Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Mike Bailey Explains His SPEEDBALL Nickname, Signing With IMPACT Wrestling, Josh Alexander

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

Speedball Mike Bailey (@speedballbailey) is a professional wrestler currently signed to IMPACT Wrestling. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about growing up in Canada, French being his first language and learning to speak English, how he got his "Speedball" nickname, his dream X Division opponents, his issues crossing the Canada/US border, how he turned the negative of not being able to enter the United States into a positive, wrestling fellow Canadian Josh Alexander, his wife Veda Scott and much more! For more information about Chris Van Vliet and INSIGHT go to: https://podcast.chrisvanvliet.com If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are going. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Bleet. How the heck are you, my friends? Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. Welcome back to another audio adventure on Insight. I am CVV Chris Van Fleet. And it's just hitting me now that this is the first episode I've ever recorded as a married man.

Yeah, you may have seen on social media that on Saturday, my fiance, well, my former fiance, my now wife, Rachel and I got married. And a lot of you have been asking about this. And I agree. I think it's time we've got to have Rachel on the show. So it seems fitting that it's the holiday season. We're wrapping up 2022. A very big year in my personal life.

I'm sure a big year for you as well. So we're wrapping up 2022. I think she needs to be a guest before the year is over. So keep an eye out for that. We got what? A little over a week. week before the year is over, so keep an eye out for that. In the meantime, though, Speedball Mike Bailey has had an incredible 2022.

Perfect timing to have him on now, because did you see that match he just had with Josh Alexander on Impact? It was like just a few minutes short of an Iron Man match, but my goodness, we might as well call it an Iron Man match. So, so good. And just great to dig into who he is and what he's all about. you enjoy this conversation as much as I do with Simpson's references thrown in there, some a little bit of French being spoken, because obviously that's his first language, and I speak like

19 words of French from, you know, growing up in Canada. But I hope you enjoy this. Take a screenshot and share this with a friend and tag us on social media so we can share it out as well. He's at Speedball Bailey on Twitter. I'm at Chris Van Fleet, and we've had so many reviews over the last few weeks. trying to keep up with this. So many reviews since we started reading them out on the show again. So if you want a shout out on the show or if you've had a shout out on the show and you want another one, just leave a review on Apple Podcasts and boom, that's it. This one is from CUNLune, CUN Lee, who says, must listen. CVV is the host that brings the big names from the industry. So excited for the next guests that he's going to have on his show, super in love with this show. Well, I'm super in love

with this review. So thank you for taking the time to leave a review. If you're listening on Spotify, a rating goes a real long way on there. So just want to say thank you. It's been an awesome year. So thank you for being on this ride with me. Let's get into this. Ladies and gentlemen, Speedball, Mike Bailey. Bonjour, my name. Hello, how it's it? That's the end of my French, though. So it's very good. At least you hit the bien part, which is difficult. People say

bien or bien. With a soft end, that's good. Well, look, I grew up in Canada, so I learned high school French. Right. So where in Canada did you grow up? I grew up in Toronto. Just outside of Toronto. I grew up in Pickering. Okay. Right. So I can, I can conjugate the verb at which is, you know, like, it's going to help me in zero situations ever. Well, hold on now. You can conjugate some of the verb. Like, there's a lot of, lot of tenses. Let me, we sound you're not. Can you do posse composed?

Kille ete, that's, that I didn't get that far. Yeah, French is ridiculously complicated, needlessly complicated. I mean, I feel like if I were to walk into anywhere and be saying, I am, you are, he is, she is, they'd be like, what is this person doing? Right? When did you learn to speak English? So I want to say that I remember when I started doing Taekwondo, I was 11 years old, or I was about to turn 12. And I could hold the conversation in English, but I made a lot of mistakes, like a lot of grammatical errors.

And my accent was a lot more present than it is now. So probably not like till a couple years before that. Though I always had a sense, like I heard English. I knew what it sounded like. I know what it was meant to sound like. I couldn't quite speak it. Like I remember when I started playing video games, I would have my father translate for me

because I couldn't understand what was happening. So you went to school in French? I went to school in French, yeah. So they thought English, but that was like half of the learning. The exact opposite of what I was just describing. Right. And for anybody wondering, our conversation at the beginning of this was, Hello, my friend. How are you? I'm good. And that was the end of it.

