November 24, 2021 • 49 mins
This week, I talk to WWE King of The Ring, Xavier Woods. We talk about the time he spent trying to break into the wrestling business, his idea to create the New Day faction, and how all his hard work has landed him some prominent roles, like hosting a show on the newly revamped G4 Network, and much more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
What's up, everybody. Welcome back to WWF Wrestling with Freddy.
Thank you guys so much for listening so far. And uh,
I'm really excited to introduce this guest because I never
had the pleasure of working with him. I left the
company before he came in. And uh, now it's time
to start the show. Now, stuffing up for the mic.
(00:25):
The host of Wrestling with Freddie Freddie Prince June. Yeah,
so everyone, please welcome the awesome, the fantastic, by my command,
the next King of the Ring, Mr Xavier Woods. How
are you, sir, I'm fantastic. Thank you for that incredible introduction.
(00:47):
Oh that's too kind, You're too kind. No, I'll telling
you the only other American besides Harley Race and Jerry
Lawler that I think would look good in a crown. Otherwise,
as we all looked like John Goodman and King Ralph,
and it looked great. And then he even rejected it
at the end, you know what I mean, he knew
(01:08):
it didn't look good. You know, it didn't look good.
It looks great now though. Um, thanks for coming out
to Los Angeles, man, dude. Of course, we haven't had
a chance to actually sit and hang out and chatting
such a long time. I haven't gotten to see you
in the flesh since I was your dungeon master. I
think that was the last time, um. And we had
(01:29):
a ton of fun and we can even talk nerdy
stuff if if you want. But before we get into that, UM,
we kind of met. Like I said, you, you didn't.
You weren't at the company when I worked there, and
so we kind of met because I became a fan
of yours and I still watched wrestling to this day,
and I still watched when I left, and I watched
(01:51):
this dude and I wasn't educated on t n A.
I watched this dude come in that was you, and
you had a backstage segment and I think the first
one was with Kofi, and then after that it was
Big Ee and it was this young, brash, good look
and wrestler. I'm blowing smoke, but this is what this
(02:12):
is what came through. And I remember sitting there going
who is this and what are they trying to do?
And you, Kofe and Biggie formed a faction, which is
very difficult to get over with fans, let alone within
the company. It's differ It's difficult um, And when you
guys came out, I heard some of the strongest booze
(02:38):
that I had ever heard a tag team received, and
they started screaming to the changed from booze to full
curt angle hate where it was New Day Sucks was
a part of it, and I remember going, man, but
you're committed though, and you guys did something crazy and
it doesn't happen often. Man. In fact, it's hard for
(03:00):
me to find another time that it has worked in
the last twenty five years. You guys went from Bood
two over in a way that I haven't seen and
I don't know how long, and it went from New
Day Sucks to New Day Rocks, and you guys are
using trombones and now then I watched it years later
(03:25):
and you're in these like bamboo beat down matches with
the USO's and stealing the show and the crowd goes
crazy for you guys everywhere you go. How the hell
did you do this? Uh? I don't know. You see
what I'm saying. It's you're first off, you're you're beyond kind,
(03:48):
You're this I don't know, it's it's it's a weird process.
It's a weird journey because I'm trying to figure out
how to say this. It's like, I don't know a
stand up comic who's been hated and then love And
that's the closest thing to wrestling that I can put
(04:09):
in show business. I feel like the reason that happened
is because regardless of like what the three of us
are doing, we have, uh, this this this unreal chemistry
together where like it's like that we can finish each
other's sometimes. It's like that type of stuff, but it's
on a different it's like a different comedic timing level.
It's not just like we're friends. It's almost like we
(04:30):
have the same style of of dropping jokes, of timing
on those jokes, of the weird pop culture references of
those jokes. UM for instance, So, uh, we're at waffle house.
Its Kofe myself. It's always of course it's a waffle Yeah,
because it's the only thing that's opened after a show. Okay,
(04:51):
so we gotta got the late night breakfast places. Uh,
and someone came up and they said they said someone's
name was the last name was Houser, and Kofe and
I immediately both went doogie. I went to high school
with him. I'm not joking, Doogie Houser I got. I
got suspended my senior year for sticking up for Neil
(05:14):
against Rob Bone. He was he was this guy in
my school. He talked smack about about Neil and said
stuff that I didn't like. And Neil was the reason
I started drama because I saw him do a deadly
more impression like the day you choose electives, and I
was like, I'm gonna do that, and I still can't
do a good one. Um. But he spoke out the
side of his face and he got hit and he
played football. I didn't, So I got suspended. But yeah,
(05:36):
so shout out Dougie Houser, shout out the goat man.
So this guy's name is Houser. You guys both just
constantly say and people are like, how did how did
you both come to do? That's how you guys interact
in the ring though, Yeah, that's how you guys would
do whatever, like whatever group or person you guys were
going against, when you guys would talk trash on him,
(05:56):
it was always. But that's why that's again, that's why
it works. There's that chemistry of like anything that I
say they will laugh anything that they say. I will laugh. Like,
so no matter what we say, whether they're bad jokes
or things that are just ridiculous, Like, as long as
we're laughing and having a good time, someone's like these guys,
it's not you can't. It's hard to hate when people
(06:19):
are just like having a good So this is a
high level thing. So Larry David has a similar philosophy.
He says, when you have confidence in yourself and in
your jokes, there are no bad jokes. There's only bad audiences.
And so he'll turn it on even more if he
knows it's bothering you, just to drive that point home,
(06:40):
to the point where he got his own TV show
and everyone fell in love with what is in essence
a horrible person. Yes, and when you guys were heels,
you were pulling this off, and it was I don't
want to call you guys unicorns because you guys actually
came out with unicorn horns. Very good reason for that.
But it's you know, it's probably dirty, is it not? Okay,
I was in rat I'm just kidding, you know. Uh
(07:03):
So my girlfriend in high school, she would always talk
about this movie, The Last Unicorn watching this whatever. Finally
we sit down and I watched and I'm like, this
is the most amazing animated film I've ever seen. So
the whole, the whole, I know, I know, the whole
idea of the movie is that this is the last
Unicorn and magic is almost gone because there's only one
Unicorn left. Unicorns are the ones who bring magic, and
(07:25):
so in my head, we came up with this thing
that we brought magic back to wrestling, and we're like,
so we're unicorns. That that's what my brain did. And
so we set in a promo once and it was
hilarious to us, and so then we started coming out
with our fingers on our heads to us people listening, like,
if you're insecure about your art, what he just said,
(07:46):
it was funny to us. It was funny to us.
That's we'll talk about that later. I'm sorry we're interrupting that.
That's like hugely important points. So there's a clip that
just recently saw. Older clip. It's Kevin Nash and he's
talking to somebody and he's explaining. He says, like, screw
those twenty people in the arena. Anything that I'm saying
on a microphone is for me and maybe seven people
(08:08):
in the back and that's about it. And I was like,
I sent it to the guys. I was like, this
is us, Like we're legitimately just trying to make each
other laugh. But that that type of fun, it's something
that you want to be a part of. Like if
I see a group of people and they're laughing at something,
even if I didn't think it was funny at first,
I'm like, but they're having a really good time, you
know what. And the point, the point of our existence again,
(08:32):
I'm gonna get a little existential because I'm in that
zone um is to have fun. I don't know what
this life is. I don't know if there's a point.
I don't know if there's a meaning. So what should
I do in order to to to to get the
most out of this, Well, I should enjoy it as
much as possible. And if I can do something that
then translates into other people enjoying their experience here as well.
(08:52):
Because we could all this could all blow up tomorrow,
comment might hit like dinosaurs. We might be better not.
I got big plans, I know, right, I know, but
that's that's the thing that makes me believe do what
is going to make you smile, do what's going to
make you happy, and that in turn is going to
hopefully extend to other people and make them happy. And
so you're talking about people hating us, it's because we
(09:14):
fully committed to that. Just said like it's the power positivity.
And at first you hear it, and it's like even
us when we heard it, we're like, we're gonna be like,
it's like a choir thing gospel. This is not what
we we're thinking about when we brought all this to you.
But fine, and so we thought we got the ball.
So we have to fully commit. And there's there's been
(09:35):
situations where people think like a man, I got this
thing thrown at me. You know whatever, this this sucks,
So I'm just gonna try to get a change. It's like, well,
this is our shot. In my head, there's like this
is my last shot. I wasn't in a good place
like before this. This is the best that I felt
in wrestling is with these two guys, and I really
believe that we have something. And so it's like we
(09:56):
have to fully commit to this because this is what
we wanted. So when we did that, everybody got so
upset because it is so corny at this point in
time to try to be positive, which is such a
weird thing to say, right of course, but it makes
people because they were still coming off like the John
Cena days where it felt forced upon them. But you
(10:18):
guys were almost a heel doing it as opposed to
the baby face doing it, so they were allowed to
be It was a different kind of hate and I'm
still trying to figure out how it changed to love it.
It's because we we gave them exactly what we were
so it became we don't like this because this is ridiculous.
And then when we fully committed, it became, you know what,
(10:42):
if they're going to play the game, we'll play the
game with him. We'll see, we'll see where this goes.
Because people understand cheering is good, booing is good, Silence
is bad. And I think that people understood that and
they saw these are three guys who are trying to
make the best out of what they're handed. And I
(11:02):
think that's even if it's not in the foreground, like
it's in your in the stunches back of your mind,
you understand what you're doing, you understand what you're watching.
Your understanding what your interactions mean to someone, and when
you see someone committed to the work, it makes it
very easy to watch. I remember when I would teach
their promo class um, I showed them the scene from
Liar Liar where Jim Carrey is trying to write the
(11:25):
word read and because his son made a wish for
his dad not to be able to tell alive for
a whole day, he can't do it, and he writes
the word blue and he's like, nor write it, and
all of a sudden, his hand gets angry at him
and it attacks him, and he's like, no, you're gonna
write it or I'll break it off. And it's so
(11:45):
over the top and ridiculous that if he didn't commit
a cent to that, that's the worst scene in the
history of film. Instead, you can't take your eyes off it.
And as ridiculous as it is, when his arm starts
the wing chicken wing things, he has everybody captured in this.
And then at the end of the scene he comes
up and his face is covered with the word blue
(12:06):
and it's like the goddamn and I'm looking at everybody
and I'm trying to tell them. I would also play
them stand up because I compare the two art forms
that it's as close as I can make a comparison
to because it's not like the movie business at all.
And I learned that very quick when all my promos
would get rejected because they were like eight minutes long.
But when I watched you guys turned face, so to speak.
