Episode 334 - Colt Cabana
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fucking tropes and what the fuck shianados
Marc:It is me, Mark.
Marc:This is my show, WTF.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:It's a very exciting show today.
Marc:Colt Cabana, the wrestler, is on the show.
Marc:He's now an independent wrestler.
Marc:He was a WWE, briefly, that kind of wrestler.
Marc:But I don't want to pretend like I'm talking like I know what I'm talking about.
Marc:Colt is a sweet guy, and he reached out to me years ago.
Marc:about how much you like my show then he built a show a podcast of his own sort of based on my model but for wrestling and it got me thinking about you know is there a crossover is because I've never been a wrestling guy never was never understood it I was one of those people that was like yeah it's fake who what who the hell what kind of moron
Marc:And I've been schooled.
Marc:I've been humbled by my research and by my experience with him and also thinking more about it and having a good friend, my friend Brendan, who was a big wrestling fan.
Marc:I had to be schooled and told to shut up as the condescending...
Marc:highbrow douchebag that I can be.
Marc:I was educated and then I went and dug into, you know, let me get into this in a minute.
Marc:There's a couple of things I want to do before I start talking about that.
Marc:I wrapped 10 episodes of Marin, the single camera, half hour scripted comedy for IFC.
Marc:The only problem is you're not going to be able to see them till June.
Marc:I want them to go on earlier with all my heart.
Marc:I don't know if that can happen, but it was great.
Marc:I'm relieved and excited.
Marc:They came out.
Marc:I don't know how they came out, but the shooting was an amazing experience.
Marc:I want to thank my cast.
Marc:uh the crew uh everybody is involved on a production level i mean it was uh it was a completely new experience for me i entered it uh you know with an open mind and open heart and i uh i just did the work and uh you know i didn't see myself as anybody other than a guy showing up for work every day and and and and doing the best i could and and i think we uh it was an incredible learning experience and an incredible experience all around and i and i hope that the shows that we get out of what we shot are are great but i want to say i'm very excited
Marc:and it was it was amazing i wish they would be on before june but that's uh you know that's out of my hands people so back to wrestling
Marc:So, of course, I had to throw myself into this because after my talk with Colt Cabana, I thought, well, maybe I should think about it.
Marc:Think about wrestling.
Marc:Because the interesting thing about Colt, as we'll talk about it, is that he was compelled towards wrestling as a younger person.
Marc:Not unlike my friend Brendan, he was a huge fan of wrestling and wanted to be a wrestler.
Marc:Now, before I talked to him, and not until after I talked to him, I thought, well, who would want to do that?
Marc:Well, why not?
Marc:I mean, it's no different in a lot of ways than than wanting to do any other expressive.
Marc:Endeavor, you know, to be in a band, to be a comedian, to be an artist of some kind.
Marc:But I didn't think about that until I had started putting stuff together in this morning in preparation for my talk with Colt Cabana to be presented to you.
Marc:I said, well, didn't Roland Barthes?
Marc:The famous philosopher and lit critic and semiotician write an essay, a fairly well-known essay on wrestling that I tried to process when I was a younger man in his book Mythologies, which I have had for 20 years sitting on my bookshelf, which I have read bits and pieces of, which I glean things from.
Marc:But I know that Roland Barthes wrote an essay on wrestling and I found it, The World of Wrestling.
Marc:This was written in 1957.
Marc:to offer some insight to me to contextualize professional wrestling and not be a pompous douchebag and say like, ah, fuck wrestling.
Marc:Cause it is pretty amazing once you assess it properly.
Marc:My only, I was not, I'm too old to have grown up as a kid in the world of WWE or WWF.
Marc:When I was a kid, when I was nine or 10 and I used to walk to Skaggs Drugstore in Albuquerque, New Mexico, my point of reference for wrestling was I would go to buy my Mad Magazine and on the rack besides the Mad, you know,
Marc:but they always seem to be right next to each other, very within proximity of each other, was Pro Wrestling magazine.
Marc:And I talked to Colt about this.
Marc:And they were always right next to the True Detective magazines.
Marc:And as a 10 year old, those magazines were were were just, you know, horrifying and sorted.
Marc:They just they would sit there on the rack, you know, exuding a darkness.
Marc:I mean, the wrestling magazines, it was always some chubby dude in a unitard covered in blood being held by the hair by some other dude, perhaps wearing a mask.
Marc:I mean, this is old school shit.
Marc:Just blood and terrified faces on the cover of pro wrestling magazines.
Marc:And the true crime magazines always had some sort of illustration of a dead lady.
Marc:And any time I'd open these up, it was a low-quality newsprint
Marc:pages and the the true crime magazines always had just you know murder pictures and then the wrestling magazines always had these bloodied men in unitards on every page you know twisting each other and contorting with horrible facial expressions in this in this newsprint black and white other than the cover and it just felt so wrong and dark and weird i didn't know it was something i was supposed to be
Marc:And I think that was probably the genius of WWE was that McMahon, the guy who took it to the next level, really reinvented it for a new for a new youth culture that elevated the superhero nature of it.
Marc:But nonetheless, it always represented some sort of darkness.
Marc:And there was a Sunday morning wrestling program, a local wrestling program, I think, from Tingly Coliseum, sponsored by some car dealership or something.
Marc:And some guy would talk to these overweight guys in unitards, you know, and they were yelling about something.
Marc:It just never was compelling to me.
Marc:But now I understand it differently.
Marc:I understand the roles.
Marc:I had my friend Brendan explain it to me once that, you know, it didn't matter whether it was real or not.
Marc:This was a spectacle.
Marc:This was theater.
Marc:You know, this was, you know, you had the heel.
Marc:You had the face.
Marc:You had the struggle of right and wrong.
Marc:And it was portrayed consistently.
Marc:And there were narratives that were, you know, that carried throughout several matches.
Marc:And it was a whole world unto itself.
Marc:And reality, or whether it was true or not, had nothing to do with it.
Marc:So I pick up Roland Barthes and there was a couple of things about these roles and about the nature of the theater and what it satisfied.
Marc:And I found this to be interesting and I'm glad I did the reading.
Marc:I will quote him now.
Marc:As soon as the adversaries are in the ring, the public is overwhelmed with the obviousness of the roles.
Marc:As in the theater, each physical type expresses to excess the part which has been assigned to the contestant.
Marc:So right away, you're like, that's the bad guy.
Marc:That's the good guy.
Marc:Now that bad guy's got to pay.
Marc:Or whatever the, you know, however much you have invested in the particular character.
Marc:I mean, there are several different types of heel.
Marc:There are a few different types of face.
Marc:And you get attached to these conflicts.
Marc:And you get attached to these characters and how they're portrayed by specific wrestlers.
Marc:See, I never knew that.
Marc:I never really took into that.
Marc:For me, it was always like, it's fake.
Marc:Who gives a shit?
Marc:Because I'm unable to connect to what I see as a charade.
Marc:I tend to gravitate and need something real.
Marc:I wish, and now in retrospect, it's the same way I feel about animation.
Marc:I wish that I could connect and feel these feelings.
Marc:I'm having a little more luck with animation now.
Marc:But he goes on to speak.
Marc:This is more Bart.
Marc:It is obvious that it's such a pitch.
Marc:It no longer matters whether the passion is genuine or not.
Marc:What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.
Marc:There is no more a problem of truth in wrestling than in the theater.
Marc:In both, what is expected is the intelligible representation of moral situations, which are usually private.
Marc:This exhaustion of the content by the form is the very principle of triumphant classical art.
Marc:Wrestling is an immediate pantomime, infinitely more efficient than the dramatic pantomime, for the wrestler's gesture needs no anecdote, no decor, in short, no transference in order to appear true.
Marc:It's the fulfilling of desire of justice and of comeuppance and the stringing along of that tension.
Marc:But you know it's going to be relieved.
Marc:Where else can you find that?
Marc:He says some wrestlers who are great comedians entertain as much as a Moyer character because they succeed in imposing an immediate reading of their inner nature.
Marc:I read that this morning and I was like, holy fuck, that is what a good comedian is.
Marc:God damn it, I got to do some work on my act.
Marc:But nonetheless, you could see how this would be compelling to a young person to want to be this, to have this feeling, to have this control, to have a context, to express yourself in a very specific way that will garner great results.
Marc:If you do it perfectly or you do it the best you can, which was interesting to talk to Colt about.
Marc:But also it's interesting that this was what defined Andy Kaufman's later career was his portrayal of the heel of the bad guy in his wrestling period and how he.
Marc:Of course it would be attracted to him.
Marc:He challenged audiences anyways, but he was able to find a perfect outlet and form to almost take what he had been doing his entire career to the next level, both in the ring and then in reality.
Marc:And you were not able to really tell whether he was being real or not or where the prank ended or it didn't, but he was the heel all the way through.
Marc:That is what you want is the justice.
Marc:And you know it's going to come.
Marc:You don't know how long it'll be strung along and how many matches it will take or what the arc of the narrative is or who the heel is or who the face is.
Marc:But how often in life do you experience the satisfaction of real justice being delivered?
Marc:How often does that happen?
Marc:And the craving for justice, especially in a chaotic world that seems to be full of evil at some time, is deep and rarely satisfied.
Marc:So this is what wrestling can enact for people that will suspend their disbelief in order to enjoy it and to feel that satisfaction.
Marc:Now, before I bring you my conversation,
Marc:With Colt Cabana, I was involved in a wrestling experiment.
Marc:As some of you know, I was the morning show driver of the Morning Sedition program on Air America.
Marc:I did about 18 months on that show, and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.
Marc:And we did a lot of great, funny, challenging, and excitingly entertaining things on that show.
Marc:It was a political radio show.
Marc:I was a lefty pundit.
Marc:I went through that period of my life.
Marc:But, uh, you know, during that time I got to work with some great guys and, uh, we wrote some great comedy and I learned how to do this, but there was one thing we did that involved wrestling.
Marc:Uh, the idea was what we strung along was we created a guy who was sending us emails.
Marc:He was a conservative guy that was just sending these emails, calling us pussies, saying we were just liberals.
