me tell you.
Guest:I'm about to shock you.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Just as good as a regular bagel.
Guest:And that's coming from a Long Island Jew.
Guest:Really?
Guest:He boiled it in the water and baked it?
Guest:He figured it out.
Guest:I don't know how he did it.
Guest:Guy's a mad scientist when it comes to bagels.
Guest:So what's he do for you?
Guest:So now he's just managing my money.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:100%.
Guest:You trust him?
Guest:Not really.
Guest:But somebody's got to give that schmuck a job, you know?
Guest:And then my mom, she's in the steel industry.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She works for a company called B&S Aircraft.
Guest:She co-owns the company with my uncle, Alan Weissman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:If you ever need steel or metal.
Guest:Was that Trump's guy who just got put in jail?
Guest:I doubt it.
Guest:Weisselberg.
Guest:Weisselberg.
Guest:What do I know, Jews?
Guest:Yeah, another long-nosed Jewish guy.
Marc:So now, do you find any actual anti-Semitism coming at you?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I've had death threats.
Guest:I've had Nazi emblems keyed into my car.
Guest:Really?
Guest:When I was on the indies, you would hear kike a lot more often than I've heard it here, but I think that's only because the arenas are so loud.
Guest:If there is someone screaming kike, I just can't hear it because there's so many people booing me because they have a bad taste mark.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's kind of interesting, right?
Guest:Did you ever find it menacing or you still thought it was all part of the gimmick?
Guest:Quite frankly, so I think in the underbelly of society, and I think you would agree with this, anti-Semitism has always been rampant.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:That's why we're kind of always like, oh shit, you got the cough, gotta be the Jews.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like a Jewish
Guest:people is always the scapegoat.
Guest:So I think this Kanye thing kind of unearthed it all over again.
Guest:And I found that really interesting to see how many people were in the replies like, you know, he's not wrong.
Guest:And you're just reading it.
Guest:And at first you're just baffled by the stupidity, but then you have to remind yourself, no, antisemitism is rampant, but it's not as fun to talk about as say, um, other ethnicities going through it.
Marc:For whatever reason.
Marc:Well, that's because most people don't know Jews.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, like, you know, other ethnicities are more represented in culture.
Marc:I'd say you got to go find a Jew.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We're hiding.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We're hiding.
Marc:We're writing for the anti-Semites is what we're doing.
Marc:But like in comedy, though, I go out of my way now.
Marc:I like to really kind of make a big deal out of the Jew thing.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:Annoy whatever people might be anti-Semitic.
Marc:I like to get people to just get to a point where they're like, we get it, Jew.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I think we're going to get along great.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because that's what I love to do.
Guest:That's actually exactly what I love to do.
Marc:But what are you going to do tonight?
Marc:This is my first live wrestling show.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I'm so sorry.
Marc:You're not wrestling.
Guest:You're going to have to deal with everybody else except me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I'm just going to go out there and talk and be the biggest star in the entire show like I am every week.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:That's why I get paid by seven figures.
Guest:You're the guy.
Guest:You're fucking kidding me, Mark.
Guest:Don't be stupid.
Guest:So I'm going to go out there, entertain the crowd like nobody else's business.
Guest:I know that there are a bunch of highfalutin people here in LA.
Guest:Are there?
Guest:Who's coming?
Guest:And they got a lot of interesting people around here, apparently.
Guest:People like you, Ken Jeong, Freddie Prinze Jr., Macaulay Culkin, Paul Walter Hauser.
Guest:Those are a couple of people that I know that are here.
Guest:Paul's going to be here?
Guest:Paul's a great guy.
Guest:He's a good guy.
Guest:Paul's a great guy.
Guest:I'm going to have to text him.
Marc:He just texted me the other day.
Guest:Paul's a huge MJF fan.
Guest:I mean, who the fuck is it, Mark?
Marc:Me.
Marc:I'm just learning.
Marc:I'm trying to get in.
Guest:Trying to get into it.
Guest:I'm not too late.
Guest:Do I have to be seven?
Guest:You're never too late.
Guest:And if anybody tells you that you have to be young to enjoy this, I think it's silly.
Guest:And I'm going to get real serious with you on this.
Guest:I think now more than ever, professional wrestling is this incredible thing because it's...
Guest:Not only is it this crazy form of athleticism, but it's also in a sense is you're seeing us where we are performing this sport with no net.
Guest:And there's no backup plan and there's no way to mess up.