(12:33):
And for people that aren't wrestling fans who are just
like listening for the stories, when you go from a
good guy or a bad guy to a good guy,
they say, you're turning face because your baby face now
and everybody's gonna love you. Um, you guys made this turn,
and you have this life outside of wrestling, as does KOFE,
(12:54):
as does E that you guys are very very public about,
and you bring a lot of yourselves into these w
w E characters in a time where that was done
because if we back up, when I was a kid,
everything was real. These were sporting contests, they were fights.
(13:17):
It was like I'll leave versus Holmes. And then after Montreal,
everything kind of got flipped on its head and all
of a sudden there was this argument of well, it's
this much real and this much but back in the
old days, you weren't necessarily doctor death, you know what
I mean, Like, but you had to live that gimmick
(13:38):
because if you were a bad guy signing autographs in
the back, how bad a guy are you? Right? And
then after the screw job happened, all that went away
and people were like, yeah, man, it's just to show.
It's just characters. You especially, but KOFE and and E
as well have found what I find to be this
sort of beautiful hybrid where you've literally really brought back
(14:01):
living the gimmick, which should make the old heads happy.
And if you're not, just listen and think about that
for a second. You're living the gimmick. You got yourself
over first, then got the gimmick over and it's almost
like old school wrestling all over again, but the real
mtvs Real World Season one version of it. It's so
(14:24):
crazy to me and you're literally it's almost like watching
old school wrestling again but through a contemporary lens. Because
young people freaking love you, guys. They love you guys.
They may be watching the Internet all the time and
don't know about cable TV, but they love you guys,
and they watch you and they follow y'all on social media.
(14:46):
And you're so interactive with them, whereas a lot of
the older heads just aren't, or if they are, they're
just complaining, you know what I mean, Like you don't
get it, you don't get it, and it's like, well,
you both don't get it, but you guys have this
(15:06):
crazy attitude of like, hey, if I don't get that,
get me hip to it. And and it's I've seen
it since the first segment I watched you do is
the same way you've been in gaming, in cosplay conventions,
in playing the bass in which I'm sure you'll be
doing in WrestleMania one day, doing to your own theme music.
(15:29):
I mean, my my friend is gonna jump pretty quick.
So man, pretty nasty on it what you guys have done.
I mean, am I crazy? Is this just me overthinking it?
Or do you see yourself as like, yo, it's not
even a gimmick. It's I'm living this and this is
me and I just found a way to make it work.
I think, I think the biggest part of it. So uh,
(15:51):
I guess it to go back to let's say developmental.
So like STW we have promo days and you can
come as whatever character or whatever thing kind of whatever
promo you want for me. It became the thing of
all right, I'm not you know six. This is like
my with my script since I was little, has has
been like I'm not gonna be six to I'm not
gonna be like two or fifty pounds, Like I gotta
(16:13):
figure out, like what can I do to to the
rise to? You know? Yeah, but like that's why I
learned how to play trump bon because I was like, okay,
maybe if I have an instrument, you know something, they're
wrestling made you want to learn it. Wrestling made me
literally do everything that I've done in my life. I
played sports for every semester and every term whatever because
(16:36):
in my head I had to be an athlete all
year long because I had to get ready bigger. You
were a band nerd who got buff and wanted to wrestle,
I'm not even playing. No. Started in seventh grade, So
I started wrestling because I wanted to wrestle. Obviously I
tried football prior, like when I was in elementary school,
but it was we played poundball in Georgia, so you're
you're on a team based how much you weigh, and
(16:58):
me and my best friend were real fat kids. So
we were playing like thirteen year old and we were
like nine and it just did not work. So I
they hit me so hard my helmet broke. I cried.
I quit. And so when I go out for wrestling,
my dad is like, you know, it's not like that wrestling, right,
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's cool. I go, but
I would need to learn something because I can't defend myself.
I'm just like I was a little pudgy fat nerd,
(17:20):
you know, and I was nervous because wrestling is the truth, man,
it is. It changes you. Man. It makes you so accountable,
not just like in a sport but in life because
football you could be killing it, but ten people don't
want to back you up. Now you lost as well.
Wrestling it taught me how to be so accountable because
if I lost, it's because I messed up. I heard
(17:41):
word for words, so many wrestlers, like amateur wrestlers, say
that yep, the interperson, and it made me translate that
to life. So if we fast forward some so there's like, okay,
I need to learn a language and a little bit
of Spanish because you know, I kinda want to wrestle
in Mexico. It's the closest country to me that speaks
a different language where I could possibly wrestle later in life.
So I started learning Spanish. Um I had incredible stage fright.
(18:03):
So my friend convinced me they were looking for guys
to be in show choir. And I was like, I'm
not saying I'm doing that. She goes, you have to age, right,
don't you? Guy said yeah, she goes, how are you
going to be a pro wrestler if you can't sing?
A dancer from the people, I said, So I joined
to get over that. In college, I was a cheerleader
because I knew I wasn't gonna be tall, So I
tried to get more agile so I could learn how
to do stuff. So, like literally every decision that I've
(18:26):
made in my life was to try to gain a
skill that might possibly help me in wrestling. And so
when I got to the point where I was in
developmental I was like, cool, now I need some sort
of gimmick. I need something. So I tried to be
the son of Papashongo. Um. So I was a motivational speaker.
I was that nineties guy. So I had like a
yack back turtles backpack. You know, I tried to be
(18:48):
like me essentially. Um, I tried to be like a
real American with Jack swagger. I had so many different
things to the point, remember the Jack swagger, Right, So
I tried so many different things to the point where
one one time I got a review that said, like,
I have too many ideas. So in my head, in
(19:10):
my in my how is that a bad thing? I've
never heard that as a criticism, right, And so in
my head, I was like, I don't even understand what
that means. Um, So I just I would like get
get upset and like I'm not I'm gonna make more ideas.
I'm gonna try to be more creative. And I had
so many people telling me like this will never I
have a list, a legitimate list. Breeze will tell you this,
he's seen this. I have a list of things in
(19:31):
developmental that I wanted to do, and I it's a
list of things that people told me I will never
be able to do. And I'm almost done with it.
I'm almost done checking things off. It's disgusting how good
it feels. And so all of that is why, like,
once it got to the point where we could try
to create a new day. I had this this idea
in my head and I didn't I don't know if
(19:52):
I ever voiced this to to the guys or if
it was something that I was consciously doing, but I
quickly realized in trying to figure out how to get
our chemistry and ring stuff all together, and to the
point of the chemis the chemistry that we have now,
which we were able to get from how shows. We
were on house shows for like four or five months
before we run and for those who don't know, that's
when they're on the road all the time, working matches,
(20:14):
doing promos, doing this. But there's no TV cameras. There
is just for the people that come to the house.
So so having having that set up helped us a lot.
But in trying to get our chemistry down, we kind
of shed the gimmick because that wasn't that the gimmick
became secondary to our chemistry. And then once we realize
that we've leaned fully into our chemistry, and then it
(20:37):
could be literally whatever it wanted to be. You know,
you guys, you said shed right, because it's an evolution
and the cocoon to the butterfly, it's so funny. Like
one of the ways I as a as a young
buck that I always kind of I would see if
like wrestling was over, is like did they get a
word over? Did they get a phrase over? Things like
(20:58):
that like Steve Austin out the what over? But one
of the best, if not the best. But to me,
I hate it because it kills promos right, like if
somebody doesn't even know the stuff, then that that that's
what I like, because if the crowd is not they're interacting,
trying to mess with us, trying to knock us off
our game. Like to me, that is what pro wrestling
(21:18):
is is what do you do when you mess up?
This is why I say it's like stand up with you.
Guys are like boxers there and the crowd is the
opponent and they want you to outsmart them. They want
you to him with his finger. They want to be
shut down because then they go, oh, he's good. And
that's that's what all this is. If you go a
B C. D. If you're like that's whatever, cool, that's
(21:38):
that's fine. Everything works, people like it, everyone enjoys it.
But what do you do when things go arrived? I
remember the first time I saw Roman get the crowd
with his promo and I literally was like, either he
just figured it out or he just took like a
full court shot and made it. But it was the
(22:00):
first time they stopped wadding and work did that exact moment.
And it's funny because I'm sitting here and going as
a writer, right going, oh god, I hate the wood.
I've seen it, and you're like, no, give it to
get That's what and that's why you're able to get
these ideas over and get them through people. People know
when it's real. Yeah, So it's so much more fun
(22:21):
because now now we're playing. This is all all, all
of this is a game, and they are a part
of the show. They want to be and they are
part of this. When you're watching wrestling on TV, you
cannot even almost feel the energy in the building. You
can't cannot even almost comprehend or even almost fathom what
the energy is like, but you can hear it. That's
(22:45):
the indicator. So even if I'm watching something and I'm
not fully invested or I'm not I'm cooking dinner or something,
but I hear the audience, I go, how I need
to turn and watch that. That makes it so much better.
How many matches if you would have seen just like
with no crowd, flat, no noise the match. This is
a good match, but that energy that you is trying
to experience through audible This is a good point because
(23:07):
I was, like I said, I was kind of like
anti crowd and then the pandemic hit and everyone was like, oh,
this is gonna be brutal. I'm not joking. I was like,
finally I can watch what I want to watch the
way I want to watch it. No, no, no, no no no.
And after the first one, I was like, oh man,
I really missed crowds. This is brutal. I was way
wrong on that. It's studio wrestling, Like it's it's not easy.
(23:31):
Everything hurts ten times worse because there's no adrenaline trying
to create it and and hope like you get to
a point where not that like you can just wrestle
and no automatically if it's good or bad, but like
you have a feel for like this was entertaining. Maybe
the crowd is gonna let you know that they have
their chance too, that they got over you know what
(23:52):
I mean. I've heard you guys get your This is awesome.
It's like that's a that's a powerful thing too. It's
instant gratification, Like if I make a movie, it's eight
months before you see it and I've already decided how.
I feel like, there's no for me. There's like no
point in any of this if there's no test, Like,
(24:12):
I want to be tested. I want to pass, I
want to fail. I want to get better. I want
to know where I'm at. You're not big on participation trophies.
I'd imagine no, no, dude, like, don't give it to me.
I didn't earn this yet. I don't want it if
I haven't earned it. And the only way I can
find out if I've earned it is if I'm tested
on the material. So before we nerd out, Yeah, I
(24:33):
just want a lot of people listening, because I do
believe a lot of people from social media that that
follow both of us will watch this, and I do
believe a lot of those people are artists in some way,
shape or form, whether it's painters, animators, sculptors, wrestlers, actors, musicians, whatever,
um everything Woods has said. I hope you guys go
(24:56):
back and listen to because it's literally the Blue Pray
and for how to stay true to yourself and your ideas.
And we hear the term sill thrown out a lot
these days. A shill is someone that is catering to
the fans, and that is the that is the opposite
of what an artist should be doing. They should be
(25:16):
making the art they love and then expressing themselves truthfully
and honestly. And then the power becomes the fan or
the audience and you get to decide whether you love
it as well or whether you don't connect to it.