Marc:We were, we were, uh, you know, limp wristed, uh, you know, our, you know, everything we stood for was, uh,
Marc:All the right-wing attacks possible against progressives or liberals, we personified in this guy's emails.
Marc:And we went through a series of emails where he was antagonizing us.
Marc:And he was telling us that we weren't even going to admit that he was writing these emails.
Marc:And he was saying he could kick our ass and everything.
Marc:So we built this character up.
Marc:And, you know, he said he would come down and kick our asses and this and that.
Marc:So we said, all right, fine.
Marc:If you come down, you know, you can fight with one of the hosts.
Marc:Come down here.
Marc:So we set this all up that this guy, this right wing guy was going to come down and fight me or my partner, Mark Riley, the one of the hosts.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:And there was only me and Mark Riley.
Marc:But on the day he came down, we introduced Mick Foley as the co-host for the day.
Marc:So we had sort of developed... We had built this character of this right-wing heel.
Marc:And when he shows up... And I've never admitted to this.
Marc:We have kept this a mystery whether this was real or not to this moment right now.
Marc:And Mick Foley comes down and we set up this... We surprised him.
Marc:We said, well, yeah, our co-host today is Mick Foley, so you're going to be fighting him.
Marc:And we basically...
Marc:did a wrestling script.
Marc:And what you'll hear now is sort of the cathartic moment of it, the moment of contact.
Marc:The voices you'll hear are Mark Reilly, myself, Mick Foley, and Brendan McDonald playing the conservative guy.
Marc:So why don't you listen to this?
Marc:Dave is a Republican.
Marc:He came in.
Marc:We solicited that he's going to fight one of the hosts.
Marc:You lied to me.
Marc:We didn't lie to you.
Marc:He's our guest host for today.
Marc:Mick Foley is our guest host for today.
Marc:He's going to be here for the whole hour.
Marc:And that's the deal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, all right.
Guest:So that's the deal.
Guest:So, you know, I'll do it.
Guest:Because, you know, I probably won't win, but I'll do it.
Guest:Yes!
Guest:Whoa!
Guest:What was that word?
Guest:Probably?
Guest:Yes!
Guest:I probably won't win?
Guest:Oh.
Guest:This is going to be beautiful.
Guest:What do you want me to do?
Guest:If I back down, then you guys would make fun of me for that.
Guest:Yes, we would.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:We're still going to make fun of you.
Guest:You just wouldn't be injured.
Guest:You're talking like your side doesn't do dirty tricks.
Guest:Yeah, granted, we're using the bait and switch.
Guest:We baited you with the marks, switching to Foley, kind of like the president did with weapons of mass destruction and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Guest:Listen, Dave, Dave.
Guest:I don't think you want to do this, man.
Guest:I really don't.
Guest:I think you ought to think about it.
Guest:I know you thought about it in the can, but that was then.
Guest:I think you need to think about it now.
Guest:Look at him.
Guest:Look at you.
Guest:You're telling me to do that, and then I'm going to think about it, and I'm going to leave, and then you guys have a fun time in here.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:They're going to do it.
Guest:It's okay.
Guest:Nobody knows you're going to do it.
Guest:Hold on a second.
Guest:Dave, you do understand there will be consequences for your actions or lack thereof, right?
Guest:You understand I've got a reputation.
Guest:I'm not going to come on Air America and make a joke out of this thing.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:You do understand you might look a little bit different when you leave.
Guest:And there are plenty of blunt objects around here that can help in that regard.
Guest:All right, fine.
Guest:Oh my goodness, he threw it out of that.
Guest:Uh-oh.
Guest:I'll tell you what.
Guest:I'll tell you what, you bush-loving fool.
Guest:I'm going to teach you a little lesson here.
Guest:I'm not going to smack you around.
Guest:I'm just going to twist your body.
Guest:I'll tell you what.
Guest:I'll tell you.
Guest:Tell me you love the environment.
Guest:Uh-oh.
Guest:I'll tell you.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Say that every kid deserves a fair shot in this society.
Guest:You can't pull my arm like that.
Guest:Say every kid deserves a fair shot in this society.
Guest:Hey, hold it.
Guest:Hold the side.
Guest:Mick, Mick, please, Mick.
Guest:Regardless of how much money is throwing, Mick.
Guest:No, no, no, Mick.
Guest:Hey, Mick, we're going to get somebody in here, Maren.
Guest:Maren, we got to get somebody.
Marc:Now, I don't know whether you thought that was authentic or not, but we got a lot of emails, emails from going like, you know, I'm not sure what you did was the right thing to do, but it was great.
Marc:You know, thank you for doing that.
Marc:But also there were the people that were like, you know, look, I'm on your side, but that was wrong.
Marc:It sounds like you hurt that guy.
Marc:You know, those were the real progressives.
Marc:Those are the people that would never engage in wrestling anyways.
Marc:But a lot of people didn't know whether it was real or not.
Marc:And then a lot of people were like, yeah, that's a classic wrestling script.
Yeah.
Marc:So there you go.
Marc:There's the truth.
Marc:Years later.
Marc:So let's bring on cult.
Marc:But, you know, before I do that, I just want to read one more thing.
Marc:This is a nice paragraph about about the idea of wrestling.
Marc:Now, obviously, this was, you know, this is a French intellectual saying talking about this.
Marc:But I thought this really, really sums it up.
Marc:When the hero or the villain of the drama, the man who was seen a few minutes earlier, possessed by moral rage, magnified into a sort of metaphysical sign, leaves the wrestling hall, impassive, anonymous, carrying a small suitcase and arm in arm with his wife.
Marc:No one can doubt that wrestling holds the power of transmutation, which is common to the spectacle and to religious worship in the ring and even in the depths of their voluntary ignominy.
Marc:Wrestlers remain gods because they are, for a few moments, the key which opens nature, the pure gesture which separates good from evil and unveils the form of a justice which is at last intelligible.
Marc:What kid wouldn't want to be part of that?
Guest:this is my rules of um just traveling the roads forever is i want uh right by the elevator and first floor if i can get it first floor yeah which everyone says you know you don't want by the elevator you don't want the first floor that's where all the that's where all the action is right the noise yeah but the reality is is i just wrestled a long match i'm tired i'm hurting i could barely walk at 32 years old but that's why they have elevators
Guest:Yeah but then you take that long walk of shame All the way down and usually And you should know now The long walk of shame down an elevator hallway As if there's still an audience going Well not for me they cheer Okay always I hope if I'm doing my job But I got my merchandise I got my gear I got everything And I don't want to walk at all
Marc:Well, that's sort of like the merch thing and the set.
Marc:Like, even last night, I just left my shit at the theater.
Marc:They're going to lock it up.
Marc:But I guess when you're wrestling, that's it.
Marc:It's one night and you're out.
Guest:Well, there's sometimes where you do the same building, but I never want to leave my stuff there.
Marc:How much merch do you bring?
Marc:What do you got?
Guest:T-shirts?
Guest:It started.
Guest:Masks?
Guest:It started.
Guest:It started with a small backpack and now it's worked its way up to a giant duffel.
Guest:I had to go to Costco and buy this giant duffel bag because it's gotten out of control.
Marc:It's hard to know because I guess we're sort of at the same level in terms of our entertainment careers.
Marc:Is that what you'd call it?
Marc:Of course, sure.
Marc:I don't know how much to bring.
Marc:Some nights are better than others, but I'd rather bring less than carry a shitload home.
Guest:This is where we differ.
Marc:Well, no, I just don't know what... I mean, I guess if I was huge, you'd just have someone take care of it.
Marc:Then you'll send the shit home.
Marc:But a lot of times, like last night, I sold a bunch of shit, and I'm not going to have enough to last me a weekend.
Guest:Well, that's why I want to bring as much as possible.
Guest:I don't ever want that to happen to me.
Guest:That would be heartbreaking, that $20 on that T-shirt not to have that.
Marc:But wait, don't you have a website where they can go get the T-shirt?
Marc:Yes, of course.
Marc:But they'd rather buy it from you.
Guest:The process of buying that online...
Marc:So all right, so my guest is Cole Cabana, and apparently I'm in the wrong hotel room if I were a wrestler.
Guest:If you were a wrestler.
Marc:And fortunately, he didn't have a match last night, so he made it down the hallway.
Marc:It was an easy walk.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:Good for you.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So look, I got to be honest with you.
Marc:I'm not going to try to be condescending or pretend like I know more than I know.
Marc:uh i'm not a wrestling guy but i know that uh that there is definitely similarities between the life you live and the life that i live and i know that i inspired you to do a podcast because even yeah you've been taught you know we've been in contact we've uh been in contact on twitter by email so what what was the uh the what impel compelled you to do this podcast
Guest:Well, I'm glad you said you weren't going to... My goal was to win you over the life... To win you over that our lives, I think, are very similar.
Guest:I guess I can't step in your shoes.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:I believe that.
Marc:And there's definitely things I want to ask you about wrestling.
Marc:But I just didn't want to go to Wiki and start talking about things I don't really understand.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:You know, my friend Brendan is a fucking huge wrestling fan, like to the, you know, to the point where like I get it, you know, but there's like like wrestling sort of like Al Yankovic.
Marc:If you if you get into it when you're a kid, then it makes an impression on your mind that lasts for your entire life.
Guest:My theory is everyone got into wrestling as a kid.
Guest:And at 14 or 13, when women start coming into the picture, then they stop.
Guest:And there's a select few.
Guest:You know, like, oh, I don't want to watch.
Marc:Oh, you mean women started coming into your life.
Marc:When you start liking women.
Marc:Not women coming into wrestling.
Marc:No.
Guest:Well, that's when everyone jumps right back in.
Marc:That was a pretty smart move on behalf of that guy.
Marc:Who decided that?
Guest:That women should be in wrestling?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Some promoter.
Guest:I'm sure back in the carnival days where it came from.
Marc:So it's been around a long time.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The podcast was started, obviously.
Guest:What's it called again?
Guest:The Art of Wrestling.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I mean, to give the long story short is I was fired by the WWE.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was my dream.
Guest:I had an awful existence there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my career was going nowhere.