Guest:Whereas if I sit down and I go to see a stand-up comic and there's shit in the bed,
Guest:they can maybe figure out a way to get around it.
Guest:And it's probably not being recorded live for the world to see while it's happening.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But we're alive every single week.
Marc:Well, you go, we go without net sometimes.
Marc:And yeah, but I mean, but I guess when we fuck up, not the whole world doesn't see it right now.
Marc:So the risk is not, you're going to drop a guy.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:The risk isn't that you're going to be a paraplegic.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I mean, when you do this, when you do the, the matches, I mean, you've got bits you do.
Guest:right well i mean what do you call them i mean i'll bite people from now and then but if only when you chart it out you know what you're gonna open with mostly like he has a comic you know personally yeah i'm a shoot from the hip type of guy yeah oh really i say what i'm feeling i feel what i'm saying but i mean like with moves like with actual wrestling with the with the moves when i'm in there you know i have to i have to study my opponent study their movement figure out what's what openings i have yeah is their arm hurt is their fucking yeah is their knee hurt yeah and that's where you
Guest:Then you got to go for it.
Guest:Do you ever use weaponry?
Guest:So you're not going to tell anybody this, right?
Guest:No, I'm not.
Guest:All right, thank God.
Guest:So sometimes, if I'm a little worried, I have a ring that I put in my trunks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I put it on my pinky.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I punch the guy out with it when the ref's not looking.
Guest:All right.
Guest:And it works every time.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Every time.
Marc:So you cheat.
Marc:What?
Marc:I mean, is that part of it?
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:I think I slightly bend the rules.
Guest:All right.
Guest:To my advantage.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you have to.
Guest:You have to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm not trying to get hurt.
Guest:How was your bar mitzvah?
Guest:Was it good?
Guest:Oh, Maximania?
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Guest:It was fantastic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We had dancing luchador females.
Guest:Their tatas were out.
Guest:It was all kosher, though.
Guest:That was your bar mitzvah party?
Marc:Wrestling theme?
Guest:Wrestling theme.
Marc:That's hilarious.
Marc:Now, did you do the full thing Friday and Saturday?
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:One day gimmick.
Guest:Red in the morning, party in the evening.
Guest:That was it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did the half tour and you're out.
Guest:Get in and get out.
Guest:Let's get to the party.
Guest:How'd you do?
Guest:Make some money?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, you know how Jewish grandparents and cousins are.
Guest:They were great.
Guest:They treated me well that night, for sure.
Marc:Brothers and sisters?
Marc:I have two older siblings, yes.
Marc:And do they judge you?
Guest:Are they proud of you?
Guest:I think they're definitely proud of the fact
Guest:I think they knew I was going to make something of myself to this degree.
Guest:I don't think any of them could have guessed it.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Are they doctors or lawyers or anything?
Guest:So Carly, the middle sister, she's in business and finance.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Alex is actually in fashion.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like as a designer or just- She's a designer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Has she done any trunks for you or anything?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I won't let her anywhere near my shit.
Guest:She's horrible at her job, but she's trying.
Guest:She's trying her best.
Guest:God bless her.
Marc:How are you going to get the Nazis not to key your green Porsche?
Guest:So the good news is now I get flown out, and I have a driver.
Guest:So I never drive my own car when we're going to different arenas in different states every week.
Guest:But back on the island, you'll drive it back to the garage.
Guest:Back on the island, yeah.
Guest:I'll drive my car.
Guest:But everybody loves me on Long Island.
Guest:I'm a welcome hero.
Guest:Are you a hero?
Guest:1,000%.
Guest:You know, I get booed everywhere else because everybody else has bad taste.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We come to Long Island.
Guest:Everybody in Long Island knows the deal.
Guest:They know I'm the best thing since sliced bread.
Guest:So you're like Billy Joel.
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'd say much more attractive than Bill.
Guest:I would hope so at this point.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Give it time.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, shit.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:So time gets us all.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So tonight you're just going to get up there and start some shit.
Guest:Maybe.
Marc:We'll see how I'm feeling.
Marc:It was good talking to you.
Marc:I know it was, Mark.
Marc:All right.
Marc:And we talked to Eddie Kingston.
Guest:Yeah, Eddie, we talked to him specifically because I had read a piece that he had put together for the website The Players' Tribune, a piece largely about his mental health issues.
Guest:But in the piece, he kind of outlined his trajectory as a wrestler.