Which is what most people get out of learning French as a secondary language. I can also say, who is the sal de ban? That's good. Where is the bathroom? That's very useful. Where is the bathroom? So the issue with learning French is that a majority of the people who speak French also speak English. Like, especially, especially, in Quebec, very few people don't also speak English. Like the official language of Quebec is bilingual, no matter what people say, most people will speak and understand both. So there's like, unless you really want to do some specific work in French, there's a very little point to actually

learning it. And it's incredibly difficult. I'm so glad that I didn't, like, I'm so glad that I didn't continue to learn it more. It was confusing as much as, as far as I went in it. right confusing and mostly useless so have you did you ever run into situations where you're like ah i wish i knew french so i went to the south of france i was at the can film festival like 10 years ago and i was with all my friends who were american i had already lived in the u.s at this point for like two years and we wanted someone to take a photo and i was like hold on a second a photo and someone was like do you want me to take a photo of you i'm like oh my god i could have just asked in english that's what i'm saying everyone who speaks french also speaks english or understands

is well enough to be able to you know take your take your picture if you want so yeah and then you're right there's like that's one of the languages where if you speak this one you probably also speak the other one if you speak french you probably also speak english but you don't really have that much of an accent now thank you So that's something I regret, especially when it comes to professional wrestling. Because I don't have much of an accent, though it does come out when I speak. You don't have like the George St. Pierre French-Canadian accent. So, no, I don't, but I wish I did.

Are you serious? 100%. Because I worked hard to make that accent go away and to speak, you know, quote, unquote, proper English. But now, like, the pressure's on. When I'm doing like promos or something, English is still my second language. It still doesn't come completely naturally, right? But if I did all my promos like this, you know,

then I could mix up some words and people would go, you know, it's okay. English is a second language. He's trying. He's trying so hard. I was not impressed with your performance. Yes, see, you can say things like that. Then it's okay.

No one questions it. And no one says, oh, that guy, he cannot talk. on the mic, they just say he has an accent. And then you just have to say, you know, after every few words, you know, you have to talk about wrestlers like Hedge and Christian. So the letter H is a very difficult one, T.H and then words that starts with H, mixing up air and hair is a very common one. And they just, people just switch it and I don't know why.

It's not like they never use it. It's like they use it when it's not there and they don't use it when it's not there and they don't use it when it's there. Oh, that is so funny. But maybe you work that into the speedball character somehow. Well, keep your eyes on the IPWF that just came out. And you might meet a certain Monsieur Baguette, who is from, is this the thing you posted on Instagram recently? This is the thing I posted on Instagram. This is so exciting because I love random Simpsons quotes. And when I posted that, it said, that man, it's my exact double. Dog has a fluffy temple. I was like, yeah. I know that when I am much, much older and demented, I'm going to be speaking only in Simpsons quotes.

I was having this conversation not long ago with Ryan Nemeth. Just like there's so many ridiculous Simpsons quotes that just like, you know, you might know them and you just say them in everyday, you know, life and other people are like, I don't know what you mean. Like my friends and I used to always say, we would go to all you can eat chicken wing buffet. and we would always reference the Lionel Hutz thing. Do these sound like the actions of a man who's had all he could eat? There's so many, I've gotten into the habit of pulling out my phone, and I know exactly what to search on YouTube in order to find the clip, and just like, rather than saying it myself, just pulling out the clip, it's a little bit more context.

Which one? That way. So what I've been using a lot recently is when they are introducing, the astronauts or the people they sent into space in the latest space mission and it's a you've got a statistician a mathematician and a different kind of mathematician and it just look all the same which happens a lot in wrestling when they'll introduce a lineup and it'll be like just exactly the same person three times now that the world cup is going on i keep referencing when the simpsons was yes soccer are you ready for a fast kicking low scoring and ties

when the commentators when the Kent Rockman is just it passes to the left passes to the right back to center and then the Spanish commentators is just going crazy holds it

you're right they cut to the stand hold it holds it hold it! Yeah it's great it's fantastic well I can't wait to meet some Monsieur Baguette Yeah, I will. It's on the Impact Plus app. It's on Impact Ultimate Insiders. I'm always happy to plug.

They call you SBMB. I'm sorry? Does anybody call you SBMB? Speedball Mike Bailey, SBNB. No, actually, no. They haven't, but I think they should. I'm sure someone has. Now I have. Now you have. Yeah, now it's a thing. Now, I feel like when someone says SpongeBob Squarepants, I always go to SBSP. And they're like, what? I'm like, SBSP. And now you're SBMB. I, so over the, it's mostly through Twitch that I've given myself a lot of nicknames.

