Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Nigel McGuinness On Bryan Danielson, AEW Commentary & Mind-Blowing Magic

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Nigel McGuinness (@McGuinnessNigel) is a professional wrestler and commentator currently signed to AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss how likely one more match will be, his in-ring careers in ROH and TNA, being renamed Desmond Wolfe, the offer that got rescinded from WWE and what could have been, being in attendance at SummerSlam 1992 in Wembley Stadium, his thoughts on Bryan Danielson and more! Plus, Nigel wows Chris with some amazing magic tricks!  Quote I'm thinking about: “We are what we repeatedly do, therefore, excellence is not an act, but a habit” - Will Durant Sponsors: PURE PLANK: The future of core fitness! Use the code CVV to save 10% on Pure Plank which was designed by Adam Copeland & Christian: https://gopureplank.com/ PRIZEPICKS: Download the app today and use code INSIGHT for a first deposit match up to $100! BONCHARGE: Use the code CVV to save 15% off your infrared sauna blanket at https://boncharge.com/cvv BLUECHEW: Use the code CVV to get your first month of BlueChew for FREE at http://bluechew.com ROCKET MONEY: Join Rocket Money today and experience financial freedom: https://rocketmoney.com/cvv PLUNGE: Get $150 off your Plunge with the coupon code CVV150 at http://plunge.com For more information about Chris 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

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to another one here on Insight. I'm CVV Chris Van Fleet. Thank you so much for being with us here. And thank you for helping to make Insight the number one wrestling podcast on the planet. If you haven't already, hit a swan ton bomb on that follow button on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening. What a weekend in Cleveland. I had a blast meeting so many of you guys at SummerSlam and also the tailgate party. I hosted before SummerSlam.

We're going to chat all about that on this Friday's Ask CVV episode. But I do want to point out, I was a perfect seven for seven with my SummerSlam predictions with the bonus, the additional prediction of saying that Roman Raines would be coming back, although I feel like kind of everybody was assuming that. If you have a question for this Friday's episode, leave a comment on Spotify. Those are always so fun to read. or use the hashtag Ask CVV on social media. Nigel McGinnis is such a fascinating guy.

Wrestler turned commentator, turned magician, and we had a blast hanging out in the studio for this one. When was the last time you saw a wrestler doing magic? Well, I can tell you the next time that you'll see a wrestler doing magic because it'll be today if you watch this video on YouTube. He blew my mind at the end of this. Crazy. Nigel has such an incredible story and such an interesting way of looking at life. So I hope that you enjoy this one as much as I do. Snap a screenshot and tag us so we can share it out.

He's at McGinnis Nigel on all social media. I'm at Chris Van Fleet and let's do this thing. Please welcome Nigel McGinnis. The man, the myth, the legend himself. I'm so glad we're finally making this happen. Hmm. Who knew that we both lived here in L.A.? We do now. We both know that now, and here we are recording in L.A. Yeah, right. How long has L.A. been home for you?

March of 2012, I made the big trek across this great country of ours. From Florida, right? I also moved here from Florida. Yeah, yeah. Happy L.A.iversary then to you. Indeed, yeah. As it's pros and its cons, as I'm sure you know. A little bit of both, right? I feel like everybody has an L.A. story of, like,

I had to move here because, you know, if there'd be more opportunities for me, with you doing magic, and we're going to obviously get into that. The magic castle's here. That's legendary. It is. It's the premier magic establishment in the entire world. How does a layman like myself get to see what happens inside the halls of the magic castle? There are a magician.

There we go. We'll see how this interview goes, Chris. Maybe we consider ourselves friends after that. Your voice is just so soothing. You know, we hear it so often on commentary. It's nice to be able to also see you while you're speaking, doing this. It's just, what a lovely voice. I appreciate that.

You know, some people would probably disagree with you. There's been people in my career who disagree with you, certainly, but we'll leave that as it is. Have you, do you feel like you've lost any bit of your accent since living here in the US? I've even took classes to try to get rid of it. Are you serious? Yeah, yeah, I took a class to try to get an American accent because, you know, there was a time where I was looking about getting into acting and stuff.

And there were a lot of great British actors who are doing incredible American accents, right? Probably better than some Americans. Right, right. Like when people find out that Christian Bale is not American or that Tom Hardy's not American, they're like, what? It's incredible. It really is incredible. But I took a class and not to impute the class or the teacher, but I just, the best I could do was Forrest Gump. and not a good Forrest Gump either.

Jenny! Yeah, yeah, special Forrest Gump. When Forrest Gump is already special. But when you speak now, you sound like Jason Statham, and he's a very successful actor. We are? So, I mean, why couldn't this work for you? I suppose it could do, yeah?

I'm open to all offers, open to all, you know, we'll see where my life takes me. And that's the beauty of my life, I think. It hasn't gone, certainly not the way I expected when I started out, you know. But it's your... voice now that is making you the money that you're making now. It certainly is. So the idea of getting rid of this wonderful accent doesn't seem to make sense now.

No, no, right. Well, I'll leave it as it is then. Yeah, yeah, I can do that. With the work you're doing in AEW now, talk, talk me through a day of collision. How much prep goes into that day and preparing for the matches that you're going to see? For me, quite a lot. The week prior, I'm usually on social media a fair bit looking for a little, you know, hot button topics, things like that, things that are relevant.

And then day of, I'll get in there early. And as soon as we got the list of what the matches are, I'll put them all together. There's a sort of a very stringent routine that I go through every time to know, you know, stories that I'm telling, the little bullet points as well. And then just little funny things, as I said, that I can sort of bring into the conversation. So that will usually take me most of the day. as of late, I've been getting in the ring as well and rolling around. So between all of that, it's a, it's a hectic rush till 8 o'clock when we shoot.

Wait a second. Dun-dun-dan! Getting in the ring? Oh, what does this mean? I've been doing it for 18 months now, actually. Okay. 18 months have been getting back in the ring. There's a ring up close to us here, about half an hour away that I've been doing as well.

There's a few rings around here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Santino Brothers or Rikis. Neither. Neither. Yeah.

Okay. A secret ring. I think I know the ring you're talking about now. I'm in the Northridge, I think. Yeah, I know the ring you're talking. But your shirt says you're bumped free since 2011. Indeed. So this is a lie, unfortunately.

Oh. Are you working towards a return match? I was open to the suggestion, open to the idea when I originally signed with AEW. I took a flight cross-country with Tony and he said, I've got to swear you to secrecy. I'm going to tell you something. And you can't tell another soul. We're doing Wembley Stadium. I was like, oh, my God.

And then just the idea occurred to me, could you, should you? Because Wembley Stadium, 1992, that was an epiphany for me. That was a moment. I went there with my friend and I sat about 50 rows back and I just remember having this strange sensation. And I talk about it during my magic show, how I just had this weird feeling, this belief that somehow I knew I was going to be a professional wrestler. I think maybe you had a similar idea yourself,

but it stuck with me certainly. So to go back to that thing, wrestle charts. But, you know, the only thing that really made sense was Brian and the osteoporosis. Had he not broken his arm? Could have happened. Would it have happened?