Guest:And I remember reading it months ago when it came out and thinking like, wow, there's so many parallels here to, you know, people we've had on this show talking about struggling with comedy stuff.
Guest:Specifically, Mark, like, you know, there were you talking about those hell gigs where there's nobody in the crowd.
Marc:And we've discussed that with wrestlers before.
Marc:I mean, that that was you know, we knew that that was a similarity.
Marc:But I think what I didn't what I had to put together that not unlike the experience of as a fan like you or somebody watching.
Marc:is that this gives these guys, you know, who are probably not emotionally that healthy, you know, a very specific context to have extreme emotions.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Of all kinds.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:You know, in character and also physicality.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, they make these decisions...
Marc:So not unlike a fan who's experiencing a wave of emotions and, you know, personality, identification, transference, you know, hero worship, all that stuff, or having the arc of an emotional experience to any match.
Marc:These guys, you know, have this controlled performative way to sort of really get the shit out.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You know how to handle a mic.
Guest:I try.
Marc:Yeah, hold up.
Guest:Sometimes they trust us.
Guest:Sometimes they don't.
Marc:Yeah, there you go.
Guest:Especially when I want to curse on live TV, which is not a good thing.
Guest:Yeah, sometimes.
Guest:You know, I use curses as like, you know, adjectives or whatever.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Yeah, I spent a lot of time in New York.
Marc:You speak the language.
Marc:You already know.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:well i just wanted to say when they came to us about doing this with aew and you know working with our show uh you know they give us the whole list of people to to do stuff with and i said no actually i want eddie kingston like that's that's the guy who matches up the closest with what we do on this show and no no not mjf our world champion he just came in so i mean he was gonna bigfoot it no matter what i guess he's a real piece of shit yeah
Guest:i'm just gonna put that out there i don't know why he's the champ but he he'll hear this anyway and he'll cry about it to tony then i'll get an email from mega hr yeah and they'll be like you can't be calling our world champion a piece of shit i'm like well if he doesn't act like a piece of shit i wouldn't call him that but you know but you know that isn't that his job to act like a piece of shit not backstage to the boys oh really yeah yeah he's a low life man he's a young kid who just thinks he knows it all and he doesn't
Guest:fuck him i don't give a shit what are you gonna do fire me okay yeah yeah i'll work i'll work somewhere and make money it doesn't bother me but yeah but your your journey to where you are yeah was uh it was fucking hard yeah it was that's a nice way of putting it yeah i mean you grew up where'd you grow up i grew up in yonkers new york i was born in the bronx uh university avenue but then grew up in yonkers
Marc:Yeah, and I mean, because I read a piece on you, and it was like, you know, I kind of related to it because I did stand-up for, you know, a long time before anything happened.
Marc:And you get to that point where you're like, fuck.
Guest:When is this going to pop off?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you, like, you hit the wall.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you're just tired and you're done and you don't know what to do.
Guest:And then you're like, for me, it was during the pandemic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was selling my clothes, my wrestling gear on eBay or wherever.
Guest:But did you have, you had fans at that point?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I had independent fans.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was getting money, but it was still like, I'm trying to pay for the mortgage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In Florida.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Oh, you were in Florida.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:What part of Florida?
Guest:Orlando.
Guest:Yeah, that's not a happy place.
Guest:I like it because no one knows me.
Guest:And I'm just in my backyard and smoking a little bit of weed and no one knows me.
Guest:So you live down there now?
Marc:Yeah, I live down there now.
Marc:They're going to get mad at me.
Marc:Like, I'm like the biggest heel to Orlando.
Marc:Because I talk shit about it and they just always yell at me.
Guest:Well, I don't blame you because during the pandemic, I went to the 7-Eleven.
Guest:The pandemic just started.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just started.
Guest:I go to the 7-Eleven.
Guest:I'm wearing my mask and everything.
Guest:No one in there is.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Nobody.
Marc:Well, there's that, but I kind of get stuck in the theme park thing.
Marc:If you just go to Orlando and all you experience is the theme park, then they hate you because they're like, you didn't go out and get a hamburger.
Marc:You didn't go out and do this or that.
Marc:I don't go out.
Guest:Thank God for Uber Eats.
Guest:When I get home from the road, it's five guys and-
Guest:Ben and Jerry's from 7-Eleven.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:But what were you doing?
Guest:When did you leave New York?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:I was 33, 34.
Guest:Met a girl.
