Insight with Chris Van Vliet - BONUS - CVV Gets Interviews And It's His Most Revealing Episode Ever!

Episode Date: June 7, 2025

Welcome to a special bonus episode of Insight! This features me as a guest on the "Friends With Ben" podcast hosted by Ben Carlos and I talk about so many things during this interview that I've never talked about anywhere else. I hope you enjoy it and if you do, please send me a DM or an email to let me know what stood out for you the most.Please support our sponsors!   PURE PLANK: The future of core fitness! Use the code CVV to save 10% on Pure Plank designed by Adam Copeland & Christian: https://gopureplank.com/?ref=tibcloux  SEAT GEEK: Use my code for 10% off your next SeatGeek order*: https://seatgeek.onelink.me/RrnK/CVV Sponsored by SeatGeek. *Restrictions apply. Max $20 discount   TIMELINE: Go to https://timeline.com/insightto get 10% off your order of Mitopure!   VUORI: Get 20% off your first purchase! Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at https://vuori.com/cvv   ROCKET MONEY: Join Rocket Money today and experience financial freedom: https://rocketmoney.com/cvv  HUEL: Get 15% off plus a FREE Gift for NEW customers with the code INSIGHT at https://huel.comMIRACLE MADE: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://trymiracle.com/CVV and use the code CVV to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF   ZOCDOC: Instantly book a top-rated doctor today at https://zocdoc.com/insight   BONCHARGE: Use the code CVV to save 15% off your infrared sauna blanket at https://boncharge.com/cvv   BLUECHEW: Get your first month of BlueChew for free with the code CVV at https://bluechew.com   PLUNGE: Get $150 off your Plunge with the coupon code CVV150 at https://plunge.com   For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://podcast.chrisvanvliet.com If you have ever enjoyed any of these episodes, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast or Spotify? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests.    Follow CVV on social media:  Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet TikTok: tiktok.com/@Chris.VanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Fleet. Welcome back, my friends, to another one here on Inside. I'm CBV, Chris Van Fleet, and welcome to a special bonus episode. Usually I'm the one asking the questions, but the tables have turned for this one. I was a guest on a podcast called Friends with Ben, hosted by Ben Carlos. And Ben is such an excellent interviewer and does some of the most. in-depth research that I've ever seen. I mean, he was bringing up things that I honestly forgot. I had even mentioned publicly. I'm like, how did you know about that? I asked Ben, if it'd be okay

if we shared this interview here on Insight. He happily agreed. And there's so many things in this interview I've never talked about before, stories that I've never shared, not even on Ask CVV episodes. So I hope that you enjoy this. Please snap a screenshot, tag us, and also follow Ben. He's at Ben J. Carlos. I'm at Chris Van Fleet, and after this episode ends, go check out Friends with Ben on YouTube or check it out wherever you're listening to this. Now, enjoy this conversation with Ben Carlos.

Man, thank you for making this happen. Oh, no, thank you. It is rare that I'm on this side of the table. People might recognize the studio, but it's rare that I'm on this side. So, man, I'm honored. Thank you for having me. Well, first off, I just want to say congratulations

because October 23, 2023, 353,8 subscribers is what you were at. And you made a goal that by your birthday, May 19th of 2025, you would hit a million. And you already crushed to that. So congratulations. I wrote it down on the whiteboard. It still sits in my office today.

And I'm just like, I didn't think it was possible. But I was like, you got to set big goals, right? Because even if you come short of it, you're still going to be much further than you were, much better off than you were. So yeah, I set that goal. My birthday still hasn't happened yet. My birthday still three weeks away.

Yes, I can't believe. That number sounds just entirely too big. It's crazy. So how does it make you feel? It doesn't matter how it makes you feel. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just, I had to do it.

I feel like we're going to do that this whole time. Oh, gosh. How many more times do you think you're going to do that? It doesn't matter how many more times you'll do it. Okay, so with that said, I have to ask you to rank your. 10 interviews with The Rock, not that I'm counting. I pick three specifically.

Okay. 2012 on Monday Night Raw. Sure. 2015, Furious 7. And then 2022 Black Adam. Yeah, those are top three. So excellent work here. Those are the top three for sure.

I will tell you that the absolute last one was the red carpet for Baywatch. And I'll tell you that story before I get into the other ones. Okay. It's a red carpet, Miami Beach. I was living in Miami Entertainment Reporter for WSVN. Deco Drive is the name of the show on. Channel 7, the Fox affiliate of Miami. So I'm on the red carpet. We're doing the interviews for the world premiere of Baywatch. And I just didn't think we were going to get the

rock. He talked to like a few of the bigger outlets and then kind of made his way down the red carpet. So when he got to me, he was very quick and very rushed. He was great and very kind, but it was like, I think if you look at the clips, like 41 seconds. And I went to wrap it up because like his publicist was giving me the old like, hey, time to wrap it up. And I went to wrap it up and you can kind of see the look on his face like, oh, all right, man. Well, hey, well, good to see you. Like, and I, it ended. I just kind of went, huh, I dropped the ball on that.

Like, I wasn't as prepared as I should have been. I didn't make the most of the moment. I think in those moments, you want to push it as long as you can. Just keep firing away questions till they're like physically removing the person from you. Like, I'm sorry. No, he needs to go. And in that one, I just made that one too short. So that's, that's ranked last.

and it would take a lot to bump that one. Those other three are great. So the first one, Monday Night Raw, that was my first ever interview with The Rock. And it was so cool that it was in Cleveland, where I was living at the time. And I also got him backstage at Monday Night Raw. I assumed I was going to get him for a movie junket.

He'd been doing so many different movie junkets. I assumed that's where it would be. But I got him in the place that I knew him best. I got him in the wrestling atmosphere. And that was so cool. So that's, uh, I'll put that at number two. Okay.

The Furious, Fast and Furious one was cool because he hit me with it. It doesn't matter. And also, like, I always try to sneak in, no matter what the movie is, try to sneak in some sort of a wrestling question for The Rock because I know that that's what my audience primarily is there to see. Of course, it's great to hear about the movie. Of course, we want to find out about the director and his co-stars and all that, but I try to sneak in a wrestling question.

So I asked him something about like a rematch, with Brock Lesnar because I love their SummerSlam match oh too. I also was like, man, you hit a rock bottom in this movie. I did hit a rock bottom in this movie. But him hitting me with the it doesn't matter. I was not expecting it. It's a fun moment. It lived on my demo reel for years and years and years.

But the most recent interview, which was for Black Adam, meant a lot to me. Because he took the time during that interview to give me the parenting advice. And I was just, it was such a. it was such an interesting time in my life. We had just found out, my wife and I had just found out that we were going to be parents. We found out that she was pregnant

with our daughter, Logan, who's now two years old. It was this, it's this moment where you are hyper aware that everything's about to change. You don't know what it's going to look like, but you know that everything's about to change. And we, I think she was only like eight weeks pregnant.