But a lot of artists and younger ones, and this
is with social media and a like button, I see
(25:37):
a lot of you asking people what should I paint,
what should I sing? What should I do? And I
always want to like, if I had your number, I
would call you and be like, don't ever do that again.
I want you to sing what you love or play
the cello with a song that you like. Don't don't
ever ask my opinion ever. I'll let you know if
I like it or if I don't, win you're done.
But be true to yourself and make art for your self.
(26:00):
That's what stand up comedy and wrestling still have in
in by the dozen compared to all other art forms.
Movies are way different now there's so much c g
I there's so much less honesty that we can that
we can put out there because the animators who put
up honest work don't even have control of the edit
and don't even have control of what music is going
(26:22):
behind what They can take a line I said in
one scene, and if I said the same line and another,
they could put it in there. So it's when you're
in that live audience that's so funny. You had stage right,
Oh the worst you have like the zero percent stage
right now, Like you're the opposite. What's the stage courage?
Your stage courage? But all this at the same time,
(26:42):
like you were saying, it's getting to be myself. That's
the scariest thing is playing yourself. Yeah, But at the
same time, the reason that I'm like where where I
feel so comfortable in this is because I was doing
what other people were telling me all the time, taking
everyone else's advice except lookscept my own. Sure, I guess,
(27:03):
And once I got to the point where I said,
you know what, I want to throw my own punches
if I get knocked out. Good because now I know
that I'm not supposed to be here. I failed the test.
I don't have what it takes. My mind is not
built for wrestling, my body is not built for wrestling. Whatever,
I need to go and do something else. If I'm
constantly throwing someone else's punches and I get knocked out,
(27:25):
now I'm going to be blaming people constantly for the
rest of my life for messing up my shot. It
wasn't their shot, it was mine, and I decided what
to do with it. And if I don't succeed based
on your advice, that's my faults are created exactly, and
then that that it ruins your life. It's a pit
in your stomach, in the back of your brain. I
would much rather fail on my own accord and understand
(27:48):
come to terms with the fact that I'm not as
good as I thought I was. There's my reality checkmate, wrestling, accountability, legit,
It's it's all rolled into one. So if I'm able
to go out on my own terms and I and
I win that night, I don't go oh cool, I
I won forever. No, No, I have to win every night.
But I have a little more confidence, and the next
(28:09):
time I go out there, I have more confidence that
I'm gonna win again. And then every time I do that,
I feel like I'm gonna win again. I'm gonna win again.
So at that point I stopped caring about do I
need to have a gimmick and have a mask, and said, no,
screw this. I like me, My friends like me, and legit,
having that relationship with them, being on camera with them,
doing promos with them, matches with them gave me that
confidence that I don't have to put on a mask
(28:31):
or be a different character in order to make money
at this place, I can just be me as a
human person. I have interest in video games, in the
last n corn In Big in all these different things,
and it's like, if you don't rock with it, cool,
I'm already here, dude, And regardless if you like me,
you're not, I'm about to have a bang or bell
to bell, So like you, you can't be mad, you
can justlike you can just like the character Davior Woods,
(28:52):
but like Austin Creed has done nothing but worked his
ass off in order to try. And if you don't
like it, so cool, it's totally you don't have to
like what I do. You have to enjoy my art.
(29:12):
That's totally fine. I have I have this this this
feeling that comes over me when I'm when I'm performing,
that that is all that I need. The way that
it makes me feel, that's all that I need. So
if you love it, I love you for it. Thank you.
And if you can't stay in it, I love you
for it. I bless you. But it's it's just that
feeling being out there with those guys. It's it's incredible, dude,
(29:33):
It's funny. I wasn't as comfortable as you are until
I got in my thirties, which you are now. And
before that, like all the movies I was doing, it
was always I didn't believe in my ideas. I would
do whatever the director said, Oh that has to be
better than than what I did, and I was kind
of learning on the job. And it wasn't until I
(29:56):
got into my thirties where I was really felt comfortable
on camera. This is no lie. My dream career would
be the actor Ron Perlman's career. He was always in prosthetics,
his face was always covered. He was hell Boy in
the original Hellboy movies. He was the preacher in that
Weird Island of Dr Moreau movie. He he was. Yes,
(30:18):
he was Beast from Beauty and the Beast, the live
action show in the eighties. He was I know, if
that movie it's a good movie, trash on it. It's
that's a good movie. I've seen it a lot, man,
and I'm always trying to like, why do people hate it?
I really like that. You know who the Cheetah was, right,
Mark the costcos that Filipino action star or American Filipino actions.
(30:41):
Can we redo this? Can I'd be your little a
little buddy the doctor bro. That would be the greatest
movie ever. Um. Okay, So we agreed on that. But
that's a good segue because I want to finish on
nerding out. So you and I A few years ago, Uh,
(31:01):
there was an app called the d C app d
C Universe and you could watch shows like Teen Titans
I think they just called Titans um, and uh they
had Doom Patrol, which if you haven't seen, you should
actually watch that. I've seen a few episodes and it's
really funny. And I love Brednon Fraser so much. Um,
Sarah made a movie with him and I got to
(31:22):
hang out with him more than her, and I literally
was like, dude, I wish we were brothers when we left,
and he was like, so do I And he's just
this giant Canadian guy with a huge heart and I
love him. So anyway, you should watch that. Um. But anyway,
we made a show there that was a table top
role playing game, which, for those of you who don't know,
it's like Dungeons and Dragons, only they've made Dungeons and
(31:42):
Dragons and all kinds of world. Some of them are
in space, somewhere in the future, somewhere in the wild West,
summer D and D and uh. We made one that
was in the superhero world and uh, I have been
and I don't even know if this is going to
come to fruition, but I'm just so excited I want
to talk about it. I've been trying to get a
meeting with the people at HBO Max who absorbed the
(32:04):
DC app and uh show them what we did there
and try to get going. And they watched it and
they reached out and they set up a meeting and
they want to talk about maybe doing more of DC.
All Stars so much fun. For those of you who
don't know, God, it literally is an eighties game, and
(32:24):
so are our Dungeon Master or game master was his
dude named Sam Wit where Everybody Loves and and Uh.
He wrote this basically the Breakfast Club for Superheroes movie,
only with dice rolls, So it's a very linear story
were the characters. There's an element of improv to it,
but he knows where his story is going to go
(32:45):
and can control it. So if if you want to
see the pilot, it's out there. They put the first
one for free on YouTube, and you had to pay
for all the other ones. Um, but you can just
kind of see what it is. So I'm going in
there and I'm going to pitch him a few different
versions of it. I want to pitch him a villain's version,
but I want to see if they'll be down to
continue our story because I felt like we had a
(33:06):
lot more to do. You and I have my favorite
interaction ever in a tabletop role playing game. Our characters
had these secret goals. Do you remember this? And my
character was a nerd. I was I was the dork
from Breakfast Club and had no friends and was like
good with computers and everyone was crapping on me and
(33:27):
like making fun of me, and uh. By the end
of the game, we've revealed our real our true identities.
I was super dude and you were bad guy. And
we're up on this like pedestal of this torn down
chapel and we're looking in and we see the bad
guys in there. And I had this special skill that
(33:50):
if I could make one friend in this game, I
would be immune to this one particular character's attacks. And
we don't know each other's goals, and so this is
like when you're saying you can finish these other sentences
and things like that. So we're both sitting up there
and I look at you and I go we're about
(34:10):
to go into battle. And I saw it and I go, hey, hey, man,
are you my friend? And what did you say? Yes?
I am, And I literally threw my paper in the
air and I was like, I'm jumping in and I'm
taking out next luker. And you said if I make
a friend he has attack doesn't work, so screw you.
And Sam just throws his pencil in there and he's like,
(34:33):
oh my god, what did I do? Why did I
give him the secret? And I had so much fun
playing these By now you guys are figuring out that
I'm a big dork. You put me on to a
d M who's a dungeon master that I want to
give love to, and they told me, since my podcast,
I'm allowed to do this. His name is kg Tang
(34:55):
and he had an online professional wrestling D and D
called d N d W, which you did, and you
were like this what it was like a luchador? I
was a lad? Uh did you hit him with Spanish?
On the Oh my god, you guys are seeing the
(35:15):
nerdy stuff. So Woods calls me from the game. I
think it just from the game we just played. I
was like, oh my god, Freddy would love this. So
this guy literally he facetimes and he's like, dude, you
gotta come do this Dungeons and Dragons wrestling game. Are
you down? And I was in my truck eating a sandwich.
It was like yeah, man, sure, But I told him,
(35:35):
I said, I gotta call Freddie Friston like wait what, yeah,
Freddy with love? What Like? When I showed them that,
it's you're like, oh my god, he's gonna come into
the game. Dude. They were so good to me. Here's
how this was the impression you left. This is how
good they were to me. So I call this guy.
He's this awesome dude who does voices. He's a voice
actor and he does wrestling voices as well, and so
(35:57):
his like announcer for the wrestling league is I think
like an orc or troll version of j R. And
so the voice is like, oh my god. So he's
already locked in on that, and uh he writes every
story for every single session, and I mean puts in
work on it. And he says, hey, it's a monster's only.
(36:19):
It's monster It's a monsters only had this rule. I
don't it's I don't know why. That makes me laugh,
but he goes, it's a monster's only wrestling league. What's
your favorite monster? And so now my whole memory is
white because I'm like, I'm thinking, like, you know, elves
and dwarves and all this stuff, and I go the
first one that pops in my head, I go an
awl Beart And so for those of you don't know,
(36:42):
it's very self explanatory. It's a giant bear with an
owl head and a lot of feathers instead of fur,
and it's pretty darn tough. So I I hit this
guy at KG back and this is going somewhere, I promise,
And I say, hey, man, can I be an Albart?
And he goes, oh my god, I love you, Please
be an Albert. He said, okay, so I come in.
(37:02):
He has me roll for some statistics, so you're rolling
for things like strength intelligence. That was a rough one
for me, and then a bit of a backstory and
some of the stats that won't bore you. And my
backstory was I got cursed from eating this wizard, and
the curse was I could I was now fluent in
every language, um, but could no longer speak or understand
(37:23):
my own. So I just hate everybody. I was just
grumpy and pissed off, so weird. Well, you know, it's wrestling,
So I'm gonna be an Indie League champion coming in
with these other professional dn D players and the one
(37:43):
her name is Christina v Christina Valence. Well, I love her.
She voices ladybug girl. If any of you have kids,
your kids love her too. Um. And she's the nicest
out of all of them. She's like, oh my gosh,
how brought you a present? Dada, Dada. She's a killer, Okay.
