BONUS Wrestling With Marc - The Training
Marc:Okay, folks, it's professional wrestling time.
Marc:Yeah, this is the wrestling stuff that I talked about, that Brendan and I talked about.
Marc:I don't know if you've been listening to the bonus content, all of it, but you can go to our bonus episode on December 6th, which was called Wrestling with Mark, The Beginning of
Marc:And understand that we've done it.
Marc:I went to my first professional wrestling match last week.
Marc:I enjoyed it.
Marc:I was engaged.
Marc:I met a lot of the fellas.
Marc:I was backstage.
Marc:I got a sense of what it's like and what it really is.
Marc:And that world of show business, which is what it is, show business...
Marc:And we recorded this episode on my couch.
Marc:We were just sitting there and Brendan was showing me some matches that featured some of the same wrestlers that I saw like the night after he showed me this stuff.
Marc:And he got me up to speed with some of the stories, with the structure of wrestling, with some of the personalities, with some of the history.
Marc:But this was all sort of unfolding in real time.
Marc:while we watched some matches for this series that's called Wrestling with Mark.
Guest:I guess we should tell people what we're doing here.
Marc:Well, we're at my house.
Guest:We are at your house.
Guest:You flew out here and... This is only the third time I've flown out for show-related content.
Marc:Tarantino.
Guest:Tarantino.
Guest:And Obama.
Guest:One was Barack Obama.
Marc:And that was it?
Guest:That was it.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:I mean, I've been out here plenty, but not for show-specific stuff.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, this is a mission.
Guest:It is a mission.
Guest:It's a mission that I was excited to undertake.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because, well, you know, we were talking about, and you've been talking about it a lot lately, especially as the new year has turned, that you're kind of looking to, I don't want to say you're making life changes, but you're looking at your life in a way that you're trying to not pin it all to... Stand up and three people.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and like obligation and like things that you have to do or in the intensity of, you know, having a list of things, of achievements that you have to tick off, right?
Marc:Yeah, well, I think it's just, you know, I make the choices of what I have to do, but I always do them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, I don't think I make choices to do things I just want to do because I'm not always clear what those things are.
Marc:So everything becomes this chore after a certain point.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, yeah, I've decided I'm going to spend more time maybe with people, having dinner parties or whatnot.
Marc:That seems to be a big factor, a big part of it.
Marc:And just doing things I enjoy, playing music.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I guess the idea here is that, you know, maybe wrestling.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, maybe, but you know what I think?
Guest:It's more, to me, I think this was as much a feeling that I had of wanting to share something with you as a friend of yours, as someone who, like, okay, well, what do you do?
Guest:You're friends, you want to hang out?
Guest:Well, I actually am not sure that you even know how important this stuff is to me.
Guest:Like, it's super important.
Guest:Like, you know how you say sometimes, and I'm very flattered when you do, it's a very nice thing for you to say that you're like, oh, Brendan's the smartest guy I know.
Guest:He knows everything about everything, right?
Guest:He knows that.
Guest:Like, I know more about this...
Guest:than I do about anything on earth.
Guest:And I'm not joking about that.
Guest:I know more about the details of the history of professional wrestling, of the business of professional wrestling, of all the people involved, of the reasons it has gone up and down and its disreputability and its peaks, its valleys, its low points.
Guest:I know it all.
Marc:Well, that's interesting because it's sort of like...
Marc:It's a finite and insulated universe.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So not unlike regular sports, in a way, that you can know all that stuff.
Guest:Yes, but when I was a kid, I did not like regular sports.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I only started to like regular sports as I became an adult.
Guest:What winds up being the thing that links me to something like baseball, for instance, is following a full season and understanding why a team is good, what they need to do to improve.
Guest:These stats mean that these guys, they have the right players here, they have the wrong players there, they need to fix this, they need to fix that.
Guest:That's what's very interesting to me about following a professional sport.
Guest:I was not interested in that when I was a kid.
Guest:I was interested in superheroes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I wasn't interested in comics.
Guest:These were the superheroes I was interested in.
Marc:Well, I mean, that's interesting about why you like sports and even in a sense why you put together these histories is like, I don't do any of that.