We really hadn't told anybody. We hadn't told my parents yet. but I said to Rachel, I said, we've got this unique opportunity here that I could ask the Rock for parenting advice. And if he gives me any sort of advice, we can just sit on that piece of the interview and hold it. And then when we do tell everybody else, that can be something we post later on. That's exactly what we did. But it's funny. Like, you can see how proud the Rock is to be a dad.

And that's kind of where I approach the question from. Like, you're such a great father. Can you give me some advice to be a great father? as well. He could have so easily given me some flippant response, some like throwaway answer like, oh man, get your sleep now, which is what you hear a lot when you're about to be a father, by the way. Or he could have been like, oh, you know, those diaper changes, they sure are smelly, and they are. But instead, he made it like a real moment. Like he was speaking from his heart. And what was it was tough for me because it was the first time I was really saying out loud, especially in public,

saying the words, I'm going to be a father. I had told other people like, the verbiage I used was like, oh, Rachel's pregnant or we're having a baby. But I don't think I had said the sentence out loud, I'm going to be a father. And it hit me hard, like the realization of like what that meant for that little girl that was about to be brought into the world. And now we have a son as well.

And I got choked up a little bit. I've never gotten choked up in an interview before. I got choked up as I was saying it. And The Rock immediately got up. And he gave me a hug. And like, that just shows like who he is in his core. Like he saw me in a vulnerable moment. He's like, hey, man, it's okay.

And he gave me great advice. Like how much this would change my life. Talked about skin to skin in the hospital. And I did that. And that's a huge thing. But that's, that ranks number one until whenever the next one is. Right.

Because I assume that's not the last one. So let's hope there's another one. Well, there's obviously going to be another one. It's just a matter of when, right? Hopefully. So you're obviously the goat when it comes to not just wrestling interviews, but also in a lot of ways, YouTube interviews. I have no doubt that you're going to have a one hour plus conversation with The Rock at some point.

What does that one hour reverse engineering of the Rock look like? First of all, thank you for the very kind words. I don't know if they're true or not, but I will say thank you. I have a note section of my phone. for anybody that I hope to one day interview or somebody that maybe I know I have an interview scheduled with. So I have a note section in my phone where I'm just like going through ideas of like anything that pops into my head. I hear them say something in an interview. Oh, you know, that that triggers a question in my head or I see a throwback clip. What the heck was going on there? We need to find out.

Like one day when I interview Triple H, I need to get the answer for that moment where he jumps off the middle rope and gets caught with a boot and like waivers for like two minutes. I need to know the story behind that. So I don't know. Let's see. Let me open up. It's an exclusive here? Sure.

Let me look at my notes section here. I don't even know what I've written because I've just been compiling answers or compiling questions. Oh, wow. I have my, this is funny. I have notes from my interview with The Rock from March 10th, 2012. Wow. Wow.

I did not know that was in there. How many of those questions were you able to hit? Never looked at this. Interesting. I think all of them actually. Yeah, wow, this is so funny looking at this. It was like a complete throwback. But I was listening to The Rock and Pat McAfee,

and I was listening to some, like, things he was talking about there. I think that the idea here is, like, it's hard to talk to the Rock for just a... hour. I mean, it's even harder to talk to The Rock for these four or five minute junkin interviews that I've done. But there's just so many things about his story that I'm curious about. Like, the Rock's story is about perseverance and pushing through. If you think about it, his goal and his dream was to play in the NFL. I mean, he got cut from the CFL. So if you think about it from that perspective, and he so proudly tells the story of the seven bucks in his pocket, that's why

named it seven bucks production. He didn't reach that goal. Like he failed at that dream. But he found another way to pivot and make it work and it worked out even better. And I think a lot about that idea of when things don't work out, what is it leading you towards? In fact, I asked him a similar question when I did an interview with him on the red carpet for ballers. And like in that show, he's playing a retired NFL player. So he's playing this player who lived the dream that he wanted to have. And I was asking him, like, if you could go back and change anything to like get back. to where you were, what would you do anything different? And he's like, I wouldn't change

anything because sometimes the best things in life are the things that don't happen. And I think about that a lot. Like, we wouldn't have this version of him if he was successful in the NFL and, you know, went down that path. So I think it's, I don't know why I can't find this for whatever reason. This is, that's the longest compilation of notes I've ever seen. There was a lot of notes in here. But I think it's just a lot about talking about hivots and changes that he made. Because when he left for Hollywood, it's not like he left because his WWE career

wasn't working out. He left because he was hungry for more. I'm really curious about that conversation. Because he, you know, we saw John Cena win number 17. There's no question that if the Rock stayed in WWE that whole time, like if he had a Randy Orton-like run of 20 plus years or an Undertaker run,

it's no question. Rock would have won way more titles than John Sina, but he chose a different path, and that path has led him to become who he is now. This episode is brought to you by prize picks. The basketball playoffs are wrapping up, but the action is still heating up on prize picks,

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What are you more excited to show your kids for the first time? Hogan Rock at WrestleMania 18 or Back to the Future? They's got to be back to the future. I feel like it's a safer thing to not that I it's a safer thing to show them

back to the future than wrestling because I think when you, when you, you can't just show them Barack Hogan,

you got to then tell the story along the way and now I've got to show Paul Kogan running over the rock with a semi truck and hitting them

in the head with a hammer. Like, I don't think that's a good thing to show the kids. Okay, that's right. Back to the future

is an absolutely perfect movie. It has a little bit of comedy. It has a little bit of drama. It has a ton of heart and an amazing message. we've already watched back to the future. I don't think she realized we watched back to the future. She was like nine months old.

But we had it on when we were eating breakfast one day and it just stayed on. And then we went into two and then three. So back to the future is the answer. I don't know where I stand on showing my kids wrestling. Of course my kids will watch wrestling. But I don't know when that happens. I don't know. Do we just plug them into what's happening right now?

Do I start with stuff that I loved from the past and pick and choose? it's especially difficult on the West Coast because Raw comes on a five o'clock. So if Raw comes on at five o'clock, we're typically eating dinner right around then. There was a point in time when she was younger when I would have it on and we'd be watching it and we'd all be eating. I'm like, man, I just don't think that's a good routine to get into for us. So we don't watch TV while we're eating. And I'll end up watching Raw after they go to bed or I'll rewatch it later on.

but I think that that's something. I'm going to have a real struggle with that, if I'm being honest. No, that makes sense. When I was a kid, I had to like sneak downstairs to watch wrestling because I knew I was like, I'd get in trouble for it. But I mean, especially back then. Yeah. Oh, 100%.

And I understand my dad did not like wrestling. And I did exactly what you were talking about. I was watching it in the basement. And I would pretend I was watching Leaf games and I would flick back. Like, oh my gosh, 2-1. Can you believe the Leafs are winning, Dad? I know you're watching wrestling. But I get it.

