Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Ryan Nemeth on his AEW debut, his brother Dolph Ziggler, being released from NXT

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

Ryan Nemeth sits down with Chris Van Vliet for an in-person interview in Los Angeles, CA. He talks about making his AEW debut on Dynamite against Hangman Adam Page, his friendship with Brodie Lee, being compared to his brother Dolph Ziggler, growing up in Cleveland, training at Ohio Valley Wrestling, being signed to WWE, why he was released from NXT, moving to Los Angeles, writing and starring in the movie "HEEL", the commercials he has appeared in and much more!  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.  For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com  Follow CVV on social media:  Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Okay, welcome to the show. Good to see you. If it's your first time here, I'm Chris Van Fleet. I'm an Emmy Award-winning TV host, and I'm fascinated with finding out how people are wired to achieve greatness. On each episode of Insight, we have in-depth conversations. and reverse engineer the habits and techniques of the world's top athletes, actors, entrepreneurs, wrestlers, you name it. If they are the best at what they do, I want to get their insight so we can apply it to our own life. And it was such a pleasure to sit down with Ryan Nemeth in person, by the way, a rare in-person interview.

And it's perfect timing because he just made his AEW debut on Dynamite. But he's also a filmmaker. an actor, a comedian, a stunt coordinator. I know, yeah, you might know his brother because he's been a guest on this show. Well, more than anybody ever. Nick Nemith, aka Dolph Ziegler, and it's just so great hearing Ryan's journey

all along the way, WWNXT, to get to where he is now. If you could, snap a screenshot, let us know that you're listening. Tag me, I'm at Chris Van Fleet. Tag Ryan on Instagram. He is at Rai Rye-Nem. On Twitter, he's at Hot Young Briley.

We'll get into why his name is Hot Young Briley, or hopefully it's not for too much longer. We get into it, you'll see. And if you haven't yet, please subscribe wherever you're listening to this right now. And if you have the time, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. This one's from Wrestling Life 06 in France.

That mess simple goo. It says, my daily motivation. Man, I love your podcasts. You took my love for wrestling, and you put it on another level. Quality guests, quality content, I can listen to your podcast for hours. My dream is to leave Europe.

I'm in France, and the closest wrestling school is hours away from me, sadly. And my goal is to become a professional wrestler, and hopefully one day you'll interview me. As you say, vague goals get vague results. And my goal is to get to the WWE, sending much love and support your way. Hashtag 2,000 reviews.

Well, thank you, my friend. very bien. I'm sending that love and support right back to you. And if your goal is to be a pro wrestler, don't let anything stand in your way, including where you live or where the closest wrestling school is. Look at Miro, Rusev, for example. He moved from Bulgaria to America to train to be a wrestler and look at him now. So you've got that specific goal, because as we say, vague goals get vague results, specific goals get specific results. So I look forward to interviewing you one day. So wrestling life 06, thank you so much. And speaking of people who have had an incredible journey in wrestling,

you're going to love this conversation today. Please welcome, Ryan Nemeth. Well, thank you for coming to my place. Thanks for having me. What a place. We are neighbors. So it's like it wouldn't make sense to not do this in person. I think, you know, we're tested, we're safe.

And I was positive. Were you? I was positively negative. But I guess I'm positive now. Man, you probably have it now. Yeah, sorry, man. Oh, cool. Shoot.

Wow. And anyone watching this. Yeah. That's how it works. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I have a streak going. Of not.

Of negative. Yeah. Okay, good. Okay. Well, I mean, with the work you've been doing with AEW, you've been getting tested like crazy, I'm sure. A lot of tests before, during, and always after me. Yeah.

How many tests do you think you've had since this began? That is a great question. I could check probably in my email. I don't know, like more than, 50 probably. Oh my gosh. A lot on my own, just because I personally want to know. Sure. And then when I book like stunts or acting things,

uh, or if I would drive to go see my brother or something, I always want to test before and after. Yeah. So I don't know. I have no idea. So many tons. I mean, it's been almost a year now. Yeah. What about you? Uh, two dozen probably. Wow. It's a lot. I mean, everybody's had. There's probably some people who have zero, you know. But those people, people just stay at home the whole time. Yeah. I would hope.

I would hope. Are you? I would hope. Congratulations to you. So cool to see you on AEW. Thanks. What a blast it was. Yeah.

Has been, yeah. It's not was. It's in the moment right now. It's going, I hope, I think. Yeah, it's been really fun. What a great cruise. Being there is kind of like a huge reunion because I have so many friends from NXT or from other parts of wrestling that they're all just, most of them are all just there.

there and so walking in the locker room just felt like oh yeah this is not right this is great it feels like home yeah how did this come together for you i went to a w to see amanda huber brodie lee's wife and her kids basically because i knew there's going to be a birthday celebration for brodie junior so i thought i'll show up and kind of surprise her say happy birthday to the boy i used to babysit him in tampa oh yeah so uh a huge bummer his passing of course and i wanted to just kind of to just say hi to her. And as the old wrestling rule goes, if you're going to be around a wrestling show, always have your gear.

Right. So, of course, I secretly had my little bag of gear of wrestling boots and shorts. And it was nice to see her, big surprise, good to catch up. And then they said, hey, since you're here, do you want to wrestle a little bit? And I said, sure. No way. Yeah. So it was great.

And she was happy about that, too. She was, like, super pumped. And I was too. and all my buddies there were excited about it and instantly to be on TV wrestling one of the top guys there was pretty incredible. This is like the most serendipitous series of events

to lead to you making your debut. That is exactly right, yeah. And I think it went well. I blacked out, but I think I won. And if I... We don't have to talk about it, but I assume that I won the match. Yeah, probably. I mean, you might want to go back

and check the tape just to see. When I got back to town, someone asked me, they don't watch wrestling regularly. And they said, how did the match go? And I said, I got second place, so pretty good. And they said, oh, how many people are in the match? And I said, just two. And then it hit them like, oh, sorry. But I had a blast.

Hangman is tough. But to make your debut on Dynamite, because so many people are making their debut on Dark, to make your debut on Dynamite, a national TV, that's pretty impressive. I was honored to do so. Yeah, I felt pretty cool that they trusted me to do that. Yeah. How did it feel being back in the ring? I felt great. I have during the whole shutdown, been doing a lot of wrestling, just not live matches in front of crowds. More like what we were talking about earlier, just doing stunt work or wrestling coordinating for TV shows, film, music videos, and stuff. So I've had a lot of reps in the ring this whole time, just not in front of a crowd with camera.

I mean, a live actual match. So it felt awesome. I just forgot how exhilarated. It's so addictive, man. Oh, my God. So now you just want more of it. Yeah, I can't get enough. Yeah.

If I don't keep wrestling, I'll die, maybe, or puke, something. One or the other. Or both. Maybe both. Maybe you'll die from the choking on the puke or something like that. Maybe that, yeah. But it's been great. They're super into, you know, encouraging creativity, very motivational, very positive environment

to be around. almost like all the friends from the past just in a, just flourishing way more. I don't want to compare anything to anywhere else, but it was refreshing and I kept thinking like, who here is secretly evil? There's going to be someone tearing off a mask point, aha, we got you.

But so far that hasn't happened, and everyone seems awesome there, and they're happy to have me. I'm happy to be there. What was the spot in that match with Hangman that you were like absolutely were just so excited to get in? There was a few. Well, honestly,

I started in the ring. So when you come back from commercial, Ryan's already in the ring. And the coolest part to me was Justin Roberts, the ring announcer, giving me an introduction, which probably I shouldn't have had, but he was very generous to give me a cool introduction.

So that was pretty cool to me. Yeah, that's amazing. I was really hoping for him to call you the Hollywood hunk, Ryan Nemouth. And he didn't in the intro. But it showed up on screen.

It did show up on screen. That name was reverse engineered after the match, actually. because it was on my trunks that said hunk on my trunks. Yeah, hunk on my trunks. Hunk on the trunks. And so, you know, the next day of tapings or after the match, I was talking to an unnamed person who said,

well, you're the hunk. What kind of hunk are you? And I said, the Hollywood hunk. And then he just goes, Hollywood hunk. Perfect, good. We're going with that. And I was like, we'll see where that goes. And I guess that's the deal now.

