Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Stu Bennett on Bad News Barrett, NWA's future, his movie career, a wrestling return, Nexus reunion

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

Stu Bennett (Wade Barrett) talks to Chris Van Vliet from his home in Los Angeles, CA. He talks about his new movie "I am Vengeance: Retaliation" which is available now on Video on Demand, he discusses his color commentator role with NWA and the future of the company due to the pandemic, being invited to be part of a Nexus reunion at WrestleMania 36, what it would take for him to return to the ring, how Cody Rhodes created the Bad News Barrett character and much more! Subscribe now and support the show by supporting our sponsors!BetOnline  - Head to http://betonline.ag and use the promo code BLUEWIRE for your free welcome bonus!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I can't recommend this enough. The final two episodes are live right now or binge the entire season to learn about your favorite soccer stars. So check out Blue Wire's Golden Goal, available anywhere you listen to podcasts. Now hit my music. It's Chrysomania, brother. That's a great question. Look at you, man. Look at the powerful questions. Woo! This is the Chris Van Bleach Show. Chris Van Bleachow. Ladies and gentlemen.

Chris. What is going on? And welcome back to another audio adventure on the Christmas. Chris Van Bleach show. If you haven't subscribed yet, please take a second to do that right now. This episode is brought to you by Bet Online, and I've been trying to do this interview for the last year, been trying to make this happen with Stu Bennett. Ryeback is really good friends with Stu's. So after the last time I saw Ryback in Las Vegas in December, he said that he'd put us in touch. Then Stu said, you know, let's wait till my movie, I Am Vengeance Retaliation comes out in the summer and we'll do it then. So then when I ran into him at an NWA taping in Atlanta in January, I was

like, hey, Stu, just making sure we're good for this interview. And fast forward now to July. And here we are. It is well worth the wait for more than an hour of awesomeness. Oh yeah. And you are awesome, by the way. Thanks for being the best part of the show every single week. And you know what, if this is your first time listening, thank you for being here. And thank you to D. Bogan for this review. I hope I'm saying that right. I mean, it looks like Hogan, but with a B, so Bogan. It could be Bogan, but I'm going to go with Bogan. It's D. Bogan, brother. It's titled, My First Review I've ever written. I've been listening to this podcast for the last six months. Needless to say, I'm caught up on all the episodes and went back to listen to certain ones again.

Wow. It's awesome to have a host that will let their guests have the time to talk and not talk over them while they're telling their story. Keep it up, CVV. Well, hey, I appreciate that. And I'm going to keep reading one review on every single episode of the show. So keep them coming in. And D. Bogan, or D. Bogan, D. D. Bogan, brother. We've got a lot more interviews for you to binge coming up in the next week or so. I just wrapped up an interview with Muhammad Hassan, which was, we've got a lot more interviews for you to binge coming up in the next week or so. I just wrapped up an interview with Muhammad Hassan, which was just fascinating. So that'll be coming out soon. I also have interviews lined up with Daniel Puter. That's going to be a good one. And also E.Y. Eric Young and a few others are in the works. We're just trying to, you know, put them on the schedules. So there's lots coming up. And that all brings us to this one with Stu Bennett, aka Wade Barrett. And his new movie, I Am Vengeance Retaliation, is available right now on video on demand. He talks about making that transition from W.W. into the world of acting. This is his fifth movie, by the way. And he's just, he's just crushing it. We also talk about his role as the color commentator for NWA, how that job came together when

Jim Cornett left. And what's next for NWA with the pandemic? You know, WWA, AE, A.W. Impact Wrestling. They've all found a way to make these shows happen. NWA hasn't had a show since COVID came around. So we get into that. He talks about exactly why he left WWE and what it would take to get him back in the ring. That and so much more. So ladies and gentlemen, I'm afraid I've got some bad news. It's Stu Bennett. Well, Stu, I've been wanting to do this interview for a long, long time. So thank you for finding the time to do this. Yeah, my pleasure. This is, it's been a hell of a month for me. We've been promoting the new movie that's come out. Iron Ben, just. retaliation. This is the final interview I am doing of the run. I think, unless I get an email

time, they've booked 10 more for me. But this is number 43, 42 down. This is the last one. Save the best for last Chris. Well, I appreciate you saying that. Or hopefully you're, you know, you're not burnt out by the time these interviews, you know. I was burned out after the first three. I've just been chugging away, though, you know. Well, congratulations. I just watched I Am Vengeance Retaliation the other day. And you are a bona fide action star. Cool, it's a lot of fun. I'll be honest with you, the transition from being a pro wrestler who was probably best known for my speaking ability and persona. A transition from that into the world of acting and especially the action world is relatively easy in terms of transitions from one industry to another. I love doing it. I get all the thrills that I used to get from pro wrestling, but in a very different environment.

