December 15, 2021 • 35 mins
This week’s episode picks up where we left off last week in promo class. I talk about a heartwarming story involving Fred Rosser, formerly Darren Young in WWE/NXT, and I take you on a wild ride in the middle of an ice storm.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
What's up you guys. It is Freddie Brinds Jr. And
we're back with another episode of Wrestling with Freddie. Last
week we got pretty deep into the promo classes and
some of the cool exercises and the successes and failures
of them. So if you haven't heard that, please go
back because this is a continuation episode. But this episode
we'll touch a little bit more on what I thought
(00:27):
is like the most heartwarming moment I ever had in
w W. Either weren't many, um, but this time we're
going into the ice storm. I have built this story up,
so without further ado, the Ice Storm on Wrestling with Freddie.
Now stuffing up to the mic. The host of Wrestling
with Freddie, Freddie Prince Junya. All right, you guys, I'm
(00:52):
on the highway with a makeup artist from uh Friday
Night SmackDown back then, even though we shot it on Tuesdays,
and we're driving I think from Memphis to Atlanta, and
if that's about a four hour drive then I'm right.
If not, it was another town. So we're on the
freeway and we're cruising down and it's late at night,
probably probably about ten thirty eleven o'clock. At night. We're
(01:15):
on the highway. It's winter and there's snow on both
sides of the road, and there are no cars anywhere
because we left much later than everyone else. Usually you
would like pass other wrestlers, or wrestlers would pass you.
This was before I was on the jet. So so
we're cruising down. That's getting late. We haven't seen anybody,
and she's getting sleepy. Right, So I'm cruising, but we
(01:36):
have a map that remember there's no map quest, there
was no app on a phone that told you I
have We would print out maps at the end of
the show, and that's how the rookies like me would
get from town to town before I was, thank god,
on the black and Red jet. So we're cruising, I
have my map. She's getting sleepy and uh. As we're
driving down the road, it's been about twenty minutes, maybe
(01:58):
thirty minutes. Like I said, there's snow everywhere. I see
some smoke down the highway. I'm like, what the hell
is that? Man? So I'm driving cruising down this curve
and now I see this like fire and smoke and
in the middle of the snow, and so I slow
the car down and I'm almost pulled over at this point,
(02:19):
and the loss of speed wakes up the makeup artist
and I go, what the hell is that? And it's
this gigantic tree that's fallen over. The roots are uprooted,
and it's on fire, straight, just burning in the middle
of nowhere. There's nobody around it. There's no cars, there's
no tire tracks anywhere. It's just a tree that's it
(02:41):
looks like it's been struck by lightning. There's no lightning,
at least not to my knowledge, during a snowstorm in
the South. Maybe maybe I'm wrong. Um hit me up
on social So I'm slowing down and now I pulled
the car all the way over and I go, what
the hell is that? And she goes, I don't know.
And I go, I'm gonna go check it out. She goes,
the hell you are? She because it's freezing outside. We're
(03:02):
going to Atlanta. I go, no, I just want to
see what it is. She No, you're not going over there.
Get back in the car. I've opened the door. Get
back in the car. We're gone. I go, okay, okay, okay,
I go with that's some crazy ship. She goes, yeah,
it's crazy ship. Let's go. It's freaky, okay, So I
closed the door. We're driving, she passes out. Nothing else
spooky or no Poulter Guy's nothing like that. But the
(03:23):
road starts getting kind of sketchy, and uh, I have
the radio on and I'm scanning the A M channels
because I mean when I mean sketchy, like there's ice
now on the roads and we're getting we're in Georgia,
we're getting just outside Atlanta. And on the radio, I
hear the mayor of Atlanta, and you could check this out,
you can figure out what year it is, has just
declared a state of emergency and he's basically closed the
(03:47):
city because of an ice storm. The roads are unsafe
to drive on, and everybody is like, not quarantine, but
it's a curfew, like stay home. You go on the roads,
you're gonna die. So we're close to the airport. Our
hotel is at the airport, and uh, I cruise up
there and I mean we're sliding everywhere like I'm on
(04:08):
ice skates. Okay, We're not in a four world drive automobile.
I mean like a like a little four door rental sedan.
It wasn't built for the snow. So we're at the
airport because we know the hotel's close to there, and
I see one of those like rental car transport vans
and it's running and there's this black dude inside, and
(04:30):
so I go up to him and I go, hey, man,
I'm trying to get to my hotel. Can you help
me out? And he says, well, what's the name of it?
And I don't remember what it was. It was it's
the Ice Storm Hotel. Will color you know, the Ice
Storm Hotel. And he goes, oh, it's down that way.
You're just gonna make a right and just keep going
straight and you'll see it. You'll see the big sign.
(04:51):
It's down a big driveway. I go, okay, So I
drive down there and we get to the driveway and yeah,
the driveway goes down, but it's deep and it goes
straight into the hotel lobby. If I take this car
down this hill, I'm not stopping. It's gonna go through
the front of the building. So I drive back to
(05:13):
the airport guy and I say, hey, man, is there
is there another hotel around here? Because we couldn't find
any other ones um or can I stay in the
can I stay in the airport. I can't get down there.
And he's just Jamaican dude, and he's like, you stay,
oh dear, you're gonna die. Mind, you better find a
way to that hotel. It's like, all right, the airport's closed.
They're not gonna let me in. So I drive back
(05:35):
and now we're parked at the top of this hotel's
driveway and the and the makeup artist is looking at me,
and I'm looking at her, and she goes, how the
hell are we gonna get down there? She goes, I
can't walk down it. It's all it's all ice. I go, yeah,
I don't. I don't know, but I'm not gonna have
like a headline in the paper tomorrow by Freddie Prinz Jr.
Found with a makeup artist frozen dead in a car.
(05:57):
I was like, the stories they would ride would share
my family for the next generation. I said, we're getting
down this damn hill. So I'm looking around. I don't
see any way down outside of you know, horrible accident,
I get sued or dead or or someone else dies. Right,
So finally, because I'm an idiot, all right, And I'll
(06:18):
preface this by saying I've done a lot of dumb
stuff as a kid, and slid down a lot of
hills I shouldn't have slid down. So I go to
the trunk. I'll freezing to death, y'all. I'm a California kid.
My blood is thin. I surf if the waters, you know,
below seventy I'm wearing a wetsuit. It's how cold as hell.
I'm not dressed properly. I grabbed my suitcase. I said
(06:40):
it at the top of the thing. And now I'm
just staring down the hill at this hotel, at the
Ice Storm Hotel, and she comes up to me. She
gets out of the car. She goes, what are you doing?
And I don't even look at her. I say, I'm
gonna slide down this hill on my suitcase. She goes, what.
I go almost slide down my hill and I'm gonna
slide down the cell on my suitcase, and so are you.
She goes, I'm not doing that. I said, you're gonna
(07:02):
get your ass on your suitcase and you're sliding down
this hill with me. I'm not gonna leave you in
a car to die. This is the only way down.
I'm sure it wasn't, but I'm not a genius, so
this was the best way I could think of. I said, so,
I'm going down with you, and you're not gonna get hurt.
Don't worry. I'm certain of it in my head. I'm
certain of it. Sara, Are you ready? She goes now,
(07:25):
I go, well, we're going. I said, I'm not going first,
We're going together. She's she doesn't want to. She gets
her suitcase. What are the I mean you, we have
an option. Get down this hill. That's the option. So
she gets her suitcase. Every word that I'm telling you
in this story is actual. Well I'm about to go
t l C. It's actual and factual. Every sorry, every
(07:49):
word I'm telling you it's a true and every word
i'm telling you you will not believe. And I'm okay
with that. So I get on my suitcase. I lay
it down and I'm sitting on it the way you
would have sled, and my feet are on the snow
so that I can have my heels to dig in
to slow me down. I tell her to do the
same thing. She sits on the suitcase. I think I
(08:12):
have like a to me, right, it's like black traveled
to me. That was big enough to get all your crap,
but small enough to get in an overhead bind. One
of those. And she has like a hard case one
because she's got like makeup and crap. Right, So she
sits on her suitcase. I sit on mine. I said,
are you ready? She goes, oh, god, I guess so.