I don't know. I mean, so much of it is out of my control, really. It's whether he wants to wrestle me. I always thought it's kind of funny. Someone asked him about that time if he'd ever wrestle me again. And he said, if I ever wrestled Nigel, I'd break his neck. Yeah. And then three weeks later, he breaks his arm, which I've caused a bit of calmer, don't you think?

That's interesting. I've always thought as well. You know that sometimes you get like couples and the girl is always jealous and blaming the guy for cheating. You're cheating on me. You're thinking of cheating on me. It always turns out she was thinking of it. So I think maybe when Brian said, you know, if I wrestle him, I'll break his neck.

He probably remembers those lariates and thinks, doesn't want that. Yeah. You go back and watch that match at Liverpool, right? We had that incredible match. And there was a time after he ran my head into the ring post. I rolled back in, blood pouring, looked him in the face. and I first and perhaps the only time I've ever seen true fear in his eyes. So, yeah, I think he was having a flashback.

I mean, PTSD from that. So I, you know, I make jokes about, I don't think he's ever going to wrestle me to be perfectly honest with it. Well, AEW's going back to Wembley. Yes, we are there soon, aren't we? Exactly, yeah. Well. Ryan's made his call now, you know.

He said he's going into the Owen Art Foundation tournament, and if he wins that, he's going to try to challenge for the title at Wembley. So if he does that, you know, his dream, my nightmare. But what if he doesn't, you know, win the tournament? Exactly. A lot of what ifs, a lot of intrigue, lot of possibilities. Yeah.

So is the only way you'd return, is it those two things? Is it Wembley and is it Brian Danielson? It certainly feels like that, you know what I mean? It certainly feels like that. All roads to me, I think, certainly aimed towards him. Because there's so much talent in AEW. You know what I mean? So many young guys who deserve those spots.

I'm very inspired by Christian Cage, obviously, and Adam Copeland as much as I'd hate to admit it. You know, these guys show that they haven't lost a step and they can still go. And all the knowledge that they have that they can convey and pass on to the next generation by being in the ring with them as well. I've been like, wow.

And getting back in the ring, I felt like, Wow, it's a strange realization when you figure out that the only thing stopping you being a wrestler was you. I haven't said that, I've certainly got no desire to step away from the announcing booth. I don't want to become a full-time wrestler. I don't really want to wrestle anymore, to be honest with you, other than beating Brian, obviously, because there's our story, there's our history. Yeah. But is it also ending things in your terms? Is that something you want to do?

That's definitely a possibility. I mean, you mentioned before we started filming that, you know, You watched a documentary, it was rather an ignominious end to my career. You know, I was very grateful to all the independent promoters that booked me on my final retirement tour. But I certainly never imagined that my last match would be in a small volunteer, a fire department in West Virginia, you know? Yeah.

But, yeah, you just don't get to choose it sometimes. You had the moment in the ring at all in last year. You announced the record-breaking attendance. Does that in a way feel like a moment in your great career that you can go? Yeah, I mean, I didn't perform. I didn't wrestle in Wimbly, but I had a moment. 100%. 100%.

Yeah. Yeah, there was definitely that. And I think, you know, if I'd have really wanted to and push for it, perhaps I could have been included in a different match. But it wouldn't have made sense. You know what I mean? Again, it's the biggest show of the year. And everybody who works so hard to be on that show deserves those spots.

And yet, for me to stand there in the middle of the ring and make that announcement was incredible, you know, and very nerve-wracking. And I wish I'd prepare. I didn't know it was going to happen. What do you mean? So walking out there, no one had told me I was going to make the announcement because they really didn't find out until the very last minute exactly what the number was. And so it was a match or a match and a half before through the cans said, right, after the next match, Nigel, you're going to get in the ring and announce this. And you got, I'm writing it down, make sure I've got the number right and the wording right, et cetera, et cetera, you know.

And then the match ends and I'm, all right, I go to get in the ring. Get it, go, go. It's you now. It's you now. And I don't know where the cameras are. It's such a huge stadium. I don't know where the cameras are. So I'm trying to find the cameras and trying to find something to say that's profound

and just, you know, get swept up in the emotion of it. But it was one of those experiences for me that was so exhilarating at the time. it's almost like an out-and-body experience, you know. I always worry for the person who has to announce the attendance. Because, you know, it's five numbers in this case. You've got to remember these five numbers in this very specific order. And obviously, this is, you know, some of the work you do as a magician. But what if you say it wrong?

Do they change the graphic on the screen immediately? Oh, crap, he said. Yeah, right. Well, they get one of the words wrong, right? You know, yeah, you mislead them or whatever else exactly. The amount of pressure, though, to... 81,035 fans. Yeah, exactly.

It is. Yeah, you still remember. What if you said 38? Right. Yeah. Are they going, oh, you change it? A lot of people would say that.

But, you know, it's funny. I've been reading a book by Bertrand Russell called The Conquest of Happiness. It was written back in the 1930s. You familiar with Bertrand Russell? No. He's a very, very famous philosopher, mathematician in England. He wrote this book about happiness. And even in 1930,

He has a lot of similarities to the world today. And he talked about how he was a very famous public speaker. And when he started doing it, he was nervous. He said a lot of times he wished he broke a leg before he actually did the speech. But then he got to a stage where he just realized if you can just let it go and you just think, whether it's good or whether it's bad, I'll just do my best. As soon as he did that and he let it go, he got better. And I've certainly found that when it comes to.

commentary as well. When did you feel like you started to get comfortable at commentary? Um, I think once I started working in WWE probably, no, no, no, certainly in Ring of Honor. Once I'd realized where my inspiration was coming from, which is obviously largely Joe Rogan, you know, someone who has the experience of being in what you're watching, um, can lend that credibility of why things are happening the way they are. that was sort of like a moment for me, penny dropping certainly. But then when I got hired by WWE, purely the fact that they hired me gave me a ton of

confidence because I'm like, oh, clearly they see something in me. Yeah, it must be doing something right. Yeah, yeah, right, exactly, which is kind of ironic given that, you know, some of the people I think of what I didn't see that, you know, but be it as it may, yeah, that was when it really started to hit and I just, I just sort of, yeah, really found my voice, so to speak. It's not so much to be nervous about. With wrestling, you've got to be nervous about if something goes wrong. What if I hurt myself?

What if they hurt themselves? A hundred different things. And I was thinking on the way over here today, actually, like with commentary, the worst you can do is not say what you were planning on saying and no one knows that anyway. And in the grand scheme of things anyway, Chris, it's just professional. We're not serving, you know, and we're not sort of solving third world hunger. It's a blessing, you know.

Regal says it all the time. Everything you've got in this job is an absolute blessing. And I feel that. I absolutely feel that to my core. When you got hired by WWE to do commentary, did you realize just how little you actually knew about doing commentary? Yeah, I've always said, actually, you know, if this is what I know about doing commentary,

this is what I learn in WWE about it, you know, And that all goes down to Michael Cole and Phil were down through Tom Phillips, who was, you know, just such, both of them so incredible in, you know, taking their time and explaining WW's view of commentary and how to do it and setting me up for success rather than failure. And, you know, Michael Cole was, he, you know, when he started there, people weren't quite so kind and understanding to him. So for him.

