BONUS The Friday Show - Brian Solomon Knows The Real Dirt
We would have to actually pitch magazine stories directly to Vince McMahon.
I pitch him this idea.
We want to do the history of steel cage matches.
He looks at me and he goes, you know, you guys really need to take your head out of Meltzer's ass.
I never brought up the name Dave Meltzer had nothing to do with Dave Meltzer.
In his mind, he thought history piece equals Dave Meltzer.
Therefore, my magazine guys must be reading The Observer.
That's how much he occupies real estate in the brain of Vince McMahon.
Chris, buddy.
Brandon, it's great to be back.
It's good to see you.
How you doing?
Are you staying cool?
Oh, yeah.
I'm in central air.
I'm really enjoying central air.
If you don't have it, I really hope someone close to you does.
I don't, no.
And not only do I not have it, I'm in a room that uses fans, and I cannot turn them on while we do this recording, so I am soaked right now.
Oh, bad.
Absolutely dripping.
What you're doing, the sacrifice is amazing.
Thank you.
Oh, thank you.
Well, maybe lose a little weight, too, while I'm in here.
Totally.
I saw something in Variety, which made me think about something we've talked about before, how I hate when stuff from WTF gets, like, turned into clickbait.
Yeah, what happens?
Well, actually, this is a case where I'm like, well, this I approve of.
Oh, really?
And it's when our show gets used to, like, prove something.
Or the detective work that goes on involves something a guest once said on our show.
Oh, interesting.
So I saw this variety piece that says, Matt Damon, quote, fell into a depression while filming a movie he knew was a, quote, losing effort.
And then has a quote from Matt Damon.
What have I done?
Oh, no.
So...
I clicked on this.
And of course, everyone's like trying to guess.
Oh, what could this possibly be?
And I'm like, I think I know what this movie was.
But like, you know, people had guesses of any possible thing.
Like, oh, is it downsizing?
We bought a zoo.
Come on.
Yeah.
Some people guessing The Last Duel, which is ridiculous because that movie's great.
And he must have known it was great.
He's hanging out with his best friend and Ridley Scott and they're in Ireland and they're like on horses.
There's no way that was a bad time.
Right.
But it's OK.
Let me read this variety piece.
It says Matt Damon revealed on Jake's Takes.
Jake's Takes.
It doesn't say anything else about that.
It doesn't put a link.
Jake's Takes.
Jake's Takes.
I'm just supposed to know what that is.
Poor Jake's Takes is feeling how you feel normally.
Like, damn it.
Jake's take, I guarantee, does this on purpose.
This is Jake's take.
Jake's take is, I like clickbait.
I don't even know Jake.
I'm just going to slander him right now.
That's why no one watches AOL Blast.
All right.
Matt Damon revealed on Jake's Takes while promoting Oppenheimer that he once, quote, fell into a depression halfway through shooting a movie that wasn't panning out how he hoped it would when he accepted the gig.
Here's a full quote.
Without naming any particular movies, sometimes you find yourself in a movie that, you know, perhaps might not be what you'd hoped it would be.
And you're still making it.
And I remember halfway through production and you've got still got months to go and you've taken your family somewhere, you know, you've inconvenienced them.
And I remember my wife pulling me up because I fell into depression about like, what have I done?
She just said, we're here now, you know?
And it was like, I do pride myself in a large part because of her at being a professional actor.
And what being a professional actor means is you go out and you do the 15 hour day and give it absolutely everything to
even in what you know is going to be a losing effort.
And if you can do that with the best possible attitude, then you're a pro.
And she really helped me with that.
End quote.
So yes, good quote.
I would actually agree with Variety.
That seems newsworthy.
Put it into a little article.
That's fine.
Jake's takes.
My hat's off to you.
i take off my chapeau uh so how does this relate to you yeah oh there we go it continues damon did not name the movie in which he fell into depression but he has openly spoken out in the past about acting in films he knew were headed for disaster one such movie was the great wall oh
Zhang Yimou's poorly reviewed 2016 monster movie that generated controversy for its white savior narrative.
Damon played a European mercenary who is forced to team with Imperial Chinese forces to fend off an alien threat.
The film didn't make it past the 50 million mark U.S.
despite a $150 million production budget.
Quote, I was like, this is exactly how disasters happen.
Damon said on the WTF podcast in 2021 about filming The Great Wall.
It doesn't cohere.
It doesn't work as a movie.
Damon added at the time, quote, I came to consider that the definition of a professional actor.
knowing you're in a turkey and going, okay, I've got four more months.
It's up at dawn, siege on Hamburger Hill.
I'm definitely going to die here, but I'm doing it.
That's as shitty as you can feel creatively, I think.
I hope to never have that feeling again.
Well, that matches up pretty damn good, don't you think?
That's amazing.
Variety, thank you so much for subscribing.
Please like and rate us.
Wow, that is... I'm impressed by the detective work, quite frankly.
Like, I wouldn't have remembered it.
I mean, I remember the Matt Damon interview.
I remember he said that about the gray wall, but I wouldn't have put two and two together.
Wow, that is something else.
Wow, and that's saying something, because you remember everything.
Yeah, yeah, like, you know what it was?
I didn't give a shit.
The gray wall, who cares?
Right.
That's great.
So, yeah, I don't mind when that happens, when we are the Rosetta Stone to some celebrity interview.
That's great.
That's awesome.
How's it going on your end?
Did you listen to any WTF stuff this week?
I sure did.
It's funny, Mark.
I love when Mark's asking folks how they're doing and all the scenarios that people could be doing while listening, which now includes...
Now includes being in a field farming.
The farming community gets a lot of love now, which is great.
But it got me chuckling because I, as I was listening, I was replacing a flapper on my toilet.
And it just.
Just made me chuckle because, you know, I'm pausing to find out on YouTube how to, like, actually remove this damn thing that won't get off my toilet.
But, yeah, it was a pretty fun time to listen to Mark talk about the field workers and making sure that they have enough shade.
Well, see, maybe next time he throws in at-home toilet repairman.
Yes.
DIY flapper fixers.
Yes.
But I really loved Lucas Nelson.
Yeah, what a great guy.
Never heard of him before.
He sounds just like his dad, which is wild.
Also, it reminded me, you used to have artists play a song when they were on.
And you actually, I think you released an album with artists performing in the garage.
Sure did.
Yeah.
And we've done bonus material that has, uh, other, like basically the volume two and volume three of that type of album.
Um, I think for Mark, it has, it's, it's not something he said no to.
It's just, um, I think he feels a little self-conscious about micing people in this new space.
Like I think he's like concerned, like, I'm not sure I'm going to make it sound good.
And he wants to do that.
So, uh, it's not off the table.
But he's less inclined to request it.
I mean, those other times when it happened, it was because he, like said, asked them if they'll play.
And he doesn't really do that anymore.
Also, I like that Lucas mentioned that there's a stagecoach, which is like Coachella for country music.
Yeah.
I'm like, oh, I kind of want to go to that or at least see what happens there.
That sounds really fascinating.
The thing that made the most sense to me in that interview was how he kind of venerated hip hop as a genre that that was something he particularly drew from.
And it was because of lyrics, right?
Like and songwriting.
Yeah.
And when you think about that, oh yeah, this guy's brain.
And so was Willie Nelson's for that matter.
Like these are true storytellers through song.
So of course to him, like, oh, the people who've been doing that the best for decades are hip hop artists.
You know, that was really fascinating to me.
Yeah.
Also, I'm always guilty of pausing the show to just Google or put it on my Spotify.
Like, what is blue eyes crying in the rain?
And then just listening to the song and then coming back to the interview, which is really fun.
But great producer cuts.
Jessica Chastain.
First of all, sounds really sweet.
Has a great sneeze.
But it's wild that she gets so much play for an interview that has yet to actually happen.
Because you mentioned her with Sir Ben Kingsley.
Sir Ben, yeah.
The liar, yeah.
And now this.
This is really fun.
And this.
And, you know, it's worth it.
Because, like, hey, that's somebody who, like...
you know, we don't typically do like forward promotion of guests, but like, Hey, if they've asked us to, they specifically asked us to hold off on that because of Emmy nominations.
Right.
And, uh, they weren't being presumptuous, but I think it was known she would get an Emmy nomination and she did for the George and Tammy miniseries.
And so they asked us, could you wait until there's Emmy voting, which is middle of August.
So,
We said, sure, you know, unless we're in some kind of jam and we have to air it, there's nothing time sensitive about it.
A lot of it is about that George and Tammy miniseries.
So why not wait?
But, you know, in the meantime, I've listened to it and I kind of knew, oh, gosh, I'm not going to be able to include all this stuff at the beginning.
And so, you know, there you go.
If I can do it on producer cuts and the full Marin people can hear it first and hear it in full, hear things that are never going to be heard, then great.
Yeah, and I must be old because I love hearing about people, you know, what people are eating and their cholesterol.