Ooh, let's hear them all. Well, so the number one is Uncle Speedy. That one goes by a lot. And I don't know why I've become an uncle, but I feel like that's the, the, the, place I occupy within the hashtag speed fam, because family comes first, which is a fast and furious reference, which is very important to my Twitch cannon.

Family. I live my life a quarter mile at a time. That's the Vindiesel voice. That was really good. Is this part of the interview? This is the interview. This is the interview. It's the most.

important part of the interview, actually. We're just going to do Vin Diesel Impression and Simpson's references for an hour. Oh, my friend, that would be too easy. It would be too easy, wouldn't it? Too easy. See, the hard part is to talk about professional wrestling. Well, you know, you've talked about pro wrestling

in every other interview that you've done. Switch it up a little bit. So, to be fair, a lot of podcasts and stuff will do this. They'll be like, hey, man, I don't talk about professional wrestling. I want to talk to wrestlers about everything else. I want to talk about anything but professional wrestling. And here's the thing about me. I love professional wrestling.

And I'm completely unashamed about it. I will talk about professional wrestling for days and days and days. And if you get me going, I will just not stop. And I don't know. I feel like it's not cool among professional wresters to talk about how much they love professional wrestling. And I'm completely unashamed about it. I don't know. Or maybe it's on the flip side of it.

It's like they just, just assume like this is something you talk about all the time that the last thing you want to do is talk about like the match that gutch you win to it or your favorite opponent or something like that. Right. So I'm sure you have thoughts on this as well, right? The other thing that you hear is, oh, I don't ask the question that everyone asks, like how you got into wrestling and how you got your start and your background and everything. But I feel like if you, if you're going to interview a professional wrestler about, you know, their career, that's the kind of things that people might want to know. and that you might need to ask. And I feel like it's on me to have interesting answers for that. Well, and I also get that this may be, for some people that are watching this are listening to this, this may be their first speedball Mike Bailey interviews.

So like, hopefully it is. I mean, that's the whole point of this, right? Hopefully it is as well. And aside from the, you know, fun antics of The Simpsons and everything else that's going on there, like, yeah, we're going to dig into what makes Mike Bailey, Mike Bailey, but I think we need to start with, what is a speedball? So the speedball is the piece of boxing equipment that just you hit and it rebounds.

And the reason that I was nicknamed Speedball Mike Bailey is because there was a, his name was Michael Ryan. He wrote about Montreal wrestling. He since passed away, but in one of my early matches, he described my in-ring style as bouncing around the ring like a speedball. And a big part of the reason I love. love that nickname is because I didn't give it to myself, which is very rare in these hard times. Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of wrestlers that go, that would look good on a t-shirt. That is my new

name. Yes, and it usually ends up sounding badass, right? That's usually like, it's the people, the monster. But then, but then like Chris Jericho tells stories of like trying to get nicknames over or trying to get catchphrases over and being like, yeah, yeah, it didn't work. Right. And speedball I like because again, it begs the question what is a speedball? Do you know what I mean? Which is immediately comes to mind for me is like Sonic the hedgehog when you hold down and he literally turns into a ball of speed and then like explodes out of there. See, that's not exactly what it is, but it's the right kind of imagery. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. That's still within the realm of what it's supposed to represent. Well, the great thing about the name Speedball Mike Bailey is if someone's never seen one of your matches and they see your name on the card and then they see you wrestle, they go, oh, yeah, like lives up to the name.

So, yes, I think so. Also, I like the name Mike Bailey a lot, which is not my real name. If you want to know my real name, it's not hard to find it all. In fact, it's Emil Baillardjean-la-Berge. It's like it's not difficult and it's all over the internet. It's very French, very hard to pronounce. They are very French. Cray, pre, Fonse. When I used to do taekwondo tournaments outside of Quebec, and they would have to call my name on the PA, because it was my turn to fight, and they would have to say Emil Béardjean-Laberg. I'd have to wait and hear the name of the school that I was representing

and then be like, is this me? Because they would never get it right. How would they normally, like, how would an English person say your name? So Emil is not that difficult, but it's not, I hear Emil, which I know there are emmels out there. I hear Amel, E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-R-G-E-O-N, but Baiav-I-L-L-A-R-G-E-O-N.