It's taken about 25 years for fans to come around on him. Right. But not even the fans. You know, even the people behind the scenes was a very different atmosphere backstage when he started. And sometimes people paid that forward. You know what I mean? I had to endure this. I had to pay my dues.

You know, he could have been very mean and, you know, say, you've got to, you know, be good or else you're going to be. But he didn't want that. He wanted to be a success. That's why, in my opinion, he's such a valuable asset to that company. What is WWE's view on commentary? Well, we haven't got enough time to talk about that. And I would imagine, I dare say it changed now, given that, you know, the higher-ups is a different structure than it was when I was there. Like I said, all the things that I've learned, the beauty of it now is that I can take the things that I think really work.

And the few little things that at least I felt like, eh, not for me. Don't have to do them anymore. You know what I mean? So we've got much more freedom in AEW to just take the government off and see what happens. Yeah, I think the thing that people don't realize is when commentary is great, you really don't notice it. Because it's just kind of guiding you along. It's kind of telling a story. And that's what you're so good at. It's not about calling this move, then this move, then this move. It's about explaining why is this thing happening? And what does that mean for perhaps later on in the match or later on in the story?

How long did it take you to get to that point? That came relatively early to me, because having been a wrestler, you're in that mind. mindset anyway when you look at a match. The difficulty for me, I had to learn, was that ability to say it at the right times as well. Struct for a match is such that you can't say the things at the end of the match that you were going to say at the beginning of the match,

etc, etc. You know, there's so much complexity of it that, again, I couldn't even really cover it here, but people have no idea. And I didn't. I had no idea before I did commentary,

how complicated it is, how much nuance there is to it. You said something really interesting in the documentary. I actually wrote it down because I thought it was so interesting. You said acting happens between the lines and wrestling happens between the moves. Indeed. So profound. Right.

And when you really think about it, it's so true. And basically what you're saying is it's not about the moves. It's about the story that's being told. Yeah, it's definitely, you know, you have to have the moves, certainly, you know, and you need to establish a move set. And you do the same moves set of someone else, then it's going to be very difficult to get over. But it is that undercurrent, that it, you know, charisma, whatever it is.

But you do, you know, in wrestling, you remember moments. And I think those moments often happen between moves. You know, we can all think of moments in matches that we watched growing up that just had those moments. Yeah, it's about a feeling. Right. It's about a, the feeling that you feel, like, I always go back to Dustin Rhodes versus Cody Rhodes at double or nothing.

And I was there live watching it and people were crying. And it wasn't about because this move, then this move, then this move. It was about the feeling and the emotion that it made you feel. Yeah. And special. Yeah, I can see it's bringing tears to your eyes now, right? You know, and I'm sure they felt it as well.

And that's when pro wrestling is at its best. And I've always found that funny. I talk about it in the magic show as well. How all of us that get pro wrestling, we're part of this proud, dirty secret. If you see someone in the world with a pro wrestling t-shirt, you go, one of us. You know what I mean?

And I don't know why, because you can watch a movie, a terrible movie, and you don't leave it and go, I'm not watching movies anymore, they're awesome. They're awful, you know? But there are people that will watch a bad pro wrestling match and go,

oh, pro wrestling's fake. Why is that? It's a strange thing. We could talk all day about that. And the same thing applies to other scripted TV, right? You can have a TV show that's scripted with storylines about homophobia or racism or drug addiction. You can have characters which are abhorrent that we, you know, you detest. I can't really have that necessarily, not to that extent, in pro wrestling.

Yeah. Because there's that fine line. And for some reason, we think that these people that you see on TV are truly what you're seeing. And sometimes it's close. It's a, the line is very blurred. It's the reason I call you Nigel, right? Like, but are you, is Nigel McGinnis sitting in front of me? You know, that's, the line is blurred, right?

It's a strange thing. Right. Yeah, yeah, you become a, what's that word? A caricature of yourself almost. I mean, you know, Rick Flair is a classic. example. He says that he is Rick Flair. Yeah. You know, for better or worse. But I saw I interviewed Rick Flair a handful of months ago and that same day I interviewed Hulk Hogan and he introduced himself to everybody on set as Terry. Hey, I'm Terry. You agreed

to meet you. Yeah. So it's like, for some people, it's like. Isn't it strange? It is so strange. Why is that? I honestly don't know. To be perfectly clear, I mean, my mom still calls me Nigel. Yeah, yeah. There are very few people in the world. It's not the game she needs. you. The name she gave you. I know. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what it is. And sometimes when people call me by my my real name, it feels a little odd. It feels as if they're sort of going, I know you really are. I'll call you by your real name. Yeah, yeah. And it's all right. Yeah, call me Nigel. It's good. Yeah. When you talk about you're rolling in the ring, you're taking bumps,

I think there's a lot of fans that didn't even think it would be possible for you to return to the ring. Let's clear this up. When were you able to get medically cleared to wrestle again? It was a long time ago. Yeah, I mean, ostensibly, once I cleared Hep B, then I was cleared to wrestle. People don't even understand that you can clear the virus. The hepatitis is very confusing because there are four, maybe even five different variants of hepatitis. They think because they're all called hepatitis, they're all similar, but they're not.

They're only called hepatitis because they affect your liver. your hepatic function. So you've got Hep A, which you get from eating bad food, which makes you very sick, very quickly, and then you get rid of it pretty much. You've got Hep B, which is what I had, which is generally you get rid of it yourself within a few months. 10% of people don't get rid of it,

which is what happened to me. And then Hep C, which generally speaking is it was considered lifelong, but now I believe there's medication you can get rid of it as well. And then there's HEPD as well, which I'm not too familiar with. But HEPB, which I had, I didn't clear it. So because of that, I had to take some medication. And it took about a year for me to find clear the virus. And then once you get rid of the virus, you have the antibodies to the virus.

So the majority of people, the 90% of people who get HEPB, never know they have it. Because you only really have symptoms for it, you know, for a short period of time. And then you can get rid of it. And then you do a blood test and you will find the antibodies to it. Once we've got rid of it, you can't pass it only more because there's no more virus. So that's what happened to me. Did you know that you had it? Yes, yes.

So it popped up in a blood test. But did you know before the blood test? No. No, I was, yeah, I had no idea. I was shocked as anyone. Do you know how you contracted it? No. Now, I've got my ideas, but I'm certainly not going to have myself up to litigation.

Sure. But, you know, I can tell you, I certainly didn't do it. I wasn't, you know, living a reckless lifestyle in any way, shape. or form. But the truth of the matter is, and this was part of my objection, one of a better phrase to the use of blood in wrestling, is that it's contagious enough that you can never know how you get it. So if there's loads of bloods around, it's still difficult for me to watch. You know, difficult for me to be around certainly. But after all this time, and again, you know, I was one of the few people that went public with it with my documentary. It seemed like there's been a lot

the people who've had any issues with it. HIV is obviously another concern for the same sort of reason. But Hep B itself, specifically, without talking for hours about hepatitis B, is particularly contagious at that sort of stage. Passion, drive, and patience. The formula for winning championships is also what keeps your ride or die alive. eBay Motors has everything you need to maintain your vehicle and level it up to peak performance. Superchargers, roof racks, exhaust kits, LED headlights, LED headlights,

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Now you're working for a company where that happens frequently. Does it make you maybe uncomfortable? It's difficult. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely difficult. And it is sometimes a crisis of conscience for me. Oftentimes I don't know if it's going to happen. Sometimes it happens by accident, you know. So it's only something I've thought of and I feel very comfortable in the sense that I don't feel I'd ever be forced to do commentary and I'm actually, I didn't feel comfortable doing so.