Marc:Like I don't, you know, I can barely keep up week to week with a fucking TV show.
Marc:Like if a show goes off for a year, I'm like, I don't even know what's happening or care anymore.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, but in terms of that's really why I don't like sports is that it doesn't interest me.
Marc:to look at all of that.
Guest:Yeah, right, right.
Marc:The evolving sort of lineups and stats and why a team is good.
Marc:I don't engage on that level.
Marc:And this was another thing I was talking about in terms of changing things is that a lot of times, like with the interviews and with anything else, I'm so engaged in the immediate experience of watching a thing or talking to somebody, I come away with it.
Marc:Sometimes I don't even remember a movie I watched a week ago
Marc:Unless it really lands.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Other than that, I'm just having this immediate experience.
Marc:And I don't know if that's unusual or if it's something I've always had my entire life, but I think it is.
Marc:It has to be.
Marc:It has to be something you've had your entire life.
Marc:Because even with comedy, people are like, you know, the work and whatever.
Marc:Ultimately...
Marc:You show up and you do this thing and it's very immediate.
Marc:And a lot of times I'm improvising.
Marc:Same with the podcast.
Marc:But I do seem to maintain some memory around some things that get through.
Marc:But none of this matters.
Marc:I think this is a nice thing for us to do as friends.
Marc:But I think it seems like it might have been an excuse for you to go to this thing.
Guest:Oh, well, I think for me more, it was like... Because I could go to these things whenever I want.
Guest:I don't have to fly out to California to go to one.
Marc:But isn't this a big one?
Guest:It's on every week.
Guest:It's on Wednesdays, and so this is a Wednesday night show.
Marc:But I mean, it's live here?
Guest:Yeah, it's live here, but they do it live every week.
Guest:And they do it in some arena in the world.
Guest:And I've gone to three or four of them back on the East Coast.
Guest:So it's like I didn't have to fly out here to go to it.
Guest:What I found was the opportunity with this was...
Guest:oh, these dudes wanted to do something with the show.
Guest:And they reached out to me, and I was like, well, wait a minute.
Guest:It doesn't make sense for us to just book a wrestler on the show and have Mark talk to him.
Guest:Why don't I introduce Mark to this world that I have been involved with since I was a kid?
Guest:How old?
Guest:I guess probably about six or seven.
Guest:Like whenever Hulk Hogan was big, right?
Guest:You know, and that's why it started because it starts through like, oh, this guy's on the A-team and this guy, he's got a cartoon and then you start watching it.
Guest:And, you know, I absolutely can remember exactly when I started watching it and why and why I thought it was great.
Guest:But that, like this shirt I'm wearing,
Guest:I'm wearing a shirt with a guy named Owen Hart.
Guest:I was a big fan of him when I was a kid.
Guest:And he tragically died in a stunt in the ring.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Broke his neck?
Guest:Yeah, he fell from the rafters and died.
Guest:And I named my son after him.
Guest:Like, I'm not joking about that.
Guest:My son's name is Owen because of this guy.
Guest:And, you know, my wife will probably say that's like 50% of the reason why he was named.
Guest:She just liked the name as well.
Guest:But I had it fully in my head.
Marc:She can't give you that whole thing.
Marc:She can't give you 100% of that.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I had it in my head.
Guest:I was like, oh, no, he's going to be like Owen Hart.
Marc:I think because when I was young, I was...
Marc:like six or seven, I'm trying to think what I cared about.
Marc:I was very hung up on sixties culture.
Marc:Like, I think it was for me, it was by the time I was 12 or 11, you know, I was already into Keith Richards.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, music, music can have its own version of this, right?
Guest:Where you start putting together all the connections and like you do it now, like with something like these guys, you know, these Brits who are, you know, into the blues or whatever, Peter Green and these guys, like you start drawing all these connections and,
Guest:which I think is a similar thing.
Guest:And it's also, I was noticing it when you were talking about the other day, how you used to look at that book with the pictures of the old celebrities.
Guest:It's so weird.
Guest:That was what I would do with wrestlers.