Guest:You know, that's why there's so many similarities, which I think, but I don't know if you think.
Marc:No, I'm with you.
Marc:Look, I have a definite understanding and respect for disappointment, for things not going the way you want to, and then for finding the balls to finding your way.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I'm traveling the roads.
Guest:I'm constantly traveling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I fall in love with podcasts.
Guest:Somebody points me out to Comedy Death Ray, and then I start listening and listening, and I find yours early, maybe seventh or eighth one.
Guest:And I see a lot of myself in you.
Guest:And I know to be on the other side, if someone says that to me, I'm just like, ah, whatever.
Guest:And that's why I didn't really...
Guest:reach out and be like mark we're the same i just you know i kept it to myself and i and i looked at you as a fan from the inside and to be honest i i see from what i hear and from what you say on the podcast i see where you're where your career's at yeah and i'm traveling i'm constantly wrestling and you're on this podcast and you've been around forever but you're never like forever well sorry you've been you've been doing your thing you're a younger man than me right yeah you've hit this wall much earlier than much earlier good for
Guest:you thank you you're ahead of the game and you're you're not saying hey i'm gonna be here i'm gonna be here you're just like oh i stopped in at the comedy store yeah yeah yeah and i and i'm thinking well uh you know i i am going to these shows and eventually as your as your podcast moves on you're like hey i'm doing this gig yeah hey i'm doing this gig things things are picking up things are picking up and that's kind of where it clicked to me
Guest:So what a tool this is, but also I found myself having conversations like like your podcast with wrestlers in the locker room.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And more so than ever, because my podcast is basically I wanted to take the awesome conversations that we've had half naked, sweaty, you know, everyone's hurting and nobody expects these conversations out of us.
Guest:These are some of the greatest memories in my career.
Guest:And I thought, what a treat for people outside of the locker room to have.
Guest:And then when I started listening to yours, I saw almost not as a science, but just the beauty of the art of the conversation.
Marc:Oh, well, thank you.
Marc:I'm very flattered.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, the difference between comics and wrestlers is we're generally in a green room and we're not bleeding.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Emotionally, maybe a little, but we're not physically bleeding and hobbled.
Guest:And I think that makes for a better, if you look at the big picture of it, I mean, we're all just dripping sweat, battered, and we're talking about, you know, our sex lives or just traveling the roads or anything ridiculous.
Marc:And I'm sure you're, well, we can, let's get into that in a minute.
Marc:But I mean, but in terms of relating to me,
Marc:As a dude, I'm a fairly specific type of dude.
Marc:So your real name is what, Scott?
Guest:My name's Scott, yeah.
Marc:Scott what?
Guest:Colton.
Marc:Now, and you're a Jew?
Marc:I am Jewish.
Marc:See, so this is one of those weird things where you start to realize, well, wrestling really is entertainment.
Marc:Because in my mind, not because I'm some sort of Jewish elitist, but in my mind, I'm like, a Jewish wrestler?
Marc:I mean, I imagine Goldberg's Jewish, right?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Marc:You would have to be.
Guest:But how many are there really Jewish wrestlers?
Guest:I mean, there's maybe a handful that you've ever heard.
Guest:Well, you've probably never heard of.
Guest:I mean, there was a guy named Barry Horwitz.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was known as one of the biggest losers in the world of wrestling.
Guest:That was his thing?
Guest:That was his thing.
Guest:He lost.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You need that guy.
Guest:Well, that was.
Guest:And then that 20 years later, that turned out to be me in the WWE, the same situation.
Guest:And they named me Scotty Goldman.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Scotty Goldman was my name.
Guest:It was like, I don't even know if they knew that they were putting, they were setting the Jews up to lose.
Marc:That was our big thing.
Marc:Well, I knew that, you know, there was a, you know, in the, at the turn of the century, the early 1900s, there were a lot of Jewish boxers.
Marc:Like there was a, when the first wave of Jews came into this country, there were definitely, there were a lot of, you know, when Jews were trying to integrate and pass, but there was a lot of Jewish boxers around, which I never knew.
Guest:Was that a New York thing maybe?
Marc:I don't know where a lot of them were, but I knew a buddy of mine who did a series of paintings of them.
Marc:There was definitely a bunch of Jewish boxers.
Marc:People forget that there is a type of Jew that is stalky and athletic.
Marc:I mean, it happens.
Marc:We get stereotyped a lot, but I always say there's the sort of peasant working style Jew, and then there's the composer mathematician Jew, physical styles.
Marc:But there's definitely some burly Jews around.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Barrel chested, I like to think.
Marc:Well, I mean, what do you come from?
Marc:Are the parents happy about your career choice?
Guest:The parents are okay with the career choice.
Guest:They never wanted me.
Guest:They knew I was going to do this.
Guest:I've been saying since I was probably 10 years old, I'm going to be a professional wrestler.
Guest:Now, where I come from is upper middle class Jewish suburbs of Chicago.
Marc:Highland Park?
Marc:Close, Deerfield.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So you grew up in something that's not unfamiliar to me.
Marc:What's your old man do?
Guest:Well, that's where it kind of differs.
Guest:My old man sold urban apparel for 25 years.
Marc:That's a Jewish business.
Marc:Urban apparel, you mean he sold clothes to black people?
Marc:Brother clothes.
Guest:Yeah, and I was a little 13-year-old kid dressed up in fubu and heads-up jeans.
Marc:Was he a wholesaler or he had a store?
Guest:He went on the road.
Guest:He was a traveling salesman.
Marc:And that's what his bracket was?
Guest:Yeah, and he went from town to town, shop to shop, store to store, selling his line.
Marc:Oh, he had his own line.
Guest:Well, no, not his line.
Marc:He repped him.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:He repped the lines.
Marc:A bunch of lines.
Marc:So he was the guy on the ground delivering the clothes to the hood.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember he, oh, man, Echo got really popular.
Guest:He sold Janko jeans.
Guest:I went to college because of Janko jeans.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember Echo got really popular and he started with him and then he was like, I'm going to go to something else.
Guest:And he dropped Echo and Echo became like a multimillion dollar.
Marc:Is that one of his big regrets?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I never really when I bring it up, he kind of easily passes over.
Guest:But I think he did well enough with Janko that it was OK for him.
Marc:And you got a brother.
Marc:I do have a brother.
Marc:And he does what?
Guest:Yeah, he's very successful.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He lives in Los Angeles and he's an animator for Family Guy.
Guest:He's one of the top directors.
Marc:So you're a show business family, almost.
Guest:My brother and I are.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And in the town, Deerfield, where everybody I know is a lawyer, a doctor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everyone sells real estate.
Guest:Everyone sells real estate.
Marc:I know, it's like a weird default.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:People that can't do what they... Like, my mother did it.
Marc:It's usually sort of like a housewife, sort of like, I'm going to do a business now.
Marc:But yeah, a lot of people sell real estate.
Marc:I don't know why now, still.
Yeah.
Guest:All the people, my, the people, when you go on Facebook and you look at what these guys are doing.
Marc:They're all real estate.
Marc:Commercial real estate.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's weird.
Marc:What'd you graduate with in college?
Guest:So I went to college, a business degree.
Marc:But let's go back.
Marc:So you bar mitzvahed, your mother's sort of like, really?
Marc:You want to do wrestling?
Marc:Are you serious about that?
Guest:No, I mean, because that was...
Guest:They didn't care?
Guest:I was in awe of it.
Guest:I couldn't get enough of it.
Marc:So how old were you when he first, what blew your mind originally about the wrestling thing?
Guest:I just remember being three years old, and I know that's weird, but I visually have that picture of Andre the Giant getting his hair cut in a handicap match, sitting on the floor watching the television.
Guest:My dad had it on.
Guest:My dad was a very casual wrestling fan.
Marc:Casual as opposed to he wasn't yelling at the TV.
Guest:Yeah, well, he wasn't like what I became, a diehard wrestling man, a wrestling nerd, if you will.
Marc:He just probably grew up with it, kind of.
Marc:I think, yeah.
Marc:With the Blassie and those guys.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because I remember even when I was a kid, I'd go to the drugstore, Skaggs in Albuquerque, and there used to be like at least three or four wrestling magazines, and they were always just bloody messy guys on the cover of the magazine, always dressed in the same sort of shorts, but no costumes.
Marc:It was just usually blonde hair, some guy holding some other dude's head, and there was just blood.
Marc:everywhere yeah and now it's become this big show back in the day right yeah it was just uh yeah guys had terry like yeah terry claus shorts your character what in that class i do yeah i do a character matt classic which was based off of that but yeah but i i mean i kind of yeah i do remember some mass but it was just blood and it was i i don't know why i wasn't compelled towards that i always went with mad magazine you know i saw that stuff and i'm like i don't know what's happening in that world there was also true crime magazines
Marc:I remember there were magazines with bloodied guys in swimsuits, basically.
Marc:And then like, you know, just weird fake pictures of dead women.
Marc:I don't know what that was, but those were the sorted sort of like that was the same kind of like that was that kind of morbid fascination thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The magazines were like my Bible.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Growing up.
Marc:And were those still around or was it you're younger than me?
Marc:How old are you?
Guest:32 yeah yeah and actually on my podcast I had a guy who started the magazine craze yeah and we'll get into later if you want but he's the guy who got Andy Kaufman into wrestling really yes and his name is Bill Apter but these things I mean front to back I memorized every single wrestler every single name just the whole idea of it that's what I would bring to school to recess I'd go and I'd read these magazines and the magazines were the internet before the internet weren't they yeah
Marc:Yeah, but so you're watching this stuff.
Marc:So when did you start?
Marc:Okay, you watch that Andre the Giant on television.
Marc:But when did you start following matches?
Marc:And what was the landscape like then?
Marc:Because it wasn't old timey.
Marc:I remember in Albuquerque, there used to be a local weekly wrestling thing.
Marc:It happened like every week at like the fairgrounds of the Civic Auditorium.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Well, when I was a kid, WrestleMania was already 45.
Guest:That's the peak of it.
Marc:Right.
Guest:That's when it starts.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So WWF is on television.
Guest:I'm watching all the time.
Guest:But...
