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Every home. The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find the rewatchables.
We do them on Monday nights.
We're doing one -day movie month this month for August. August is coming.
RoboCop is going to be Monday.
We're doing all bangers.
It's going to be an all -banger, one -day movie month month, I think.
I think it's going to be all bangers.
Pretty confident in that one.
But you can watch that in The Ringer Movie's YouTube channel as well.
I think RoboCop's on Amazon Prime for free if you want to go check it out.
I was just in Chicago for 24 hours.
I'm a little delirious.
I'm too old to fly.
I don't know how the NBA players do it.
Flying back to Chicago.
It's like four hours.
Got up super early yesterday and flew back today.
But I was at the national, the sports collectors convention looking for stuff really for the studio.
I put it on my Instagram.
I found one thing I was really excited about.
This Bull Durham tobacco sign I got.
But I got a couple other good things too.
I'm going to do a studio tour on here.
I'll do like five minutes explaining a lot of the choices.
voices, but, uh, but it was, uh, really fun to go back to the collector's convention.
I had not been since COVID and, uh, it's just massive now.
And weirdly there's less eclectic stuff than ever and just more old baseball cards from the fifties, sixties, and seventies.
I have no idea who's buying, uh, who under 40 years old is like out there looking for like a Stan Musial card. I all kinds of things for the background for here, but just in general, I was looking for basketball cards.
10 minutes to go. I found this amazing item.
Hold on. So this is from 1924.
It's a Holy Cross football doll.
I'm pretty sure it's not a voodoo doll.
I'm not positive yet.
We'll find out, I guess, if anything crazy happens to me.
But it says HC, back when Holy Cross used to be really good at football.
Found this with 10 minutes to go with the show.
You never know. I got a bunch of good stuff, But this is obviously, I think I had this in the eighties on the back.
It has all the championships.
This was the 86, my favorite team.
Needless to say, I have a spot in the studio for it right behind the guest's head.
It's going to be really good.
Very fun to go to the Collectors Convention.
The big piece I bought was this Bull Durham tobacco thing.
You can see OJ, the OJ piece behind me, the juices on the loose.
So that's going to be a staple of the studio.
But I wanted a couple more things like that.
Anyway, thank you for your patience with the studio.
I know it sounds a little echoey.
We're going to work on all this.
The lighting is going to be really good.
We're in the exhibition season.
I think by the time we get to football season, it's going to be absolutely awesome.
So I'm excited about that.
Less excited about the Boston Red Sox, who last time I checked had a chance to be like a pretty interesting playoff team with the amount of bats they have. Maybe they're not going to win the World Series.
But I really have enjoyed this season.
Crochet, we have an ace.
Roman Anthony, best young Red Sox player I think I've seen since Noamar Garciaparra in 97.
You might want to throw Mookie in there, but I don't even think Mookie was as confident as Roman Anthony is this first year.
It's nuts. They just have a Bregman's back.
They have a likable team.
team. Raffaella has been, been really, he's cooled off a little bit, but he's been really good.
But it's the kind of team where it's like, man, if this team got a number two starter, they'd be really one more bullpen arm.
They'd be really interesting.
So what did they get?
They got Steven Matts and Dustin May with the Dodgers who are trying to win a World Series or like take them.
The Red Sox were first in payroll in 2013.
The second last time they won won the World Series.
They were third in 2018.
They were fifth in 2021, the last time they made a real playoff run.
Since then, 12th, 11th, 18th, and 9th, which doesn't make sense when you consider all the other teams that spend a lot of money are these big market teams that used to be like the Red Sox, the Yankees, the Mets, the Dodgers.
And on the other hand, this Fenway Sports Group, which owns, they own Liverpool soccer, they own Penguins, a whole bunch of stuff.
But Liverpool has just been buying, I mean, they're like a drunk guy at two in the morning just buying cheeseburgers and pizza, just buying everybody, trying to get everybody, and then the Red Sox get Dustin May and Steven Matz.
I'm still going to watch this Red Sox team.
You're not driving me away this time.
The Mookie Betts, I lost four years of my Red Sox life, and you're not doing it again.
I like watching these guys.
You can try to drive me away.
Terrible Red Sox owners, it's not going to work.
I'm still here. One other thing I had for you.
There's been some stuff written this week about the NBA's ambitious foray into Europe with the EuroLeague.
The opportunity is that Real Madrid and FC Barcelona and the EuroLeague have not re -upped.
They have their licensing deals expiring in 2026, And they're basically become free agents.
Adam Silver's been intrigued by this forever.
I feel like, and there's been some reporting about this too.
I feel like the league is cooling off on expansion for the NBA.
And kind of looking abroad at this Europe thing as a real opportunity.
And Adam's out there with his crew, meeting with all of these possible investors, with some soccer teams. Here's the opportunity.
Paris growing market with Wembley.
London completely untapped they don't even have a regular Euroleague team they have to play their way in with the results there's these massive soccer clubs that want to grow their footprint in basketball so you have that too so what's the NBA offering?
well from what I've heard and from what's been reported it's probably a 10 team league but they could get away with 8 maybe you grow it to 12 you get a guaranteed spot in the league you get the voting rights you get better TV distribution better sponsorship.
You're not relegated.
You don't have to worry about like, I think there's 12 teams in the EuroLeague that are in there, but there's another six that you can get bounced out or if you don't have a good season.
And there would be some sort of link to the NBA, which I think is the key here.
There are exhibition games, which I've already announced a bunch of them, Manchester City and Paris, London.
Maybe a tournament.
And I've heard heard a couple different ideas for this and I don't even know if they've decided on what they want to do yet but you could have maybe in October you have the two best three best NBA teams and the three best teams from this NBA EuroLeague they have a little round robin maybe it's just champ versus champ best of three maybe it's something in February with all the best teams there's some sort of synergy thing and it goes beyond just we're going to have some regular season games over there and some exhibition games i think big picture 20 years from now what does this look like they're
the leagues are probably a little more intertwined not too intertwined but a little intertwined so they are trying to lock down real madrid and fc barcelona because they can get out of the euro league next year they have ac milan um i think pretty much on board on board they're owned by red red bird and uh they don't have a real hoops team attached.
The Milan team is Olympia Milano, who's re -signed in the EuroLeague for the next 10 years.
So AC Milan, count them in in some way.
In Paris, you could have PSG, which is owned by the Qatar Sports Investments.
It's been reported all week that Silver met with them.
Paris Basketball won the 2024 EuroCup, but isn't officially in the EuroLeague.
Maybe you have both of them.
London doesn't have, as far as I could tell, they don't have a set -in -stone EuroLeague team.
The London Lions is the best one.
They're a little independent.
They're owned by Tesonat.
I think it's called a tech company.
But you could have the London Soccer, one of the Tottenham, Arsenal, Chelsea, any of those.
Buy one of those teams and launch their own or who knows.
You also have Manchester City, which has to be mentioned because they're hosting this NBA game randomly.
So I'm going to count them in as a possible one.
Then you have the two Greek teams. Boy, I'm going to regret trying to say either of these names.
Fenerbahce? Olympios?
Maybe I got them. Both of them have notoriously battled the EuroLeague over the years, so maybe one of those.
You have Alba Berlin, which started this whole thing.
They're on a one -year Euro deal right now, and they said they'd join the NBA already.
That kind of got the ball rolling.
And then The Athletic today reported that four existing EuroLeague franchises, I already mentioned Real Madrid, Barca Barcelona, Barcelona, ASVEL, which is in France, and then an Istanbul team could all be potential defectors.
So I think this goes London, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Paris, Berlin, and Greece as your definite seven that are in this.
I think Adam has those seven in his pocket and maybe doesn't know who the Greece team is yet.
Maybe you could add Tony Parker's French team that's at ASVEL.
He's the president of it you could add the istanbul team you could add manchester city also them at 10.
maybe there's an israel team down the road um maybe there's a third spain team who knows but uh they could take this right away and if you look at the way the uh the euro league is where you you basically have this ownership it's called euro league commercial assets that's the company that runs league you get voting rights on league rules financials tv deals etc etc and then there's a b license that uh that's a one -year thing that you got to play your way in based on results and then a c license that's like basically a wild card um they could challenge this they could offer the sponsorship expertise
better tv deals they could shoehorn some of the tv stuff into their things they could do the schedule so that it complements the nba schedule correctly and um and i think this is going to be going like i i like i i honestly wouldn't be be surprised that this was going in the 26, 27 season.
And what's really interesting about this, and I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, that I felt like the NBA is drifting against expansion, which was a lock forever until they got $76 billion from the media deal.
Then suddenly, you know, you need the media money and the teams that, I mean, the owners don't need to give up media money for expansion fees because they made so much. I think this is the apple of their eye right now.
And I think that's why the reports are coming out this week.
That's why Adam is is very publicly meeting with all of these people, even though it's private, but it's not.
Stuff's leaking out.
And I think this is going to happen in a real way.
And what's cool about it, I remember watching a bunch of Luka games when he was playing over there as a 17 -year -old.
I can't remember what team he was on.
And the quality of play was good.
The crowds were great.
It was FIFA. So the style of it was pretty neat.
And it was a good enough product.
It was just the players weren't quite good enough.
rough, and it still felt a little, not rinky dinky, but just compared to the NBA.
It just definitely felt second class.
I think if you can move that up where it's somewhere between first class and second class, and then you could also be a place, this could be a place where you park some of your retiring players.
It's like, oh, you're last year, you're going to play for this team.
And maybe you go there, maybe they change the rules where you could get a little bit of an ownership stake if you go over for a year.
They could do some things with this league that that they can't do with the NBA, um, they, you know, they could bend the rules and make a little more European.
I don't think they would do relegation with it, but, um, some of the ownership stake stuff, there's, there's a little bit of urgency with it just because of those two, those two Spanish teams are coming up on their license agreement.
I don't think this is a response to the, the Maverick Carter league that he's been trying to start that I talked about a couple of months ago.
That's a little bit of a different format.
It's like an F1 thing.
You you move from city to city for two weeks.
Nobody really seems to think they're going to be able to get the kind of talent that they're bragging that they could get.
I just think they're going to get their legs cut off by this EuroLeague.
And I think this is a really, really, really interesting wrinkle.
I'm thinking about when I'm 75, could the NBA have like a 45 -team league?
Who the fuck knows?
Will we be able to fly from LA to London in three hours?
I don't know. Will you be watching me at a virtual hologram wondering why I'm still doing a podcast?
Maybe, but keep an eye on all this.
Read all of the stories.
Joe Varden had one at Athletic today.
People are gonna start reporting on this.
Just follow this because there's a lot of money at stake and I think it's a chance for them to weave in some soccer clubs, some Qatar money, some Saudi Arabia.
Some of the stuff they can't really do with the NBA, they can do overseas.
And I think it's notable.
Okay, speaking of notable, about Cody Rhodes.
It's coming up in a second.
And, uh, he was awesome.
We hadn't done a podcast together before he came to my house.
We did it in the studio and, uh, and we had a great time.
So that's coming up next.
Let's take a break and we'll do Pearl jam and then Cody Rhodes.
All right, we're taping this on a Monday.
Cody Rhodes is here.
We've never talked on a podcast. I feel like we're both members of the Bet On Yourself Club.
Yes. You're like an all -time Bet On Yourself guy.
I feel you are too, though.
Yeah, but I mean, for you, you leave WWE and it's like, what's that guy doing?
I remember seeing it from afar going, oh no, where's he?
And then it, it couldn't have worked out better, but it was, it was a bit on yourself staple.
I think part of me though, was also like, oh no, a lot, a lot of, um, well you were married, right?
But you didn't have a kid.
So I was married. It's very important that I was married and to the story, because I would always tell people, Hey, I'm the one Rhodes who saved his money so I'm I had you know I had 10 years with WWE I'm good financially I can make these swings and bet on myself and do this unprecedented stuff I'm gonna try and do but that wasn't entirely true it it it became at one point a little bit more we are going check to check I just bought a house in Denton Texas the first house I'd actually bought 10 years into my wrestling career and that's when when I decide to see a buy and, and, and where I was going
and some of these shows I was doing, Pwg in California, for example, you have to want to be on Pwg.
It's not a matter of them paying you big money or anything like that.
And then certain Indies would pay great rates because you had the WWE name, but then if you wanted to keep going and come back, it was a whole, you're flying to Japan too, right?
You're doing some Japan stuff from here.