She attacked me right away in the story where she
came to give me a hug, made an agility roll
and the success of that was she slipped something in
(38:05):
my sock that was gonna like affect me later, right,
So I was like, oh my god, you're a horrible
human being. I love you. Will you please play it
all my RPG, which she does now She's even played
Mafia with Seth and Claire and all of us. And
she's a gangster that too. Um shout out to the
dnd W crew, by the way. So I'm loving all
these people and I can't roll bad like no matter what,
(38:26):
and I always rolled back. I'm like the King of
the Four. Okay, So it's just seventeen eighteen twenty. I
think I rolled three natural twenties. Uh in the match
like that we were in against this like giant night
and I killed his kill him, I take him out
and I got the belt and I even did like
a voice. And the point of this was I modeled
(38:47):
him after the Big Show and literally so I made
him British so he sounded like this, but he was
incredibly grumpy and I even cut a promo. I was like,
I have to listen to your stupid languages and here
you're doing. To do this whole I had to do
it on the fly, but it was and I've never
done that before. It was incredible. And off of that
(39:09):
was when you asked me to uh, sacrifice my life
for a month and write you guys a tabletop RPG,
which I love doing. Man, I had a plast doing that.
Now I can't stop. There's literally another one right in.
Um so we're dorks. Yeah, it's a little bit, and
a lot of you probably are too, so in your face,
(39:32):
in your face, I haven't heard in your face. It
was big when I was in the eighties. Man, I
have my Z Cavarici's bringing it back like a Jimmy
Z shirt. In your face? So okay, so funny thing.
So just for a second to go back to wrestling. So,
like you just said, this is what's funny. So I'm
gonna say that if I have a problem one Monday,
because it's funny to me, and I'll tell Coffee and
(39:52):
Ei this story and I'll go, oh, this is funny
that we're going. Yeah, and your face was no I
said in a long time. And we'll say it and
we'll giggle and someone we'll go, what why are they
say in your face to ridicule me? Yeah, that's perfect,
but that again like just having fun coming and doing this,
like we're just having fun. I feel like this is
what people enjoy it. You guys have created something that
(40:12):
I love watching, that makes my kids laugh, that makes
me an old head laugh um. And I love what
you guys have done for the business. I really feel.
I don't like saying people have changed the business, because
everything changes the business constantly, but you guys have really
helped the business evolve and find its way back to
the future of w w E fans and their their
(40:34):
logo is is you know what, then, now forever, And
it's that kind of evolution that makes forever a possibility.
And I think wrestling, as crazy as it is right now,
I think it's in a really good place and I
think it's due for really big things in the next
couple of years. And I like all the competition going
around right now. And I like the vibe that your
(40:55):
generation is laying down, which is like, yeah, I'm gonna elevate,
but I'm gonna pull all of you up with me,
And it may not be as fast as climbing over
your head, but I sleep better at night. And I
love that your generation is down to do this, and
I see it not just from you, but from other
cats you've inspired, and it's just a different way of thinking.
And I love all you guys for it, but the
(41:16):
most I just I think that seeing and hearing all
of the stories from the guys and girls in the
previous men and women, excuse me of the previous generation,
and being able to learn from them and sit down
so like, I wouldn't be in w w E if
it wasn't for conversations with Devon Dudley. Yes, I got
(41:37):
to meet him. He was so cool, like legit. So
when I got released from t n A, I was
again I was in that zone of man, I bet
on myself and I lost. Maybe I shouldn't be a wrestler,
not realizing that in that point of life. So I'm
still still in college and I in my head, I
was like, I can just do my school work and
try to be a good wrestler, not understanding that this
(41:59):
is a job and jobs have politics and you need
to be friends with people and you need to like
make sure that people see you, and you need to
be knocking on doors to let people know that you
want opportunities things like that. But I just didn't understand
at the time, you know, so uh talking to Divon
he he he gave me the game, you know, he
explained all that stuff to me. He's like, this is
how you are, and this is probably why this happens.
(42:20):
Like no one knows for sure, like how things would
have worked had you did things differently. So much experience
in a game that he can make educated guess exactly,
and so knowing things like that and hearing things from
him saying because then me telling him, maybe I'm not
cut out for this, He said, no, you haven't. You
haven't exhausted all your options. Continue grind and continue hustling.
If this is something that you want and you and
you at one point thought you should be here like,
(42:42):
then then continue to work, continue to grind and can
continue to get better, and you will create more opportunities
because people say, like you find opportunities or they find
you like, No, you create, create and create. The luck
is the intersection of skill and opportunity, Like you have
to be ready and then you have to make things happen.
My godfather said, it's it's luck is being prepared when
the opportunity comes your way. Yes, and if you're not
(43:04):
then you're of course you're going to fail. And so
like by him sitting on the phone with me while
I'm like I'm like crying to him about dude, I
love the ure, like I'm I'm weeping, and he's on
the phone with me for like two hours, just like
comforting me, making me feel better and then pumping me
up about things. By the end of the conversation, I
immediately got on the phone and like started getting booked again,
(43:25):
Like he did Devon Deadly change my life. Dude, I
love that guy. I love him even more now when Man,
when I did Punky Blissen and Flair came out and
we're nice enough to come and do like a bit
with the new Punky girl, and he was the agent
that they said now and so while they were working,
I was just like talking to him and just nerding out.
I was like, oh, dude, I used to watch how
(43:46):
many tables do you think you went through? Just totally
and he was really cool and nice to me. Man,
but he just looks so tough and just I love Yeah,
I got a soft spot for all y'all's he's he's
the best guy you know, and so like without that conversation.
I wouldn't be and at this table with you you
like we would have been talking like I wouldn't be
in there with Kofini like I would the None of
this happens without Devon taking the time to care about me,
(44:08):
you know. And so for me, that is how I've
tried to make sure I'm trying to leave things better
than they were when I got here, because it's not
wrestling like doing things, it's fun and having goals. Once
you achieve those goals, I feel like you didn't have
the responsibility to make it better for the next person. Yes,
there's still things that I want to do and still
things that I want to achieve as because as you
(44:31):
as you get to your goal, your you move the
goal post back some because you want to find something new.
I've hit, I've hit what I wanted since I was
a kid. So while I'm still trying to achieve things
that I want, I also have to put equal energy
into building a better path for the for the sixteen
year olds that want to start wrestling next year. And
it's a harder road to walk, but it's a it's
an unbelievably possible road to walk down. It's just a
(44:54):
little bit harder and people it's very difficult to say,
don't just look out for you, But you don't have
to just look out for you. Once you get to
a certain point confidence wise, you really can bring others
with you. And how more artists start doing that. It's
just it's wrestlers leading the way. What do you know
about that? Well do you know about that? It's one
of those things where you know, you hear people like
(45:15):
somebody got bullied and this is just like in life,
like so somebody got bullied before they got into a
good position in life, and then so like they're bullying
people to like, you know, because that's how they were
brought up. Like you know, like if you got bullied
and then you became you know that that top person,
wouldn't You want to just make sure that people don't
go through like the bs you went through. You want
to make it better. Put him in karate school, don't
(45:35):
bully him. Yeah, give him with scholarship. So talking about
Devon and just like other veterans who have like, since
you're giving us the game, like we know that there's
certain things that we can do to make sure that
we're better off, you know, like we get to stand
on their shoulders, and that's why he's doing that and
sharing those two hours with you because you knew you'd
be receptive to that. He's not gonna waste his time otherwise. No, no,
(45:56):
but it's like we gotta leave it better for the
next people, and they gotta leave it better for the
one after them. So like it's it's cool to see
everything change and to be a part of such an
interesting evolution of wrestling. I feel like the past ten
years wrestling is like very different just from when I
was there. It's there's nothing that women had a five
(46:16):
minute match when I worked there, and two minutes was
their entrances. They get too commercial breaks now, like it's
in the third hour a raw, Like it's wrestling is
night and day, night and day, and I love it.
It's just it's just better. We have so many, so
many talented people, and there's so many talent people not
just in w W but in the world at that
(46:36):
are good at this and like, if you don't like
this one, then watch that one, and you don't have
to baden off this one to say that you like
this one. Like there's so much space for everybody. Everything
but you're the reason I know about wrestling pro wrestling.
It's one of my favorite things to do is watch that.
You know it is, We're gonna talk. I'm gonna talk
about it. I'm gonna go deep on another episode. I
even want to bring on Yeah, I want to have
(46:58):
Kendrick here for it, because it's literally like if the
kids in the Hall from HBO and Mr Show and
Vince McMahon somehow made a baby and that baby wanted
to be a wrestler. Oh, can I say yea side question?
Can you follow me on the Socials of course, Austin
Creed wins and check me out on G four t
V Bay Bay. Yeah, we're not We're not. We're not
(47:20):
ending this just yet G four TV. So I'm not
even gonna lie. When I found out they were casting
for it, I legit talked to Sarah and I was like, yo, there,
that was like a cool show man, and She's like,
you're so old, They're never I was like, yeah, no,
I was just talking out lab and then I see
you tweet like yo, that would be like a sick job.
And then it kind of it got this movement. That's
(47:42):
the power of your positivity. It got this digital movement
behind it, and all of a sudden you're like, yo, man,
I'm wanna be a host on G four. That's like
a dream job. And I read the text, I was like,
oh my god, that's amazing. It's like so unreal, because
it's like, that's that's what like all the hustle has
been for, especially like in gaming stuff, because like again,
(48:02):
learning from guys like Devon and learning from veterans like
that who are kind enough to have these conversations, like
that transitional period from stopping wrestling and starting something else
is weird. But then you can in any profession, as
you're getting older and maybe like phasing out of something
doing something and you've got to start chapter three or four,
whatever you wanna call it, is like what what do
I do? And Yeah, So in my head, it's like,
(48:23):
how can I make that transition as easy as possible
without feeling that anxiety like nearing the end of my
career whenever that may be, And it's like just be
in the space and so getting getting the green light
from G four, like I don't know, that's for me,
that's the biggest jump that I have have made in
my head because that to me is like, all right,
(48:44):
we accept you in the gaming experience like for real
net because that there's always in my in the back
of my head, I'm I'm if you haven't realized, ladies
and gentlemen, I'm a very anxious person. And so whenever
I do gaming stuff, even though I've been in the
space for like six years now, and there's that, oh,
who's this random wrestler guy on my TV? Like, and
I did e a play? I know there's hell of
people that have watched that that have no clue who
(49:04):
Xavier Woods is and don't care you know, um, and
they go, oh, they just hear ww like, oh it's
a random wrestl he doesn't know anything about video games.
But then my my job in my head is like
I have to be so much more cautious, not cautious,
but conscious um of of getting myself to a position
where they go oh um. And so being able to
do that to the point of becoming a G four
(49:25):
host tells me my transition should be should be okay,
And that's what's suddenly love you know, Yeah, it's power
positivity people, And we'll speak to you guys next time.