I don't know why, but I got a kick out of it.
Oh, sure.
I think it's just like Mark talks to musicians and actors and he's looking for tools.
I, too, want to pick up some tips and be like, okay, that's what they're eating?
Nutrition.
Yeah.
Right.
Well, especially you're like, well, she's very healthy, so I'd like to know.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
I do actually have a question for you, and I've never asked you this question.
Yeah, shoot.
Did you ever attempt to be a stand-up comedian?
No.
Never?
Never.
You have so much comedy in your DNA.
Surely, when you were younger, people would suggest that you try out.
Yeah.
And I knew it was stupid.
Oh, you know what?
It wasn't that they would suggest that I try out for comedy or do comedy.
It was so often that I would be in like a school play and I would, if I was in a school play, you know, name your school play.
We did them, you know, every, every standard musical and whatnot, Oklahoma and Hello Dolly and, you know, just all, all the ones that kids do in school.
Right.
Yeah.
And anytime I was in them, I was always in the like comic roles.
Right.
You know, it's how's the best way for me to put this?
If you possess enough sense of timing and some skill around handling a joke, even if it's an old joke that exists in one of those old musicals, if you do it just at a certain level of competence as a kid, adults watching that think you're a genius.
They're like, this is a professional actor.
And...
If I heard it once, I heard it every time that I did one of these shows.
Afterwards, some grown-up would come up to me and say, you should be on SNL.
Every time, they would say that.
And I attribute it almost entirely to my obsession with SNL as a kid.
that I had books on SNL.
I saved many episodes on tape.
I watched it all the time that I knew this is really fucking hard.
It is not something I'm good.
I'm not good at what those people do.
And I, as a kid, I would look at those people saying that to me in the face and I would smile and nod and behind my gritted teeth, I'd be like, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
I knew it.
So, no, I never wanted to get involved with it.
I was I was I always assumed I would do something in broadcast media.
When I went to college, I wound up working at a radio station and, you know, started doing news.
So my first jobs out of college.
college were working in news radio.
And I thought that was fine.
Like, I could have probably done that for the rest of my life.
As you know, I went on to work at MSNBC, wound up doing it on television.
Like, that could have been the muscle I flexed.
But I think just because when I started working at Air America, based on my radio experience, not any kind of comedy, just working with Mark started our partnership together.
And so, you know, that's what gave me entry into a world of like entertainment media as opposed to just straight up news media, which is what I was doing.
That's fascinating because you, you know, did all the plays.
Like I said, I never did any of the plays.
And, you know, as I grew up and got, you know, I guess, I guess funny, people would say the same thing to me like, oh, you should do comedy and this and that.
And I
Same thing.
It never entered my brain.
I had no interest in it.
I knew I would not be good at it.
So it's so interesting that you had the same feeling as I did.
Yeah, I've never been driven to anything where I was like, well, I think I might want to try to do that, but I know I'm going to have to grind away.
That was never an impulse for me.
I was always like...
No, I should do a thing that I know I can do.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, I don't want to be down some road, halfway down the road, being like, I put all my heart and effort into this, and it's too fucking hard.
Right.
And the chances of success are nothing.
Right.
So, you know, I stayed away from that.
I did not want... I also knew so much about, like, that element, the heartbreak of show business, and how...
minimal the success rate was and so i i just shied away from it and i guess you could say hey the success rate of podcasts was just as minimal like this was as much a crapshoot that this thing took off as anything but like we weren't planning on that it wasn't a thing we were banking on so that was just good fortune and and i take nothing away from it but yeah the other thing not for me
You know, the one thing I always wanted to do, but I never was able, you know, I mean, I didn't really pursue it, but I always wanted to be like on The Moth or like This American Life and tell like one specific story.
You know, I have one good story in me.
And one of these days I'll try to maybe, you know, tell it.
But yeah, I have one good story that I feel like would be good for one of those shows.
Yeah.
One of those shows?
Fuck you.
Or this show.
I mean, I don't want to bore you.
You got five minutes?
We'll tease this out.
We'll tease this out.
Your one story.
No, I'm not going to burn it on a random episode.
This is going to be like the Christmas show or something.
Awesome.
Hey, you said it, pal.
Yeah.
You didn't have to say a damn thing.
Now the ball is rolling.
You're fucked.
All right.
Well, let's get into some of the things people sent in because there was some direct response to last week's show where we did our all-star teams for...
comedy, did our all-star teams for wrestlers.
This week was the all-star game in Major League Baseball.
We got this one comment that says, love ya, love your show, but an all-star team is generally, read always, made of active players.
That's true.
You guys had great Hall of Fame lists, but how about limiting yourself to active wrestlers or comedians or comedy writers?
And I'll tell you what, the only thing preventing me from totally burying this fool...
is that this person is exactly me like I would have sent the same comment in to some show that did this this is a pedant after my own heart you did not sign your name but I appreciate you whoever sent this in because exactly I would have said the same thing but hey give us a break I was just trying to link it to something in the news I know these were like best of all time discussions didn't really have anything to do with all stars but like it was the timing the all star game like give me a break
I was thinking the same thing on the streets of Nebraska.
I was like, wait a second, we should have done the All-Stars for wrestling this year.
Yeah, but here's why I can't do it, because I don't watch WWE, and so it would be incomplete.
I would not be picking All-Stars.
There's definitely people in WWE who are worthy and should be at the top of some list, but I'm not the guy to do that, absolutely.
I'm happy to weigh in on historical terms, but currently, no, not right now.
And probably is the same way for comedy.
Like, I'm definitely not watching the same amount of comedy that I did when I was younger.
All right, got somebody else here.
It says, love the all-star comedy idea.
Here's my suggestion.
All-star band.
Singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, bassist, drummer, and one catch-all for a non-traditional band instrument.
This is a great idea.
I would say, personally, I am not equipped to do this.
Like, I don't have that level of expertise around things.
Like, I think like, oh, the best guitarist of all time is like Brian May, right?
Or somebody like that.
Come on.
Well, okay.
Well, why don't we hear what this person, Justin, sent in?
He sent in his list.
Okay.
So he says his catch-all is Clarence Clemens.
on saxophone from the A Street Band.
Drummer would be Jimmy Chamberlain from the Smashing Pumpkins.
Weird, okay.
I know that he was a venerated drummer, but I wouldn't know much to distinguish that.
I just hear drummer and I think, well, what was the guy from Rush with like 16 drums?
Yeah, or John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin.
Well, John Paul Jones is on his list.
That's the bassist for Led Zeppelin.
Oh, I'm sorry.
You're thinking of John Bonham.
John Bonham.
Yes, excuse me.
Yes, who is also a classic drummer.
Right.
But yes, he put bassist John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin, keyboardist Steve Neve, or Nieve, I don't know how you pronounce that, but from The Attractions, Elvis Costello and The Attractions, guitarist Johnny Marr from The Smiths,
Sure.
Singer Paul Westerberg from The Replacements.
That's excellent.
And songwriter Bob Pollard from Guided by Voices, who loops right back around to the original discussion, because Bob Pollard was an excellent college baseball player, and he threw a perfect game.
Oh, no shit.
Yes.
Wow.
A friend of mine who's a Bob Pollard fanatic, a Guided by Voices fanatic, sends a happy Bob Pollard's perfect game day around every year.
That's awesome.
They celebrate the anniversary.
But so, yes, hey, if you're out there and you listen to Justin's list there and you have your own, send them in.
I definitely am not equipped to do that.
I'm not like Mark, like a music head.
I don't have a sense of those things.
I know what's I like.
That's about it.
Yeah, same.
It's like art.
I don't know much, but I know what I like.
Yeah, there you go.
I think that's porn, too.
All right.
This one was somebody just sent in.
They said comedy all-stars.
And this is their list.
A Hall of Fame list, I would say.
It's not an all-star list, but they're taking our cue.
Stand-up, Norm MacDonald.
This person says, never made a great special, but live he was untouchable.
Sitcom star, Kelsey Grammer, hilarious, but his pathos is the secret weapon.
That's true.
And, you know, sitcom star with the same character across two sitcoms is rare.
Totally.
Secondary sitcom character, Kramer.
Yeah, that's a fairly obvious one.
But, you know, what are you going to do?
We're doing best of all time here.
Sure.
Best comedy movie star.
This is interesting.
Ben Stiller.
I mean, that's a good pick.
Yeah.
I mean, Tropic Thunder.
You know what I'd say about Ben Stiller?
A lot of singles or doubles.
You know, it's like this was not a home run guy, but he got on base a lot.
Yeah.
He's a high average, like a Tony Gwynn type.
Yes.
Right.
Right.
Comedy writer Seinfeld and Larry David, which you could easily make that comedy duo.
Sure.
That's a duo.
His thing for comedy duo is Matthew McFadden and Nicholas Braun from Succession.
That's the disgusting brothers.
