Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Sean Ross Sapp - Fightful's Managing Editor On How He Breaks The Biggest Wrestling News

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

Sean Ross Sapp (@SeanRossSapp) is the managing editor of the pro wrestling and MMA website Fightful.com. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about how he got started in journalism, how he was able to break the news that CM Punk had signed to AEW, his favorite interviews, working with Denise Salcedo, how he trained and worked as a pro wrestler, his favorite and least favorite parts of the job, what he learned working for Bill Apter and WhatCulture, his thoughts on whether or not kayfabe is dead and much more! For more information about Fightful visit: http://fightful.com Save 20% on your first purchase at True Classic Tees with the code CVV20: https://trueclassictees.com/discount/CVV20 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 CVV and INSIGHT go to: https://podcast.chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet TikTok: tiktok.com/@Chris.VanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are going. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Bleas! All right, my friends. Welcome back to another audio adventure here on Insight. I'm CVV, Chris VanV. It's so good to have you with us on this episode with the man who has been breaking some of the biggest stories in wrestling over the last few years. He is the managing editor of Fightful.com.

He is SRS Sean Ross Sapp. Also, Sean interviewed me. So he was on my show, I was on his show, and you can find that either on the Fightful YouTube channel or look for Fightful pods wherever you're listening to this right now. And also make sure to follow Fightful and insight on the podcast platform of you choosing so you don't miss out on anything that we have coming up. Sean Ross Sapp, by the way, is on social media at Sean Ross Sapp. That's S-E-A-N-Ross Sapp. I'm at Chris Van Fleet. and our fan of the week is Nelly Fresh 1994,

who left this review that says, Love this podcast. Hopefully I get a second shout-up, but this really is the best podcast around. I can say that a thousand more times, but it's true. Chris really knows how to listen to his guest and asks amazing questions.

We'd love to grab a beer with you someday and just listen to your knowledge about wrestling and podcasting. Thank you, Chris, for great content, and keep it up. Don't ever give up. Well, that is very kind of you. Nelly Fresh, 1994. I read a review on every single episode.

So if you haven't left a review yet, leave a review on Apple Podcasts. We'll shout you out here. If you have left a review and either want another shout out like Nelly Fresh here, or you just didn't get read out the first time for whatever reason, go back in, click on write a review. You'll see the review that you've written there. Add a few words, change something, out an emoji, just something to freshen it up. resubmit it, and then it'll go right to the top, and we'll see it again.

But if you haven't left your review, and you want a free shout-out, that's it. Just leave a review on Apple Podcasts. We're almost at 2,200 reviews. Man, you guys are awesome. Between the YouTube channel and the CVV Clips channel and the podcast, it's been an amazing year. So incredibly grateful for you guys. And so incredibly grateful to have SRS on today. He doesn't do a lot of interviews.

So really happy he could join us here. Let's get into it. Ladies and gentlemen, Sean, Ross, Sapp. Oh my gosh, this is happening. It is happening. I've always wondered, is Ross your middle name? Yes. Okay.

So you're like a 90s teen heartthrob where you have three names? Yeah, absolutely. And I hated my middle name when I was growing up. Like, I would, I almost like wouldn't acknowledge it. And then I thought professionally, it would be a little bit more memorable if I went with a three. Did Ross from Friends not make your name cool?

It absolutely encouraged me to not use it, yeah. Because when I was growing up, that show was huge. Of course. And there weren't a whole lot of other people around named Ross. And then by the time that was well out of there,

they're like, Sean, S-E-A-N, you mean like, Puff Daddy? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's the same way. You're like Jonathan Taylor. You're like Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Sarah Michelle Geller. Yes, exactly. My life is exactly like theirs as well. But at what point in your professional career did you decide I'm going to be the three-name guy?

I think like a couple years into it maybe. Like I can't remember a defining point or anything like that. But there must have been a defining point because you have bylines. Okay. I'll tell you. When I remember going, okay, I need to change that. I wrote for Bill Apter. And he put something like Sapomania as the editor.

And I said, that doesn't work for me, brother. I don't like that. So I figured maybe something else would work a little bit better to define that difference. And thankfully it did. Was Bill After's website? That's one wrestling. Was that the first one that you worked for? Yes, it was.

It was, like, I remember I pitched to that a website called Like Obsessed with Wrestling, which has a bunch of wrestling profiles and some articles. And Russell Zone, I pitched a column I was going to do. It was for January 4th, 2010, actually. The TNA Monday Night Show and the Brett Hart, Sean Michaels thing. I was getting so into MMA. I was falling out of love with wrestling a little bit. So I pitched a column that I would like wait until WrestleMania and see if I still loved it

and decide if I wanted to keep watching it, knowing full well, I was probably going to keep watching it. Like, it had been so long at that point. But Bill After, he said yes, and OWW said yes. And I was like, well, I want to write for Bill After. Like, I don't care.

That's what I wanted to do at that point. Well, they said yes to your pitch was, can I just write an article for you for free? A regular column. I think it was a weekly column at that point. And, yeah, it was absolutely for free. I didn't make a dime off of pro wrestling. writing for years, yeah.

Yeah, when was the first time you made money off of pro wrestling? Maybe some freelance stuff a little bit, like in 2012, 2013, but really... And you got like 20 bucks? If that, if that. But I would ghost write a lot of stuff, like for entertainment articles and stuff like that, anything to keep me afloat. But I was working like, gosh, 10 different wrestling MMA jobs for free at that point anyway. Like through 2009 to 2013, 2014, like, I wasn't making any money doing this.

I was surviving, like, on my student loans and stuff like that, pretty much. Just trying to— What were you doing to make money? Did you have a job? Trying to freelance. Like, any little thing I could get living within my means as best I could. Like, I was broke. I always say, like, I was checking my bank account before I ordered pizza.

Like, there was not a lot of money coming in. I taught kickboxing locally. That made me a little bit of money here and there. But at the start, I was doing it so I would get free gym memberships at any gym around here. So if you teach the kickboxing class, they're not going to go, oh, well, you got to pay your monthly fee too. And then they were like, okay, we're going to cut you in on the revenue as well. So that was, I would step that up from once a week to two or three times a week to increase revenue there. but it was a lot of living within my means and like bare essentials type of stuff back then.

But you'd basically made the decision that this was going to work. One way or another was just a matter of time until it finally did. Yeah, kind of like 2009 was when I started to train MMA and pro wrestling. And I just wanted to see. I was like, I want to see what this feels like, how I do. And by then I had decided like, I'm going to do something, but I was really like afraid of my own failure in a lot of regards, whether it was going to be wrestling, fighting, writing, anything.

And that prevented me from, like, writing for the first time or going on camera for the first time. Like, I was so afraid. I knew I could be good at it, but I was afraid, like, what if nobody cares? What if I'm not as good at it as I think that I'll be? And it kept me from it for a lot longer than it should. But I don't necessarily regret that because, quite frankly, anybody that sees me tweet knows that I'm not always the most mature person. And back then, I especially wasn't the most mature person. So I probably needed that time.