Like during that attitude era, I understand why he didn't want his 15 or 16 year old son to be watching what was going on there. Doesn't matter. Dad watched it anyway. Okay. So safe to say you've seen Back to the Future like, what, 100,000 times or whatever? A handful of times. Okay. Have you ever seen Men in Black?

Yeah. I've seen not only once. Okay. So you know how they have the neuralizer that wipes your memory? If you could wipe your memory of either the Back to the Future trilogy or Christopher Nolan's entire filmography. so you could watch one of them for the first time all over again, which would it be? But we're not losing them forever.

I'm just rewatching them for the first time. Yeah, you get to watch them for the first time all over again. Wow. Oh, my goodness. I think I would probably, I would love to rewatch Nolan's stuff for the first time again because it's just so mind-blowing. And then the great thing about that

is then you get to rewatch Nolan's home for the second time and see all the things you missed in the first time. Then the cool thing is you get to watch it for the third time. and see all the things you missed the first two times. So I would love to have a clean slate to go in and watch Nolan films. I remember specifically, I went to an early screening of Interstellar. And I'm a huge Nolan fan. And I remember talking with my friends about how excited I was for this new movie called

Interstellar. And I went to see it like two weeks before it came out or a week before it came out. And I remember leaving the theater. And I called my friend immediately. Like, all right. Like, tell me. Like, how was it? And I'm like, I'm not sure.

Sure. I don't, I don't really know what I just experienced. I liked it, but I, like, I need some time to, like, put the pieces together and, like, figure it all out. Like, I still watch Interstellar now and try to figure out all the things. I saw a really interesting fan theory that I'm like, man, there's some real, like, there's some real legitimacy to this that perhaps, spoiler alert, perhaps Cooper has died early on. and what we're seeing here is just like some sort of a dream sequence. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. Because there's one very specific scene where they're in the spacecraft. And you see the exact same shot twice, two different parts of the movie. And that's not something Nolan would do by accident. Nolan wouldn't be like, well, we don't have the time to shoot at that shot again, just throwing one from earlier.

There must be a reason that he repeated that shot. I don't know if that's the actual specific reason, but I love the fact that we can look at any of Nolan's movies, Memento or Tenant or Interstellar or Inception, any of the Dark Night Films, and we could all have our own theories about it. That's brilliant. My response to that is like a little mixed because I love when my friends and I get to nerd out about like movies and stuff like that. But also I've never seen Interstellar. You've never seen Interstellar. I've never seen Interstellar.

Oh my gosh. Well, grab some tissues. Yeah. Because there's that one scene when he comes back from the water planet. Okay. gets me every time. It's just impeccable acting from Matthew McConaughey. It's beautiful.

But you need to watch it. You're here for a few days. I got some time. Yeah. I mean, you need a bunch of time for Interstellar. To watch it once and then watch it again. It's just a long movie too.

But yes. Okay. Since we've been on the subject, I'm memory wiping and time travel. I'm going to paint a picture for you. Okay. I'm DJing a party on Ezra because I know you went to Laurier. Yeah.

I never went to Laurier, but I had friends who did. Yeah. I've had a little bit of the, L'O Rolier Waterloo experience. So I'm DJing a party, and I give Young CVV the Ox Corde. Is he going to play this? Honest, let's make this night last forever.

Or is he going to play this? I love this song so much. I know every word of that song. If I played Summer Girls by LFO, I think people would start leaving the party. So I think I've got to play some sort of Blink 128 too. That's not even my favorite Blink song. That's probably like, I don't know, maybe not even top 15. Really?

I don't like that song. That's probably my favorite. Really? Yeah. I know you've talked about your pop punk Mount Rushmore. Blink's probably like maybe third for mine. I don't know if they classify as pop punk. I feel like you're more of the expert here so you can weigh in on this.

But mine was more Green Day and Fallout Boy. Sure. That's more so what I agree with one. Fall Out Boy is for sure Pop Punk. I think depends on who you ask about. Green Day. I think that some people will be like, of course, it's too poppy to be punk. And then there's some people that's like, it's too punky to be pop. I mean, hard to argue with those ones. I've, I have a real affinity for that song, Summer Girls. It takes me back to a place in a time. That was

a summer in 1999. I know every word of that song. I think the lyrics are just ridiculous. And that's what makes it so cool. And when I worked as a server at the Fern Resort in Orillia, the summer of 2002. I lived in this house. We had parties almost every night. And once a month or so, a few of the guys who played instruments would bring them all in and we would play live music at the party, which was insane. Like, they were just playing covers. And I would jam out with one of my buddies there. And he's just started, riffing on the guitar. And he's like, oh, do you know this song, Summer Girls? I'm like, I love that And I knew like a few of the words.

And I was like kind of like, you know, singing a little bit as we were just like jamming out like practicing. And he goes, well, if you learn all the words for that, I think we're getting all the like instruments together for like the party of the Saturday. Yeah, I'll play it and you can sing it. I'm like, done. And I like listen to the song more and I learned it.

And then I sang it slash wrapped it at this party. And everyone's like, oh my gosh, he knows all the words. This is crazy. So that just has such a. special place in my heart, rest in peace to two of the members, which is crazy. Devin and Rich Nice, who were taken, like, far too soon. Like, it's wild to think about that. But I put that song on every once in a while and impressed my wife with my

lyrical abilities. So, like, did this prelude the band? It did. It did prelude. Oh, so this was, uh, wasn't it? Yeah. I've been playing guitar since I was 16. Okay.

really, like, it was pretty basic stuff to begin with, like GCD, you can play almost any song with G and C and D, turned into some power chords. My guitar playing is like a five out of ten at best, but, you know, you play a couple of power chords or a couple of GCDs. You're okay. You can trick some people, especially if they've had a few libations at a party. Were you ever the guy who at the party was like, oh, I can play Wonderwall. Were you ever that guy? So anyway, here's Wonderwall. Of course. Capo on the second fret.

If you had a guitar right here, I would play Wonderwall. Dang, I should have brought my guitar. Oh, my goodness. Speaking of the other band, was legend killer about Randy Orton? Kind of. Really? The The The band formed in 2006. It was like right, 2005, 2006, right when I had graduated from Wilford-Laurier.

And Orton was doing his legend-killer thing at that time. And do you remember? remember he would like spit in people's faces? He would spit in people's faces. He was like destroying all of the legends. If you had done anything iconic in WWE, he was finding a way to give you an RKO or spit in your face or disrespect you in some sort of way.

So I guess kind of, I mean, the story's about someone feeling disrespected and spitting in someone's face. I spit in your face because I'm the legend killer is the part of the chorus. You haven't heard that song, have you? No. Maybe I'll play it for you later. I'm surprised you didn't name it like Carlito or something like that because that would have worked too.

Oh, yeah, with the apples? Yeah. Yeah, the band. I mean, what a silly name. Reminds me of a, have you seen Gone Girl? Yeah. They had a bar called The Bar. Great.