Yes.
Real just great chemistry between those two.
And that was all from Ryan, who said, P.S.
Mark's really hung up on Seinfeld not liking or respecting him.
But it seemed to me that Jerry enjoyed talking to him and that Mark doesn't like or have much respect for Jerry.
Yeah.
This is fantastic because, boy oh boy, there are fewer episodes that we have done that are more of a Rorschach test than the Seinfeld episode.
It really is a hall of mirrors.
And I have an answer for this.
And guess what?
I'm not going to say it.
Because...
I don't want, like, seriously, seriously, follow your bliss with the Seinfeld episode.
It is for all people to be all things.
I really don't think there's a right or a wrong answer.
And I think that's the same for Mark and Jerry.
I think they're both making awesome points, and I don't think there's a right or a wrong.
So go with your gut on how you feel about that Jerry answer.
I am going to keep mine to myself.
My sister-in-law thinks the same exact thing as this listener.
So it is fascinating that there is, you know, just different takes on it, I'll say.
Okay, well, we're going to get into some wrestling here because someone, Dave, sent in his own list of an all-star Hall of Fame team.
And he wanted to send this in because he said, these are some names for an all-star team that is not WWF heavy.
And this seems like someone who grew up with a lot of NWA influence.
It says, best tag team, the Steiner Brothers.
Nice.
Best heel champ, Lord Steven Regal.
Excellent.
Best babyface champ, Sting.
Fantastic.
That's right up there with my Bret Hart pick.
I think Sting and Bret are the same guy.
That's my feeling about WWF and WA, WCW, that Bret Hart and Sting are the analogs.
Best wrestler, Ric Flair, and it isn't close.
I mean, you're not going to get an argument out of me on that.
Who's going to say Ric Flair's not the best wrestler of all time?
You might have favorites or whatever, but everybody...
would be okay with it being flair uh best female wrestler medusa medusa who is very good and even when she went to wwf and she was uh alundra blaze um one of the great things was they would put her in there against japanese wrestlers who could go toe to toe and that was always helpful i didn't have a lot of fond memories of medusa as a wrestler but that's mostly because they didn't give her good opponents when she's in there with like uh bull nakano or someone aja kong someone from all japan wrestling was great
So that was, again, like I said, from Dave.
But now, speaking of Dave, a different Dave, we got this message.
And I like this message very much.
This person says, wonder if you want to talk about dirt sheets and how they were banned in wrestling's big promotions and people could be severely punished for even being seen with the pro wrestling torch and or wrestling observer in their bags or rooms and how that changed through time.
Wow.
And this is a fascinating thing because dirt sheets, that's what promoters came to call essentially what was started by Dave Meltzer.
He's really the person who invented something that came to be called a dirt sheet.
And then there were lots of people trying to do the same thing.
The only other one with...
About as much or equivalent success to Dave Meltzer was the pro wrestling torch done by a guy named Wade Keller.
Both guys, Dave and Wade, still active today.
But the Wrestling Observer was like the preeminent dirt sheet.
And what that meant was you subscribe to this.
He would put ads for it in Facebook.
wrestling magazines or wherever people like-minded people were apt to find it you would subscribe to the wrestling observer newsletter you get a mimeographed copy that he was doing by hand putting the staples in himself and send it to your home this is in the mid 80s and it would say like you know what were the wrestling results around the country and which guy was leaving this promotion and going to another one he would put the wrestlers real names in that was the thing i remember as a kid being like
Oh, this is the thing that has their real names.
That's crazy.
Oh, wait.
So you knew about this back in the day.
You were subscribed to it.
I was not subscribed as when I was that young.
What drew my attention to it was there was a weekly sports magazine called The National.
And it was made by Frank DeFord, who's a famous sports writer.
And the national had all sorts of sports in it.
And Frank DeFord was a subscriber to the Wrestling Observer.
And he gave Meltzer his first national column.
So that was the first time I ever saw it.
I think it was probably like 1990 or so.
And I was hooked immediately.
I'm like, this is exactly what I want to know.
I want to know, like, why did that guy all of a sudden disappear from TV?
Oh, he had a fight with the promoter and he's gone.
Like...
loved yeah that was that was the next level of my fandom was tapping into this stuff and so i love that idea of talking about it but here's the deal it's like talking about as this listener sent in can you find out about what it was like for you know people to be punished or that it was banned i'm not sure how much of that is true like i think a lot of that is myth because there's plenty of people who have said oh we all read the observers
Like, Bret Hart talks about it openly.
Like, yeah, everybody read it.
It's fine.
You know, it's known that it's been seen on Vince's desk back in the day.
Oh, wow.
And so, like, I'm like, man, it's hard to know how much of this is myth, how much of it is just people trying to denigrate the wrestling observer or the torch and not make it seem like everybody in the wrestling business cared about it.
And so I thought, you know what?
Let's talk to somebody who might know.
And I happened to have a contact.
with a former writer of the WWF magazine.
Amazing.
Now, WWF magazine was another huge entry point for me into, like, the world of wrestling.
I think I was eight years old when I first subscribed to it, and I subscribed to it with my money, and I went to the post office on the day I knew it was getting delivered every month, and I went and got my copy.
I would look in the little glass of the post office and go, I see my...
copy right there in the mailbox and go get the WWF magazine.
And so I happen to know this writer, Brian Solomon, who has gone on to write books and he hosts a podcast on wrestling and he's got a career beyond wrestling, but was involved in the WWF back in the day.
I put out a request to him.
He got right back to me, said he'd join us.
And so we're going to bring that to you right now.
This is me and Chris talking to Brian Solomon, former writer of WWF magazine and
and many wrestling books, which we'll talk about also.
So Brian Solomon, how's it going, man?
It's going really well, Brendan.
Thanks for having me on.
Yeah.
Well, I should say Chris doesn't know this, but the reason why I knew who you were, well, there's, there's two reasons really.
The first is that I, you know, long had a WWF magazine subscription going back to when I was eight years old and I read it all the time.
And it was like, literally like my first act of commerce.
Like I was like, I will
pay for a subscription to this magazine and i will go to the post office once a month and get it myself uh and uh and then in the you know i guess the late 90s or so uh your name was in there as you had a byline in there and i just as a person who absorbed all this stuff
I knew everyone who was writing for the WWF magazine.
I knew their names.
I knew where their columns came up.
So I knew you from that.
And then one day I'm walking around with a friend of mine.
He's a mutual friend of Chris and myself.
His name's Mike Batistic.
And we're walking around and I'm talking about wrestling.
And he's like, I know another guy who knows as much about wrestling as you do.
His name's Brian Solomon.
And I was like, wait a minute.
Guy writes for WWF magazine.
He's like, yeah.
I'm like, oh my God, I know exactly who that is.
All world.
That's crazy.
Well, it's also just so funny because like, I don't know what was, so you were at the time, were you doing that freelance?
Yeah.
So Mike and I, we worked for H.W.
Wilson, which was a reference book publisher.
You know, it was it was the 90s.
People still weren't totally relying on the Internet for research.
And so we did, you know, periodical readers got to periodical literature, all this boring stuff.
And even back then, though, Mike, I don't know, for whatever reason, he was just fascinated with it.
picking my brain about wrestling.
I mean, that was around the time of the Montreal Screwjob.
It was actually happening in real time.
And he was going to me like, what do you hear about this?
What's happening?
Like, is this real?
Is this real?
Is this part of a story?
Like, what's going on?
And so, yeah, we've maintained touch over the years.
It's kind of funny.
But at that time, so this is like late 90s.
I hadn't come to WWE yet.
I left...
that company to go to work for wwe but i was doing i started out just doing uh freelance wrestling stuff for even i mean this is sounds crazy but even like my local neighborhood newspaper of course i would cover indie shows like for free just as a just shoot my own pictures i'd be sitting there with a stopwatch literally at ringside timing the matches doing all
Because I was right out of college.
So I was doing whatever I could do, you know, and doing like that kind of local stuff and thinking, OK, one day I'm going to write for for wrestling magazines.
And it actually happened.
So there you go.
That's amazing.
And what was like what was the process?
I'm assuming it's not the same as like sending in a magazine pitch to like, you know, Harper's or Vanity Fair.
How do you wind up doing freelance writing at WWF?
It didn't really happen organically.
What I was doing back then, it didn't really lead directly to it.
I had kind of given up on it.
At the time, I was sending clips.
I was thinking, okay, I'm looking in the masthead of all the magazines.
So, okay, Pro Wrestling Illustrated, I'm going to send stuff to Bill Apter.
WWF Magazine at that time was Vince Russo.
I'm going to send stuff to him.
I even sent stuff to the Daily News.
The Slammer.
Right, right.
I actually said, I said, I can do a much better job than the slammer.
He stinks.
No offense.
And the most ironic thing is the guy who was the Daily News sports editor at that time was a guy named Barry Werner, who wound up hiring me because he came to the WWF to be their publisher.