Marc:Yeah, but you started wrestling when you were in New York?
Guest:Yeah, I was 20 years old when I started wrestling, yeah.
Marc:Wait, how did that happen?
Marc:Is this something you always wanted to do?
Guest:I always wanted to do it.
Guest:And then I was ironworking in the city for Local 580.
Guest:What's up, boys?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you were a union guy?
Guest:Yeah, my whole family's union, all elevated.
Marc:Ironworkers?
Guest:No, local one.
Guest:My Uncle Kevin Moore, rest in peace, he was an ironworker.
Guest:Now, were you like up on, like- Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You were sitting on the girders?
Guest:Yeah, that and the hoist and all that stuff.
Guest:Hanging off the side of the building, welding, putting windows in, all that stuff.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:So I just turned around and I saw like a 70, 80-year-old guy who's been on the job God knows how long.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he's just coughing up a lung and drinking on the job site.
Guest:And I went, I'm smoking my cigarette going, there got to be something more than this.
Guest:And I just got AOL.
Guest:Yes, I'm older.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just looked up wrestling schools near me.
Guest:And I found one.
Guest:Which one did you go to?
Guest:I went to one in Jersey.
Guest:They kicked me out.
Guest:I'm a New York kid, so I'm not going to hold my tongue.
Guest:I didn't know I had to be whatever professional, I guess they call it.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Like if I saw someone who was being an asshole, I was like, oh, you're an asshole.
Guest:But they're like, oh, he's been in the business this amount of years.
Guest:You can't be mean like that.
Guest:I'm like, what are you talking about?
Guest:Anyway, got kicked out of there.
Guest:Went to a place in Pennsylvania called Jakara.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Where a lot of us are from.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of the AEW people.
Marc:They trained there?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They learned?
Marc:Yeah, they all learned from there and then just took off.
Marc:And what do you learn?
Marc:Mostly, do you learn how to put together a persona or just moves?
Guest:For me, it wasn't the persona.
Marc:You already had that.
Marc:That was just me, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:This is me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They teach you how to tell a story.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Not just what moves to do, but how to tell it.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Like, how do you put that together in your head?
Marc:Like, you're going on tonight.
Guest:Yeah, tonight, me, I don't talk about it.
Guest:I like, because after 21 years in, not that I know it, it's just...
Guest:After 21 years in, I don't remember a lot of things.
Guest:You can't tell me what you're going to do because I'll forget.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:So they just got to react?
Guest:I go, listen, we just got to react to each other and do what we would do in real life if we're in a real fight.
Guest:I try to keep it in, you know.
Guest:Fresh?
Guest:Yeah, character, I guess you could say, or whatever you want to call it.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I don't want to talk to you out there, so I'm not going to talk to you back here.
Guest:We may go over little things here and there, but other than that, let's just.
Marc:So it's just the assumption that everybody can respond to the move you're going to put on them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, we're just going to see what happens.
Guest:And if they react, they react.
Guest:If they don't, then we'll go a different way.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Now, when he started, though, what was the, you know, what was the independent scene like at that time?
Marc:Oh, it was shitty.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was horrible.
Marc:I was getting like $5 a show, $10 a show.
Guest:And promoters, though, like, did they take advantage of it?
Guest:Oh, God, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The indie scene didn't pop off on the East Coast until about...
Guest:I say 05, 06.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And that's when I was like a couple years in, and then there were guys like me, Samoa Joe, Homicide, Bryan Danielson, all those guys made the independents really hot.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But they still screwed you.
Marc:Yeah, but before, did you see like dudes that like, you know, who'd been at it too long and that were like sad and-
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's how I feel like I look like now in the locker room to the guys.
Guest:I'm just sitting in the corner going, when are we done with this?
Guest:But it didn't scare you?
Marc:It didn't make you think like, holy shit.
Guest:No, because I didn't want to do anything for my life.
Marc:This was it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, if I wasn't going to do this, then I was just going to do iron working or whatever.
Guest:So when shit went bad, what happened?
Marc:You just dried up?
Marc:The work dried up?
Marc:Oh, COVID hit.
Marc:And that was it?
Guest:And everything, that was it.
Guest:Everything dried up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Unless you were with the two big companies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:AEW and the other place.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And yeah, if you didn't have it, you were just home.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Waiting.
Guest:And how did you get this gig?
Guest:I mean, how did you?
Guest:I talked a lot of shit.
Guest:I had an independent show finally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:After COVID.