Cause at the, I ended up with New Japan I would come in I'd only come in for their big shows because they really loved like American cowboy wrestler I yeah this and they'd bring me in I had the WWE name they had a lot of respect and reverence for my dad uh yeah I'd come in like once a month with Japan and that's was such a fun experience it's a different type of wrestling very different style and so much you can learn I got to learn a great deal over there you're flying coach over there well trying to be honest with myself here I was going to say indie wrestler just zooming down to Japan I think
because you're very right in terms of indie wrestler I was lucky that Atlanta was my home for so long 10 years with WWE so every status the greatest Delta status you could ever have so I used it was always my global certificates is what I used and sometimes you'd have to wait till you're literally scan your boarding pass.
And they told you, I think it's going to be you.
There's four open. And my wife and I would actually do that at the time, just praying.
Cause the other option was a little brutal for sure.
Especially if you're wrestling the day you land, like, Oh, so it wasn't.
So you did that. I forget what you called it.
What was it called?
The all -in one where you guaranteed like, I'm going to sell 10 ,000.
It felt like once that, once you got the 10 ,000 fans right away to go to the show, I felt like you had momentum because I was falling on the, on the dirt sheets.
I was like, Oh, this Cody thing might actually, who knows, who knows how this is going to go for this guy.
I think probably the two, two really large factors in it all going into the all in, this was an independent show by itself.
Ring of honor helped us produce it.
But I think the big factors for me was I had the list right when I left. And that was a list of places I wanted to go, things I wanted to do.
Uh, nobody had really ever nervous when you said you had a list. Cause like lists are very controversial right now I was like on the edge of my seat for a second this was just a list of opponents list of places and also nobody ever quits wwe you you end up you they quit you especially in your early 30s yeah that's really unusual and a legacy I had a great relationship with most people I had had big moments up and down the card and I just felt where I was at it was time to move but I had that list and the whole purpose of it was to mobilize hey I'm not lying to when i said hey i can do really cool
stuff and and and i can do it better and and i'm gonna go here i'm gonna go here and they were all over the map so that was a huge piece of it and the other part of it was that underground scene was forming with you could just see it for example wrestle con is this convention where it's a lot of legends x ww independent talent things of that nature it it will piggyback off of a big WWE event.
Usually we'd go a group of us.
We'd go and notice we had a line around the hallway to the elevator, down the stairs and out the door.
And then we'd see one of the legends, God bless him, not have that same effect.
So there was just this general underground rumbling that was happening.
That's why when the bet came up, somebody saying, Hey, nobody can draw 10 000 in america other than wwe it had been true up until that point and i i think fans felt they wanted to be in on that journey with us the only way i can describe that original original event was it just felt like woodstock every piece of it it was just we didn't know what we were doing but but we we were gonna fake it we were gonna fake it till we make it and the event i mean we had some talented people involved too i mean that was the other thing there's this This whole class of whatever we're calling this era of wrestling,
which I'm scared constantly for everybody involved, mainly because I'm old.
In terms of the physical, what you're seeing them do?
Yeah, because I just— And this has been— We're going back almost 25, 30 years here, but you just keep raising the bar and raising the bar and raising the bar with the stunts.
I mean, Mankind was, what, late 90s, early 2000s, going through the cage?
Going through the cage and off the cage.
The tooth coming through his nose.
but there's come some point where it's like I don't know if we can go any higher guys on the ladder jump and I don't know it felt like we were hitting it in terms of sports and sports entertainment I feel like one of the things about our game is that danger has just continued to go up in terms of high spots and physical things that you're seeing and unbelievable acrobatics and real Cirque style motions but it's just evolved that way it's really at so at the nightmare factory for example i we get so many kids who can do a 630 who can do a you know a sasuke special we do so and it's really great once
they have that awesome keep it you will need it you know some of the you'll hear people today say it's it's not about the the moves it's about the moments and then you'll hear kind of the old timers talk about storytelling versus the action itself and the actual truth is it's right in the middle it's it's really right in the middle that modern audience has seen what can be done.
And I think that right now, WDB is probably at its absolute best. And if they don't know why they're at their absolute best, that to me is one of the reasons why you've got the king of storytelling in a sense with say a Roman Reigns, king of storytelling.
And you've got a Mr. Heyman behind the scenes and Triple H at the helm, but then you also have guys who are just so unbelievably Unbelievably, if you give them the time, which Triple H gives them the time to go out there and do something physical and impress and steal the spotlight and take it.
There's a lot of really special folks.
For example, Mexico, we were just talking about Mexico City, Monterey had two shows this weekend.
WWE now works, you know, we're overseeing AAA or however we're putting it, but that's part of the WWE family now.
And to see their level of talent and Lucha Libre skills in the ring, which is again, Again, next level.
Two people who are on all in for Pentagon, Phoenix, both of them with WWE now.
So to have it all seems to be the ticket to success in the wrestling industry and keeping it successful.
I'm trying to think of the levels to this because I remember when Snuka was, when he was jumping off the top rope.
And by the way, we didn't have YouTube back then.
So when he jumped off the top of the steel cage, which I saw, I thought it was like 25 feet.
It was like, I don't know, 10.
in your head it was 25 yeah but he was one of the first ones Macho Man and people got a little more airborne but it really felt like the Hardy Brothers those guys when they started pushing in the 2000s but then we've had this other level of it in the last 10 years where I'm just scared the whole time I remember thinking like a pile driver seems scary although that's basically mostly been outlawed right pile driver it was outlawed actually at WWE up until Kevin Owens hit me with a package Pall driver.
That was unfair. Um, post, uh, the original, there are a return to Saturday night's main event, which, which by the way, was laid out in this Netflix show, which was incredible, which you've seen.
And I've not seen. Oh, really?
Yes. It's real. We have not, uh, I know WWE has been saying it's an unprecedented look into our industry.
Certainly unprecedented.
Apparently it is because I, I haven't seen it.
I keep hearing it's a really great episode and they, they really did dig in there and, and show a different side or a side people have hurting it from you of, uh, I don't know what they're afraid of, but I, I think it's going to be great.
I've heard good things.
What did you think?
I mean, I had heard we were going behind the curtain.
I was like, yeah, right.
It's behind the curtain.
Is it? Okay. It really is.
Like, especially, um, talking about the scene of Hill turn is like almost a whole episode and, and just how that's laid out and whose idea it was how they kept it a secret oh man and uh i'm intrigued it's i was surprised um but i feel like a lot of people know this anyway so you're lifting the veil off for yeah very few people i thought it was really neat i i actually thought it was uh it was the stuff i had always wondered about but never knew yeah um and then you get to it gave me new respect for like how much thought you have to put into every aspect of the behind the scenes and stuff maybe
that's the goal i know when i you sound like down on it no no gosh for me my whole outlook on it has been seeing these people in a different light not ria ripley out there in the ring not cm punk out there are myself my whole thought process is if if that's endearing to a completely new audience that now wants to come and check out what they do you know what we We do and see it.
For example, if you come to a WrestleMania, if you come to a SummerSlam, you're going to be a wrestling fan for life.
Usually there's always something.
Well, there's the stages.
How old are you? You have one kid or two?
Two. No, one. I'm sorry.
One. Sorry. I don't know why I said two.
How old is your kid?
Four. Yeah. So six is, it's like between five and a half and six.
That's when it gets you.
She's been, she came WrestleMania when we were in SoFi.
Yeah. She was just because it was pre -bedtime because it was a West Coast show.
So it ran earlier. That's probably my favorite photo ever because I got to go see her, have a moment with her.
And just this great photo in front of 70 ,000, 80 ,000 something people right before the first WrestleMania main event I ever got to do.
Yeah, it was really special.
But Unreal, my whole thought process is for new fans that don't know.
And they see somebody like Rhea Ripley, for example, our punk, and they want to follow them into the actual.
Now I'll watch the actual show.
that's how i've always thought it would be a good thing uh the veil has been lifted a long time certainly there's parts of it that haven't been seen but kayfabe does not mean what kayfabe used to mean yeah and i always tell people i'll give you a thousand dollars you can tell me what kayfabe means if you can actually tell me because it's it's a one word definition and nobody ever gets But to me, it's all about capturing a new audience because I feel the hardcore wrestling fan is pretty much like myself.
We're in. We're going through it.
I've watched my whole life.
I love it. I'll continue to watch it.
There comes a point where they're in or you're out.
Yeah. I don't know what age it is, but it's just you're there at some point.
Having kids helps because it kind of regenerates a lot of it.
Having Liberty is only four, but just seeing her react to like a Bianca Belair.
Yeah. Because we put Bianca and Clash of Clans as like a skin crossover where you can make the character look like Bianca and seeing her emulate the hair whip and sing the song a little very much opened my eyes to, I take it so seriously and try to get so nuanced and deep with pro wrestling and the story I want to tell that night in the ring.
It's sometimes not that deep.
Sometimes it's just big, bombastic fun.
But that's what was interesting about this show.
so I watched I was with my son my son's 17 he got sucked in around age 5 okay and my wife and daughter were at a concert so it was just us and I got the I got the screener I'm like let's watch one of these see if it's good and we're watching and we're all in we watch all 5 but it was the little stuff like like Bianca Belair was asking I think it was Rhea Ripley like she's like I really loaded up my ponytail tonight you good with that yeah yeah and and Rhea Ripley was like like no no i'm okay and she's like i'm telling you it's like really heavy tonight just be ready and it's like little stuff
like that where i was like wow that's really interesting that the she's worried about the effect of uh oh yeah that's but that's just the kind of stuff you wouldn't think about when you're watching this yeah let it well also to ria ripley probably totally fine with it because most wrestlers i know have a weird sense of like yeah bring it on yeah yeah nothing yeah I'm so it's so toxic yeah for example Sina turning on me my hands aren't up once on those belt shots and by standards today it's like please put your hands up please it's just this weird alpha toxic like yeah let me it's I don't even
know how to describe it but I think well you had the craziest one what did your pectoral ripped off yeah this guy over here year it just went and you just said fuck it and you wrestled hell in the cell i did uh and you had like i mean it was kind of gross it was your whole side of your body was purple had no idea how hurt you were but obviously you were really hurt but what you could do and it was kind of an amazing match it's uh i think the idea so many lies went into making it so that i could get in that ring that night because i was just refusing to do old school hey let me be laying there
backstage and who did it i just like you get hit by somebody driving a van right covid mask on it was like who was that it was the first uh first main event i'd had with wwe and peacock had a bunch of like subs went up on it and they told me that and it was hell in the cell with seth rollins this is spinning out of my my coming back at wrestlemania yeah i screwed up the backstory this was like your big moment.
So yeah, I'm back and what I said all along is, hey, I can be in the main event.
I can. I can handle it and I can be in it and I can do well for you guys.
So this was my first main event and here I am.
Oh, I'm going to have to go away.
I wanted to at least give them something to remember me by and...
Is that some son of a wrestler shit though?
Like where... Oh, big time.
Like you kind of grew up in the world and you just kind of understand differently that there's a different level of respect with going through an injury like that.
but here's the thing.
It's son of it's son of a wrestler for sure.
However, had my dad been alive, he wouldn't have let me wrestle because my dad didn't look at me like a wrestler.
My dad wanted me to be an actor and thought I was, Oh, you're like Michael Corleone.
He disappointed. He had a family business.
He legit, he was, he was very happy when I got into it, but my dad just babied.
I'm the baby of my family severely babied me and, and just took care of me in the greatest to me greatest dad ever but if all the other old school wrestlers were like yeah that's it right there that's that's old school all of he would have been the one to be like that's the dumbest thing i've ever seen why did you do that so i part of it was old school wrestler and and really again like i said i lied on the way i i kept it so the information was true wwe's doctors looked at me and said he can't hurt it any worse that was true couldn't hurt any worse but also but But it didn't mean it hurt.
That was the part. Yeah.
I was like, oh, I'm good.
I'm good. And was there a moment, like 15 minutes in, where you're like, shoot me in the head.
This is the worst idea I've ever had.
It's probably two minutes in.
Okay. Because I hadn't done anything.
Yeah. And so it detaches here by my armpit.
Yeah. But the other part is connected to your collarbone, right?
So when the detach here, it just falls.
There's nothing there anymore.
However, it would cramp up into the collarbone, spot so anytime you did anything it would cramp up it was giant it literally is sticking out this much and when that happened it hurt more than anything i feel like your collarbone was just going to come out of your body explode you're going to literally explode that was the only thing for me where i thought oh and also everyone was under the impression oh they're going to go like six minutes this is it's fine it's not going to be much that match was awesome you're in there with seth rollins there's nobody better and we got like 25 minutes there's
tables involved he He pulls out a toolbox at one point.
We just went for it because, again, wanted them to have something to remember me by.
I hate saying it, but I was really ashamed.
I'd never been hurt.
And then I finally got to the spot and I got hurt.