But by the time that, like, I think my first MMA class, I was like, I'm doing something in wrestling and MMA. That's what I want to do for the rest of my life. And I don't know if people realize that you still have like a massive passion for MMA, even though you are the air quotes wrestling guy. Yeah, like that. And that was one of the things. Like, I didn't miss covering an MMA event for. 10 years, but it's just, it is so different than pro wrestling. And the audience, like, I mean, I noticed people have seen me dunk on some Twitter trolls.

It's so much worse than MMA. It is so much, like, more angry there. Like, Shana Bazler speaks about it an awful lot. And that kind of pushed me away from it a little bit. But also, like, there are so many, like, people like Ariel Hawani. Like, you're not going to beat him with, like, interviews or scoops or anything like that. Yeah. And I so badly wanted to be like the best at literally anything for any defined period of time.

Like just one thing. I wouldn't have cared if I was like the best at mopping a floor somewhere, like as long as I could be for like 10 minutes, a year, 10 years, the best at something. And I was like, is there anything that I'm going to be better at than everybody else in MMA? And I looked at it and I was like, I don't think so. I was very realistic with my skill set there. But what's interesting is you live in the Midwest, you live in Kentucky, I've lived there. The Midwest. Right.

You're close-ish to Ohio, you know. And what's interesting is that sometimes when you achieve a little bit of success in a small town, it's like, oh, my gosh, I have made it. And then you don't need to aspire to anything else, but you still have that drive in you, which I love. Well, the benefit of that is I live, like, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, put out there where I live anymore because, you know, weirdos on the internet, but I live in a town of 200. And nobody here knows what I do. Only, only like a couple months ago, I went to the corner store. And there was a girl wearing a Sammy Gavara shirt.

And she looked at me and she goes, is he nice? And I was like, what are you talking about? And she pointed to her shirt. And I was like, oh, she means Sammy. Like, she knows what I do. Like, other than that, like, and maybe like one transaction at a local McDonald's where somebody looked at my card and they were like, hey, I like your show. Locally, that doesn't happen.

Like, my longtime friends know what I'm doing. But here, nobody knows who, nobody knows who I am. Like, I don't really, like, this, this area of Kentucky is not exactly my scene, so to speak. Like, I don't, I wouldn't fit in normally with people out here, but like, nobody out here knows who I am. So it's easy to stay grounded in that sense. Do you, you know, we live in a time now where you could literally live anywhere, but You're not that close to an international airport.

Have you thought about relocating? Yeah, I'm going to. I'm going to move to Lexington next year. I thought about maybe trying to get a property in Orlando, like maybe something like really, really small for visits and stuff like that, because there's so much wrestling in Florida. I stepped off of that a little bit when the pandemic ended because, like, one. Well, let's be honest, the pandemic has not ended.

Okay, yeah, okay. Yes, you're right. The pandemic has not ended. I should say when WWE and AEW started to tour again, I stepped off of that. That's more fun. So when the pandemic ended for WWE and AEW, I stepped off of that a little bit. But yeah, I'm going to be moving to Lexington next year. We're like we're in the process of starting the whole line process. Yeah. Congrats. What does your wife think about this? So she's a school teacher. She's a special education teacher. And right now she really, really loves where she works, really loves it. It would be like an hour or so drive from there. So my hope is that we can get into a house by early May, end of May.

That way she can make that drive for a couple weeks, see if that's what she wants to do. Otherwise, there's so many schools in the area we're moving. She'll have her opportunities, yeah. Yeah. Does wrestling feel like a job to you? Like, does watching wrestling feel sometimes like it's a burden? There have been a couple of times. Like, maybe when I was going through some depression or something where it did,

but there are a lot of times, like, I'll make an observation about a show, and somebody won't like it, and they'll go, well, why do you watch? And I say, well, it's my job. And they say, well, I wouldn't do a job that makes me miserable. And I'm like, wait a second. I would much rather watch and cover terrible. wrestling than do literally anything else. There have been times when I thought, okay, was this argument worth it? Was that worth it? Maybe I'll go work in an Amazon factory or something. And then I

think, what would I do when I get home? And what I would do is I'd probably watch wrestling. I'd probably watch wrestling interviews. That's probably what I'd do while I was playing video games or something like that. So I'm like, why would I? If I've got this very fortunate position that I've worked really, really hard for, and I'm even more fortunate that people care about it. Like, I couldn't imagine looking at it and being like, ugh, the travel sometimes, I don't know how wrestlers do it because I travel like a couple times a month, and it zaps me for like a week. Yeah, man, I love sleep so much. I like, that's one of my biggest, no, I'm not one of those, like, I'm taking naps all the time,

But I block out a solid seven to eight hours every night and it's undisturbed and I'm getting sleep. When I hear these stories, especially in WWE, where it's fly in and it's like, or fly in, it's like get a rental car, go to the venue. Then the next morning you've got to like do press and then take the rental car back to the airport and you're doing this on two hours sleep and sometimes driving three and four and five hours. I'm like, I don't know how you guys do it. I'm getting these notices from Hertz that are like, hey, we added 75 bucks. because you brought our car back damage. And I'm like, I drove it up the street one time. Like, what are you talking about?

And like, this is what these wrestlers have to deal with weekly, weekly. And I'm like every two months or once every couple weeks, two or three weeks, like, I'm going through this. And I'm just thinking, like, man, I'm very fortunate to have a job where I can work in the middle of nowhere, Kentucky. My bed is a room away. Like, I can be. here. And that's one of the reasons. Like, I realize how rare this position is and how fortunate I am to have this position. I did work really hard to get it, but still, a lot of people work really

hard and don't get it. So I don't ever really lose sight of that. Yeah, what was the thing that really stepped you up to that next level? You're working for free or freelancing, and then finally someone either sees the value in your work or they just take a chance on you. I saw the value in my work. I worked for four years for Bill After, and before that, like, there was a local gym. It was our catch wrestling gym. And that's where we learned a lot of our MMA, pro wrestling, all that stuff. But I would do their social media. I would do their YouTube.

I would promote open house events for them. And that would lead to MMA promoters being like, oh, come in and coordinate our fights, get people ready, tape their fists, do commentary. That was a big help too. Because then when I got paid for commentary, I was like, oh, my gosh. I might not be terrible at all of this stuff like I'm thinking. Still wasn't getting paid for wrestling or MMA writing. And then it was 2014. I think I got hired by fan-sighted to be like a shift writer.

And then I went on to, I think it was what culture. And within a couple of weeks of working at what culture, their guy, which was, it was a miserable experience there. But their guy hired me and he was like, hey, I want you to do this full time. you've really got a knack for newswriting. I was like, oh, thanks, awesome. That's what I need. And he told me the amount, and it was enough for me to live on comfortably.

And then when I realized that amount was actually in GbP, and I was making even more than that because of the conversion rate, I was like, oh, my God, I almost cried. I was so excited. And that's when I was like, okay, from this point on, this is what I'm doing, period. That's it. however, within a couple of weeks,

the vision didn't go quite like what he wanted, and it really, it really put me at a low point. But fortunately, after that, I was like, okay, I'm not going to give this up, just because I had it, and it didn't work out. Not at my fault, fortunately. I'm going to keep at it, and a couple weeks later, I was at Wrestling Inc.,

and that's one of the biggest wrestling websites in the world. So that helped an awful lot. But at 2014, I went from fan-sided, like rant sports, what culture, to wrestling ink. So that year, I had put a firm, like, if I'm not making full-time money on this by the end of the year, I'm going to, I have to, for me, my family and my eventual wife, like, I've got to do something that will make it happen. What exactly happened with what culture? Oh, boy. I don't know how much you want to get into it. Oh, I'll get into it.