Guest:I would read as much as I could, but I would also just sit and study the pictures of them and know, you could hold up a shot
Guest:of wrestling from the 80s and say, where was this from?
Guest:And I would tell you date and time and location and match.
Guest:I could be like, that's from Minnesota, the WrestleFest 1990 or whatever.
Guest:I could tell you just based on what it looks like.
Marc:That's crazy.
Marc:When I was in third grade, I could name all the presidents in a row.
Guest:But that's another kind of organizational thing.
Guest:You want to be able to be... It's a feat.
Guest:A trick.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:I did it in front of the class.
Guest:Well, one of the things, too, talking about tricks, I do think that it'd be fun to go to the matches and that, and you just experience the thing.
Guest:But I do want you to kind of take in...
Guest:how wrestling is made and done in a way that I think you as a performer can appreciate.
Guest:And the idea that you're building these matches based on the stories that they're telling, right?
Guest:Some guy hates another guy or there's whatever reason that you're having the fight.
Marc:But sometimes these beefs go back years, right?
Guest:They can go back years, or it can be brand new.
Guest:It can be just this, oh, these two guys have to have a fight to see who's going to be the next in line for the title or whatever.
Guest:Well, what do you do with that once you're doing it?
Guest:You have to have a match.
Guest:These matches...
Guest:if they're good, have to tell a story in the match.
Guest:And it's actually much like a standup set where you kind of know a certain scaffolding of how to build the set.
Guest:Like these matches have a scaffolding that you have to kind of follow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Almost, you know, they teach it to you when you're training to be a wrestler.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the best ones can do it and they can do it without even talking about it beforehand.
Guest:They say, let's just go out to the ring.
Guest:We'll call it in the ring.
Guest:And then they know they have the intro, which is how they're going to kind of set up the match.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then there's a part called The Shine, which is where the baby face, the good guy, gets his moves in, gets to look like a winner.
Guest:Then you call The Heat, which is when the heel takes over and hope looks lost.
Guest:You give some what they call hope spots, where it looks like the guy's coming back and then he gets waylaid or whatever.
Guest:And then there is the comeback.
Guest:And then the comeback builds to a climax.
Guest:And then the climax ends with one of them winning.
Guest:The heel...
Guest:cheats and wins or beats the guy clean, which tells you that heel is better, right?
Guest:Because the general premise of wrestling is the babyfaces are better than the heels.
Guest:That's why the heels are heels, because they need to cheat.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And all of this has kind of Joseph Campbell-y hero structure stuff.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:and so once you can kind of notice that you can start to watch these things and go well that guy's really good yeah he made me really believe he was going to lose there and he didn't yeah and he like you you start to see these dudes play people like a fiddle so what's interesting about it is that it is sort of an improvisation in this totally in this structure yes and who decides who calls when you know the heat is over
Guest:So that's a good question because, and most people wouldn't ask that.
Guest:It's like, yeah, who's in charge?
Guest:Usually the heel is in charge of the match.
Guest:The heel calls the match.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's just like having a dance partner.
Guest:You know, that's just how it's chosen.
Marc:Is it because he doesn't usually want to get the ship eaten out of him?
Guest:No, it's more like he's going to be the one that controls the pace, right?
Guest:If the pace is all dictated by this part where the bad guy is in charge, so it's going to be up to him to know, all right, I've pushed this to the limit.
Guest:Now it's time for you to make a comeback.
Guest:All right, ready?
Guest:I'm going to put my head down and you punch me in the face or whatever it is to...
Marc:And they're saying this to each other?
Guest:Yeah, you'll notice it every now and then.
Guest:When they're in a headlock or a clinch or something, they're whispering to each other in their ears.
Guest:I mean, some guys don't do it well and you can actually hear them, but the guys who do it well disguise it well.
Marc:It's so funny because I did this wrestling show for years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I don't think I had any sense of any of this.
Guest:Well, I think also when you fictionalize wrestling, it becomes very easy to cut all of this out, right?
Guest:Like someone watching GLOW is not interested in how they're building a match or putting it together.
Guest:You're just dealing with the characters.
Marc:Yeah, and it wasn't really talked about, even though we did matches.