So we kind of do the scooch like our feet
(08:34):
are in the snow like a one and it's too
and three and my feet are in the snow instantly.
The moment that it gets steep, there's no more snow
for my feet to dig into. It is hard ice.
It is a good inch thick, and they're probably not
an inch thick, but you get the point. Like it is,
(08:55):
there's no attraction. So I hit terminal velocity within about
two and a half seconds, and I'm I mean, I'm flying.
I looked to my right because it's it's too fast
(09:17):
for me. I looked to my right, and she's bailing out.
It's too fast, okay, So she bails out to her
left towards me right. But now she has nothing. Now
it's just her body. So she's just gonna keep on sliding.
But it's not with any sort of control. So she's
going upside down, she's going horizontal, she's going to the left.
She's on her left hip, she's on her belly, she's
(09:39):
sliding everywhere. It looks like breaking two electric boogaloo, like
a deleted scene, right. She breakdancing all the way down
the sizes and I'm flying, okay, So I get down first.
She kind of curved off to the side into the
snow drift by the curb, but she's okay. She gets up,
she's solid, makeup, good to go, case not destroyed. I
(10:00):
slide all the way down to basically where the valet
is and onto the brick entry way of this hotel,
about four ft away from the double sliding doors. The
entire staff of the hotel that was in that area
had been watching us since we were on top of
the hill, wondering how we were gonna get down. And
(10:22):
they're literally cheering for me because I literally just did
my evil kinevil shit. I just went like a hundred
twenty seven miles per hour done this driveway, and they're cheering,
and I get up and I'm laughing, and she's laughing.
Everybody's still in a good mood. And the guy literally
tells me. He goes, dude, we didn't know how you
ever going to get down, that was so sick. So
(10:42):
we go to check in. They don't have her room.
So she gets my bed and I crashed out on
the couch and then we wake up and the ice
they've now salted and done all this stuff. And the
next day we got on the plane and uh we
flew back to wife flew to New York City, and
she flew to wherever, to wherever she lived. But that
(11:03):
is the ice storm, and that's the fastest that I've
ever gone and something that wasn't a vehicle or a jet. Oh,
by the way, I flew in the jet. This isn't
wrestling related, but the like the dead commander at Nellis
Air Force Base in Las Vegas was Borto Rican dude,
and he loved my dad and my buddy who lives
out there. Ran a construction company and gave him some
(11:23):
equipment to help him do his house and uh, his
off his off base house and uh there in Las Vegas,
I think it was Henderson, Nevada. And so he was
like he saw a picture of me and Brian, my
buddy Brian, and he goes oh, you know Freddie Prince Jr.
Man I loved his dad. And he goes, oh, yeah,
he's a good friend of mine. And he goes tell
him if he ever wants to fly in the jet. Uh,
it's on me. He goes, no cameras, nothing. I was like,
(11:45):
and so my buddy Brian calls me, and I was like,
what do you mean like a jet jet? He goes, yeah,
I go to Oh, dude, I'm in. I drove from
l A to Las Vegas at night at like eleven
thirty at night, drove as fast as I could, and uh,
we have the date. I get there and I think
I'm just gonna fly on the jet. No, it's like
an eight hour class on how to breathe because you're
(12:06):
gonna be pulling so many cheese. And I'm in my twenties.
I'm cocky. I'm like, whatever, man, I'm half listening, right.
So they put me in the two seater and forgive me,
this is over twenty years ago. I don't remember. I
think it wasn't F sixteen. I don't know what the
two seater was. It might have even been like a
F one oh something. I don't know. But we get
(12:26):
in I've done my like my test, and they make
you do this like it's like I don't want to
breathe in the mic because it'll sound weird, but it's
like labor breathing. Okay, So I get in the jet,
we take off, just the take off my borderline tap out. Okay,
this dude, I tap out twice. And this isn't even
from tricks. Just turns were literally like, he goes, if
(12:49):
it feels good, you're not breathing. I said, what do
you mean? He goes if it starts to feel good,
if you feel high, you're not breathing, right, I said, okay,
And that basically is in jiu jitsu, like they say
tap when you when it feels good, that means you're
about to go to sleep. Twice I had to tap
because I forgot to breathe, and the breathing is the
hardest part. At one point in the air, I said,
(13:09):
how long would it take us to get to l A.
He said about fifteen minutes, and I literally was just like,
oh my god. So anyway, I like going fast, we
fly back, I go back and uh, and now I'm
back ready to go to work. Talking events about the promo,
class who I like, who I don't. And the storyline
going on at the time was the Nexus, and this
(13:32):
was Wade Barrett and uh and Michael's something I can't remember,
but it was a big group that came up to
like take on kind of like how the Shield took on,
like the Current Stars. This was they were taking on
that here's current Stars. So they were going after Randy,
who was a heel, and John who was a baby face,
and John sold big for like horror movie cells, right,
(13:54):
because they were really trying to get this group over.
They thought they had a couple of solid bangers in there. Right.
So I'm doing my promo class and I have a
lot of these guys and and uh and girls in
there now, and we're getting to use like really big rooms,
like sometimes even the cafeteria because we have so many
people in there. And I got these Nexus cats, right,
(14:14):
And there was this one dude named Fred and y'all
if you watch then then he wrestled under the name
Darren Young. His real name is Fred Rosser and uh
he's now out of out of the closet, and and
everyone knows that that Fred is a gay wrestler. And
I think was the first one to come out while
under the employee of w w E, but certainly not
(14:37):
the first gay wrestler in the w w E. If
you know about Pat Patterson, everyone in the company knew
Pat was. He was very open about it um and
everyone embraced him. So at this point in time, though
Fred was not out, he was a young wrestler. He
was coming up and uh so now I think he's
a new japan wrestling now. So if you're a big
wrestling fan, he's built from stone, looks gray eight solid us, right,
(15:00):
and we just call him black John Cena because he
looked just like John Cena. But if John was black,
even his face, it was crazy. You put him side
by side and it looked like the exact same dude.
I think John even cut a promo on it, uh,
in like an actual storyline where he's like, maybe we
did have the same father, but I hate you anyway.
I'm fighting for justice, so uh start doing the promo
classes and it's a lot of you, you going against
(15:26):
me because Vince likes that, right, So it's we're going
to have a fight, and you're gonna give me a
reason to watch like that. If you remember the dog story.
You're a dog, and you're a dog. Now make me
want to watch you fight. So a more productive way
to accomplish that is to give them a reason to fight,
like I did with Kia Stevens and with Beth Phoenix. Um.
(15:48):
If you remember from last week's episode, so William Regal
also known as Stephen Regal, is and was one of
the single most helpful human beings while I worked at
that company. He would warn me about people. He would
(16:10):
help show me what wrestlers strengths were and to write
my promos to fit the type of wrestler they were,
because I was not doing that. Um, you don't want
to write a luchad or like a big man. You
don't want to write a big man like a high flyer.
There's a different attitude. When you're seven ft tall. You
(16:31):
don't have to say as much. Your seven ft tall
I kind of equated to Darth Vader. You don't have
to give Darth Vader a lot of a lot of dialogue.
And you notice he only moves when he has to.