Guest:There is local wrestling, Windy City Wrestling at the time.
Guest:And I'm watching that.
Guest:Anything.
Guest:Any wrestling.
Marc:And that was a lot less.
Marc:That was a little more kind of rock.
Marc:It was in a little studio down on the south side of Chicago.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And he probably had the regular host and he would just facilitate the shit talk.
Guest:Right, and he was also, I think, a car salesman.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:And he got them a sponsorship, and they're all working together, small business style.
Guest:But I would watch anything.
Guest:Anything I could watch, I was enamored with it.
Guest:I always say that people are like, who is your favorite wrestler of all time?
Guest:And I was just like, any of them.
Guest:They were all cooler than me because they were doing wrestling.
Guest:Even the ones in front of 50 people and the worst show in the world, they were cooler than me because they were wrestling and I wasn't.
Guest:And that's where I wanted to be.
Marc:But I guess there's part of me, the reason why I never locked in was that outside of the cover of those magazines, I always thought it was not real.
Marc:That there was always the issue to me.
Marc:It seems like guys that really dug it, that didn't matter so much as much as the spectacle of it and following the guys they liked.
Marc:The idea that you guys talked before, there are scripts that have to be played out, that sort of bothered me.
Guest:But I was a huge athlete.
Guest:I was a sports guy.
Guest:Please don't judge me for it.
Marc:I kind of sense that when you walked in.
Marc:I'm like, all right, he's this guy.
Marc:All right, I got it.
Guest:Oh, thank you.
Guest:But to me, it was like the ultimate sport.
Guest:It was.
Guest:These guys were flying around, moving around.
Guest:And I could sign up for baseball and football, but I wasn't allowed to sign up for wrestling.
Guest:So I think the idea that it was...
Guest:The sport in it, obviously, yes, it's a show and I love the entertainment aspect of it, but the sport in it and the fact that I couldn't reach it because I wasn't of the age, I think was what held the fantasy for me.
Marc:But football is a team sport.
Marc:You learn things.
Marc:You learn how to take a hit as a team, and you strategize, and you're sitting with other dudes, and there's a lot of life lessons there if you're smart enough to take them and not think you're going to be a professional football player.
Marc:I mean, I guess the similarity between what you do in stand-up is like, fuck the team.
Marc:I want to get an outfit and make it about me.
Guest:But wrestling is, for the most part, there's three people on that team.
Guest:There's that referee, and there's your opponent.
Guest:And the reality is...
Marc:You're all working together.
Guest:Yeah, of course, working together to put on the best possible show.
Marc:But that's where, okay, so that's a show, not a sport.
Guest:But yes, no, for sure.
Guest:It's 100% a show, and I'm happy to say that.
Guest:Yeah, I'm not sure anyone's sort of like, no, you mean it's not real?
Guest:But the physicality of it and the things that we do in there, definitely, that aspect of sport, for sure.
Marc:Okay, so walk me through this.
Marc:So you finished high school.
Marc:What did you play, football?
Guest:i played football yeah yeah and um my parents wouldn't let me go into wrestling school they said after you graduate college you can so you had to go to college to placate your parents yes and there's like a wrestling school like a clown school yes it's a trade school sure there's trade schools all over for wrestling for professional wrestling
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So there's good ones and there's bad ones?
Guest:Yeah, there's people ripping off people all over the country.
Guest:What do you mean, ripping off?
Guest:I mean, there's bad schools where guys who have wrestled for two years.
Marc:Oh, I thought you meant there's a certain style that is uniquely somebody's.
Guest:No, there's great schools and then there's some really bad ones.
Marc:And I imagine there's private teachers.
Marc:Are there some down-and-out wrestlers who teach private?
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:And they don't even own a school.
Guest:They'll take them to shows and show them before and gladly take their $3,000.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:It costs that much?
Guest:Yeah, I paid $2,000.
Guest:How long of a program is that?
Guest:That was a year long of training.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How many people go to this school?
Guest:People are coming in and out of it, really.
Guest:In my place, there was no classes, but now some of the schools have classes, some don't.
Guest:But I had to go to college, and I had to finish college if I wanted to wrestle.
Guest:And if I went to college, I said, okay...
Guest:On WWF at the time, the announcer Jim Ross would always say about these guys' football backgrounds.
Guest:And I was like, oh, well, if I want to be a pro wrestler and I can't go right now, I'll just play football.
Guest:So they'll know that I'm good enough to do it.
Marc:You got the right stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I went and played college football.
Guest:And it was the worst experience of my life.
Guest:Why?
Guest:It was just, I went from being a star in high school to being literally the worst player on a Division I football team.
Marc:Oh, you take your first hit.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Not only that.
Guest:You're the bench guy?
Guest:I was redshirted.
Guest:I was fifth on the line in the depth chart.
Guest:I'm six foot.
Guest:These guys are 6'9", 350.
Guest:What school?
Guest:Western Michigan.
Guest:So was it a big football school?
Guest:Yes, Division 1A school.
Guest:And I am awful.
Guest:Not only that, the coach hates my guts.
Guest:Can't believe that we signed this guy up.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because, I mean, on my tapes, I was good.
Guest:And on the games, I'm good.
Guest:But when you size me up against this man.
Marc:But didn't he know that?
Marc:I mean, didn't you go for an audition or whatever for the football team?
Guest:Yeah, and they liked what I had.
Marc:And but why do you end up hating you?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:You just became the I was the guy.
Guest:I was the guy.
Guest:The first day I walk into into practice, they give us everything and every Nike, this Nike, that free breakfast, whatever you want.
Guest:So why would I bring a pencil?
Guest:right and uh you don't have a pencil and i don't even want to reenact it but he went crazy and i was doing sprints and whatever and the wrestling was bad there was some anti-semitism going on with me what do you mean i mean i'm in kalamazoo now i was born and sheltered in the north suburbs of chicago what do you mean there's anti-semitism on the football team yeah towards me a little bit like what
Marc:Jew boy.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Wear your horns.
Marc:No.
Marc:For sure.
Marc:You got that one?
Marc:I got that one.
Marc:From a guy from the Midwest said that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But weren't there other ethnicities on the team?
Guest:Yeah, but not Jewish.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Not that I knew of, at least.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Nobody was saying, hey, I'm the Jewish guy except me.
Marc:So you felt that from the coach, too?
Guest:Not the coach, but just the whole experience.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:The coach was awful.
Marc:Why'd you need a pencil?
No.
Guest:To write down plays?
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:You'd think they would give this stuff to you.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, sure.
Marc:Couldn't be bothered.
Marc:How about a box of pencils?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So that was the first strike against you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No pencil guy.
Marc:Right, yeah.
Marc:And so this football experience, how long were you on the team?
Marc:All four years?
Guest:No, I played one year.
Guest:I wanted to quit day two.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Day two.
Guest:I mean, honestly, I remember I was doing two days, and thankfully Judge Judy got me through sitting in my room alone watching Judge Judy for some reason.
Guest:I still remember that.
Marc:You really do like wrestling.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's basically the same format.
Guest:Sure, right, exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, yeah, so, I mean, I said to myself, listen, I can't be that guy.
Guest:I got to play this thing out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I played it out.
Guest:It was awful.
Guest:The last day I went into the coach's office.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't even think he knew who I was.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I said, I'm done.
Guest:I said, Mom, I'm starting wrestling.
Guest:I don't care what you say.
Guest:She said, oh, fine.
Guest:Stay, make sure you stay in school, do whatever you want.
Guest:So I was going to college and I was traveling up and down the roads.
Guest:I would, while in college, going down to Louisville, Kentucky in a little barn and I'm wrestling twice a week in front of 20 people.
Marc:But had you gone to school for wrestling yet or you're just winging it?
Guest:Sorry, no, yeah, I mean, I go to wrestling school in Chicago.
Guest:I'm traveling two hours here and back, back and forth.
Marc:How do you get those gigs?
Marc:Which ones?
Marc:Like traveling to Louisville?
Guest:Networking.
Guest:It's all networking.
Marc:What does that mean, networking?
Marc:Because, like, you know, with comedy, you get a club booker or you get a guy who books these things.
Guest:My first...
Guest:shows where I was living in Kalamazoo and my trainers were doing shows in Minnesota.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they tell the promoter, Hey, we got these trainees, let them come with us.
Guest:Uh, so I go up, I'm doing a 10 hour drive up to Minnesota for no money.
Guest:And I get to sleep in my trainers, uh, hotel room.
Marc:Yeah, that's similar to comedy.
Marc:So these are basically your first gigs.
Marc:There's no pay.
Marc:How many matches?
Marc:So you're doing the first match?
Marc:Yep, yep.
Guest:I'm the opener.
Marc:Paying my dues is what they call it.
Marc:And you're fighting another guy who you know or you don't know.
Guest:Fighting the guy that I'm training with.
Guest:And specifically, the guy that I train with is named CM Punk.
Marc:He's a big guy.
Guest:He's the number one guy and number two guy in professional wrestling.
Guest:Are you guys still friends?
Guest:Best friends.
Guest:Yeah, he's my next-door neighbor.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Out here?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Doesn't it sting a little bit?
Guest:No.
Guest:And which is where I never.
Guest:OK, well, he's always buying me lunch and he takes care of me.
Guest:All right.
Guest:And there was never really any jealousy.
Guest:Because they're... Honestly, I say that.
Guest:I'm just... I'm super happy for him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And as long as I'm not pushed out of wrestling completely, I'll always be happy for him.
Guest:And I think his time is there.
Guest:And I still think maybe my time will be somewhere, you know, in... Something's going to get.
Marc:In the late 30s or early 40s.
Marc:I can do something.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So you're doing these gigs.
Marc:You go... Like, just... I mean, I saw the wrestler, but...
Marc:I know that's somewhat true, but you're going out to these gigs in small rooms, right?
Marc:You have W halls.
Marc:So how many people go to those things?
Guest:Like the local gigs?
Guest:50, 100, 150, 200.
Marc:So 100 people, from 50 to 200 people, that's not a huge crowd.
Marc:They got a ring set up.
Marc:Okay, so you're about to enter the ring in your first match against a guy that you know that maybe you drove up with.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:So what's the discussion?