It's something that I think that, you know, maybe I will address moving forward. I'm not sure. Again, it's hard for me to say because pre-getting it myself, I would have said it's no big deal. Yeah. You know, and in the time since, nobody else has tested positive. so it's hard for me to say just because of me, one example, you know. Are you saying it's a health thing? You don't think people should be cutting themselves in the ring because who knows what

it could lead to? Yeah, it's definitely part of that. I mean, part of it, I think always as well. I remember in TNA there was one time. Only one match, actually. I didn't really want to. And, you know, I don't like getting into the weeds of all that sort of stuff anyway. But for me, it always felt.

felt like the true art form is being able to do it without people knowing, you know. I mean, look, cats out the bag. But there are a lot of similarities between, as we'll get to, magic and wrestling. One of them is that you don't want to throw that curtain back. Because once you do, people lose that magic. Yeah. And so to that extent, yeah, I don't think that unless it's the exception, rather than the role.

Yeah. I felt watching your documentary, and I'm sure you're a very different person now, 10 plus years later from when you filmed that. But there was like this through line of like, not everybody gets a shot. Like, just because you work hard doesn't mean that you deserve a shot.

You had your shot. It didn't work out. And now you're at a completely different, like, part of your life and you're doing incredible work on commentary. How do you feel about where you're at now and where your career is at now. Very happy.

Very happy, very blessed. Certainly. As I said earlier, life very rarely works out the way you expect. And I'm a determinist. Do you know what determinism is, Chris? You're just, I think it's the idea of like you have a goal and you're... No, the idea of determinism is that free will is an illusion. Absolutely everything that happens in life is predetermined.

from the color of the socks that you put on in the morning to who you'll marry, everything is pretty determined. Are we living in some sort of a... Not alternate universe, no. Einstein felt this was the case. There's been a number of very... Is this a simulation? I don't think so either.

I mean, we can get into that with Jimmy Jacobs, if you have him on it, certainly. But I believe it seems to me that when you look back on your life, oftentimes it feels as though you had free choice and you had a free will. But you didn't. And you're just, you're just reading the book. And maybe that's just me trying to find solace in the fact that it didn't work out exactly the way that I'd hoped.

But either way, I truly do believe that. And it gives you pause and it gives you the chance to sort of say, every positive thing that happens to me is a blessing, you know? It was right there for you. Like, if we go back to 2009, you were setting the world on fire. And you had the offer from WWE and then it got rescinded.

Do you remember that day? Again, you're giving away all my magic show. Half of what I talking. I was on a beach in Florida, actually, when I got the phone call from the doctor. So Brian and I were both signed at the same time. We both had a contract. And it wasn't a developmental contract. It was an on-the-road contract.

And we both went to the physical at the same time. And I passed and he had a few little niggling things that he managed to resolve. And the doctor said to me, in passing afterwards, you ever had any injuries? And I'd been wrestling for 10 years. So who had, you know, and I'd had an old arm injury, which previously a orthopedic surgeon who was highly recommended, had looked at it and said,

partially torn, scar in place, and it's no more likely to get re-injured than if it had never been hurt in the first place. He even wrote me a letter saying that. So, yeah, I said,

we got this. So he said, well, send me the MRI and I just want to take a look at him. So I sent him the MRI. He said, you need surgery. I said, my guy doesn't need surgery. Said me I didn't need surgery. And so long and the short of it

is, he said, I can't, you know, recommend that we hire you. And so what was it going to do? What was it going to do at that point? Did you have options? Well, I mean, my options were to get surgery. So first of all, I didn't have a lot of money.

Second of all, I didn't believe I really needed surgery. I'd already wrestled on this for a year and a half since having the original injury and was perfectly okay, you know. And third of all, just because I've had surgery, doesn't mean that then going to hire me because I couldn't get that kind of assurance, you know, they may not ever hire me again, you know. So it was just, and there was an offer on the table from TNA. I remember my last match in New York with Brian,

and I remember getting a phone call from someone at TNA saying, you know, if it doesn't work out with WWE, give us a shout. Sure enough, after I got that phone call, I gave them a call, and I was totally honest, I said this is what they've said, this is what I believe. And so they said, okay, we'll sign you up. I mean, it was for pennies on the dollar compared to what I would have made, but I really truly believed in myself, my ability, I was going to go TNA, prove them wrong, have some great matches,

and before the hepatitis, that was largely what happened, you know? Was that just a tiny window of opportunity with WWE? Like, why not after a little bit of time with TNA? Why wouldn't WWE give you another look? Well, I think, I mean, the hepatitis thing was a big factor, certainly, you know, And then, yeah, I don't know. All I know is I remember reaching out after that to friends who worked in WWE. And I think it was Johnny was, you know, the first conduit to getting anybody in then.

And it just said, no, there was no interest. Do you feel like your career, your in-ring career then became a big what-if? 100%. Yeah, yeah, I struggled with that. You still feel that? No. No, no, no, no, at all. again, because I'm a determinist, because I believe that there was no choice that things

couldn't have worked out any other way. It was always going to work out that way, you know. And again, you know, maybe I'm just convincing myself for that reason, so I don't have to struggle with it. But without that, without what happened, I wouldn't have had the documentary. And that documentary has talked to so many people because you watch documentaries about famous people, not that I'm a famous person, but usually it's because this is the guy who made it.

I don't usually hear the documentary about the people who didn't make it. And so that story, I think, speaks to far more people in the world. And, you know, I've got some great friends now that I've made through that. You know, Chris Bricker, who's an incredible comedian in the UK. We met through him watching the documentary and we're great friends from it now. And there are so many other people. I remember I bring tears to my eyes how there was a guy in England and he used to watch wrestling with his mom. And they like Ring of Honor because they didn't like.

like WWE at the time for whatever reason. And I was their favorite wrestler. And his mom had a stroke and struggled to talk and to communicate. But he said that that was one of the few things that they could, you know, connect with. And to have that, you know, to have that ability to touch people's lives is a true blessing. So there was that. And then if I had gone back to wrestling, then I wouldn't have had chance to become

I'm the commentator that I am, you know, arguably, well, arguably certainly a safer job and arguably one that I'm much better at. And one you can do for the rest of your life. Right. Exactly. You know, so none of that would happen, you know. But when you say, you know, here's a documentary about someone who didn't make it. What do you mean?