I love that. Something like that. The reason was it just started out as like my friend Pat is so talented when it comes to music. He can play any instrument. Pat McCormack. He's an absolute legend. He had every instrument in his basement. So sometimes we would go hang out at his parents' house,

and we'd go down in the basement and bang on the drums a little bit, and we would play guitar, play bass. And I think one day I started playing something on the guitar, and he started drumming. And my buddy Greg Kuzak grabbed a mic and started singing a little bit. And I'm like, maybe this is something. I was just kind of like putting some chords together. He was just, you know, playing something on the drums.

And Greg was singing something. heavily inspired by the doors, like heavily, heavily inspired by that. And we're like, well, what if we like wrote down some lyrics and like made this into something? And we did. And we're like, what is, what are we going to call ourselves? I don't know. We really sound like a the band. And at that point in time, the the bands, all of them were so popular.

The hives, the strokes, the white stripes, like so many bands with the. Oh, that's where they're right. Interesting. I'm like, well, we're not a the band. We are the, the band. That's amazing. That was it. It's so, so silly.

But if you listen to our music, it has a little bit of, if you can even call it music. It has some inspiration from my love of pop punk and a lot of Greg's love of the doors. And then Pat just being able to just be a wizard on, like, he was playing harmonica in some of our songs. It was so good.

We never played it like a show or anything. It was just us jamming in the basement. But we recorded something like maybe 15 songs. And we'll album. Yeah. We actually put out two albums. This is so... I'm just remembering this now.

Greg would burn them on to CDs and give them to our friends as Christmas presents. And they'd be like, what am I going to do with this? What am I going to do with this thing? No, they wouldn't even listen to it. But it was so much fun. And it's funny. I'm listening to that music recently. brought me back to a place in a time. And that's a beautiful thing about music is it has the ability

to just transport you to a place. It really does. And what I love about that too is that, I guess you could say that was one of your first, like creative outlets in a way, right? One of them. I think that was, that came after college. And in college, I was still doing some stuff with radio and I did the morning announcements when I was in high school. So there were a lot of different creative outlets. But that was definitely one where it was like, the cool thing about that is you're working towards a finish product. And that's a beautiful thing about any sort of art where whether it's paint on a canvas, you can go, look what I've done.

Whether it's music and you go listen to this song or whether it's a movie, you can go, look at this thing that I've made. It's a beautiful thing. Think about this. If my friend Greg in 2006 was inspired by the doors, you know, 30-ish years before, that would be like a band now being inspired by 90s music. Oh my goodness. Isn't that crazy?

Oh, you're making me feel old. Isn't that wild? Obviously, wrestling has been a huge part of your life. And for a lot of people, when you think of the WWE, there's no more important name than Vince McMahon. But if you think about the world of CVV, it's a different Vince. Can you tell me more about Vince Reynolds? Wow. May he rest in peace as well.

He's not with us anymore. Vince was my closest fishing buddy. and he's also the guy who got me into wrestling. I played on a hockey team with somebody else and he's like, oh, we're going fishing at Center Island. I didn't know we can fish at Center Island. Yeah, there's all kinds of pike there.

It's like, okay, we're going to bring my friend Vince. And it was one of those situations where like, I came with this friend, but I hit it off with this other friend. And like, we instantly clicked and became best friends. And it went from like that one random fishing trip together to like we were talking on the phone all the time about fishing. And in Canada, it's not a lot of months you can do open water fish.

There's a lot of months you can't do open water fishing, I should say. We would talk all the time on the phone. He was a huge wrestling fan. And I knew that on Monday nights, our phone calls would abruptly come to an end because 9 p.m. on TSN, Monday Night Raw would come on. And he would be like, I got to go. And that would be it. and he would always talk about it and he would always make references to wrestling things that I didn't get

and I just didn't understand that world. And then one Monday night, we weren't done talking about what we were talking about. And I said, all right, I'm going to put it on. I'm going to watch it with you so I know what you're talking about here. And then the first commercial break will finish whatever this thing was that we were talking about. And I just got sucked into it. And I instantly became a fan and I started watching everything. I went from watching zero minutes of wrestling at that point in time.

to watching everything. Raw and Nitro and found out about ECW. And I just dove head first. And that's the thing about me is I don't check the depth of the water. I don't check the temperature of the water. Just dive all the way in and I'll figure out when I get in there. And I became a huge wrestling fan. To the point where it was within a year or two, we started our backyard wrestling company, company was not a company. Our backyard wrestling federation, the HCW. And like I was in this. And I was at that point committed to when I get a car, I'm going to go train to be a pro wrestler. That's how excited I am about this. And it all ties back to Vince being my friend, Vince loving wrestling and like right place, right time coming together. And I think about that so often in life.

If you don't meet this person and not at this point in time, like you don't become the person that you are. And again, tying it all back full circle. So I love back to the future. If this person doesn't meet this person, then Marty's not born, you know. If Marty's dad is not a peeping Tom that falls out of the tree and gets hit by the car, you're right? All these things. You know, Marty's dad doesn't meet Lorraine, all these things. I think about that far too often.

You mentioned right place, right? But sometimes in certain scenarios, you have to put yourself in the right place and create the right time. So I want to dive into the Chris Van Fleet playbook right now. And there's three instances that once I thread them together, I feel like you'll understand where I'm getting at. Check Stevie in Peterborough, 969 MTV2 in Vancouver, and a certain talent agency in Los Angeles. Yeah. In terms of creating the right place, right time, how much of that was fueled by your passion and love for broadcasting and wanting to do that as your career? Was there anyone in particular or a certain something that also fueled that drive?

drive and ambition? So the thread you've tied in together here is that I just made myself available. So Checks TV was an internship I had right after I graduated from university. And I was getting nowhere with any of the applications I was putting out for an internship. And I scoured the internet and I found the email address for the general manager at Checks TV, a small station in Peterborough, Ontario, about an hour from my hometown. And I just emailed him and I said, hey, it's reading week next week. Could I come by and talk to you about a possible internship? Here's my resume. Total lie. Had no plans to be in Peterborough. Hadn't been in Peterborough in years. And he's like, yeah, I mean, if you're going to be in town, come on by. Okay, great. So the whole idea here is like,

if I just sent in my resume, I was not going to get a response. But if I made myself available, I wanted to do whatever I could to make it as easy as possible to get to yes. long story short, that ended up turning into an internship, which then ended up turning into a job. Crazy. That's how I got my career. And I owe Ron Johnston so much for just seeing something in me and giving me that opportunity. I was there for 17 months. And during that time, I auditioned for much more music. That's a whole story in itself. But they plucked me out of the crowd. Like there was hundreds of people there to audition. And I'm like, filling out my paperwork. And security guy comes up to me and goes, hey, you, come with me. And I'm like, what did I do? It's like, don't worry, it's a good thing. And then the producers are like,

we want to see the people that we were interested in first before getting to everybody else. Like, we like your look. Here's my card. We want you to come back for a callback. And that gave me like so much confidence that if much more music has what I'm looking for, maybe much music has what I'm looking for, or someone else in their family of different shows. So when I saw this opening come up for the show called 969, which was on a sister station called Razor, which had been rebranded from MTV to Canada. I was like, I know I have what they're looking for. I'm going to send in my stuff.