I don't care. Now, I just want to establish none of the former video personalities were there when I was there. Like, people like Simon Miller got nothing but love for him. Great guy. Adam Blompeyade and Adam Pissidi never knew them until like last year. There's a fellow by the name of Matt Holmes. I don't even care to name him. He runs and owns a site, and he's the one that hired me and interacted with me directly.

And I was hired to be a newswriter. Now, if you remember what culture back then, that isn't really what they did. They did like top 10, et cetera, et cetera. Now, I had put myself through and put myself through with student loans, media journalism school. And there is no real like top 10 class that you take. Like, you have to really learn their format. Within the first day of me doing news writing for them full time, he's like, hey, you got to step back. You got to do some top 10 stuff.

I was like, hey, you're paying me. I'll do whatever. That wasn't to his liking, but they were trying to expand into the U.S. So they hired me and David Bixen's band. And he was my editor. And the idea was, well, a lot of these people in the UK, they're out of the office at like five local time there. So that's noon over here. As you know, wrestling news does not stop at noon on a weekday.

So the idea was, let's have some U.S.-based people to contribute there. the final conversation after like some weeks of criticism and it wasn't constructive criticism whatsoever was I don't think you should be newswriting anymore I don't think it's going to work out for you you're not very good at it and it was basically Matt Holmes encouraging me saying you need to get out of this completely you're not good at it and I was looking at the work and I was sending it to well respected people I was sending it to Bill After and Bill After is like the kindest guy and he was like that guy does not know what he's talking about keep doing what you're doing. And after like a couple weeks, this job, which taught me sign a contract, always sign a contract if you're going to commit full time exclusive.

He cut me and I didn't have that income. And I was thinking like I was the worst writer in the world. And fortunately, I had already made enough like high level contacts to send my work to and be like, be honest. Like, is this terrible? And they're like, we have no idea what he's talking about. So I don't know if maybe it just didn't fit his profile, but I think that he wanted to aggressively expand into the U.S. And when he didn't see immediate results from wrestling news writing, he was like, let's next the whole thing. Wow. So then it's on- It insulted me. And I'm pretty sure maybe Bix on the way out too, like straight up saying, like, get out of this. It's not going to work out for you. That to me was like, really you could

just say it's not working out. Well, it's worked out for you now. That's really. all the matters. What are we drinking here, by the way? Are we drinking coffee? I'm drinking water. It's just, I have realized that if I do this in the middle of a show, that's like the bodybuilder thing. Look at me, man. But if I just slug this down, it doesn't look as professional, right? Like, I'm just slugging this down. I actually, I use the fightful cup. I try to go the entire interview without drinking water because, really? Well, if you and I were sitting next to each other, I wouldn't be taking water breaks. It's different now that water is like within arm's reach here. Buddy, I'd be double fisting. I'd be like, like Steve Austin. All the time I'd be drinking water.

And I drink a ton of water during the rest of the day. And like as soon as we hit end on this, I will chug a bunch. But I'm just all about like, I want to be as absolutely present as possible, which is actually kind of- I got you in my ears, bro. I'm kind of bummed out that we aren't doing this in person. We can eventually, I'm sure. And we will. We will eventually. So it was onto Wrestling Inc. And then while you're at Wrestling Inc.,

Jimmy Van, who owns Fightful.com, basically went, I see something in you, you're the best, come work for me. So, kind of. And I would, I'll preface this by saying,

I'll never, ever ask anybody to work for free, ever. That just isn't me. If they offer, I might give them that opportunity. That's what I did with Bill After. So,

after that 2014, that was very integral for me positioning myself. I got it Wrestling Inc. And they put me on screen, which was very important to me, obviously, because that's where a lot of people became familiar with me. I got to expand into ROH,

New Japan news because somebody was already covering all the WWE stuff. So I had to find my niche. And finding my niche, I made more contacts because a lot of these wrestlers were like, thank you for covering what we're doing, because nobody else is. That goes a long way. But I remember very vividly.

I was like, I'm going to still write for Bill Apter for free. Out of respect for who he is, what he's done for me, giving me an opportunity. And I don't care if nobody ever read it. The fact that he let me be associated with him, he put me on screen a little bit too. That meant a lot to me. But I remember in January 2015, like, I didn't even run it by him that I was joining Wrestling Inc. Like, I just did it because even though I respect him, I didn't owe anybody that. I was making money.

and he hit me up with a message. He was like, oh, this is for wrestling ink. Are you not with us anymore? And I was like, no, I still am. I'll still contribute. And I just didn't hear back from him. And I barely heard back from him until we did an interview, like, maybe nine or ten months later for his book. Because I wanted to promote his book with him.

It meant a lot to me to help get that out there. But other than that, we really didn't talk much. And then when Jimmy Van hit me up, he said, well, I got a nice recommendation from Bill Afterer. And he was like, that's what made me reach out to you. Because he had reached out to a couple other very prominent names in wrestling news media. And I was not a prominent name. Like I had a couple thousand followers. But he reached out to Bill After and Bill After said, well, this wouldn't be right for me,

but it'd be right for Sean Ross Sapp. He's really good. So you never know what might come of that work. Yeah, it's that idea of just being nice to everybody. Wow. I can't say that. I'm nice to everybody that's nice to me. There you go.

The Rock always says this quote, and I love it. It's not his quote. Who'd he ever beat? Good question. Good question. The Rock always says it's not his quote, but he says it a lot. It's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice. And I think about that all the time.

Oh, I never forget how people treat me. If you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you, flat out. If you see me being rude to somebody on Twitter, trace the thread. They've been mean to me or somebody else. Like, I am a big believer in. do unto others. 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 Clemenberg. 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 U.S. Soccer Podcast, presented by Henco. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. There's a lot of people in wrestling media that are writing,

or especially now, they're on camera or they have podcasts. There's a lot of people who want to be doing what you're doing. But you, over the last two-ish years, three-ish years, have really the cream rises to the top, brother. And you've risen to the top. What was it? How? So as I muted myself while I coughed, that seasonal asthma, I always find it's important to be versatile.

People will always say, how do I get involved? Do everything. That's how. Create content and do everything. Anybody can start up a free Patreon account and post things. I would start taking photographs. I'd start doing video content, editing, learning the inside and out of audio, learn what, like, how to encode audio, how to level out audio, just basic stuff of it. And also learn how to news write,

do opinions, transcribe interviews. The more that you can do, the better. And there is no job at Fightful that exists that I haven't done at some point. So that was important. So then when I'm able to teach each person that comes in at Fightful, this, I can find out what they are great at. We hired a guy five years ago with no experience. Kyler James, who does our social media, and he's made it the fastest growing wrestling website Twitter account, period, because he had a knack for that. So I said, okay, this is what you're going to do.