But you've got to understand how many similarities, there are to your brother. He's from Hollywood, Florida. Sure. You're from Hollywood, California. Right. He has bleached blonde hair. You have bleach blonde hair.

Does he have bleach blonde hair right now? He currently does not have bleach blonde hair right now. There are similarities. We're related. We're brothers. We are trained literally by the exact same people in wrestling. We grew up wrestling for the same school together. But I will say, I've spent my entire pro wrestling career.

looking and dressing exactly the opposite of him. The whole first five years of wrestling guy had dyed black hair because he did have bleat blonde hair back then. Since then, he's grown his hair out really long. It's brown. So I thought recently, cool, I'll do the opposite. I'll have short blonde hair. And he wears pants now.

I'll wear shorts. We have opposite colored boots. Like, it doesn't matter. We have different names, literally. No matter what I do this entire time for a decade. anytime I'm in a match at all, the Indies are on TV, NXT, whatever, the Twitter comments will be,

carbon copy of your brother, wow, stealing his hair and his gear. It doesn't matter. So at this point, who cares if there's no point? I could have red hair and wear a tuxedo, and they'll still say, wow, dressing and acting just like him. Like, whatever, man.

Sorry, we're related. That's true. I mean, you guys do outside of wrestling, you look like your brothers. You know, it makes sense. But have you been like outside of wrestling, wrestling aside? Do you feel like he's your older brother.

Do you feel like you've constantly been trying to play catch up with Nick your whole life? No, I mean, we've had pretty different lives. He, even if we go way back, he was always, I mean, he was a collegiate wrestler where I focused more on writing and acting in college. I mean, I played sports. I played rugby in college, but I was always into comedy and doing the plays, screenwriting, sketchwriting, all that kind of stuff. And to then, you know, in the past few years, to do so many of those things together has been awesome. So he's in my movie Heel that I made.

We do a lot of live comedy together. Not really catch up. I never felt like we're competing for anything. He does his thing. I do my thing. And I've really enjoyed it. All my favorite times in wrestling and comedy have been with him. So, yeah.

I just, you know, sometimes there's this thing where the older brother and the younger brother are like so similar to each other because I'm sure you looked up to him. Of course, yeah, still do. Yeah, I guess I do too. Yeah, I mean, how can you not? He's a great guy. He is a great guy. But it is funny, okay, on that topic, I'm watching Dustin Rhodes wrestle this past week and Cody Rhodes wrestle.

And I'm thinking, okay, they do some similar moves too. No one anywhere in the world is saying that about them. And I'm watching them at, okay, and the young bucks, please tell me what moves do they not do? Did they not look alike? Come on. Well, I mean, I think there's probably. good portion of like semi-regular fans that probably don't know the difference between Matt and Nick. Of course, sure. And I mean that with great love and respect. Absolutely, yeah.

They're the young bucks. They're a unit together. Yeah. Yeah. So I think he's a great guy. Also, Dustin Rhodes is tall. Cody Rhodes is shorter. Dustin Rhodes is like, you know, a lot older. I'm just saying they're literally brothers on the same show doing some of the same moves and I love them both, but you don't ever hear anyone saying anything about that. Yeah. But if I do a drop kick, I'm, uh, I should be jailed and, you know, paying penalties. Is he the only one who does a drop kick? Is he the only one in the world?

Come on. He's the only one that does a super kick as well. I don't do a super kick. I don't do a zigzag. I don't do a super kick. I don't tune up the band. Don't do any of that. I don't look anything like Sean Michaels.

And if everyone thinks he looks like Sean, I mean, there's, I think, this whole debate is on my side just no one sees it that way i agree with you and you don't even have the same name we don't we i mean we've never had the same name this is true i've never been a ziggler i've been a pierce a nemith hot young never been any of those other ones what was your reaction when you found out that that was going to be next wrestling name oh i was in i was texting him all day long we were trying to think of a name he said something something like my name is going to be ziggler i get to pick my first name what do you think it should be and we were trying we were thinking of so many and honestly what is a good first name for that it's hard man

so it's a pretty good first name for that nick ziegler that'd be good yeah yeah right but uh i guess it's doth sure so did you come up with doth no i was pitching some other ones i don't remember what it was but i'd love to hear that i mean we could maybe find the list somewhere if that's still like that was a long time ago at this point but uh when it was settled on dz i designed the original logo that was on his trunks for a while, the DZ with the devil tail. Yeah, yeah. I felt pretty cool. That was in the video game, I think.

I was playing that, thinking, yeah, I made that, yeah. Like, I'm not making any money. I'm not getting paid for this and never getting credit. And this will be a good, you know, thing to know for when I worked here. It'll be the same. You'll never get credit or paid for it. Were you always into wrestling? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. We loved wrestling. My dad used to take us to see at the Gondarina in Cleveland. We used to see any time they would come to town. and my brother and I would go see ECW and they came because it was not a parent-friendly environment, really. And we would see Cleveland All-Pro. We would go see everything, yeah. I've met your dad.

He is like, I think he might be more jacked than both of you guys put together. Yeah, he looks like Lance Storm. I've always thought that, yeah. How, like, has you just been really into fitness? He got a solo flex when we were little kids. I don't know if anyone remembers what a solo flex is. It's like the bow flex, right? Like the first version of the bow flex.

Yeah. And he would just, we would seem working out all the time. And I thought it was awesome. I remember, like, so it was years ago when I was working in Cleveland. And he came over to the TV station. I did an interview with Nick. And I met him, I'm like, you should be the wrestler. He's, he's jacked. There's little, there's photos of us as tiny little kids at the petting zoo, you know, just looking like tiny little kids. And my dad is just so jacked with the tiny little sleeves, like the little shorts. Like he was so muscular, man. Yeah. I don't know at this point if you would. Yeah, to me, he still is. When I see Lance Storm, I just think, that looks like my dad. Wow. So were you always into working out?

I got into working out probably at age 13 or 14 when I started doing like wrestling stuff. Well, I guess before that, I would go on the solo flex and do what I could do, which is limited if you're a kid. You can do like pull-ups and hanging ab crunches maybe, but the rest of it's too much for a child. And so rugby was your sport? Well, I wrestled. grade school through high school and then when I went to university, Xavier University, started playing rugby.

You started playing rugby in your? Yeah, I just, I knew they didn't have a wrestling team and I was kind of there for other things, but I wanted to be active and physical and that seemed like so weird to me, but a few my friends are doing it and I said, all right, I'll try it. And I went to one practice and I thought, this is cool. I get to tackle people.

Yeah. So what were you going to school for? I was doing English and Art double major. So I wanted to probably get into screenwriting or comedy or something, something like something show business related. Yeah. And was that always the goal, the dream growing up that you wanted to work? They wanted to work in Hollywood. Well, I wanted to do something that entertained people. I didn't quite know what it was.

I didn't know if it was writing or acting or comedy or whatever. So it was kind of like anything in that category, I just need to be pushed that way. Yeah. Yeah. So if we take it back, were you the kid like starring in the high school? play or were you in the drama club? The truth is not really until college did I get involved in doing live things like that. I think I did, there was an acting class and I thought, well, I have one more credit

to fill this semester. I'll try an acting class. And it was like after one class, I thought, oh, my God, I'm obsessed with this. And I should have been doing it all throughout high school. I thought. And I started spending summers in Chicago doing like improv classes at I.O. and, you know, like checking out I own Second City and thought this, now my brain is expanded again.

Like, holy crap. And then Nick was at OVW, so Wednesday nights, me and guys from the rugby team would drive to Louisville, watch him wrestle, drive back, and, like, we just had a blast. And then I started to think, whoa, wrestling is kind of like this improv stuff, just physical, which never crossed my mind. I just thought, that's his thing, you know. I like to watch it, but this is his thing.

And it was kind of like near the second half of college, I started to think, whoa, maybe I could do this. And yeah, I'm getting ahead of the story maybe right now. No, no, there's no path on this story. But you're about, you know, when you're going to school, Xavier, you're about two hours-ish from OBW in Louisville. I always freak, like some people say Louisville, then people from there say Louisville.