So I'd still get to be this performer and have a lot of fun and work with different people. and I'm enjoying it. Thank you very much for the kind words there. Well, you say that there's a lot of similarities, but I also know that the wrestling that you did in the ring is nothing like the combat that you do in a film. Yeah, absolutely. I'd say wrestling in a ring hurts a lot more, that's for sure.

I'm sure people who watch this show are probably pretty clued in about professional wrestling. It is a simulation. I don't think I'm letting the cat out of the bag for anyone listening there, but we do hit each other. We do kick each other. We slam each other and throw each other around in the film world. the way fight scenes are kind of set up there.

You don't generally punch each other. You throw a punch and it misses by a few inches and you're only really playing to one camera, which is kind of behind you and they'll set it up. So it doesn't show that you're missing the punch and all this stuff. So actors tend to get very upset if you punch them for real. And I learned that.

I wonder why. Quite early on. So being a pro wrestler in 2015, I wanted it in a fight scene in the UK on a film called Eliminators with a guy called Scott Hankins, who's one of the top UK kind of action film fight guys and we did this fight scene and in the setup for it in the test, okay, here's the plan we're going to do this.

Let's have a little practice run. And I, of course went in pro wrestling mode and threw a punch straight to his head. Immediately, shut it, stop, everyone, stop. The fight coordinator steps, hey, Stu, you do know we're not supposed to be punching each other here. This is, then they taught me, okay, the foot works like this,

the throwing the punches like this and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's a learning curve. The interesting thing about making a movie is like inches really matter, like in terms of like how far you turn your head or hitting your marks, especially, you know, landing punches and stuff. Would that be one of the biggest differences for you? Yeah, everything's so precise. Footwork and everything. You've got to hit an exact mark and sometimes they'll put little chalk marks on the floor,

a little bits of tape on the floor. And it's even little things like if I turn my face slightly this way, a bad shadow gets casted on there or if you step two inches too far forward, there's a bad shadow on the person standing next to you. It's all so precise and exact on exactly how you need to walk. And sometimes they'll shoot the same scene 10, 12 times and halfway through, they'll move the cameras around. But you need to remember exactly which foot you led off on when you started walking, exactly the spot you stopped, where you, I know, scratched your shoulder as you were walking and you've got to do the same thing every single time. Whereas in obviously the pro wrestling world,

we tend to have a very light structure as to what we're doing in, in, in, a match, but it's so much improv and just figuring out, okay, he's going to drop me, now there you go, okay, what should I do? I don't know. You're kind of figuring out as you go along and there's no retakes or anything like that. Rassely, you got one shot to make it happen in movies.

You go until it's right. Exactly. Well, I mean, sometimes you've got a you're limited for time on, especially on indie movies. This was an independent film. It wasn't a Hollywood major blockbuster with, you know, 12 months of filming time or anything like that. So sometimes we all push for time on film, but

again, you're never going to put something on film in the final edit that's a complete disaster. You're going to have opportunities to edit around it, even if the take was really bad. But generally, like I say, you get a few goes on it, which is interesting balancing your adrenaline levels, especially in a fight scene or something like that. Sometimes you're throwing the same punch 10 times until you get the right one. So it's interesting trying to keep that level of adrenaline up when you might be filming a fight scene. One fight might take eight hours to film the entire fight scene, which when it's edited down, it might last 90 seconds and you've spent the entire day having this fight scene.