He's in here and you know Nick and Triple H and all these guys saying, Hey, you're right, Cody.
We're going to go all in on you now.
And then I felt like I'd blown it.
So I wasn't going to leave that spot that night without at least leaving a very large mark on hopefully the fans.
Yeah. You're like, I've come this far.
This is a seven year odyssey to get back here to this moment.
I'm not leaving now.
I think in my documentary, I said, it's a peck well spent, you know, like it's just a peck.
And you know something crazy about the peck surgery?
Dr. Dugas did my surgery and he's done like so many great athletes and wrestlers.
But right before, right before the surgery, he goes, you know, this is mainly a cosmetic surgery.
surgery. And I said, what?
He goes, yeah, plenty of people don't repair it and they're, they aren't fine.
I'm like, I don't want to sit out for six months for cosmetics reasons.
And then the next, you know, you're out and like, I'm like, well, no, he's just trying to make you feel better.
I think he was. Cause I was like, I don't know.
I was told this was very serious, sir.
But yeah, he said that right before it happened.
You're healthy now though, right?
Yeah. That's the only injury I've had the entire time I've been doing this.
Cause you're right.
You're You're right in that wrestler prime.
Wrestler prime's like...
Do you know the exact age?
I would say it's like late 30s into like the 42, 43 range.
Because you have enough, I would say enough experience.
It's 35 to 42. Yeah.
You hit it. Yeah. And now it's...
Your mic skills are going to be the best they've ever been.
35 to 40. You nailed it though.
But it's honestly like a stand -up comedian or something.
If you're a stand -up comedian, you're going to clubs for 10 years, perfecting how to feel in front of whatever crowd you're doing, how to how to have hecklers bounce off you everything and then you kind of figure out who you are and what you're at this the big thing is who you are and how you can handle every situation and yeah and and what you do is stand -up comedy is such a great parallel because what you do in a live setting we were in uh mexico city two nights ago and we did this spot where bad guys are beating up my partner on the outside they did it so many times that i used to watch watch
Undertaker do this thing.
When I was the bad guy, Undertaker come down on the floor, he'd snap the chair together where the whole crowd could hear it.
So just the acoustic of, oh, and then he'd chase us around the ring, but nothing actually happened.
Yeah. It was such a less is more situation.
And I got to do it the other night and it was just something that we felt in the moment and trusted the crew would know what's happening.
You hear that chair, you better run.
Yeah. Otherwise I have to hit you with it.
I felt so great because he actually was there at the show watching it.
it's like all right we passed on this knowledge and we can do things like that now you know there's two ways wrestling has gotten better since the heyday of your dad one of the great wrestlers of all time I don't know where he ranks them see if we had like first take for wrestling we would just constantly argue about is this guy better than Dusty Rhodes where does he rank between Hogan and I feel like I want to pull every time media a lot of the really great media moments that you'll go on and talking to really excellent people always ask the question what's your Mount Rushmore and I don't like
I don't like it I say I don't think people realize I I basically say a different one each time I'm waiting for someone to be like oh this guy's full of shit yeah so you just do different yeah that's a good word because I like that because how how can you do that there's so many eras of wrestling so many uh different and when hardcore fans start breaking in on technical stills on promos I guess that's better than just saying here's the four And then you get into the situation where it's, you just have to be really generic and be like, well, pro wrestling is about drawing money.
So, okay, here they are.
We've heard those four before, you know, like it's, you know what it's like, it's like actors are like this.
Cause in basketball, it's easier because you actually can come up with a list. That's going to look mostly like somebody else's list, right?
LeBron and Jordan and Russell.
And there's like certain guys at the top.
I think when I think about wrestling lists or actor lists or comedian lists, it's almost more like who if you start talking about it who has to be at least in the conversation as you're talking about it it doesn't have to be like seven four ten but like hogan clearly has to be on it right stone cold your dad so it's so funny it's like a short list but you kind of know who's on the list and everybody's list can be different but everybody's gonna have the same five people I just did a documentary on Hogan that was coming out.
And I did the interview a month ago.
And I actually kept saying, well, from the business standpoint, your one and twos of that time period up until recently, the one and twos were very clearly Hulk, Steve Austin.
So you can interchange them.
And up until recently, because we've been blessed that we're breaking all these records.
So we'll see how. If you're talking about one guy just selling out arenas.
everywhere who has a dramatic impact and it didn't matter whether they have the title or not.
See, Andre has to be on that too because Andre didn't even need the title.
So you're probably definitely right with Andre.
The only issue with Andre, it's a similar issue I find with my father, is the data isn't there succinctly.
Meltzer certainly tries to do a good job putting data together.
Shoemaker, a lot of people can look at it, but so much of it is lore lore, and so much of it is fantasy.
Oh, there were 60 ,000 people.
There probably was, but now we're really, I mean, the fire marshal is going to tell you how many tickets we actually sold.
It's way easier to track now these days.
And so I feel like a lot of it gets lost to the lore.
And part of me, if you've ever seen the movie Big Fish, where if Big Fish is, that's like my childhood.
It's a great movie.
It sounds familiar.
Big Fish is Ewan McGregor, right?
Oh yeah. Did I get that right yeah is it even mcgregor i'm sitting here saying it's one of my favorite movies yeah but the the end the end is uh that's the that's the moral is all these tales yeah he heard growing up that he thought well they're just tales and then at the you know not to spoil it for anybody but the funeral you find out oh oh my gosh such so many of these things were real so i like to think like andre you're probably very right and andre certainly i've got books in my basement booking journals from late 70s early stuff yeah great stuff and if you flip them open there's the card
there's how much money they made there's how much they made the last time and then typically on some of these that will say andre coming in battle royale uh and then you'll flip to where next year andre and always up always up he truly was uh you had to come and see him you know and gorgeous george was the first ever to do that and say martino was like that oh my gosh yeah Yeah.
There's some people that had really nice short runs though.
I still feel like Sgt.
Slaughter and Iron Sheik was one of the great feuds of the entire last 50 years of WWE.
And it was only in like three, four months, but it really mattered.
And the crowds went absolutely fucking bonkers with the USA vs. Iran stuff.
Sgt. Slaughter is, I feel, really underrated.
100%. He's got a street fight with Pat Patterson in the Garden.
and oh that's that it was like match of the year yeah pre and and you have if i told my students about that today they'd no clue even the people i'm talking about they wouldn't know pat i don't think they'd know sarge but i do have a selfish little sarge moment that i i you would be the first person i've shared it with but it was i mean it gave me goosebumps unbelievable made me feel so good and also made me feel like oh man i hope he's right but we're standing there for the 10 bell salute for the Hulkster and I'm standing next to Sarge I saw him out there, I was excited to see him and he's standing
next to me and afterwards they're playing the video package and you know, we're just out there and I shook his hand shook Hunter's hand and he said something to me and I didn't really hear it and I think I just said like, oh yeah yeah, just kind of like and then I heard him and he goes, no no carry the ball and I thought oh I mean it made me feel like 10 feet tall.
I had a promo later that night and I'm thinking, I got to go.
Yeah. Sarge just told me, carry the ball.
I better not let him down.
I was so excited. I got to hang out with the legends a little bit that day and I know the circumstances were somber, but to just be around Jimmy Hart.
Yeah, to be around Sarge.
Hacksaw, who I God bless love Hacksaw Jim Duggan.
That was really nice to be around.
Yeah, I was saying we got sidetracked.
I sidetracked myself.
I was talking about the two ways wrestling is different now versus then.
No, it's one is the moves and the athleticism, which we talked about.
And then the other is the entrances are all great now.
You go back and you watch the old ones.
Because I was thinking about that with Hogan when he had Eye of the Tiger and it was one of the first great entrances.
The Freebirds had, what did they have, Leonard Skinner?
Well, they were the first to have music, yeah.
Yeah. So it was very early on, only a couple.
Macho Man had the big, the big grand.
Pomp and circumstance.
Yeah. But now it's like everybody.
And a lot of them are designed for the crowd to be able to sing along at some point in the song, which you have. They didn't sing along.
I had that song forever.
Yeah. And now they do.
Now they get it. Yeah.
But that's how I think those are the two ways wrestling's better in HD.
So the songs, and Randy was talking about this the other day, Randy Orton, because he was, they sing his song like, word for word now.
And it's hilarious.
It's new to him. Yeah.
And he was talking with me about it.
And one of the things though about it is it's really old school actually.
Even though there wasn't music then, the whole point of what we're doing, the whole point, and I don't know if Unreal points this out and I bet you it does, is we're trying to connect with them.
It's not completely sport.
It's not completely entertainment.
None of it functions though without them caring.
That's the whole thing you know John Cena's rule if they start making noise he's coming up he's gonna fight back to see your guy see your girl and then you do a thing so usually it was something that affected the matches we'll cheer for such and such the matches we'll cheer against such and such in the match now it's we come we sing the song we say whoa we do the yeet we that is as old school as it gets actually it's just done in a very new package because the entrances are so highly Highly produced and part of it now.
I remember Road Dogg, Jesse James, and Billy Gunn.
Yeah. When wrestling made its big comeback for the WWE after WCW was kicking its ass.
But those guys would come in and do the entrance and sing the song.
And the crowd lost their mind.
Oh, you didn't know?
I mean, literally. Oh, you didn't know?
It was like they didn't even need to wrestle.
It was so good. It was like, well, I'm just here to do this and sing with you guys.
So if you were wrestling me tonight and I came out and the crowd was really receptive to Kingdom, the song.
and they were one like crazy and then they started the soccer chance the cody cody rhodes chance i'd probably tell you just kick me in the gut i don't need to do they seem good i'm good they seem good with me kick me in the gut and let him boo you and we'll just see how long it goes you know just because it becomes part of your match now well when punk came back finally to ww after 72 years of sitting out but that first time when he walked in and the crowd was just going nuts And singing his song And he almost didn't know what to do You could just see he was delirious It almost seems like he passed
out Must be a pretty cool feeling It's a pretty cool feeling And Punk's had more experience with this feeling Than I have But I feel like And this is something I was just talking about One of my favorite wrestlers Told me As things started to take off for me He said And this is right around Wrestlemania 39 -40 Right there in the spot and he told me that you're on the treadmill now the reactions are going to be through the roof the it's always going to don't take it for granted right remember the first time that they went nuts and treat every time like it's the first time that they went nuts and it
shocks me how right he was as far as when you when you find this whatever this elusive thing is that they like about you.
It's the most beautiful thing ever because then all the flips and the dangerous stuff you're talking about.
Yeah. When you do it, it matters so much more.
Like that's why this discussion about moves over moments.
No, and that's not the discussion.
If you have that connection and you do that really cool thing, they like to see that's box office.
And that's real. That's just, it's just, that's the whole, that's the whole thing.
And, and all because you mentioned an Unreal and now I really want to see this episode.
I'm taunting you that I saw Unreal.
You've seen it. You've seen it all far.
I think one of the things that presents itself for wrestlers that hardcore fans may not be thinking but the really smart smart smart super geniuses as I call them.
You're Michael Hayes and you're Mr. Haymans.
There's work that can happen within the work.
If you say hey this is all real.
Look at this. then it starts to become hard to figure out, wait, how, wait, no, that part's real.
And that's where you can do work within the work.
So you can still, again, the word that no one can ever tell me what it means.
You can still do kayfabe.
You really can. It's just different.
And that's the fun experiment we get to take as we lift this veil, but we cover this thing up.
I don't know. You know, I just, I think it presents options that wrestlers and And maybe the hardcore fans were a little worried about, oh, no, they're going to expose it all.
And maybe we expose this part.
But maybe there's a whole other part you didn't see.
Yeah, but think about like, what was that documentary they did about Bret Hart?
Wrestling with Shadows?
One of the greats. Yeah.
Which we cribbed some of that for the Vince McMahon doc, but the behind the scenes stuff of that match. After the match?
Yeah. That was like, holy shit, I can't believe somebody filmed this.
So here's my question for you.
Do you think... That was a documentary or do you think that was part of it?
So it sounds like you have a theory of this.
I have had a, I, whenever I tell somebody high level confidential stuff, I use Chris who's in the corner has probably heard me say this.
I say Brett, Sean level.
I have never heard from either that it wasn't as real as it possibly could get.
And maybe it was, it certainly ended up being real.
No doubt. However, I have questions.
there was a documentary crew backstage at a company that never, ever allows anything like that.
There's mics in the room.
This is amazing. Conspiracy, you've just activated conspiracy bill.
He's about to take off his sweatshirt.
This to me is always the work within the work.
And Shawn Michaels was my favorite wrestler growing up.
And I'm probably sitting here making him mad.
He's still my favorite wrestler.