Marc:Maybe it was talked about with the girls, but I didn't hear any of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And then, obviously, what I want you to pay attention to is things that look like they hurt, because most likely they do.
Guest:And once you're tuned into that, it's kind of shocking how much they get hurt every single match.
Marc:Well, I did see the wrestlers, so I understand.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Guest:But you know what the other thing, it's like, I think people have this sense, they look at these guys in the ring and they think they're on a trampoline.
Guest:Like that's plywood underneath there.
Guest:You've been in a ring.
Marc:I've definitely been in a ring.
Guest:Yeah, and it's like falling on that flat on your back over and over again.
Guest:God forbid, on your head or on your neck, which a lot of these guys do, you know, not intentionally sometimes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, that's going to hurt over time.
Guest:Even, like, Hulk Hogan, who is known to be, like, a very light worker, they call it.
Guest:You know, like, he's not going to lay things in heavy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:which kind of was ridiculed by pro wrestlers as like a soft move, was to just drop a leg on a guy's head and pin him.
Guest:And it was an undefeatable move.
Guest:Like he would always win when he did it because he was Hulk Hogan.
Marc:He'd jump up and do the thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, he had to get a hip replacement after doing that for 30 years.
Marc:You'd have to get a hip replacement after doing anything for 30 years.
Guest:Sure, yeah, right.
Guest:But that's why some of these guys are like, I'm going to make a choice to do a move where I don't land on my ass or my knees or my back, right?
Marc:But isn't that looked at as being sort of a pussy?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It depends who you're asking, I would think.
Guest:There are guys, like, you know this guy because of the Andy Kaufman thing, Jerry Lawler, right?
Guest:So he is, now he's in his 70s, and he's been doing this for 40, 50 years.
Guest:and was a master at working the crowd.
Guest:And he had awesome worked punches.
Guest:He'd punch you in the face and look like he just punched you for real.
Guest:And the guy, you know, his territory was Memphis.
Guest:This was before WWE really took things national.
Guest:He wound up working for WWE.
Guest:He...
Guest:he was the king of memphis yeah he would sell out the building every week because he was so convincing and such he would be a hero he could be a heel whatever and he didn't take a lot of bumps and he had a prolonged career because of that and i don't think you'd meet any wrestler who would say jerry lawler was a pussy yeah you know a guy or like a guy who didn't deserve his spot like they respect him and he set a standard right
Guest:Well, yeah, sure.
Guest:But so did lots of them.
Guest:And that's when you get into, well, what do these guys base things on?
Guest:Now you're going to go see these matches.
Guest:And so many of these are young people in their 20s, early 30s who are basing stuff on things that came around even after I was a kid.
Guest:They were watching stuff from the 90s and getting inspiration from that.
Marc:Did it evolve a lot?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Like the moves?
Guest:Oh, yeah, big time.
Marc:Like, it is a much more... I guess, you know, the people must be in better shape now.
Guest:Better shape and taken care of better.
Marc:Because, I mean, I used to... I remember seeing the local wrestling show out of the Civic Auditorium or Tingley Auditorium in Albuquerque on Sunday.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And these guys look like they'd just woken up.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:Well, there's that, which was a lot of coming from the fact that these were dudes who like, you know, were boozers and they wrestled in VFW halls and stuff like that.
Guest:You know, now this is a high dollar thing.
Guest:WWE is a multi-billion dollar public country.
Guest:They're not wearing unitards.
Guest:And they have to take care of themselves.
Guest:And the business takes better care of them now.
Guest:Now, there are plenty of issues.
Guest:They're still not unionized.
Guest:They're all considered independent contractors.
Guest:That's a larger debate about the health of it as a profession.
Guest:So there's going to be a guy you see on Wednesday.
Guest:There's a match that's a grudge match.
Guest:What is that again?
Guest:Where?
Marc:A grudge match.
Guest:Oh, grudge match means these two guys hate each other.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And they hate each other because legit, in the last time they fought, one guy gave the other guy a clothesline and he concussed him.
Guest:He knocked him out cold and he was concussed.
Guest:They had to stop the match and take the guy off on a stretcher and it was real.