Guest:Out in New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:After COVID.
Guest:And I just grabbed the microphone one day and I said, hey, Cody Rhodes had a thing going here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Open challenge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I said, hey, Cody, all these guys that you're fighting are kids.
Guest:I'm a grown man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All this stuff.
Guest:And then it caught wind on Twitter.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and I was like, okay.
Guest:And then they called me in, and they were like, oh, we want to bring you in to wrestle Cody.
Guest:And the first question I asked was, how much?
Guest:How much are we getting?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because the way I didn't look at it, like I was getting a contract.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I didn't look at it as a tryout.
Marc:You just saw it like a one-nighter?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I looked at it like, okay, man, I can pay my mortgage next month, so I'm good to go.
Guest:But they signed you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I got lucky.
Guest:I had a good dance partner with Cody, and we beat each other up.
Guest:And two weeks later, they were like, hey, you want a contract?
Guest:They go, yeah, how much?
Yeah.
Guest:And how many matches you do in a week?
Guest:Oh, for AEW?
Guest:It's once a week.
Guest:But you don't go out at... Oh, no, I do.
Guest:I like doing the independents still.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because without the independents, I would have went nuts years ago.
Marc:So you just like it to do the shows.
Guest:Yeah, and a lot of times...
Guest:Well, they already announced it a couple times.
Guest:I hate it when they do this.
Guest:I usually will go there and do a show, but I'll tell them, take half my money and give it to a charity that's local.
Guest:And I tell them not to announce it, just do it.
Guest:And they announced it anyway.
Guest:So yeah, that's what I like to do.
Guest:And they're like, really?
Guest:I'm like, look, you guys kept me fed.
Guest:For years.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I had nothing, so let me help you back out.
Marc:Oh, that's nice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't like being nice, but it happens once in a while.
Marc:Well, I mean, yeah, you don't have to tell people.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But like when you go to England, have you been there a lot?
Guest:Yeah, a couple times, about eight or nine times.
Marc:And what's the scene like there?
Guest:uh i don't know how it is now after covid but before covid i lived out there for three months yeah and it was every day it was a show yeah except for like a monday we had off and the fans oh we're insane i love the fans over there now so this you know this international right so they all know you from this
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Hopefully they do.
Marc:Hopefully they know me from this.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But no, they knew me before that, but not a lot.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like I had a little niche, you know, like punk rock.
Marc:Right, sure.
Guest:I had that little group.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Not a whole worldwide mass audience.
Marc:Where else do you go internationally?
Guest:I'm trying to go back to Japan yeah yeah so that I hear that's crazy yeah it's I love the Japanese style is what I'm really into what makes it different it's more it's treated more like a sport oh yeah and it's a harder hitting but you know it's in there yeah that's what I do I'll hit you you'll know I'm here I'm not gonna hurt you you'll go home with your you know see your wife and kids but I'm gonna I'm gonna let the person in the front row go god damn
Guest:I was there at the Newark show, Full Gear, where you fought Jun Akiyama.
Guest:I mean, obviously, you talk about you have a reverence for that style and want to go back there.
Guest:But it did feel like that was a very emotional moment for you to fight that guy.
Guest:Yeah, it was because I saw that guy wrestle when I was 14, 15.
Guest:And now I'm wrestling him...
Guest:in a ring in newark near home yeah and with a big company i was like yeah of course this is emotional i didn't think this yeah i thought i was gonna be done with wrestling after you know covid hit i thought other things too as a kid i thought i'd be dead by 26 because the way i was acting yeah you know i mean i was just being a punk kid nothing crazy you know so just to have that moment and i'm facing right across the ring from a guy who i idolized i'm like this is trippy
Guest:We just kept calling each other out.
Guest:Well, I did on Twitter.
Guest:And I said, oh, this is my dream match.
Guest:This is my dream match.
Guest:And it caught wind again on Twitter.
Guest:And he was just like, yeah, I'll do it.
Guest:And I was like, that's it?
Guest:They're like, yeah, he wants to come in.
Guest:I was like, it was crazy, man.
Guest:It was nuts.
Guest:At one point, I wanted to take off my boots and go, OK, I'm done.
Guest:Like, nothing's going to beat that.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:But I got a lot of people who
Guest:I don't know, man.
Guest:I don't look at me doing this for myself when I get frustrated or whatever.
Guest:With the business, everyone gets frustrated.
Guest:I just think of other people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not myself.