There's no wasted movement with Darth Vader, which was the
same crap I would hear in the production, not crap
this is good crap um. The same stuff I would
(16:52):
hear in the production meetings when they would talk about,
you know, tell these guys, the big guys, to slow down.
Less is more And there's something I know a lot
of people disagree with that, but I tend to agree
with it. It's more. It's what made Frankenstein so scary,
right is It's why Pepper lepu we were amazed with him, like,
how could someone as slow always catch always catch him? Right?
(17:14):
So it may be dated, but with the big guys,
they don't want them, you know, flying around everywhere. Vince
doesn't want his guys and his girls getting hurt, which
is why that w W E style is less exciting
because he feels it prevents injuries. So Stephen has been
getting me hip to it. And he asks me if
he can come in and uh and cut a promo
(17:38):
and I'm like, yeah, man, you want me to pick something?
He goes, oh no, no, no, I have something. I said,
all right, dude. So he comes in and I it
was either the Saint Crispin's Day from Henry the Five,
which is no joke, or it was from Hamlet, and
I feel like it was from Hamlet. Otherwise. I don't
know why I remember this line, but I feel like
(18:00):
I remember Stephen saying the world is nothing more to
me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors, and
that I know for sure is from Hamlet, so I
think it was Hamlet. So he cuts this, and then
he's trying to explain why he chose this to all
these young wrestlers, and he said he was talking about
the iambic pentameter, which is sort of the rhythm and
(18:22):
cadence required by by Shakespeare. He's trying to explain that
you can tell a story whether you speak English or not.
There are a couple of Japanese wrestlers in the room
at the time. You can communist cad to story whether
you speak Spanish better than English, the same way he communed,
(18:42):
those communicated those feelings from that monologue to everyone in there,
and everyone knew exactly what he was saying. When you
say someone, this world has nothing more to me but
a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors, I'm communicating a
message to you with a whole bunch of words that
neither one of us will ever use again in our
entire life. But you know exactly what I'm talking about.
You go, whoa, Freddie's a little depressed, ok you do?
(19:05):
And that message has been communicated beautifully, right, So I
think Funaki was in there. And by the way, I
got a great Funaki story. Kung should we do a
Japanese side quest? Should we do a side quest? All right,
we're doing a side quest? Okay. So it's a SmackDown.
It's over and Shane Hurricane Helms and some of the
(19:25):
writers and my buddy Angelo the writer, We're all having
like a beer at the hotel, and you know, after
a couple in, Shane goes, man, I wish we could
get I wish we'd get Funaki over again, and Angela
was like, yeah, well, let's let's think of something. He goes, oh,
then they wouldn't buy anything we do. And he goes
to we could think of something. And this is all
credit to Shane. Okay, I think he even wrote the
(19:46):
song that our truth saying to him later on, but
he goes, what about what if it was kung fu
KNOCKI and all the writers are drunk and they're like,
wait what He goes, yeah, like kung fu? He we
could sing the song Everybody loves Kong Fu Knack that
dude can't drink some sacking and he had like this
(20:08):
whole freestyle jam that they all fell in love with.
And I was in the writer's room one day and
they're pitching this and I'm like, yo, wait what And
Shane comes in and they go, Shane, what about Kung Funaki?
And Shane just looks at the board and he sees
how we booked and he goes, that's pretty fucking funny,
and he just walked out of the room. And that's
when we gave Funaki the Daniel Son Crane kick, and
(20:30):
m VP sold it better than Johnny Lawrence did in
that movie Are You Kinda May Come Home Baby? Sound
for the Wind? So anyway, that's the Japanese side quest.
So um, we're back in promo class and Sir William
Regal is in there. Gotta call him sir, even if
he's not a real knight, he should be Darren. Young
Fred gets up and he wants to He wants to
(20:51):
do a promo scenario then cutting on each other, and
so Regal says, I'll stop my friend, and he says,
this is I'll never get this man. He says, you
don't belong here and you're going to quit, And Rosser
comes back and he goes, don't and he does repetition.
(21:12):
He goes, I don't belong here. Do you think I'm
gonna quit? And Rigo just looks back at him and
he goes, I've seen it a million times before, my friend,
you're going to quit and you know you don't belong
And Fred gets this like emotion and cuts like the
promo of It's a shame I didn't film any of these.
(21:34):
He cuts like the promo of the Universe. And he's
straight up his fist ball up and you can hear
his knuckles crack. And we've already established there's no there's
no punching, right, and Fred didn't come off the type
to do it. And there's his eyes start to well
up and I'm sitting there watching and regals so cool man.
(21:56):
He's like a gun slinger in the wild West. He's
gonna let you draw first and still be fastinough like
he didn't even blink. But this is the guy that
smashed on Goldberg to let people know like what time
it was back in the day, right, Like he does
not care but he was a good giving man at
this point in his career. He probably was his whole career,
but in this moment especially, and Darren Young just screams
(22:22):
and tears come down his face. At the same time,
it's like the like Denzel Washington does the perfect tear
right like He'll hold it for a whole scene and
then drop it out right at the end, and everyone's like, oh,
like that's the next level technique. This was just wrong.
Came out and he screams, I do, my lord, and
then there's like a ninety second promo of the sacrifice,
(22:44):
the fear that this that that, And while he's saying this,
I shit you not. I literally was like, Yo, Fred's gay.
You could just I mean, I'd work in Hollywood, man.
(23:06):
I know a lot of people to this day that
aren't comfortable with who they are based on the reaction
that that society is gonna have. Right. So, and I'm
not trying to say this to like, oh, look, how
smart I knew, Like I was like, oh my gosh,
Fred Fred's gay. And I didn't say anything. I never did,
and he's out now, so it's not a secret. And
I don't think anyone else knew except maybe William who
(23:29):
kind of had this like glint in his eye, and
as as Darren Young. Although this was all Fred Rosser
finished his promo. You know how like British people, like
when you do something sick in America, we'd give you
that head nod right, like people do memes of it,
like Robert Redford as Grizzly Adams or whatever. They're like
(23:50):
nod in his head. Well, British people do this smile
and it's like a half only half their face works,
and it's this rye sort of half smile. And Rigo
just gives in this that smile already hits him with
it and he goes and uh. And Roster finishes his
promo with I'll Never Quit, and Rico just looks at him.
He says, my mistake, lab, maybe you do belong And
(24:14):
everybody was, I mean balling man balling and Fred was
to and Regal gives him this big hug man and
you can see like Rosster squeeze him hard like that
there was hurt and pain in there. And right after
that we wrote this promo for him. And you'll forgive
me if I don't remember what show it was for
it I believe it was an x T, like he
got moved down to an x T when it was
(24:36):
like rookies and someone maybe or maybe it was right
before that, and uh, and he gave him this promo
where he didn't feel like he should even be there.
And I said, do you remember when you screamed I
do belong? He said yeah. I said, I wanted it
wasn't my promo, someone else's, but he was struggling with it.
I said, I want you to feel that when you
say I wrestled John Cena and he goes, yeah, okay, okay.