This has been a production of I heart Radio's Michael
Tura podcast network. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
(49:45):
you listen to your favorite chills
What's up, everybody. Welcome back to WWF Wrestling with Freddy.
Thank you guys so much for listening so far. And uh,
I'm really excited to introduce this guest because I never
had the pleasure of working with him. I left the
company before he came in. And uh, now it's time
to start the show. Now, stuffing up for the mic.
(00:25):
The host of Wrestling with Freddie Freddie Prince June. Yeah,
so everyone, please welcome the awesome, the fantastic, by my command,
the next King of the Ring, Mr Xavier Woods. How
are you, sir, I'm fantastic. Thank you for that incredible introduction.
(00:47):
Oh that's too kind, You're too kind. No, I'll telling
you the only other American besides Harley Race and Jerry
Lawler that I think would look good in a crown. Otherwise,
as we all looked like John Goodman and King Ralph,
and it looked great. And then he even rejected it
at the end, you know what I mean, he knew
(01:08):
it didn't look good. You know, it didn't look good.
It looks great now though. Um, thanks for coming out
to Los Angeles, man, dude. Of course, we haven't had
a chance to actually sit and hang out and chatting
such a long time. I haven't gotten to see you
in the flesh since I was your dungeon master. I
think that was the last time, um. And we had
(01:29):
a ton of fun and we can even talk nerdy
stuff if if you want. But before we get into that, UM,
we kind of met. Like I said, you, you didn't.
You weren't at the company when I worked there, and
so we kind of met because I became a fan
of yours and I still watched wrestling to this day,
and I still watched when I left, and I watched
(01:51):
this dude and I wasn't educated on t n A.
I watched this dude come in that was you, and
you had a backstage segment and I think the first
one was with Kofi, and then after that it was
Big Ee and it was this young, brash, good look
and wrestler. I'm blowing smoke, but this is what this
(02:12):
is what came through. And I remember sitting there going
who is this and what are they trying to do?
And you, Kofe and Biggie formed a faction, which is
very difficult to get over with fans, let alone within
the company. It's differ It's difficult um, And when you
guys came out, I heard some of the strongest booze
(02:38):
that I had ever heard a tag team received, and
they started screaming to the changed from booze to full
curt angle hate where it was New Day Sucks was
a part of it, and I remember going, man, but
you're committed though, and you guys did something crazy and
it doesn't happen often. Man. In fact, it's hard for
(03:00):
me to find another time that it has worked in
the last twenty five years. You guys went from Bood
two over in a way that I haven't seen and
I don't know how long, and it went from New
Day Sucks to New Day Rocks, and you guys are
using trombones and now then I watched it years later
(03:25):
and you're in these like bamboo beat down matches with
the USO's and stealing the show and the crowd goes
crazy for you guys everywhere you go. How the hell
did you do this? Uh? I don't know. You see
what I'm saying. It's you're first off, you're you're beyond kind,
(03:48):
You're this I don't know, it's it's it's a weird process.
It's a weird journey because I'm trying to figure out
how to say this. It's like, I don't know a
stand up comic who's been hated and then love And
that's the closest thing to wrestling that I can put
(04:09):
in show business. I feel like the reason that happened
is because regardless of like what the three of us
are doing, we have, uh, this this this unreal chemistry
together where like it's like that we can finish each
other's sometimes. It's like that type of stuff, but it's
on a different it's like a different comedic timing level.
It's not just like we're friends. It's almost like we
(04:30):
have the same style of of dropping jokes, of timing
on those jokes, of the weird pop culture references of
those jokes. UM for instance, So, uh, we're at waffle house.
Its Kofe myself. It's always of course it's a waffle Yeah,
because it's the only thing that's opened after a show. Okay,
(04:51):
so we gotta got the late night breakfast places. Uh,
and someone came up and they said they said someone's
name was the last name was Houser, and Kofe and
I immediately both went doogie. I went to high school
with him. I'm not joking, Doogie Houser I got. I
got suspended my senior year for sticking up for Neil
(05:14):
against Rob Bone. He was he was this guy in
my school. He talked smack about about Neil and said
stuff that I didn't like. And Neil was the reason
I started drama because I saw him do a deadly
more impression like the day you choose electives, and I
was like, I'm gonna do that, and I still can't
do a good one. Um. But he spoke out the
side of his face and he got hit and he
played football. I didn't, So I got suspended. But yeah,
(05:36):
so shout out Dougie Houser, shout out the goat man.
So this guy's name is Houser. You guys both just
constantly say and people are like, how did how did
you both come to do? That's how you guys interact
in the ring though, Yeah, that's how you guys would
do whatever, like whatever group or person you guys were
going against, when you guys would talk trash on him,
(05:56):
it was always. But that's why that's again, that's why
it works. There's that chemistry of like anything that I
say they will laugh anything that they say. I will laugh. Like,
so no matter what we say, whether they're bad jokes
or things that are just ridiculous, Like, as long as
we're laughing and having a good time, someone's like these guys,
it's not you can't. It's hard to hate when people
(06:19):
are just like having a good So this is a
high level thing. So Larry David has a similar philosophy.
He says, when you have confidence in yourself and in
your jokes, there are no bad jokes. There's only bad audiences.
And so he'll turn it on even more if he
knows it's bothering you, just to drive that point home,
(06:40):
to the point where he got his own TV show
and everyone fell in love with what is in essence
a horrible person. Yes, and when you guys were heels,
you were pulling this off, and it was I don't
want to call you guys unicorns because you guys actually
came out with unicorn horns. Very good reason for that.
But it's you know, it's probably dirty, is it not? Okay,
I was in rat I'm just kidding, you know. Uh
(07:03):
So my girlfriend in high school, she would always talk
about this movie, The Last Unicorn watching this whatever. Finally
we sit down and I watched and I'm like, this
is the most amazing animated film I've ever seen. So
the whole, the whole, I know, I know, the whole
idea of the movie is that this is the last
Unicorn and magic is almost gone because there's only one
Unicorn left. Unicorns are the ones who bring magic, and
(07:25):
so in my head, we came up with this thing
that we brought magic back to wrestling, and we're like,
so we're unicorns. That that's what my brain did. And
so we set in a promo once and it was
hilarious to us, and so then we started coming out
with our fingers on our heads to us people listening, like,
if you're insecure about your art, what he just said,
(07:46):
it was funny to us. It was funny to us.
That's we'll talk about that later. I'm sorry we're interrupting that.
That's like hugely important points. So there's a clip that
just recently saw. Older clip. It's Kevin Nash and he's
talking to somebody and he's explaining. He says, like, screw
those twenty people in the arena. Anything that I'm saying
on a microphone is for me and maybe seven people
(08:08):
in the back and that's about it. And I was like,
I sent it to the guys. I was like, this
is us, Like we're legitimately just trying to make each
other laugh. But that that type of fun, it's something
that you want to be a part of. Like if
I see a group of people and they're laughing at something,
even if I didn't think it was funny at first,
I'm like, but they're having a really good time, you
know what. And the point, the point of our existence again,
(08:32):
I'm gonna get a little existential because I'm in that
zone um is to have fun. I don't know what
this life is. I don't know if there's a point.
I don't know if there's a meaning. So what should
I do in order to to to to get the
most out of this, Well, I should enjoy it as
much as possible. And if I can do something that
then translates into other people enjoying their experience here as well.
(08:52):
Because we could all this could all blow up tomorrow,
comment might hit like dinosaurs. We might be better not.
I got big plans, I know, right, I know, but
that's that's the thing that makes me believe do what
is going to make you smile, do what's going to
make you happy, and that in turn is going to
hopefully extend to other people and make them happy. And
so you're talking about people hating us, it's because we
(09:14):
fully committed to that. Just said like it's the power positivity.
And at first you hear it, and it's like even
us when we heard it, we're like, we're gonna be like,
it's like a choir thing gospel. This is not what
we we're thinking about when we brought all this to you.
But fine, and so we thought we got the ball.
So we have to fully commit. And there's there's been
(09:35):
situations where people think like a man, I got this
thing thrown at me. You know whatever, this this sucks,
So I'm just gonna try to get a change. It's like, well,
this is our shot. In my head, there's like this
is my last shot. I wasn't in a good place
like before this. This is the best that I felt
in wrestling is with these two guys, and I really
believe that we have something. And so it's like we
(09:56):
have to fully commit to this because this is what
we wanted. So when we did that, everybody got so
upset because it is so corny at this point in
time to try to be positive, which is such a
weird thing to say, right of course, but it makes
people because they were still coming off like the John
Cena days where it felt forced upon them. But you
(10:18):
guys were almost a heel doing it as opposed to
the baby face doing it, so they were allowed to
be It was a different kind of hate and I'm
still trying to figure out how it changed to love it.
It's because we we gave them exactly what we were
so it became we don't like this because this is ridiculous.
And then when we fully committed, it became, you know what,
(10:42):
if they're going to play the game, we'll play the
game with him. We'll see, we'll see where this goes.
Because people understand cheering is good, booing is good, Silence
is bad. And I think that people understood that and
they saw these are three guys who are trying to
make the best out of what they're handed. And I
(11:02):
think that's even if it's not in the foreground, like
it's in your in the stunches back of your mind,
you understand what you're doing, you understand what you're watching.
Your understanding what your interactions mean to someone, and when
you see someone committed to the work, it makes it
very easy to watch. I remember when I would teach
their promo class um, I showed them the scene from
Liar Liar where Jim Carrey is trying to write the
(11:25):
word read and because his son made a wish for
his dad not to be able to tell alive for
a whole day, he can't do it, and he writes
the word blue and he's like, nor write it, and
all of a sudden, his hand gets angry at him
and it attacks him, and he's like, no, you're gonna
write it or I'll break it off. And it's so
(11:45):
over the top and ridiculous that if he didn't commit
a cent to that, that's the worst scene in the
history of film. Instead, you can't take your eyes off it.
And as ridiculous as it is, when his arm starts
the wing chicken wing things, he has everybody captured in this.
And then at the end of the scene he comes
up and his face is covered with the word blue
(12:06):
and it's like the goddamn and I'm looking at everybody
and I'm trying to tell them. I would also play
them stand up because I compare the two art forms
that it's as close as I can make a comparison
to because it's not like the movie business at all.
And I learned that very quick when all my promos
would get rejected because they were like eight minutes long.
But when I watched you guys turned face, so to speak.
(12:33):
And for people that aren't wrestling fans who are just
like listening for the stories, when you go from a
good guy or a bad guy to a good guy,
they say, you're turning face because your baby face now
and everybody's gonna love you. Um, you guys made this turn,
and you have this life outside of wrestling, as does KOFE,
(12:54):
as does E that you guys are very very public about,
and you bring a lot of yourselves into these w
w E characters in a time where that was done
because if we back up, when I was a kid,
everything was real. These were sporting contests, they were fights.