Guest:It's whatever with me.
Guest:I don't know if you notice I really am not a... I don't love myself too much, but enough.
Guest:But I think about my mother.
Guest:I'm a mama's boy.
Guest:I think about my father.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think about all my friends.
Guest:So anytime I get all...
Guest:crazy and want to get out of this thing i think of everyone else same thing with akiyama i was like yeah i'm done i don't want to wrestle no more but he gave me confidence and he was like i believe that what he said he said i believe you'll be champion here and i was like oh shit i guess i gotta stay yeah and when you when you hit the wall though were you how was your health i mean were you like you know just fucked up
Marc:Oh, just, you know, mentally fucked up, I guess you could say.
Guest:Like, I talk about mental health a lot, because to me, it's a real thing.
Guest:Sure, of course.
Guest:I mean, I'm on Zoloft, so I don't, you know what I mean?
Guest:I chill out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's a real thing, and I've seen it.
Guest:I've seen it in my family.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I've seen it with a couple of friends I've lost from suicide.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:mentally you know what i mean it's a it's a struggle but physically i feel better than i ever have because now i can afford ice baths and oh yeah you know what i mean and saunas before i couldn't ice bath really work yeah yeah what does it do just you know uh brings down the swelling on your body oh okay you know what i mean so i'll hop in the ice bath or after tonight you may see me with ice on my shoulders and my neck yeah nothing's wrong it's just to bring down the swelling yeah because after 21 years of
Guest:You know, getting beat up.
Guest:It hurts after a while.
Guest:I bet, yeah.
Guest:Like, was there a turning point or something that clicked in that made you go public with things about mental health and awareness?
Guest:Yeah, it was being part of AEW and then seeing the reach that this company has.
Guest:And I was like, well...
Guest:If I'm going to talk about it, might as well talk about it now and people will listen.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And I don't care if people take it and believe in mental health or whatever.
Guest:I really don't care.
Guest:The people I care about are the people that get it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm going through it.
Guest:And you probably hear back from people, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's a little weird.
Marc:It's a little weird because I don't.
Marc:You saved my life.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's not me.
Guest:I don't do things for that.
Guest:No, I know.
Guest:I just do it because it's the right thing to do.
Marc:Yeah, I get the same reaction with the podcast.
Marc:Like, I didn't get into it for that.
Marc:But when someone writes you an email and says, you know, I probably would have killed myself if it weren't for you.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That gets me.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:That gets me.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't.
Guest:My mother says this to me all the time.
Guest:She goes, you like to give.
Guest:She goes, you like to give out love.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you never like to take it in.
Guest:She goes, that's the Irish in you.
Guest:I'm Irish and Puerto Rican.
Guest:My father's side always gets the bad rep when I do something wrong.
Guest:And they're both still around?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yep, they're both around.
Guest:Yeah, man, they're happy.
Guest:They come to matches?
Guest:Yeah, they come when we're in New York, yeah.
Guest:My father just sits there in amazement.
Guest:Yeah, oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, because he was always there for me, my dad, but he was tough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:He always wanted me to get out at some point and get a regular job and all that, but he was always there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Always there, you know, to do things for me, so.
Guest:He must be impressed.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:He says he's proud of me.
Guest:And I look at him and go, oh, OK, cool.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:I did it.
Guest:Yeah, I guess so.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Do you feel like you're getting better at taking the love since you have a huge fan base now?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:I don't.
Guest:There's been nights where I'll be in the hotel room after like a match and everyone's loving it.
Guest:That's why I got rid of Twitter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I don't even want to hear the praise.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because to me, this is not a big deal.
Guest:I'm doing what I wanted to do since I was nine.
Marc:What's the reaction to praise?
Marc:What does it make you feel?
Guest:I just don't feel good.
Guest:I feel uncomfortable.
Guest:Because to me, like I said, I'm doing something I've wanted to do since I was nine.
Guest:I'm not doing anything special.
Guest:I'm just living my dream.
Guest:But if you want to take this journey with me, cool.
Guest:Yeah, sometimes praise is hard to believe.
Guest:yes it is very hard very hard to believe especially when you know some of the dumb shit you've done in the past you're like what yeah exactly so yeah no yeah i just don't i don't like it because i don't do things for praise yeah yeah i do it because i either a want to do it or b it's the right but it's nice to be appreciated yeah no definitely is when my mom does or people close to me yeah when the people close to me are appreciative that's what it means oh good all right well it's great talking to you
Guest:All right, I guess we're done.