But then you get to him and Hogan when they wrestled SummerSlam.
And they're like, oh, you can tell he's mad at Hogan.
When he was overselling all the moves But is he?
Or does this just seem like the one real thing On the show where you knew everything else was Fictional Two things that would be countered Conspiracy Bill loves this The loogie that Vince McMahon spat Or Bret Hart spat at Vince Was disgusting And looked like a giant oyster Nailed Vince That's the worst bump Vince has ever taken Second Vince did get cold cocked and wobbled out and had a black eye.
I don't know how they would have would have would have faked that one.
Well, it's pro wrestling.
You wouldn't have faked it.
Right. It was talking like again.
So if the whole thing was a word from beginning to end.
Yeah. Then part of it is he has to hit him.
We're talking about you saw Rhea and Bianca talking about there's no way to pull that.
It's coming. It's coming.
And I mean, this is great.
You really blew my mind with this one.
Yeah, I wasn't prepared.
I don't even want to do the podcast anymore.
mark i just want to go on reddit so growing up around my dad i always when something would happen on tv that felt like a shoot as we say yeah i'd be sitting literally front of the tv as they say like what crisscross applesauce whatever watching the tv i have my hasbro figures even though i was way too old that figures at that point i'm watching and uh he'd be behind me and i'd always look back like awesome and he just always smile ear to ear and i felt like in that smile i could tell he knew they were doing some high level work and the whole world was doing exactly what they needed to do and i
was like his litmus test i was his test on because we're talking about sean again and i i don't mean to i i love sean so much but he didn't understand why i liked sean michaels because he he was he was past his run he was just dad yeah uh but he oh that's funny he was like critiquing some of your choices so he'd never take my joy away though he'd always ask like what do you like about him oh my are you kidding look at him he's smaller and leaner but he's jacked and he's he's able to wrestle these big guys yeah are you kidding all the chicks like him and like yeah the whole and and he never tell
me otherwise he just and then I remember Wrestlemania 12 Bret Shawn they go the hour and i'm so disappointed like my guy didn't win again yeah again and then oh here comes they're gonna go 15 more minutes and again i looked at my dad smile ear to ear and i thought yeah this is they got me they got me and they just i don't know these could all be to conspiracy theory they could all be true they could all be total shoots they really could but the way i look at is anything and everything that happens in the ring i always look at it with a well that feels like it was part of it one of the best ones
ever was cm punk when he when he sat down cross -legged oh the pipe did this yeah went after cena in a real way and then people were mad and i i still don't know how much of that was real and how much of it was uh talked about beforehand i i like with a pipe bomb for example um i always even though we're getting into it now I actually if it's so good I almost don't want to know right if it's so good that oh hey that the rest of that show oh that seemed normal but this is this they're going to a place I wasn't expecting then I don't need to know it's like the magic you know what was your first one
because my first one was when Killer Con broke Andre the Giant's leg and then they got a whole thing about it and then finding out way later working the documentary that it was actually seen accident killer con felt really bad and I was like oh man why'd they ruin this for me I thought he did it intentionally I don't know if I had a I know for example sting got his ribs broken by Vader in the strap match oh but after I saw him and he was good normal but he was also leaving for a while and then I asked my dad in the car like oh the old he had to leave for a while anyway Anyway, it's an injury.
I asked my dad for a while, well, what's happened?
You know, what will he do?
He's like, oh, he's just going to drink milk and the bones will heal.
It was just a terrible answer.
He didn't actually come back.
So, yeah. But again, so I'd get to the shows as a kid.
Doug Dillinger, who was just on TV the other night, WCW's famous security guard, he used to knock on Goldberg's door.
Doug was like my guy.
He'd always print me this oversized, laminated backstage pass.
And I'd never want to be backstage.
I wanted to go sit.
I'd go find him. an empty seat and I wanted to see I just didn't care for the the mystery of it because I could tell there's something off like all these guys are shaking Dusty's hand and they're they're playing cards something's off but I don't I didn't want to know the it was it's still magic you know it was a tough one in the mid 80s was when uh Hacksaw Jim Duggan and I think it was the iron sheet got pulled over together that was in high school and I was like why were those guys together most of them one of them must not have had a car and maybe the other guy was giving him a favor you give
yourself all the reasons justified in my head so you missed i mean obviously because you were too young but you missed when dusty's apex so most of dusty's prime is me watching it on vhs right i didn't because i missed most of it too because i was in the wwf part of the country yeah and you would see him sometimes and i you know but i just the the week -to -week stuff that That made him so great.
It was one of the best mic guys ever.
I didn't know how over Dusty was until we did a show.
WCW did a show at the Omni in Atlanta and he was the executive producer.
And I was eight. I mean, at that point, I should have started to figure things out.
But Sting went out the back door to go to his car.
And as we went to step behind him, my dad kind of threw his hand in front of me.
He was like, just give him a second.
Don't, you know, give him a second.
it was strange and they reacted like crazy for staying and i'm thinking like that's so cool man look at that all the fans out there what a cool job oh because he knew and then my dad went out there yeah these people lost their minds yeah and i dusty dusty and i just like i couldn't believe it like i get choked up about it thinking about it today i couldn't believe like what like tell me more because we lived in this really snooty part of uh georgia east cobb it's like laguna beach without the beach so the wrestlers my dad we were like the adams family we he'd mow the he'd mow the lawn in his dr
trunks with ray -bans that his head was too big for that are like pulled into the side of his head the bleach blonde hair and gabe simpson uh you know from the braves was on the other side of the neighborhood and yeah he was like the real sports guy and then we were the goofy entertainment side of the other neighborhood but i just didn't know because parents would ask me about my dad and i had no clue and then i started looking into our own vhs's and old school reels and all this stuff seeing the florida stuff seeing all the crockett stuff because it's not like baseball or something where you just
look up his stats on baseball reference like oh dad hit 400 it really was atlanta the city you know um yeah and uh i i don't go there anymore but linux small man he'd walk into linux mall and i mean they a riot would start just he he was a going to atlanta hartsfield jackson the airport all the delta redcoats russian i mean no shots fired at atlanta but you could argue he's the best champion they've had in the last 50 years the sports haven't done great it's a tricky uh it's a tricky uh it's a little tricky uh i uh i'm a i'm a dogs fan so it's always good to cheer for the the dogs always good
listen the braves are gonna do okay you have a weird pro what's your pro football team you have something weird i'm uh i uh currently i'm an eagles guy yeah i didn't get that part so it's it's real easy and you'll be like i am college football this is my favorite thing love college football was so pumped when joe tess came uh to commentary because i've listened to him a hundred times but pro football is my sister cheered for the cowboys my oldest sister love the cowboys because my family was was all Texans really minus me.
So I'm like a fake Texan kind of, but by the time I was older, the Cowboys weren't the Cowboys like that anymore.
The Falcons. Are you fair weathered it?
Oh, I continue to fair weather.
This is how easy I am.
The Falcons as a kid, not great.
Jamal Anderson doing the dirty bird. Places losing their mind.
I'm in. I'm in. I'm a Falcons fan.
Doesn't go the way we think.
Okay. You auditioned a new team.
Yeah. So Michael Vick shows up Michael Vick season tickets sell out I was Michael Vick number seven jerseys everywhere it's Michael Vick that goes really terribly poorly to say the least and then really did lose like the franchise lose a lot of the franchise then okay Matty Ice makes it to the Super Bowl okay all right Arthur Blanks on the field okay it's uh -oh uh -oh and it's at that point get the helmet behind i do oh my gosh yeah so brady's great so you're gonna you're gonna hate everything about what i'm gonna say that's at that point where i just said i'm if atlanta gets there i'll be there
but i'm not i'm not against them but i'm really not going to get on the four of them train so tom brady becomes my favorite quarterback okay okay so tom i go to the covet super bowl just to see him throw the ball one time when he's with tampa bay which is an amazing story one season and they win a the Superbowl, whatever it may be.
But this is how easy I am.
I go to do media for WrestleMania 40 at TI at the stadium for Philly.
And this is a massive, massive sports franchise.
Yeah. They rolled out the red carpet for me.
They did. They let me have a room in the stadium.
They had all this media coming in.
They gave me all these jerseys and they gave me all this stuff for my daughter, an Eagle, all this, that moment, kids, gifts, kids, gifts, kids are a great way to steal 100 % and I knew I was going to be wrestling in the center of that field yeah the next year I and I had a feeling uh I was betting on myself but praying too I had a feeling I was going to be in the main event yeah so forever the city of Philadelphia because Wells Fargo is actually my favorite arena which is right in the sports complex there um that is that's going to be that's my wrestling other hometown is filling you know I feel
bad for the seven NFL teams names you didn't root for yeah well in the course of that journey I really wanted uh I wanted to root for a lot of people but listen it's like wrestling you get behind somebody yeah you gotta win and a winning season would work for me you just gotta win um but yeah Philly they became my team yeah I'm trying to think what wrestler I've stayed loyal to the entire time you do you do usually bounce around yeah Shane Gillis the comedian uh he's a big Philly's guy I mean an eagles guy he came backstage and he's all eagles up and i i think it's on record now that i'm i'm on board
with the eagles that's my team i'm going but it's not i haven't been born and raised you know that way so i was really hoping he didn't call me on any uh eagle nation stuff you know like you need to do like a little backstory yeah i need to i need to look in real quick before we started talking football but it was really cool to see because he's so into them and i they did did become my team I mean the fact that I got to wrestle right there on the 50 yard line and the biggest match of my life and yeah the you know WWE's biggest event ever and that uh yeah I'm linked to that stadium and that franchise
I'll allow the seven favorite thank you thank you you know it's funny you're talking about Dusty having all this old stuff there are all these pockets of wrestling happening in all these different ways in the 70s and 80s and like even you think like Jerry Lawler is just huge in Memphis right and that specific area he's a god and your dad's a god and like basically the entire south yeah but then when we did the um we did the vince doc one of the revelations and i thought i knew most of the stuff at this point but the revelation that vince was choosing between dusty and hulk and and wanted dusty
first and dusty didn't want to go and you were you were interviewing the doc you talked about it but um shocked me it's it's a pretty fascinating sliding doors yeah do you think dusty Dusty, I talked about this with Shoemaker, ironically, after Hulk died on my podcast. And we were talking about the three things that basically needed to happen for WWE to blow up, which was cable TV, Vince getting aggressive, trying to beat everybody else.
But then Hogan. Yeah.
Does it happen with Dusty, you think?
Gosh, I feel like the only thing I can think against him is the accent.
So one of the things that Vince actually told me, I didn't believe the story when my dad told me the story.
And then wrestling lore, you never know what to believe.
My dad telling me he was slotted for the spot, walked out of the hotel room, never came back because Vince had booked recording studio time.
They were going to make an album with Dusty.
Wow. All right. I thought this is complete dad nonsense.
Years later, Vince tells me the exact story, tells me how mad he was.
Dusty walked out of the hotel room on me and I'm thinking, what?
He really was in line to do it.
however part of the story he didn't say it in a mean -spirited way he said but it worked out better that i got hulk and that your dad got to go do jim crockett promotions help build wcw up from the nwa him and rick and everyone of course involved and all the great talented people they'd had i think it worked out better i i don't know the answer to that but i think hogan was was more of the now than maybe...
I think he made more sense with the Stallone, Schwarzenegger kind of...
That era. Let's fight.
Let's have these superheroes that basically fight the villains.
He just made more sense.
I think a lot of it, you could literally chalk it up to Dusty's subverting your expectations with his look was one thing.
But the look at the time and where it was going, especially if you look at the AWA, which most people don't realize, Hulkamania and St. Paul at the AWA was happening.
So I think it was probably the right call.
Dusty had a different delivery, a different way of talking people in, and Hogan was Stallone, Arnold, Hogan.
And Dusty was a little at the tail end of his prime, right?
He had beat himself up.
He was moving through.
Dusty's real prime is there's very, very little footage of his real, not prime, but his hottest stuff is Florida.
Championship Wrestling from Florida.
early mid 70s yeah Gordon Soli and Pac Song and Harley coming in and that was unbelievable I mean they were scalping tickets this is the Bucks are you know this is Tampa's main sport was was really championship wrestling from Florida at this this brief onset with the armory and the grams so funny it's crazy and um the only way you would know it was even happening was the wrestling magazines which of course I was always going through in the news oh yeah and they would just have these articles or photos and that was it.
There was no video.
I think, I also think too, dad was really proud of the three in the garden with superstar.
I think he wanted to walk off on the three.
I did the three in a city I thought would eat me up, you know, chew me up and spit me out in New York.
And they loved me and they took me.