Guest:And now they're building it in.
Guest:This is what you do in wrestling.
Guest:Something real happens.
Guest:You build it into a story.
Guest:So now he hates this guy.
Guest:He says, you made me forget my kid's name, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Oh, right, right, right.
Guest:And so they're fighting.
Guest:But in the moment,
Guest:People weren't sure if this guy broke his neck.
Guest:And they stopped the match cold.
Guest:In the old days, that would never happen.
Guest:In fact, I watched a match with Steve Austin, literally compressed his spine and had a stinger where he was paralyzed, couldn't move.
Guest:And they made the guy, this guy, Owen Hart, who was fighting him at the time, walk around the ring for a few times and then stumble over him and fake pin himself so they could basically be like, oh, Steve Austin won the match, which is where they wanted it to get.
Guest:The guy had a compressed spine, possibly paralyzed for life.
Marc:And he's rolled over them over on them?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And they're like, you got to get the match over with, right?
Guest:That shit would never happen these days.
Guest:So again, going back to like, these guys are in better shape.
Guest:It takes a little... It's also like, they're following more sports protocol.
Guest:Like, you're not going to be allowed to fight if you have a concussion.
Marc:But they really stay on top of that?
Marc:But isn't that...
Marc:Sort of a problem for the fans in a way in that, like, you know, they used to take bigger risks.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:But I think that the fans, part of it is having to educate the fans that, like, these are human beings.
Guest:You don't like when they when that guy got clotheslined and it was a main event match and they had to end it five minutes in.
Guest:It was definitely not the ending of the match.
Guest:And here's, you know, a crowd that paid to see the main event and it ended.
Guest:you know, they put him on a stretcher and they wheeled him out of there.
Guest:And that crowd all gave him a standing ovation and cheered for him.
Guest:And what, like, they're not standing there booing and throwing stuff in the ring saying, where's our match?
Guest:Like the crowds are willing.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Especially when they thought it was real.
Guest:Like when, when, but when fans weren't smartened up and they thought like, I'm going to see an actual fight.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like they think this was bullshit.
Guest:Right.
Marc:When did they think it was an actual fight?
Guest:I think the, the,
Guest:The change to it being a national show that Vince McMahon ran, you have to understand the kind of history of it as a carnival presentation, which was this thing that went around to carnivals and you would predetermine who was going to win so that people at these carnivals would bet on them and it was a part of a three-card Monty act almost.
Guest:Well, when they figured out that that could make some money,
Guest:and you'd have it in local territories around the country.
Guest:The advent of television meant they needed programming.
Guest:So this was a real cheap way to have programming on TV that wasn't regulated by any kind of sports authority or anything.
Guest:It wasn't boxing.
Marc:That's how I've dug into TV.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Well, it's interesting.
Marc:That movie, I think it's called The Requiem for a Heavyweight?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The guy that they set up, the fall guy, is this wrestler from South America...
Marc:who they present as the greatest heavyweight in the world, and they just take him around and get the shit beat out.
Guest:Yeah, tomato can.
Marc:That's what you call that.
Marc:Where does that come from?
Guest:That's a boxing term, like a guy who's just going to take the punches.
Guest:It's tomato can.
Marc:It was a heartbreaking movie because he comes out of that circus world.
Marc:He's a circus entertainer.
Marc:He's a strong man.
Marc:Circus guy.
Marc:And then they bring him up here and they just, it's brutal.
Guest:Well, that also would be one of my big blind spots of wrestling knowledge is the lucha stuff.
Guest:It's Mexican and any south of the border stuff.
Guest:It's an entirely different world and an entirely different culture.
Guest:And I think I know a good deal about the guys who came to America and became popular here, the Guerreros.
Guest:You know, Chavo, who he worked with, his whole family was from El Paso, but they worked a lot in Mexico.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, same with any, there are certain masked wrestlers that come over and specifically guys from Japan, too, that they have whole worlds that are kind of hinted at when they're here.
Marc:Is the mask like the clown face?
Guest:Oh, like it's your special mask?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, big time.