You wrestled Ring of Honor. Wrestled in TNA. Obviously, after the documentary, hired by WWE to do commentary. All three of those are dream jobs for most people. So then it comes down to then what's the, you know, then what's the, you know, definition of making it. Exactly. And that's something that I think all of us who have those sort of aspirations in entertainment. And Chris, I'm sure you can talk about the same thing for yourself, right? You know, at what level do you have to be? You have to be a Ryan Crest before you're going,

okay, now I've made it. Right. And then there's always somebody that's, you know, better looking and more talented and makes more money. Always. Yeah. And it's always, again, not to bring it back to the clam digger, but for me and Brian to have that. For me and Brian, to have Claire Tigger. To have those parallel stories. Yeah. I remember the first time I ever met him. He was in a locker room in Ohio,

second match I ever did for Inovina, I think. And he was just sitting there reading a book and I had this really weird, unerring sensation that he was going to play a big factor in my life. Just knew it. Just knew it. Even before we'd ever had our first match, And so then for our careers to go in such different directions and see the success that he's had,

that's why it's almost impossible not to compare yourself to other people as well. You know what I mean? Yeah. But again, I feel truly blessed that the opportunities that present themselves because I didn't get to WWE. Because listen, let's say in an alternate universe, if it wasn't a deterministic universe, that instead of that, someone pulled for me and they said, forget about the arm, we'll hire you anyway. Let's say I go there. Let's say I get kicked in the head by someone.

Let's say I have a concussion. I never get able to shake it. And that's the end of my career. I've also sat across from many people who did get hired by WWE and just maybe not used in a great way. You know, a year or two later, they're right back where they started. Right. Except they can say former WWE superstar.

Where do they go from there? Right. Exactly. So again, I think it speaks to what we, that William Regal talks about how everything you get is an absolute blessing. So I've really come to terms that I'm totally at peace with it. Why did you become a determinist? I think that probably about four or five years ago, I would think certainly.

It's a bit of a contentious subject. It's really a moot point because either it is or it isn't. If the world is completely deterministic, then every conversation that you ever has is already predetermined. That's right. I'm not even choosing the words I'm about to say. Exactly right. Yeah. So it's a bit of a fun conversation for a road trip. But yeah, I would say about five years ago, I just can't see how it works otherwise. Like at what level of evolution do people, things have free will? Do dogs have free will, for example? Can a dog? And what is free will? Right. To me, free will is the idea. Let's have we got two drinks here in front of us.

Yes, we do. A little bit of shilling for you. Delicious after three energy, yes. Thank you. And I asked you to point to one of those. Okay. Now, you're going to point to one of them. And this comes back to magic and mentalism as well. Yeah, yeah. Now, you may not know which one you're going to point to you. You might point to that one because it's closer to you.

Yeah. Might point to that one because it's blue instead of red. You might point to a hundred different reasons. Yeah. And maybe you're not even aware of the reasons why you might point to one of them or the other. But you are going to point to one of them. Yes. Free will exist if you could go back in time and with the exact same reasoning, choose a

different one instead. Why would you? You wouldn't. This is why Back to the Future is my favorite movie of all time. And I bring it up far too often in these episodes. Yeah. But it's the idea of like Marty goes back to 1955 and he's watching his parents meet. And if they don't meet, we see the photo and he's disappearing.

And like he seems to be able to completely change the space time continuum by going, if this person's not here at this exact point in time, then this thing doesn't happen, then all of these different things, which is a very similar subject, but at the same time also a very different subject. I'm fascinated by that. I'm fascinated by the idea of like,

if I speed up to make it through this yellow light instead of breaking and sitting at this red light, what happens in my life? If I went through, was I going to get in a car accident or any number of things? You're presupposing free will with that statement. What if? There is no if because you were going to do what you were going to do.

Yeah. Spooky, eh? We're getting in the weeds. We are getting in the weeds. We'll talk a little more wrestling before we get into all of that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We could talk about some magic as well if you want. We will.

Actually, full disclosure, I should probably say before we started, I did ask you to choose a random wrestler, right? I ask you to choose a random wrestler and write it down. I didn't see it, correct? That's correct. Turn my back. You turned your back. You put it away someone else like that. The cameras were turned off.

Yes, I did that. It wasn't DDP, was it? It was not DDP? Okay. Was it supposed to be DDP? No, no, carry on. Carry on. Okay.

Okay. I see what you did there. Okay. Uh-huh. Before we get into more magic, the matches you had with Kurt Angle and TNA, that was magic. Mm-hmm.

They're two guys in their absolute prime. And people don't talk about how good Kurt Engle was in TNA. No. So good. He's incredible. What do you feel like you learned from working with Kurt in the series of matches you had in TNA? Wow. So much.

You know, I learned self-confidence, I think, as well. I've always found the best matches I had were where I could go to someone and go, oh, I've got this idea, and I've got this idea. and they take it and they put it in the right place. Brian's a perfect example of that as well. And so I learned timing and also it was one of the few times in my career. We had a very small European tour. So I was working with him a lot of nights there and we ostensibly, you know,

worked each other every night. And so the ability to, I'll say have the same match, but the ability to tell the same story and then tweak it just a little bit, Just a little bit. And this is what changed so dramatically when we got away from the house show way of making money in business. It used to be, and maybe it still is in WW. I'm not sure, but it used to be that you'd, you know, you'd work the same guy night after night after night. And you'd just a little bit, tweak it a little bit.

You know, this is developing that ability to sort of ad lib on the fly. Whereas now, with the advent of YouTube and whatever else and your matches out there immediately, You can't do that. People watch a match. You think of the great British wrestlers of the past Johnny St. For example, who, you know, God bless his soul. Like, did his stuff, his stuff week after week after week. Didn't need to change it because it got over because people weren't watching it back.

Go, no, he did this last week. This is the last week. He did this the same time. You know, he didn't need to change it because it worked. But now their business has just changed dramatic. The world has changed dramatically. The entertainment has changed dramatically. It's changed dramatically.

But if I go see a band in Los Angeles tonight, and the set list will immediately be up as soon as the concert's over, and then that same band plays in San Diego tomorrow, and they play the same set list, are you saying, like, people would get upset about that? Why is that? Yeah. I've often wondered that about Matt.

What if that's the show, you know? Yeah, it's strange. I honestly, I'm not sure. I mean, I suppose. But if I see David Copperfield in Las Vegas tonight, and then I see him again tomorrow, early show and late show, it's the same show. Yeah.

Why would I be upset about that? No, no, but perhaps you wouldn't. As long as you don't see through the curtain. And perhaps that's the complexity of pro wrestling. It doesn't exist with any other form of entertainment. Because seeing the same match two nights in a row just tells your brain, oh. I know what's coming next. Of course.

Yeah. You know, and that's the... I get it. It's the same reason why when they do part two of a movie, we want to see a different story being told. Maybe some, you know, callbacks to the first show. But it is strange. If you think of your favorite movie, you love watching your movie again, even though you know what's going to happen. But then perhaps are there great wrestling matches that you can watch back again,

even though you know exactly what's going to happen? There are. They're absolutely. And it still touches you that same way. But the other matches, not so much. Comicated. Put your bias aside for one minute. why is Brian Danielson one of the best wrestlers in the world? I would say this because he's paid to have an award named after him. Whoa. No.