Oh, wow.
But that's not.
But so I took a couple of years away from it where I was just, you know, I just got married.
I was trying to get like a real job, like a like a grown up job.
Yeah.
And I found the ad in the New York Times classified.
It was just the most surreal thing.
Back when it was like a print classified, I'm looking through it, and there was a gigantic WWF logo, you know, standing out from everything.
Sure.
I apply just as like a joke.
I don't know.
Let's see what happens.
And they put me through the mill.
I had three different interviews driving up to Stanford.
I was living, you know, I grew up in Brooklyn.
So I was driving up from the city repeatedly from like October 99.
It took me until February 2000 to finally get hired.
And what was the what was the position?
Well, I got my foot in the door as a copy editor and I kind of bluffed my way in.
So a copy editor, as you probably know, is basically a glorified proofreader.
That's really what it is.
You're reading, you're checking for mistakes in other people's articles.
You're not even really like an editor with any kind of power.
And I'd never done that kind of work.
I'd strictly just been a staff writer at H.W.
Wilson.
And I kind of bluffed my way in thinking once they see...
how much I know about this stuff, they're going to go, oh, yeah, we have to make this guy a writer.
And again, that actually happened.
I was there for six months doing this proofreading grunt work and trying to learn as I went along all the little proofreader marks and things.
And they had a staff writer on the magazine who left.
And Barry Werner, the publisher, said, this guy, we can't just have him correcting people's articles.
Like, he knows wrestling like it's his religion.
He's obsessed with it.
And he could actually write because I had been trained as a writer.
I'm an English major.
I'm an English nerd.
I have an MA and a BA in English Lit.
And they plugged me in as the new staff writer.
So, I mean, it was just...
I don't know.
It was like this, it stalled for a couple of years and then it just became this perfect trajectory where I found myself as a staff writer on a magazine that I also read as a child, you know, in the 80s.
Yeah, right.
And I think I remember at the time when Mike first said that he knew you, I think it was like either right before or right after he told me that you did an interview with Vince McMahon.
Like there was like, I remember like he was like, there, that's my friend Brian.
It was like a picture of you and Vince.
Yeah.
Yes.
Where do you get that picture from?
I mean, I've posted it.
I think it was on like WWF dot com like it was on their website.
So I did.
I actually had the distinction of doing two long form interviews with Vince McMahon while I worked there.
And that was rare.
Yes, very rare.
One of them was for the magazine.
And Vince had, I believe, never given an interview to his own official magazine.
Right.
And it was on the occasion of the 10th anniversary at that time of Monday Night Raw.
And I was working for Shane.
Shane McMahon, Vince's son, was our director of our department.
So he was able to make the connection.
And I met them.
At the New York sales office in Manhattan, the ad sales office, I rendezvoused.
I took the train, got in a limo with Vince.
Shane introduced us officially, even though I've been working there for like two years, gotten a limo with him and rode up to Stanford in bumper to bumper traffic.
So I had him.
It was just me and him for hours.
You didn't sneeze, right?
No, I never sneezed.
I never sneezed.
He offered me like a couple of protein bars.
I was like, no, I'm good.
I'm good.
And we talked for we talked for so long that we ran.
I ran out of questions and we were just bullshitting.
We were just talking about our families and things.
And and then a second time I interviewed him as research for a book I was doing for WWE.
called wwe legends and i wanted to talk to him about all the old timers like so i got to pick his brain about his dad and all the people his dad worked with and like his memories of being a kid i mean again i had him in his office on the fourth floor for hours i mean it was like a it was like a dream come true yeah
Well, interestingly, though, you know, you said that that was the first time he'd ever granted an interview with the official publication.
But I think for a lot of people listening, they might not get like when you talk about it being the official publication, like the WWF magazine and then WWE when they still had it as a magazine.
I think it lasted to what, about like 2012, 13, somewhere around there.
14, yeah.
14, okay.
And it is a fully kayfabed publication.
It's something that was done to essentially sell the whole product much the same way it was being done on television.
And I think I remember when I was a kid, my dad picked it up off my floor one day and was just paging through it.
And he goes, this whole thing is an ad.
You bought an ad.
And I was like...
Well, okay, I like it.
I didn't have a problem with it being an ad.
But, like, that's an interesting thing for me.
Like, from, like, talking to you, you're a person who started doing that.
You're working, you know, on this official publication that is part of the story.
You know, helping to move the stories that they're telling in the ring and on the shows.
You're helping to move those along.
And then you've gotten yourself to a career where you're actually writing books to the point where you just wrote a biography on the chic, which requires, like...
A much different skill set.
Right.
That is a journalistic pursuit.
So I guess I'm just kind of curious, like how that journey went for you.
How did you go from being like part of the show to then realizing, like, you know, you got to use these same skills for doing something that's telling the truth as opposed to just the truth as wrestling sees it?
I always have to stop myself too, because now when I'm doing that kind of writing, like you're talking about the journalistic type of writing where I'm not, I'm no longer beholden to WWE.
I'm continuously in my head, remembering all the rules and things that were like rammed into my brain for seven years and going like, you don't have to follow those rules anymore.
Right.
You know, you don't have to do that.
You're not you know, you can actually be independent.
You can you know what?
If it was called WWF at the time, you can write the letters WWF and the wrath of God is not going to come down on you.
You know, when you say rules, was it mostly like semantic?
Like like I know there's a big thing about you call the you don't call it a belt.
You call it a championship and all of that kind of stuff.
Was it mostly that stuff or was it like you had to be following a very specific storyline arc at the same time?
It was all of that.
And I should it was the kind of rules of style, what you can and can't write in terms of style.
But also, you know, yes, you can't contradict what's on TV.
In some cases, you might be able to expose certain things you can't expose too much.
Like I was very fortunate by the time I got there, there actually were two different magazines.
So there was the WWF magazine, which was, as you said, the kayfabe magazine where everything had to match up to the storylines.
And we treated everything on TV like it was real, 100%.
And then there was Raw magazine, which was more of the behind the curtain, almost like a lifestyle magazine where we would do a combination of historical pieces and like, you know, finding out about the real people behind not only the wrestlers, but the people behind the company production and how it was done.
It was a little bit more.
We called it a worked shoot magazine because
At the same time, there were things we would never let on about.
We were not going to say that the outcomes of the matches were predetermined.
No matter how real we got, we had to treat it like you won this championship, you beat this guy.
We could talk about things like, okay, you changed your persona or...
you know, you used to be a fan favorite.
Now you're more of like a rule breaker type wrestler.
Like we could do that kind of stuff, but we couldn't just come out and say, okay, yeah, Vince McMahon told me we're going to give you a big push and we're going to put the title on you.
Like we couldn't say things like that.
But so we walked that line and I'm actually very proud of that Raw magazine because it,
it was a really interesting read.
I thought we did something really special that no one I think has done before or since where we never, we did not obliterate kayfabe, but we gave people a mature kind of interesting product to read.
If you were older than 16 years old that you would actually enjoy.
So I got to do a little bit of both while I was there.
And, um,
We sort of changed the tone of the publications at the time to the point where I've talked to a lot of people over the years now who write about wrestling or who cover it, who will say to me, oh, yes, I used to read those magazines in that early 2000s era.
And it kind of opened my eyes about how you can write about wrestling differently.
in a way that doesn't destroy kayfabe but is also engaging and interesting and acknowledges history and things that that you never used to be able to write about so it kind of whetted my appetite a little bit on on that kind of thing were you ever doing like a kind of a fictitious version of of a story like for instance you know i know that with the after mags they did this all the time where
They weren't interviewing a person that they would say was an interview.
It was just a kind of fabricated or fantastical version of what an interview with random ex-wrestler would be.
And I just always assumed that was happening, too, in the WWF magazines.
Like, if you read, here's an interview with the Rockers.
Like, they didn't actually sit down and talk to the Rockers in character and get what they were saying.
But I don't know.
Maybe they did.
I'm wondering what your input is on that.
Well, we used to, I mean, I can't speak for all the writers, but I used to enjoy doing those kind of things at the WWF magazine because it was like creative writing.
So if you want to scratch that itch, you can do it.
And we would do, we were huge fans of the Aftermax.
And I've told some of those guys that, and they couldn't believe it because we were selling like 10 times what they were selling, but we wanted to be like them.
We grew up reading the wrestler inside wrestling, pro wrestling illustrated.
So we would try to, at least in the era I was there, we would try to ape them and do like these fictionalized vignettes and create these scenarios.
Like you have a story.
Okay.
Chris Jericho has just shown up from WCW.
He's in the WWF now.
And you know,
We open the story in the locker room.
You know, Chris Jericho walks in the reaction of everybody there when, you know, he's the enemy.
And now he's with us and people mumbling under their breath.
You create this whole scenario that never happened.
And it's but it's also never been shown on television, but it fits in with what they're presenting on TV.