(25:00):
And so he did it, and he hit it about
like eight percent of where I'd hoped it got, but
he still got the point across. And he's like, but
it was more of an arrogant take because it needed
to be. He's like, all, I wrestle John Seen and
he got kind of a little choked up on it,
and uh, he was able to kind of bring which
was a real honest moment to TV. Now. I could
(25:21):
relate to this because early in my acting class, my
acting coach gave me this scene. He used to let
me pick right, but I would always pick really easy stuff,
and he really challenged me, and I don't remember the
name of this play, and I don't want to remember
the name of the play. So even if I say
words from it that you remember, do not hit me
(25:42):
up at at real F p j R. On Twitter,
and do not hit me up on Instagram because I
have deleted this ship from my mind because it broke
me in pieces. So my butt hole act I love,
I love my acting coach, but this was just Oh
he was right. I was wrong, but man, I hated
him for this. So he gives me this scene and
(26:04):
my characters crying right away, And that was my biggest
fear was I don't I don't know if I can
do that. I don't know if I can cry. I
don't know if I can open up like that. Earlier
in my career, I manufactured every performance I did until
I was probably almost thirty years old, and it took
me that long to figure out acting. I'd never I
didn't start until I was eighteen, so I was learning
on the job and everything came real, real fast. I
(26:26):
was not ready and not prepared, so I withdrew and
pulled back, which is what I always do. And uh,
when I was thirty, I finally like this actor Gil
Bellows just I was gonna do this movie. This is
another side quest, sorry Alexis, but I was doing a
play in London and he came to watch it because
I was gonna do a movie that he wrote. And uh,
we went and had dinner afterwards. My cousin was with me,
(26:49):
and this dude like broke down my whole performance and
nailed me on every bad habit I had. And I'm
sitting there like everything is. Dude is saying it's like
dead on my cousin. I can feel it's like getting mad,
like he's not. He's getting pissed at the guy. But
I'm kind of like feeding off the energy. And we
finally said our good nights, and my cousin Joe was like, now,
(27:10):
I thought you're gonna knock him out. I was like, no, man,
Like I feel like this guy just kind of unlocks him.
The next night was the greatest performance that I ever
had in anything I ever did in my entire career.
It was a Kenneth Lonergan play called This Is Our Youth,
and uh, it was the first time I ever like
broke down organically in her performance. So I knew exactly.
(27:31):
I share that story because I knew exactly what Fred
was going through. The scene was about my dad with
the character's dad, but I made it about my dad
and the moment I allowed myself to do that and
allow a real feeling that I hated at the time.
I'm forty five. Now I have kids, UM, so it
doesn't carry that weight that it used to. Now it's
(27:52):
just respect and love, um, like on his birthday and stuff,
I'll miss him. But outside of that, like, I've adjusted
well to it. But then I applied so much real
hurt and pain. And my character is supposed to accidentally
knock over this dish full of cocaine and UH and
manitol and he freaks out. And my choice was I
(28:15):
got so mad at myself because I was so stupid
that I smashed the plate on the table and the
plate cracked open and it split my left hand open
and I was bleeding everywhere and I didn't even notice
I was bleeding until the end of the show. Like
that's how into the moment I was. And I have
Gil Bellows to think for that, And so to see
someone else let something reel out like that, it just
(28:39):
slap the holy hell out of me. Now that's kind
of deep and heavy. So we're gonna end on a
high note, and I'm going to talk about one of
the funniest promo classes that that we ever had, or
not maybe scariest, and has to do with Nattie night
Heart and Harry Smith, Um, who was the son of
(28:59):
a legend. So I loved him very much because you
have very big shoes to fill. I was the son
of a legend, so I have very big shoes to fill,
and so I connected with Harry a lot, and I
really wanted to get him in TJ over UM and
I worked. I worked hard to do it. But we
just you know, I have plenty of failures. We can
talk about those two is just the success. Success ones
are usually cooler and funnier stories. But um, I failed
(29:20):
those boys. I never I never got over that I failed.
The USOS to tag team wrestling is tough, man. I
remember Vince, I was working so hard on building up
a tag team division and Ben said, Freddie, I gotta
pay four guys for one fucking match, and I kind
of went, oh, I had never looked at it like that,
(29:44):
And again, it's show business, and I was in charge
of of the Cologne Brothers, I named Primo for crying
out loud. Um, that was my name. Um, and uh,
it's kind of like changed my perspective on thing ings
and change the way I approach storylines. I couldn't pitch
for for as much anymore. But anyway, or in promo
(30:06):
class or another side quest completed, you just leveled up. Um.
And if you make it through the whole podcast, you
get all kinds of experience. It's great. Um. So we uh,
we're in promo class and you guys all remember the rules.
There's no makeout sessions allowed and there's no beating each
other up. That seems they seem like reasonable requests as
(30:27):
far as like an acting coach and and the talent
in that room go. And I feel like everyone should
be able to follow those rules. Um, but apparently not.
And it was little Nattie Nidheart who decided to break it.
And so her and Harry are in there, and I've
already told you, like what the state of women's wrestling
was back then, and we're gonna get into the transition, um,
(30:50):
which was the Bella's And I have no responsibility and
take no credit for the women's division. But uh I
did help bring those girls up, and it was those
girls who really opened Vince's eyes with their show Total Divas,
which we'll get into in another episode. Um, and how
they kind of revolutionized and changed matches from five minutes
(31:11):
to all of a sudden having multiple commercial breaks, which
is just so sick. But anyway, we're still in the
time where the ladies got five minutes, and if they
had a pay per view match, it usually got clipped
to about seven to give to give the boys more time.
So uh as Freebird would say, So they're in there
(31:31):
and it's a repetition and they're going back and forth
about you know, I don't even remember. It was like
you ain't ship, No, you ain't ship. Whatever it was, right,
they're going back and forth. Michael Tarver was the other
NEXTUS guy. I was trying to think of that early on.
He had a sick promo where he just wrapped and
it was amazing. By the way, there's another side quest. Um.
(31:52):
So they're in there and they're going back and forth,
but they're getting closer and closer, and everyone knows that
they're no chance of any like smooch. He smooched with
those two because t J's her man like forever um.
So they're getting closer and closer, and I'm like, this
is this is weird. I don't know where this is going.
(32:12):
And at this point we were doing points, so if
you changed up the sentence, the other person got a point.
But it wasn't over until someone got three points, right,
so they change it up and uh. He says something
to Natty about like that's why you are where you
are and I am where I am and Natty just
I mean it looked Richard Bryor had a joke where
(32:35):
he talks about he wanted to be a boxer and
he got hit with a hook and he said I
saw his hands start down in Mississippi. It gains speed
through Texas. Now I'm watching Natty throw this right hand
and it's like a John Wi movie. Man, it's full
slow motion. I'm pretty sure a bunch of doves like
took flight behind it as it traveled through the air.
(32:58):
And Harry's hands are down at his hide and he's
sticking his chin out like what And Naddy's hook comes
all the way through open hand hook right like like
the way, Uh, if you saw The Godfather talked about
how he used to open hand slap people off the stools.
It's like a Godfather slap what bow And it sounds
(33:21):
like two four two by four smashing together to simulate
a gun shot. And everyone in the class, including me,
at the same time, goes. And then I jump out
of my seat before I even let the breath out,
and instead of breathing out, I just go what dof?
And I curse. Right, I'm trying to control myself, but
it was a big f bomb. And I'm not mad.
(33:44):
I'm scared because I mean, it's the loudest shot I've
ever heard of my life. And Harry looks at me,
was put a freaking smile on his face. He goes, bro,
it's so good, like nothing happened. And you know, look,
I'm an actor. Actors are soft as hell, man. Like
I've seen dudes not be able to work for two
weeks just because their feelings got hurt. So this is
(34:07):
all new to me, man, But this dude took the
shot of I'm telling you, to this day, I've never
heard anyone get hit that hard in my life. I'm
including UFC kicks where you here like an Edison Barboza
foot slap on that one tall skinny dude's face. Back
in the day, I was like, Wow, that ain't ship
(34:28):
compared to this Canadian right hand that literally game speed
through Alberta and then just made contact in whatever city
we were in. It was we gotta have Natty on
the show one day as a guest. I just gotta
know what she was thinking when he did that, because
in her eyes, he deserved it. And I ain't gonna
(34:49):
argue with the girl. So that said, guys made it
through like five Cyde quests today. So you guys are
the real winners. And I'll speak with you guys all
on the next w u F Wrestling with Freddie. This
has been a production of I Heart Radio's Michael Tura
podcast Network. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
(35:09):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite show. M h m hmm.