Yeah, they say, and so I can't. I would never try to be an imposter and speak like them. I lived there for a year at some point and never said it right. And I understand that. So what was the plan? And all right, I like wrestling. This is really interesting to me. I'm going to start to train at OVW.

The plan was, I was thinking either that or I'm going to Chicago and going full into acting and improv and really going to, like, I saw two paths very much in front of me. And, you know, we've all been there where we're dating someone that leads us down a different path. So the girl I was dating was like, I'm moving to Chicago to become a nurse. And I thought, all right, fine. I'll go there and I'll do comedy. And like, there it is.

Yeah. And basically right when I got there, I thought, like, this is wrong. I should be wrestling. This sucks. Really? But I try to like stick it out for a few months. And there was one day. And Nick would be touring there.

Smackdown would come there. We'd go see him and I would hang out with him afterwards and just think, man, I really want to be wrestling. I don't want to be here. What's the deal? And he would say, he would give me a little bit of advice, you know, either go to Lance Storm School or go to OVW, like just learn from someone good. Yeah.

And there's one day I came home from my gym job ahead and walked. into my girlfriend's house. I said, we need to talk. And she just looks up and she says, you're going to start wrestling with your brother, aren't you, and just move out of Chicago. And I said, I said, I guess we don't need to talk.

You pretty much covered it. Yeah, you got it. Well, Nick's path was so interesting. Like, Nick didn't have to decide, like, I'm going to pick a wrestling school and go there. Yeah. He got scouted because he was so good at amateur wrestling at Kent State University.

His dream since child since we would go see wrestling, he wanted to be a wrestler, that kind of wrestler. And so it's kind of funny. His whole amateur wrestling career is a little bit of a fake out because he was just doing that to get to WWF at the time, you know. Which is wild. So wild and like so many amateur wrestling people would think like they're mad about that. And I just think, how can he be mad at that? Like, all he did was do great and encourage more people to watch that sport.

Like, how is that bad? And was it Jim Ross that scouted him? I think it was Briscoe. Oh, wow. Yeah, who probably passed the info on to Jim Ross, I think. And I don't know if people appreciate just how good Nick was in his amateur career. Like, he's a Kent State Hall of Famer. Hall of Famer.

Most wins in his career set the record for that. Most pins in a season. He didn't have a scholarship just to walk down to the team and became team captain. Yeah, he was awesome. I used to love in high school going to watch his meets too. We'd drive up and watch him drive down. I would imagine that a lot of amateur wrestlers get that call from Gerald Briscoe or WWE or whoever and they go yeah like definitely yeah no thank you there a lot of them are insulted by that and they

think this is making a mockery of a we do yeah when the reality is the two are not related at all yeah like literally unrelated but it just so happens that if you're really good at one you may be good at the other i imagine for nick though it's like ah this is the call i've been waiting for my whole life yeah for sure yeah yeah so you decide you're going to leave chicago yeah and it's straight down to ovbw i did a little him staying in Cleveland where I saved up some money and did a little training at, it was called Firestorm Pro, which I don't think exist anymore. But they had a ring set up at the fantasy nightclub permanently. So I would go sometimes with their classes and try to learn how to bump or hit the ropes, but mostly when Nick was in town, we would sneak in late at night. I would get the keys,

and he would just go with me alone and teach me how to do certain things. So that was like my first pro wrestling training was sort of with him secretly in a haunted nightclub, like late at night. Is this nightclub not, like, functioning as a nightclub anymore? I think they would have concerts and they would have wrestling shows and most of the time, like, during the week, there's nothing happening there. So the ring would just be in there all the time. Wow. Yeah, but we were a little spooked because we would hear ghost stories about how the place is haunted and stuff. So.

And I would go sometimes alone and then I very quickly stopped doing that because I were very, you know, superstitious in that way, I guess. But a building is spooky. It's 100 years old. And to, to, like, turn the light off and get to. the door that you leave to lock was like a giant distance. So it had to turn the light off and then like just kind of make your way blindly through this dark haunted hall. Oh man, it was foogie. I don't want to do that again. Now I would go alone sometimes and be hitting the ropes just doing basic things. And I swear I would hear something and look up and just think, all right,

I'm out of here. Let's go. Like, got to leave, man. So if we follow your path, it's from Cleveland then Kentucky to Cincinnati. Oh, Cincinnati for school. To Chicago, back to Cleveland, then to Kentucky for OVW. Yes, yes. So you're training in OVW, I think a big thing that people need to realize here is you're picking up your life and you're going to move it.

It's about six-ish hours from Cleveland to Kentucky. Yeah, really far away. I think I sold the car that I had. I flew there with nothing. Oh, you flew there? Flew there with like a duffel bag and a couple hundred bucks I saved up

and just thought like I'm somehow going to become a wrestler. I don't know. I'll figure it out. Yeah. How were you going to pay for wrestling school? I got a job at L.A. what was called Urban Active, I think. Okay.

At the time, as a personal trainer, and I lived a few miles from OVW, the building, and I bought, I think the second day there, I went to Walmart and bought a bicycle. So I thought, I don't have a car at this point. I'm going to ride to wrestling practice and back. Hope that they, you know, accept me as a student. I mean, I hope so.

You didn't even know that they would accept you. A lot of this was just, I'm going to do this. I was pretty determined. I just thought this will happen. Yeah, I just, in my mind, I thought this can't not happen. And I wanted to happen so it will. And got a bike, started riding back and forth, training there. Won a scholarship.

I did some contests where it was all new people from out of town. And I won that to be like the guy that they, I can go to the advanced class now. So I was training with the Ripper Rogers advanced class. I was also going to the beginner's class to try to, I just want to wrestle constantly. So four days of training a week, two days of shows, one TV day, basically every day of the week. training or wrestling or helping build the ring or whatever. I just wanted to be around it all the time. So take me to the first day when you don't know that they're going to accept you. Do you show up and knock on the door and go, yeah? Hi, my name's Ryan. I'm lucky to train here.

So a lot of us showed up to try to win this scholarship for some days, some event they had. And we were all just nervously standing outside the building. No one knows anyone here. We're all just kind of confused. And at some point after an hour of waiting, this old guy, like opens the door, looks at all of us, says some kind of insult, just shuts the door again, and we're like, okay, I guess we'll just stay out here longer. And then an hour goes by again, and then he lets us in, and I think he was just having messing with us a little. And that was day one of the tryout. We went in there and got into a wrestling ring for the first time, and I thought, man, this thing is not like the indie ring in Cleveland. It's so big. These are real ropes. They hurt really badly,

you know and danny davis and rip rogers became my first trainers there and it was awesome i was hooked really after just being in a very solid ring in a building that i have been in so many times before to watch matches and i knew how many people were trained there i knew sina randy orton batista all these guys and girls came out of there who just went on to have amazing careers my brother yeah and uh another fun part is i was riding my bike there to practice one day and this car show up with a flat tire. And some guy gets out of the car who I think, wow, that looks a lot like Jim Cornett, but it's probably not him.

And this guy is swearing up a storm about his flat tire, goes in the building, slams the door, screaming about this car. And I'm like, wow, that guy's pretty mad. I remember I texted Nick, some guy who looks like Jim Cornett's pretty pissed off about his flat tire. And he said, do you think it is Jim Cornett? And I said, no, I don't think so. He's too tall.

And I got in there and found out that is Jim Cornett. He's pissed off about his tire. and I'm going to kind of, you know, stay far away from him at the moment. So when you're in OVW and you're doing the wrestling training, have you put the acting and the writing and comedy all on hold at this point? Still doing some writing, but mainly focusing on like, I'm pretty tunnel vision at this point. Yeah. And is the goal, WWE or bust?

Yeah, for sure. And I thought this is the best path to do it. Moving to Canada for Lance Storm School seemed like way harder than just showing up in a different state. I mean, they're both pretty hard to do. Well, the thing is, when you go to Lance's school,

they're not having, like, OVW shows every week. Yeah, constantly. Yeah. Whereas Lances is like, it's, it's hardcore training for, I think it's three months.

And then it's like, all right, you're ready to. Yeah. So that, so a lot of factors, and that was definitely one of them. And I just thought,

I can spend six months a year, however long I want here. And I know I'll get a lot of reps in front of a crowd. Because they just, they're one of the last actual territories in the world. Yeah.