So it was fun to do that.
As far as the interviews go, from what I understand, there was a time.
So if you go back to the beginning of the magazine in the 80s and the 90s, where a lot of the interviews were completely made up by the writers and Vince or maybe Linda, because Linda McMahon was the original chief of the of the publications department, they would then have to approve it.
By the time I got there, a lot of that was not happening anymore.
Part of it was they were trying to go in a more realistic direction with the Attitude Era.
Part of it was that our director was now a real journalism guy, Barry Werner, and I don't think he was entirely comfortable with doing that, even though it was pro wrestling.
He had worked for the Daily News, although...
I would venture to say in the past 25 years, the daily news has gone more into the realm of fiction than it was at the time that he worked there.
But so he would sort of be, he would put us, we would find ourselves in these odd situations where I'm sitting down with a wrestler and I have to do this interview for real.
And I'm like, look,
This is in storyline.
We're going to be talking about what's on TV.
And, you know, there are some guys who were who loved doing that.
They were very comfortable doing it.
I'm trying to think of a good example.
Edge comes to mind where he was totally on board.
He loved the idea of, oh, yeah, yeah, this is great.
It's like, you know, I'm doing a promo or something or Steve Austin, like doing that, too.
He's very comfortable just off the cuff.
Who wasn't very good at that?
Oh, well, there would occasionally be a guy who would go, and the first person comes to mind, it's an uncomfortable reference, but it's Chris Benoit.
I remember having a situation that Chris Benoit was a very serious guy.
He was very serious about his craft of wrestling, and he wasn't always comfortable doing some of the more
kind of over the top things they would ask him to do on TV in the first place.
So I remember sitting down with him once, for example, and he's just going, you know, he's kind of getting frustrated with it.
And he's going, you know what?
I don't know.
I don't even know what I'm supposed to say.
So why don't you just write it?
Just write the questions and answers.
You could show it to me if you want to.
I'll let you know if it sounds like something I would say.
I even remember, I think that might have even happened with Ric Flair once, who you'd think would be very comfortable doing that sort of thing.
But even he was just like, I think he was worried about saying the wrong thing or pissing off Vince or whatever.
Well, it's a weird thing.
It's like one step removed from what they actually do.
Like, you know, there's this feeling I always think that like and a lot of wrestlers have said this, too, that when they are performing, they're themselves with the volume turned up to 10.
Right.
And it's got to feel weird when you turn that off.
Right.
Because now you're in a workspace or whatever, whatever environment they're in talking to you.
And it seems like you're just supposed to be a person with the volume set at normal level.
And there's none of the trappings of the ring or a microphone in front of them or all this.
And then you're saying like, hey, can you turn the volume up all the way to 10?
Because we're going to do this in character.
And there's no one, you know, it's not like they're being filmed or anything.
So it's like they have to get into character in this weird way.
Some of them just didn't like to do it.
I remember one time I was at a photo shoot with Eddie Guerrero.
This was hilarious because we were doing this cover shoot where
he's there with his low rider cars and he's got all these girls with them and he's in his full gimmick.
Like he's like Tony Montana or something.
And I remember we were at a nightclub in Stanford shooting it.
And in between shots, we were sitting at the table and I said, look, Eddie, we got to, you know, this is also a cover story.
So since I have you here, we'll do a little interview.
And again, it was an in-character one.
And, you know,
Eddie Guerrero, when he was on TV, especially in the WWE, they really had him play up his heritage where he's talking like Cheech Marin.
He didn't really talk like that.
He's doing all that.
I mean, Cheech Marin doesn't really talk like that.
So, like, he's playing it up to begin with for TV.
And we're halfway through the interview, and he starts to laugh.
And I'm like, Eddie, what's so funny?
And he goes to me, you know, like, this is so ridiculous.
Because he goes, he goes, and he, you know...
He didn't have the slightest trace of an accent.
Not at all.
I mean, he was born.
I think he was born in California.
El Paso.
I think you're right.
And he goes to me, you know, when I'm on TV, my wife watches me.
And this is before Vicky Guerrero was a TV character herself.
He goes, my wife watches me and she can't stop laughing because I am nothing like this.
Like I have all these girls I'm riding in these cars.
I'm hanging out with China.
I'm calling her mommy.
He's like, I don't call anybody mommy.
Yeah.
Like, and he's, you know, he's like, I got the chains.
I am just a homebody.
I am the most down to earth.
I play with my kids.
Like I'm not, you know, and now I have to do it in the magazine too, where I don't even have somebody who's when I'm on TV, at least.
You have people writing a lot of the stuff for you or they're sitting with you and coaching you and you get to do maybe a couple of takes.
He's like, here, I'm just winging it.
I'm just talking to you and pretending like I'm the guy on television, which I'm not.
So, yeah, it could get very surreal for sure.
Did the writers ever like join you on any of these shoots to be like, you know what, why don't you just talk to me and I'll, you know, sort of impersonate the person?
The TV, that actually happened once or twice, but it wasn't because they wanted to do it.
The TV writers hated us.
They hated us.
We were like, you know, major pains in the ass to them because they're trying to do their job and write television.
And they have Vince breathing down their neck.
And now they have members.
Shane is our boss.
So Shane has a lot of power and a lot of access.
So Shane is forcing us down their throat and saying that we I want the magazine writers in all the TV production meetings with the writers of TV so they know what's going on.
They didn't want us there.
You know, they hated us and they would sometimes they would try to work us like they would tell us things that were going to happen that didn't happen.
You know, they would they would toy with us, you know, because they did not want to have to deal with us.
They didn't want to have to be beholden to anybody.
And then, you know, because their plans would change on the fly and they didn't want to be stuck in this thing of, well, now it's going to be in the magazine.
Right.
And they just resented a lot of it.
But there were a couple of times where Shane would go.
I'm just putting you on the phone with Brian Goertz or Dave Lagana or one of the guys that was doing.
And they're just going to dictate to you what what they want the character to say.
But again, it was just one more annoying task they had to perform that they didn't feel they didn't even feel the need to have to do.
So that made them hate us even more.
yeah did the tv guys ever get one through like uh did the magazine publish something that did not happen uh storyline wise on television well i'll tell you one thing it's not exactly that but there's one thing that happened and nobody could tell me otherwise and i don't know if he hears this um shane helms who was the hurricane who was hurricane helms if he hears this i'm sorry but we took a liking to him and his character when he came from wcw
He took on like this superhero character where he was the hurricane.
And he's a huge comic book fan.
And he would build in a lot of that into the character.
And he's getting over on TV.
This is like 2002-ish.
He's interacting with The Rock.
They're doing things with him.
Like he's getting popular.
And we're going, you know, let's put him on the cover.
How many times could we have The Rock on the cover, Steve Austin on the cover, or whoever?
There was a short list of people they were comfortable with, DX, Triple H, China.
Okay, we've done it all to death.
Let's take a mid-card guy who's getting a push and try to help that push along.
Now, of course-
We made the mistake of not clearing this of just we, as they say in the business, we went into business for ourselves.
We didn't say, oh, is this OK?
Like, what's your plan for the hurricane?
We put him on the cover.
It was a great cover.
We had him like Clark Kent.
He's opening his shirt.
And instead of the Superman symbol, it's the hurricane symbol.
The whole thing is comic book style cover.
Nice.
Now.
I can't prove this.
I can't prove cause and effect.
I will just tell you the second the magazine came out, the second it hit newsstands, his push stopped dead cold.
Oh, no.
They immediately started jobbing him out.
And we felt like.
Oh.
They were punishing him for what we did as a way to say to us, don't ever do that again.
Stay in your lane.
That kind of thing.
Again, I can't prove it, but I'm convinced that that's.
Well, it doesn't appear that that's an isolated incident.
Like it's not specific to the magazine, but there have been innumerable cases of, you know, what you would call a wrestler getting themselves over.
And if they were not part of the plan, you know, they would not only be not pushed, but like D push.
Right.
Like there's like, hey, we want to get the message across here just because you came up with a catchphrase and it got some pops and got the crowd into it.
It's not our thing and we are not going to have it.
So Cain will now chokeslam you 20 times a show or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah, it happened.
I mean, the famous example is Zack Ryder.
That's right.
Where they just saw Zack Ryder as a goofball.
He was a funny, almost like a comedy character.
His gimmick was basically I'm a Long Island douchebag.
I mean, that was essentially what his wrestling gimmick was.
He got himself over to the point where.
He was getting like main event level reactions.
And it's almost like they hated him for it.
They were just like, no, no, no, no, no.
We don't see you that way.
We're not changing our plans just because now all of a sudden people like you.
Like you would think they would think the opposite.
Right.
And I think at their most successful...
That's what they did.
They did the opposite.
And it worked.
I mean, Steve Austin was not meant to be a main event guy.
I mean, The Rock was not seen that way when they first brought him in.