The interesting thing is you mentioned managing your adrenaline, and I heard some other actors talking on a podcast about how your body doesn't know the difference between real and fake. Your body doesn't know that you're faking this fight right now or that you're faking crying right now. So, like, you probably just really have to, like, manage those emotions. That's true. And I would say I get myself very worked up on fight scene days. The way we filmed this film, we had the drama days where we'd,

doing the dialogue and all that kind of stuff. And then we have four or five days that were pure fight scene days. So they were spaced out. So we had recovery days of doing the drama in between. But yeah, I have to get myself in a certain frame of mind. Those are normally the days where my temper is pretty short. And, you know, I'm probably not the most conversational. I'm trying to stay in the mood in between tapes and trying to stay in this angry,

badass ass kicker mode, which is what I'm supposed to be portraying in the film. So, yeah, I think different people have their ways of clicking in and out of it. I suppose that's always been my way. I was the same in wrestling, probably an hour before a match. I didn't really want to hang out with anyone or talk to anyone. I kind of started warming up on my own, earphones in, start getting loosened up and getting in the frame of mind. Probably nerves would be kicking into then prior to going through the curtain

and get myself ready for this big event. And then stretching that out over 12 hours of a fight scene day can be really exhausting. You're also listed as an executive producer on this film. So congratulations to you on that. But for people who might not know, what exactly does that mean for this film? So the first film I did, I Am Vengeance, which came out in 2018. I was just an actor in that one. I'm the lead actor in it.

But this one, because it was financially successful in terms of the budget, it's a little bit of a pat on the back for me. It's an extra credit on IMDB. But also it allows me a little more influence in terms of the script. Now, Ross Boyask, who's the guy who wrote the film and he's also the guy who directs it. this is his baby. And 99% of what you see on there is absolutely him. But there's certain things when I read the script that little tweaks I would make to my character or my dialogue or even some of the fight scenes. I didn't like how they were playing out. So I actually have some influence because of my executive producer role in the film. I have some influence on what the final

product is actually going to look like. And it's not like I'm taking liberties with that. But there are certain things that from my background in telling stories and professional wrestling and especially telling stories in the ring on how a fight should go and what would make sense at this point in the show, okay, I'm the good guy, but I need to be taking heat at this point in the film. Okay, this part of the film is the big ending.

This is supposed to be the hero comeback where I get the pat on the back and the crowd's all excited. So having a little influence on that and perhaps even giving some of my knowledge from the wrestling world, two people in the film world, in terms of how a fight scene should flow

and stuff like that. So it's interesting in the parallels that I can have influence in based on my background in wrestling. You know, there's a lot of people that get into acting and their role is like they're a man in an elevator or they're a bartender or something like that. You, just a few films in, you're the leading man in this franchise. I've been very fortunate, and this is my fifth film,

and it's out around the world now. I should add that. I know when I was doing some of the interviews at first, it wasn't out in certain areas. It is out around the world now, just to throw that in there. Yeah, so where can you go get it if we're going to throw that in there? Okay, it's on VOD platforms everywhere. There was supposed to be a limited theatrical run at one point,

but obviously with the virus, that's all been shut down. So it's on all major VOD platforms. Wherever you get your movies, iTunes or Amazon or wherever else it is, I'm not an expert on all the big locations to get these, but wherever you get your films, it's on there. And it was on direct TV in the US also. But going back to what you were saying there, I've been very fortunate.

this is my fifth film and I think in four of the five films I've been in a leading role either as the number one which has been the two Vengeance films or as a number two like the lead villain which has been in a couple of other films. I've been very lucky and one of the cool things about having success in the wrestling world is it has opened up opportunities in other worlds I clearly would not have got this quickly. So anytime you get a jump on a ladder you can leverage whatever you have to allow you to get that jump you've got to take it. It's the same in pro wrestling and guys like take a Kurt Angle, for example, one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, but he leveraged his success in the Olympics, gold medalist in the Olympics,

into bouncing into a very high position in the professional wrestling world. Of course, he killed it, but it's leverage of success in one game, hopefully leading into opportunities earlier in another game. So I'm very fortunate to get that. I'm also lucky that in terms of improving as a wrestler, it took me years and years to start climbing up that experience. experience Lider because you're only ever as good as the guys you get to work with.