In fact, I was working at a news station. I was working at Chex TV. All my stuff was like local news. So I would go into work. I would drive to work when I wasn't working. I would borrow the cameras with permission, of course, and I would shoot these on-camera stand-ups, making it seem like I was covering more interesting things than I actually was.

I was pretending like I was reviewing a movie or I was pretending I was covering a music festival so that I could bulk up my demo reel so that when I sent it to MTV 2, they would go, oh yeah, this guy's already doing the thing. So I sent my stuff in, didn't hear anything back. That kind of sucks. So I'm like, well, I just feel in my heart that I like at least could get an audition there. So I knew the person that was doing the hiring because her name was on the application. So I just randomly called the front desk of the TV station.

And I said, hello, is Catherine Peterson there, please? And they said, one moment, please. And I went, oh my gosh. She didn't end up answering. I left her a voicemail. She emailed me back a few days later and said, hey, we're still looking through everything, but we'll get back to you.

In her email signature was her direct phone line. I said, well, I am going to put that in my back pocket. And in a few days, I'm going to call her. So a few days later, I called her, direct later desk. She answered. And I said, hey, it's Chris Van Vleck calling from Toronto. I sent you my stuff. She's like, oh, yeah, yeah.

It actually looks pretty good. We're going through some stuff here. I said, well, I'm actually going to be in Vancouver next week. I would love to just come by and just have an informational interview and just talk to you about the position. She's like, oh, you're going to be here? So, yeah, I'm going to be there next Thursday. She's like, oh, well, if you're going to be here, yeah, come on in. What? This actually worked? I can't believe it. I hung up the phone. I remember specifically going,

Dad, I need to find a way to fly to Vancouver. My dad worked for an airline and he had the ability to buy standby tickets so it was like much more inexpensive. My dad is just the best. He somehow turned this into a work trip so that the flight and hotel was covered. And I went in there and like five minutes into the interview, they're talking to me about salary. And I'm like, I think I got it. Like I think this worked. They had me film a few other things on my own, but I got the job offer, all because I was like, I'm going to be there next week. And then, again, same thing happened years later when I got my first agent here in Los Angeles. I had been applying to so many jobs and, like, it would be down to me and one other person,

me and two other people, and I wouldn't get it. I'm like, well, if I can't find a job in Canada, could I possibly look for a job elsewhere? So I sent my stuff into a few agencies and they call me back and said, yeah, your stuff looks pretty good. And you said in your email here, you come to L.A. frequently? I said, yep. They said, what are you here next? I said, I don't like a few weeks from now.

I said, great. When you're in town, let us know, we'll set up a meeting. And they ended up signing me. So the moral of this and the thread that ties this whole thing together is make yourself available. Like, if you don't ask, the answer is always no. If I said to them, hey, I'm available next Thursday, and they go, yeah, that's great, but we're not interested. Okay, fine.

But I think the biggest thing I kept driving towards with all of this is I wanted to lose the position based on skill and merit. I didn't want to lose it based on like inconvenience. We'd love to bring you in, but you live far away. And I didn't want that to be the thing that was like the deciding factor. I wanted to lose it just based on, was I good enough for this job? or not. And if I wasn't good enough, that's okay. Or if you were looking for somebody else, that's fine. But I wanted to be able to put my best foot forward, show them everything that I had, be absolutely prepared for it. And if it didn't work out, it didn't work out. But at least that

be on me then. In the words of the man sitting in that chair right there, control the controllable, right, Chris? John Cena's been here the whole time. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And control the controllable can mean so many different things to so many people. For me, it means you can't control what other people say or what other people do, but what you can control is how you react to those things. When it comes down to those job opportunities, or now I'm doing it a lot with interview opportunities, I just make myself available. Hey, where are you based out of? Oh, you're based out of Dallas? Great, that's a quick two and a half hour flight. So let me know when you're available. And then it gets you hopefully to yes a lot quicker. What exactly did you do in your audition video for the CBS station in

Cleveland that was apparently so good that they aired it the same day. And then Dan Salomon, your news director, sponsored you with the O2 visa and hooked it up. So I'm so impressed by your research. And I love how much research you put into this. I went in for, there's a whole story behind this. And it actually begins with, I got this audition in Cleveland. So I'd been going for quite a few different auditions with this agency that I had kind of backdoored my way into an interview with. I had interview with a lot of things in New York, a lot of things in L.A. I actually auditioned to be the new host of TRL. Oh, wow. Yeah, I was in Times Square. I did an audition there and then they ended up deciding they weren't going to move forward with a new host and they

ended up canceling the show. But I was there. Like when Damien Fahey was leaving the show, he was the guy who took over for Carson Daly. I went in and I had an audition. I saw the guy that also was vying for the job, but he was very good. I don't know who he was. but I didn't end up getting it. So I had all these auditions. And my agent said, what do you think about working in Cleveland? And I had gone to Cleveland that previous summer.

My dad and I go to a different baseball stadium every year. We've been to 25 now. We had just gone to see the Indians play when they were so called the Indians, a progressive field. I'm like, wow, like the timing on this is crazy. I was just in Cleveland. Cleveland has so much heart.

It's such a great city. Of course I'd love to audition there. She's like, what's an entertainment reporter position for the CBS affiliate there? Great. And I went in, I was supposed to have my audition, my apartment in Toronto got broken into. And I thought my passport had been stolen. Like all of our other stuff had been stolen. I thought my passport had been stolen too.

And I was supposed to audition that weekend. I had to make a very embarrassing phone call to Dan Salamone, who was not my boss, to say, can't find my passport. My house was just broken into. think it was stolen. Turns out it was like, it was at my parents' house, but like hidden, like not where it should have been. It was in like a backpack that I had used for a previous trip, which was like the biggest relief ever. It's like, no problem. Why don't you just, you were supposed to come in for this, the audition this Monday? Why don't you just come in next Monday instead? Okay, great. We'll make

that happen. I truly believe that everything in life happens for a reason because that particular Monday that I went in, they had their Christmas party the night before. And this is where I knew, like, I think I'm going to get this job. Because I flew in that Sunday. And Dan goes, why don't I pick you up from the airport? And we're actually having just a little Christmas party, like nothing big. But we're having a little Christmas party at like a bar in town. Why don't I come bring you and you can meet everybody?

I'm like, okay. So here I am, someone who's about to have an audition and interview the next day. And I've been brought into this Christmas party and meeting everybody and shaking hands. and I remember two guys who ended up being some of my closest friends in Cleveland being like, all right, so when you move here, you're going to move into this building on West 9th Street. It's called the Bingham. I'm like, guys, I haven't even had the audition yet. Like, I literally just met you.