I mean, they went with the reactions they were getting.
But I've seen it happen where I remember it happened with Christian where they had a show at the Garden and the Madison Square Garden crowd is very vocal.
And they were going nuts for him.
And it's almost like they have to figure out a way.
This sounds ridiculous, but they have to figure out a way to cool you off after that because they don't want it's not in their long term plan and they don't want their plans to get messed up.
There's a guy right now, L.A.
Knight.
Yeah.
who people are talking about, like, why don't you do more with this guy?
He's over to an insane level.
When he came out in London at the pay-per-view they had there a few weeks ago, he got one of the biggest reactions on the show, Money in the Bank, and everybody had him pegged to win the Money in the Bank ladder match, which gets you a title shot and all this stuff.
And it's almost like...
They actually said – they actually do it out of spite.
Like, oh, you like this guy?
Oh, you want this guy to win?
Guess what?
He's not going to win.
And their big thing that people kept saying was, well, L.A.
Knight is 40 years old.
L.A.
Knight is not – you can't build the future on somebody like that.
Now, the guy who won money in the bank was Damien Priest.
Guess how old Damien Priest is?
40 years old.
So, I mean, it's ridiculous.
Just ridiculous.
Still happens, though.
Damn.
Now, one of the things that's kind of like the sand in the ointment of that, you know, Vince or anybody running a wrestling promotion and trying to basically exert their will on what's going on is this existence of wrestling news that comes from outside of their control.
Right.
Right.
And the whole reason we started talking about this was a listener sent in a question about dirt sheets.
And my biggest point of curiosity is how much the dirt sheets actually affected the product.
Right.
Like, were the wrestlers reading them?
We like we know stories of like the Wrestling Observer was seen on Vince's desk and Bret Hart talks about how tons of guys had subscriptions and they wanted to know what the star ratings for their matches were in that.
And I'm just wondering, from your perspective,
How did it bleed into the actual product?
Big time.
I was one of the people in the office who my task was to Xerox as many copies of the Observer as I could and and disseminated around the building to the people whose names could not be seen on Dave Meltzer's subscriber list.
Oh, wow.
It was safe for my name.
I'm a nobody.
I would zero.
I would make like a stack and they would go to like Howard Finkel.
They would go to Terry Taylor.
They would go to Dr. Tom Pritchard.
They would go to, you know, all these people that wanted to look at it because look, what it is, is a trade publication.
especially in the pre-internet days before all these all fans got access to it, who probably it's not really in their interest to read it.
But when it was a real true insider industry type of journal, everybody was reading it.
And, you know, absolutely.
If Vince wasn't reading it, which I don't think he was really like picking it up and reading it, but I can guarantee he had people who read it for him.
No question about it.
There were people there who read it for him and probably still do.
And the thing is, he always had this weird kind of love-hate relationship with them.
And I say love-hate because Vince actually gave an interview to Dave Meltzer once, at least once.
And there have been times where they've had cordial communications.
It's almost like...
The relationship between a president and the press where it's like an, you know, sane president where it's like the idea is I don't like all of this.
I wish I didn't have to deal with all you people.
You make my job really difficult and you're you annoy me.
But.
It's part of the job.
It's part of life.
It comes with the territory.
I've got to make the most of it.
I know you're going to piss me off a lot, but I'll put on a brave face and deal with it.
I really think that that a lot of times was the relationship of Vince and the dirt sheets, because you would hear things like, oh, that's sacrilegious.
We don't want to see it.
Like, I remember one time I had one on my desk and Shane came in and he literally pointed to it and he goes, what's that doing there?
That's that's sacrilege.
And he actually used the word sacrilege.
But it was more like it wasn't like no one's reading it.
It was more like, what are you doing?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Who are you?
Do I really want the people who work for me to be reading these weird secrets about my family and that my dad is cheating on my mom and all this weird kind of stuff?
Like there was that.
But there was also the understanding that.
You know, we respect what he does.
I guarantee you, I know there were well placed people in that company and still are who talk to him on a regular basis.
Yeah, that was going to be one of my questions to you was like, did you was it was it like talked about openly when you work there that people are like, well, we know and you don't have to name names, but like, oh, we know so and so talks to Dave.
Yes, I won't name names, but yes, there were.
In fact, it got to the point where we would even sit there when we had downtime and we would go like, we would try to calculate how much money does this guy make off this thing?
I mean, he's got to be making millions because we're sitting there going, it's like $90 for 40 issues.
So you can extrapolate that 100 and whatever for a year's worth.
He's got to have like a few tens of thousands of readers easily.
That's a conservative number.
This man is making millions.
And then we would go.
It's very conceivable to imagine he's bribing people.
I don't want to slander anybody, but it wouldn't be easy to see that he could have people on the payroll maybe.
And I'm not saying these people were, but they were people that we just absolutely knew.
And you could tell from some of the information that got out who were the people that were talking.
But I'll tell you a story about how much I know that Meltzer got under Vince's skin.
I was in a meeting.
Again, I was being forced down Vince's throat and Vince...
Hated seeing us there.
We would be sitting in the board meetings.
We would have to actually pitch magazine stories directly to Vince McMahon.
Why?
I have no idea.
You know, it would be like if Michael Eisner in the 80s is sitting there having to approve like goofy baseball hats.
Like, which one do you like, Mike?
Do you like this goofy hat or this goofy hat?
Like, that's not his.
He doesn't need to concern himself.
So Shane would put us in there and go, all right, tell Vince what, you know, what are you looking at doing in the next issue?
And I would run down the ideas and, you know, he would pretend to be falling asleep in the middle of it, of course, in front of the whole board of directors.
And then he would.
I remember this one time where we had an idea to do a story.
It's innocuous, right?
We want to do a story on the history of steel cage matches.
We just thought it's an evergreen story.
It doesn't matter what's going on television.
It's not talent based.
The history of steel cage matches.
For some reason, I guess, because Dave Meltzer does a lot of historical pieces in The Observer.
Vince is not a huge fan of wrestling history for the sake of wrestling history.
Like he likes it.
If it can help him to sell a match, he doesn't approve of this whole thing of like, Oh, let's just write about it for the hell of it.
So I pitch him this idea.
We want to do the history of steel cage matches.
He looks at me and he goes, you know, you guys really need to take your head out of Meltzer's ass.
Yeah.
I never brought up the name Dave Meltzer had nothing to do with Dave Meltzer.
In his mind, he thought history piece equals Dave Meltzer.
Therefore, my magazine guys must be reading The Observer.
That's how much he occupies real estate in the brain of Vince McMahon, for sure.
Well, and it's funny because it's also, it's like to them, like just calling it a dirt sheet, right?
Which I assume is something that originated with the promoters.
Like Dave Meltzer didn't say, hey, get your dirt sheets here.
Like it was a pejorative.
And the idea was that it was dirt, right?
And in some cases, this guy is deliberately trying to fuck with.
this right he's trying to spoil results he's going to you know places around the horn and telling what the results are and so if you want we want people to pay their money and he's giving away the results of the matches and and you look at what it is now
what I take it as is like the graduation level of investment from wrestling fans who have grown out of, well, I just want to watch the show and get the stories.
Now they're like, there's real life stories behind this, and I want to know those, but the company's never going to tell me that, right?
And so you have this ecosystem that's created to, like, it's not even that they're reporting on it.
It's not, most of it's not journalism.
It's like...
We heard a thing.
We put it in our newsletter or we put it on this, you know, exclusive post online.
I heard there was an argument backstage or whatever it is.
And that invests a certain amount of fans in a way that they don't have just from the TV show.
And so I get my guess.
And you tell me if I'm wrong about this, that a guy like Vince.
Realize not just that like he could work with it the way you work with the press if you're a president, but also on some level, it is selling his business to a different degree of fan.
Right.
And if he if those people are invested in the product, they'll keep watching the thing on TV, which they may have even outgrown.
Well, the problem is that wrestling promoters have never been interested in having educated fans.
Sure.
And I mean educated to the business.
Right.
They don't want – that's why in the territory days everything was so closed and contained.
They didn't want you to know what was happening in another territory because you might know that this guy already lost to this guy or this guy, he's a good guy here, but he's a bad guy over there.
Like it was never – it just is a tradition in the business that –
You only want your fans to know what you're telling them.
You educate your fans because then you could educate them on the type of wrestling to expect, which is based on the type of wrestling you can give them, the type of wrestlers to cheer for, the type of storylines to enjoy.
You can control it.
So it's a business that never had to deal with anything.
The thing that any other field has to deal with, especially entertainment, but any field, which is, like I said, trade publications.
Every field has that.
Even in entertainment, you have that.
But wrestling, I hate to say it, it was a backwards business.
It was a business that was based on just secrets and hiding and isolation.
Con artistry.
Right.
It came out of the carnivals.
It was it was carnies and con men.
And so you don't want to shine that kind of light on it.