What's up you guys. It is Freddie Brinds Jr. And
we're back with another episode of Wrestling with Freddie. Last
week we got pretty deep into the promo classes and
some of the cool exercises and the successes and failures
of them. So if you haven't heard that, please go
back because this is a continuation episode. But this episode
we'll touch a little bit more on what I thought
(00:27):
is like the most heartwarming moment I ever had in
w W. Either weren't many, um, but this time we're
going into the ice storm. I have built this story up,
so without further ado, the Ice Storm on Wrestling with Freddie.
Now stuffing up to the mic. The host of Wrestling
with Freddie, Freddie Prince Junya. All right, you guys, I'm
(00:52):
on the highway with a makeup artist from uh Friday
Night SmackDown back then, even though we shot it on Tuesdays,
and we're driving I think from Memphis to Atlanta, and
if that's about a four hour drive then I'm right.
If not, it was another town. So we're on the
freeway and we're cruising down and it's late at night,
probably probably about ten thirty eleven o'clock. At night. We're
(01:15):
on the highway. It's winter and there's snow on both
sides of the road, and there are no cars anywhere
because we left much later than everyone else. Usually you
would like pass other wrestlers, or wrestlers would pass you.
This was before I was on the jet. So so
we're cruising down. That's getting late. We haven't seen anybody,
and she's getting sleepy. Right, So I'm cruising, but we
(01:36):
have a map that remember there's no map quest, there
was no app on a phone that told you I
have We would print out maps at the end of
the show, and that's how the rookies like me would
get from town to town before I was, thank god,
on the black and Red jet. So we're cruising, I
have my map. She's getting sleepy and uh. As we're
driving down the road, it's been about twenty minutes, maybe
(01:58):
thirty minutes. Like I said, there's snow everywhere. I see
some smoke down the highway. I'm like, what the hell
is that? Man? So I'm driving cruising down this curve
and now I see this like fire and smoke and
in the middle of the snow, and so I slow
the car down and I'm almost pulled over at this point,
(02:19):
and the loss of speed wakes up the makeup artist
and I go, what the hell is that? And it's
this gigantic tree that's fallen over. The roots are uprooted,
and it's on fire, straight, just burning in the middle
of nowhere. There's nobody around it. There's no cars, there's
no tire tracks anywhere. It's just a tree that's it
(02:41):
looks like it's been struck by lightning. There's no lightning,
at least not to my knowledge, during a snowstorm in
the South. Maybe maybe I'm wrong. Um hit me up
on social So I'm slowing down and now I pulled
the car all the way over and I go, what
the hell is that? And she goes, I don't know.
And I go, I'm gonna go check it out. She goes,
the hell you are? She because it's freezing outside. We're
(03:02):
going to Atlanta. I go, no, I just want to
see what it is. She No, you're not going over there.
Get back in the car. I've opened the door. Get
back in the car. We're gone. I go, okay, okay, okay,
I go with that's some crazy ship. She goes, yeah,
it's crazy ship. Let's go. It's freaky, okay, So I
closed the door. We're driving, she passes out. Nothing else
spooky or no Poulter Guy's nothing like that. But the
(03:23):
road starts getting kind of sketchy, and uh, I have
the radio on and I'm scanning the A M channels
because I mean when I mean sketchy, like there's ice
now on the roads and we're getting we're in Georgia,
we're getting just outside Atlanta. And on the radio, I
hear the mayor of Atlanta, and you could check this out,
you can figure out what year it is, has just
declared a state of emergency and he's basically closed the
(03:47):
city because of an ice storm. The roads are unsafe
to drive on, and everybody is like, not quarantine, but
it's a curfew, like stay home. You go on the roads,
you're gonna die. So we're close to the airport. Our
hotel is at the airport, and uh, I cruise up
there and I mean we're sliding everywhere like I'm on
(04:08):
ice skates. Okay, We're not in a four world drive automobile.
I mean like a like a little four door rental sedan.
It wasn't built for the snow. So we're at the
airport because we know the hotel's close to there, and
I see one of those like rental car transport vans
and it's running and there's this black dude inside, and
(04:30):
so I go up to him and I go, hey, man,
I'm trying to get to my hotel. Can you help
me out? And he says, well, what's the name of it?
And I don't remember what it was. It was it's
the Ice Storm Hotel. Will color you know, the Ice
Storm Hotel. And he goes, oh, it's down that way.
You're just gonna make a right and just keep going
straight and you'll see it. You'll see the big sign.
(04:51):
It's down a big driveway. I go, okay, So I
drive down there and we get to the driveway and yeah,
the driveway goes down, but it's deep and it goes
straight into the hotel lobby. If I take this car
down this hill, I'm not stopping. It's gonna go through
the front of the building. So I drive back to
(05:13):
the airport guy and I say, hey, man, is there
is there another hotel around here? Because we couldn't find
any other ones um or can I stay in the
can I stay in the airport. I can't get down there.
And he's just Jamaican dude, and he's like, you stay,
oh dear, you're gonna die. Mind, you better find a
way to that hotel. It's like, all right, the airport's closed.
They're not gonna let me in. So I drive back
(05:35):
and now we're parked at the top of this hotel's
driveway and the and the makeup artist is looking at me,
and I'm looking at her, and she goes, how the
hell are we gonna get down there? She goes, I
can't walk down it. It's all it's all ice. I go, yeah,
I don't. I don't know, but I'm not gonna have
like a headline in the paper tomorrow by Freddie Prinz Jr.
Found with a makeup artist frozen dead in a car.
(05:57):
I was like, the stories they would ride would share
my family for the next generation. I said, we're getting
down this damn hill. So I'm looking around. I don't
see any way down outside of you know, horrible accident,
I get sued or dead or or someone else dies. Right,
So finally, because I'm an idiot, all right, And I'll
(06:18):
preface this by saying I've done a lot of dumb
stuff as a kid, and slid down a lot of
hills I shouldn't have slid down. So I go to
the trunk. I'll freezing to death, y'all. I'm a California kid.
My blood is thin. I surf if the waters, you know,
below seventy I'm wearing a wetsuit. It's how cold as hell.
I'm not dressed properly. I grabbed my suitcase. I said
(06:40):
it at the top of the thing. And now I'm
just staring down the hill at this hotel, at the
Ice Storm Hotel, and she comes up to me. She
gets out of the car. She goes, what are you doing?
And I don't even look at her. I say, I'm
gonna slide down this hill on my suitcase. She goes, what.
I go almost slide down my hill and I'm gonna
slide down the cell on my suitcase, and so are you.
She goes, I'm not doing that. I said, you're gonna
(07:02):
get your ass on your suitcase and you're sliding down
this hill with me. I'm not gonna leave you in
a car to die. This is the only way down.
I'm sure it wasn't, but I'm not a genius, so
this was the best way I could think of. I said, so,
I'm going down with you, and you're not gonna get hurt.
Don't worry. I'm certain of it in my head. I'm
certain of it. Sara, Are you ready? She goes now,
(07:25):
I go, well, we're going. I said, I'm not going first,
We're going together. She's she doesn't want to. She gets
her suitcase. What are the I mean you, we have
an option. Get down this hill. That's the option. So
she gets her suitcase. Every word that I'm telling you
in this story is actual. Well I'm about to go
t l C. It's actual and factual. Every sorry, every
(07:49):
word I'm telling you it's a true and every word
i'm telling you you will not believe. And I'm okay
with that. So I get on my suitcase. I lay
it down and I'm sitting on it the way you
would have sled, and my feet are on the snow
so that I can have my heels to dig in
to slow me down. I tell her to do the
same thing. She sits on the suitcase. I think I
(08:12):
have like a to me, right, it's like black traveled
to me. That was big enough to get all your crap,
but small enough to get in an overhead bind. One
of those. And she has like a hard case one
because she's got like makeup and crap. Right, So she
sits on her suitcase. I sit on mine. I said,
are you ready? She goes, oh, god, I guess so.