And generally in wrestling, you start off wrestling, other guys who are kind of crap, you get a little bit better each time, you start making a lot of mistakes. It took me years and years, probably really until I got to the OVW, FCW, and really onto the main roster with WWE when I was working with guys like Randy Orson and John Cena until I got those reps working with the best people out there. So to be in the film world and getting those reps so early on and getting lead role, roles, which is a lot of dialogue and a lot of scenes. And also working with great fight choreographers like Tim Mann,

who's in this one and actors like Vinny Jones and Scott Adkins and stuff like that. I'm very fortunate to get that. And hopefully it improves my performance a lot quicker than it would if I was back climbing that ladder slowly again. Well, you got your reps in with some of the best of the game in your first film. And Dead Man Down, you were sharing screen time with Colin Farrell and Terrence Howard, which is, I mean, that's got to skyrocket the learning curve for you. Yeah, of course.

And that one came out of the blue. It actually got injured about a month before they called me with that one. It was through WW Studios. And I was all down and depressed. I think I was just about to head into surgery the next day. And I was miserable. It was my first major injury. And I'd had this run with the Nexus.

And I kind of been lost in the way a little bit after that with the core. And I was a bit down about my career, but still had that hunger. And I wanted to climb the ladder. So when that injury came out of nowhere is a pretty dark time. But I got a call from Triple H, who was just starting to move into the talent relations world at that point. And he said, hey, we've got this film coming up. We think you'd be a great fit for it. I think they knew I was a good speaker and I could present myself pretty well.

And he said, hey, it might not be a huge role, but it's working with this guy, this guy and this guy. What do you think? And then my options are, okay, do I do this really cool opportunity or do I sit at home moping around on my couch the next five months? So, of course, I grabbed that and turned up there. and that was really my first taste of working in the film world on that setting. It was a hell of an experience. It was a two-month shoot. It was a pretty big budget too.

It was, I think, a $40 million budget working with some major stars and directors. Nealz Arden Oplev, who'd achieved a hell of a lot by that point in his career too. So getting that taste was great. I would say my performance on there and what I was actually required to do, despite the fact that I was spread over two months was very limited. I was kind of in the background of a time of scenes. I was a heavy for Terrence Howard, who was the lead villain in the film. So I had a few lines here and there, but more than anything, it gave me a taste of working on film sets,

testing the water, so to speak, and seeing what this is about. And I came away from that, knowing that, okay, this has been pretty cool to do some more of this. If anything ever comes up in this world, I'd definitely want to explore it. And luckily, things have worked out pretty well for me. And yeah, I'd say so. And I'd say that some of the best way to learn is sometimes just by watching. So maybe Terrence Howard or Colin Farrell didn't say something specific to you, but did you watch them on set or watch the way that they interacted with other actors or other people and go, oh, that's how it's done? Yeah, I was honestly went into that as really a blank page and I had no idea how the movie world worked or how things were filmed because my experience of movies have been watching movies at home, which you see the final cut, the final edit.

and also, I suppose, the pro wrestling world, which is very much shooting live and we don't do retakes. So to go on a set like that, which was a big budget set, and they have a lot of time for retakes and realize that, okay, this scene that they brought me in for 10 hours to do where I'm literally just standing there, they are going to film this 12 times from one direction,

then we're all going to go away for an hour, and we're going to come back and film the exact same thing from the opposite direction, but they have to move all the lights around, and I just have to keep walking these three, steps and standing still. And this was 12 hours of work. And it was amazing to me that this is how it would. I assume they had six cameras filmed with the one scene. We did it. And if anyone messed up the lines, we did it again, then we go and do the next one. But every angle they shoot

from each camera, and you'll notice in a scene for a film, there'll sometimes be cut into six, closer to the face, closer to this face. Then moving the lights and moving everyone around each time and moving the set around slightly so the shadows aren't. It was an amazing experience to see that this is what actually goes into producing a film. And yeah. The dangerous thing, though, is in between those takes, the craft services table is just sitting there screaming your name with all kinds of delicious food on it. I'm a naturally skinny man, I would say.

That was right after I had a surgery. I probably lost about two and a half or three stone, which in American terms is about 40 pounds. Wow. Yeah, when I had surgery, my weight just falls off me. I've never had the issue of being a fat guy if I eat a cake or something like that. I know different people have different metabolisms. Ryback is the opposite of me, as you can probably tell by his build, he's a huge guy,

but if he starts pigging out on stuff, he'll get fat really quickly. So you'd appreciate me saying that. I love taking digs at Ryback. It's a good friend of my annuals, I believe. Yes, yes, I love Ryback. But, yeah, so, I mean, I could pig out. And in all, honestly, I probably needed to because I'd lost all this weight. And I was rehabbing my arm, which had broken and slowly getting back in shape.