I'm good. I'm not going to overstay my welcome i think he he was when florida would make those trades you know uh eddie graham would make trades with vince i love when they used to do that or they were just like i'll send you just make sure he doesn't get pinned send touch and touch yeah do whatever you want just make sure he leaves with the title or whatever it may be they had that trust vince senior and eddie graham and i i just thought he probably looked at it because he was so proud of those three i knew about those three matches before i knew about many things with him because that moment
was Was there a video of those or no?
MSG? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
I think there is. I remember seeing at least one of them.
Yeah. The first one, and I think the bull rope is on there, too.
The ropes are loose as hell.
Superstars flying all over the place.
I can't believe how much video there is of the 70s and 80s now.
Yeah. Like, my whole childhood is on there, basically.
But stuff you just assume would just disappear and you never even know about it again.
I'd say those garden ones are fun to watch. One of the things that was amazing with him was how athletic he was, your dad.
like he was like the most deceiving athlete i wonder like what other did he play sports in high school played everything and i remember i got really hot at there's another wrestler who was he did this interview and he'll never know this and he did this interview years ago where he was like you know it's not like dusty was some sort of athlete and i wanted to explain to him like buddy the whole point was he was an athlete he didn't look like one and he could do a standing dropkick he was the best basketball player I'd ever seen in my life yeah he just seemed exceptionally coordinate he was just
he didn't look at uh isn't there a video of him playing basketball yeah so there's some charity game or something right and he looks like he's like Charles Barkley just flying by everybody Charlotte Police Department and if you ask it's amazing you ask like Lex Luger or Sting who are both in it just running up and down Lex Luger just a lot of like post -ups where he's just left ball hogging if you ask him about it he said that dusty had a meeting before where he said if we lose to the police you're all fired and then they just they just went for it and all these just shots this is it was a real
bummer that that video exists and here's why uh fanatics who wwe and fanatics have this great partnership right they had me do the the fanatics fest physical events on the same day, I'm doing a signing and photo ops and stuff like that.
And to me, when you meet the fans, it's the coolest thing on earth.
That's my favorite thing.
I could do it all day long.
If I complain about getting up early by the end of it, I'm the happiest I've ever, I already feel the excuse coming.
Oh, I'm just, it's the excuse.
I go out on the one I was worried about was basketball because I'm thinking like, well, there's footage everywhere today.
There's footage of everything in every corner.
I'm in my suit And I'm thinking My suit's a disaster I'm not gonna not try this The suit's tough I can't say I didn't try I Kind of tried I did not Like just bone it And I miss Every single shot That's where you blame The pictorial I could It's just not I just don't have The same motion yet I was legit like Hot at WWE Talent relations For a minute Because Right I Guys The wrestler Out there Who they already think Is an athletic athletic looks you can't do that to me and i didn't i never said any of this because all of this is my fault i made like one great like slap shot hockey shot which nobody
got footage of uh did terrible in the football skills golf skills bombed but basketball where they're seeing all these clips of dusty just float like a butterfly and these beautiful layups and this jumper he had and then i'm out there and it looks like my legs don't like i it's so bad and the guy the mc is He's going, all right, all right, okay.
Let's get up for Cody.
Let's get him one. Let's get him one.
And it's so, like, I couldn't make, I couldn't get in there.
It was so bad. Yeah, but, yeah, Dusty was a deceivingly good athlete.
Did he save a lot of his stuff?
Because you mentioned, like, you had the journals.
Do you have, like, this war chest of things from his career?
I have a team for the Charter Oak Buffaloes, the Patriots.
He went to camp. Oh, you have even going back there.
Yeah, he's got, so I've got a program.
from Patriots where he's listed on the team actually.
I've got a lot of his baseball stuff because baseball was his better sport and my nephew now, Kellen, is kind of following that baseball journey and he's got skills from his dad and pops as well.
So yeah. What about the stuff from the 70s and 80s?
In terms of the wrestling stuff?
Yeah. Because nobody ever, people just threw that shit out back then and they didn't think to keep it.
I have a lot of stuff.
I'm trying to think if we got real good, from the 70s, I think the favorite thing I have is a photo album the photo album was a personal photo album so it's like him and Dick Murdoch on the boat oh wow from Victoria to you know Vancouver and then there's Hogan just randomly in the background as a young wrestler that you it's these really fun him Ric Flair when Ric Flair wanted to be rambling Ricky Rhodes when he was just breaking in the business and he weighs I don't know if you ever saw Flair in the 70s pre the back and oh yeah huge.
She doesn't even look like the nature boy at all.
So those photos I have, we've got some reels, stuff like that.
Anything that I find really valuable, actually we'll send to Ben Brown at WWE, who's the archivist. Yeah.
Cause I it's sitting in my basement.
It's better that you, I could always get it back.
I just want, it's better that somebody takes care of it.
Cause if you go to the warehouse in Stanford, I mean, they've got.
Oh, they have like a seven hall of fames in there.
Right. And the things you don't know are valuable.
You open up and it's, It's Pat Patterson's Booking Journals.
This is the most valuable thing in here, guys.
It's in the corner.
There's some real special stuff in there.
I remember when we did the Andre thing, they brought us back and it was like, here's Andre's shorts.
You're like, ah. I got a good Andre one.
Okay. I can't confirm or deny that Dusty was ever the Midnight Rider.
I should preface it with that.
But if he was the Midnight Rider, the Midnight Rider, as a ruse to get people off his scent, other Midnight Riders would show up.
Hey, I know it's you, Dusty.
And then the next thing you know, there'd be Andre the Giant or someone who looks like him wearing the midnight rider.
Oh, it can't be Dusty.
Right. This guy, this isn't, no, this isn't the guy who's been winning these matches.
So when I was younger, I went downstairs and I put on a midnight rider mask in my basement and it was a size of this, like this table.
And I remember as a kid thinking, oh, that's what my head will be that big when I grow up.
Not realizing that that was an oversized Giants, Andre the Giants, midnight rider mask.
Yeah. Size eight and three -fourths head or whatever it was.
Unreal. Because my sister has more memories with him than I do with Andre because him and Dusty were pretty close.
But that's one that, I mean, when anyone describes him, the type of giant he was, he was a real giant.
That's for sure. So you come in WWE, you're there for like, I don't know, nine, ten years?
Yeah. 2007. And then they trap you with the Stardust gimmick.
Everybody knows all these stories at this point.
But did you start feeling like this ain't happening for me Or were you thinking, this is going to happen for me, and I'm in the wrong spot, and I need to fix and solve this?
Because I remember the Stardust part.
I was like, oh, man, I don't know if this one's going to work.
I think I took pride in the first six months, year, which it should have only lasted six months, a year.
i think i took pride in hey this is a this is like the wrestler opportunity to make the most of something yeah classic okay you got chicken shit you're gonna turn into chicken salad the classic every wrestler who was ever good took the thing and ran with it you know polka dots is a great example on the old man i think i took pride in the beginning and then it still felt like a thing that oh no i'm locked out you know you start looking at the roster and going all right that guy i'm not getting by him i i get back him i had a list of all the roster uh the show i was on and like next to dolph ziggler's
name i remember i wrote abs i i had these it was a list of things that i thought all these guys are better than me yeah and i didn't realize the worst thing i was doing was competing with those guys was not the answer i was feeling sorry for myself super pity party all the time uh i was losing my relationship with people who i'd worked years prior i'd wrestled triple h at a summerslam as part of legacy and now we can't even get two words between each other backstage i was really just kind of developing into a bad apple and no doubt the booking was terrible oh bad chemistry guy yeah but so everything
was going bad and i was and i i think i even wrote it i i was starting to hate a place that i loved and And maybe the most mature thing I could do was I'm going to leave and hold on to the good stuff here.
No doubt, there's plenty of – the booking is terrible.
There's plenty of issues here.
But also, I'm not helping myself at all.
I'm becoming the worst me.
As I get older, I take more and more of it on me than I do put it on, you know, Vince or Hunter or whomever.
I try to put more on me about it.
But I think the thing that bummed me out the most was I talked to my dad every day.
Yeah. and I told you he babied me and thought I was just so good and I had a great athletic career growing up as an amateur wrestler and he just saw things in me that I guess I didn't see and that was the thing I was most ashamed of was that that happened and then he died so my dad didn't get to do any of the good stuff for his dad Virgil Sr. the plumber you know he passed away before the American dream had took over and really even got a good start.
I think he'd had a couple of matches and getting beat up by Fritz in Texas and stuff like that, but he hadn't had his run yet, or even a first run, whatever it may be.
That's the thing that bummed me out the most is I wanted to give my dad the WWE championship.
There's nothing fake about that story in that quest. I, yeah, this was the thing you didn't get.
I'm going to be the one to get it for you and we can have it.
And to this day, I still feel like immense shame over he just missed everything.
I couldn't get out of that spot.
I felt trapped. I was trapping myself.
God bless Brandy for putting up with me during that period of time.
And I needed to get out.
I've heard Nick Kahn say it before.
I had to go away to come back and be seen as an adult.
And I don't know if I see it that way.
But there's certainly some truth to that.
I was a kid. When I started there, I was 20 years old when WWE hired me.
Well, sometimes you have to think outside the box when you're on your own.
I felt that way, by the way, when I got my, I left this, where's the Boston Herald?
They're over there.
When I left that place, I had to figure out how to write a column.
And I'm just on my own.
I just kind of had to fit, but it made me better.
It made me ready for the next thing.
You probably had some of that.
Well, you bet on yourself.
But you also had the, you have to start thinking like you're booking everything.
think you're figuring out everything.
There's a strategy.
Yeah. I used to say you probably hadn't really considered before.
I used to strategize in my mind and the thing I'd always find myself saying, and I hate saying this, but this is during Stardust, I'd always find myself saying I'm smarter than these people.
I'm smarter than this.
I, why can't I get out of this?
All of these guys taught me stuff.
I worked with them all on a peer level.
They taught me stuff and I I can't somehow, none of it's working.
I can't. So I, when I left it, it became this kind of amalgamation of all the things I've learned from Dusty, uh, from, from John, from Randy, uh, from Hunter, from Sean, from Undertaker, all these guys who had wrestled.
And, and in the end, it's kind of like, you're talking about figuring out writing this column in the end.
I feel like I, it had to be me.
It just clicked. Yeah.
Maybe it was all that help.
Maybe it was all the feedback finally come to one but but in the end it has to be my voice it has to be what i want to do and and you needed some momentum too that wasn't just this is the roads kid and yeah no you needed you created your own thing yeah it was really cool and different you bet on yourself yeah the promotion you had felt different than wwe and in like these little different ways and then you know it just was a home run nobody had really challenged the wwe like that and what 20 years no it I mean since since the door was closing on WCW yeah but that was like that was a challenge
that was a walking corpse for three years exactly very short -lived in a sense and for me I was very almost volatile in how I came at it I had love and reverence this is my one chance yeah I'm not I have no way I'm not doing this right I had love and I had reverence for wb this is the house that built me it is but man i really wanted i woke up every day thinking i want them to know what i could have done i want them to know what i could have done which is why it's fun to talk about now because they came back and got me uh which wasn't on my that was never part of the master plan sometimes when people
look at me like oh he always was going back and nick khan was always talking about it you were i i just tell him he would tell like like the freaking Gardner getting Cody in a year.
Yeah, no, I, I, I had, I kept making it appear that I had a plan.
I had a plan, but really I wanted to make as much noise and disrupt as much as I could.
And I can't ever think of anything.
Cause I was talking about the two things and momentum and all that in the beginning, I found some of the best people around me who were feeling the underground elements of that.
And, and really, uh, like the three that I'd always cite and I'd I'd feel uncomfortable if I didn't.
Matt and Nick Jackson, The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega.
That group and Kevin Owens, God bless him.
He's probably going to hear this pod.
He's responsible for it because he linked us all together.
And that connection of my name and my equity and their skills and their moxie and the drive and just that anger that I had and what they had, all of that just set up a situation that couldn't fail, couldn't fail.
and also at the time Triple H doesn't realize he's a big part of this because at NXT he's bringing in every good hot gun off the independents so it's not about legacies it's not about tenure at WWE anymore it's about who has the hot hand so it was a matter of like well let's I'm gonna be the hot hand and I don't know if I'm gonna come back with it what are we gonna do and you know we're off to the races with it at that point but that was a really huge part of all the skills I had combined with really great people around me really great timing great timing And you never really talked about leaving
AEW, but it felt like - It's locked behind a paywall.
Yeah, apparently it is.
But did you feel like that had a shelf life, or was there a moment during that run where you felt like this was home, you're going to be one of the building blocks of this, and that was going to be the rest of your life?