Yeah, it's hard to me to answer that honestly. He certainly has worked hard. Okay. He's been doing it a long time. He's been doing it a long time. Even a blind squirrel gets a nut from time to time. And he's just got the right attitude. To be perfectly honest of you, you know,

he's got that working class hero sort of attitude of just challenging himself constantly, getting better, committing himself to something. And he's got some natural inatability as well. And I think I wonder if he's sort of inspired by the fact that he looks a bit like a Neanderthal. you know what I mean he's not the sort of you put him up in a wall you know in a line up and you go who would you pick to be a great professional

you're not choosing him oh yeah you know what I mean like and so maybe that sort of has inspired him to really you know become as as good as he possibly can yeah against all odds against all odds right and sometimes against all odds is

what you need to be a success right sometimes if people are pulling you pulling for you from day one and I don't want to say it's all handed to you, but if a lot of people are pushing you in the right direction, it doesn't feel like as much of a success as if you've really been told you're never going to make it. You're not big enough, you're not good enough.

I mean, there was the longest time in the mid-2000s where none of us ever dreamt we could have got to that stage, apart from me. I felt like I was going to make it for some strange reason, but I was the one who didn't. such his life. You've had some wild lines on commentary. Brian Danielson used to be vegan,

but he couldn't give up eating brief. I wish I could take credit for that one, Christopher, but unfortunately, no. Who gets the credit? The beauty of social media. I think someone must have posted it on Twitter about a year or two ago, something like that. Well, that sounds like that.

I wasn't sure whether I could use it because, you know, I've had a lot of lines that I always run everything by Bobby Cruz before the show because he's a good sort of, you know, barometer of whether this is politically correct enough or not. And that one got through the cruzometer. So you were talking about cheese, right? Talking about cheese. Yeah. Exactly.

You know. Yeah. There were some upset people in France. But I can't please everyone. Yeah. That's a wild one. Yeah. I was glad.

I was glad to get it out. And it's interesting. Sometimes I think, oh, this is a great. I'll save this one for the perfect time. and there is no perfect time. You know, that's one thing I've definitely learned about commentaries is if you've got something to say it. Get it out.

Just keep doing this, keep doing this. It's not like stand-up comedy. Stand-up comedy, you get your jokes and you fine-tune them. Set up, punchline, yeah. You've got an hour of stuff and it's solid, you know. Every week, new joke, new joke, new joke, new joke, new joke. Sometimes it hits. Sometimes it doesn't, you know, I've, you know, whiffed on a,

couple of, couple of them recently. And that's the beauty. What I love about AEW is that I'm not worried about people saying to me, you shouldn't have said that or, you know, that's inappropriate or, I mean,

I hear about it after the fact, certainly. Someone was upset that I made a joke. What was I said about Brian? He broke his arm. Everyone was saying how valiant he is for, you know, continuing to wrestle with a broken arm when he can't use one of his arms.

And I said, we've been married for seven years. He's got plenty of experience. using both hands already, you know. Someone said, it's really offensive to someone who's been married for a long time. And I'm like, what? At what point do you draw the line, right? You also made some sort of comment, you're like, well, you only broke one of the bones in his arm.

I mean, 208 bones in the human body. 206 bones in the human body. It's only one. Oh, I love it. It's got another bone in his arm. It's such easy material. And I love it. Do you go into commentary?

you know, you've got your notes, right? And you got your notes there. And do you go in with like, I'm going to definitely say this line in this match? I have an idea of it, yeah, certainly. But nine times out of ten, it just doesn't work. It doesn't fit there.

Because maybe there's a story. The story is the most important thing. You've got to get over the story of why the match is happening. Why should you care about this? Me making a joke about French cheese, you know, funny. I guess people watching.

You need it from. time to time, but overall, you've got to say, why do I care about this match? We've all heard the stories about some of the things you might be hearing in your ear in commentary when you're working in WW. What are you hearing in your ear when you're commentating in AEW? Not so much. Yeah, there's not so much production. Tony will sometimes feed me a couple of lines here and there if he thinks, you know, it fits,

but not half as much as it was in WWE. But having to be said that, you know, when I work in WWE, it was NXT, or in the UK, it wasn't as heavily produced as their main brand products. So I never really had to sort of experience that level of things there. But in AW,

it's been fantastic, yeah. You're hearing a lot of like two minutes to commercial break or stuff like that, right? Yeah, yeah. Don't forget to plug this sponsor. Right. And, you know, Tony Chivoni, bless his soul, does the majority of that,

or Excalibur, you know, when he's on the show, they handle what's called traffic. just as Michael Colewood as well, and that's an absolute blessing for to have someone to do that. Yeah, you're not so much doing color commentaries. You're doing like color, like analysts. Like it's a beautiful merger of the two where you're explaining, like you said, with Joe Rogan, what he does in UFC, you're bringing that to wrestling. Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think it fits perfectly, you know, certainly two-man booth or sometimes the three-man booth as well. If you want, you know, diametrically opposed analysts or color guys, then, you know, that works a, works as well, but you have to have that difference.

And that was one of the things that most people don't even realize the difference between a play-by-play guy and a color guy. And, you know, they need to be different voices. You know, the color guy handles the flow, traffic, calls a move if and when, and the color guy throws a little bit in here and there and there. 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 Klinberg.

And now we're giving people an inside look at the World Cup. Time's ticking. I think you can feel the intensity. All the guys are wanting to really take their claim. And they want to be on that World Cup roster. There's no doubt about it. Hosting the World Cup on the home soil comes with its pressures, but we're just really excited just as the people are.

The US Soccer podcast, presented by Henko. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Why were you Desmond Wolfe in TNA? Why couldn't you continue to be Nigel McGuinness? I'm not sure. Tony calm was really, he always says, why did they change your name? You know, you were so over, you were a brand and they got rid of that. And obviously they did it because they wanted to own the IP.

And that obviously filters down from WWE. That was their mentality as well. But in the name, you'd have to ask Vince Russo, I think it came from him. There was a movie with Nail and I. It's a classic British movie. set was filmed in the 80s, early 90s. It's set the last weeks of the 60s, 1969, and these two sort of dreadful actors in London trying to make it.

They've got no money. They're using like deep heat to keep warm because they haven't got any heating. And one of them, Richard E. Grant, I believe, says, when I make it, I'm going to change my name. I'm going to be Desmond Wolff. I don't know if that's where it came from, but it's a fantastic movie, and I'll take it if it is. All right, what kind of magic do you have for us? Let's dive into it.

Oh, we go straight into magic. I think so, right? Wow. Okay, well, we can start here. And by the way, people can, it isn't just stuff you do for fun, right? This is, people can see your show. Yes, so I have a magic show, um, ostensibly called Nigel McGuinness's magical night. It was inspired by the passing of Jay Brist's,

go people that always said to me it's been a hobby of mine for the longest time magic just cards and stuff like that started in japan and um how long ago how long you've been doing this 2006 i would say i's first got a deck of cards and started doing that but it was all small close-up sort of stuff and so to do a stage show is just completely different um i didn't want to make the effort to do it and it was a hassle and i didn't feel like i could do it either and then when Jay passed and I got let go from WWE and you just realize you're not guaranteed tomorrow. Let's do this. You know, so I took three weeks and I wrote down my life story,

ostensibly, and tried to use magic to emphasize parts of that. So I'll talk about not getting hired by WWE because I was honest about an old arm injury. So that makes me very good at detecting lies now. So I get people on stage and I'll get them to lie and figure out who's lying, who's telling the truth. So I've done it about six or seven times now at this show. I've done it in London. I've done it in Chicago, Philadelphia, and it's made changes to it. Now it's less about my life story and more about just doing some fun magic things and relating them to wrestling.