So that's never been a big concern of mine. A little more now, I'm getting older. I'm almost 40 and I have to watch the diet a little closer now. But generally speaking, I'm a skinny guy who's always trying to get bigger. So you had no intention of getting into film, no intention of acting if it wasn't for this injury? I just don't think I'd have ever got my foot in the door in the first place. It's difficult to say I would never have done it. I think I always enjoyed performing.

Clearly, I became a professional wrestler and in drama, classes in school and things like that. I always enjoyed being the performer and, you know, presenting. And I think in the back of my head, yeah, I'd like to do that. But how do you ever break into that? How do you ever get your first role? And where do you go? And how does it even start? So I got very lucky that that fell into my lap.

And then a couple of years after that, they called me with a role for Eliminators. I think Michael Louisi, who was in charge of WWE Studios, he was the president. He's moved on now. But he liked what I'd done in the film with Dead Man Down. and came to me a couple of years later and said, I've got this bigger opportunity. I know what you did in Dead Man Down was great, but it was kind of a limited role,

but I've got this opportunity for you now. It's a smaller budget film, but we want you to be basically the lead bad guy in the film. And a bunch of fight scenes. He pitched that to me and told me who the director was, a guy called James Donne, and that was going to be filmed in London. So obviously that was an easy sell to me.

And yeah, you take four weeks off your wrestling career and go do this. And of course I grabbed that and had a great time over in London film in that film. So if you hadn't gotten injured, what would the path have continued to be for you in WWA? Who knows? I was on a real low ebb when I got injured. So not that there's ever a good time to get injured, but that was as good a time as any. If you're not doing anything, it's different if you're, okay, I'm in the build to

WrestleMania and I'm about to take on Roman reigns in the main event. And three weeks before I come down with an injury, that would have been disastrous. But I think I just, I think right before I got injured in 2012, I'd just been eliminated from a Battle Royal by Santino Morella. And I'm a huge Sanino fan. He's one of the funniest guys I've ever been around and one of the best comedic wrestlers of all time. I genuinely believe that.

But I think it says a lot about where my career was at that point that Santino was eliminating me out of a battle royal because I've heard people actually said, oh, he was about to get this big run for the money in the bank. I wasn't. I was at a real low air at that point. And it was a good opportunity for me, A, to get away and do something else, which just fell into my lap. But then hopefully the desire is when you come back,

okay, this is a reset opportunity. And when I come back in six months' time, fingers crossed, there's going to be a little push for me. So with I'm Vengeance retaliation, we're now two movies in. It looks like there could be a third one, maybe a fourth one. Is that the plan to continue to make this a franchise? Well, when Ross Boyas, the director first approached me about doing the original, I Am Vengeance, he did say to me, it's like, hey, listen, this, this,

the plan for you. for this is to turn this into a franchise. Here's the first script. We think you'd be perfect to play John Gold, the lead in the film. The plan is that if this goes out and it goes well and people like it and make some money, we want to turn it into a franchise. And I have all these arcs, these story ideas. We could even do a prequel, go back in time and tell some of the backstory of John Gold.

So, of course, being a veteran of the entertainment industry, I was like, yeah, whatever, this guy, he's full of it, right? Turns out he actually wasn't full of it. He's one of the rarities in the entertainment world. He was actually telling me the truth, which is nice. So, yeah, he was right. He very soon after the first film came out in 2018 and we realized, okay, this has done pretty well,

let's pitch to the guys who are backing the film financially. Let's pitch a sequel and we managed to get a bigger budget for it. And obviously, that allowed us to bring in Vinnie Jones, a guy of his caliber and name value. And again, if this one does well, which fingers crossed, the initial numbers that I've seen have been very, very positive from around the world, so hopefully that keeps going. Fingers crossed, we get a third out of it, and I know Ross, the director and the writer,

he's already written scripts for a third and a fourth. And he has a bunch of ideas, too, that are currently unwritten. So pitches are ready. It's just a numbers game at this point. It's horrible to be clinical about it. I like to stay in the arty side of things and do the fun part, which is making the film and acting and promoting the film. But then there's also the spreadsheet people who are behind this.