Where they tour all around. And they're on TV. And they have their TV show. Yeah. So I thought no matter what happens, I'll get a really good experience there. And you were working under your real name there? Yeah, it was Ryan Nemeth and had no clue what I was doing. But Jim Cornett thought that I was handsome and had a good body, so he'll be on TV instantly.

And I had no business doing this at all. But I was tag champ, like a multiple times, rookie of the year instantly. I was only there for half. I think I lived there for six months and was really put in a lot of fortunate positions and worked with a lot of good wrestlers and very quickly

taken to NXT or FCW at the time. So your debut match in OVW was against Biggie and who else? Well, I guess that's... Now wait, that's FCW. Oh, that's FCW.

So who were you in OVW with? OVW, my debut TV match was against Cliff Compton who was Domino and Deucon Domino and Duce and Domino. Okay, okay. And there's a lot of controversy about this match because he put me in a submission and I was going to tap but I did not tap.

And Joe Wheeler, the referee, called for the bell. And I was like, screw job. I thought I was going to tap but I didn't. So technically what the hell? And Cliff will often text me a pitcher of that moment and say, you tapped. And I was like, no, I didn't. Joe Wheeler screwed me. Who else were you training with there that we might recognize?

Mikey from the Spirit Squad, Mike Mondo. Let me see who else. Geez, Paradise, who is now a producer for NXT. He was my tag partner. I don't know. God, this has been a while now. It was just so quickly. When you go to FCW, there's tons of names that we recognize there.

Yeah, FCW, definitely. But how did you get their attention? How did you get, like, that's a huge bump on. They were coming to scout some talent. So there was one weekend in which we knew WW Impact and Ring of Honor were all coming in the same two days to just check out what does OVW have at the moment,

like who's there. And Ring of Honor was doing tapings at our building. So I was working sometimes with Ring of Honor talent on their show. It was fun. It was a fun time. Yeah. Being at OVW was one of the most fun times in wrestling for me ever.

It was just so fun. And so the tryout was we would wrestle in front of Ring of Honor, Scouts, Impact, and then finally in the last day, John Laurenaitis, who was the head of talent at the time,

came to watch us. And we wrestled matches and cut promos. We cut a promo if they wanted us too. So I think Danny Davis maybe said I would really like Ryan to do one and John liked that. And afterwards, I think he came up to me

and there's just a long line of people waiting to talk to him. And he just walked away from all of them and came to me. And I felt like, yeah, that's got to be a good sign. And he said, hey, what are you doing for a living here, like to make money? And I said, oh, I'm a personal trainer. And he said, how much do you make doing that?

And I told him, very low figure at the time. But it was a job and things were cheap in Louisville. I was, you know, I liked it. And he said, have you ever been to Florida? And I was like, whoa, come on. This is leading me on now. And I said, yeah, you know, once or twice. would you ever consider living in Tampa?

And I said, yeah, of course. Yeah, that's literally the reason I'm here right now is so you will say this. Yes. And he says, yeah, how about you come work for us there then? I said, uh-huh. Yeah, that'd be great. He said, cool, nice to meet you. What do I weigh?

How big am I? How big am I compared to my brother physically or whatever? Those kind of questions. And then he just disappeared and this whole line of people was very upset, I think. But I felt cool as hell. And then I just didn't hear anything for weeks. And I would ask my brother, like, do I work there now? What do I do?

What's happening? And he's like, I don't know, man. Because that company is just such a mystery. Wrestling in general is a mystery. People say those kind of things and then just disappear. And that's what literally happened. So I think weeks went by. And then finally someone from Connecticut called me and said,

hey, we like you to come to Tampa for a two week tryout or a week long tryout or something like that. And I thought, okay, A, that's pretty cool. B, I thought I already worked there. He literally said out loud, why don't you come work for us in Florida, which I guess translated to someday you'll have a tryout in Florida and we'll see. So, yeah, then I flew there for a week, wrestled with him for a week, trained with everybody. I had great experiences with like Norman Smiley and Dr. Tom Pritchard and Dusty Rhodes.

Thought I was cool. I mean, I think he thought it was cool at the time. and a few weeks after that, then I was home thinking, now am I going to work? Like, what? How do you find out? And there's no, like, email to, like, ask. I was just a mystery. I have a brother who works there and is a champion probably at the time, and he doesn't know.

So at some point, somebody called me in the middle of a training session. I saw the number and I was like, I'm sorry, I got to take this call. And I, like, went to the gym hallway. My gym manager at the time watched me. He goes, are you getting signed right now? And I said, I think so. I think so, you know. And he was like, cool, cool, cool, because he was a wrestler.

and he, you know, and then a few weeks later, I just moved to Florida and then started working there, yeah. And how long were you in Tampa for? I'm sure their process now is much more streamlined and normal, but back then it was kind of like, I don't know. I was in Tampa for like three years, I think. It was FCW and then came NXT like halfway through my time. Yeah, and then how quickly did you get a new name? A few weeks into it. So before my first match, I was giving them a list of names every day.

and the office the little office dweeb, sorry, I'm not going to name him. I think this guy sucked. He was, I mean, I didn't like him.

He would look at the sheet of paper. He would look at it for less than one second and go, these all sound indie and hand it back to me. And I thought, you didn't read one name on this page and there's 80 names on there.

He would just take and go, too indie. Think of new ones. Wow. Just, no, this guy sucked, man.

It'd be great in real life. And at the building just was so lame. Oh, so lame. So eventually, I think I was eating dinner with Damien Sandow somewhere. I got a text that was like, you're either going to be Nathan or Briley. Which one do you like? I thought they're both pretty good, but Briley's really weird.

And it's secretly the last name of Danny Davis, who trained me in Kentucky. So I think that would be cool. Like a secret little wrestling reference that no one will get. And it's strange. So I went with that one. So I was Bradley Pierce. Yeah. And then you were Hot Young.

I added Hot Young. Yeah. I started doing Hot Young and OVW. I would get to the ring announcer and say, hey, call me this name. And she would be like, am I allowed to? And I would say, yeah, yeah. They said it's cool, which a lot of wrestling is like that.

You just pretend that's what's happening. And someone goes along with it. So you were originally Hot Young. Hot Young Ryan, yeah. And then Hot Young Bradley Pierce. And then I had a great time. We were tag champs right away. Got to wrestle.

Got the main event, like a lot of house shows with, I don't know which names to use. I'll just use what they were then. we'll figure it out Cesarro, Dean Ambrose, Sandow, and I was teaming

with people like Xavier Woods and, you know, it was so fun. What a fun time. Yeah. A lot of talent in FCW at that time. Huge, yeah. And,

yeah, basically we had anyone that's on TV right now was pretty much mostly an FCW with me back then. Wow. And your Twitter name

is still Hot Young Briley. Yes. We were messaging about this. Yeah, yeah. So when you're debuting on an AW Dynamite, it says,

Ryan Nemeth, Hot young Riley. So good. Like people are probably like, what's that mean? Ryan Nemeth already taken. Someone has already got Ryan Nemeth, Hot Young Ryan Nemeth, Rye, Rye, Nett. Any combination I want to use is already taken and has my face on it from some. Well, I think then you say to Twitter like, hey, that one's me.

Can I do that? Yes, of course. I looked at this. Your name on Instagram is Rye Rye Rye Nemeth. So you can follow him. Rye Rye Nemeth. The Rye Rye Nemeth account on Twitter. Wait, careful.

On Instagram, it's Rye, Rye, Nem-Nem. Because Rye Rye-Nemeth is another fake one. Jeez. You people are awful. They cover it all. And then they trick my family. They'll have babies, get married. And so I have uncles calling me going, hey, congrats on the baby. I'm like, dude, I don't have, I'm not married. I don't have a baby. This is not real. So Rye Rine-Nemith on Twitter in his bio says this is a fake account. So I feel like you should be able to go to Twitter and go, hey, this is my name. And this person is clearly, they have a fake account. I would love to change. I would love to take the real name.

All right. Well, somebody watching this is going to help you out. I hope this happened. Just report. Which one do you want them to report? All of them. Okay. Report them all. Rai Nem.