So it's fantastic. Yeah, it's wonderful. It's got great reviews, and we're looking for a place in Dallas to do it by the time this airs. Hopefully, you know, we've got somewhere. If you follow me on social media at McGinnis Nigel, that's where we'll have all the information. Didn't you just do it in Vegas too? Yeah, yeah, we did one in Vegas as well. What about here?

Have you done one in L.A.? Yeah, we did a couple actually in L.A. Yeah, the Illusion Magic Lounge, which is a fantastic magic venue down in Santa Monica. You should go and check that out as well. We did that down there a couple of times, you know, it's just, for me, I have trouble getting enough people into it because, you know, when you hear magic, you go, it is a rabbit. Did you bring any rabbits?

So people don't really understand what it is. And it's not even a traditional magic show either. That's why I feel like Vegas would have been a great spot. People seem to, I don't know, people are always looking to be entertained in Vegas. People seem to get magic there, whether it's Chris Angel or David Copperfield. But it is a very wrestling-centric show. show as well in the sense of I talk about wrestling and I relate the two things together. So, for example, I've got a little monkey dressed like Brian Danielson that I bring on stage

all the time. So when I bring him on stage, if you're not a wrestling fan, you just go, who's this, et cetera, et cetera. So all the jokes I make, they wouldn't get the Bree joke for example, obviously. So what if you did it, like, what if you did it around every big pay-per-view that that's the idea? I've been trying to piggyback off of the AEW stuff. That's a Long Island.

Yeah, yeah, well, because you've got to find a venue in Long Island. You've got to make sure it's the right time. So it's the day before. Can you find a venue? And is it financially viable? Yeah. Can you get the word out to enough people? And if it's on a Friday night, people are not already got plans.

And it's it's, uh, the logistics of it are boring and dull. These are all the reasons why I didn't have a live show. Why do you ask me DDP earlier? Did you think it was DDP? I just for some reason. I love, he's one of my very good friends. I love DDP. He's a wonderful person.

Um, certainly. But he's not on one of these. Or were you trying to put it in my head? Was I? I don't know. But it was, was some determinists? Was an American wrestler, right?

Yes. Okay. That's two non-Americans sit here right now. Yeah. But I think maybe I got the error wrong, because it wasn't an attitude error. I think it was before the attitude error. Is that right?

That's correct. Wasn't Mr. Perfect. It was not Mr. Perfect. What are you doing? I'll run out eventually. of care. So this is perhaps the most highly sought-after deck of cards in the pro wrestling world. What is this?

So double or nothing? Double or nothing. A.W cards. There's all these different. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They've got, you know, wrestlers. I don't know if my person's going to be in there.

No? I don't know. Okay. Let's try this. Um, normally I would use my favorite wrestlers for this. You guess who my favorite wrestlers. I know you can guess who my favorite wrestler isn't. Uh, are these just current A.W people or all time?

Yeah, this is, no, this is current AW people. This is current AW people. And this was double or nothing, 2023. So, um, yeah, so I'll, I'll save you. the effort. Your favourite's British Bulldog, right? Not necessarily. I do a big fan of Davey boy,

but normally, so I would normally use, in this deck, my two favorite AW wrestlers, Christian Cage, of course, of course, of course. Christian sat right here. Yes, I watched it. Oh, thank you. The Patriarch.

Yeah. The patta familialis. I'm just glad my dad's still around. Right. So anyway, two, two random cards, It's two random. And you're going to see which ones I choose? Yeah, yeah.

That's not important. Just choose. Let's choose some. I like this. That's a good one. Okay. Yeah, I like I got to show the camera here. That's fine.

Yeah. I got Jack Perry, Jungle Boy. And then, okay. We're going to also take Sammy. Sammy Guevara. All right. So these are the two. Two young stars.

So this is, what's your memory like? I think pretty good. Pretty good. I remember who. do I need to remember the actual cards? No, just remember the people. Oh, I remember the people, sure. So I put those cards down like that now, which one's on top?

Who's on top? That was Sammy on top. Sammy on top, you're sure? Yes, Sammy. Okay. Yes, all right. So if you take Sammy and you hold him thumb up. That card in your hand is.

That's Sammy Guevara. I show you this one is... That's Jack, okay. This one now has to be Sammy, is that right? That's correct, yeah. Unless I've changed it, it's a completely different person. Yeah. Take a like, make sure.

Sammy Gavar. So you've got Sammy, right? Yep, I got Sammy. Jack. Yep. You've got Sammy. Yep. Yep.

Yep. That's all right. I've got Sammy. You got three. loosen up a bit. Two, loosen up. One. Without looking now, that card.

Is that Sammy or Jake? That's the same one. Definitely the same one. I didn't switch it. You sure? Yeah. So I put that one on top, which one's on top? Sammy.

Sammy. Yeah. If I've changed the order, would you? you be impressed. Yeah. I asked you about your memory, didn't I? Uh-huh. Do you remember who my favorite wrestlers are?

The Christian Cage and Lee Moriarty. Oh! Okay. Okay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Wow. Okay.

Where's Sammy? Where's Jack? I'm, exactly, yeah. Hmm. Um. Trummel? Sure. please.

You brought a pad and... Yeah, yeah, we'll get into it. That'll be something. I'm thinking maybe we could sweat this up or something, but just... Okay, let's see, let's see. Tell me to stop somewhere in the... I'm going to stop. Stop there.

And I did say, I did stop what you said, right? Yes, you did. Take a look. Okay. And I'm not showing you who I go here. You go. Okay. All right.

Put it back. Right in the middle? Yeah. Okay. And then give it a few cuts. Make sure there's no way that I can see where Nick Jackson would be. Okay. It's not Nick Jackson.

Jackson. It's not? No. Are you sure? It had to be Nick Jackson. It's not Nick Jackson. Should I have showed the camera on that one? Yeah, you should have showed the camera.

Well, it's not... Are you sure? You're not just messing with me? No. Are you messing with me now? No, I don't think I am. Who was it? Who was it?

It's his brother. I got close. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's two Jackson. Right. So you were thinking of a Jackson. Yes.

One more time. Okay. Stop. All right. Same again. We will show. Close your eyes. Look the other way.

This is who our person is right here. Okay. All right. Got it? Mm-hmm. And that's now lost. Right? Better be.

Possibly no. There it is. Yeah, there's Matt Jackson. That wasn't the one though. Oh. Okay. All right. Let's spread these out here.

Okay. Do we have enough room? I don't think I do. Spread them out. Do this for me. Hold that pen. Okay. How do you want my own?

I like that. Okay. Like this? Yeah. Now, this is what's going to happen. As I go through this, see how that pen is sturdy in your hand. Yes. Very.

Don't give anything away. Okay. Keep that pen completely and utterly. You haven't seen it. I can't see a lot of these, so. The next card, I can't. turn over is your card. Yes or no?

This one? Yes. Lance Archer. What am I doing with this pen though? Wow. So there we go. There's some mentalism. Am I still holding the pen?

No, you can let go of the pen. But you might need actually. Let's try it. Do you have any more questions or should we try the last? Do you know who the wrestler is that I picked earlier? So we're going with the 80s, I think. And for some reason I see a headband. I see a headband and I see WrestleMania.