Yeah. Bay-Largan, Belargin, Bay-R-G-on. LaBerge is kind of straightforward, but it comes at the end. It's also a hyphenated last name, which is just a mess, a complete mess. Yeah. Do you think of how different your career may have been? like you were doing taekwondo and martial arts early in your life when ufc wasn't quite the ufc that we know now do you think that if maybe you were 11 years old now doing taekwondo that maybe your

career would have gone a completely different way so i think so but the uh i am not uh i like i'm not spiteful and the thing that i never had in in any like combat sports that i did was like Like, you know, that anger, that rage, that desire to beat my opponent and knock him out. You know, I just wanted to win. I wanted to be technically superior and win. And that was much more interesting to me. And I never had any animosity towards my opponents. Like, even if they, which is, again, very much reflected in my professional wrestling,

in my persona on the screen. But I never had any animosity. Like, even if they tried to, like, cheat, I'd be like, yeah, I understand what you're doing. I understand where you're doing in it. And it doesn't really bother me. and I think that's why pro wrestling worked better for me than actual competitive combat sports because I like, I prefer teamwork to outright competition. I prefer working together in order to achieve a goal than trying to, you know, beat up another person.

Like, I know that pro wrestling is not the only avenue for that. And there's like, you know, lots of stunts and stuff is something that I almost went into at one point. and was certainly interested in. And there's a lot of other avenues for that. But pro wrestling really fits my personality well and much better than competing in MMA would have. Well, the interesting thing about stunts is that could be something that you do 10, 15, 20 years from now when you're no longer wrestling. It absolutely could be, but unfortunately, pro wrestling is working out quite well for me right now. I don't have any.

That's why I said 20 years from now. We'll see about 20 years from now, yeah. When do you feel like on this trajectory, things really started to shift for you in your wrestling career? So there's been many moments where, like it's come in such small increments. I've been wrestling for 17 years. I'm 32 years old,

which is I started when I was 15. And I started from literally the bottom, like the, it was in Quebec, so there was a language barrier that kind of cut off the whole province from the rest of the world. And then there's a physical border between Quebec and the U.S. I started taking bookings in January 2006. And later that year is when Kevin Steen wrestled Christopher Daniels in Quebec City. And that match was the first time in a very, very long time, like in decades that anyone was

ever brought from outside of Quebec to wrestle in Quebec. And that's how, that's just how isolated and, and difficult that was at the time. So all this to say that there's been a lot of moments where, you know, I was just doing wrestling. And then I thought, oh, this is going pretty well. And then it wasn't. And then it was again. And then. Yeah, I feel like you were like the best kept secret on the Indies for a long, long time.

And it's no longer a secret anymore. Right. But yeah, up until the beginning of this year, I was number one on all these greatest wrestler you've never heard of lists that pop up, which is great. However, I'd like to be the greatest wrestler you've also heard of. Well, that's where you are now. And you're in this incredible platform with Impact Wrestling, you're having some matches that are making people go, oh, wow, that's why I tune into Impact.

Yeah, and it's been great. It's been great to finally get to do on a bigger platform, what I had been doing. I think PWG was a great example of that because up until last year, people would still go, oh, Speedball Mike Bailey, I love his match with Roderick Strong, which happened in like 2015, and I had been wrestling in Japan for DDT for like four years at this point, and I'd had way better matches there, not because, you know, not because I had been wrestling better opponents because there are very few than, you know, than Roger Strong. But I've gotten so much better in so many aspects over those, over the five years that I couldn't come into the

U.S. So it's still, it's sucked to have people judge me on what I was five years ago. And it's even worse to have people go, oh, you were great five years ago. And it's like, well, I am a lot better now. And it was great to be able to come back to PWG in the beginning of the year and change up that perspective. I interviewed Josh Alexander earlier this week, so as this airs about two weeks ago, and he was like, wait to you see the match

that I have with speedball on impact. Yeah. Yeah, it's a big one. What is it about wrestling with someone like him that kind of pulls the magic out of both of you? I think it's hard work. I think it's we both have. I'm sure Josh

told you his story, and hopefully everyone who's listening has listened to your interview with Josh as well. But he and I like kind of mirror each other in the way that we come from Canada and we had a very, very difficult paths, completely differently, but very difficult path in order to get to where we are now with his injuries, both of us dealing with the border and just, you know, I think he and I are both in a place where we take absolutely nothing for granted. And we are, we realize how blessed we are to be. doing what we're doing now as a job and that we get paid to do professional wrestling

which I think is very, very easy for a lot of people to forget. But I don't know if he talked about it with you, but he worked construction up until quite recently and he had jobs and, you know, I worked up until like I want to say, 2016 or 15, I think,

I was a janitor. I cleaned a university at nighttime, and I used to make, you know, I don't know, $18 an hour, $19, in 2015 money, which is a lot more than it is now. But, you know, every time I go in the ring and I get to do what I love and get paid for it, I remember just how hard I worked at something I hated in order to be able to do what I love in my spare time.