But the interesting thing is, if you go back because he started doing it in the 80s.
So this is like way before the average fan would have any way of knowing this stuff any other way.
I mean, it was the one conduit.
There were a couple of others.
There was the torch, Wade Keller, and things like that.
But Meltzer was the template.
And you would have – there's a famous story about Memphis because Memphis was one of the most closed territories there was.
It was like a walled kingdom.
I mean –
Even Vince McMahon couldn't penetrate Memphis for years and years because they had such a closed media ecosystem.
They had no professional sports teams at the time.
They had no, you know, wrestling was life.
I mean, the wrestling show in Memphis, the whole Jerry Lawler thing, it was the highest rated show on television.
I mean, a lot, even ahead of the news in some occasions.
So like, it was this very closed world.
And so when the Observer came to town, it was this crazy thing where they, on the surface, they hated it.
Hated it, but everybody was reading it secretly to see where they were being mentioned.
But the interesting thing about the Memphis thing is the one guy there, and this would happen a lot, who loved the Observer, kept it above boards, talked to Dave all the time, and couldn't understand why everybody was upset about it was Lance Russell.
who was the announcer.
And the reason was Lance Russell had a background in television, not in wrestling per se.
He was a news guy.
He came from broadcasting school.
He understood the value of a trade publication.
And that would occasionally happen in other territories too.
And I think for people that get The Observer or get...
what so-called dirt sheets do.
I think those are the people that understand that as well.
And the people, you know, because now you have all these fans today who a lot of times they don't, I don't think they really understand what the function of the dirt sheet is and all they see it as is something that's going to spoil the show for them.
you know, that's what they're there for, for people that want to know what's going on behind the scenes.
If you don't want to know that stuff, avoid it.
You know, don't read it, but don't call them out for doing what their function is supposed to be.
And as far as, like you were saying, people, them trying to appeal maybe to people who read dirt sheets and read The Observer, I think what you saw happen was it wasn't so much because of the dirt sheets, it was because of the internet.
And with the rise of the internet, and look, let's face it, a lot of those websites...
Where were they getting their information?
Dirt sheets.
Right.
But but but the Internet was like broadcasting it to everybody.
So you started getting much smarter fans.
And that's when you started seeing a lot more of these work shoot storylines.
You saw it in the attitude era where they're trying to and you still see it to this day to a certain degree where they try to incorporate reality into.
into the stories, they try to trick you and make you go, wait a minute, is that real?
Like, what are they talking about?
Or anytime a wrestler does promos, like we see it in AEW with all the CM Punk stuff, when wrestlers are doing promos that are tied to things that we know really happen behind the scenes, everybody goes, whoa!
Oh, my God, this is really good.
You know, get the popcorn you want.
You know, and wrestlers getting in each other's faces on TV in a scripted promo.
But they're talking about things that, you know, are reasons that they don't actually like each other.
Right.
People eat that stuff up.
And that was created by the smarter breed of fan, whether they whether they like it or not.
Well, it's one of the things you've been able to do is take this not to the Internet, but to actual publishing.
And you've done quite a few books.
Some of them were under the WWE umbrella.
I know you did a trivia book with them and that one you mentioned, WWE Legends.
There's also one that's kind of like I've seen it referenced quite a bit, the pro wrestling FAQ.
That's got like, you know, just what would you call that?
Like an encyclopedia of wrestling, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
It's kind of like a single volume reference book on everything you'd ever want to know about the history and business of wrestling.
Yeah.
But then there's this book, Blood and Fire, the unbelievable real life story of wrestling's original chic.
And that came out, what, about two years ago?
Yes.
Actually, a year ago, 2022.
Yeah.
And that I mean, that's a full biography of like a fascinating individual.
How did you how did that even come up for you as the as like the thing you were going to devote your time and attention to as a as a full wrestling biography?
Well, I didn't always see it that way because when I left WWE, I kind of got away from wrestling for a while.
I didn't really intend to keep writing about it.
But Pro Wrestling FAQ is a book that kind of pulled me back in where I kind of started following it again because it was this reference book that I got hired to do because I had a mutual friend.
I mean, it wasn't even something I sought out.
It was amazing.
The publisher wanted to do a wrestling reference book.
They had an editor there who was a friend of mine who suggested me.
But that wound up leading to the Sheik book because I wrote a capsule biography of the Sheik in the book along with many other people that were like chapters devoted to different people.
And I started to get really interested in his story.
And it came back to me years later because I started thinking because –
The pro wrestling FAQ book did not exactly like the world on fire.
And I came to the conclusion that the wrestling books people really want to read the most are biographies.
They're usually personality driven books.
And I thought, well, okay, who can I do a biography about?
And that I have a very historical interest in wrestling books.
And I started going, well, okay, who are the biggest names?
Because there have been so many biographies.
The biggest names I could think of, the most important wrestlers, the biggest stars who have not had a book written about them, especially books, stars from the past.
And I couldn't name anyone that was a bigger deal than the original Sheik who hadn't already had a book done on him.
And when you add to that, the fact that I'd been fascinated with him going back to, you know, when I was reading wrestling magazines in the early nineties and he was still active.
Sure.
And I thought this is the time.
I mean, you know, if anyone's going to do it before he fades out of living memory, unfortunately, like this needs to get done to preserve the
his legacy and his importance to the business and that wound up being that book thankfully i'm very excited to say was was a very big success and continues to be yeah i see a reference quite a bit and i you know i think if anybody's uh curious the the person we're talking about the original chic it's not the iron chic right this is this is uh um uh you know his his career largely started was it in the detroit area was that the territory he was mostly from
Yeah, that was he actually owned and operated it also for a number of years.
It was basically Michigan, Ohio, Southern Ontario.
That was like his his whole area.
But but he was I want it needs to be stressed that he was a national star.
Yeah, right.
Right, right.
And for other people might know, his nephew is Sabu.
And, you know, just generally, I had the same relationship you did to him where I knew him from like the after mags and old wrestling mags because he bled a lot.
So he made for great art, right?
Like you'd have pictures of him in all these magazines you'd see in like your pharmacy.
Oh, look at that thing.
There's a bloody guy on the cover and it would be the Sheik.
And I wonder when you had, you know, you had to do your research and your interviews for the book, did you find it tough to navigate like the worked world of wrestling versus actual biography and what you need to discover like through journalism and reporting?
Yeah.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, you're talking about somebody whose entire life's mission was to make sure nobody knew anything about his personal life like that was his active goal throughout his entire career.
And let me tell you something.
He was extremely successful because.
Doing this book, it was like I've described it as archaeology because it's like you I had to go back to primary documents.
I had to really cut through the fog of things and the bullshit and the kayfabery and, you know, learning that he oh, wow, he was actually working his own family and friends about some of these things about his personal life.
You know, like I found his military record and.
how he served in World War II, but not anywhere near to the extent that he would tell people that he did.
But he was there.
And things like that, you know, where he went to school and learning things like the fact that people would say, oh, did you hear that the Sheik was a – he was actually a football coach in college.
All these weird urban legends that pop up.
He taught – he was a professor.
He did this.
He did that.
And then I went to discover that he never even went to high school, you know.
And a lot of these things that would negate the – or contradict –
the what people thought they knew about him and unfortunately now he's been gone for 20 years and a lot of the people are gone family uh colleagues peers so even the people i would get to talk to very few people that were really kind of true peers of his that i could talk to um you know terry funk was a huge example of one of them who's still with us but in a lot of it was was
The interviews would be people who maybe were fans or who were wrestlers who worked with him, but they were people that were kind of rookies when he was the big star.
And so they were there, but their view of things might not be – they might not have been in the inner circle.
So it was a lot of piecing together.
And so what I decided to do with it too was –
put in whatever I could learn about him, you know, get it all in there and to fill in the gaps of everything else that could never be known.
I made it a much bigger book.
I set his life story in the entire context of what was happening in the wrestling business at the time everywhere and how he was connected to it.
And also what was even happening in the country at the time, you know, because he was in Detroit wrestling when they were having the riots.
So, I mean,
There were bigger things going on than him.
So that was almost like, I don't want to call it a trick, but it was like a device that was used to kind of make the story about more than just the one man.
So that where there was mystery of his life, I could tell you what was happening around him.
That could maybe make you understand him more, even if every little detail of his life could not be known.
Well, Brian, I really encourage people to check that book out, Blood and Fire, the Unbelievable Real-Life Story of Wrestling's Original Chic.
But also, people can hear you, right?
Do you still do a regular podcast?
Yes.
I have a podcast called Shut Up and Wrestle, which is part of...
the Arcadian Vanguard Network, which is known for the Jim Cornette podcast.
That's their kind of claim to fame.
I'm a part of that.
And I was going to do it independently.
I had this idea.
I wanted to do an old school vintage themed podcast where I would have rotating guests and whatever our topic was would depend on the guests.