(13:17):
It was like I'll leave versus Holmes. And then after Montreal,
everything kind of got flipped on its head and all
of a sudden there was this argument of well, it's
this much real and this much but back in the
old days, you weren't necessarily doctor death, you know what
I mean, Like, but you had to live that gimmick
(13:38):
because if you were a bad guy signing autographs in
the back, how bad a guy are you? Right? And
then after the screw job happened, all that went away
and people were like, yeah, man, it's just to show.
It's just characters. You especially, but KOFE and and E
as well have found what I find to be this
sort of beautiful hybrid where you've literally really brought back
(14:01):
living the gimmick, which should make the old heads happy.
And if you're not, just listen and think about that
for a second. You're living the gimmick. You got yourself
over first, then got the gimmick over and it's almost
like old school wrestling all over again, but the real
mtvs Real World Season one version of it. It's so
(14:24):
crazy to me and you're literally it's almost like watching
old school wrestling again but through a contemporary lens. Because
young people freaking love you, guys. They love you guys.
They may be watching the Internet all the time and
don't know about cable TV, but they love you guys,
and they watch you and they follow y'all on social media.
(14:46):
And you're so interactive with them, whereas a lot of
the older heads just aren't, or if they are, they're
just complaining, you know what I mean, Like you don't
get it, you don't get it, and it's like, well,
you both don't get it, but you guys have this
(15:06):
crazy attitude of like, hey, if I don't get that,
get me hip to it. And and it's I've seen
it since the first segment I watched you do is
the same way you've been in gaming, in cosplay conventions,
in playing the bass in which I'm sure you'll be
doing in WrestleMania one day, doing to your own theme music.
(15:29):
I mean, my my friend is gonna jump pretty quick.
So man, pretty nasty on it what you guys have done.
I mean, am I crazy? Is this just me overthinking it?
Or do you see yourself as like, yo, it's not
even a gimmick. It's I'm living this and this is
me and I just found a way to make it work.
I think, I think the biggest part of it. So uh,
(15:51):
I guess it to go back to let's say developmental.
So like STW we have promo days and you can
come as whatever character or whatever thing kind of whatever
promo you want for me. It became the thing of
all right, I'm not you know six. This is like
my with my script since I was little, has has
been like I'm not gonna be six to I'm not
gonna be like two or fifty pounds, Like I gotta
(16:13):
figure out, like what can I do to to the
rise to? You know? Yeah, but like that's why I
learned how to play trump bon because I was like, okay,
maybe if I have an instrument, you know something, they're
wrestling made you want to learn it. Wrestling made me
literally do everything that I've done in my life. I
played sports for every semester and every term whatever because
(16:36):
in my head I had to be an athlete all
year long because I had to get ready bigger. You
were a band nerd who got buff and wanted to wrestle,
I'm not even playing. No. Started in seventh grade, So
I started wrestling because I wanted to wrestle. Obviously I
tried football prior, like when I was in elementary school,
but it was we played poundball in Georgia, so you're
you're on a team based how much you weigh, and
(16:58):
me and my best friend were real fat kids. So
we were playing like thirteen year old and we were
like nine and it just did not work. So I
they hit me so hard my helmet broke. I cried.
I quit. And so when I go out for wrestling,
my dad is like, you know, it's not like that wrestling, right,
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's cool. I go, but
I would need to learn something because I can't defend myself.
I'm just like I was a little pudgy fat nerd,
(17:20):
you know, and I was nervous because wrestling is the truth, man,
it is. It changes you. Man. It makes you so accountable,
not just like in a sport but in life because
football you could be killing it, but ten people don't
want to back you up. Now you lost as well.
Wrestling it taught me how to be so accountable because
if I lost, it's because I messed up. I heard
(17:41):
word for words, so many wrestlers, like amateur wrestlers, say
that yep, the interperson, and it made me translate that
to life. So if we fast forward some so there's like, okay,
I need to learn a language and a little bit
of Spanish because you know, I kinda want to wrestle
in Mexico. It's the closest country to me that speaks
a different language where I could possibly wrestle later in life.
So I started learning Spanish. Um I had incredible stage fright.
(18:03):
So my friend convinced me they were looking for guys
to be in show choir. And I was like, I'm
not saying I'm doing that. She goes, you have to age, right,
don't you? Guy said yeah, she goes, how are you
going to be a pro wrestler if you can't sing?
A dancer from the people, I said, So I joined
to get over that. In college, I was a cheerleader
because I knew I wasn't gonna be tall, So I
tried to get more agile so I could learn how
to do stuff. So, like literally every decision that I've
(18:26):
made in my life was to try to gain a
skill that might possibly help me in wrestling. And so
when I got to the point where I was in
developmental I was like, cool, now I need some sort
of gimmick. I need something. So I tried to be
the son of Papashongo. Um. So I was a motivational speaker.
I was that nineties guy. So I had like a
yack back turtles backpack. You know, I tried to be
(18:48):
like me essentially. Um, I tried to be like a
real American with Jack swagger. I had so many different
things to the point, remember the Jack swagger, Right, So
I tried so many different things to the point where
one one time I got a review that said, like,
I have too many ideas. So in my head, in
(19:10):
my in my how is that a bad thing? I've
never heard that as a criticism, right, And so in
my head, I was like, I don't even understand what
that means. Um, So I just I would like get
get upset and like I'm not I'm gonna make more ideas.
I'm gonna try to be more creative. And I had
so many people telling me like this will never I
have a list, a legitimate list. Breeze will tell you this,
he's seen this. I have a list of things in
(19:31):
developmental that I wanted to do, and I it's a
list of things that people told me I will never
be able to do. And I'm almost done with it.
I'm almost done checking things off. It's disgusting how good
it feels. And so all of that is why, like,
once it got to the point where we could try
to create a new day. I had this this idea
in my head and I didn't I don't know if
(19:52):
I ever voiced this to to the guys or if
it was something that I was consciously doing, but I
quickly realized in trying to figure out how to get
our chemistry and ring stuff all together, and to the
point of the chemis the chemistry that we have now,
which we were able to get from how shows. We
were on house shows for like four or five months
before we run and for those who don't know, that's
when they're on the road all the time, working matches,
(20:14):
doing promos, doing this. But there's no TV cameras. There
is just for the people that come to the house.
So so having having that set up helped us a lot.
But in trying to get our chemistry down, we kind
of shed the gimmick because that wasn't that the gimmick
became secondary to our chemistry. And then once we realize
that we've leaned fully into our chemistry, and then it
(20:37):
could be literally whatever it wanted to be. You know,
you guys, you said shed right, because it's an evolution
and the cocoon to the butterfly, it's so funny. Like
one of the ways I as a as a young
buck that I always kind of I would see if
like wrestling was over, is like did they get a
word over? Did they get a phrase over? Things like
(20:58):
that like Steve Austin out the what over? But one
of the best, if not the best. But to me,
I hate it because it kills promos right, like if
somebody doesn't even know the stuff, then that that that's
what I like, because if the crowd is not they're interacting,
trying to mess with us, trying to knock us off
our game. Like to me, that is what pro wrestling
(21:18):
is is what do you do when you mess up?
This is why I say it's like stand up with you.
Guys are like boxers there and the crowd is the
opponent and they want you to outsmart them. They want
you to him with his finger. They want to be
shut down because then they go, oh, he's good. And
that's that's what all this is. If you go a
B C. D. If you're like that's whatever, cool, that's
(21:38):
that's fine. Everything works, people like it, everyone enjoys it.
But what do you do when things go arrived? I
remember the first time I saw Roman get the crowd
with his promo and I literally was like, either he
just figured it out or he just took like a
full court shot and made it. But it was the
(22:00):
first time they stopped wadding and work did that exact moment.
And it's funny because I'm sitting here and going as
a writer, right going, oh god, I hate the wood.
I've seen it, and you're like, no, give it to
get That's what and that's why you're able to get
these ideas over and get them through people. People know
when it's real. Yeah, So it's so much more fun
(22:21):
because now now we're playing. This is all all, all
of this is a game, and they are a part
of the show. They want to be and they are
part of this. When you're watching wrestling on TV, you
cannot even almost feel the energy in the building. You
can't cannot even almost comprehend or even almost fathom what
the energy is like, but you can hear it. That's
(22:45):
the indicator. So even if I'm watching something and I'm
not fully invested or I'm not I'm cooking dinner or something,
but I hear the audience, I go, how I need
to turn and watch that. That makes it so much better.
How many matches if you would have seen just like
with no crowd, flat, no noise the match. This is
a good match, but that energy that you is trying
to experience through audible This is a good point because
(23:07):
I was, like I said, I was kind of like
anti crowd and then the pandemic hit and everyone was like, oh,
this is gonna be brutal. I'm not joking. I was like,
finally I can watch what I want to watch the
way I want to watch it. No, no, no, no no no.
And after the first one, I was like, oh man,
I really missed crowds. This is brutal. I was way
wrong on that. It's studio wrestling, Like it's it's not easy.
(23:31):
Everything hurts ten times worse because there's no adrenaline trying
to create it and and hope like you get to
a point where not that like you can just wrestle
and no automatically if it's good or bad, but like
you have a feel for like this was entertaining. Maybe
the crowd is gonna let you know that they have
their chance too, that they got over you know what
(23:52):
I mean. I've heard you guys get your This is awesome.
It's like that's a that's a powerful thing too. It's
instant gratification, Like if I make a movie, it's eight
months before you see it and I've already decided how.
I feel like, there's no for me. There's like no
point in any of this if there's no test, Like,
(24:12):
I want to be tested. I want to pass, I
want to fail. I want to get better. I want
to know where I'm at. You're not big on participation trophies.
I'd imagine no, no, dude, like, don't give it to me.
I didn't earn this yet. I don't want it if
I haven't earned it. And the only way I can
find out if I've earned it is if I'm tested
on the material. So before we nerd out, Yeah, I
(24:33):
just want a lot of people listening, because I do
believe a lot of people from social media that that
follow both of us will watch this, and I do
believe a lot of those people are artists in some way,
shape or form, whether it's painters, animators, sculptors, wrestlers, actors, musicians, whatever,
um everything Woods has said. I hope you guys go
(24:56):
back and listen to because it's literally the Blue Pray
and for how to stay true to yourself and your ideas.
And we hear the term sill thrown out a lot
these days. A shill is someone that is catering to
the fans, and that is the that is the opposite
of what an artist should be doing. They should be
(25:16):
making the art they love and then expressing themselves truthfully
and honestly. And then the power becomes the fan or
the audience and you get to decide whether you love
it as well or whether you don't connect to it.