Who them all? Rai Nem-Nem. The one I really want hasn't been used in like eight years. So I'm just like, come on, dude. Let me have that. Which one's that? I think that's Rai, Rye,

Nem-Num. That's the one I really want. I like how that sounds. You really want Rye Rye Nem-Nem-N-M-N. And there it is. Come on. Let's all report that one. Say this is a fake account.

Does Twitter watch this? No, no, no, everyone watching this is going to report it. Nice. And then they're going to get like hundreds of reports on this account and they're going to go, huh, we should shut down this thing. Yeah, shut it down. Give it to me. This is the plan.

Let me have it. Okay. We're going to make this happen. There it is. Excellent. Yeah. While everybody's watching, they can also. Also, Hollywood honk is taken everywhere.

Well, which I can understand. Yeah, I'm a little late on that one. Yeah. Again, you know, it's. These things happen. It happens. It happens. So you're in NXT.

Yes. How do you go from working with all these great people in NXT to just not working out for you there? It was working great for me there while Dr. Tom Pritchard was head coach and John Laurinitis was in charge of talent. I was getting treated greatly or fairly. Dusty Rhodes thought I was cool. And it was similar to the Jim Cornett experience back in OBW, which was he's good at talking and he's handsome. He's going to be on TV right away. And you'll learn to wrestle as you go.

And that was going great for me. Yeah. They literally had a top 10 list of talent back then, and I was like three, I think, which I felt I felt I don't really deserve to be third of this amazing group of people. But cool, I'll take it. And then almost overnight, someone else took over talent. Someone else became head coach. And I didn't exist anymore, basically. Yeah.

So that's all. That's just what happens in any kind of show business thing. If someone else shows up and they like other people, see you. Wow. Yeah. So when the new coach took over, it was super clear to me that this man did not like me or that he didn't like my brother and had some thing. It was some kind of weird. You know, that's just how wrestling goes.

He's not there anymore. He's not there anymore. A lot of people don't like this person you're speaking about. And again, certain people I don't even like the name and give credit to because, but I would call him coach to his face in a way that really, to me was always like, you don't deserve to be a coach. you're not good of the coach and you suck as a coach. Hey, coach, like just to rub it in, like, I hope you feel every time I say coach, I don't believe it.

I hope, like, I'm just saying it, you know. Anyways, yeah, so I was, I remember the phone call I got from the guy who is the office guy. I don't know if he's still there. I had no idea, probably still. And a few months before, I had spoken to him and said, hey, I think this coach doesn't like me and I'm kind of screwed. And this executive at the time said,

I can confirm that. That is true. I said, so you know that I'm doing really well, but the reports you get are changed to say, I'm not doing well. He goes, yes, I've gathered that much. And I said, is there anything I can do about this? And he said, I'm not sure. No way. And as he called me to release me from my contract, I said, hey, you remember a few months ago we had that talk? And he said, yep. And I said, is that what's happening now? And he goes, yep. And I said, kind of like, what the hell, dude? But, and that is just how wrestling works. He basically said out loud, like, yes, you're getting fake fired and I can't stop it and whatever.

I'm like, cool, dude, thanks. Wow. So was it immediately back to Cleveland then? No, never back to Cleveland, only to visit. So then did you go, all right, were you a little bit jaded from wrestling then? The phone call actually was, it was interesting. He said, we think you're probably, like, some people you're let go or we think you're going to, you know, go to Japan and do whatever. Some people will do never wrestle again.

And we think you're probably going to go to Hollywood and start being, excelling in that world. And I thought, yeah, that's probably true. Cool, dude. Thanks. See ya. You know? And I moved one month later to L.A.

and just started trying to go full hog and acting and writing stuff. Yeah. And were you done at that point with wrestling? I did sporadic wrestling here and there. A little bit of indie wrestling. Yeah. And then I got really into indie shows and running my own promotion with my girlfriend at the time, too, to raise money for charity.

I mean, there was wrestling always happening. And luckily in Hollywood, there's always something being shot about wrestling or that involves wrestling. So I've been very involved with wrestling still. I would do tours in Australia for House of Hardcore with Dreamer. I was wrestling sporadically, you know, and really enjoying it. Enjoying it way more than I was in NXT at the second half of it, actually. And yeah, all right.

Sorry, I'm friendly. No, no, please. It's your show. How many, so how long have you been here in Hollywood? Been here for, I think, seven years. It's always longer than I think. I always want to say like three years, but not it's been a while now. So when you decided to leave Florida, did you like pack up, did you have a car?

Do you pack up a car and drive out here? Yeah. Well, I shipped the car and flew, I think. I met the car in Phoenix. And did you, well, where your brother lives? Did you have any friends out here? Did you have any connections? I had a few friends.

I had John Morrison lived here. And the guy who is now Lutuosaurus lived here. And that might be it. Wow. I sort of knew Johnny LaClausto, like barely. So I knew like three people here, yeah. This is like everybody's Hollywood story. It's like, seriously, I know one or two people, but I'll figure it out when I get out there.

But to me, this was just like, I did the same thing in Kentucky, sort of the same thing in Florida. Like, I'll figure it out. Yeah. And when you come to L.A., you realize that everybody's kind of in that same boat. So they're kind of like open to like, oh, yeah, well, just come grab a drink with us or grab some pizza with us. Like, we'll figure it out together. And I made fast friends with the crew at Second City. like Brett Connell, Sam Richardson, all those guys.

They had a weekly show that involved the idea of wrestling sort of. They would have a wrestler guest each time who would tell a story and they would do improv and sketches about it. And I guested with them one time, hosted it. And then they said, hey, you just want to be in this because you have that improv background. We think you're great. And so I just started playing with them. So that was cool. To get in with like things like that felt really, started to feel like a home.

Yeah. I may be naive because I've only been here. less than a year, but I feel like it's easy to find your tribes of people here. If you're into comedy, you know, start hanging out if it was open at the comedy store, you know, at some other comedy place. If you like acting, start taking acting lessons. And then you start to find people who are like-minded just like you. Definitely.

I started to, I got in with like a few worlds. Like Gold's Gym Venice was a world I got really into, I got into UCB and Second City, pretty hard core. And then I had my wrestling friends also. So I had it was awesome. I loved it. Did you work out with Mike O'Hern? He's at Golds all the time.

He was always there. We didn't work out together. He's a large man. Very large man. We would say hi. What was your first real break, if you will, in the film, filmmaking, film writing, acting? Break? Let's see.

My first break was a Venmo commercial I did. Can we find this somewhere? Yeah, it's on YouTube. It's probably on their Instagram. I was, I remember getting flown. to Vancouver shooting like multiple spots. And I was so excited because I thought, this is the first national commercial of me,

and this is awesome. And my girlfriend at the time was like, you know, if this was union, you'd be making so much more money. You're on TV constantly. They played at the World Series. There's banners. And I didn't know the difference between union

or non-union at the time. I was just like, yeah. Can you give us your line from the commercial? Yeah. I had lines and then I started making them out because I thought they wanted us to ad lib a little bit. And I remember at some point,

the director was like, like, hey, and this time just sticks to the lines this time. And I was like, all right, what I thought he said. I mean, I'm not going to argue with that. Sure. I think I come out of the door of the bar and I say, this happens every time. And it was about, it was a Venmo commercial. So the idea was, oh, now we can pay each other and split the tab much easier.

And then magically ponies appeared and we were all standing on ponies because the slogan was pony up. Oh. And then there's a few other ones where we're like in a juice bar. eating pizza. We had to film with these ponies, or they were actually mini horses. The animal trainer was very mad that we were calling them ponies. He was pissed. And they just did not, after a few hours, they just don't want to be there anymore.

And so they would just start moving around and you'd fall, you know. Oh, my gosh. And you couldn't really sit on them because they were too small. So you had to like stand. You had to like do a half squat. It was very hard, actually. And this is like hour 11 and they'll say cut. And as soon as they, like, whisper cut to not spook the horses, they would just start walking off.

So they would say cut and I would just fall. Oh, man, it was brutal for those animals. Man, it was pretty, I thought, I felt cool, though, you know. That's a pretty big break. Really, a national commercial? It came on during the Simpsons, which is my favorite show. So I felt very cool about that. And they had my friends who went to the World Series that year, they were in Chicago,

I really feel going, dude, there's, you're on banners at the World Series. And I thought, yeah, sweet. What else might we have seen you in? Let's see, a few other commercials. That was the biggest commercial. Are you union now? Union now for a couple of years now. Oh, I was in the Xfinity commercial with Amy Poehler this past year.