You're going to do it full time. That's branched off into him doing a clips channel for us. Jeremy Lambert, I found that he's really good at digging up news, digging through news, finding unique quotes, finding unique headlines, not hurtful headlines, unique headlines that will make people smile or laugh

that wrestlers will take notice of and go, oh, this is funny. They're not taking this too seriously all the time. So he zeroed in on that and expanded from there. So what that did,

that allowed me to focus more on podcast, interviews, wrestling news, because those are what I'm good at. Those are the three things, even though I can do all these other things,

getting information, determining whether it's true or false, podcasting interviews are the three things that I should focus on. Now, it is like when you've crafted all this, it is hard to step back and delegate a lot of that. But when I have delegated to people who are just better than me at these things, the results speak for themselves. Like, it works out so well.

And as far as, like, expanding the news stuff, just don't lie. Just don't make stuff up. don't be intentionally hurtful. Like, I don't tweet as much like negative stuff about wrestling shows anymore because it gets taken out of context so much. I'll leave that for my shows. As far, go ahead, sorry. Well, I was just going to say, I don't know if everybody realizes that you're not just a podcast or a YouTuber or a writer.

You're the managing editor of Fightful. So you're the boss of people who are working for Fightful and writing about wrestling. And I've worked myself into an ownership spot now, too, which is. Yeah, congrats. That's amazing. Thank you. That was, I didn't even know necessarily if that's something I wanted because I've been very lucky that we have somebody in Jimmy Van that was like, do things your way because I like your vision. And our vision was, it could be, it has to be different, but familiar. You're still writing wrestling news. You're still talking about wrestling, but just adjusted a little bit and that formula will work. And the news aspect of it,

like, I didn't want to do a paywall. I was so vehemently against a paywall. But the paywall has expanded our staff to over 30 people from like six, quite frankly. And we've got people in every company that subscribe to it, executives subscribed to it. It's been objectively a good thing for us. And it helps an awful lot when like wrestlers know and executives know, like, we're just not lying. Like we, there's no long term benefit in making stuff up or talking. or talking about something that we don't know about, I know a lot of these wrestlers and people get upset or not upset.

Maybe like, why is he asking this? Isn't this common sense? No, it's not. You can't assume. You can never assume. You can never make stuff up because you might assume wrong. And if you make something up, somebody will find out. It always happens.

Somebody will find out. It's easier to debunk fake news than ever before. And it's such a small community. Everybody knows everybody. And if you don't know someone directly, you definitely have one degree of separation between you and that person. Yeah. And I remember there were two or three wrestlers that contacted me within 10 minutes of each other, like maybe two or three years ago. And they said, hey, we're not really supposed to do this, but we just wanted to let you know.

We're making more of a concentrated effort in debunking fake stuff because there was one or two people specifically that were getting a little too comfortable doing that. and they wanted to let it be known, we're squashing this. So they were like, just, you know, make sure you tie all your shoe strings, so to speak, because I had good relationships with a lot of those people. They will do that. They will, like, I had people reach out over a lot of the Saudi Arabia stuff and be like, this is true, this isn't true, this is true, this isn't true about some other reports. Like, they care about the accuracy of news by and large.

So just don't make sense. stuff up and don't assume. No matter how, duh, it is, you've got to ask. So with all of that said, does it just rub you the wrong way when you get lumped in as a dirt sheet? As a dirt sheet, no, I think that term is funny. Just like I think, like, I've never seriously called somebody a mark. Like, I'll do it as, like, a funny thing. Like, if somebody, like, to me, that's, like, the most ridiculous thing, because if a wrestler's not calling somebody that. It's like, why are you even saying it's such a dumb, goofy thing? So the dirt sheet thing doesn't bother me at, like, at all. There are people that really feel like it's an insult. And I'm just

like, eh, I'm all right. What was the first story that you, first big story that you broke when you were kind of breaking your way out of like just being another writer? Well, I can tell you the first story I ever, ever broke was that Brock Lesnar was going to take a curb stop at the end of Night of Champions, I was there and I happened to know somebody that was in the ring teaching Brock a lesson how to take a curb stop. It wasn't Seth Rollins. But there were a bunch of people and they fed me the info. I confirmed it.

Sent it to Raj, who was the owner of Wrestling Inc. And ran that. But I think the first story, like outside of like an interview that I broke that got attention was that Ronda Rousey was training to be a pro wrestler about six. months before she debuted at the Royal Rumble. And I knew that she was going to be at WrestleMania the day that she did the thing with the Rock. But then

when this happened, I was getting pictures sent to me of her training and her footage. And I was like, oh my God, she's really good already. And I was able to confirm that. And that was like the first one that I broke and I was very fortunate that that got

picked up by a lot of mainstream outlets too, which doesn't always happen with pro wrestling. But that was the first one that I remember being like, oh, I might be able to do this and be really, really great at breaking news, too. But there's a difference between breaking a story and getting credit for breaking that story, which, as you know, doesn't always happen. I'm very fortunate now that I almost never have that experience. And I make sure that whoever does do that, if it's not me, they get that credit.

That is so important. Because when I broke in, people were saying, you're not Mike Johnson. you're not Dave Meltzer, you're not Wade Keller, so you're not real. You don't have any of that. And I don't fault either of those three for that because they all three worked really, really hard to get where they were. And then a little bit later, it was, you're not Ryan Satin, and he was breaking news as well. But ultimately what you got to do is just keep chipping away at that track record. Keep chipping away at that track record. I'm sure I had a chip on my shoulder and was very obnoxious about it at times. But the longer I've went, I was like, you know what?

Just keep on putting out, putting out accurate information, and eventually people won't be able to deny you. And is that how you build this trust? Like, to get a text from somebody who is in the arena, not somebody who heard something from somebody who might have possibly been there, to be, like, to get it straight from the source, how do you build that? Oh, and, okay, so the first, there were, there were a couple people initially that I won't name because people will be like, oh, they're his sources. If somebody's become like a friend to me, I generally don't ask them information like that because that puts him in a weird spot. But there were a couple people very early on in wrestling who treated me like a normal human being and I really appreciated. And they would tell other people he's a good guy. He's okay. He's trustworthy. He's not out to like screw up anybody's

career. He wants to report the news. That helps an awful lot, word of mouth. And then now fortunately, I'm at the point where Fightful is like five and a half years in. So there are people who were teenagers who are now earlier, like early in their career, they're 23, 24. They were reading Fightful and watching Fightful podcasts four or five years ago. And they didn't grow up in the copy paste of Meltzer era. They grew up in the Fightful is reporting accurate news and pro wrestling sheet is reporting accurate news.