Guest:in in mexico it's like a like a sacred thing too like you know if you're masked you live like there's some gonna be some guys you watch on this aew who are luchadors and they like live the gimmick they don't take the mask off in public they uh you know won't reveal their real names like they they where do you think that came from
Guest:It's all, it's all, it's all having to do with the lore of like the, the Mexican luchadors.
Guest:And I don't know specifically, but I think it goes back a long way to like older cultures.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:To older cultures?
Marc:Not to, to like sort of criminals who didn't want to be known?
Marc:That'd be interesting.
Guest:I really don't know.
Guest:I couldn't speak to it.
Guest:Like I said, it's a, it's a blind spot for me, but.
Marc:They tried to make it a hipster thing here.
Marc:I remember years ago.
Guest:Oh yeah, definitely.
Guest:The luch of a voom.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:There was comics and strippers and then a wrestling match.
Guest:They do a burlesque.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I think Blaine Capach was the MC.
Marc:Yeah, he used to host it.
Marc:I mean, I did one of them.
Marc:I remember doing them.
Marc:But even then, I was sort of like, what are you guys doing?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What is this?
Guest:Well, that I definitely think had more to do with the kitsch of it, right?
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Like it matched up with the burlesque because it was costumes and it was big and showy.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know how it got integrated or why.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because it is the joining of two worlds.
Marc:Right.
Marc:In a way, I guess.
Marc:I mean...
Marc:campy you know old-timey striptease uh you know versus like whatever's going on at a strip club today i mean i don't know why all of a sudden it's a highbrow if someone's wearing tassels and or why you know necessarily that the the luce uh wrestlers were part of that i don't know who brought that all together no i'm not sure either yeah
Guest:Well, the thing we're going to watch right now, and maybe we'll do a little commentary while we're watching it.
Guest:This is All Elite Wrestling.
Guest:This is what we're going to be going to see on Wednesday.
Guest:And this specific show is the one I was at in New Jersey.
Guest:And it was a pay-per-view.
Guest:With Chris.
Guest:With Chris Lopresto, who we also heard on our bonus material a couple weeks ago.
Guest:And I really was not a guy who watched wrestling much into my adulthood.
Guest:I followed it still.
Guest:And what I would do a lot of was watch the old stuff that I remembered watching as a kid.
Guest:This All Elite Wrestling was started by a guy named Tony Khan, who basically shares my same profile as a wrestling fan.
Guest:He's around my age.
Guest:He came into this as a guy who was doing a lot of wrestling online with online communities, message boards, subreddits, things like that.
Guest:And his dad happens to be one of the richest guys in the world.
Guest:He's an auto parts king.
Guest:He's a Pakistani immigrant, Shad Khan, who created...
Guest:a company that made bumpers for cars.
Guest:And at some point he became the guy who supplies all the bumpers to the big three automakers.
Guest:And so he wanted his kid to go into business, engineering or whatever.
Guest:And I remember reading something about him that he was like, I'll go to the school you want me to go to, but only if you let me go to this wrestling match in Philadelphia that I want to go see.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And and he has kind of stayed on it for as a passion.
Guest:And then when the time seemed right to introduce another wrestling federation on a national level, which hadn't existed for about 20 years, it really just been WWE.
Guest:He makes this thing.
Guest:And I, I started watching a little in a pandemic happened.
Guest:I kind of didn't pay much attention to it, but I started watching it again.
Guest:And I'm like, Oh, I get why I like this.
Guest:Like it's made by a guy like me, like who is thinking about this stuff the same way as a fan as, and as a person who the reason why he's a fan is because he was taken with the stories.
Guest:This guy wanted to get back to the idea of telling the stories through the matches and
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And which was what I always liked.
Guest:I've been able to get back into this, not from a nostalgic point of view.
Guest:They're not putting guys on here that I knew when I was a kid.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But from a sense of like, oh, they're building something that I always thought was the best way to build it.
Marc:It's returning to the roots of it.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Well, let's take a look.
Guest:We can watch some.
All right.
We are live at the Credential Center in Newark, New Jersey and sold out for AEW's
Guest:You were at this show.
Guest:I was at this show.
Guest:This is AEW Full Gear.