Look at this guy. I played a lifeguard. I felt very cool about that. Can we find that one online too? That's easy to find online. Okay, there we go. The show AP Bio, NBC's AP Bio. I believe it's on Peacock now this past season.

I am a wrestler in it. And I also worked as wrestling consultant and did work, you know, put together all the stunts, got all the wrestlers cast and put, you know, the sequences together. It was very fun. Trained, helped train some of the main actors in that show at how to wrestle, which was very fun. So fulfilling to put the two worlds together, you know. Yeah. That's a work. That's something you've been doing a lot of. Yeah. So how do you break into that world where you go, I can be the guy who can train you? Well, actually, AP Bio was probably the first time. They hired you because you were a wrestler? Ah, okay. So I shot, I'll give a little clue of the film Heel that I made. Yeah, we'll get into a whole bunch of that here.

To do the stunt coordinating for that, we had Chavo Guerrero, who was a great family friend and who does fight coordinating for Glow or had been doing fight coordinating for Glow. And he was like my brother's first kind of really good mentor, tag partner in WWE. Yeah. And Kerwin White. Curwin White. And to have him working on that with me was awesome. He's helped get me in with Glow for the final season of Glow,

which is not to be. But, you know. That's too bad. Yeah, but AP Bio. So they, I knew some of the people from just getting to know a second city in UCB and like Chicago Improv people who are all sort of a generation ahead of me, but knew that I lived here and was likable and new wrestling.

So they said, well, you come into the writer's room and talk to us, we're thinking about writing an episode about wrestling and a lot of people in the writers room where people who had seen me wrestle at Nuclear Heat or our indie show we were running or just knew me from improv stuff and I gave them all the key terms to use like things that wouldn't happen in wrestling locker rooms

like we spent a couple hours and it was so fun you're like a consultant I was consultant yeah so like a month later a few weeks later the line producer called me and said hey would you like to come on as wrestling consultants and we'll pay you this much. And here's, you'll just be, like, on call for this month of shooting before pre-production.

And then would you also come in and, you know, run the stunt portion of the wrestling, help us cat? Basically, we need wardrobe, a wrestling ring. 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 Clevenberg. And now we're giving people an inside look at the World Cup. Times 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 U.S. soccer podcast, presented by Henko. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Look over the script dialogue to see if it makes sense.

Cast wrestling extras, train everybody. And I thought, like, this is awesome. This is my dream right now to, like, put wrestling and have it represented in a way that I think makes sense and is not going to get the wrestling business mad at me. And have it just be very true to what's really happening. And that went so well. It was awesome.

That's amazing when it came together. And then since then, I've done maybe three or four more of the similar thing for music videos or apps that are making wrestling things or movie, whatever. Yeah, it's been really cool to be hopefully that's an ongoing thing. I really like it. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Is there something interfering with your happiness or is preventing you from achieving your goals?

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That's BetterHelphelp.com slash insight. You sent me a link so I could watch Heel. Yes. Which is your short film, which you wrote and you produced. Yes. And you started. And I was so impressed. Thank you.

I was so impressed with, number one, how great the story is, but also how good you and everybody else is is in it and it was very well directed as well but the story like with what was going on in the wrestling world last year with speaking out it feels like it's like coming out at the exact perfect time thanks for saying those nice things uh that's true maggie levin was the director and she was just so good man right i showed her the script when it was in its longer form like a second or third draft and she said, yo, let's meet to talk about this.

And I knew she was about to direct a feature film. And she said, I'm about to do a feature film. But I want this to be the final short film I direct. I want to direct this so bad. Are you down with that? And I just, I was like,

yes, I'm down with that, dude. As if I would say, no, yes, I love everything she's made. And I knew that she was about to take off

and be way too busy. So I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do this. Uh, right.

So how much can we say about what the plot of this film is? The plot of the film deals with sexual, assault in the world of indie wrestling. And it's kind of too short of a movie to give anything else away, but it deals with that. And I will say that when you watch it, it feels like the situations that we heard about last year with speaking out. Well, it comes from a very real place. There was a time when I was doing a lot of indie wrestling, and I just suddenly was kind of like ambushed with awful stories about assault in the indie wrestling world. And it was just way too close to home for me. and that's why I took a break from all wrestling at all.

I just thought I am too grossed up by this to keep being a part of it. And I know it's not everywhere, but it was like really close to home for me. And I said, I need to do something. I can't really like speak on behalf of these women because for a number of reasons. Actually, let's take this time to address people on Twitter who will say to me, Ryan, if you knew about all this, why didn't you say something? You're just as guilty. No, I'm fucking not.

You can't speak on behalf of victims. That's not my story to tell. Legally, just think about that, man. Just think of how much trouble I'd be in legally if I decided to do something like that. Victims themselves would have every right to sue me or whatever, you know? Thirdly, there are ways that I can help and contribute. That is not one of them. This is, you know, using art or film as a way to start a conversation about things that are happening.

and hopefully that encourages things to change. So you wrote this basically saying, I'm disgusted with some of the stuff that I've seen or heard about in the wrestling world. I just need to get this out there. Yeah, I love pro wrestling, and I love the people in it. And there are some bad eggs who do some heinously bad stuff

and get away with it year after year, month after month, show after show. And there's not one solution to that. But this is one that I can personally, try to help with. Is the idea here that this short may become a feature? I would love it to become a feature or a series or something. And if it, if the worst thing that happens is that a lot of people watch it, that's great too, you know, like, well, people can't, they can watch it soon, right? It will. So we crowdfunded it and was a massively successful worldwide campaign. We raised in 30 days,

like $65,000 from like really generous people. And the, I think the average pledge was like 20, bucks. So it's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. Yeah, I really appreciate it. If any of you were watching, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. So this is going to start debuting at film festivals. Yes. And it's been in a few that have streamed online. And as they happen this year, I'll post about them everywhere. So it's kind of unfortunate that it's not going to be in person for a lot of these fest just because of COVID and everything. But it's more accessible. If you can watch it in a festival, it's playing in Florida and you live in Indiana, like you don't have to go to Florida. So there's good and bad. But the thing about the festival circuit is your film can be in those festivals for quite a while. Yeah. So there's a chance that hopefully towards the end of the year, if things get better, that this can start to be in-person festivals.

I hope. I hope. We're all. And Florida, you know, everything's open there for some reason. Yeah. So maybe if there's one in Florida, we find. I know that like many months ago, the Cleveland International Festival already now, it's like next year, streaming no matter what. And I just was like, oh, way.

I mean, it's cool, but like, oh, yeah, because that's like my favorite one. Yeah, I used to cover that all the time in Tower City. Well, yeah. Yeah. So, yes, it will hopefully be popping up in a lot of easily accessible streaming film fest this year. Yeah. Are you working on another film maybe? Are you writing stuff?

Yeah, I'm always writing things, definitely. So pretty much always in the background during my downtime I'm writing or doing something like that. Are you still taking acting lessons? I was loving my classes to Playhouse West, but they're only online now, and the scheduling has been very hard. So, like, my acting now is, like, when I get an audition or a self-tape, I'll coach with it for someone for, like, a few days and then do that. And I think that is, like, my private sort of ongoing.

Sure. Which is good. I just, I really wish the things at Playhouse West were so great. It was the Meisner method, which you can't really do online. You have to do in person. It's very involved and physical. And, man, I love that place. So, I don't know.

to be determined when things start happening again. I'll get back in there. Do you think it's easier or harder that everything's a self-tape now? It's tricky because it's much easier to do because... And you can do a thousand takes. I even did one, you know, when I was at AEW last year, there for a few days. And of course, as soon as I get on the flight, I get a text from the manager, hey, you have a self-tape due in like 10 hours.