But a lot of artists and younger ones, and this
is with social media and a like button, I see
(25:37):
a lot of you asking people what should I paint,
what should I sing? What should I do? And I
always want to like, if I had your number, I
would call you and be like, don't ever do that again.
I want you to sing what you love or play
the cello with a song that you like. Don't don't
ever ask my opinion ever. I'll let you know if
I like it or if I don't, win you're done.
But be true to yourself and make art for your self.
(26:00):
That's what stand up comedy and wrestling still have in
in by the dozen compared to all other art forms.
Movies are way different now there's so much c g
I there's so much less honesty that we can that
we can put out there because the animators who put
up honest work don't even have control of the edit
and don't even have control of what music is going
(26:22):
behind what They can take a line I said in
one scene, and if I said the same line and another,
they could put it in there. So it's when you're
in that live audience that's so funny. You had stage right,
Oh the worst you have like the zero percent stage
right now, Like you're the opposite. What's the stage courage?
Your stage courage? But all this at the same time,
(26:42):
like you were saying, it's getting to be myself. That's
the scariest thing is playing yourself. Yeah, But at the
same time, the reason that I'm like where where I
feel so comfortable in this is because I was doing
what other people were telling me all the time, taking
everyone else's advice except lookscept my own. Sure, I guess,
(27:03):
And once I got to the point where I said,
you know what, I want to throw my own punches
if I get knocked out. Good because now I know
that I'm not supposed to be here. I failed the test.
I don't have what it takes. My mind is not
built for wrestling, my body is not built for wrestling. Whatever,
I need to go and do something else. If I'm
constantly throwing someone else's punches and I get knocked out,
(27:25):
now I'm going to be blaming people constantly for the
rest of my life for messing up my shot. It
wasn't their shot, it was mine, and I decided what
to do with it. And if I don't succeed based
on your advice, that's my faults are created exactly, and
then that that it ruins your life. It's a pit
in your stomach, in the back of your brain. I
would much rather fail on my own accord and understand
(27:48):
come to terms with the fact that I'm not as
good as I thought I was. There's my reality checkmate, wrestling, accountability, legit,
It's it's all rolled into one. So if I'm able
to go out on my own terms and I and
I win that night, I don't go oh cool, I
I won forever. No, No, I have to win every night.
But I have a little more confidence, and the next
(28:09):
time I go out there, I have more confidence that
I'm gonna win again. And then every time I do that,
I feel like I'm gonna win again. I'm gonna win again.
So at that point I stopped caring about do I
need to have a gimmick and have a mask, and said, no,
screw this. I like me, My friends like me, and legit,
having that relationship with them, being on camera with them,
doing promos with them, matches with them gave me that
confidence that I don't have to put on a mask
(28:31):
or be a different character in order to make money
at this place, I can just be me as a
human person. I have interest in video games, in the
last n corn In Big in all these different things,
and it's like, if you don't rock with it, cool,
I'm already here, dude, And regardless if you like me,
you're not, I'm about to have a bang or bell
to bell, So like you, you can't be mad, you
can justlike you can just like the character Davior Woods,
(28:52):
but like Austin Creed has done nothing but worked his
ass off in order to try. And if you don't
like it, so cool, it's totally you don't have to
like what I do. You have to enjoy my art.
(29:12):
That's totally fine. I have I have this this this
feeling that comes over me when I'm when I'm performing,
that that is all that I need. The way that
it makes me feel, that's all that I need. So
if you love it, I love you for it. Thank you.
And if you can't stay in it, I love you
for it. I bless you. But it's it's just that
feeling being out there with those guys. It's it's incredible, dude,
(29:33):
It's funny. I wasn't as comfortable as you are until
I got in my thirties, which you are now. And
before that, like all the movies I was doing, it
was always I didn't believe in my ideas. I would
do whatever the director said, Oh that has to be
better than than what I did, and I was kind
of learning on the job. And it wasn't until I
(29:56):
got into my thirties where I was really felt comfortable
on camera. This is no lie. My dream career would
be the actor Ron Perlman's career. He was always in prosthetics,
his face was always covered. He was hell Boy in
the original Hellboy movies. He was the preacher in that
Weird Island of Dr Moreau movie. He he was. Yes,
(30:18):
he was Beast from Beauty and the Beast, the live
action show in the eighties. He was I know, if
that movie it's a good movie, trash on it. It's
that's a good movie. I've seen it a lot, man,
and I'm always trying to like, why do people hate it?
I really like that. You know who the Cheetah was, right,
Mark the costcos that Filipino action star or American Filipino actions.
(30:41):
Can we redo this? Can I'd be your little a
little buddy the doctor bro. That would be the greatest
movie ever. Um. Okay, So we agreed on that. But
that's a good segue because I want to finish on
nerding out. So you and I A few years ago, Uh,
(31:01):
there was an app called the d C app d
C Universe and you could watch shows like Teen Titans
I think they just called Titans um, and uh they
had Doom Patrol, which if you haven't seen, you should
actually watch that. I've seen a few episodes and it's
really funny. And I love Brednon Fraser so much. Um,
Sarah made a movie with him and I got to
(31:22):
hang out with him more than her, and I literally
was like, dude, I wish we were brothers when we left,
and he was like, so do I And he's just
this giant Canadian guy with a huge heart and I
love him. So anyway, you should watch that. Um. But anyway,
we made a show there that was a table top
role playing game, which, for those of you who don't know,
it's like Dungeons and Dragons, only they've made Dungeons and
(31:42):
Dragons and all kinds of world. Some of them are
in space, somewhere in the future, somewhere in the wild West,
summer D and D and uh. We made one that
was in the superhero world and uh, I have been
and I don't even know if this is going to
come to fruition, but I'm just so excited I want
to talk about it. I've been trying to get a
meeting with the people at HBO Max who absorbed the
(32:04):
DC app and uh show them what we did there
and try to get going. And they watched it and
they reached out and they set up a meeting and
they want to talk about maybe doing more of DC.
All Stars so much fun. For those of you who
don't know, God, it literally is an eighties game, and
(32:24):
so are our Dungeon Master or game master was his
dude named Sam Wit where Everybody Loves and and Uh.
He wrote this basically the Breakfast Club for Superheroes movie,
only with dice rolls, So it's a very linear story
were the characters. There's an element of improv to it,
but he knows where his story is going to go
(32:45):
and can control it. So if if you want to
see the pilot, it's out there. They put the first
one for free on YouTube, and you had to pay
for all the other ones. Um, but you can just
kind of see what it is. So I'm going in
there and I'm going to pitch him a few different
versions of it. I want to pitch him a villain's version,
but I want to see if they'll be down to
continue our story because I felt like we had a
(33:06):
lot more to do. You and I have my favorite
interaction ever in a tabletop role playing game. Our characters
had these secret goals. Do you remember this? And my
character was a nerd. I was I was the dork
from Breakfast Club and had no friends and was like
good with computers and everyone was crapping on me and
(33:27):
like making fun of me, and uh. By the end
of the game, we've revealed our real our true identities.
I was super dude and you were bad guy. And
we're up on this like pedestal of this torn down
chapel and we're looking in and we see the bad
guys in there. And I had this special skill that
(33:50):
if I could make one friend in this game, I
would be immune to this one particular character's attacks. And
we don't know each other's goals, and so this is
like when you're saying you can finish these other sentences
and things like that. So we're both sitting up there
and I look at you and I go we're about
(34:10):
to go into battle. And I saw it and I go, hey, hey, man,
are you my friend? And what did you say? Yes?
I am, And I literally threw my paper in the
air and I was like, I'm jumping in and I'm
taking out next luker. And you said if I make
a friend he has attack doesn't work, so screw you.
And Sam just throws his pencil in there and he's like,
(34:33):
oh my god, what did I do? Why did I
give him the secret? And I had so much fun
playing these By now you guys are figuring out that
I'm a big dork. You put me on to a
d M who's a dungeon master that I want to
give love to, and they told me, since my podcast,
I'm allowed to do this. His name is kg Tang
(34:55):
and he had an online professional wrestling D and D
called d N d W, which you did, and you
were like this what it was like a luchador? I
was a lad? Uh did you hit him with Spanish?
On the Oh my god, you guys are seeing the
(35:15):
nerdy stuff. So Woods calls me from the game. I
think it just from the game we just played. I
was like, oh my god, Freddy would love this. So
this guy literally he facetimes and he's like, dude, you
gotta come do this Dungeons and Dragons wrestling game. Are
you down? And I was in my truck eating a sandwich.
It was like yeah, man, sure, But I told him,
(35:35):
I said, I gotta call Freddie Friston like wait what, yeah,
Freddy with love? What Like? When I showed them that,
it's you're like, oh my god, he's gonna come into
the game. Dude. They were so good to me. Here's
how this was the impression you left. This is how
good they were to me. So I call this guy.
He's this awesome dude who does voices. He's a voice
actor and he does wrestling voices as well, and so
(35:57):
his like announcer for the wrestling league is I think
like an orc or troll version of j R. And
so the voice is like, oh my god. So he's
already locked in on that, and uh he writes every
story for every single session, and I mean puts in
work on it. And he says, hey, it's a monster's only.
(36:19):
It's monster It's a monsters only had this rule. I
don't it's I don't know why. That makes me laugh,
but he goes, it's a monster's only wrestling league. What's
your favorite monster? And so now my whole memory is
white because I'm like, I'm thinking, like, you know, elves
and dwarves and all this stuff, and I go the
first one that pops in my head, I go an
awl Beart And so for those of you don't know,
(36:42):
it's very self explanatory. It's a giant bear with an
owl head and a lot of feathers instead of fur,
and it's pretty darn tough. So I I hit this
guy at KG back and this is going somewhere, I promise,
And I say, hey, man, can I be an Albart?
And he goes, oh my god, I love you, Please
be an Albert. He said, okay, so I come in.
(37:02):
He has me roll for some statistics, so you're rolling
for things like strength intelligence. That was a rough one
for me, and then a bit of a backstory and
some of the stats that won't bore you. And my
backstory was I got cursed from eating this wizard, and
the curse was I could I was now fluent in
every language, um, but could no longer speak or understand
(37:23):
my own. So I just hate everybody. I was just
grumpy and pissed off, so weird. Well, you know, it's wrestling,
So I'm gonna be an Indie League champion coming in
with these other professional dn D players and the one
(37:43):
her name is Christina v Christina Valence. Well, I love her.
She voices ladybug girl. If any of you have kids,
your kids love her too. Um. And she's the nicest
out of all of them. She's like, oh my gosh,
how brought you a present? Dada, Dada. She's a killer, Okay.