They're like, you're at the Christmas party, dude. Like, I think you got the job. I went and I did the audition the next day. I don't remember anything about it being particularly great. I certainly put my all into it and I tried to do the best job possible. but I remember like we did it and then we had a meeting in his office afterwards and he goes, I thought that was really good and I'm actually going to put it on TV this afternoon just to kind of see what people think. Like, and Dan just loves to think outside the box. He did a lot of things

when I worked with him where they were just totally outside the box. So he's like, I'm just going to put this on TV and like if we get a bunch of bad feedback, I guess, you know, that'll tell us. And I was like, okay, I don't know if we're like allowed to do that. But Okay. And I went to the airport later that day to get my flight. And one of the TSA people's like, didn't I just see you on Channel 19? Like that, what? Like it was, it flew my mind because I had been on TV in Toronto for years and something like that had never happened.

And here I was in Cleveland for a few hours getting recognized. But it's just so funny how that whole thing came together. Why do you think it was that Dan saw in you? That gave him so much confidence that you pretty much got the job. before the audition? I don't know, and he's never told me, but I think that one of the biggest things was I was completely different

from the person who had been doing it before. It was a woman who was doing that position. She was moving on to just focus on doing the 10 o'clock news. And she was beloved in Cleveland. So they were looking for something completely different so there wouldn't be comparisons. Because if they brought in another woman,

people would be going, oh, well, man, they're not like she was. So I think he wanted to bring in someone that was completely different. So I think he already had an idea in his mind that he wanted someone who was young and who was a male. So I already took those two boxes. So I think that's part of it. And I remember my agent saying they're looking for someone like Joel McHale on the soup. And I'm like, well, I'm not really a comedian, but like, I'll try.

And I remember some of my like early entertainment bits were like maybe a little too punchy or maybe like, I think there's a difference between being funny and being like mean. And I think some of my like celebrity jokes might have been a little mean-spirited. And I think I reeled that in a little bit. It took a little while to reel in and like find what my voice was. But I just truly think that like he saw like an energy and an excitement in me that I had for broadcasting that. I still have for broadcasting now. And again, right place, right time.

Who is Dirty Pirate Hooker, one, two, three? And what exact moment did he realize that the landscape of broadcast? was changing. It's my, it's my username on, that that channel still exists. It's my username on a, like a hidden channel on YouTube.

Because when I was working in Vancouver for that show, 969, they were putting a lot of our clips online. They were putting it on like the Much Music slash MTV Canada website. But YouTube was just starting to like fire up. And we were getting the opportunities

to interview some of these huge bands. A lot of bands, occasional like actors or comedians or celebrities. But like, think about this. I just wanted to see May Day Parade last night. If you're a huge May Day Parade fan, you want to like take in as much information about them as possible. You want to watch all of their interviews. You want to like look at all their photos. You want to watch all their live performances, all of that.

So we had this unprecedented access like compared to like a, you know, a normal fan would. to ask questions that a fan would want to ask. So me and my co-host Lauren Toyota, like we would do like a lot of like deep research and like figure out like what are the things like fans are like really like talking about. We would do those interviews. But if you think back to that time, it was 2006, 2007. And it's no different from how TV is now.

But if you aren't watching TV at that exact time, on that exact day at that exact channel, you're never going to see this thing. And both Lauren and I had, sorry if I'm outing you, Lauren here. We both had secret YouTube channels. So we could put our stuff online just so people could see it. She was actually the one that gave me the idea for this.

It was just the concept of like, for her, she'd just talked to like 30 seconds to Mars, like just had a great conversation with Jared Leto or like there was any of the other big bands at the time. It's like, we got a, we got something from them that unless you were watching our show on that particular day, you'd never see it. So we just started ripping them from the website and like the super low quality and just putting them up on our YouTube channels and just hoping that another fan and another part of the country or another part of the world would be able to see that and appreciate it. That was all it was. Just trying to get that piece of content, that piece of art, if you will, out to more people.

So what was the point when you realized that, oh, this YouTube thing, this might be the future? I started a different channel in 2011. that was just my name. Same concept here. I wasn't being sneaky this time. Same concept here, just taking interviews that I was really proud of or interviews that were really like timely and putting them online. I had a moment the year after. So in 2012, I was here in L.A. I was going to a junket. I remember talking to somebody on our way on the shuttle over to the screening. And he's like, yeah, I've been making a little bit of money on YouTube and I was like, what? What do you mean money on YouTube. It's like, yeah, yeah, like it's called Google AdSense. It's going to your settings and you click a button and

like, you know those ads that you see on YouTube? Like, you get a portion of them. Like, why didn't someone tell me this sooner? And that for me changed everything. And Google AdSense would pay out at that time. I think it's probably the same now. They would pay out when you get $100 in your account. So I was like, my goal is to make $100 a month. I want to get paid out every month. And there were some months you'd make like $17 and it would be some months you'd make like, you know, $117. But the goal was to always try to get paid out. That's when I realized there was potential there. Like the exact same content that I was getting my flat rate for, my yearly salary

for at the TV station, I was able to like, number one, put that out to a wider audience. So if you were a fan of that wrestler or comedian or musician, you were able to see that. Not if, you know, if you weren't living in, I was in Cleveland at the time. I loved that. Number two, I was able to make like a little bit of bonus money on the side. That was a game changer to me. And that's all I ever thought it would be. $100 here, $100 there.

And man, it's turning into something else. So in a lot of ways you were one of the YouTube OGs in that sense because... Maybe with interviewing. But like, I think when you look at the early era of YouTube, they were just monsters in that space. They were, like, there were some people at that time, like, was it Ray William Johnson? Ray William Johnson, yeah?

Like I Justine. I justine Nigaiga, Kevjamba. Right. Yeah, you know. Like they were monsters of that space and they were like real pioneers. I was just a guy who was doing interviews for a TV station and they were underutilizing social media and YouTube at that time. And I was just uploading them. Obviously we see where YouTube has taken your career now.

How much was the transition from insight becoming primarily, wrestling or wrestling adjacent results oriented? And was there ever a moment prior to that where you didn't want to be known as the wrestling guy? I prided myself on being able to talk to anybody. And when you look through my career, I have interviewed all kinds of different people, all different walks of life. It started mostly as an entertainment reporter where you're interviewing actors and musicians and comedians and celebrities. But you're also thrown into, like the amount of I interviewed people that were in line for the latest Avengers movie or something like that or the people who were in line to get into the stadium when the Cleveland Cavaliers were in the

playoffs. Like I did so many of those different types of interviews that I felt like I was always looking for like a common ground. Insight became just a wrestling show about two years ago. It was WrestleMania 39 where that's kind of like the line in the sand to borrow a line from Evolution's theme song. But I'd been always doing one interview a week and then one of something else. That was always the way it went. And then every once in a while, a bonus episode thrown in here and there. But I always wanted that like the anchor would be wrestling. So if you're a wrestling fan, I got you. But if you're also a fan of like becoming a better version of yourself or reverse

engineering things or like just learning more, I've got you. I'm going to talk to entrepreneurs. I'm going to talk to actors. I'm going to talk to just thought leaders. talked to Colin O'Brady who climbed Mount Everest. Like, fascinating conversation. I had a great talk with Chris Voss, who wrote a book called Never Split the Difference. He worked as a FBI negotiator. Like, I love these conversations. But I started to look at the numbers.