I'm like, okay, no problem. I could do it in the hotel room. Great. And I had Luchessaurus be my reader with me and I sent them in it. And of course, you know when you'd have someone, who's not an actor be a reader, they're like so excited. Yeah. This summer I had my aunt do that with me too, and they just feel like, wow,

I'm part of Hollywood right now, which is awesome because you don't, around here to get another actor to do it as like twisting their arms, you know? I'll read with you anytime. Hey, thanks, man. Same. Yeah, and I'll read flat, so, you know, I'm not taking away from your performance. Oh, Luchess is so into it, man. When you read with someone who's doing for the first time, they're like,

these pretzels are making me thirsty. I knew that was going to be the line that you said. Yeah, and they love it, but it was cool. And then while I was there, a different wrestler texted me and said, hey, can you help me with a secret self-tape? And I was like, of course I can. I just did my own, no problem. And so, you know, they're easier to do now.

You don't have to find parking. Yeah. Battle traffic. Be in a waiting room with other people who look just like you or mad that you're there. Yeah. Only, you know, walk into that room and, you know, you're the 19th person to walk in there. And they're just staring at you. All right, Slate.

and go. Yeah, yeah, what do you got? So that part's good, but the bad part is that then if you book the part and you're on set, suddenly there's cameras and everyone around, which is not in your bedroom or wherever you're filming the audition. Right, but it doesn't matter. You already got it. Yeah, so it doesn't matter.

I think the thing, the reason I like the self, and I don't do that many of them, but I like that I can do like 17 different versions, then watch it back on my editing software and go, huh. That's pretty good. I thought the fourth take would have been the best, but it's actually the seventh take. As it turns out, yeah. And then when you go in and you do it in person, You've got one shot.

That's it once, yeah. Do people know what self-saves are? Should we tell them? Go ahead. Self-tape is when you tape your own audition by yourself and give it to the casting people. Just what it sounds like. Yeah. It's an audition that, yeah, you film yourself.

Yeah, that's it. I don't want you to just be watching this and think. I don't know what they're talking about. Click away. You know, I pulled this up here and remembered that I had a fan question, actually. Whoa. Yeah. This came from Nick N?

Nick N. Okay. Oh, that's too obvious. N. Nemeth. That'll be better. Okay. That's confusing. All right. Ask him if everything will be, ask him if everything will all be on the arm. Little inside joke that you guys don't get.

I don't get it either. So this relates to performing at Second City. Nick has performed at us many times. Whoever this Nick is, yeah. Oh, I don't know who that Nick is. I just mean my brother, Nick. This is a different Nick. of course he's played with us a bunch at second city in hollywood uh the show is called flying chuck

which is a reference to john morrison's move set if anyone really cares they might or john he is john morrison i'm gonna say johnny nitro oh morrison moondo that's right nitro impact so he uh there's there's a guy named mikey wilson who's a detroit improv performer great dude during a scene i think with sam richardson maybe i think a waiter uh uh uh gave them the tab of what their drinks were going to be. And he said, Mikey Wilson taps his arm. And he says,

I thought this was all on the arm. Which means, as I found out way later on, but looking it up as an old-timey way of staying on the house. Oh. But he used the phrase on the arm. No one knew what that meant. The crowd was laughing out of confusion.

And me and my brother in the back were just laughing, like, what? No one knows what that means. And he's just throwing this out there as if we'll all like, we're all just like, what do you don't know? And the waiter in the scene also. I was like, I don't know what you're talking about.

He goes, on the arm, free, you know. And so that's just a little inside joke with my brother. And it's weird that this fan knew that little joke. He also said I should call you Kronin O'Brien. Oh, they're both references to improv stuff. There was a show, a sports show they used to be on starring Kevin Fleming. And they were interviewing Conan O'Brien. He was getting him such a hard time.

And they mispronounce his name as Kronin O'Brien. That's it. These are not fun for these people to lie, you know. Every time someone says Conan O'Brien, I love that you mentioned Simpsons, because I just think of when Bart went on when he was the I didn't do it guy. Just do the dance. Or no, don't do the dance. It's perfectly still.

Only I may dance. Only I may dance. Just say the line. Say the line. Oh, man. Cronin O'Brien. Speaking of N. Nemeth, take me back to, I know it's one of your favorite matches, one of your favorite moments.

Take me back to you watching Dolph Ziegler cash in on Alberto Del Rio. yeah, I'll talk all about that. So a few months before that, I was lucky enough to have a match against him in NXT, Kissimmee, Florida. Is that how you say it? Kissimmee. Kissimme?

Is that how you say it? Yeah, I think so. Kissimme. So against Del Rio or Ziegler? Against Ziegler. Okay. We wrestled against each other in a tag match. Trent Barreto was in the match.

A.J. Lee was part of the Biggie. Anyway, so he had the briefcase of the time, and I was for some reason home with my family. I don't know what I was doing. doing in Cleveland, but we were all watching Mania there? We, okay. Because it was the night after maybe after mania. I just don't know

why I was, I was in Cleveland, but I was there. Maybe there's some family event or something. And we were all at my grandma's house and the TV was on. And I sort of had this thought of like, oh, Raw's on. Should we put Raw on? Maybe Nick's on. And we turned it to Raw just as Nick's music hit

and he started coming down. And he cashed it in. The place went nuts. and my family is going crazy. And I was like, oh, thank God, I remember her. I was like, this is the, because he didn't tell any of us anything, you know. But yeah, that was awesome. Great, great to watch that with my family, parents, and everybody see that happen.

What an awesome moment. Oh, man, it's my favorite matches. When you watch it back now, do you still get goosebumps? Yes, absolutely. As soon as the music hits, the place goes absolutely insane. That's the loudest I've heard of Place B ever. Well, because the buildup to that moment, I think he had the briefcase for, I mean, It's close to a year.

It was a long time. It was a long time. It was so long that, and I don't know if this happens much anymore, it's so long that you forget that briefcase has the power. You just think it's part of their entrance. Yeah. But in that moment, Del Rio had just been beaten up bad by Randy Orton. Yeah.

And he's kind of in the corner and they're saying, oh, man, Del Rio's in bad shape here. Big time. And the music hits. It's like, oh, I know what's happening. But then you kind of don't because you always think he's the kind of guy that gets this close and doesn't win. And there's so many times in the match where it looked like,

El Rio is going to win. And as a family, we're thinking, come on, dude, just give him a break one time. Do you know if that match was planned out? Because it looked like they were calling a lot of it in the ring. Like, was he planning to cash in that night? I don't think he was planning to cash in. I think a lot of those, I'm not going to speak for him. But it seems like a lot of things on that show are kind of when the boss says they're

happening, suddenly everything changes. But if I know my brother, a lot of the actual match was probably called because he likes he prefers that as much as he can to call things and improvise. What do you think is one thing you've learned from Nick? And this can be wrestling or otherwise that you now do in your life every day. I try, something I've learned the last few years is something I a little bit learned while wrestling him in that Kissimmee Kissimmee. I think it's Kissing me.

Kiss me. Same thing. We had so much fun in that match. Is that the only time you worked with him? There's another time in Orlando. where there's a match that we did together. Yeah, but this was a really fun one. Okay.

The main event, there was a packed house. We had relatives in the front row. My uncle Mitchell was there watching. He had the briefcase at the time. I think it was so fun. It was the most fun. And we did so much before the actual bell ring that like the time the match we had to wrestle already expired before we started wrestling.

And I remember the referee being very worried about that. And I think we locked up and he had me in a hold. And the ref comes over and says, Okay, they said take it home. And at the time, the person in charge was the person I didn't like who he used. So they tried to get this match to cancel. It was an NXT house show match that for weeks my boss was trying to cancel from happening. Meanwhile, the match involves the biggest star in your company at the time packing the house for our show.

Why would you not want that match to happen? It was a very frustrating couple of weeks. And so that match happening just felt like a mid-hast. Yeah, sure. It's the internet. One of the east, you know? and he comes over and says, they said take it home. And my brother just looks at him and goes,

get the, go, basically go away. And I thought, wow, you need to just stand up for yourself, basically. Because if he listened to that referee, the match would have been lock up, put Ryan in a hold, zigzag over.

And do you think the crowd, the multiple thousands of people who came to see that would be happy with that? Of course, they wouldn't be happy with that, dude. So how much longer did the match end up going on? I went like, I don't know, like 15, 17 more. Like, we had a fun, awesome match. We had the cool match we wanted to have.