Gosh, it's hard to kind of put myself in that spot again, but I started to get a sense you know Michael Hayes is really famous for always leave the territory at your hottest I started to get a sense that all wrestling needs change guys are going to go from company to company oh you got to keep it fresh guys are going to go down for a minute then they're going to come whatever it may be I just got the sense that it might be time for me to move into something else and I didn't know what that was I remember thinking oh that'd be crazy to be part of the the Royal Rumble to come home.
Yeah. Cause you know, I've made another home.
I got kids at this home.
Basically I got a lot, you know, but to show everybody, cause the first meeting I have with Vince and Bruce Pritchard, I didn't think I was coming back.
Yeah. I was excited to go to that meeting to say, and this is going to sound crazy.
I wanted to tell them both.
Thank you. I left on crazy, bad terms. No one can ever leave. Like I left because of how I left. I didn't even even sign my release papers.
Like Chris probably could sue me over, you know, like I was, uh, I, I left in a terrible place.
They let it happen because of probably more respect for my dad than anything.
And then I went out and I fought so hard and filled with rage.
I mean, I'm smashing the throne.
I'm, I'm just, I'm bleeding.
I'm setting myself on fire.
I was just, I don't know, going through it and living it out for everyone who was watching, but I wanted to tell them both thanks.
You guys helped build me and train me.
And I took all those skills and I took them everywhere I went.
I took them to every company, to every independent, to every, I got to reinvent myself on how I wanted to be here in WWE.
I got to be that outside.
And that's all I thought it was going to be.
A sense of closure, a real sense of thank you so much, uh, for lessons I never got to thank you for.
And then it turned into be something else by the end of that meeting.
But, you know, was the fear like 2022 at A .W.
is going to 2024 is basically be the same thing.
And you're just running back years, but nothing.
You're not elevating anymore.
You're just kind of you're kind of here.
You can't go here. Gosh, I know that that was my perception from afar.
No. Yeah. And I feel like maybe that's maybe that's a little bit of it.
I think I started thinking about writing a book the other day.
I've never even really considered writing a book, but we've done some fun stuff.
I think it would go well.
Right, and I think that's the, I was thinking of, what would I say?
How would I put it?
Because there's clearly bad blood, but there's also clearly respect and love.
And in the end, the way I kind of see it is, if I felt disrespected ever at WWE, that's one thing.
that's a company that was built look at this glass you know that's that's a that's that's the yankees that's the flagship of it all if I ever felt there you know I was I was a number on a sheet maybe it but feeling disrespected at something I built yeah with with my friends and with us with that we built feeling disrespected there I I wouldn't stand for it and and and I i think brandy and i both uh i'm so blessed to have her it was one of those where it was fuck it like i did way more here than you think and you're gonna find out the moment i'm out the door and i i hate saying that with any sense
of anger or rage but i'm like the angriest person you're ever gonna meet i'm always i'd like to be in the top five right so like when you said that I was thinking about when I left ESPN, I was like, okay, guys, you're going to say right.
Same thing. Like it made me so ready for the next thing to me, the greatest, I don't believe in like the cold hearted backstabby type of revenge.
The greatest revenge on earth is success.
And I felt like we were sitting on something wonderful, something great, a huge potentially with what I was doing with the American nightmare as a bad guy, as a good guy, something in between we're sitting on something magic.
And if I'm not going to do it in the house that i literally with matt nick and kenny built then buddy i'm going elsewhere and uh every day i am so blessed that bruce richard nick and triple h got me vince got me back because i get to live it out now i get well you know it's funny the way you laid it out because i watched the first couple episodes of uh netflix has this big cowboys documentary oh yeah that's coming and it's about the Jerry Jones era so I made I made them send me a couple episodes because I wanted to watch it you get all the stuff huh well I just badger people no I just badger people
and I break them down eventually but the Jerry Jones Jimmy Johnson thing where Jimmy Johnson he brings them in he's building through the team through the draft he's coaching it he's doing everything and they have real success they win but at some point there's a little bit of a schism and the schism comes down to to jimmy johnson be like dude you brought me here to do all this like this is let me do my thing and jerry as they had more and more success started to think he was a little more involved with the success that maybe he was and just coincidentally reminded me of your situation maybe i
feel like at aaw probably similar and it hurts even more when you're tasked to do something when somebody sees it with their own eyes but then i don't look at any of it i said i was really angry green rage I don't look at any of it with really any negativity and here's why I got to be part of WWE again right it all worked out great and I got to be part of WWE we're we're talking about Austin we're talking about Hogan two of the greatest ever to lace up their boots and draw people into the arenas and every one of those records has been broken and I got to be in the matches that broke those records.
I got to stand across from my Marines at 39.
I got to do it again.
I got the quarterback spot at a company where I was last in the combine and I am very grateful.
That's why I have such trouble articulating and that's why I want to write this book because I'm very grateful for, Hey, okay, this schism happened.
But the outcome is I got to be with the biggest game in town and not only did i get the spot i got to show them i could do it you know because what are we in now three three years or four i'll say it more simply it was a good career move good career move it really was yeah good career you join and all hell's breaking loose with vince which i'm not going to put you in the position to talk about here um and then you don't want to put my media training to a test well i just like you're just because some because when you do interviews like this.
And then people are like, why don't you ask him about this?
It's like, cause you're going to give a shitty answer.
Like nobody, neither of us want to talk about it.
That's what it is. You can Google it.
Sometimes you give a shitty answer and then somebody will ask a follow -up and the next answer is even worse.
Right. Like it just goes, it's just like, Hey, there's no answer here.
You know, it's yeah.
Vince was there almost 50 years and now it's not.
And we, we all know what happened.
yeah um but you have that and then you have your you get hurt so you it's like two things like fuck is this and you start to think like is this is this is it am i yeah my snake bit here what's going on and then everyone thinks you're going to win wrestlemania you don't yeah but i thought that was kind of really smart in retrospect that you did yeah i think that was well played you'll be the second person uh but probably the first people ever hear this i i had jelly roll on my podcast recently it's it hasn't come out but he i asked him what his like most complete song was i don't know why i thought
that was a good question i was like you know where you felt like you were checking every box all your skills and i told him my favorite match is wrestlemania 39 which is the one where it doesn't happen and uh it was really smart it i i probably would have been pumped to win certainly i i gosh to to but there's something about that night where things things were happening in the arena that had, or the stadium, but it never happened to me.
He's got me in the guillotine choke.
Yeah. And you hear these old timers and God bless him.
I love him. Talk about, you know, just stay right there.
And the people will react and they'll, when, when you've seen the amount of cool flips and awesome stuff, sometimes that's, that seems like, I don't know, maybe that's not real anymore.
And then in that moment, I remember I'm just slowly wiggling my head out and I can hear an entire higher stadium where the sound goes up, start to move.
And I thought, oh man, this they're into this.
How, how blessed am I that they're into this?
And it just, when it's that good, it feels completely real.
Everything seems real.
Roman is the greatest enemy of my life.
And I'm trying to climb a mountain that's impossible to climb.
And that just acoustic moment for me, I'd made it my favorite match of all time.
That's cool. I couldn't tell anyone that though, cause it was the saddest ending and then like walking right back.
But yeah, it's my favorite match. Roman's a good example of somebody who had to eat some shit and it made it better.
That's a great example of I'm going to show you guys.
Oh, you think I got handed this or this was too early?
Fuck you. How many years of Roman where he was in the spot that he was getting booed?
It was a couple, more than a couple.
It was like three or four.
He wasn't quite ready yet.
But all that's happened.
But it helped him. Right.
And so this is when people today complain about Roman and oh he's barely ever there he's paid so much whatever may i i always think guys do you see what he the run he had yeah who he went through what he went through there was probably nobody on earth equipped with it and had the will and drive like a roman so if he's decided hey i'm coming a few times i'm gonna look great people are gonna lose their mind superman punch beer that's a gift to us it's a gif when he shows up I think people forget that that he he basically earned the right to call whatever shots um he wants I I think very highly of he's
great he's great in the ring he's great in person yeah and the other thing I've been to a lot of these now over the years presence is a thing that it's not a stat when somebody comes in and you can feel it um people either have it or they don't he definitely has it and he had it even when they were trying to, Vince saw it, I think, pretty early.
This guy has it, and he just pushed him out.
But I think, ultimately, I think anybody who really makes it, you have to walk out to a 60 ,000 to 80 ,000 seat stadium and carry it somehow.
And it's not just music.
Yeah, he's another one that reminds me of Dusty a little in a sense that his athleticism is also, that he could do a whole lot.
You're right. Undertaker is the all -time example, though.
Of his athleticism?
Undertaker was like fucking Dr. J when he would do the walking down the rope thing how many people on the planet could do that and just the even harder thing is hook the top rope fall backwards over and land on his feet because he could never come off his feet that early 90s Undertaker is out of control one of the great athletes how you know is he's positioned as this monster zombie killer what we would assume a heel and then oh no people love Undertaker we're just putting him with bad guys we don't have to make him a baby just put bad guys and the idea and just there's very few people who ever
earned the respect that undertaker has and and i i came to a show at uh msg i think it was 14 yeah gold dust dustin was wrestling and he said uh when i got there um he says are you coming backstage i said i'd love to he goes well i need you to meet undertaker before you do that so that was the thing i said hello and he's super nice i'm 14 yeah he was almost like the bouncer of the entire locker room bouncer I always used to, because he's such a cowboy.
To me, he was like the sheriff.
He's legit like the sheriff.
So when he shows up at WrestleMania 40 in my match, for any younger fan that's like, what, Undertaker?
To me, it made perfect sense.
Sheriff's coming in to even the odds, help out a good guy in need.
It was just, yeah, he had more respect than most people I've ever seen in a locker room.
I mean, to this day, he's such a great locker room leader.
More fun to be a bad guy or a good guy?
everyone's going to tell you bad guy.
But I think that's because they haven't experienced what good guy can really be.
Bad guy is fun because you can fall on your face and make a spot out of it.
Bad guy is fun, you can stumble on your words in a promo and make a moment out of it.
Bad guy is fun because traditionally a bad guy leads the match. But a good guy or good girl that they are actually invested in, that they came, they're wearing your shirt, They've got signs.
There's all this argument always about, oh, Cody turn heel.
I don't think so. They can boo all they want if certain people decide like, yeah, Cody's a heel to me.
But I don't think I'd ever turn because it's just too much of a connection with those who were on board with me.
I think it's harder to be a good guy.
So that's the thing.
I think it's harder.
It's harder to pull it off, I guess I should say.
and for a while they were extinct because they just wanted anti -heroes and social like edgy social too yeah tv and wrestling always marry each other oh my gosh yeah an edgy social kind you know yeah all everybody every heel out there has got the best social media and the best one -liners that leave most baby face like dick in hand uh what do i do you know what i'm saying like yeah so you've got to be a really good baby face you have to kind of rise above it and that's that's That's very hard. Jey Uso I look at as probably a great example is most so, so popular.
And it's not easy. It's not easy to make that connection with them.
And I feel like it's even harder to keep it because baby faces get beat up a lot on TV.
And to me, it's just such a gift. I certainly, yeah.
Well, yeah, you're selling the villains.
Yeah. It's the first, so Bob Backlund, when I got into wrestling, Bob Backlund was the champ.
He was champ for like five years.
Yes, he was, yeah. And he was like the perfect guy for back then because he was just the vessel to have all these awesome bad guys that they had.
Because they had great villains.
And he was an all -American guy and he had the crew cut.
But it's hard to have runs like that.
Cena did it forever.
But even as it was happening, the crowd was like, he was polarizing in the moment.
It's funny today because like John for so long was booed in certain markets, cheered in others.
He really was so unique and you felt strongly about him.
You weren't getting up and leaving.
You were going to boo.
You were going to cheer.
Today, I feel like we are so, our attention spans are a little shorter.
When they start booing a good guy, people think it's time for a, no, no. Yeah, flip them.
To me, I just call it an away game.
I always know, too.
I know when it's an away game.
Hey, we're going into their arena tonight.
It's an away game. Wrestling John right now, heading into SummerSlam.
That freaking traitor.
Right, right. How dare he kick you in the balls?
How dare? And then how dare he make a shirt for every city featuring every sports team and every, we have to celebrate the farewell while he's in this nefarious state of mind.
That's why on Smackdown this past week, we talked.
How dare he sell his legacy?
Right. Well, so we talk about like, what's, what's real, what's not.
I'll tell you something that says as real as it gets last week on Smackdown.
Give me carte blanche.
What I want to say in my promo, what I said in my promo was very simple.
Just be the real John Cena.
they're already happy for you.
They already love you.