Marc:How does that unfold?
Marc:Do you go like, I'm going to do this, you're going to do that, and then we're going to do this?
Guest:Those situations are something that we've gone over in training school for the most part.
Guest:That's what we're trained to do to get ready for that.
Guest:Do you want the complete...
Marc:I have no idea what the show consists of.
Guest:We want a good guy versus a bad guy.
Marc:So you've got to decide at that point, since no one's an established good guy or bad guy, who the bad guy's going to be.
Marc:Correct.
Marc:And the bad guy's got to act like an asshole.
Guest:And one of the tricks of wrestling is that the bad guy goes out first because it's easier to get booed than to get cheered for people to hate you than to love you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Bad guy goes out first.
Marc:How do they know you're immediately the bad guy if you're not all decked out?
Guest:This is a skill you have to learn.
Marc:So what?
Marc:Is it a facial thing?
Marc:It's almost like clowning.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:You've got to look like an asshole somehow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the idea is you're the pompous fucking that guy.
Guest:Well, you say that.
Guest:The first couple years, I don't know what I'm doing.
Guest:And I'm thinking, well, what does everyone hate?
Guest:At that time, late 90s, I'm wearing a backwards, upside-down visor.
Guest:Like, oh, that's what I hate while in college, those frat guys.
Guest:So I'm doing something like that.
Marc:That's all I know of what people hate.
Marc:But the disposition is sort of over the top pomposity in a way.
Marc:And usually the good guy is a little more humble.
Marc:Like, you know, like, you know, I've got to take down the bad guy.
Guest:And he's the better wrestler.
Guest:And because he's the better wrestler, the bad guy has to cheat because he's not as
Guest:Right.
Guest:And there's a whole psychology to it.
Guest:There's truly, it's called wrestling psychology.
Guest:That's what you learn.
Guest:And there's an A to B psychology that you learn in school.
Guest:But when you've been doing it for years, then all of a sudden you're able to, and I'd imagine it's the same as when you're building a set or building
Marc:your jokes well not really i mean you know because you know you're both the good guy and the bad guy in my racket you know depending on what kind of entertainment you want and i think the reason why you know wrestling transcends time in a way i mean this is something this type of wrestling has been around forever i mean i'm not sure when it started do you know
Guest:I mean, it's the early 1900s, 1800s, the carnival.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It served a purpose.
Marc:There was a spectacle to it.
Marc:And it got people immediately engaged in this narrative of good versus evil on some level.
Marc:And there was a certain amount of it's almost like clowning in a way.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I mean, it comes from the carnival.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:But these scripts, it's just very interesting to me.
Marc:So what you learn when you do these one-nighters or these smaller gigs is just owning your skills of how bad you can make your bad guy.
Marc:Imagine you start to evolve a personality as a bad guy or as a good guy that's uniquely yours.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:And then like, you know, you start with a hat turned backwards and then maybe you can make other choices.
Marc:And now when you say when the bad guy has to cheat, like, you know, that's what chairs, you know, you know, anything dastardly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like, what is that list?
Guest:A powder in the face, brass knuckles choking on the ropes behind the ref.
Guest:Poking in the eyes.
Guest:These are all things.
Guest:This is classic wrestling cheating.
Guest:And you can go either way.
Guest:You can go good guy or bad guy?
Marc:Me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've been a good guy for, this is my 14th year in wrestling.
Guest:I would say I've been a good guy for the past 12 years.
Guest:And what happened was I found my character.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It was six or seven years it took me.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So when did you know you had the character?
Marc:I mean, so you were primarily a good guy.
Marc:For the most part.
Marc:How do you decide who's going to win?
Marc:The promoter decides.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Whatever's best for business.
Marc:So that's the understanding is, you know, you and the other guy in the ref, that's the show.
Marc:The promoter says, you're going to lose because I need these people to come back.
Guest:Yeah, you're going to lose because they want to cheer.
Guest:Next time we could sell more tickets if we come back, if this guy loses, if he cheats to win.
Marc:So the genius of wrestling promotion is to string out a narrative with characters for as long as possible.
Guest:As long as possible.
Guest:And almost a century is essentially what it is.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So it takes you six years of these kind of bouts to develop your personality.
Marc:What was the first sort of what was that moment where you're like, OK, I'm this guy?
Guest:Yeah, and I'll tell you, I'm a comedic wrestler.
Guest:I do comedy in wrestling.
Guest:I consider myself a comedian for the most part.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:There's a lot of wrestlers who think they're tough and angry and mean, and that's the persona they put on, most of them.
Guest:I make the crowd laugh.
Guest:Yeah, that's my goal.
Guest:It's what I want to do.
Guest:As a good guy.
Guest:As a good guy, that's the way I win their hearts over, by putting a smile on their face.
Guest:And I remember, for a long time, I was just being a tough wrestler guy.
Guest:And I remember I was wrestling this guy, AJ Styles, who is on Spike TV now all the time.
Guest:He's a big star in our world.
Guest:And we were known as two good wrestlers.
Guest:We were great, solid wrestlers.
Guest:We knew how to do the job.
Guest:And we're doing this thing.
Guest:We're doing this thing.
Guest:And he hits the ropes.
Guest:And I stick out my foot.
Guest:And I trip him.
Guest:And it got the biggest reaction of the night.
Guest:Probably the biggest reaction of my career at that point.
Marc:Was that an unusual wrestling move?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Not...
Guest:That's, you know, he's ready to, he's churning up.
Guest:He's going to hit those ropes.
Guest:Something awesome is going to happen.
Guest:I stick on my foot like Wile E. Coyote or whatever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he falls on his face.
Marc:So usually the bad guy move would be to clothesline him or.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But the tripping was a little more subtle.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Because it was slapstick.
Guest:Crowd goes crazy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Biggest reaction of that night, probably to my career that I've heard.
Guest:And it just it sparks in me.
Guest:This is what the people want.
Guest:I'm a goofball in general.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A real idiot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And no problem.
Guest:Let's do it.
Guest:Let's get into it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's where that's the moment for me where I saw it.
Guest:And then you got your first big laugh.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It was my first big laugh.
Guest:And I was hooked and I wanted to... Nobody in wrestling was really doing this for the most part.
Guest:And I wanted to perfect it.
Guest:And from there on, that was my goal.
Marc:It still is my goal.
Marc:Was it an impulsive thing?
Guest:I mean, had you planned it or it just... Yeah, but I mean, it was a small detail in what was to be a bigger thing.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But it just, that's...
Marc:Okay, so you're the guy who's funny.
Marc:So that was your first big laugh, is tripping this dude, just sticking your foot out in sort of a goofy way.
Marc:So how did you build on this comedic persona?
Marc:I wish I was more familiar with you in the ring.
Guest:So what happened was...
Guest:I graduated college.
Guest:I figured I'd just go right to WWE.
Guest:Well, that didn't happen.
Marc:In college, by the time you graduated, you had a couple years on your show?
Guest:Yeah, I'd been in three and a half years.
Guest:I got a normal job.
Guest:Doing what?
Guest:I was a teaching assistant.
Guest:What?
Guest:While going all over the country to wrestle.
Guest:Teaching a system.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:Yeah, I was working with kids with Down syndrome and autism.
Guest:Just, you know, it was great.
Guest:Nine to three.
Guest:I could weekends off to do my wrestling, much like Randy the Ram and the wrestlers.
Marc:So basically you spent the day, what, you'd go and what, you'd play with the kids?
Guest:Yeah, I shadowed a kid with Down syndrome.
Guest:And to be honest, he was a big inspiration in my career.
Guest:The kid's got Down syndrome.
Guest:He was the funniest kid.
Guest:He was always goofing around, always having a joke.
Guest:He was very inspiring to me.
Marc:What sort of puts you in that direction?
Marc:It's a unique line of social service.
Marc:My girlfriend does the same thing.
Marc:She shadows autistic kids.
Marc:I mean, what made you do that?
Guest:I was a sports camp counselor for 10 years before that.
Guest:And I love working with children.
Guest:You were a sports camp counselor?
Guest:Yeah, while doing the wrestling.
Marc:So you got into that when you were like 17 or 18?
Marc:15.
Guest:Yeah, with the park district.
Marc:And what, a day camp thing?
Guest:Summer camp.
Marc:Yeah, but not sleepover, just day camp.
Marc:Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you work for the city kind of thing.
Marc:And you just go play sports with kids.
Guest:Yeah, it was great.
Guest:Free tans, you're outside all day, you're playing with kids.
Guest:I never really, like I had all these weird odd jobs.
Guest:I was an umpire too.
Guest:For kids?
Guest:For kids, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I guess in a way, I mean, I do some of the greatest moments are this, you know, the smiles on the kids faces when you wrestle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, yeah, it was an easy transition.
Guest:The park district worked with the school system.
Marc:Was there someone in like because like, you know, camp counselors in my mind, like when I went to camp, I didn't go to sports camp.
Marc:But, you know, these kind of people can have a big.
Marc:impact on your life.
Marc:I mean, you know, if you have a good sort of adult guide, you know, who's not your parents, I mean, you can really have... Unlike the coach at Western Michigan.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But I mean, did you go to those camps when you were a kid?
Guest:I mean, was there somewhere... Yeah, but I hated those camps.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I hated like the outdoors and the stickiness of it all and the order of it.
Guest:I really hated the order.
Guest:Hence why, you know, same lifestyle.
Guest:I'm a wrestler.
Guest:I wake up at 12.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But I mean, but you did go like work with these kids.
Marc:I mean, to work with, uh, you know, autistic kids and kids with downstream and sort of, it's a tall order.
Marc:It's a certain type of person that, that, that does that.
Marc:And you, you got a lot out of it, huh?
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Guest:Um, but the reality was, is I love doing it, but
Guest:You don't have kids.
Guest:You're not married?
Guest:I don't.
Guest:I'm not.
Guest:It was hard to wake up at 7 o'clock, do my shows all over the weekend, wake up early for school.
Guest:I was making $11,000 as a teaching assistant.
Guest:And then all of a sudden, I'm making $5,000 as a wrestler.