So we kind of do the scooch like our feet
(08:34):
are in the snow like a one and it's too
and three and my feet are in the snow instantly.
The moment that it gets steep, there's no more snow
for my feet to dig into. It is hard ice.
It is a good inch thick, and they're probably not
an inch thick, but you get the point. Like it is,
(08:55):
there's no attraction. So I hit terminal velocity within about
two and a half seconds, and I'm I mean, I'm flying.
I looked to my right because it's it's too fast
(09:17):
for me. I looked to my right, and she's bailing out.
It's too fast, okay, So she bails out to her
left towards me right. But now she has nothing. Now
it's just her body. So she's just gonna keep on sliding.
But it's not with any sort of control. So she's
going upside down, she's going horizontal, she's going to the left.
She's on her left hip, she's on her belly, she's
(09:39):
sliding everywhere. It looks like breaking two electric boogaloo, like
a deleted scene, right. She breakdancing all the way down
the sizes and I'm flying, okay, So I get down first.
She kind of curved off to the side into the
snow drift by the curb, but she's okay. She gets up,
she's solid, makeup, good to go, case not destroyed. I
(10:00):
slide all the way down to basically where the valet
is and onto the brick entry way of this hotel,
about four ft away from the double sliding doors. The
entire staff of the hotel that was in that area
had been watching us since we were on top of
the hill, wondering how we were gonna get down. And
(10:22):
they're literally cheering for me because I literally just did
my evil kinevil shit. I just went like a hundred
twenty seven miles per hour done this driveway, and they're cheering,
and I get up and I'm laughing, and she's laughing.
Everybody's still in a good mood. And the guy literally
tells me. He goes, dude, we didn't know how you
ever going to get down, that was so sick. So
(10:42):
we go to check in. They don't have her room.
So she gets my bed and I crashed out on
the couch and then we wake up and the ice
they've now salted and done all this stuff. And the
next day we got on the plane and uh we
flew back to wife flew to New York City, and
she flew to wherever, to wherever she lived. But that
(11:03):
is the ice storm, and that's the fastest that I've
ever gone and something that wasn't a vehicle or a jet. Oh,
by the way, I flew in the jet. This isn't
wrestling related, but the like the dead commander at Nellis
Air Force Base in Las Vegas was Borto Rican dude,
and he loved my dad and my buddy who lives
out there. Ran a construction company and gave him some
(11:23):
equipment to help him do his house and uh, his
off his off base house and uh there in Las Vegas,
I think it was Henderson, Nevada. And so he was
like he saw a picture of me and Brian, my
buddy Brian, and he goes oh, you know Freddie Prince Jr.
Man I loved his dad. And he goes, oh, yeah,
he's a good friend of mine. And he goes tell
him if he ever wants to fly in the jet. Uh,
it's on me. He goes, no cameras, nothing. I was like,
(11:45):
and so my buddy Brian calls me, and I was like,
what do you mean like a jet jet? He goes, yeah,
I go to Oh, dude, I'm in. I drove from
l A to Las Vegas at night at like eleven
thirty at night, drove as fast as I could, and uh,
we have the date. I get there and I think
I'm just gonna fly on the jet. No, it's like
an eight hour class on how to breathe because you're
(12:06):
gonna be pulling so many cheese. And I'm in my twenties.
I'm cocky. I'm like, whatever, man, I'm half listening, right.
So they put me in the two seater and forgive me,
this is over twenty years ago. I don't remember. I
think it wasn't F sixteen. I don't know what the
two seater was. It might have even been like a
F one oh something. I don't know. But we get
(12:26):
in I've done my like my test, and they make
you do this like it's like I don't want to
breathe in the mic because it'll sound weird, but it's
like labor breathing. Okay, So I get in the jet,
we take off, just the take off my borderline tap out. Okay,
this dude, I tap out twice. And this isn't even
from tricks. Just turns were literally like, he goes, if
(12:49):
it feels good, you're not breathing. I said, what do
you mean? He goes if it starts to feel good,
if you feel high, you're not breathing, right, I said, okay,
And that basically is in jiu jitsu, like they say
tap when you when it feels good, that means you're
about to go to sleep. Twice I had to tap
because I forgot to breathe, and the breathing is the
hardest part. At one point in the air, I said,
(13:09):
how long would it take us to get to l A.
He said about fifteen minutes, and I literally was just like,
oh my god. So anyway, I like going fast, we
fly back, I go back and uh, and now I'm
back ready to go to work. Talking events about the promo,
class who I like, who I don't. And the storyline
going on at the time was the Nexus, and this
(13:32):
was Wade Barrett and uh and Michael's something I can't remember,
but it was a big group that came up to
like take on kind of like how the Shield took on,
like the Current Stars. This was they were taking on
that here's current Stars. So they were going after Randy,
who was a heel, and John who was a baby face,
and John sold big for like horror movie cells, right,
(13:54):
because they were really trying to get this group over.
They thought they had a couple of solid bangers in there. Right.
So I'm doing my promo class and I have a
lot of these guys and and uh and girls in
there now, and we're getting to use like really big rooms,
like sometimes even the cafeteria because we have so many
people in there. And I got these Nexus cats, right,
(14:14):
And there was this one dude named Fred and y'all
if you watch then then he wrestled under the name
Darren Young. His real name is Fred Rosser and uh
he's now out of out of the closet, and and
everyone knows that that Fred is a gay wrestler. And
I think was the first one to come out while
under the employee of w w E, but certainly not
(14:37):
the first gay wrestler in the w w E. If
you know about Pat Patterson, everyone in the company knew
Pat was. He was very open about it um and
everyone embraced him. So at this point in time, though
Fred was not out, he was a young wrestler. He
was coming up and uh so now I think he's
a new japan wrestling now. So if you're a big
wrestling fan, he's built from stone, looks gray eight solid us, right,
(15:00):
and we just call him black John Cena because he
looked just like John Cena. But if John was black,
even his face, it was crazy. You put him side
by side and it looked like the exact same dude.
I think John even cut a promo on it, uh,
in like an actual storyline where he's like, maybe we
did have the same father, but I hate you anyway.
I'm fighting for justice, so uh start doing the promo
classes and it's a lot of you, you going against
(15:26):
me because Vince likes that, right, So it's we're going
to have a fight, and you're gonna give me a
reason to watch like that. If you remember the dog story.
You're a dog, and you're a dog. Now make me
want to watch you fight. So a more productive way
to accomplish that is to give them a reason to fight,
like I did with Kia Stevens and with Beth Phoenix. Um.
(15:48):
If you remember from last week's episode, so William Regal
also known as Stephen Regal, is and was one of
the single most helpful human beings while I worked at
that company. He would warn me about people. He would
(16:10):
help show me what wrestlers strengths were and to write
my promos to fit the type of wrestler they were,
because I was not doing that. Um, you don't want
to write a luchad or like a big man. You
don't want to write a big man like a high flyer.
There's a different attitude. When you're seven ft tall. You
(16:31):
don't have to say as much. Your seven ft tall
I kind of equated to Darth Vader. You don't have
to give Darth Vader a lot of a lot of dialogue.
And you notice he only moves when he has to.
There's no wasted movement with Darth Vader, which was the
same crap I would hear in the production, not crap
this is good crap um. The same stuff I would
(16:52):
hear in the production meetings when they would talk about,
you know, tell these guys, the big guys, to slow down.