and allow us to do this kind of stuff. And they have to be happy to, and fingers crossed, that all goes well. And then pitches can be thrown out. And hopefully we're going to third, maybe a fourth. Well, in the first film's on Netflix right now. So I rewatch that again after watching the second one the other day. So I rewatch it again. It being on Netflix, though, means it's accessible to everybody at basically no charge

other than paying your Netflix membership. That's it. It's great advertising pretty much for the film or the franchise that it's on Netflix. the first one. I think it's just, so it was on Netflix in the US, just to be clear, I know you have a global listenership. I believe in the UK, it's just gone on to Amazon Prime. So regional places have different requirements on who gets to stream it and whatever deals. Each region has struck. But yeah, it's great. It's out there. Maybe the second one at some point we'll get a deal for that, but currently it's VOD. And it's just good advertising for the brand in

general and that franchise and let people see it. And hopefully if they like the first one, then they'll go check out the second one. I really want to dive into your your process here. So you get a script and then what happens from there? Okay, well, to go back in time and I'll give you the first one. Okay. It was, so this is the first I Am Vengeance movie. It was, I found it very difficult because I was still fairly new to the script world and especially jumping into a lead role because you have to really understand every single scene in the movie and how they all fit together and why this character is presenting themselves in this way at this point, but later on, something changes and why is that change? And what's the moment you need to highlight in the script? Now, I'll be honest with you,

I read that script probably 10 times before it slowly started sinking in, because you read on page three about this character who does this, and then you forget about them, because in page 43, they're suddenly back again. You're like, what did that person? It's just words on it, and, you know, words on a page, and it wasn't fitting in. And the more I read it, the slowly started making a bit more sense but I would say that when it came to the second film my experience was was growing at this point I think the first Avengers film was my third film the second Avengers film is my fifth film and now I'm a little better with it it takes me perhaps two or three reads to get a good grip on it and then you break down each scene into the ones you're shooting each day so you'll get a

small set of sides they call them which so rather than give you the full script every day okay we're filming these three pages of the script today and breaking it down that way and then you get to really focus on this specific scene. So are you like, when you first get the script and you're breaking it down, are you taking notes like crazy all over the page? Yeah, first thing I do is highlight all of my character's lines. So that's always the first thing. I like to know exactly where my character is going to fit into everything.

But definitely annotating all around it. Okay, this is this character here. I'm going to get to fight later on. So we're sowing the seeds of dissension at this point in the film or something like that. So I'll break it down quickly that way. And one of the toughest things that happens is, in the run-up to the film, you'll keep getting rewrites

and redrafts, so you'll go through your script that you've got four weeks out, highlight everything and annotated, all looks brilliant, you've got it all down, and then you'll suddenly realize the week later, they've sent you an updated script, and two of the scenes are now cut, they've added this new one in, some of the dialogue has changed,

and now you're basically starting again with those areas, and that'll happen four, five, six times before the start of the film. And even when the film is filming, maybe you've had a day that you've had to film where the plan was a load of stuff outside, but it's actually raining. We're in the UK, it rains a lot.

We can't do all that stuff. It's not going to work because the weather, and the weather's different to the continuity of the scene we shot earlier. So we now have to move this somewhere else, and then the scenery changes. And if the scenery changes, you're now indoors, you can't do that car scene that you were planning to do. So there's constant rewrites and changes,

especially in the world of indie film where you press for time and you don't have this. Okay, well, it's raining today. Let's just come back tomorrow and hopefully it'll be sunny. I'm sure. Some of the bigger, bigger budget films can do that kind of thing. But we have to roll with the punches a little more in indie film. You know, the comparisons are obviously there

between the people who have done the wrestling and are now in Hollywood before you with obviously the Rock, Batista, John Cena now. Is that the path that they've blazed that you would like to be on? I wouldn't say that necessarily. I'm at a point in life where I like to take opportunities that come to me that I want to grab, as opposed to chasing something specific.

I think when I was younger, I was chasing a very specific goal and my life was very regimented and directed towards getting to WWE, first of all. Then when I was in WWE, continuing success, climbing the ladder and hopefully becoming WWE champion

or headline in WrestleMania or whatever it was, I don't really put that kind of pressure on myself anymore. I've been very fortunate since leaving WWE that good opportunities have tended to come to me and I'm in a position where If I like an opportunity, I will take it, if it sounds good. And if I don't like it, I can turn it down.