Guest:He's kicking me out already.
Guest:There it is.
Guest:You guys got busy stuff to do.
Guest:We just slept sitting on a couch.
Guest:I fight, dog.
Guest:It ain't nothing busy, really.
Guest:It's my first live wrestling show.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Dude, you're going to have a blast.
Guest:I'm excited.
Guest:You're going to have a blast.
Guest:Get ready for that Young Bucks match, man.
Guest:Watch those crazy guys go.
Guest:Great talking to you.
Thank you.
Marc:Well, what I found is that, you know, specifically I kept trying to picture these guys, you know, like, you know, next to, you know, like a sports locker room.
Marc:They're different, the personalities.
Marc:And it's like, they're not anything like them.
Marc:And they're more like me.
Marc:Like, you know, you talk to all these wrestlers and stuff.
Marc:They're definitely show business people.
Marc:Whereas like, you know, and they know that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So whatever the natural condescension would be on behalf of an MMA fighter or a football player in that situation, which I'm not even sure would happen, but it's like they're not aspiring to any of that.
Marc:This is wrestling.
Marc:This is a big show.
Marc:This is the circus.
Marc:You guys, you're fighting for something else.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:You're doing something entirely different.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Was really like when they have these opening matches, right, leading up to the regular guys.
Marc:And you told me that some of these guys are just local wrestlers.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So like that dude from L.A., you know, you said they pay him for the night.
Guest:Yeah, usually get about 800 bucks or something like that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, and he does the match that no one.
Marc:It's not that they don't care, but it's just, you know, it's the opening act.
Marc:It's a preliminary match.
Marc:Opening act shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then, like, after everything's all said and done, you were hungry.
Marc:We'd go back to catering.
Marc:The food's all gone.
Marc:It's out on the table.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Getting ready to put away.
Marc:And then the guy who was in one of the opening matches is, like, filling up a takeout thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Cookies and stuff.
Marc:Yeah, and some shrimps and things.
Marc:Take it home, yeah.
Marc:To take it home.
Marc:But I'm like, that's...
Marc:That's show business.
Marc:It's like he made his 800 bucks.
Marc:He's not part of the thing, but he's in town.
Marc:He's probably going to go home and have that food tomorrow.
Marc:I mean, I know exactly what that is.
Marc:Even now I go do shows and, you know, I only have two things on my rider, you know, like a bag of cashews and the Xevious soda.
Marc:So like when I'm on the road, I'm like, I'm taking these cashews.
Guest:Oh, when we went to, when you did your HBO show and you had all that Russ and daughter stuff, you're like, everybody's got to take this stuff.
Guest:We got to get, we got to have, you know, don't let this go to waste.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's just, that to me has always been the nature of show business is that, you know, you do the thing and then you're backstage again.
Marc:And it's sort of like, all right, so like, where, where's my jacket?
Marc:But ultimately, all in all, yeah, very engaging, you know, and I was open to it.
Marc:And, you know, I found it to be entertaining and emotional.
Marc:And I loved the idea that they are my show business brothers.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:And sisters.
Guest:I mean, really, like, I will say, like, I don't want to say, like, I had a secret motivation to this.
Guest:But it was kind of like, I did have a kind of mentality of, like, Ferris Bueller's day off, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, you watch that movie and you think it's about this kid who's like fucking around and just wants to take off his school.
Guest:And then, you know, it gets to the end and you realize like, no, no, he wanted to do this for his friend.
Guest:Like he wanted his friend to see the world and see that things were cool.
Guest:And I've always kind of thought, you know, especially as we've talked about you doing other things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I knew that so many things were pointless because it's like, no, Mark doesn't engage with things on like a fan level.
Guest:He's not going to watch, you know, a Star Wars show week to week and talk about it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Music, sometimes music.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:But like, you know, yeah, you go to concerts and that, but that's a thing.
Guest:Like one time and it ends.
Guest:And I said like, you know, look, this is a thing I've been into my whole life.
Guest:And I'm not into it from the level of like, oh, I believe it's real or I believe like I'm into it because it's what I think is good show business.
Guest:Like I really don't think I ever would have gotten into any kind of entertainment if I had not been a wrestling fan.
Guest:Because I integrated what I learned from watching it from a show perspective.
Guest:What were they presenting to me?
Guest:How is this happening on a week-to-week basis?