Picture a match or a moment with them. Headband, WrestleMania, not macho man? So macho man. And you've written this down, right? I wrote it down, yeah. Wrote it down before we even started recording. All right. Let's try this.

We'll try something with numbers. Let me borrow your pen. I mean, you're a phone for a second. My phone? Uh-huh. Okay. Put on the calculator, if you can. Okay.

Open up the calculator right there. Okay. All right, fantastic. Zero. Now I'm going to, you can't see this, right? I want to make sure you can't see this and they can't see this, right? No. No.

I'm going to type a number in it. Okay. And I'm going to send it to you. Send me a number. I'm going to send your number. So clear your mind completely. Okay. Nah, I'm going to change it.

Hold on to change that. Mine is completely clear. It's vacuous. All right. I type this number in now. It's got six digits. Six digits. Six digits.

I'm going to send you the first one. Write it down that piece of paper. Write it down. You should fill a number. Oh, I'm going to feel a number. Am I hiding this from you? You can hide it. Yeah.

Okay. Write down the first number. Okay. Now the second number. Okay. And the third number. Now I'm going to send you all three together. The next three, write them down together.

Okay. You got it? Yeah, I got it. Six numbers. Six numbers. Completely freely. And how close are they? They're not that close.

Not even close. You've got one of the numbers there. Well, let's try and salvage. this, Chris, shall we? Would you like to see what the numbers are? No, no, no, no. This is, just, uh, open this up again if you can. Okay.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, there's my beautiful little girl, my beautiful daughter. All right. So I've got these numbers. I'm going to hit, if you can, just hit multiply. So the X. Yeah, the X. Okay, I'm going to hit the X.

And then type in your number as well. Okay. You don't still don't know what my number is, right? Yeah, it's okay. Okay. Okay. Then what? And then hit plus.

Plus. And then type in. type in a random four-digit number. Just any four digits? Yeah. Okay. Then hit equals. Okay.

You got a big number there? Giant. Right. Now, giant numbers. In the billions. I'm going to get the pad as well. I'm going to turn my back so I can't see it when you should write that number down.

This whole number? The whole number. Okay. Okay. That's the big number. It's in the billions. What? What?

Trillions. Okay. How close you to... I've done. I wrote it down. I can't see that number, right? You better not be able to. There's no way.

I see the first digit. There's no way. There's no way. I see the first digit. Okay. I think the first digit is a two. And I see a... The first digit is a two.

I see a one and then it's a six. No, no, no, no, no. I think it's a, I think it's not a six, it's a zero. Zero and then I see, see some numbers coming in together. I see some numbers coming in together. I see, I see, why am I seeing a three, three ones? That doesn't make it awesome. No, no, no, no, no, no, hold on, hold on, hold on.

Here it is, here it is. I think these are repeated. These are repeated. 0-7-1, I think, is repeated. I think 071, there's a big 0.7. I've got this bit wrong. I've got this bit wrong. I've got this big wrong here.

This is not one-one. It's not 1-1-1. It's, it's, it's, it's, I think that's a 4. I think that's a 4 and that's an 8. What? What? Look at this. How close is that?

Well, that's upset. What? Oh my. That was really. right? What the heck? And I see what you've done here. Oh my gosh. Flip it over. Incredible. You're getting ahead of yourself. You're getting ahead of yourself because it would be great if I could have somehow predicted this. Right? It would have been great. So this is this is a nine, no, 12 digit number. 12 digit number. 12 digit number. We're both matching here. Now I said earlier, didn't I?

I said earlier, I asked you to think, choose a random wrestler. Yeah. I could have chose anybody. Could have chosen anyone. I think I was right about WrestleMania 3. I was right about the headband. I wasn't right about macho. Coco beware.

Wow. What is the chances? How did my numbers? How did sorcery? Wait a second. now it would be even better. How could I have you inspired you? When did this happen?

You were wearing And that is magic. When did You were wearing your own shirt when you walked in here The whole interview. You're wearing, we even referenced the shirt Haven't taken a bump free since 2011. You're wearing a Cocoa Beware shirt.

The numbers become the name. Wow. Wow. Okay. Where do we go from here, Chris? What kind of sorcery is this? If you like that, come out to Nigel McGuinness's magical night. Oh. How? How indeed. And if I was to tell you, I'd have to kill you. And it would ruin the illusion. Who would you rather kill? Me or Brian Danielson?

Well, here's the thing I could probably get away with killing you much more easily, right? I would think. It's far more famous. That is absolutely true. Wow. This is brilliant. You are as brilliant with this. Look how proudly you're wearing that shirt now. That's a fantastic shirt. You can actually get hold of them as well, you know, progressing teas and get mine as well. So there you go. You are as brilliant as this is. you are at being a speaker and the magic that you create with the words on commentary.

I appreciate it. And it convinces me that you think almost as highly of me as I do myself. I will end this with the question I ask everybody at the end. And by the way, thank you for making the time to do this. This was a pleasure. And my mind is blown. I have goosebumps all throughout my body. I saw, when you were making that aid, I went, wait a second. Wait a second. Gratitude is such a big part of my life. It's the driving force of my life. While you may be a determinist, I am a gratitudeist. And I think that the more things you can be grateful for, the more things you will have to be grateful for. So what are three things in your life, Nigel, that you're grateful for? Wow. Yeah, certainly my daughter. know, my girlfriend, my job, my health.

It's far more than three. I was going to say it's almost impossible to stop at three, you know, and I think that's one of the things that I am grateful for the ability to be able to appreciate everything that you've got in life. Yeah. All the blessings, all the things you've given, you know. It's arguably, people could look at me and say, well, that's easy for you, isn't that, you know, you've kind of got a dream job.

And, you know, but it's, it's been a hard journey. And I think that's certainly what everybody has to accept is that they are going to be highs, but it's going to be lows as well. You know, and being able to sort of deal with that, I think, is a real lesson. I would shake your hand, but I'd be afraid that dubs would fly out or some sort of a rabbit would fall out of there. So I will just say, thank you. You are more than welcome. Thank you for your time, Chris.

Okay, so you need to go on YouTube to see exactly everything that was going on here. Unbelievable. I picked Coco Beware, and not only did all that weird math that he had me doing, add up to the numbers that when he flipped them upside down, spelled out Coco Beware, but then he was wearing a Cocoa Beware T-shirt! Sorcery! incredible. And what a story as well. Ring of Honor, world champion, his run in TNA as Desmond Wolf, the whole idea here of like, he's supposed to go to WWE and then at the last second

he doesn't get medically cleared to go. But Daniel Brian goes and ends up having the career that he has as both Daniel Bryan and WW and Brian Danielson, now in AEW. It's fascinating. Absolutely fascinating when you think of everything that Nigel's done in his career and then just crushing it now on commentary. Snap a screenshot. Let us know that you're listening and tag us. He's at McGinnis Nigel. I'm at Chris Van Vleit. And here's a quote from Will Durant to wrap this one up. We are what we repeatedly do. Therefore, excellence is not an act, but a habit.

Be great and be grateful. My friends, We'll see you on the next one for some more insight with Adam Pierce. What a great conversation. We'll see you on Thursday for that one. The 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.

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