Guest:And it's like, ooh, I think I could do this wrestling full time.
Guest:And what happens was it got to the point where
Guest:You know, I my my wrestling money was almost matching my teaching assistant money.
Guest:And I was ready to do it full time.
Guest:And I stopped.
Guest:I did two years as a teacher.
Guest:And I said, OK, I'm a full time wrestler now.
Guest:Let's go where the full time wrestling is.
Guest:And it's not in America.
Guest:And I moved over to England for three months and I did the the British circuit over there.
Marc:Well, let me ask you a question about this kid with Down syndrome.
Marc:He was funny.
Marc:And I imagine that with people with Down syndrome or people who don't have that weird self-consciousness, they know when they're being funny a lot of times.
Marc:And if you're laughing at a mentally disabled kid for the right reason.
Marc:With him.
Marc:I'm laughing with him.
Marc:No, I know because he knows he's being funny.
Marc:But there's none of that sort of like, you know, there's no second guessing the funny.
Guest:Mr. Colton, I farted every time.
Guest:I'm on the floor and he's laughing too.
Guest:It's amazing to me every time.
Guest:There's nothing funnier than farts.
Guest:Do you farts in your wrestling?
Guest:Yeah, sometimes you'll, sure.
Guest:I mean, it's a joke between, you know, there's weird positions and weird moves and you get in there.
Marc:So you get up and you do the wave.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I'm saying just between, let's say me and you are having a match and you get me in a move called the sunset flip and you're pinning me and my ass is right in your face.
Guest:I'll let one go.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:A little harmless ribbing.
Marc:All right, so you realize that you're not ready for the WWE at the time, and you're like, I'm going to go where the wrestling is, where I can keep working and maybe make a break.
Marc:So Britain's got a big circuit?
Guest:Britain's got a big circuit, and also I'm introduced to the old school British wrestling, which isn't on television here.
Guest:England used to be one of the bigger circuits.
Guest:Now they only play WWE wrestling, but before they had their own wrestling on ITV.
Guest:How is it different?
Guest:It wasn't bright lights.
Guest:It was very straight-laced.
Guest:There was no punching.
Guest:It was move for move, hold for hold.
Guest:Everything was taken very seriously.
Marc:And you never did wrestling in high school or anything?
Marc:No, no.
Marc:Because that doesn't necessarily help you.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't even.
Guest:I mean, looking back, I probably should have.
Guest:And a lot of people do.
Guest:A guy like Kurt Angles, an Olympic medalist and a huge star in the world of wrestling.
Guest:But to me, it was two completely different things.
Guest:So the old British wrestling And then I'm watching tapes While I'm over there I'm living the life that these guys lived I'm wrestling 7 times a week Sometimes 8 times a week I ended up wrestling 84 matches in 75 days I had a broken thumb halfway into it But that's what you do And I was such a fan
Guest:of those people who had done it before me, I wanted to go in that pathway.
Guest:And I was introduced to the old time wrestlers.
Marc:And I mean, there's no costumes.
Marc:There's no I mean, how is it different?
Guest:Just the guys who had done it before me in that era.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's a wrestler named Les Kellett.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And British guy.
Guest:British guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And.
Guest:As comedy fans, I would ask you to go watch some Les Kellett on YouTube.
Guest:It's not even wrestling.
Guest:It's just unbelievable comedy.
Guest:And to watch this guy and to see how serious he takes wrestling and doesn't joke...
Guest:uh about wrestling you know people they joke with wrestling and this becomes my inspiration uh to follow his lead well i mean these characters are so broad i mean i mean there's there's definitely comedy to it i would say that that professional wrestling is really probably 90 comedy isn't it a lot more drama i would say it's all at the end of the day it's all about the drama of that final match
Marc:Yeah, but there's a moment, even in the drama of the final match, one of the guys in the ring is going to be a buffoon of some kind.
Marc:I would prefer that in my matches.
Marc:In some of the bigger matches.
Marc:Maybe I'm just not looking at it the right way.
Guest:To me, you're looking at it.
Guest:That's the way I wish everyone would look at it.
Marc:Even the most serious of bad guys, they're hilarious.
Marc:On some level.
Marc:Sure, on some level.
Marc:Maybe it's gotten more menacing lately.
Marc:There's something about the exaggeration.
Marc:Even when Kaufman did it, and he is a comic, but even when he's just acting like a dick, it's funny.
Guest:Well, he took a very Memphis style.
Guest:Oh, there's a Memphis style?
Marc:It's like barbecue.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How many different styles are there?
Guest:There's tons of styles.
Guest:Lucha Libre.
Guest:That's a Mexican style.
Guest:Strong style Japanese.
Guest:But there's also Memphis.
Guest:There was a Memphis circuit for years, which was very different from the New York style, which was the McMahon style.
Guest:What's the Memphis style?
Guest:And the Memphis style is a lot of walk and talk.
Guest:It is a lot of over-exaggeration.
Guest:Striding around?
Guest:Yeah, a lot of stalling.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, that was known as the Memphis style.
Guest:And when Kaufman went down there...
Guest:He took... In my mind, he took... He was an actor playing the job of a heel, and that's what he saw Heels did.
Guest:Jerry Lawler, you know... That was his idea of what a heel was.
Guest:Now, it worked great because he was on television.
Guest:He was known.
Guest:The heel's the bad guy?
Guest:The heel's the bad guy, yeah.
Guest:But there was guys down there, you know...
Marc:there's different there's menacing styles of being a healed jake the snake roberts and roddy piper these guys didn't use the snake he was the guy in that documentary yes yeah and beyond the mat beyond the mat like that guy barry i i know him we're kind of friends he wanted to do a doc about me and i watched that thing it was great it's one of my favorites is he all right that guy
Guest:Jake, I saw Jake.
Guest:I was on a show with him the other day.
Marc:Well, because he was the dude with the daughter and the drug issue.
Guest:And when he does interviews, you know, if I was to have him on my podcast, the rule is you can't talk about Beyond the Mat.
Guest:He's upset about it.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So that's his rule.
Guest:But he's on the road.
Guest:He doesn't wrestle anymore, but he does appearances and people remember him.
Guest:Is he sober?
Guest:He was then, yeah.
Guest:Bought me dinner.
Guest:I was amazed by that.
Marc:He seemed like a real charming character, that guy.
Guest:He's been around the world, and he grew up as a wrestler.
Guest:You know, his father was the wrestler.
Guest:He grew up in that world, that carny world.
Marc:Yeah, carnies.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right, so there's the Memphis style and the New York style is what?
Guest:It's, you know, there was territories all over this.
Guest:Vince McMahon took all these territories and made them into one global thing that we see now.
Guest:But before, there was, you know, 26, you go to Portland and you wrestle in Portland.
Guest:Then you go to Arkansas, you wrestle in Arkansas.
Guest:Then you go to California and San Francisco.
Guest:And none of these TVs, there was no internet.
Guest:There was no major cable stations.
Marc:They were either local television.
Marc:Yeah, it was all local television.
Marc:Because that's what I saw when I was a kid.
Guest:I remember it.
Guest:And then eventually when Hulkamania hit and Vince McMahon Jr.
Guest:took over from Vince McMahon Sr., the WWF, he made it a global thing.
Guest:And all these little dying territories and all these little styles of wrestling, they went away and it became one thing.
Marc:Sort of sad in a way.
Guest:Very sad.
Guest:It's sad for guys who want to make a living.
Guest:And it's sad.
Guest:I mean, it's great for Vince McMahon.
Guest:He's a millionaire.
Guest:A billionaire.
Marc:So what that basically did, it's almost like Live Nation or Clear Channel, where is that now these guys who are just sort of meat and potato wrestlers, you know, who are making a living doing the sponsored shows in their region.
Marc:Because I imagine that all these shows have sponsors and they got to be local sponsors.
Marc:It's got to be sort of affiliated with radio in a way where like, you know, the car lot, you know, every week they sponsor the show.
Marc:So all these guys who were just...
Marc:at that level, who could make an okay living traveling around a region, they're fucked.
Marc:Because now there's probably a monopoly on the shows, and now they've got to break into whatever McMahon has created there.
Guest:Yeah, he's handpicking the top stars, and then that territory slowly dies because they see his show on television.
Guest:The lights, the pyro, the beautiful production of these television shows, and then they look at the little one that you saw in New Mexico, and they go, that's not...
Guest:That's not wrestling.
Guest:The WWF one, that's wrestling.
Marc:But is there any sort of like, even now, is there some sort of retro resurgence of more intimate wrestling?
Marc:I mean, are there people that enjoy that type of wrestling over the spectacle?
Guest:Yeah, it's called the independent wrestling scene.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And that's what I'm doing.
Marc:All right, let's get back to the rise and fall of you.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:So you're a kid with a dream.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you lock into this British dude.
Guest:I like the British dude.
Guest:I wrestled.
Guest:Now I'm wrestling over there.
Guest:I'm traveling the world.
Marc:Are you getting any traction?
Marc:Are people coming to see you?
Guest:Yeah, I'm getting good.
Guest:I'm getting a little buzz on the internet.
Guest:I get flown places.
Guest:It's not like I'm on TV in Japan, but because of the internet, the power of the internet, people know who I am and know my name.
Guest:And I'm getting flown to Japan.
Guest:I'm getting flown to Germany.
Guest:I'm doing these shows.
Guest:And the goal is to get signed by the WWE.
Marc:And so you're basically working up to this point where you're like ready for that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And in your mind, what do you need to be that guy just to be a great wrestler?
Guest:You got to, you know, I just need an opportunity.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You need to get in the ring for a WWE fight.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And and what happened was, I mean, I did it for about eight years until I got signed.
Guest:And then because I had such a nice little name for myself, I didn't get hired based on doing a match with them or anything.
Guest:So many guys in the day I'd made so many friends who had eventually got jobs.
Guest:so many guys had said, you've got to hire Colt.
Guest:You've got to hire Colt.
Guest:And kind of without even watching me or knowing that I was a comedic wrestler or knowing what I was about and how different I was from that style of wrestling, the guys, I think, said, okay, sure, and signed me up.