And there are a lot of people being held accountable. John Pollock reporting accurate news era of this as opposed to the everybody copies and Pace era. I think there are a lot of people that wanted wrestling news to change within wrestling and the fact that we're kind of reporting accurate stuff spoke for itself and that gets a lot of people more comfortable. And you know who doesn't get enough credit for this is TMZ. TMZ five to seven years ago was breaking a ton of huge wrestling news. Yeah. That's what Ryan, basically Ryan split off and did pro wrestling sheet. And there were a lot of people. I remember when he joined Fox, they're like, oh, doesn't this upset you? And I'm like, no, he's doing exactly what he wants to do. Like, if he wants to leave pro wrestling sheet and start up a wrestling website just about donuts, do it. If it makes them happy, do it. Like, I don't have a narrow-minded view of media. I don't like to wallet or pocket watch other people and how they make their money.

money, but Ryan was a really, really big part of helping a lot of the wrestling news get mainstream. Whether, whether, you know, people want to admit that or not, he was. And then he did pro wrestling sheet. And to me, that was a big help because people saw that there is somebody else that is breaking accurate wrestling news besides the ones that have been around for 10, 15, 30 years. I just always wonder, what's in it for the sources? You know, if I give you a scoop, what's in it? send it from me. So that's what you have to decipher. You have to decipher the agenda of these people.

Now, there are some people that just, I don't know, it makes them happy maybe. There are some people that I ask and they, they just like, I'll tell them who gives, who gives a damn. There are some that I feel like the companies went out there. Like, needless to say, CM Punk News getting out there wasn't necessarily the worst thing for AEW. And then after that, I had heard, hey, Goldberg's coming back. And I hit up somebody within WWE and usually I'll get like a runaround. And they're like, yeah, he sure is. And I was like, oh, it's very clear. They don't care if that's out there.

They want that. So people might tune in on Monday. Again, you have to determine if the source has an agenda. And if they have an agenda, you have to take that into consideration before you consider running things. There's a lot of stuff I haven't ran because I'm like, I got like, I'll get one promoter saying this person's problem. then I'll see them sign elsewhere. And I'm like, you said they were problematic because they didn't sign with you. They signed elsewhere.

That's what it was and didn't run that. And you always have to be aware of that. I'm talking to the best liars in the world on a daily basis. And that's not an insult. But they make you think they're hurt. They make you think that they're not hurt when they are hurt. They make you think they care about stuff they don't care about and vice versa. Like, and they're doing it in front of 10,000 people.

Like, they're really good at lying. So you have to be good at deciphering whether or not they're lying to you. Would you say the punk story is the biggest one you've ever broken? Yeah, without a doubt. Without a doubt. And you sat on it for a little while. You sat on it for a few days before you broke it. Oh, boy.

A few days. It was like a couple weeks. Oh, wow. I didn't realize that. It's so funny. I've got connections in the sports agent world. And there's one guy. I've told this story before, but there's a few details I've left out.

There's one guy that's well connected in Chicago. And he will always bust my balls and be like, we'll get off the phone talking about sports stuff. And he'll be like, hey, do you hear, Hulk Hogan's coming back and winning the title? And then he'll, like, hang up. And I'm like, very funny. And then one time he did something like that,

he's like, hey, do you hear Undertaker's going to win the Cruiserweight title? And I was like, very funny. And then he said, yeah, but you really need to check on CM Punk going to AEW. And I was like, ha, ha, ha, cute, very funny, man. And then, like, two days later, I talked to another connection within that industry. And they said, hey, have you heard anything about this? And I said, yes, I have heard the Undertakers

winning the Cruiserweight title. But no, I was like, okay, this person doesn't know this person, but they know this. What's going on here? So I started to poke around. And then I talked to somebody who had done some work with him in the past.

And they said, yeah, it's happening. And then I was in Nashville for Slamavisory. and I had a very secret meeting with somebody and they laid out a lot of stuff for me right there on the spot and it was I think maybe the day before Slamoviracy or the day of Slamoviracy. Now, I didn't know Tony Kahn was in Nashville

and I was going to ask him and I spoke to I spoke to somebody close with AEW and they're like, they said, this might get you blackballed. I was like, Really? Really? And quite honestly, if I knew the news was going to be true, I was going to report it anyway. Like, I don't give a damn if I'm blackballed. I can do my job without going to a scrum. And they were like, yeah, I think I think it might. And I was like, well, I'm going to reach out to Tony anyway because I haven't heard that he signed. I had not heard that CM Punk signed. I heard that he was in talks and very close to a deal and the details were hammered out. And the person was like, well, don't ask him today because it's his dad's birthday.

And that would go wrong. Well, then I find out he was in the same place I was. He was in Nashville. I was like, I would have just hit him up and asked him then. But I was very specific in what I asked AW officials. I said, have you been in talks with? Because I was very aware that if I phrased it the wrong way, they could deny it. And they had before.

I came to find out another wrestling writer had asked Tony Con heard you signed CM Punk, is that true? And Tony said, no, it's not because they hadn't signed CM Punk. So I said, I've heard that there are talks. I've got it from like four sources now. And they were pretty forthright. They said, we've had talks. I can't say that these details that you provided me are the truth. And I was like, you know, I was told that I might get blackballed for this.

and I immediately thought of Ariel Hawani breaking the Brock Lesnar news at UFC. I was just going to bring that up. And it was specified to me. We don't do business that way, despite the fact that we like UFC and Dana White. We don't do business that way. And I had decided to that point. I'm going to report it Wednesday at noon. It's before Dynamite.

People are going to be in the AEW mood anyway. It's going to be at noon. And at like 1150 in the morning, I'm getting messages from like, Alex McCarthy and other wrestling writers. And they're like, you hear about punk? And I was like, publish! Publish! And I ran it at like 11.52 because I was not going to risk getting scooped.

But the person who told me, like, oh, I think you might get blackballed. I guess they had had some further conversations. And that person was like, report this. You will regret it for the rest of your career if you don't. And that meant a lot to me because that person did not have anything to gain from this. probably had a lot to lose from it. And they were right. I would have regretted it for the rest of my career,

and it changed my career. I remember when you were trying to get to 69,000 followers, which is obviously very funny. What a great number. Yes, of course. You were trying to get to 69,000 followers. I told you, I wish I was still there, based on some of my interactions now.

And then, like, two months later, you had almost doubled that. Was it because of you breaking the punk news and then the Daniel Brinson, Brian Daniel, whatever? I do that all the time. So I broke, I want to give Cassidy Haynes. Yeah.

Wow. Geez. I want to give Cassidy Haynes credit. He broke the news of Danielson signing with AEW, but I broke the news of him leaving WWE. Unfortunately, I think it has a lot to do with the WWE releases because I break that news. We don't put that behind a paywall. Like if somebody's getting there, they're getting fired, that's going on my Twitter and

on the website, not behind the paywall. If I get supplemental details beyond that, then I'll put. it behind the paywall. But unfortunately, it's the fact that I get these releases before other people. I think that because it coincides with that. And I don't like that. It makes me feel a little bit scummy and dirty. But I mean, I am reporting the news there, but I think that has a lot to do with it. And you put out this tweet recently where you were basically like, hey, I realized I'm going through some depression right now. And if I've been on edge or I've said something that wasn't very nice to you like, I'm sorry. Where did you collect the self-awareness to, number one, realize you were going

through this, and number two, to put it out there? Well, first off, I want to say everybody that I've been mean to absolutely deserves it and they're terrible people. I just want to say. What a heel. A lot of people would say that I'm not self-aware, and a lot of times I'm not. And, you know, not everybody is. But I went through some depression for the first time last year, and I think a lot of people did during the pandemic. And I was fortunate enough to recognize it. And early on, I told my wife, I was like, I'm depressed. I need to do some things.