Guest:This big guy is the Luchasaurus.
Guest:This guy used to be teamed with this guy coming out, who is Jungle Boy.
Guest:Luchasaurus used to be teamed with Jungle Boy.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Jungle Boy.
Marc:And now they don't like each other.
Guest:They do not.
Guest:And Jungle Boy is a classic baby face.
Guest:He is also the son of Luke Perry.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Jack closes the distance and now raining down right and left on the head of his former friend.
Marc:Well, this little guy is a little more agile.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:So then that becomes also part of the character.
Guest:You've got to use your speed.
Guest:You've got to use your agility to get out of the way.
Guest:Don't be a striker.
Guest:If you try to strike, this guy's going to eat you alive.
Guest:That high boot, though, stopping the momentum of Jungle Boy.
Guest:Yeah, big power right there.
Guest:Oh, like a lawn dart.
Guest:Oh, face burst.
Guest:Look at that.
Guest:All right, so once you're hitting the metal, now we're in the part of the match where this guy's going to get heavy heat on the baby face.
Guest:If all of a sudden the jungle boy jumped up and he was fine, that'd be a bad match.
Guest:You have to add in the believability now of this giant just slammed you into steel.
Guest:You better be down and you better be close to losing.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And here's a little tip.
Guest:The fact that the camera is not on Jack Perry right now tells you he is probably cutting himself so that he can bleed all over the place.
Guest:And yep, there's the blood.
Marc:What's the trick on that?
Guest:You take a razor and you cut your head.
Guest:a little bit yeah so the camera guys know that yes now also there's you know the guy who runs the place tony and usually you know another producer are on headset with the ref the whole time and the cameraman giving them time cues telling them uh keep the camera off him while he gigs so the guy in the red blazer he's the guy that broke these guys up yes
Marc:That's the backstory.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And that's another classic thing is that you got a bad guy who's your heater in the ring, but the actual bad guy is the guy who's not fighting, which makes it even worse.
Guest:Now people really want to boo because, well, that guy, he's not even getting involved in the fight.
Guest:He's just a shit heel.
Marc:But he's sitting there talking on the outside of the ring.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Well, and you'll see he'll get involved in the match too in a cheating way.
Oh, God.
Guest:Oh, man, his face, Jack's face is a mess.
Marc:So this guy's getting the shit beat out of him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, this is, like, again, what I would say, this segment, this is called the heavy heat.
Guest:So you're going to beat this guy to an inch of his life.
Guest:You want the crowd to be like, well, he's fucking dead.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then...
Guest:Can he come back from that?
Guest:Which everyone assumes he can.
Guest:Otherwise, why would you even bother having the match?
Guest:Like, there's nobody sitting in that crowd that wants this guy to just pin this guy and the match be over.
Guest:They're waiting for him to do something to mount a comeback.
Guest:And here he's, oh, he just punched him.
Guest:He's very weak.
Guest:Not a good showing.
Guest:That hurt.
Guest:Definitely.
Definitely.
Marc:I wonder what the masochistic element of this is.
Marc:Why is it appealing to these guys?
Guest:Lord knows how many stitches he's going to need by the end of this thing.
Guest:I hate to even think about that.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:I get the... What happens is at some point...
Marc:The emotions of the story transcend the device, and that's when it's good.
Guest:Which is like Star Wars, right?
Guest:You don't really believe there's people flying around in space, but at some point, you're so emotionally invested, you want the guy to blow up the Death Star, right?
Marc:Well, yeah, but it just happened for me like four or five minutes ago.
Marc:And I don't think I've ever watched wrestling this long.
Marc:So, you know, it's just a matter of choice.
Guest:He's got the table and he's bringing it back into the ring.
Guest:There's something funny about this, right?
Guest:Is that...
Guest:you'll notice this table is out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's going to put it in the ring.
Guest:Now that table is going to sit there for about, I don't know, five, 10 minutes.
Guest:There's no way that the match can end before the table.
Guest:It's like Chekhov's table.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So any kind of thing that you're putting on now, you know, like, all right, this is all set up to what you're going to do with the table.
Guest:So that also impacts how they're going to build around the match.