Guest:This is McMahon?
Guest:This is McMahon, the guy who worked for McMahon.
Guest:He's such a different world.
Guest:And so I got sent to their minor league system, the developmental system.
Marc:So that's the farm team for the WWE.
Marc:Their farm team.
Marc:To get me ready for their television.
Marc:But how does that work?
Marc:How is that different than what you were doing before?
Guest:I get a paycheck every Monday.
Guest:I'm not hustling.
Guest:I'm not bringing my merch bag.
Guest:I don't have to sell bootleg Macho Man rap CDs.
Marc:But what's ultimately the test on that level?
Marc:Are they seeing that if you can develop a draw?
Marc:Because obviously you know the scripts.
Marc:You know the ring.
Marc:So when you're doing that test, that B team, the farm team for the WWE, what is their expectation of you?
Guest:I don't think they really knew.
Guest:They just sign guys.
Guest:They throw them down there.
Guest:But you're playing public matches, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they're trying to see if you're going to be a star.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But it's not like we have a lumberjack idea.
Guest:Who should be the lumberjack?
Guest:This guy.
Marc:No, they're just seeing if people resonate with you.
Guest:And I did.
Guest:And I did really well down there.
Guest:And at one point, one of the head guys from WWE came down and said, Wow, you have it.
Guest:You have it.
Guest:That's what they said to me.
Marc:You got star appeal.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:And the people like me.
Guest:I like to think that I relate with...
Guest:With people and wrestling fans.
Marc:Well, you seem like a pretty sensitive guy.
Marc:I imagine that's the good thing about you, but also your Achilles heel.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I'm normal.
Guest:And I always, Vince McMahon wants larger than life.
Guest:And I think in this day and age, it's people want to relate.
Guest:They want to say, this guy's just like me.
Marc:I could hang out with this guy.
Marc:You're creating some sort of intimacy and some sort of genuineness in wrestling, which is antithetical to wrestling on some level.
Marc:It's a big word.
Marc:It's not what wrestling is.
Guest:like you want to make it relatable yes whereas you know wrestling is trying to create super villains and superheroes well the wrestling that society and our culture yeah i've said yeah but in this point in my life i realized there's not only is there something different i can be a part of something different and i can help start a movement to really bring that light to people that it's not exactly what what
Marc:People see on Monday nights that doesn't have to be professional wrestling.
Marc:OK, well, but I'm sure that that realization came after they pushed you out.
Guest:That realization came when they made me conform to their style of wrestling.
Marc:Let's talk about that.
Marc:So you're on the farm team there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you get called up to the big league.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What's that?
Marc:What was that call?
Marc:What was that day like?
Guest:Well, it was one of the greatest days of my life at that point.
Guest:How did it happen?
Guest:I had been in Louisville, Kentucky on their farm team.
Guest:They moved the farm team to Florida, so I had moved twice.
Guest:And finally, I'd been there a year and a half, and they said, Colt, we're calling you up.
Guest:They had nothing specific for me, but they said, you're going to do this match.
Guest:And what happened was I ended up losing in two minutes.
Yeah.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:But was that the plan?
Guest:No, you don't get, you don't bring a guy up and have him, I mean, that's, you're feeding him to the sharks, aren't you?
Marc:Oh, you don't get to have the pre-match discussion?
Guest:No big, he's coming, he's, the next big thing is coming.
Marc:No, but I mean, I thought there was a script to this shit.
Marc:I mean, I thought that, like, you know, you were the good guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there was a bad guy.
Guest:Yeah, and the bad guy that I debuted against was going on to bigger and better things.
Guest:The business of the match was to get this guy over, to make him a big star, to show that he's the man.
Guest:But when you debut, the business should be that, hey, this is the guy debuting.
Guest:This is our new star.
Guest:But it was just kind of we slid him in.
Marc:Fed you the lion.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're like fucking.
Marc:But did you know you were going to drop that quick?
Yeah.
Guest:I mean, going in, I thought it was going to be a long match.
Guest:They were talking about having a whole angle, a storyline of me taking him to court and doing all these like lawyer and small claims court.
Guest:And it all it all just dropped, which happens up there.
Guest:And so were they bullshitting you?
Marc:I mean, were they just feeding your dream and then he kicked your ass?
Guest:That business is crazy.
Guest:Like that Monday night wrestling.
Guest:It's the scripts are changing.
Guest:They write a script, let's say they finish the script on Sunday night, and the script, by the time it goes on air, that script has changed 25 times.
Marc:But why'd you drop so quick?
Marc:That was the end of your story?
Marc:That was the end of your script at that night?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I mean, basically, from what I hear, and it's all second nature, the guy who didn't know that I was having a great time in Florida, the fans were loving me, some guy who does the producing looks at me and goes, oh, that guy doesn't look like a wrestler.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's my fate, from what I hear.
Guest:I don't know if that's right, but the idea is... See, this is how it's exactly like show business.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:This is your big break, and you get fucked.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you thought you had a good spot, and it turns out the spot wasn't good.
Guest:My dream.
Guest:My dream was about to come true.
Guest:I was about to debut as a superstar.
Marc:And then you were just fodder.
Guest:They changed my name from Colt Cabana to Scotty Goldman, which...
Guest:I had a conversation with Vince McMahon.
Guest:I had a meeting with him, and basically I'm telling him my love.
Guest:He's like, well, what do you like to do?
Guest:And I'm like, I love comedy.
Guest:I love alternative comedy, just the idea of it.
Guest:He's like, what's alternative comedy?
Guest:I tried to explain to him, which was my first mistake, I don't know, like the state or kids in the hall, and the idea of it.
Guest:And he turns to his wingman, he goes, oh, kind of like Jackie Gleason, right?
Guest:And I was like, oh, no, he...
Guest:He's not going to understand any of this or what I am or what I represent.
Guest:And so, I mean, that's kind of where I saw my fate.
Guest:So he just I'm to him to my age of people.
Guest:They get me to his age of people.
Guest:he i'm jackie gleason you know or bob hope and so um so i'm just another guy i'm expendable and and i do i i do four matches a couple battle royals and before you know it they they have the line they give us is creative has nothing for you their creative team to which i later make fun of it now i have a youtube show called creative has nothing for you because um
Marc:So the best that could have happened is that you do your audition, you kick ass, maybe not win the match, but they see something that they can work with.
Marc:And then creative starts generating storylines for your character.
Marc:Correct.
Marc:That's the best that can happen.
Marc:Correct.
Marc:So your first day in, they threw you to the Lions, and then the second match, same thing?
Guest:Second match, same thing.
Marc:Third match, I'm first.
Marc:Like you had no opportunity to sort of strut or do your show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But what happened was I got they were start doing Internet shows.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I got I they I lost a bunch of matches and then they took me off the road for a while and then they gave me this WWE dot com show.
Guest:And now it's I guess, you know, before the YouTube show start hitting, it was before it was around that time.
Guest:It was called What's Cracking with Scotty Goldman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was writing I was writing material.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:for this show and um and i'm i'm they give me a writer this guy named joe he worked on leno he was about 60 yeah and i i myself fired him yeah i don't think i was allowed to yeah but i was like yeah no it's because he's writing with me can't do the jokes yeah no what are you doing and then so i i give my script and then they cut it down and then they're cutting down my material and but at the end of the day it got a nice little following but
Guest:At the time, WWE.com, I don't think it was very important to the shows.
Guest:So the big boss men, they hadn't seen those shows or the traction I was getting or the numbers I was getting.
Guest:You know, they were just worried.
Guest:And rightfully so.
Guest:They were worried about John Cena and Batista and the millions of dollars that they draw.
Guest:And eventually, I mean, it just came to a point where they just they just kind of let me go.
Marc:Okay, so the WWE just said, we're done.
Marc:We're not going to renew your contract.
Marc:So your big opportunity, your big shot, you didn't get it, really.
Marc:But what is it that you think was really different?
Marc:What were you not willing to do, or what do you think was different from you and what they expected?
Guest:Well, to a point, I was scared to 100% show my way.
Marc:Because I know for me, I'm not everybody's cup of tea as a comic.
Marc:I never knew how to be everybody's cup of tea.
Marc:And my audiences were small.
Marc:And relatively speaking, they are still to a certain level.
Marc:I'm not a major act.
Marc:But the people that like me, like me.
Marc:And that's it.
Marc:I can't put on a mask or get any bigger.
Marc:Maybe I could, but I don't want to.
Marc:I want to be authentic to myself.
Marc:So was that the same issues you were dealing with?
Marc:Well, yeah.
Guest:If you mean, I didn't have the body of what these guys looked like.
Guest:And I'm not...
Guest:i have no interest in steroids or any of that right and um so i mean i so i didn't look the parts i guess but i so it was a look thing i i think you know so you weren't willing to to mutate your body and they have such a great policy now i don't think they were asking of that but essentially
Marc:i work out i'm a big dude but i'm i don't have a six-pack abs and i don't look like what these these guys look like right but i know i can connect on a level with them but you know you can connect with the audience as a performer 100 so it you know it was just uh because it's so much about wrestling is about that connection but these guys you know also became these monsters yeah and and
Guest:The people in charge don't have an opportunity to get to know me, to get to know that I'm a funny guy, I'm a fun-loving guy, I have a great sense of humor, I'm a normal dude.
Marc:Well, they don't seem to care.
Marc:They just want that energy, the monster energy that they can write for.
Marc:Because I know Mick Foley.
Marc:I saw him the other day.
Marc:I used to interview him on my old show.
Marc:He's a sweet guy, but he's pretty beat up because he was one of those guys for a long time, wasn't he?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, he looks kind of beat up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He made his money on crash and burn.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, that's where he became a legend is he took these crazy bumps and these crazy falls.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I, at a smart age, realized that I'm going to make my money making people laugh and not doing the big falls.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's what's going to give me longevity.
Marc:So, OK, so you get your dream gets kind of completely diverted.
Marc:You don't know.
Marc:You're out.
Marc:The WWE, which is the only game in town for massive recognition, has said new.
Guest:The only place you can make money in professional wrestling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In everyone's mind, for the most part.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So were you heartbroken?