And I'm in a lucky position because of that. Financially, I did well at WWE that I don't have to grab every opportunity that comes to me. So I'm very selective. I have an agent in the UK, and I've just signed with one here in L.A. And I've told them, I want to be selective. I don't want to take a role just because it's a role. And the other weird thing is because I've been in these lead positions in films. It's kind of hard to them want to go and start.

step down and be the man in the elevator that's just stood in the background or something like that. So I am also very protective of where I'm at positioning-wise in film too, because offers come in and opportunities arise that if I take them, it kind of drops my stock to an extent to. And it's the same in the wrestling world. I know a lot of, especially the independent wrestlers, they'll only have a certain level of independent show they'll work too. They won't go lower than that.

And they won't wrestle certain guys because it lowers their stock. if you have this star in one region going and working the opening match against a local guy and losing another region it can lower their stock. So there's an element of that too. But in general, if an opportunity is good, I will do it. And it's fun. It will benefit my career or pay well. Then I'm definitely going to look at it.

And if not, then you know what? I'm going to give this one a pass and go do some wrestling commentary for a bit or go host the show on Netflix or whatever it is. And that's how I operate these days. Yeah, before quarantine started, you had a lot going on. You had a lot on your plate, especially. I mean, wrestling fans would see you every single week on NWA power. It's obviously come to a screeching halt now with everything that's been going on in the world.

But how did the power thing come together? How did that come together? Because obviously you filled in for Jim Cornett, who decided to leave. Yeah, so that was an interesting one. I think for the past couple of years, I was getting calls from NWA. They'd started their reboot two or three years ago. And Nick Aldous is a former colleague of mine. We actually started off trainings together in the UK in 2004.

He was my first ever singles match. So I was aware of what was going on in there. We've kind of stayed in touch ever since. And I saw he was their champ and he was doing well. I was being sent there 10 pounds of gold series and all the information on that. And it was pretty exciting times. But I think they were contacting me frequently because they wanted me to get back in the ring and be one of their main guys on their roster as they rebooted.

And that wasn't in the cards to me. I wasn't looking to get back in the ring that soon anyway. Maybe I will at some point. But I told them, look, I've done quite a lot of commentary before. I've done commentary for Florida Championship Wrestling while I was in developmental. I've done it for what culture pro wrestling in the UK or Defiant, which it became. And also world of sport, I love doing that. So if you have anything in that world that ever comes up, please think of me.

and I'd love to talk to you about that, but as far as the in-ring stuff, I'm not actually looking for that right now. And we stayed in touch and they would send me episodes of NWA Power and say, hey, look, he's our new series, it's NWA Power, what do you think? Give us a critique and stuff like that,

and I'd have a look at it. And I was always very impressed with it. I thought it was well polished, and I liked the narrative style of pro wrestling that they're doing. It's very storyline-based, a lot of promos, a lot of characters, personas, which is the kind of wrestling that I got into,

when I first discovered wrestling in the late 80s in the 90s, that's what wrestling was based around. So for me, it was a refreshing change from most of wrestling that's out there currently, which I feel is lacking in those departments. So I enjoyed it, but again, I wasn't looking to get back in the ring, and we just stayed in touch,

and then suddenly the Jim Cornett thing happened where he decided to move on from his role, and I think three or four days after that happened, they realized, shit, we've got to get someone in pretty soon. We've got a pay-per-view coming up next week, and we've got to tape the NWA Power series that they taped to in Atlanta.

So I got a call then and they were sounding me out about it. They knew I was a fan of the show already. And very quickly we came to an agreement and I was excited to go join them. So you basically got a call and then a few days later, you were commentating for them. Exactly. And that was, you know, it's probably something when I filmed, I think I did WOS or World of Sport in 2018,

summer 2018. So I probably hadn't done any commentary for about 18 months at that point. So I agree, I got the call and they were like, hey, here's what it is. I was already up to speed on the storylines and the characters and the personas. I need to do a little bit of research here and there. But for the most part, I knew what was going on, which helped. But yeah, I'd say four or five days later, I was on a flight to Atlanta and then bang, right, you're live on pay-per-view, go. And for the first time ever, I work with Joe Galley, who's the play-by-play commentator there.