And I think Josh is the same way, And I think we both have no qualms about working as hard as we need to. And, you know, the effort that we've put into our lives in order to get where we are just comes through in the matches. I think it's that idea that if you're going to have to work for the rest of your life, and this was a big epiphany for me when I was finishing university, you're going to have to do something for the rest of your life. Why not like try as hard as you possibly can to do something that you love doing? And if you try really hard and it doesn't work out, at least you know that you try. Oh my God, it's the biggest privilege to be able to do something that you love is the biggest thing.

Because again, speaking about my career, there are many moments where I was settled into, you know, I'm going to do something that I hate in order to be able to do things that I love in my free time. And, you know, settled into that and going like, okay, this is fine. This is going to be my life. And now that I have the opportunity to do what I love for living, great. The United States Soccer Federation present the U.S. soccer podcast. My name is David Goss, and I'm joined by my co-host, Megan Klinemberg. And now we're giving people an inside look at the World Cup.

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Soccer podcast, presented by Henko. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Josh and I talked about how important it is that Scott DeMore is Canadian, because it's almost like he gives fellow Canadian wrestlers that edge of like, all right, look, I know this isn't going to be easy, but knowing what I know, impact wrestling can help bring you in. Absolutely. I think people don't realize, I know for a fact that people are not aware

of the caliber of talent that there is in Canada. Man, the wrestling landscape is wild. It's completely different now than when I started. It's completely evolving. For a lot of people, this is how their pathway, right? They start wrestling training in

2018. They get a match on AW Dark after they've been wrestling for six to eight months. And now they're trying to get signed and they're getting tryouts and stuff. Where I wrestled for, you know, five years until I received the first envelope that had

five Canadian dollars in it and that was my pay. And before that, I just, you know, not even a handshake and a hot dog. Is it wrestling for free though? Five years of wrestling for free, yeah. But it's not because anyone was taking advantage of me, just because no one was making money because, again, this is pre-social media where the only way to advertise your wrestling shows is by, you know, stapling the flyers to telephone poles and waiting outside of the house shows to try to hand out flyers and get people there. And you're not bringing in anyone.

There's no draw. There's no big names. No one's making money. Yeah. I think that when I talk to fellow Americans, I'm not an American, talk to other people that live in America. Right. They're trying to be a pro wrestler. They take for granted the great privilege that they have of being able to travel all around the country and see all the different cities and showcase their abilities. And when you live in Canada, you know that there's so many more opportunities on the other side of the border. But as you touched on, and I know it was a big part of your story, crossing the border as a Canadian is not an easy thing, especially if you're trying to do something where you're making money in the States. Yep, that's absolutely right. And, you know, Canada is in a weird position because that border is right there.

Do you know what I mean? It's a lot of people live physically a two-hour drive down from a promotion that we'll offer them an incredible amount of visibility compared to what they have access to in Canada. 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S. border. That's right. It's almost the whole country. Yeah, basically. You know, and the amount of visibility, like,

especially for independent wrestling in the U.S. with IWTV and Fight Plus and how easy it is to put your show on a big platform that people will have access to with discoverability. I mean, that's a huge step in getting a following online and then growing your career that way.

But also, like we talk about Canada a lot and it's, you know, that's where I'm from. It's very important. But I wish that there was a better avenue in order for the greater public to discover promotions like Grapple Macs in Singapore that have fantastic shows and promotions. There's great wrestling over in France

with fantastic wrestlers that people don't know about. And it's a thing that I try to do as much as possible like raise awareness of all the fantastic world-class town that people have no idea about because it's too far outside of America. I think people saw the headline of you getting turned away at the border and everything that happened there in 2016 and they don't realize everything that likely went up until that point. I think people might read that story and go,

well, Mike showed up to the border and they said you can't come in. But how many other times had you crossed and they had kind of gone, we're going to flag your, we're going to flag your passport? So it hadn't happened. I was fine up until that point. But again, it's extremely tricky. And the thing about the border is that everything is up to the agent, right? They don't really need a reason to turn you around, and they don't need a reason to look further into your things either. They can just decide, you know, I don't like your face. We're going to go and do a deep dive into everything you say.