You spent years building equity with them.
I could care less. Stop.
If you got to boo me, if you say, let's go Cody, Cody sucks.
Fine. Well, I'll take it.
I got raised in the industry to be able to take it.
Let's be you. If this is your last SummerSlam, come like it's your first. Be you.
And then I don't have to stare at a sea of, nothing's weirder than you're my favorite wrestler.
wrestler somebody telling me you're my favorite wrestler when they're wearing the entire cena uniform the entire farewell i'm like all right well yeah didn't help me tonight but but yeah so for me just i want him to be john and and uh i don't know he's uh he's the most unique soul there is in the industry so we'll see what we get that was way too magnanimous because that guy's a jerk yeah he sneak attacked you right can't believe he let you down he let down all the You've let Travis Scott slap you?
Travis Scott kind of took some liberties, didn't he?
No, no. Travis Scott, I feel like if you're a wrestler and you can't take getting slapped in the face, you're not that great a wrestler.
However, the mark just looked really bad.
So it was one of those where I couldn't the next few days, everybody's like, what happened?
I don't know. And there's a clear fan video of just, it just happens.
It's just part of it.
Do you get mad that the Paul brother is actually good at wrestling?
I think it's bad for wrestling.
He just steps in and he's immediately doing crazy moves.
I don't know. If he had just stepped in and could immediately be as good as he was, I'd be furious.
Could he put the work in?
One of the hardest working people I've ever seen.
And the other thing is, really, if you consider him a heel, that's okay.
Because the guy is a complete, you keep saying jerk.
Logan is as prickly as it gets.
Yeah. However, his story of doing the work is as accurate as it gets, and his secret weapon is Shane Helms. Shane Helms, who's a producer at WWE, they're attached at the hip.
They're talking wrestling.
They're training wrestling.
He took it as seriously as anybody ever.
I have a feeling he's going to end up being world champion or WWE champion at some point, and the internet will explode, and we'll all be fine.
We're going to be okay, but he is very special.
special as legitimate as a prick as you could meet though in a sense like oh this is this is a slap cheers to this but i love having him on the team he is as valuable i mean he is he is a massive asset to wwb gonna be a future champion for sure what's the maddest you've ever been in the ring at somebody as you guys were going back and forth and it got actually in a way where you're like i'm gonna actually fight this guy after we're done maddest i've ever been have you had one?
Because they did this they covered this on Unreal where it got a little it got a little testy with Charlotte and what's her face I'm blanking who did she wrestle Tiffany when they got they it kind of went back and forth and it got to a point where Triple H actually had to get mad at them on the show is that that's in the show is it Unreal or is it that's an Unreal kind of from a conspiracy level what do you think I don't know Conspiracy Bill bought off Total Real it seemed relatively real brent sean like where do you where do you put it it was real you're saying seem mostly real okay okay uh mine
it was an 8 out of 10 real 8 out of 10 real okay mine was not even in the ring i did commentary me and my brother did commentary on a tag match as the brothers yeah and they had told jbl and i don't know who the they is but they had told jbl to eat me up on commentary.
And he did. And it was like a roast. It was not even like a rose.
I remember he said, he asked me a question.
I said, I replied with, honestly, I'm about to make my answer.
He goes, no, I want you to lie to me.
And then he just kept going.
And I'm again, nothing makes me feel weirder than when you're supposed to protect the good guy.
Yeah. But you, I, but then also it's like, Hey, if you're, if you don't know how to defend yourself, you're not going to be that good of a good guy or whatever it may be.
I learned a lot. JBL is one of my favorite people ever but I remember that night that's the most I've ever thought okay you just want to hit him over the head with something well I just wanted to explain like what what's the point right are you and I wrestling are you are you are we wrestling because if we are that was great so he's testing you yeah and he tested me and I'm okay with that test and I failed that test now that I look back at it I'm totally okay with that test I'd probably want to test somebody too but I failed that test which again as older I get the more I start to put the impetus
I put it on on me that this was, these were my screw ups.
I said I was ready and I couldn't handle JBL on commentary.
Maybe I wasn't ready.
How do you do, you don't have to name a name, but how do you do a program and plan out stuff with somebody you don't like?
Like if you're doing a match, like you're doing like a, like a six week arc with somebody and you actually have to spend some behind the scenes time.
You do it with more love and commitment than you do with somebody you do you like you you interesting yes so it's like fake friendship you i i mean hey man how you doing i think you like hate the guy there's just a lot more of when you're talking a lot more of this so that you know i'm serious he knows i'm so that because okay you if you come backstage at uh raw or smackdown you'll see wrestlers shake hands to a level that's like what why why you We've shaken hands three times.
Why are we shaking hands?
My trainer, Al Snow, I remember him asking me.
He said, do you know why we shake hands?
I thought it was a simple answer.
We respect each other.
It's about respect.
He goes, yeah, you know, that's one of it.
He goes, the real reason, though, is we need each other.
You're supposed to pick me up, slam me, look like you hate my guts, and want to murder me.
I'm supposed to get up safely, and we're supposed to do that the next night.
Well, and you're putting your life in somebody else's hands.
You're putting your life in someone else's hands.
and wwe i think is more of a team -minded unit than i've ever seen before there are plenty of people who dislike each other there's plenty of people who i oh he's great love him uh but never has it been more uniform in terms of hunter is really good hunter and nick are really good about this is the direction this is the direction we're a team we're all going and that's not just the wrestlers That's the whole company.
Everybody gets on board with the team.
So it's really, you just go at it with more love and commitment than you would if it was one of your buddies.
One of your buddies, you can almost, like Jey Uso kicked my head off the other night on Raw.
It's a replay of it.
My whole face moves.
It's like a boxing punch. I loved it, right?
Yeah. But when you're working with someone that maybe there's not that trust and empathy and love with, then you go at it a little differently.
But that makes great TV.
Who do you think is next generation, generation below you?
So I'm going to say in the 24 to 29 -year -old range.
To look out for? Who do you have your eye on?
Anybody? There's so many guys.
By the way, I think Rhea Ripley is incredible.
Unreal, huh? And not to plug the...
Yeah. No, but I mean, I really like in person.
Yeah. Probably the most presence of any female wrestler I've seen and also really talented.
I don't know how old she is.
I think Rhea, well, that's good.
She's probably in her prime, though.
That's good. She's in her prime.
I think Rhea is. But there's no younger one where you're like, whoa, oh, my gosh, there's more women training to get into the business than there are men.
Yeah. So right now at the Nightmare Factory, my school, all my favorite students, I'm waiting for a guy to come along and finally have the skills, you know?
I'm trying to think of a young up -and -comer at WWE because there are many.
Because there's probably some NXT stuff, right?
Dominic Mysterio will end up becoming a massive, he already is, but Dom has a connection with the audience and the work is coming.
It's kind of reverse.
The work is coming.
He gets heat. I got to say, you can feel it in the crowd.
He also works with people that are really, he can see some, his father's the greatest example.
When you're around people like that, you learn things that no one can teach you, right?
And other than someone who is, I don't want to use the overword, but somebody who's extremely popular, someone who's over.
So Dom is someone definitely to look out for in terms of specialness.
My gosh. And then there's just a whole, I mean, if you look at NXT, Oba, who's coming up, Oba's really special.
Ricky Saints, Ethan Page, he's another one that if you meet Ethan Page, he could be 50 or he could be 25.
He's got a really unbelievable skill set.
that's what I like the most about the WWE currently is that if someone was to move to go we've got people ready we've got people ready now it's going to take time we're talking about Roman takes time and takes years my dad used to say it takes two years for a guy to really connect with the audience Cena will tell you it takes five years for a guy to connect with the audience but sure yeah right so that that that bastard uh but uh you know the uh I think we've got a lot of Sean's really trained a lot of people really right, but there's a lot.
So Sean was your guy.
He was your favorite.
I say, I've talked about him way more on this pocket.
He was my favorite growing up.
Yeah. Cause I went to the Boston garden WrestleMania when Tyson was the referee.
He's sick. And Sean had like basically a broken back and they did the match. Yeah.
And he, he sells it.
He does. I like you, you wouldn't really know.
You knew he wasn't a hundred percent, but you wouldn't really know the match and it went dark.
But did you know he was a hundred percent?
Hunter, did you carry him off?
Yeah. Did you know he was a hundred percent?
or was that the story going around the building that day?
Are you conspiracy billing me again?
I think he's the best in the business at giving you something else.
I just said, oh, he was sick because my dad on the couch behind me, I heard the kid's really sick and he's pale and he's backstage and they show him, I think it's him, Hunter in China, they're all walking and then he goes out there and he looks super pissed off.
He's also throwing his head into the steel steps with that weird toxic grit we were talking about.
out he might have had a bad back he did I mean he clearly he had a broken disappeared for like two years he might have had all those things he might have had I think it was bronchitis was the rumor going around in the in my home or he might have just been Shawn Michaels and creating magic out of magic yeah unreal I'm telling you really give us the unreal that's why if any fan is worried about unreal the work within the work I will never I don't let Chris VanVleet who's a a wrestling podcast guy he asked me one time the scariest question anyone's ever asked me in a podcast and i i didn't know how
to answer it he said you seem like you're always in character you're always wrestling you're always talking because you're ever not and in the moment i realized oh no i think you're really like this i right i think i am too but i might be too deep in andrew schultz i do his podcast and he's like oh he's just wrestler talking he's just and i'm I'm thinking, am I?
I don't know. I grew up in this.
It's so hard for me to determine, like, where are we at with all this?
So, yeah, that was a scary question.
That was the weird thing.
I remember Hunter came in.
He's so many names.
What do we call him?
Paul, Triple H, Hunter.
Like, what do we go with?
I say, and I think it's the worst choice.
I say Hunter. Yeah.
But then I hear others say Paul.
I don't know him as a Paul.
And then I see, I hear people like, hey, trips.
Trips. And I don't think I'm cool enough to hit him with a...
Trips? Trips. Trips is...
I don't know, yeah.
So, but yeah. That's like when Magic Johnson's teammates called him Buck.
Yeah. Like, he had, like, this extra nickname that it was, like, a special nightclub for the big thing.
I just say Hunter. Yeah, he came in to see us, like, when I was at ESPN.
Grant, we did a pod.
Yeah. And just being around and watching, like, different, the different version of him, I was like, oh, I think this is probably who he actually is.
Like, the low... Yeah.
Soft -spoken, kind of intense guy.
Yeah. but then you see him in wrestling he's a completely different human you seem like you're around the same at all times i i mean i'm a big i'm a big fan of his when i left i was doing things to i tried to steal a lot of his playbook uh in terms of the the evp role for example i i've modeled a lot of stuff after hunter but i find it if i don't ever have the chance this is a perfect chance to he is probably one of the top three he's one of the most important people in my professional life and it's like i didn't know he was until so recently the first time you left wasn't he like kind of shocked
yes it's like really he shocked and he was one of the first people to text me uh when i won a world title outside of wwb hey good job he had no reason to to be watching that show.
And maybe just the fact that he kept tabs on me, but all that kind of shame I had over not being able to do, have this run that I've been so blessed to have that my dad never saw.
I, I do take some solace in the fact that I get to be around Hunter.
Yeah. Cause they were tight.
So, you know, I, if my dad was to wake up and walk in the room and see Hunter and I holding my hand up at WrestleMania are at these press events or things of that nature, there's something special about that.
I don't know if it was destiny or what, but Hunter's been extremely...
I watch him at all times almost because I love how he operates at WWE.
I love how he runs the team.
Part of me inside wouldn't mind another shot at...
I'd love to try behind -the -scenes stuff, right?
Well, if you get behind the scenes again, Again, I'm just, the two championship belts are too confusing.
Two champs. So like a world title.
The heavyweight championship and then the world.
It's like just, we need to call one of them like the WCW belt.
Just like make it easier in my head.
I'm old. You need one title, huh?
I like the old days when it was the WWF title and the Intercontinental title and we had the two titles.
You're not wrong. Do you know the reason why two titles, it's not wrestlers and it's not the booking.
You know why we have to have those?
For the two different shows, right?
For the two different shows.
It's their fault. Well, we want the champion on our show.
All right. Well, this is that champion.
Can you imagine if the NBA did this where it's like, Oklahoma City won the title, but what's the thing they do in Vegas?
The Commissioner Cup?
Oh, yeah. The Commissioner Cup was elevated.
It was the same level.
And it's like, there's the Commissioner Cup title, the Milwaukee Bucks.