Less is more And there's something I know a lot
of people disagree with that, but I tend to agree
with it. It's more. It's what made Frankenstein so scary,
right is It's why Pepper lepu we were amazed with him, like,
how could someone as slow always catch always catch him? Right?
(17:14):
So it may be dated, but with the big guys,
they don't want them, you know, flying around everywhere. Vince
doesn't want his guys and his girls getting hurt, which
is why that w W E style is less exciting
because he feels it prevents injuries. So Stephen has been
getting me hip to it. And he asks me if
he can come in and uh and cut a promo
(17:38):
and I'm like, yeah, man, you want me to pick something?
He goes, oh no, no, no, I have something. I said,
all right, dude. So he comes in and I it
was either the Saint Crispin's Day from Henry the Five,
which is no joke, or it was from Hamlet, and
I feel like it was from Hamlet. Otherwise. I don't
know why I remember this line, but I feel like
(18:00):
I remember Stephen saying the world is nothing more to
me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors, and
that I know for sure is from Hamlet, so I
think it was Hamlet. So he cuts this, and then
he's trying to explain why he chose this to all
these young wrestlers, and he said he was talking about
the iambic pentameter, which is sort of the rhythm and
(18:22):
cadence required by by Shakespeare. He's trying to explain that
you can tell a story whether you speak English or not.
There are a couple of Japanese wrestlers in the room
at the time. You can communist cad to story whether
you speak Spanish better than English, the same way he communed,
(18:42):
those communicated those feelings from that monologue to everyone in there,
and everyone knew exactly what he was saying. When you
say someone, this world has nothing more to me but
a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors, I'm communicating a
message to you with a whole bunch of words that
neither one of us will ever use again in our
entire life. But you know exactly what I'm talking about.
You go, whoa, Freddie's a little depressed, ok you do?
(19:05):
And that message has been communicated beautifully, right, So I
think Funaki was in there. And by the way, I
got a great Funaki story. Kung should we do a
Japanese side quest? Should we do a side quest? All right,
we're doing a side quest? Okay. So it's a SmackDown.
It's over and Shane Hurricane Helms and some of the
(19:25):
writers and my buddy Angelo the writer, We're all having
like a beer at the hotel, and you know, after
a couple in, Shane goes, man, I wish we could
get I wish we'd get Funaki over again, and Angela
was like, yeah, well, let's let's think of something. He goes, oh,
then they wouldn't buy anything we do. And he goes
to we could think of something. And this is all
credit to Shane. Okay, I think he even wrote the
(19:46):
song that our truth saying to him later on, but
he goes, what about what if it was kung fu
KNOCKI and all the writers are drunk and they're like,
wait what He goes, yeah, like kung fu? He we
could sing the song Everybody loves Kong Fu Knack that
dude can't drink some sacking and he had like this
(20:08):
whole freestyle jam that they all fell in love with.
And I was in the writer's room one day and
they're pitching this and I'm like, yo, wait what And
Shane comes in and they go, Shane, what about Kung Funaki?
And Shane just looks at the board and he sees
how we booked and he goes, that's pretty fucking funny,
and he just walked out of the room. And that's
when we gave Funaki the Daniel Son Crane kick, and
(20:30):
m VP sold it better than Johnny Lawrence did in
that movie Are You Kinda May Come Home Baby? Sound
for the Wind? So anyway, that's the Japanese side quest.
So um, we're back in promo class and Sir William
Regal is in there. Gotta call him sir, even if
he's not a real knight, he should be Darren. Young
Fred gets up and he wants to He wants to
(20:51):
do a promo scenario then cutting on each other, and
so Regal says, I'll stop my friend, and he says,
this is I'll never get this man. He says, you
don't belong here and you're going to quit, And Rosser
comes back and he goes, don't and he does repetition.
(21:12):
He goes, I don't belong here. Do you think I'm
gonna quit? And Rigo just looks back at him and
he goes, I've seen it a million times before, my friend,
you're going to quit and you know you don't belong
And Fred gets this like emotion and cuts like the
promo of It's a shame I didn't film any of these.
(21:34):
He cuts like the promo of the Universe. And he's
straight up his fist ball up and you can hear
his knuckles crack. And we've already established there's no there's
no punching, right, and Fred didn't come off the type
to do it. And there's his eyes start to well
up and I'm sitting there watching and regals so cool man.
(21:56):
He's like a gun slinger in the wild West. He's
gonna let you draw first and still be fastinough like
he didn't even blink. But this is the guy that
smashed on Goldberg to let people know like what time
it was back in the day, right, Like he does
not care but he was a good giving man at
this point in his career. He probably was his whole career,
but in this moment especially, and Darren Young just screams
(22:22):
and tears come down his face. At the same time,
it's like the like Denzel Washington does the perfect tear
right like He'll hold it for a whole scene and
then drop it out right at the end, and everyone's like, oh,
like that's the next level technique. This was just wrong.
Came out and he screams, I do, my lord, and
then there's like a ninety second promo of the sacrifice,
(22:44):
the fear that this that that, And while he's saying this,
I shit you not. I literally was like, Yo, Fred's gay.
You could just I mean, I'd work in Hollywood, man.
(23:06):
I know a lot of people to this day that
aren't comfortable with who they are based on the reaction
that that society is gonna have. Right. So, and I'm
not trying to say this to like, oh, look, how
smart I knew, Like I was like, oh my gosh,
Fred Fred's gay. And I didn't say anything. I never did,
and he's out now, so it's not a secret. And
I don't think anyone else knew except maybe William who
(23:29):
kind of had this like glint in his eye, and
as as Darren Young. Although this was all Fred Rosser
finished his promo. You know how like British people, like
when you do something sick in America, we'd give you
that head nod right, like people do memes of it,
like Robert Redford as Grizzly Adams or whatever. They're like
(23:50):
nod in his head. Well, British people do this smile
and it's like a half only half their face works,
and it's this rye sort of half smile. And Rigo
just gives in this that smile already hits him with
it and he goes and uh. And Roster finishes his
promo with I'll Never Quit, and Rico just looks at him.
He says, my mistake, lab, maybe you do belong And
(24:14):
everybody was, I mean balling man balling and Fred was
to and Regal gives him this big hug man and
you can see like Rosster squeeze him hard like that
there was hurt and pain in there. And right after
that we wrote this promo for him. And you'll forgive
me if I don't remember what show it was for
it I believe it was an x T, like he
got moved down to an x T when it was
(24:36):
like rookies and someone maybe or maybe it was right
before that, and uh, and he gave him this promo
where he didn't feel like he should even be there.
And I said, do you remember when you screamed I
do belong? He said yeah. I said, I wanted it
wasn't my promo, someone else's, but he was struggling with it.
I said, I want you to feel that when you
say I wrestled John Cena and he goes, yeah, okay, okay.