Guest:I mean, I don't get depressed, but if there was ever a point that I was depressed...
Guest:It would be that Because what are you 28, 29 at this point You put your whole life into doing this thing And they're not going to take a 35 year old I mean your career is done at 35 You're too old for the wrestling industry That's what they say So it's not like I'm ever going to get another shot But this is what I know And this is what I want to do There was no plan B in your head?
Guest:There's never been a plan B
Guest:Um, I mean, even with a college education, I know that one.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I always said plan B is setting yourself up for failure.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But there's also pride involved once you invested that much of your life in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I, I mean, I go home, I go on monster.com and I'm like, should I use this marketing degree?
Guest:I didn't know what to do with my life, but I, but I, since enough people liked me and enjoyed me, um,
Guest:You know, I was getting, people were paying to have me on their shows.
Guest:And I just, I felt it going down, not going up.
Guest:My career.
Guest:And that's where the podcast comes in, ain't it, you know?
Marc:But you wrestle now.
Marc:Right.
Marc:What is that circuit like?
Marc:Because I know, like, in L.A.
Marc:and, you know, and maybe New York, but there was a, there's sort of become a Luce, Mexican wrestling, sort of tie-in with the whole sort of Nouveau, neo-burlesque movement.
Guest:Yeah, I wrestle for Luce Vavum.
Marc:Yeah, I love them.
Marc:They're great.
Guest:But that's like a hipster thing.
Guest:Yeah, and I'm proud to be a part of it.
Guest:And what I say is that there's different aspects of wrestling that I want people to know about.
Guest:And I guess I would say, like, if you just say to someone, hey, what's comedy?
Guest:They go, you know, Jay Leno or whatever.
Guest:And you go, no, there's so much more out there.
Marc:Sure, right.
Marc:Jackie Gleason.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so if you say, what's wrestling?
Guest:Oh, only WWE?
Guest:No, there's...
Guest:There's Lucha Vivoom.
Guest:I wrestle for the Insane Clown Posse.
Guest:There's groups like Chikara, which is a kid-friendly promotion that I wrestle for in California.
Guest:With Lucha Vivoom, there's a group called PWG, and they run once a month, and you'll see people from Community and True Blood come out, and it's in this little VFW hall, and they pack it every single month.
Marc:So there is sort of a kind of like classic wrestling retro thing, hipster thing going on.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:And it's called the independency.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And and that's that's wrestling's alternative comedy.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:One hundred percent.
Guest:And how are those crowds?
Guest:They're small.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the way I look at it.
Guest:is I love your quote when you say, I won't quote it exactly, but you have to make somebody else money to make money.
Guest:And when you wrestle for WWE and wrestle in front of 18,000 people,
Guest:the ring crew's getting a cut the merchandise guy's getting a cut everyone's getting a cut and eventually it sliced it all down but that ratio of when you're your own man going to your own show and selling your own merchandise that you paid for yourself that's just a one to one ratio but that's like making a living versus making money
Marc:I mean, I'm in that world, too.
Marc:When you make a living, you can earn a living doing what you do if you figure out how to do it.
Marc:But in order to make money, someone's got to go, that kid can make money for me.
Marc:And then it becomes a different game.
Marc:I haven't solved that.
Guest:Yeah, I'm trying to figure it out.
Guest:I think I'm not close, but if we take this path... Well, how does it look for you?
Marc:I mean, what's your vision of it?
Marc:How's that going to happen for you?
Marc:You don't know?
Guest:I mean, I think...
Guest:All I ever wanted to do was take wrestling, go from town to town, like I did in England.
Guest:Town to town to town.
Guest:But the thing is, you have to carry a $3,000 wrestling ring around.
Guest:And I always loved the fact that as a stand-up comedian, you just need a microphone.
Guest:Sure, you don't even have to carry that.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Marc:And so I want to... Have them there for you.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And my goal is to figure out...
Guest:how to do wrestling without a wrestling ring and whether that's um the podcast or the show the five dollar wrestling i do which is like a mystery science 3000 or a cheap seats you know over wrestling um or the movies i'm making documentary series now and or live the live podcasts and i see people coming out and i see that i don't have to bring a giant wrestling ring and there's such this niche art this niche audience that love wrestling
Guest:But you don't necessarily have to bring that ring.
Guest:And I think it will hit somewhere.
Guest:I got to find where it's at.
Marc:But did you ever think about, you know, there.
Marc:Did you ever think about running scripts, you know, as podcasts, but but subverting them in the way like like, you know, you got two wrestlers, you and another guy on the podcast and, you know, some shit goes down.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But to the point where, you know, the audience doesn't necessarily know if it's real or not.
Marc:And you just sort of run sort of classic wrestling scripts based around this medium.
Marc:Like, do you know what I mean?
Marc:Build on them.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Does that make sense?
Guest:Well, the art of bringing people up and down is what we do in wrestling.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Is bring them up to bring them down to bring them back up again.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I think what I've learned in the wrestling ring is when I write for my YouTube show or when I'm putting together the podcast, sometimes I do little skits and we do little shorts.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I do integrate that comedy wrestling skits into the podcast, and I'll integrate something written, and I think about bringing them up to bring them down.
Marc:Well, the one thing you have to, the way I'm thinking about it is that this medium that we're talking in right now is one of the few places where you can still fuck with people.
Marc:in the sense that I don't do it, but when people have this relationship with the radio, I mean, there's something about just this one-on-one thing where if you play it straight, people are gonna be like, is that real?
Marc:And there's no way for them to determine whether it's not, because they're not looking at anything, they're just listening to something.
Marc:It's like War of the Worlds.
Marc:You know, the HG Wells, you know, the Orson Welles thing, you know, that radio broadcast in the, what was the 30s, where the earth was invaded by Martians, and they played it completely straight, right?
Marc:And people panicked.
Marc:They freaked out around the country because of the earnestness of this medium.
Marc:I would have to think that given that, you know, wrestling sort of, you know, rides that line where people like, you know, the big question is always, oh, is that fake?
Marc:But it seems like you could do something with this medium where you could definitely fuck with people.
Guest:Well, I couldn't be the guy that turns bad because then the business goes away.
Guest:It's not for a lack of trying to do something.
Guest:I have so many bajillion little mini projects, and I always saw that as...
Guest:And when I got fired from WWE, that was my one basket.
Guest:And I was like, I can't ever do that again.
Guest:I can't ever have one basket because it went away.
Guest:So now I give myself seven baskets.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I have an agent.
Guest:I don't know what I'm doing, but she sends me out.
Guest:I'm booking gigs.
Marc:And you're okay to do that out of Chicago?
Marc:I mean, you don't want to move to the coast or anything?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said when I was 35 that I would go to L.A.
Guest:if things didn't pick up.
Guest:This was before, but things have picked up.
Guest:Good.
Guest:So I'm happy to travel.
Guest:I mean, I travel the world.
Guest:It's ridiculous.
Guest:I'm going to Australia twice in the next two months.
Guest:For matches?
Guest:For wrestling, yeah.
Guest:Because I believe the popularity of the podcast is because this thing can be heard anywhere.
Marc:So that's part of the independent wrestling scene?
Guest:yeah that's great yeah yeah and people are excited and they get to know you on the podcast and then you go and you go wrestle the australian guys yeah yeah that's fucking great and i'm like not that i and that's why not that i'm this huge draw and selling out uh thousand you know seed arenas but i have 50 people in a line ready to buy my shirt in australia in
Guest:australia probably more in australia i did i had brendan burns on my podcast in england sure and um we had i mean it was you know it's a 50s seat whatever yeah it sold out within a second you know what i'm saying so i can only imagine uh if i was this comedy wrestling crossover i like it because they do that in lucha vovoom too i mean they always have mcs i mean blaine kibach always yeah you know
Guest:The wrestlers have no clue, but I'm like, holy shit, Blaine Cabatch is calling my matches, and he's hilarious.
Marc:And Dana Gould.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Tom Kenny.
Marc:Tom Kenny.
Marc:Well, good, man.
Marc:Well, I'm glad it's working out, and I'm glad we talked.
Marc:You?
Marc:You feel good about it?
Marc:I feel great.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So thank you, Colt slash Scott.
Guest:I don't like to tell people, Scott.
Guest:I'm really against that.
Marc:Not against it, but it's okay.
Marc:If you run into Colt, don't bring up the Scott thing.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:That's me being educated about wrestling and talking to a sweet guy.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:Colt's a good dude.
Marc:Listen to his podcast.
Marc:All right, that's it for me for today.
Marc:On Thursday, we got Keith and the Girl, a couple of podcasters who were at it long before anybody else who were a great help to me early on and inspiration.
Marc:Had a good talk with them.
Marc:They're great.
Marc:If you don't know them, listen in for that.
Marc:Got some good interviews coming up too.
Marc:Jay Maskis, Dinosaur Jr.
Marc:Coming up soon.
Marc:What else is going on?
Marc:WTFpod.com for all your WTFpod needs.
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:Get some merchandise.
Marc:Kick in a few shekels.
Marc:See who's been on the show.
Marc:Listen to the show.
Marc:Leave some comments.
Marc:Don't be a douchebag.
Marc:Or douchebag-ess.
Marc:Is that the feminine of douchebag?
Marc:Does there need to be a feminine of douchebag?
Marc:Can a woman be a douchebag?
Marc:unanswered questions
Marc:Philadelphia, December 6th through 8th at Helium Comedy Club.
Marc:I'm looking forward to coming out and looking forward to getting back into that.
Marc:I just spilled Just Coffee all over my desk here, and it's amazing when you spill something just how fucking much it gets all over everything.
Marc:It got into things I didn't even know it was here, but it was good coffee before I spilled it.
Marc:You can get some justcoffee.coop at wtfpod.com.
Marc:And always now, please, in our hearts and minds, Boomer Lives!
Marc:Putting some t-shirts together.
Marc:Trying to find a charity that I can kick in a little shekels for the animals.
Marc:So look forward to Boomer Lives t-shirts.
Marc:They're coming.
Marc:That interests you.
Guest:I gotta go.
Guest:I gotta go.
Guest:I gotta go.