So I switched where I do my business out of a dark drab room into a brighter, more vibrant room. I refamiliarized myself with some things that made me happy, and that helped out a lot. So now when I do have these ballots with depression, I've got ways that can help pull me out of it a little bit more. And I'm very fortunate to have a good support system. And yeah, I mean, sometimes tone doesn't necessarily reflect through social media.

And again, as I'll say, I'm only mean to people who are mean to me. But sometimes, you know, unintended responses can happen and things are lost on Twitter. But like I, it's like sometimes when you like the size get a little bit of, bit deeper when you're having a break throughout a day or you're like, am I looking forward to this? Am I looking forward to that? Am I devoting the right amount of attention to the people that care about me as opposed to the people who you will never convince otherwise? And Taylor Hendricks gave me some really nice advice about that.

Wale gave me some really nice advice about that. They were both like, don't pay attention to them. You're not going to change their minds. There's nothing more that you can say that will get them to feel a certain way. And that coming from people that have been under the microscope an awful lot, that helps a lot. And I had dozens of people reach out to me and give like very, very nice words. I had a lot of wrestlers that reached out to me about that. And again, I don't want to name names because they'll be accused of being sources.

but there was a lot of positivity out of that, and I really appreciated it. I realized recently that you're not going to change people's minds on Twitter. People respond to my tweets with something that's just blatantly incorrect. Yeah. And there was a version of me, six months a year, 18 months ago, that would be like, well, actually, and then it'd spell it out for them. I would waste my time and waste my energy.

And now I just kind of go, yeah, no, they're wrong, and it's okay that they're wrong, and I don't need to point that out. And that's the point I'm trying to get to. Like, I will not argue with somebody over their wrestling opinion. I love that some people care about my wrestling opinion, but it means as much as everybody else's. My wrestling opinion means as much as the guy up the road that doesn't watch wrestling, because it's an opinion. As long as they don't doubt my wrestling news credibility, okay, and people are still going to do that,

despite a positive track record. And if they do, after all this time, that's okay. there are other wrestling media to ingest, and that's where media literacy is employed, and we're doing good, then they can do good. Block people on Twitter if it improves your Twitter experience. You don't have to have a reason for it, really.

Like, just whatever makes you happier and doesn't hurt somebody else, that's what I'm okay with. You mentioned AEW and Tony Kahn with that whole CM Punk story. They've had a lot of transparency through this, And I remember when they did their first media scrum at Double or Nothing in 2019 in Las Vegas, I was like, oh, my God, like, we're going to have access to this to ask actual questions.

I didn't know before this happened. Like, are we asking the character questions about the match that night? Are we asking the person who plays that character about the match? But either way, I was like, I can't believe we're going to have access to ask these questions. Do you think WWE will ever get to a point where that's a possibility? Well, Triple H did. Triple H kind of set that trend. Like, Triple H did those media calls before and after NXC takeovers.

And I loved those. I missed them. I wish he still did them. So I think he kind of set the trend there. But I think Tony Khan coming from the sports background was going to do that anyway. And I know that there were a lot of people that are like, oh, well, why does anybody ask K-Fab questions? We do cover wrestling in K-Fabe as well. Just, guys, no.

So it's about getting that good headline. but I think Triple H, if he gains more control, that will happen. W.W.E did do them briefly for international media years ago, but they kind of stopped doing it because now if they give something to one outlet, it'll get picked up by all the other outlets. So I don't think they'll lean as much into that. Do you think K-Fabe is completely dead? No. No. M.J.F., Matt Hardy, Silas Young. there are some really good examples of, like, you and I were talking off the air about doing

K-Fabe interviews. Yeah. Those are three people, Silas Young, the last real man of Ring of Honor, Matt Hardy and whatever character he's in, MJF, assuming that is a character, I wouldn't know. He's a jerk all the time. He's the worst. Yeah. Like, there are some that I look at and I'm like, okay, I'm going to get a good headline

out of you, whether it's in character or not. And there are some that step out of it, some that don't. Silas does. Matt does, MJF, I assume he never does. But I don't think it's dead completely. And you play off of realism behind the scenes these days and make it real. These people are interesting enough to where you can add that to K-Fabe and make it all K-Fabe as well. I think it works, like you said, with some of those examples. It works when it works. And when it doesn't work, like when I was first starting to do wrestling interviews,

and we would have them live on the local news, like live on TV, and sometimes they were playing a character. For someone who's not a wrestling fan, they're just like, that was strange. Like, I don't understand that. But I can think of an example in, like, mainstream, like, pop culture. When Will Ferrell does interviews as Ron Burgundy,

it's magic. Yes. It's amazing. I don't know if we'd want to see that with all of Will Ferrell's characters. Like, if Will Ferrell was playing his character from Get Hard during an interview, you just be like, yeah, what is that? Just go back to being Will Ferrell.

We were talking off the air how different our Switchblade J. White interviews were. You are more mainstream than Fightful is. You're like, you've got the wrestling credibility and the mainstream credibility. Fightful is wrestling as a niche. And then there are places like NBC CBS that are completely mainstream. In mine, he did completely K-Fabe. And yours, there would be a little bit of, of a mix if there's a wrestling question.

In theirs, it was completely out of character. So, like, there are those people that blur the lines as well. Yeah, he was talking a lot about, like, how he doesn't think fans should know. He doesn't think that the curtain should be peeled back. Like, don't ask him if he's going through the forbidden door to impact or to AEW, because if and when he does one day, he wants you to be genuinely surprised. And I was. Like, oh, it's so funny because he did show up at Slashire.

Amiversary. And I was so busy getting the punk news that I didn't even bother to dig about the Switchblade J. White news that happened the next day where he just walked out. Like on their run sheet, there was a big blank space where he was going to come out. I didn't even, you know, I was able to get that information. Then I didn't even think, like, oh, you know, I need to ask about this blank space, this what's happening here thing. So, you know what?

I completely respect people that do that, too. there is no wrestler, there is no staffer, there is no exec, there is nobody that owes me information. I owe my audience information and I got to try to get that for them. But there are people that I know that I like, they understand that I don't fault them. They can leave me on red over something like that and then come to me about something completely different a couple days later. They can avoid a question and it's going to be okay. They knew I'm doing my job and that I'm not going to hold that again. them because they don't owe me that information. I owe that info to fightful select subscribers.

Does it bother you that, you know, you're going to make some people upset with your reporting? Like, you're going to make some, I don't know, enemy seems like a very strong word, but you're going to have some people that are upset with you because of this. So, as I pointed out earlier, I live in a town of 200. This has put it in perspective for me. Because, again, and it's something I have to expand more in my social media and personally, If somebody in this town doesn't like me, I had to have done something terrible. Like, I had to have done something really wrong. Like, my dog got loose and killed a cow or something.

And somebody's livid because that's their livelihood. And then all their neighbors don't like, which has never happened, by the way. It's just an example. Not yet, though. Well, it's happened to other people in my town, but not me. But in wrestling, I can just report news not even negative about them in general. It can be a positive story. and somebody gets mad or their fans get mad.