Guest:And I think it was basically wrestling and SNL were the two things that kind of formed in my brain around what is entertainment?
Guest:How is this not just, you know, fake stories that get put on a screen, right?
Marc:Yeah, and they're similar.
Marc:Like one is the, it's the id and the ego of show business.
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:You know, wrestling is this ongoing id of show business.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's wild.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But thanks for taking me.
Guest:Yeah, thanks for doing it.
Guest:And thanks for, you know, anybody from AEW is listening.
Guest:Thanks for hosting us and being willing to talk to us.
Guest:And to me, it was not just fun.
Guest:Like, I have fun at wrestling matches.
Guest:But it was a new experience for me.
Marc:Oh, to be backstage?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:To be there with you.
Marc:Oh, thanks.
Guest:I've never really been there with somebody who...
Guest:didn't follow it or didn't know it but I didn't seem bored did I no I wasn't I thought I was I had a fun time with it and I just had a fun time knowing that oh this is you know somebody experiencing it for the first time like I don't know if you've ever had that of like you know somebody maybe like you're like oh you're gonna listen you've never listened to this record oh yeah I love it yeah and you're just sitting there like huh
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I was kind of aware of that for a minute, but then I was like, you know, I'm into this.
Marc:I'm OK.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You're just like, whatever.
Marc:And the other thing was like so many people recognize me from Glow.
Marc:I realize like those are my people.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Like they all watch Glow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Like I would be very surprised if a wrestling fan didn't watch Glow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was like it was a high recognition thing from a very specific thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, they had asked me when we were setting up, you know, going to the show and all the preparations.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They said, does Mark want to get involved?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And what get involved means is, you know, like, is a bad guy will come over to you and, like, you know, maybe push around.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You get to, like, give him the stink eye or whatever.
Guest:And I said...
Guest:Let's take it easy.
Guest:Next time.
Guest:I was just going to ask you, if we ever went back, would you get involved?
Marc:Yeah, well, there was a point when Max was up there doing his heel business, and he brings up Freddie Prince, and he brings up Ken Jeong, and I'm like, I'm right here, dude.
Marc:Take your shot.
Marc:Yeah, wait.
Guest:I met you backstage.
Guest:I can handle it.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I think that probably was my fault by saying no.
Guest:They probably were like, don't involve Marc Maron in the act.
Marc:He doesn't want to be.
Marc:Yeah, next time I got to be part of it.
Guest:Well, Paul Walter Hauser took a guitar to the head last night after we left.
Marc:Oh, he did?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Marc:He told us it was going to happen.
Marc:He brought his Golden Globe with him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was the deal.
Guest:And he was going to hit a guy with the Golden Globe.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And then the other guy was going to crack a guitar over his head.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, no, I'm game.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah, we'll do it next time.
Marc:All right, sounds good.
Marc:All right, buddy.
Marc:Okay, that's it, right?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:AEW airs Wednesday nights on TBS and Friday nights on TNT.
Marc:There's another two hours of Wrestling with Mark available for full Marin subscribers.
Marc:And if you aren't already a full Marin subscriber, hang out for a second and I'll tell you more, especially you wrestling fans.
Marc:For full Marin subscribers, next week we'll release some of the producer cuts that have been piling up.
Marc:These are clips that didn't make it into actual episodes for whatever reasons, usually good reasons.
Marc:Brendan will tell you why they were cut and play the clips from Colin Hanks, Brendan Fraser, James Gray, and Andrea Riceboro.
Marc:And if you want to sign up for the full Marin, just go to the link in the episode description or sign up at WTFpod.com by clicking the WTF Plus button.
Marc:You'll get every episode of WTF ad-free plus weekly bonus content.
Marc:And now for all you wrestling fans who are subscribed, we're going to have a Friday wrestling wrap-up show.
Marc:Reviews of current matches, classic shows, interviews, and my continuing wrestling education.
Marc:That's a special Friday show in addition to...
Marc:to the weekly bonus content we're already doing.
Marc:We're crazy and we work too much.
Marc:My HBO special, From Bleak to Dark, premieres this Saturday, February 11th at 10 p.m.
Marc:on HBO and On Demand on HBO Max.
Marc:I'm proud of it.
Marc:Enjoy it.
Marc:And here's some lazy but, you know, pounding guitar.
guitar solo
guitar solo
guitar solo
guitar solo
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Marc:Boomer lives, monkey and lavanda, cat angels everywhere.
Marc:Jesus told me so.