And it's a house show. What does it matter if you take it home? It didn't matter at all. And that was just another way of, that's all. I just felt like the message was stand up for yourself. And if someone's in charge right now, they might not be the next time. So, but you'll always be you. So whatever things are working against you or holding you down, it may change.

The next time this situation is revisited or it's not permanent. So just always stand up for yourself. Do you think that there's something that you're really proud of that you taught him? That I taught him? Well, he calls himself a comedian now. I like to think I had a little hand in some of that. Is he a comedian? That's what his Twitter bio says, and he said he wrestles for our time.

I think, okay, so I think we do stage shows together, I at least have a positive influence as far as improvising and ad-limbing and just going with the flow. I think I hope that is something I've kind of. Yeah. Because that's my main thing. It's just whatever's happening is fine. It could always be fine and funny. Don't really stick to the script that hard.

I mean, you do a lot of improv. Do you ever test your hand at stand-up? I perform on a lot of stand-up shows, not doing stand-up. Have you ever thought about doing stand-up? Yeah, it's not really funny. I like doing characters and bits and other kind of things within a stand-up show. So if there's three comics and then Ryan does something weird and then another comic, You're like, that's something I really enjoy doing.

So maybe that is called standup. Some people might say, that's standup. You're standing up doing something and it's comedy. One man's show, maybe. Something like that. I like doing variety things or characters or whatever. You're like a Renaissance man. Hey, man, I'm everywhere.

I'm all over the place. Just think about it. Filmmaking, film writing, acting, stunt work, wrestling, comedy, and you're an artist. Oh, my God. Ryan paints dogs. I just, like I told you earlier before we start, I like to make people smile.

And so that doesn't really keep me in a box. So whether it's some kind of art, some kind of entertainment, wrestling, acting, whatever. I love it. So I said Ryan paints dogs because that is your Instagram handle for your side business that you have. You paint people's dogs. Do little dog portraits and water. And they're amazing. Thank you very much.

How did this start? Well, I've always been artistically inclined. And sort of when I started wrestling, I stopped doing it. And in the past few years, I just as a hobby, you got back into it and then thought, well, this is something I really enjoy. It's peaceful. It's very mindful. I love dogs. And I recently did a portrait of my good friend Brody Lee. And so Ryan paints dogs and sometimes people, I guess it would be. When you parked outside, you were like, oh, dog. I saw a nice little dog walking by. I look like some kind of mixed with a poodle, I think.

I don't know. Something. Sure. It's a small white dog. Small white dog. Yeah. Like, I could paint that. I thought that. I love dogs. You love dog. Do you have a dog? A dog sit, but I don't have my own dog. That's probably the responsible move. I think it is because I think I'm really good with them. I can take care of them and help if someone needs a hand. But my life is very strange and it's hard to, if I have to be there all the time,

taking care of a dog, it would be unfair. Well, this is kind of the life of someone who is in the industry that you're in. Yeah. You could at just a moment's notice be working for a week or two or three straight. I could just suddenly be wrestling on dynamite for no reason. That story's amazing. The most unexpected thing. I remember everyone just asking, oh, do you work there?

I thought, no, I literally do not work here, but this is great. I mean, they were advertising and promoting like this. I mean, this is a big deal. It was cool. They did that promo package for Roads of Dynamite on YouTube. We got to film it in Venice. That was pretty cool. I think I was wearing this jacket in the video probably.

It's perfect. People will be able to recognize the jacket. Yeah. looks good doesn't look anything like nicknith at all he does not have this jag i think he'd be pretty jealous of it he'd be totally jealous of it i've really enjoyed this well thanks for having me no thank i end every interview i'm very driven by gratitude i hope it's not sports trivia no oh thank i end every interview i'm very driven by gratitude i think that if you can be grateful you can live a great life so i'm curious ryan what are three things in your life that you're grateful for right now

right this moment okay so my family. I think about them a lot. I would say dogs. I love dogs. And well, the thing you just said about finding your tribe, not just said, but a half hour ago, I think in my life, I've cultivated a very good tribe of people. I feel like I'm the center of a few different tribes are involved in a lot of really amazing groups of people. So those three things, I think. Those are three great things. Thank you. What about you? You got, you have different answer every week, or do you know the one? Oh, for me? Yeah, yeah.

I actually, the people want to know. I start and end every day with gratitude, actually. Oh, you're all about it. I mean, because if you're in a grateful mindset, it's hard to be pissed off.

Like, because otherwise, if you have these expectations about things, you're always going to be let down. So Tony Robbins says, if you can trade your expectations for appreciation, then you'll never be let down. Because in every moment,

you'll just be like, oh my gosh, I'm so happy that this thing is happening. So for me, my family, my parents have been married for 46 years. years. Wow. And have given this incredible example of love and union partnership. So my family,

in this weird, strange time that we're living in right now, my health. Perfect. And I'm really grateful that I get to do stuff like this. Wow. Like the fact that we just hung out for an hour and six minutes. And yeah, yeah, right. I don't wear a watch. I don't wear a watch. You don't have one. It's just so cool to be able to learn from people like you who are extremely talented at what they do. Wow. And just find out a little bit of how you got to where you got. I'm really grateful for that. Well, thanks for having me on you.

Hey, it's great what you just said about not having all these expectations. I've been trying to think about the past months. I'm just kind of enjoying the moment and not worrying about what's to happen or not happening because, like you said, it's just full of disappointment. You can't control it. So just go moment to moment and have a good time. Yeah, and I think that there's always people are like, well, what if I did this? Then this thing might happen.

I think that what has happened is always going to happen. Whoa. Right? And because this other decision you made along the way, you know, this thing happened, it led you to be sitting here right now. Dang. In this moment.

Well, that's a pretty wild thing about it. But I think that I, look, maybe, maybe, you know, not everybody agrees with that. But that's how I think that is. Yeah, some people are getting so mad in the comments right now. How dare you say that? Well, and I get that, like, bad things happen, good things happen as well.

There's a little secret sign on the side of this place right now that says, be great, be grateful. He's living what he says. I have a T-shirt that says that too. There you go. You can buy it down below if you're watching on YouTube. Buy it. Buy everything.

So you can find Ryan. Well, tell them. Where can they find you right now until we figure out your Twitter account? A very easy method is just to, in your search bar type, Ryan Nemith, because it all shows up. I think my real Instagram, my real Twitter, both pop up. But if you need it, on Twitter, it's Hot Young Briley. For now. On Instagram, it's Rai, Rye, Nem, Nem.

For now, yes. For now. Yeah, we'll figure that out. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Well, there we go, my friends, Ryan Nemeth. And it's exciting knowing that at 36, he's just getting started. It's getting started with all of this.

Whether it's stunt coordinating, whether it's writing films, whether it's wrestling. He is just getting started. And man, this interview made me miss doing in-person interview. reviews so much. We've had a few of them. We've had a few of them sprinkled in, you know, here and there, JTG, Victoria, Jick the Snake, Jazz, Gangrel, but just a few. So I look forward to when they become the norm again. Hopefully it's sometime later this year. But if not, maybe sometime later next year. When Ryan's movie, Heal becomes available, I can't recommend this enough. It's such a great story. So well written, so well directed, acted, edited, everything.

So keep an eye out for that. Maybe it's coming to a festival near you. So keep an eye out for that. If you enjoyed this, share it with a friend. Take a screenshot, share it, and tag us online. I'm at Chris Van Fleet. And you can tag Ryan on Instagram. He's at Rai Rye Nem.

And on Twitter, he's still hot young Briley, at least for now. But I just checked. Right before I recorded this, I just checked. And Rai Rye Rye Nem-Nem on Twitter and Rye Rye Nemeth on Twitter are now suspended. Those fake accounts are now suspended. We did it, guys. I don't know how it's done already. So I imagine that his name will become one of those eventually.

But just like he said, search for Ryan Nemeth and you'll find him. As Tim Fargo once said, who you are tomorrow begins with what you do today. Be great. Be grateful. We will see you on the next one for some more insight. The Hammer Alley Podcast. An 80s flashback mockumentary. Back in the 80s, there were a thousand bands

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Ever heard of them? To Rock Bottom. Dude, I was born in 1987. I can't believe he's doing this. Hammer Alley. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.