And, like, to put that in perspective when I'm like, oh, my gosh, like, there are dozens of people, no matter what I type or tweet or post, they're going to be mad. Like, that is not the easiest to come to grips with when you're from such a small area. Yeah, I'll go on, like, to go to send a – I tried to go send a tweet to someone the other day and realized they'd blocked me. And I went – Oh, no. Well, I'm sorry, I blocked you.

And this was a restaurant. It's the rock. It's the rock. Man, that would break my heart. It was a pretty well-known restaurant. I'm like, I've never even met you. What could I have, and I like to think of a pretty positive person. Well, I can't, I legitimately, like, I can understand why people block me, because sometimes

I'm abrasive. You're never abrasive. You're never negative. I tried. And I, I'm trying very hard to maintain arms length distance away from that stuff, because I think when you get too close, it's really hard to not take stuff personally. Yeah, it is. And that's something I lost sight of for a very long time.

To me, I cannot fathom making a personal attack about somebody over wrestling. It does not, like maybe I did it years ago. Can't imagine it now. Like after being around so much, it's just weird for me to even think. And Bill Aptor said, if they don't know you personally, don't take it personal. I was like, you know what? And that's something that hit my mind recently when I was telling the story. of him recommending me for Fightful. And it's something that I hope to employ in the future.

Yeah, that's such a big thing. If people can just remember one of my favorite books of all time is the Four Agreements. And one of the Four Agreements is never take anything personally. And it's so true. Like more often than not, someone's reaction to something is a reflection of what they're going through in their life and has zero to do with you. Oh, I can tell you personally, that was me for a long time. I was, I was, I was, okay, for example, Justin Labar used to do a show for a wrestle's own called

Cher Shot Reality. I wouldn't say terrible to him on social media, but I would like pick at him and pick at him and pick at him. And this was before I ever really wrote or did much of anything. I did some one wrestling stuff.

And he reached out to me and he was like, hey man, I respect your work. I know you're new here, but why do you feel this way? And that changed a lot of things for me. I was like, well, I think I'm probably jealous. I think I'm probably jealous and insecure about my position, about my future and stuff like that. And him just reaching out like that and talking to me like a human instead of how I was

talking to him at that young age and at that point of my life, that meant a lot and that put things in perspective. And that's why I was like, you know what? I'm not going to be mean to somebody unless they're mean to me first. I'm going to treat them like they treat me. And that was an interaction that meant a lot to me because he could have just could have just been crap. to me. I want to ask you, not about your favorite interview, because I think that that's too easy and too generic of a question. I'm asking you that later.

What's your favorite interview moment? There's a few. I always like the run-ins. Like, quite frankly, I don't get it. For all the AEW-Shill accusations, they don't give me interviews. I don't get interviews from them. It can be an uphill battle a lot. I've had a couple this year.

but MJF popping up on my interviews, as miserable as that can be, draws attention. It really draws attention. And that's pretty cool. Like him popping up in the middle of a Thunder Rosa interview, an Eric Bischoff interview. I'm like, okay, that's good traffic.

I got slapped by the inspiration recently because I called Gail Kim Old. They struck me. They're wonderful. They're so good. I like that. So it's Gail Kim. She's magical.

I love Gail Kim. It's a rib because Gail Kim was one of my inspirations to wrestle in the ring. Eat Defeat was my first finishing move I ever used in a wrestling match. And it was because of Gail Kim. So we rib each other on Twitter, but I think the world of her. But those were a couple of them. Yeah. I'll tell you what, one of my favorite moments was before I went on the air.

I did an interview with Brett Hart, and it was like I grew up a huge Brett Hart fan. and it was for an animated show in Canada called Corner Gas and the PR people, they were great to me. I love him, but they had said, no wrestling questions, only go 15 minutes. Beforehand, I guess Brett researches everybody he talks to because beforehand he said, we go as long as you want and you can ask anything you want.

And I knew what that was in response to because he got tagged in the email. And I was like, like my heart melted a little bit. So was the PR person not on that? call? No. Oh, well, that changes everything. Yes, it does. And I don't know if everybody knows this, but sometimes when you do interviews with some people, there's a PR person listening in just to make sure everything stays the course. And they're typing and messing up your shots sometimes. Like, they'll type and like the message will pop up on your little Zoom gimmick. And I'm like,

no. But yeah. And again, the PR people were wonderful because they set me up with Lance Storm and Brett Hart and tried to with Trish as well. But it meant a lot that he was just willing to be like, yes, I will do this for you because that was a big moment for me and a big interview for me. Yeah. What would you say is the best advice for someone who wants to be in the position that you're in? Produce content all the time, do a lot of it and don't lie. Do not lie. Don't lie to your staff. Don't lie to people. Don't take it too seriously. I mean, mean, it's pro wrestling. It's not all going to be like hard hitting journalism. We get a lot of people that are like, why are you reporting this story? And I'm like, it ain't all going to be

CM Punk coming back to AEW. Sometimes I'll just find out information that I find interesting and I relay it to the world because I like learning about wrestling. If you find it interesting, other people are going to find it interesting to some degree. So be familiar with everything, but truly find what you're passionate about and what your wheelhouse is and zero in on that when you can. But have a familiarity with everything. There's just a few more questions before we wrap.

Sure. This one up, and then we're going to turn the tables here, how the turn tables have turned. We are going to turn the tables, and then Sean Ross Sapp, SRS is going to interview me. Sure, I am. So this is very exciting. What a great chunk of a few hours here in our day.

I know. As we wrap up 2021, And now you are a part owner of Fightful. You've got some skin in the game for sure. I do. It's amazing, man. Congrats. And what are the goals as we had to invest any money either?

But you had to invest a lot of time. A lot of time. A lot of time. What are the goals as we heading to 2022? So I never thought that being the most visited wrestling website was realistic. Now it's not going to be in 2022, but down the line, I want to be the most. Who's number one? probably wrestling ink

and probably wrestling where are you guys at like what do how many views a day or daily visitors are we're probably at three four million they're probably at 20 million but a day or a month a month a month but they are like we have like doubled recently

and our fight we're the most subscribed wrestling product on in Patreon history like that was important you've kind of like you've gone like it was Dave Meltzer for people were subscribing to his news no it was ad free shows because Dave Meltzer isn't on Patreon. So I don't like I'm sure more people subscribe to Wrestling Observer than than Fightful. But that's not on the Patreon platform. Eventually we will get off of that platform. That is a goal. But we will take a financial hit because of you can't port everybody over. I want to get to 100,000 on YouTube. We, because I didn't know how YouTube worked for a long time, we hurt ourselves a lot by producing too many videos, by producing videos that weren't long enough by doing everything. We put our interviews, our podcast.

podcasts, our news posts, all on one channel. If I could do it over again, I would probably split those up and I think our numbers would be higher. But I want that. It's shifted a lot. Like it shifted so much. I used, you know, two-ish years ago, I could know if I put an interview out, it would get at least this many views. Yes. I think that YouTube now, and I'm not an expert here, I think they're now favoring the Mr. B style of content that's 10 to 15-ish to 20 minutes that leads to another one of their videos that leads to another to another to another. Rather than watching one of my hour-long videos that's just one, they're them sitting in one spot for one time.