And also, the part that is complicated is that for, you know, every speedball Mike Bailey and Josh Alexander that, you know, had issues at the border and then saw it through the end. There's a hundred more Canadians that you've never heard of because they weren't able to pick up enough steam and by the time, you know, they got turned around

before they were able to actually get their name out there and it's been so much harder for them ever since. I was lucky that I'd been able to do you know, PWG and CZW and evolve and a bunch of higher echelon places. And then when I was not, no longer able to get to the U.S., I was able to go to England and Japan and, you know, Germany and wherever else,

because I had picked up enough notoriety in order to be able to have my name out there and be attractive to promotions overseas. So what was it like on that day? You hand over your passport, you get to the border, they say, where are you going, what are you doing? And then do you immediately go, oh, this is not going well? Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to go in detail into it because, you know,

the truth is a lot more sad and boring than you would imagine, but there was that big realization of, you know, your career is going to go way differently than you thought it would. Do you know what I mean? Because the plan at the time was, you know, I'm finally resting in front of people that could make decisions and, you know, could change my career. And I know that if all was being very closely looked at as the time,

And if you look at everyone that was on those PWG shows with me in that period, most of them went to NXT or New Japan or are now in AW. In fact, almost all are in, if you were to run down a card, like everyone's in AW or at that point. It's wow. Yeah. So to go from their realization that that's not going to happen for you, at least not for five years is, of course, very difficult to deal with.

But, you know, I'd already been wrestling for 10 years at this point. And like I mentioned, I didn't get paid for the first five. So I'd been doing this just because I loved it for long enough. I wasn't about to stop. So you're like this is the perfect example of taking a bad situation and like putting a shine on it and making it work out for you because you basically said, all right, that's one country I can't wrestle in, but look at all the other countries that I can wrestle. Yeah. And luckily like I had already been in touch with DDT before that and a ref bro was a lot of help and as soon as that happened

they were the first ones to reach out to me and go hey come and spend two weeks and we'll you know, we'll do something. Yeah, DDT had already reached out to me and I had, like, I couldn't do the dates they offered because I was already going to Mexico at this point to AAA for a couple months but as soon as that happened I reached back out to them

and they were like, yeah, come on. And their initial offer from DDT was yeah, uh, okay, just burn your passport and we'll get you Japanese citizenship and you can stay here, which was very interesting. But, you know, I was always kind of looking ahead at the end of those five years. And my goal was to raise my value as much as I can, which meant performing in as many different places at the same time as possible

in order to get where I am now. But I just love that you were able to take a bad situation and turn into something good because I think there's a lot of people in different aspects of their life, that would take something that in the moment is seemingly as crushing as that and go, well, never going to happen, forget it. And you were able to go, okay, well, this is just a speed bump in the road for speedball. Wow. Very well done. Very well done. I did, yeah. Look, I was such a huge fan of TNA. And now that you're in there and you're part of the X Division.

Who's a match that you wish you could have? Or what's a match you wish you could have with somebody that was part of that early days of the X Division in TNA? Oh, man, there's so many. AJ, AJ Styles is, of course, number one. And I think the person that will forever be associated with TNA, right? Sure. But, man, that early X Division roster was something.

You look at it like Jerry Lynn, Matt. from that time. Amazing Red, doing absolutely fantastic. Sabin, who's been there from the beginning, who is still one of the best. It's interesting to see. And what is unique about the X Division is that it's been able to, for so long,

maintain its identity, which is very, very rare and professional rest. Do you think of the intercontinental championship in Dewey? And it's like, it's kind of, the mid-card title, but it's not associated with any particular style. Yeah. Right?

Where the ex-division... It's been held by like almost everybody. So it's like, yeah, it's a mid-card thing, but then why do main eventers keep winning it? Right. And like, there's no... People have attempted to do it. Like, there was the, you know, 24-7 titles and the hardcore championships and things

that end up being too specific. Yeah. And kind of, you know, put itself in the box. but the Exhibition is still kind of an open-ended thing. It's just very action-fact professional wrestling, and it's maintained that identity for so long is amazing. I remember when it was it's not about weight limits, it's about no limits.

And then like the 10 years later, they did put a weight limit on and I went, excuse me, what are you doing? And then they quickly got rid of that. Good, yeah. Okay. That makes sense. But you're right.