(25:00):
And so he did it, and he hit it about
like eight percent of where I'd hoped it got, but
he still got the point across. And he's like, but
it was more of an arrogant take because it needed
to be. He's like, all, I wrestle John Seen and
he got kind of a little choked up on it,
and uh, he was able to kind of bring which
was a real honest moment to TV. Now. I could
(25:21):
relate to this because early in my acting class, my
acting coach gave me this scene. He used to let
me pick right, but I would always pick really easy stuff,
and he really challenged me, and I don't remember the
name of this play, and I don't want to remember
the name of the play. So even if I say
words from it that you remember, do not hit me
(25:42):
up at at real F p j R. On Twitter,
and do not hit me up on Instagram because I
have deleted this ship from my mind because it broke
me in pieces. So my butt hole act I love,
I love my acting coach, but this was just Oh
he was right. I was wrong, but man, I hated
him for this. So he gives me this scene and
(26:04):
my characters crying right away, And that was my biggest
fear was I don't I don't know if I can
do that. I don't know if I can cry. I
don't know if I can open up like that. Earlier
in my career, I manufactured every performance I did until
I was probably almost thirty years old, and it took
me that long to figure out acting. I'd never I
didn't start until I was eighteen, so I was learning
on the job and everything came real, real fast. I
(26:26):
was not ready and not prepared, so I withdrew and
pulled back, which is what I always do. And uh,
when I was thirty, I finally like this actor Gil
Bellows just I was gonna do this movie. This is
another side quest, sorry Alexis, but I was doing a
play in London and he came to watch it because
I was gonna do a movie that he wrote. And uh,
we went and had dinner afterwards. My cousin was with me,
(26:49):
and this dude like broke down my whole performance and
nailed me on every bad habit I had. And I'm
sitting there like everything is. Dude is saying it's like
dead on my cousin. I can feel it's like getting mad,
like he's not. He's getting pissed at the guy. But
I'm kind of like feeding off the energy. And we
finally said our good nights, and my cousin Joe was like, now,
(27:10):
I thought you're gonna knock him out. I was like, no, man,
Like I feel like this guy just kind of unlocks him.
The next night was the greatest performance that I ever
had in anything I ever did in my entire career.
It was a Kenneth Lonergan play called This Is Our Youth,
and uh, it was the first time I ever like
broke down organically in her performance. So I knew exactly.
(27:31):
I share that story because I knew exactly what Fred
was going through. The scene was about my dad with
the character's dad, but I made it about my dad
and the moment I allowed myself to do that and
allow a real feeling that I hated at the time.
I'm forty five. Now I have kids, UM, so it
doesn't carry that weight that it used to. Now it's
(27:52):
just respect and love, um, like on his birthday and stuff,
I'll miss him. But outside of that, like, I've adjusted
well to it. But then I applied so much real
hurt and pain. And my character is supposed to accidentally
knock over this dish full of cocaine and UH and
manitol and he freaks out. And my choice was I
(28:15):
got so mad at myself because I was so stupid
that I smashed the plate on the table and the
plate cracked open and it split my left hand open
and I was bleeding everywhere and I didn't even notice
I was bleeding until the end of the show. Like
that's how into the moment I was. And I have
Gil Bellows to think for that, And so to see
someone else let something reel out like that, it just
(28:39):
slap the holy hell out of me. Now that's kind
of deep and heavy. So we're gonna end on a
high note, and I'm going to talk about one of
the funniest promo classes that that we ever had, or
not maybe scariest, and has to do with Nattie night
Heart and Harry Smith, Um, who was the son of
(28:59):
a legend. So I loved him very much because you
have very big shoes to fill. I was the son
of a legend, so I have very big shoes to fill,
and so I connected with Harry a lot, and I
really wanted to get him in TJ over UM and
I worked. I worked hard to do it. But we
just you know, I have plenty of failures. We can
talk about those two is just the success. Success ones
are usually cooler and funnier stories. But um, I failed
(29:20):
those boys. I never I never got over that I failed.
The USOS to tag team wrestling is tough, man. I
remember Vince, I was working so hard on building up
a tag team division and Ben said, Freddie, I gotta
pay four guys for one fucking match, and I kind
of went, oh, I had never looked at it like that,
(29:44):
And again, it's show business, and I was in charge
of of the Cologne Brothers, I named Primo for crying
out loud. Um, that was my name. Um, and uh,
it's kind of like changed my perspective on thing ings
and change the way I approach storylines. I couldn't pitch
for for as much anymore. But anyway, or in promo
(30:06):
class or another side quest completed, you just leveled up. Um.
And if you make it through the whole podcast, you
get all kinds of experience. It's great. Um. So we uh,
we're in promo class and you guys all remember the rules.
There's no makeout sessions allowed and there's no beating each
other up. That seems they seem like reasonable requests as
(30:27):
far as like an acting coach and and the talent
in that room go. And I feel like everyone should
be able to follow those rules. Um, but apparently not.
And it was little Nattie Nidheart who decided to break it.
And so her and Harry are in there, and I've
already told you, like what the state of women's wrestling
was back then, and we're gonna get into the transition, um,
(30:50):
which was the Bella's And I have no responsibility and
take no credit for the women's division. But uh I
did help bring those girls up, and it was those
girls who really opened Vince's eyes with their show Total Divas,
which we'll get into in another episode. Um, and how
they kind of revolutionized and changed matches from five minutes
(31:11):
to all of a sudden having multiple commercial breaks, which
is just so sick. But anyway, we're still in the
time where the ladies got five minutes, and if they
had a pay per view match, it usually got clipped
to about seven to give to give the boys more time.
So uh as Freebird would say, So they're in there
(31:31):
and it's a repetition and they're going back and forth
about you know, I don't even remember. It was like
you ain't ship, No, you ain't ship. Whatever it was, right,
they're going back and forth. Michael Tarver was the other
NEXTUS guy. I was trying to think of that early on.
He had a sick promo where he just wrapped and
it was amazing. By the way, there's another side quest. Um.
(31:52):
So they're in there and they're going back and forth,
but they're getting closer and closer, and everyone knows that
they're no chance of any like smooch. He smooched with
those two because t J's her man like forever um.
So they're getting closer and closer, and I'm like, this
is this is weird. I don't know where this is going.
(32:12):
And at this point we were doing points, so if
you changed up the sentence, the other person got a point.
But it wasn't over until someone got three points, right,
so they change it up and uh. He says something
to Natty about like that's why you are where you
are and I am where I am and Natty just
I mean it looked Richard Bryor had a joke where
(32:35):
he talks about he wanted to be a boxer and
he got hit with a hook and he said I
saw his hands start down in Mississippi. It gains speed
through Texas. Now I'm watching Natty throw this right hand
and it's like a John Wi movie. Man, it's full
slow motion. I'm pretty sure a bunch of doves like
took flight behind it as it traveled through the air.
(32:58):
And Harry's hands are down at his hide and he's
sticking his chin out like what And Naddy's hook comes
all the way through open hand hook right like like
the way, Uh, if you saw The Godfather talked about
how he used to open hand slap people off the stools.
It's like a Godfather slap what bow And it sounds
(33:21):
like two four two by four smashing together to simulate
a gun shot. And everyone in the class, including me,
at the same time, goes. And then I jump out
of my seat before I even let the breath out,
and instead of breathing out, I just go what dof?
And I curse. Right, I'm trying to control myself, but
it was a big f bomb. And I'm not mad.
(33:44):
I'm scared because I mean, it's the loudest shot I've
ever heard of my life. And Harry looks at me,
was put a freaking smile on his face. He goes, bro,
it's so good, like nothing happened. And you know, look,
I'm an actor. Actors are soft as hell, man. Like
I've seen dudes not be able to work for two
weeks just because their feelings got hurt. So this is
(34:07):
all new to me, man, But this dude took the
shot of I'm telling you, to this day, I've never
heard anyone get hit that hard in my life. I'm
including UFC kicks where you here like an Edison Barboza
foot slap on that one tall skinny dude's face. Back
in the day, I was like, Wow, that ain't ship
(34:28):
compared to this Canadian right hand that literally game speed
through Alberta and then just made contact in whatever city
we were in. It was we gotta have Natty on
the show one day as a guest. I just gotta
know what she was thinking when he did that, because
in her eyes, he deserved it. And I ain't gonna
(34:49):
argue with the girl. So that said, guys made it
through like five Cyde quests today. So you guys are
the real winners. And I'll speak with you guys all
on the next w u F Wrestling with Freddie. This
has been a production of I Heart Radio's Michael Tura
podcast Network. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
(35:09):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite show. M h m hmm.
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