So I want to get that silver play button. Who knows if it'll happen. But as you know, once you get more subscribers on YouTube, it really starts to just accelerate. So I would like to get to that. We've got so many different channels now, like between clips and like one of our shows became so popular. We gave it its own channel.

The distraction. I want to see it do well. But my main goals are hit 100,000 on YouTube next year and try to get back down to 69,000 followers on Twitter. Well, I'll end this interview with the same question I ask everybody. And this has been wonderful, by the way. Thank you. It's good to just chat with you. And also good to hit record while in chat.

A lot of people don't know that, but we did a project with Chris, Fightful Feast, that Jimmy was insistent on. And I was like, I don't know. I mean, like, Chris would be great to do anything. But like, why are we eating all this food while we're talking? I mean, that was great. We ordered a whole bunch of room service in Las Vegas. We ate like this much of it, too. I'm eating pizza while trying to answer questions.

I know. It was amazing. But this has been great. And like, what's funny is we talk a lot. We've actually only seen each other in person like three times, I think. Vegas. Winston-Salem, what was the other time? Probably tied to AEW.

Yeah. We lived near each other for a good period of time and didn't see each other at all. Yeah. Well, a lot of that was at the very start of the pandemic when we weren't sure about anything. What was cool about when AEW started doing the press scrums was it brought together a lot of members of the wrestling media that you had never met in person before. and say what you want about Zoom interviews at Riverside or Streamyard or whatever platform you use.

It's great. Like, it's awesome. Me and you are in two different parts of the country, two different time zones. We're talking in real time. It's not the same. Oh, I'm on Hollywood Boulevard right now. You are?

Yeah. Oh, I'll jump in my Tesla, grab some green juice and come on down there. You'll drive six. That was the most Hollywood thing I could possibly think of. You'll drive six hours across town. But there's nothing beats being able to hug

someone feel their energy, like as great as this is, and I'm so glad that if the pandemic were to happen in any time in history that is happening now when we can connect in some sort of way, but, man, nothing beats being able to be in person to somebody. It doesn't. It doesn't. But I have found my interviews are better when I've got my notes in front of me, and I hate pulling up notes in front of people. I'm just so ADHD that I blank so much in person.

I can have banter with people in person. like just BS with people. And that makes for fun interview moments. I'm more partial, like for quality and news for Zoom. But that's what I like about your interviews. Like in person, you get such, like, you get good news no matter what. But in person, you're able to pull some like really great stories and emotion out of people. You're able to really make them cry, Chris.

Yeah, I can't believe that's happened a few times recently. Jeez. So anyway, back to my big lead-up here of the final question. What are three things in your life that you're grateful for? My family and my wife, for sure. Again, I don't put her out there on social media a lot because people are weird, but a lot of support in a period where a lot of people would not have supported me that said, keep doing exactly what you're doing,

because I know you can be the best at it. Our following at Fightful, I am so thankful for because we came out of the middle of nowhere, and now we're getting a wealth of support. If you subscribe to Fightful Select, I can't tell you how important that is that you are investing in what we do. And quite honestly, I know he'll never let me hear the end of it,

but Jimmy Van, the guy who founded Fightful because he financed Fightful and he said, whatever you want to do, let's go for it. He had a lot of his own ideas along the way,

but if I wanted to hop off this right now and me and you do a show about the Toronto Raptors NBA season on the main fightful feed he'd go, what are you all doing? And then I'd tell him and go, whatever, okay, if you think it'll attract, if you think it'll do this,

sure. Like he's trusted the vision. He has, we lost money for a very, very long time and he could have pulled the plug. I got a lot of very, very nice offers from a lot of really great places that I would have enjoyed working at.

And he said, stick with us. I promise it'll be worth it. And it always was. I've always had to think about that and go, I know I'm happy here, will I be happy at those other places? And I've always stuck with that. I've remained loyal to that. And he's remained loyal to me

and the people that are also loyal to me, he's loyal to. So I'm very thankful for that, that I got a very once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do this. Well, let's help Sean and Fightful get to 100,000 subscribers. Help them get that silver play button in 2022.

So I'll link that down below. I'm sure a lot of people that are watching us right now are subscribed. But if you're not, subscribe to Fife. Also subscribe to my Clips channel, CVV Clips, because I'm trying to get that to 100,000 subscribers. It's good. I mean, I like the clips. That's such an easy thing.

Like, then people find your full interview. And also clips, when clips are on your home screen of YouTube, and maybe you don't know about Fifell or maybe you don't even know how to pronounce Chris Van Vlyette. you might look at that two, three-minute clip and go, oh, that's interesting. And you start to go down the rabbit hole. Yeah. And that's what we're in the business of, rabbit holes. That's, we're in the rabbit hole business. We're in the rabbit hole business. Sean, thank you so much. And where can people find you? And more importantly, the interview that you did with me. Oh, well, they can find that at fightful.com. We've got all of our podcasts and interviews at fightful pods.com. You can find a giant list of them. We also have YouTube.com slash fightful.

There you'll find links to the distractions YouTube channel, our clips channel, and you can subscribe to Fightful Select at Fightful Select.com. If you're having trouble finding it, just type in Fightful Select on Patreon. Quite frankly, I think we are the most accurate wrestling news source that has ever existed. Every single day we have at least one piece of exclusive news. Again, it ain't always going to be CM Punk returning to wrestling. But every day we've got at least one piece of exclusive wrestling news. I don't know anywhere else that has ever done that.

We also have at least one show on that service a day, and we have cultivated a really good environment there. We do not let people poison the well. If they are bad people, we actively discourage them from joining our service because we want a very nice, positive wrestling experience for people that they feel comfortable with. This has been a nice positive experience. Thank you so much, man. I'm about to just read my mentions.

I'm going to go through every YouTube comment, positive or negative here, and just bury the person. That's what you do. Barry. That's how you build an audience. Right there. Right there.

Subjective negativity. That's what you do. There you go, my friends. Thank you so much for joining us on this one. CBV and SRS. And yes, Sean interviewed me for Fightful. So if you have some time this week, Check it out either on Fightful pods, wherever you're listening to your podcasts right now,

or on the Fightful YouTube channel. And Sean doesn't do a lot of interviews. So super grateful that he agreed to do this. Take a screenshot. Let us know what you think of this. Tag both of us. He's at Sean Ross Sapp. I'm at Chris Van Fleet.

And I'll leave you with this quote that I saw on Instagram this week and absolutely loved. Hopefully it can light a little fire under you. You only have two options. Make progress or make excuses. That's good. That is good. Enjoy your holidays, my friends. Hope you're able to spend it with some loved ones.

Be great. Be grateful. And we will see you on the next one for some more insight. Jim Rome takes on sports. Why? Because I have a job to do. With rapid fire takes. So I don't want to hear from you lava pigs on this.

notion today. No idea what you're talking about. You're complaining more than you like to breathe air. It's like you get up in the morning only to complain and cry and moan on social media about things that you don't even understand. He's the spitfire of sports smack. Take advantage of but get up in here. The Jim Rome Show podcast. What should be? Follow and listen on your favorite platform. You've been warned.