And every time I had a wrestler on, didn't matter who they were, didn't matter what company they worked for, that episode would always pop. If I had anything that wasn't wrestling, didn't matter if it was an A-List actor, the episode just kind of did okay. WrestleMania 39 came around here in L.A. And I went, what if I could just bank a bunch of interviews?

I live in this city. So what if I could just make myself available and get as many as I could? I did something like 14 interviews that week. So with two interviews a week, that set me up for the next seven weeks. I'm like, okay, well, if I've got seven weeks in the can now, can I plan some more and just keep this thing going? That April ended up being the best month for the podcast in terms of numbers. crazy. Then May ended up becoming better than April. Then June was better than May. Then July was

better than June. Every month kept building upon itself. And I'm like, we're on to something here. I can't ignore this. Like, obviously, there is, the Venn diagram has some overlap of people who are wrestling fans and fans of something else. But it was something that someone told me that really stuck with me. If you make a show for everybody, you make a show for nobody. And the thing about the internet now is niching down into that niche and niching like niching upon the niche. So like I didn't just do a sports show. I did a wrestling show. And that was like if you're looking for in-depth conversations with pro wrestlers or people in

the pro wrestling space, I've got you. Not like tune into my show and you go, I've never heard of this person. But that might be an interesting concept. I might learn something, which were what a lot of those interviews are. And that's no disrespect to those people or those interviews. It's just I have found what's worked right now. And the audience seems to really enjoy these interviews with wrestlers. So we're going to keep this thing going as long as we can.

I want to close it off with a couple rapid fire-ish questions. Okay. Start bench and cut these three. New York pizza, barbecue hot wings, and a bone-in ribby steak. Wow. I got to cut one of those things? Yeah. Start bench and cut.

Okay. Man, we're going to start the pizza. I can eat pizza for every meal on every day, especially if it's good New York pizza. And there's not a ton of it here in L.A. It's the first thing I do when I get to New York is I look for a good slice. So that's, that starts. Bench the wings.

And I love a good rabbi. Love one. But I don't know if I, yeah, I probably do eat steak once a week, at least once a week. That's tough. Depends where the wings are coming from. Okay, if they're not good wings, I can. definitely bench the wings or definitely cut the wings. Because sometimes you know those wings when they're not good.

You get like the rumble gut. Yeah. You do breaded or non-bredded? If breaded is an option, I love breaded. But if it's like breaded or grilled, I'm probably going to go grilled. And I like it. Because it's healthier? It just, I don't know.

There's something about like the, I love just the taste of the burnt on anything. Ah, okay. Whether it's on wings or whether it's on, like when we grill up broccoli, I love that. I guess that's, man, I'm getting rid of, I can never eat steak again. All right, let's reverse this. I love wings, though. All right. Wings are, wings are cut.

Okay. That was hard. This might make this next one a little bit tougher than. Oh, boy. Start bench cut, swish allay, shagwells, and Cleveland Chop House. My goodness. Three of my favorite places. I think for those, are we just talking?

talking about the food, or we're talking about, like, the atmosphere and everything. I'll leave it open to interpretation. I think it's got to be the atmosphere because there's Shagwell's doesn't exist anymore, so I don't mind saying this. Shagwell's food was not great. But Shagwell's had all you can eat chicken wings on a Sunday night in Pickering, Ontario. So we went there a lot, a lot.

And some of my friends like Basil or Greg could put down like five or six pounds of wings, which is a ludicrous amount of chicken wings. It's a lot of chickens, too. You know, you think about the chickens, crazy. it's a lot of chickens. Swiss chalet just means something, you know, that's like a, that's comfort food. And that's the food. I don't know if it was the same for you growing up in the GTA. But like when you, when you were like coming out of like, you know, church or when you were coming out of like, when you needed to go meet the grandparents somewhere, like Swiss chalet was just the easy answer.

I know that that has shifted a lot because when I go home, Swiss chalet has like six tables in it now. Like it used to have to line up to get to Swiss chalet. Now you walk in and there's like four other people there. But the chalet sauce is so good. You could drink it. And Cleveland Chop House was just like a, it was walkable, it was a block and a half from where I lived in downtown Cleveland on St.

Clair. And it was just like, it was open for lunch too. And my friends and I went there frequently. It's funny. That doesn't exist either. I think it's been renamed to something else. Cleveland Shop.

It's Cleveland Shop. Yeah. I think they had a different change of ownership. That was also a long time ago when I went there. We are going to start Swiss chalet just because I love it so much and it means so much deep inside my heart. Cleveland Chop. And then I guess we get rid of Shagwells, even though the memories were so great, we've moved on with our life. Okay.

So I had a feeling you were going to answer that way. So I prepared an extra one to throw in there to kind of throw a wrench in here to see. how this would affect your order. Okay. All right. Okay. So we have those three. And then the dark horse one here, Tanner's.

Oh. Oh, wow. Okay. That's where Rachel and I met. Wow. It's, uh, the rooftop is called something else. We met on the rooftop.

Yeah. I mean, that place, that has to take the number one spot. Although we've only been there once since. You never went back. It's in Huntington Beach, which is maybe 25, 30 minutes from where we live. We went back once.

And we sat on that. rooftop and went, oh, look at this. Memories. Yeah. I guess we, I mean, just for pure nostalgia, we're going to go with Tanner's. Excellent cut there. I even forgot. Because it's, it's, Tanner's is the name of a place within a place. Okay. I was thinking of the other place. Reminds reminds me of like, uh, never bit of sneaky d's. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like that, I guess, because it's like, you have the, you have the club, but then it's like the restaurant, like, a down Yeah, like the restaurant downstairs has a name. Yeah.

And then the rooftop has a name too. Yeah. Wow. That's what made me think of. We have a map that hangs in our bedroom. And there's a little heart right where Tanner's is. And it says where it all began. Aw.

June 20th, 2021. Yeah. So you like to close your interviews asking your guests. Three things that they're grateful for. I want to put a spin on that. And I want to ask you three lessons that you've learned from certain people that you're grateful for. I'm going to name them off one by one and then we can go from there. Okay.

I love this. Rachel Van Fleet. I've learned so much from her. She's made me a better person. And I think that I can't picture my life without Rachel. And my entire life has changed as a result of meeting her on that one faithful day. If you look at our story and just the way things were set up, we never should have met. She's from New Jersey.