She attacked me right away in the story where she
came to give me a hug, made an agility roll
and the success of that was she slipped something in
(38:05):
my sock that was gonna like affect me later, right,
So I was like, oh my god, you're a horrible
human being. I love you. Will you please play it
all my RPG, which she does now She's even played
Mafia with Seth and Claire and all of us. And
she's a gangster that too. Um shout out to the
dnd W crew, by the way. So I'm loving all
these people and I can't roll bad like no matter what,
(38:26):
and I always rolled back. I'm like the King of
the Four. Okay, So it's just seventeen eighteen twenty. I
think I rolled three natural twenties. Uh in the match
like that we were in against this like giant night
and I killed his kill him, I take him out
and I got the belt and I even did like
a voice. And the point of this was I modeled
(38:47):
him after the Big Show and literally so I made
him British so he sounded like this, but he was
incredibly grumpy and I even cut a promo. I was like,
I have to listen to your stupid languages and here
you're doing. To do this whole I had to do
it on the fly, but it was and I've never
done that before. It was incredible. And off of that
(39:09):
was when you asked me to uh, sacrifice my life
for a month and write you guys a tabletop RPG,
which I love doing. Man, I had a plast doing that.
Now I can't stop. There's literally another one right in.
Um so we're dorks. Yeah, it's a little bit, and
a lot of you probably are too, so in your face,
(39:32):
in your face, I haven't heard in your face. It
was big when I was in the eighties. Man, I
have my Z Cavarici's bringing it back like a Jimmy
Z shirt. In your face? So okay, so funny thing.
So just for a second to go back to wrestling. So,
like you just said, this is what's funny. So I'm
gonna say that if I have a problem one Monday,
because it's funny to me, and I'll tell Coffee and
(39:52):
Ei this story and I'll go, oh, this is funny
that we're going. Yeah, and your face was no I
said in a long time. And we'll say it and
we'll giggle and someone we'll go, what why are they
say in your face to ridicule me? Yeah, that's perfect,
but that again like just having fun coming and doing this,
like we're just having fun. I feel like this is
what people enjoy it. You guys have created something that
(40:12):
I love watching, that makes my kids laugh, that makes
me an old head laugh um. And I love what
you guys have done for the business. I really feel.
I don't like saying people have changed the business, because
everything changes the business constantly, but you guys have really
helped the business evolve and find its way back to
the future of w w E fans and their their
(40:34):
logo is is you know what, then, now forever, And
it's that kind of evolution that makes forever a possibility.
And I think wrestling, as crazy as it is right now,
I think it's in a really good place and I
think it's due for really big things in the next
couple of years. And I like all the competition going
around right now. And I like the vibe that your
(40:55):
generation is laying down, which is like, yeah, I'm gonna elevate,
but I'm gonna pull all of you up with me,
And it may not be as fast as climbing over
your head, but I sleep better at night. And I
love that your generation is down to do this, and
I see it not just from you, but from other
cats you've inspired, and it's just a different way of thinking.
And I love all you guys for it, but the
(41:16):
most I just I think that seeing and hearing all
of the stories from the guys and girls in the
previous men and women, excuse me of the previous generation,
and being able to learn from them and sit down
so like, I wouldn't be in w w E if
it wasn't for conversations with Devon Dudley. Yes, I got
(41:37):
to meet him. He was so cool, like legit. So
when I got released from t n A, I was
again I was in that zone of man, I bet
on myself and I lost. Maybe I shouldn't be a wrestler,
not realizing that in that point of life. So I'm
still still in college and I in my head, I
was like, I can just do my school work and
try to be a good wrestler, not understanding that this
(41:59):
is a job and jobs have politics and you need
to be friends with people and you need to like
make sure that people see you, and you need to
be knocking on doors to let people know that you
want opportunities things like that. But I just didn't understand
at the time, you know, so uh talking to Divon
he he he gave me the game, you know, he
explained all that stuff to me. He's like, this is
how you are, and this is probably why this happens.
(42:20):
Like no one knows for sure, like how things would
have worked had you did things differently. So much experience
in a game that he can make educated guess exactly,
and so knowing things like that and hearing things from
him saying because then me telling him, maybe I'm not
cut out for this, He said, no, you haven't. You
haven't exhausted all your options. Continue grind and continue hustling.
If this is something that you want and you and
you at one point thought you should be here like,
(42:42):
then then continue to work, continue to grind and can
continue to get better, and you will create more opportunities
because people say, like you find opportunities or they find
you like, No, you create, create and create. The luck
is the intersection of skill and opportunity, Like you have
to be ready and then you have to make things happen.
My godfather said, it's it's luck is being prepared when
the opportunity comes your way. Yes, and if you're not
(43:04):
then you're of course you're going to fail. And so
like by him sitting on the phone with me while
I'm like I'm like crying to him about dude, I
love the ure, like I'm I'm weeping, and he's on
the phone with me for like two hours, just like
comforting me, making me feel better and then pumping me
up about things. By the end of the conversation, I
immediately got on the phone and like started getting booked again,
(43:25):
Like he did Devon Deadly change my life. Dude, I
love that guy. I love him even more now when Man,
when I did Punky Blissen and Flair came out and
we're nice enough to come and do like a bit
with the new Punky girl, and he was the agent
that they said now and so while they were working,
I was just like talking to him and just nerding out.
I was like, oh, dude, I used to watch how
(43:46):
many tables do you think you went through? Just totally
and he was really cool and nice to me. Man,
but he just looks so tough and just I love Yeah,
I got a soft spot for all y'all's he's he's
the best guy you know, and so like without that conversation.
I wouldn't be and at this table with you you
like we would have been talking like I wouldn't be
in there with Kofini like I would the None of
this happens without Devon taking the time to care about me,
(44:08):
you know. And so for me, that is how I've
tried to make sure I'm trying to leave things better
than they were when I got here, because it's not
wrestling like doing things, it's fun and having goals. Once
you achieve those goals, I feel like you didn't have
the responsibility to make it better for the next person. Yes,
there's still things that I want to do and still
things that I want to achieve as because as you
(44:31):
as you get to your goal, your you move the
goal post back some because you want to find something new.
I've hit, I've hit what I wanted since I was
a kid. So while I'm still trying to achieve things
that I want, I also have to put equal energy
into building a better path for the for the sixteen
year olds that want to start wrestling next year. And
it's a harder road to walk, but it's a it's
an unbelievably possible road to walk down. It's just a
(44:54):
little bit harder and people it's very difficult to say,
don't just look out for you, But you don't have
to just look out for you. Once you get to
a certain point confidence wise, you really can bring others
with you. And how more artists start doing that. It's
just it's wrestlers leading the way. What do you know
about that? Well do you know about that? It's one
of those things where you know, you hear people like
(45:15):
somebody got bullied and this is just like in life,
like so somebody got bullied before they got into a
good position in life, and then so like they're bullying
people to like, you know, because that's how they were
brought up. Like you know, like if you got bullied
and then you became you know that that top person,
wouldn't You want to just make sure that people don't
go through like the bs you went through. You want
to make it better. Put him in karate school, don't
(45:35):
bully him. Yeah, give him with scholarship. So talking about
Devon and just like other veterans who have like, since
you're giving us the game, like we know that there's
certain things that we can do to make sure that
we're better off, you know, like we get to stand
on their shoulders, and that's why he's doing that and
sharing those two hours with you because you knew you'd
be receptive to that. He's not gonna waste his time otherwise. No, no,
(45:56):
but it's like we gotta leave it better for the
next people, and they gotta leave it better for the
one after them. So like it's it's cool to see
everything change and to be a part of such an
interesting evolution of wrestling. I feel like the past ten
years wrestling is like very different just from when I
was there. It's there's nothing that women had a five
(46:16):
minute match when I worked there, and two minutes was
their entrances. They get too commercial breaks now, like it's
in the third hour a raw, Like it's wrestling is
night and day, night and day, and I love it.
It's just it's just better. We have so many, so
many talented people, and there's so many talent people not
just in w W but in the world at that
(46:36):
are good at this and like, if you don't like
this one, then watch that one, and you don't have
to baden off this one to say that you like
this one. Like there's so much space for everybody. Everything
but you're the reason I know about wrestling pro wrestling.
It's one of my favorite things to do is watch that.
You know it is, We're gonna talk. I'm gonna talk
about it. I'm gonna go deep on another episode. I
even want to bring on Yeah, I want to have
(46:58):
Kendrick here for it, because it's literally like if the
kids in the Hall from HBO and Mr Show and
Vince McMahon somehow made a baby and that baby wanted
to be a wrestler. Oh, can I say yea side question?
Can you follow me on the Socials of course, Austin
Creed wins and check me out on G four t
V Bay Bay. Yeah, we're not We're not. We're not
(47:20):
ending this just yet G four TV. So I'm not
even gonna lie. When I found out they were casting
for it, I legit talked to Sarah and I was like, yo, there,
that was like a cool show man, and She's like,
you're so old, They're never I was like, yeah, no,
I was just talking out lab and then I see
you tweet like yo, that would be like a sick job.
And then it kind of it got this movement. That's
(47:42):
the power of your positivity. It got this digital movement
behind it, and all of a sudden you're like, yo, man,
I'm wanna be a host on G four. That's like
a dream job. And I read the text, I was like,
oh my god, that's amazing. It's like so unreal, because
it's like, that's that's what like all the hustle has
been for, especially like in gaming stuff, because like again,
(48:02):
learning from guys like Devon and learning from veterans like
that who are kind enough to have these conversations, like
that transitional period from stopping wrestling and starting something else
is weird. But then you can in any profession, as
you're getting older and maybe like phasing out of something
doing something and you've got to start chapter three or four,
whatever you wanna call it, is like what what do
I do? And Yeah, So in my head, it's like,
(48:23):
how can I make that transition as easy as possible
without feeling that anxiety like nearing the end of my
career whenever that may be, And it's like just be
in the space and so getting getting the green light
from G four, like I don't know, that's for me,
that's the biggest jump that I have have made in
my head because that to me is like, all right,
(48:44):
we accept you in the gaming experience like for real
net because that there's always in my in the back
of my head, I'm I'm if you haven't realized, ladies
and gentlemen, I'm a very anxious person. And so whenever
I do gaming stuff, even though I've been in the
space for like six years now, and there's that, oh,
who's this random wrestler guy on my TV? Like, and
I did e a play? I know there's hell of
people that have watched that that have no clue who
(49:04):
Xavier Woods is and don't care you know, um, and
they go, oh, they just hear ww like, oh it's
a random wrestl he doesn't know anything about video games.
But then my my job in my head is like
I have to be so much more cautious, not cautious,
but conscious um of of getting myself to a position
where they go oh um. And so being able to
do that to the point of becoming a G four
(49:25):
host tells me my transition should be should be okay,
And that's what's suddenly love you know, Yeah, it's power
positivity people, And we'll speak to you guys next time.
This has been a production of I heart Radio's Michael
Tura podcast network. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
(49:45):
you listen to your favorite chills
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