Samoa Joe was one of the greatest Exivision champions of all time, and he's obviously a heavyweight, but he made it work, and that's what was so impressive about him, is that, you know, that the most ex-division title match of all time, which is that three-way match between the A.J. Stiles, Chris Daniels and Samoa Joe,

which goes a million miles an hour for 30 minutes with, you know, a heavyweight in there, wrestling with two junior heavyweights that still doing some of the craziest stunts that ever happened. I watched that match pretty frequently, and I got, Don't we all. Don't we all?

Right. I loved TNA. I remember buying the best of AJ Stiles DVDs back in the day. But I just kept going back to that one match. And I'm just like this. This is why TNA was so good in the mid-2000s. Well, that's probably why the Impact YouTube channel

just posts it every like three and a half months. On the channel. I get some million views every time, which is great. Because it's, again, a fantastic match. Like I think the anniversary of the Elix Skipper cagewalk was like last week and kept getting posted everywhere and I'm like, kept getting posted. Like it was getting posted by non-wrestling accounts. And I was just like, yeah, no, that that's when you know you've got a great moment that transcends wrestling. Absolutely. Do you have a moment like

that that's like what's the most shared Mike Bailey moment gift match, whatever it might be? So, sadly, I think it's when I kicked Ninja Mac off that ledge at the, uh, Ukrainian cultural center, which I see sadly because I'm not doing anything. I literally just kick him and he falls off. And like I don't even kick him off. I just kick him and he, you know, kind of plops down there. But yeah, that one went around. It's a great spot. It's entirely his doing. I had, it was not my idea. You know, in kicking with that theme, like I interviewed Chris Harris recently, which everybody talks about the Elix Skipper Cagewalk and doesn't, nobody, nobody, realizes that's Chris Harris on the receiving end of that Hurricane Rana.

And I'm like, see, I didn't even know it was Chris Harris. Right. Because it's just, you know, your eyes are focused on the movement, which is, you know, death defying and insane. But yeah, it was like so few people even associate that that's you or even associate like the entire match and who's in it. There's like, that's just a moment, which I think is actually very interesting. It's a wild thing to have a.

clip go outside of the world of wrestling, get posted on like, oh, so I gave Joey Janella a moonsol double knees through a table. And I'm not sure if you saw that one, but he falls, like, directly, like that in the center of the table, like a cartoon and just disappeared. So the table doesn't even like, the table doesn't break in half. The table stays. There's just a hole in the middle that breaks and he falls right through it looks, it looks wild. But that clip gets posted on like, reposted by like barstool sports. or one of those accounts that just steals clips and then posts them as their own.

They don't give any credit to the people that are performing? No, no, no, of course not. Why don't they do that, right? But the comments in there are absolutely wild because it's usually a mix of complete and utter amazement and just anger and rage and people that are just angry that this 30-second clip has happened and it doesn't belong in professional wrestling or whatever

their idea of professional wrestling is. But especially when it gets posted on a mainstream account, you get a lot of the people that are like, you know, some sort of terrible, awful comment about it being fake. And it's like, yeah, okay, like, that would be like going on to someone posting something about avatar and being like, you know this is going to actually blue throw. So CGI, yeah, old men yelling at clouds. That just doesn't make any sense. I feel like you've got like new life, you know,

since the border is back open to you, signed with Impact Wrestling, you know, turn a lot of heads there. What, now that you have every opportunity in front of you, what do you want to do? I mean, I'm going to be with Impact Wrestling for a few more years, and I'm very excited about that. I want to grow along with impact.

And I think that that's a big part of it. I feel like, I'm not taking any credit for it, but they have absolutely been making all the right moves. And Scott has taken the company in a very, very interesting direction. And they have been growing. The shows have been consistently getting better. They've come out of the pandemic and just knocked it out of the park. The live events are absolutely fantastic.

fantastic. And I think that I don't think there's a limit right now to what I can do in impact. And I think that the more we all, like all of us at impact grow, the more the company is going to grow. And I feel like that's limitless, kind of. But that being said, I want to outdo myself. And I know that people have said that my, my 22 was a wild year. and my goal is just to make 2023 better wherever and however that might be. So,

like, I am, again, I am a much better wrestler right now than I was at the beginning of the year. I am focused on growth and continuous improvement and I feel like I've achieved that

and I feel like my work itself is going to keep getting better in 2023. I mean, And with how wrestling is evolving and changing, there's new opportunities constantly. I mean, forbidden door things that are happening now like they never have before. I got to wrestle Kenta recently at Pro Wrestling Revolver.