I'm from Pickering, Ontario. We're both living in Southern California, but not close. She was living in Costa Mesa. I was living in Studio City. She had her settings on, we met on Hinge, dating app. She had her settings to like 30 miles. We were like 40 plus miles away from each other, which in L.A. is a long distance relationship. the quickest I ever got to her place in like at like three or four in the morning,

like because I was trying to beat traffic was like 45 minutes. The longest was like two and a half hours. Oh, wow. Oh yeah. It's not fun or close. But just the, she has this incredible ability to make everybody in her life feel special, myself included.

And that is something that I have learned just by osmosis, by being around her all the time. She is the funniest person that ever. met. She's the most generous person I've ever met. And she's the most selfest person I've ever met. And I feel so incredibly grateful that I get to love her every single day. Damn, you're going to make me tear up, bro. I can't fix your life without her. And it's, I'm, I just can't believe that we got to meet each other. And now we get to spend the rest of our lives together. Okay. So the second one, I'm actually grouping two people. So, uh, Dirk and Helen Van Fleet.

And how lucky am I that I get to sit here and both of my parents are still with us? I mean, I quite literally, I am who I am because of them. I'm not here without them, obviously. But there's different lessons I learned from both of them. My dad's is, I think a lot of that perseverance is from my dad. My dad's never been late for anything. And I get that from him. my dad's the whole idea of like if you're five minutes early,

that's when you're on time. And I very much appreciate that about him. I also think I get a lot of my passion from my dad. My dad worked for Lufthansa, the German airline for his entire career. He is passionate about airplanes, like passionate. And I think I get my passion from him for different things.

Like he'll see an airplane fly over and be like, oh, yeah, it's an A320. Oh, look at that's American Airlines, A320 right now. there. Wow. I'll get on a plane. I'm getting on one tomorrow to go to St. Louis for backlash. I'll get a text from him and be like, oh yeah, I saw there's two seats open in business class. Are you on the business class waiting list? Do you think you'll get upgraded? Oh, no, dad, I didn't get upgraded. I'm in 17C. Oh, you're in the exit row window seat. Yep. Like it's, oh, I saw that your flight took off seven minutes late today. But you're going to get into

Arizona for your connection four minutes early. That's great. I just love that passion. And that's the passion I was talking about. Well, I dive into something and I don't check the depth of the water or the temperature of the water. My mom is just so selfless in everything that she did for both me and my sister growing up and all of the opportunities that they gave us. Both of them never missed a baseball game, never missed any of my sister's soccer games. They were there for every hockey game I played. just so supportive. And like, yeah, maybe they didn't like wrestling when I really got into it. And I know that they were scared when I became a backyard wrestler that I was going to get

injured. It wasn't me. It was my friend Will White who broke his leg. But I know that it came from a place of, like, they just wanted the best for me. And now that I'm a parent, I judge a whole lot less than what I did when I was younger. You know, when you're a kid, your parents are kind of like the fun police, especially when you're a teenager. They're the fun police because all they're doing is telling you,

no, you can't do that thing you really want to do. But my friends are doing. I don't care what your friends are doing. You can't do it. And like you really start to butt up with just like the idea of like, you want to do this thing. They don't want you to. And it's like, well, like, I'm never going to get my way.

Now that I have kids and they're not old enough to be asking for things. But I now realize that like, oh, they were just doing this because they were looking out for us. and I'm so grateful for both of my parents. And yeah, I wouldn't be who I am right now without them. And the final person, Kimberly Van Fleet. It's so hard. You know, it's so hard.

We lost my sister in October. It's funny when her husband, my brother-in-law, Brent, did the eulogy. He said, you were literally the nicest person that I ever met. And it's so true. My sister was so nice to everybody. To everybody. It didn't matter who you were. So nice to everybody.

And she saw the best in people. And that's the quality that I take most from her is she saw the best in everybody. And I see that in her kids. See that in Ainsley and Colin and Clark. They see the best in everybody. And I didn't talk to my sister. Like I wasn't like texting with her all the time because she was quite a few. years older than me and had her own life and lived in Calgary. But every time I saw her and saw the family,

we picked it right back up, right where we left off. And I love that. And I miss her. I miss her a lot. And I know it's been really hard on my parents as well. They say that grief is like, it's like walking around with a rock in your pocket. And at first, you're like, I got a rock in my pocket. Like you're always noticing it because it's always there. And then as time goes on, you get a little bit stronger and you're okay with it being there. And you start to notice it a little bit less, but it's always there. And yeah, there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about her. And it just came as such a surprise.

She was battling this for years. And we thought we were in the clear. And then it came back. And then we thought everything was okay. And then she was gone. But I'm grateful for the time that we had with her. I have one last request for you. A lot of people, they like to ask their guests.

Oh, where can we find you? I'm not like most people. I want to channel one of my favorite people, Jeff Probes. And I'm going to ask you to dig deep here. I want you to channel that inner sharp talking, sharp walking, sharp dressing, Chris Sharp, two-time HCW champion. Wow.

And I want you. to cut a promo on why the three most electrifying words in wrestling aren't WW. No. They're not AEW. They're not RKO. Hell no. They're CVV. Well, I would tell you where to find my YouTube channel, but with over a billion views in the last year,

I don't think I need to tell you. You already know where it is. Hell, you're probably already subscribed. Or maybe you're one of those people who just watches the videos. and doesn't subscribe. You're a taker. Take, take, take, take. That's all you're doing.

Taking. Maybe it's time to give back just a little bit. What is pushing a button on your phone do for you? Nothing. You know what it does for me? As a creator, it allows me to continue doing what I love to do. It actually does really bother me when you think about this.

Right. These videos pop up in your feed and you don't have the decency to just click a button. That's it. All you got to do is click a button to subscribe or follow a show. That's it. So again, I would tell you where my show is. You already know where it is. Billion views, million subscribers.

You know all about it. So go do the thing. Are you still looking at me for? Do the thing. I don't like Chris Sharp. I don't think I don't think I like Chris Sharp. I don't think I don't think I like Chris Sharpe. I'll also, as we wrap this up,

I feel like I should have done this earlier. I should have said, hip-hop armoryed spick and span. Met you one summer and it all began. You're the best girl that I ever did see the great Larry Bird jersey, 33. When you say, but take a sip, you buzz like a hornet.

Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets. Call me when you listen because I can't speak baby. Something in your eyes went and drove me crazy. I won't continue. I know the whole thing, though. Jim Rome takes on sports. Why? Because I have a job to do.

With rapid fire takes. So I don't want to hear from you lava pigs on this notion today. No idea what you're talking about. You're complaining more than you like to breathe air. It's like you get up in the morning only to complain and cry and moan on social media about things that you don't even understand. He's the spitfire of sports smack. Take advantage of it. Get up in here. The Jim Rome Show podcast.

What's your beef? Follow and listen on your favorite platform. You've been warned.