I'll say one thing about the two titles that helps us though, is the guy who's wearing wearing the world title and the guy who's wearing the WWE title always looking at each other of the fall like I'm better than you or I want to be better than you I want to and when you get to a live event like say you're just doing a non -televised live event well who's on last right that's the so there's a again the real competition that sits under day one day two because SummerSlam's two days yeah so what's the better day because like when I went to at WrestleMania I went to day one day two is the prestigious
day right or does it so they both are technically main events so that's not a lie when we say WrestleMania main event which day would you rather be on Sunday and that's just again back to old school wrestler toxic I want to be the last thing they see before they go home well I like the two day thing because I went to the famous with my son the New York WrestleMania that was I think I'm still there, actually.
The really long one?
I think I died. Yeah, the one that was like seven plus hours.
Is this MetLife? I actually think I'm there still right now.
Yeah, well, that's why we have two nights.
Yeah, that was the longest day of my life.
My son, of course, loved it, didn't pee once and was locked in.
He was locked in. Locked in.
Well, also, I love he didn't pee one time.
He was in. Didn't pee.
Didn't want to miss one thing.
Night one, if a wrestler's told you're on night one, often they might say one thing outwardly but inwardly night one is a huge opportunity because the crowd is prime yeah it's prime and I feel like it makes it so that night two if you're a night two guy it's a lot harder now bar's been set we just saw how are you gonna and then when a good night one guy ends up on night two they're in the same position so there's a beauty to night one as well there really is I like so I've had four Wrestlemania main events my mom only would say it's three because she she doesn't count night one but she's not oh
I count night tough critic yeah well she she's as tough as they get she's she's she's uh I mean she grew up around Andre the Giant and Dusty Rhodes so the very little I've ever done has impressed her but when I can get her it's it's pretty solid so it's pretty solid but you need Need the, need the title back.
It's funny when you're around someone who was around the business, my dad and married to him the majority of his professional career and still says things like, I was sad you lost the title.
I was sad. And then still ask you things like, yeah, oh my God.
It's great for moments like this.
You could have brought it today.
You don't have it. Everyone takes a picture with it.
It's a whole thing.
But it's, it's, it's sad though when she calls you then hey how you doing well good it's just she's still she's still I guess it's real to her you know that's hard on my family though I think the worst part is losing the title but then you have to figure out when's the right time to do the the roll the roll out of the ring oh the walk of shame it's like a roll of shame I yelled at somebody on my walk of shame um somebody was telling me to go side ramp which is also lovingly called by production loser's lane Lane.
And I will, I would, I would rather take a $25 ,000 fine than ever walk side ramp.
I will walk up the ramp with my sad face.
And I will, cause I want to feel every bit of that.
Do the look back? Depends the sad look back wondering what happened.
I think sad look back.
Sometimes that might be their moment.
And if sad, if sad look back takes away from their moment, I just want to know that I walked down this thing and I'm walking back up it.
Now win, lose, or draw.
That's, that's, that's part of it.
So, so many poor, it's never their fault.
I apologize to them in advance.
If you tell me to go side ramp, you're going to have to hold the show 30 seconds because I'm not going side ramp.
It's, it's as odd as that is, that is where I draw the line.
I will not be going side ramp, but that's all that moment is.
It's, it's their moment.
you roll out you know and we have to go because i kept you too long but uh i did want to ask you why what managers why we just don't have more of them and why it feels like the most unexplored terrain in wrestling like why couldn't shane gillis do like a three month he just starts managing somebody getting involved doing doing stuff on the mic like what how did we get away from this cindy lauber way back when when she got involved and did a little thing and it was really fun i I don't know why we're not messing around with this more.
I think managers, it's a great question.
It boils down to nobody wants to train to be a, they don't want to be a manager anymore.
For example, Bobby Heenan and JJ Dillon, two of the greatest managers ever.
Jimmy Hart, another outstanding.
They trained, they could also be wrestlers.
They could take a bump.
They probably were referees at some point.
They were everything.
So if you're a manager, you're going to at some point take a couple bumps.
Exactly. So today people will be like, well, how do I train to be a manager?
No, you train to be a wrestler.
And then maybe wrestling determines that you are a manager and that you can help build somebody up or help get heat for somebody or be like Bobby Heenan was, be a mouthpiece for somebody.
Don't forget about the smoking hot managers.
Miss Elizabeth was an iconic ABs person.
Oh my gosh. For all teenage boys.
I would love for there to be managers everywhere.
Just bring them back.
Just experiment. During the dead part of the WWE schedule, I just feel like they should start trotting him out.
I'm really trying to think of an example of somebody who would be an outstanding manager.
But, I mean, here's another reason why.
You're going to hate this answer, but this is a true answer why maybe there's no managers anymore.
It is hard to be a manager when Mr. Heyman, when Paul Heyman's on the show, because he's so much better than everyone.
But that tells me there should be more managers then.
Well, there should be someone trying.
there's you know so when we had paul hayman's been involved in some of the best wrestling moments of all time oh and he's partly a mind behind some of these moments but you know and then you had cornette back in the day he was such an outstanding manager for his guys and and really helped i just feel like more guys who get into wrestling schools and go to nxt or whatever i i don't be afraid to look into that it doesn't mean it's the end i mean i was growing up we had had blassy we had lou albano with the wizard the grand wizard yeah yeah we had jimmy hart yep um there were some bad ones but then
there was missy hyatt was popping up and you laid texas all those managers you just laid out were there for macho who's gonna be macho's manager and then instead of picking any of the greats he picked liz i remember she walks in yeah and it's shocking he didn't go with the ones he he had a great gimmick that's sitting there for somebody you I liked when you did your, I'm so handsome, don't touch my face.
Dashing Cody Rhodes?
Yeah, I like that one.
But I like the super rich. I think that's sitting there for somebody.
The million -dollar man in 2025, that gimmick is just sitting there for somebody.
Here's what it would also take to get a good manager.
You need a young talent who wants to take care of his manager because often it looks like the manager takes care of the talent on screen.
Yeah, the relationships.
ship behind the scenes you have to make sure your guy gets there they're older at this point you know your guy gets there your guy's okay he's happy in his life he's happy to be on the road i don't know if a lot of young guys are looking for that person that they could have and you're stuck it's almost like getting a dog it's very much it's like there's a dog i have a manager i gotta go everywhere with this guy but you that's the thing if it's gonna work you've gotta go everywhere it's like a tag team you and i become a tag team well then we have to drive to the show Do you think people in the 80s
felt that way? Like, fuck, I got Captain Luebano. 100%.
I'm gonna fly with this guy.
This is Sheridan in a week and a half.
Hunter talks about all the managers that Vince suggested that he hated.
Yeah. And then ultimately they found China and they were off and running.
So it does have to be a good fit.
I like the rich guy manager or rich guy wrestler thing sitting there for somebody.
Logan Paul with a manager would be really good.
Logan Paul would be really great with a manager.
Like a former hedge fund crypto guy who cashed out now he just really wants crypto amongst wrestling fans is we're booing if i if i ever did a if i ever did a manager i would have them not i wouldn't speak i'd have them speak i would no longer speak anymore if i ever had a couple like kane there were a couple wrestlers that just relied on the manager to talk that's the other thing that's a big question that there's a whole room of people like well this guy's forgot about slick that was another manager that that's i think it's okay that you forgot about slick he's great he was there no no slick
was a great it was a great great manager.
He had some good ones.
There's so many good managers.
Yeah. And there's, come back managers.
That's my big note.
It's a freebie in front of a live crowd.
Oh, the manager gets tossed out.
The ref gets to do this whole thing.
It's a freebie. That's a free reaction.
But the guest manager is great too.
The Shane Gillis just popping in for two months, doing one back and forth promo where he's just roasting somebody, but then just kind of being around.
I think if you get a manager today, who's a bad guy manager, the audience needs to let up a little bit on the cancel they need to be able to get get a little buck with it get a little wild because if we're if we're not let's do it we're not able to get heat then none of this works and it's just we're all friends just hey good guys wrestling you know that shocked me so I went to the Netflix LA in January oh yeah when Hogan came out and he got booed yeah and he didn't read where the room was and flip which I thought was I was like oh he's just too old now because in the old days he would have read
the room oh the room's going this way I'm going to zag like how dare you guys brother he powered through yeah because The Rock's done that a couple times where he's like oh the room's going there alright I'm just going to zag which is like it's like wrestler ESP almost right before he went out Hogan and I we We had a conversation backstage and he had real American beer.
He was talking about the beer.
He had a duffel bag, like a custom real American beer duffel bag with a bunch of beers in it.
And I wanted to try one of them.
I thought, oh, I want to try one of Hulk's beers.
And I talked to him and then he decided he was going to give me the whole duffel bag.
So I had this whole refrigerated duffel bag because he was there with his son, Nick.
And I'm so blessed that I got that moment because I thought the beer was good.
that beer was good but my bus driver thankfully he's not driving drinking these while driving but that's his beer wow and that bag is still on the bus it wasn't like a thing that like some swag that didn't make it that bag is his bag that he's he's about it so it's a nice gift i got from him because i didn't you know i didn't know things were going to go like they did but uh yeah i got the real american beer duffel bag what was the number one most starstruck you've been by a wrestler it might have been him when he came to wcw uh when i was a kid because seeing him right i'd only ever seen him
really on tv um gosh but but i didn't get it it's a real weird answer the most starstruck and more scared i ever was oh man dr azek that guy was uh no close oh i say close but shockmaster harley race harley race shockmaster was married to my aunt bobby so i wasn't scared of shockmaster is that true yeah it's uh and berkeley this is is just some fun lore for you guys berkeley his son is the uh beloved we love berkeley uh is the time keeper at ringside he's been that for many years yeah he's very good at his job so harley race harley race was the first i felt like harley race who was older and vader's
manager at the time seven time nwa world champion i felt like he could still be nwa world champion he looked like harley race there's a couple guys where you just feel like these are the guys you want on your side at a bar at 1 .30 in the morning?
Yeah. I think he's, like, number one, right?
I always used to talk about how you could kick everybody's ass in real life.
Him, Haku. Right? Yeah, him, Haku.
I feel today, like, it's an easy choice if you're going into a bar fight.
You hear all these creative answers.
Like, I'm just gonna take Chad Gable because he's a former Olympian alternate and then any of the Samoans.
We're winning the fight.
We're gonna, you know, I don't have to even get up.
Like, yeah, he got him.
Oh, and then, like, one little fake kick at the end.
Like, yeah, so. I think Undertaker probably had a 15 year run there on the nineties, two thousands, where it's like, that's your, that's your choice in the dark alley.
Yeah. I mean, you can get creative with it.
There'd be some fun choices, but to me, I'm some of these athletes I'm around.
I'm like, yeah, no, just Chad Gable is everyone's getting twisted up and no, it's not going to be violent.
He's just going to put them down in that uncomfortable humbling type way, you know?
Right. Yeah. That's smart.
Yeah. Um, this was great.
This was so much fun.
Good luck. Uh, good luck with that freaking I can turn quote jerk Cena.
I love how upset you are with him.
Well, he let down two generations of children.
I'll be upset if he doesn't show up like the John we all know and love.
I'll be upset if we just get this.
Maybe he can come back to some sense of human normalcy.
The reality is. Versus shitting on his fan base.
John is a man of his word. The reality is 11 shows left. He might be that wrestler that like, oh, yeah, it's going to.
Oh, no. And he's gone.
Well, if we've learned anything in the history of professional wrestling, it's that nobody ever actually retires.
So I believe it when I see it.
And I think that one you will see.
He might be the one person who is more serious than ever about it's time.
Unless there's some like Stone Cold who had a neck injury, like he had to stop.
If there's some sort of physical thing where it's like, you can't do this anymore.
But for the most part, hard to walk away.
I don't even think we'll see Jon returning in cameo roles.
I think this is it.
Wow Which is why at SummerSlam I'm very excited Because As much as Well maybe he should retire And think about some Of the choices he made Over the last year You tell him You tell him You know Letting down Entire arenas of people Kids crying Kids crying Really terrible Hit me with my watch too Great to spend time With you in person Thanks for doing this Bet on yourself club Yeah We're in it Alright that's it For the podcast Thanks to Cody Rhodes Thanks to Eduardo And Gahau as well Well, I'm maybe coming back on Sunday.
I will definitely have a podcast over the next seven days.
Don't forget about rewatchables on Monday.
And I will see you in a couple days.
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Gambling problem, call 1 -800 -GAMBLER or visit rg -help .com.
Call 1 -888 -789 -7777 or visit ccpg .org slash chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp .org in Maryland.
Hope is here, visit Gambling Helpline, ma .org or call 800 -327 -5050 for 24 -7 support in Massachusetts or call 1 -877 -8 -HOPE -NY or text HopeNY in New York.