So if I have a historian in Florida wrestling, well, then we're going to talk about Florida wrestling that hour.
Or if I'm talking to
You know, the unpredictable Johnny Rods, what we're going to talk about working in the WWWF in the 70s for that episode, that sort of thing.
And I was going to do it independent, but I had been on the Cornette show.
They interviewed me when the Sheik book came out and his co-host and his producer, Brian Laste.
took an interest in me based on that.
And I had been on his own show a couple of times.
And so when word got out that I wanted to do this show, he approached me and he said, he said flat out, he said, if you do this with anybody else, you're crazy.
You should do it with us.
Like we want, and I'm, and I'm going like, I never even imagined anybody would care, you know, but since you want me to great.
And now it's, we're about, we're almost 80 episodes in and our audience is growing all the time.
And people seem to like this old school stuff.
Yeah.
Shut up and wrestle.
Well, what Chris and I have learned is that when you tap into wrestling fans, there is no satisfying their appetite.
So I fully understand that people will keep coming and keep listening to what you're doing.
And I hope some of the people listening to this who might not have heard your show or read your book, they'll go check it out.
Again,
That's a blood and fire, the unbelievable real life story of wrestling's original chic and the podcast, shut up and wrestle.
And Brian Solomon, this was awesome.
Thanks so much.
I'm so glad I got to talk to you after all those years of knowing that you're friends with my friend, Mike Batistic.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
And please tell Mike that I, that I said hello, because I, I haven't spoken to him in a while, actually tell him I'm, I'm still here.
If he wants to pick my brain about wrestling again.
Yeah.
All right.
Yes.
I don't have to do, I don't have to do all the heavy lifting for him on that.
No, no.
Okay.
Thanks, Brian.
All right.
So that was cool, Chris.
That was a lot of great context about, and man, such great stories about actually what was happening in the halls of WWE at the time.
Yeah, totally.
And I never knew about dirt sheets as a kid.
The only thing I used to know is that every Friday, I would be delivering the New York Daily News every day, but every Friday, there was a little column by the slammer
Yeah, we brought it up with Brian.
Yeah.
And and yeah, I used to read that and was just fascinated by it.
And that was the thing, though.
Like when when I first started getting that that newspaper, The National and seeing the Dave Meltzer column in there, I was like, oh, this is like a good version of the slammer.
Like the slammer never had any influence.
The Slammer was just a guy who was like recapping what he saw on TV, right?
And so here was Dave Meltzer being like, oh yeah, no, that guy's gone from WCW.
You're never going to see him again.
You're like, what?
He knows.
Like, how do you find that out?
I do think it's funny, though, that like...
As much as, like, Dave is, like, the preeminent wrestling journalist, as they would call him, you know, and he's the guy who everybody talks about and, you know, is the guy basically responsible for a whole subculture of wrestling fans who want to know the real news behind stuff.
Like...
whenever there's actual news having to do with wrestling, it never comes from wrestling journalists.
Like, who broke the story of Vince McMahon, you know, being investigated for sexual abuse allegations?
It was the Wall Street Journal, right?
Like, the wrestling journalists...
in air quotes there are like, they're going to tell you like, Oh yeah, this guy, he actually broke his leg.
He's out for five months or whatever.
But you, you don't hear like actual stories get broke.
They're not, there's not, they're not anything that's going to like be in the culture.
It's only going to be for wrestling fans.
Right.
And you know, it makes me realize that dirt sheets are to wrestling.
What is,
entertainment journalism is to movies and the entertainment industry.
It's the same.
It's a one-to-one.
It's so similar.
I mean, it's like Brian was talking about.
It's like every industry has its trade papers, right?
And that's with the movies and Hollywood, it's Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.
And, you know, there's still plenty of journalism going on at those places.
But when you think about the things that get cribbed,
from the minimal amount of actual reporting and then turned into gossip or rumor, which have existed since the studios existed, right?
They were invented to kind of sell studio material.
Like, you know, if you watch Hail Caesar, it's all about that, right?
Like being in bed with the gossip colonists, setting things up so that they see them.
And it's definitely in the DNA of show business.
And wrestling is no different.
And I think the only difference is here's this...
art form or entertainment form that is based in deception.
And, and, you know, one of the things that winds up happening is people want to know, well, how's it happening for real?
Right.
It's this itch that you want to get scratched.
And that's what's fascinating to me about it.
And yes, I mean, I'm a full on wrestling observer subscriber.
I think now I probably subscribe more for entertainment value, the podcasts that they do and Dave's histories of things.
Yes, I have my head up the Dave Meltzer's ass for wrestling histories.
stuff just like vince said and you know i i gotta say i know like a few people like some guy i work with uh i mentioned that you know i like i like uh wrestling and he's like oh yeah i still subscribe to the dirt sheets and i'm like but but he doesn't watch any wrestling and i'm just like that's unbelievable oh that was me for that was me before aew came along i mean like i cut out wrestling entirely but i was still reading about it you know
Wow, that's fascinating to me.
That you would subscribe and want to be in the know, but just not pay attention to the product is really fascinating.
Just shows you how much reach these dirt sheets have.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, yes, it was a fascinating thing and equally interesting to listen to Brian talk about not just the dirt sheets, but his career as a wrestling magazine writer.
And I'm so happy to have him on.
Thanks again to Brian if you're listening to this.
And next week, we're going to have somebody on to talk about something that came in to us early on when we were doing this Friday show.
One of the first times we asked for people to write into the comments section, someone wrote in and said, you should talk about the story of Sputnik Monroe.
And if you're unfamiliar, he was a white Memphis territory wrestler in the 50s, whose popularity with black fans, thanks in large part to his frequent nights out drinking on Beale Street, ultimately gave him the kind of pull that enabled him to demand the promoter desegregate the events.
Well, that perked me up, and I wanted to learn more about this.
I've since read some stuff about Sputnik Monroe.
And next week, I'm going to bring on a guest here who's going to tell us more than I could ever glean from information about this.
And I think it's going to be a really great conversation about a pretty fascinating subject, which you never hear of.
You never hear of this idea of desegregating wrestling.
And so look forward to that next week.
And I guess what we can do is just wrap up here with Chris.
The best thing you saw in wrestling last week, we may have the same thing.
So I'll let you go first.
I have from AEW Collision, FTR versus Bullet Club Gold.
Yeah, same for me.
I mean, what a great goddamn match.
I mean, can they just fight forever like the crowd was asking?
Well, they will.
They've got a two out of three falls match coming up this week.
That's right.
And I must say, I am not someone who was familiar with Jay White before he came to AEW.
I know he was on the indie scene and people were, there was like a bidding war for him between WWE and AEW and AEW 1.
Uh, but since it's been over, I'm just like, okay, he seems fine.
Um, but you know, I don't really see, you know, what the hubbub is all about.
And, uh, and then this happened and I gotta say he is, uh, as advertised.
What a, what a great performer.
Well, I think the thing was he came in, they didn't expect to get him.
They thought he was WWE bound.
And so when he kind of fell in their laps, they didn't really have anything for him at that time, storyline wise.
So it really kind of required them to wait until they could get this thing going with FTR.
And now it's off to the races.
But yeah, I mean, I texted you while I was watching that and I was like, and when it was over,
I think I said like, man, that was some damn good tag team wrestling.
And that's exactly what it was.
There was no stipulation.
There were no gimmicks.
It was just straight up tag team formula wrestling.
Now, that's the thing.
Tag wrestling has a formula, just like action movies have a formula.
Right.
But sometimes you watch an action movie like you watch an action movie like that was fun.
I watched the thing and thing exploded or whatever.
But sometimes you watch and you're like, man, that one just hit all the notes.
Right.
Like the Fugitive or Raiders of the Lost Ark or Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One, which I've seen twice now.
Seen twice.
Right.
And so, you know what I'm speaking of where you're like, they just know how to work this formula in the best possible way.
And those four guys absolutely know how to work a tag team wrestling formula.
It was exciting.
It was long, but it never felt long.
Three segments.
Yeah.
Three segments, it was awesome.
It was like a half hour match and it moved at a very brisk pace.
These guys were hard hitting.
You believed the whole time that they were exhausting each other and feeling broken and tired by the end.
Yeah, I couldn't have loved it more.
It is exactly what I'm looking for when I turn on wrestling.
That match, if you watch a match and say, why do these guys talk about wrestling every week?
That match is what I'm looking for when I'm watching wrestling.
Yes, it's that we are Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood pointing at the screen.
Yep, snap my fingers and everything.
Yep.
All right.
Well, hopefully we will hit that high note again this week.
There is a rematch of that same match, and they're going to go two out of three falls, which God bless them.
I hope it goes an hour.
Yeah, me too.
I'm just about to say that.
Go 60 minutes, please.
Yes.
Well, we will find out how that went next week when we join you.
We will also hear of the story of Sputnik Monroe.
And until then, I'm Brendan.
That's Chris.
Peace.