Marc:Here come the chairs.
Yeah.
Guest:Jack Perry fighting with every bit of heart he has left, fighting for his life perhaps right now.
Marc:He's coming back around now.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I would say he's doing, as a babyface, he's doing a very good comeback in the sense that he is not all of a sudden a superhero, right?
Guest:He's fighting through the pain, which is part of, again, part of that emotional thing.
Guest:You're like, yeah, I don't want him to all of a sudden be able to just kill this guy.
Marc:He's got to fight through it.
Marc:He's found it inside of himself.
Guest:Return to their feet.
Guest:Jack Perry laying in those elbow strikes.
Guest:But Luchasaurus, the headbutt.
Guest:That was a desperation move because Luchasaurus was not faring well on the receiver.
Guest:He's announced reserve.
Guest:That's a real talent.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:Especially that guy, Excalibur, the guy in the mask.
Guest:He's super impressive.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He keeps the whole thing tied together.
Guest:He's the glue.
Guest:My God, where's this kid going?
Guest:Be careful, Jack.
Guest:Where's he going?
Where's he going?
Guest:be careful jack he's coming pretty high get to a certain height at a certain point you got to reevaluate i think this kid's too young too good to put it all on the line here that's what he's doing jack perry standing high above the ring high above the rock here in newark and he dropped the elbow by the abdomen
Guest:Locked in the snare trap.
Guest:Submission.
Guest:A submission attempt.
Guest:Will the big man tap?
Guest:Will he tap?
Guest:No one's been able to survive the snare trap.
Marc:Look at Jack's face.
Marc:Got it.
Marc:It's a baby face one.
Marc:He had to hurt himself jumping off of that thing.
Guest:I mean, you watch it again.
Guest:I think that he probably doesn't feel great the next day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was a stunt move that a stunt person could do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you could get in a position where you do it and you don't do permanent damage to yourself.
Marc:Was it decided before that the baby face would win?
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Tony Khan, who runs this thing, is the booker.
Guest:So every ending of every match is what he says.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There are times where a certain... So he's running this Marvel Universe.
Guest:Correct.
Guest:And there are times where a guy will come to him and say, I really want to put over this guy.
Guest:So give me a match with him where I lose to him.
Guest:Right?
Guest:That happens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's his mom?
Guest:Yeah, his mom and sister.
Marc:So now everybody's got to play along with this.
Guest:Sure, but I think you're seeing the mother and the sister emotional there.
Guest:I think they legit are.
Guest:The son just gave an amazing performance.
Guest:To open a pay-per-view, gets a huge reaction, is clearly a rising star in the organization, right?
Guest:So this was coming out for him, right?
Guest:So they're emotional in the sense that this thing he's wanted to do his whole life, that he went to wrestling school for, that he's been training for, he's showed them a success at him.
Guest:We're going to pause this here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We can go have some food or whatnot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I didn't come empty handed to do this today.
Guest:Is there a wrestler in the car?
Guest:I recruited some help.
Guest:No, we'll get some food.
Guest:And when we come back here, Chris Jericho is coming over.
Guest:no way yeah Chris Jericho's coming over and he's going to just talk wrestling with us yeah but then also talk about like this guy's been doing it since he's 19 yeah he's a real road dog yeah he was involved in every promotion in the world WWE WCW New Japan so he can give you a real sense of what it's like to be basically a guy who's seen it all and he's gonna come by and we'll do that with him
Marc:Get on the mics out in the garage?
Guest:Get on the mics out in the garage, yeah.
Guest:Okay, man.
Superkick Podcast!
Marc:Okay, so you were with me.
Marc:If you don't know anything about wrestling, you knew as much as I did, and you're up to speed as much as I was.
Marc:We're going to have an interview with Chris Jericho.
Marc:Then in future weeks, we've got AEW owner Tony Khan, wrestlers MJF and Eddie Kingston, referee Bryce Remsburg, and our old friend Colt Cabana is back.
Marc:Plus, we talk all about the AEW show we went to and some of the backstage stuff we saw.
Marc:So...
Marc:This is it, man.
Marc:This is wrestling.