I had a match with John Moxley. I wrestled Will Osprey earlier in the beginning of the year. I mean, I feel like I wrestled Dax Harwood two weeks ago in a, you know, big Forbidden Door extraordinaire. match. And I feel like that just makes the possibilities endless. And if I can continue to wrestle all the best wrestlers in the world and keep getting better while I do it, I feel like that's enough of a goal. I feel like early in my career, I got a piece of advice that really stuck with me. And it was that if you're not watching your older stuff from like six months ago and kind of cringing

a little and going, put it on that better, then you're not heading the right direction. that is incredibly true. And I think if that's not how you feel about, you know, about pro wrestling and about life in general, I think you're slipping. Man, what a great spot to end this on. But before we do, I just want to say, first of all, congratulations on everything.

I mean, it was a hell of a 2022. Even if you could just keep the same pace in 2023, I mean, it's going to be unbelievable to see. Thank you for everything. And I end every conversation talking about gratitude because it's such an important part of my life. I wake up every day, say out loud three things I'm grateful for. I do it before I go to bed too. So SBMB, what are three things that you're grateful for?

So we talked about, you know, my year 2022. And one of the highlights was that I got married. Congratulations. Thank you. I'm very grateful for my wife, Vedas Scott. We heard a little cameo of her earlier on. That's right. More than just being grateful for Veda,

I'm grateful for the voiceover they provide my life as well as my matches. Anytime that I have Veda on commentary while I'm wrestling, it just feels like, especially when I watch the match back, it just feels so much better. Not only because we have such a connection, but also because they're such an amazing commentator and their voice on every match. How much you know about wrestling

and how much care and passion they put behind making every match better is just unmatched, I feel. So that's something I'm very grateful for. I'm grateful for the audience that comes to professional wrestling. I make it a point to interact with people as much as I can on Twitter, on Instagram, on Twitch where I've grown such a fantastic community.

And honestly, with Twitch, I was expecting there to be a lot of, a lot more people who would come in and be unpleasant or mean or rude or annoying. And that quite frankly never happens. Everyone is so nice. Everyone is polite. At the merch table as well after and before shows. Like it, it makes me angry. It bothers me.

when I read things about how bad wrestling fans are on Twitter, which you do see a lot, which I quite frankly don't think is true at all. I think most people are. Wrestling is cool. People are great. I mean, I know there definitely are some weirdos who watch wrestling. It's like those nameless, faceless people who have a username with like seven numbers at the end of it and no profile picture.

It's like, all right, buddy, like nobody's listening to you. Yes, and it's very easy to get cut up. I know a lot of people, and I've said this to a lot of other wrestlers who I see, they'll make a tweet, right? They'll give out an opinion, and then there's going to be one comment that's going to be like, no, you're wrong

and you're an idiot for thinking that, and they will reply to that one comment and ignore all the others that said, yeah, man, you're totally right, and also this, which I think, you know, if you're going to respond to the mean comments, then you should respond to, you know, even more of,

the positive comments. I like that. Yes. Right. And then I'm going to be grateful for the existence of professional wrestling and that there is such a beautiful art, like open-ended yet concrete art form out there that just ticks a lot of boxes for me specifically, but also luckily for so many other people. I love that. Again, congratulations on everything, personal and professional from this year. Can't wait to see what's next for you in 2023. So Mike,

thank you so much. Thank you. Well, there we go, my friends. I feel like Mike and I should just have a separate podcast where we just talk about the Simpsons and Simpsons references

for an hour every week or twice a week. I think I'd be down with that. Big thank you to Mike for joining us. Thank you to you, of course, for always being here with us. If you enjoyed this,

please leave a rating or review and snap a screen shot and tag us let us know you're listening. Mike is at Speedball Bailey on Twitter. I am at Chris Van Fleet. And this quote hit me real hard when I saw this the other day. And I hope it hits you hard as well. It's from C.S. Lewis who says, you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. Be great. Be grateful. Happy holidays, my friends. We'll see you on the next one with some more insight. Hammer Alley podcast, an 80s flashback mockumentary. Back in the 80s, there were a thousand bands trying to make it in the world of rock.

But there was one band that had it all. Hammer Alley. Whatever happened to Hammer Alley? How did they go from top of the rock? I'm looking for a music video. They're a band from 1987. Hammer Alley. Ever heard of them?

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