I knew that was going to be a great fit because I'd heard his work with Jim Cornett on the first season of NWA power. I knew how good he was. I think people were concerned that you don't even know each other. You never met each other before. How's this going to go?

Chemistry-wise, I had no fear whatsoever. I know what I can do. And because I knew he was so good at play-by-play, I had no fear at all. And I think we clicked very quickly. It does take time to build chemistry, but I think from the word go, we were live on pay-per-view,

and I think we fit together very nice. Yeah, almost instantly, and you guys had this great chemistry, and it just goes to show how good you are and how good Joe is at this. Thank you. I mean, I will say that as the color guy, it's my responsibility to add some personality, and it's my job to go everywhere I want. I can go all the way in this direction, all the way in that direction. The play-by-play guy's job is to bring everything back and keep us going in a straight line. So he's so good at that, that it allows me the freedom to go all over the place. and it reminded me a lot of working with Byron Saxton

while I was in Florida Championship Wrestling and that was my first taste of color commentary while I was down there. Dusty Rhodes put me on a color commentator with him. I'd never done it before and of course I was concerned about, can I really do this? How do you talk for an hour constantly about pro wrestling and what's going on? How do you keep this interesting and not stumble your words and make a fool of yourself?

But very quickly I fit into a persona while I was at the desk and I was able to do that because Byron Sachin was. was so good at pulling everything together and keeping us going in a straight line that it gave me the freedom to have fun, show some personality and hopefully entertain people. Hey, it's Chris. Popping in for just a second to thank our sponsor for this episode, Bet Online. Sports are coming back, and that means so are your chances to bet on your favorite sports teams and events.

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That is one word, Blue Wire, B-L-U-E-W-I-R-E. Bet Online, your online wagering experts. Well, WW Impact and AEW have all found a way to keep their show going. Has NWA looked into how they can keep power going? Yeah, so very quickly, when this pandemic broke out and everyone got locked down, probably the end of February, beginning of March, NWA management came out and said very specifically, there is no circumstances by which we will be putting on shows without a crowd there.

They see, a Billy Corgan specifically sees the audience as an integral part of professional wrestling. And I actually agree with him. I've seen the stuff that other companies are doing not to take a shot of them. I just think you lose so much when a fan base isn't there. It's not like a pure sport like football or rugby or soccer or whatever where, okay, the importance here is really the winning and losing. In wrestling, it really isn't the most important part, as we all know in this day and age. The important part is the entertainment and the emotion that it brings out.

And it's very difficult to bring out that emotion when you don't have the audience there because as a television viewer, a lot of your reaction is based on that crowd and how they're responding. And I heard a great quote a few years ago. I can't remember who said it. But it was along the, I'm paraphrasing here, but it was along the lines of a good crowd, a great crowd takes a good match and makes it great. And it also takes a bad match and makes it good.

So the crowd being alive, and especially when you're in those arenas, when they're on their feet constantly, and the day after WrestleMania type of crowd where everything you do is just exploding, those make the matches even better. And when that crowd isn't there or you have a completely dead crowd, it makes the show a little torturous to watch and perform into, I will say. So sometimes you just get those crowds that want to sit on their hands and on into it. And that can be tough. And that comes across to the TV view, and it's very rarely, it's very rarely that,

know even if the match in the ring is really good technically and everything's been done right if the crowd aren't responding to it then the viewers at home think this was a terrible match just because that audience hasn't responded whereas if you'd have turned up the volume on that audience it could be the exact same match and it would be an amazing match because people are going nuts for it and that's you'll lose all of that when you have no crowd there obviously well i think unfortunately you know for these other companies their hands are tied because they've got these tv contracts that they have to put out a product every single week. Of course. It's impossible. I would never take a shot of them for it. I know it's very easy me sitting at home working or having worked for a company that isn't doing it and being

nice and safe. It's very easy for me to take a shot of those guys for doing it. That's not my point at all. They are literally handcuffed to these deals. And if they don't produce the content, then they aren't fulfilling their obligations. That money's getting pulled. And potentially, depending on the company, their company may be bust after that. So they have to look after the business side too and by looking after the business they're also looking after the employees and people who work for them so it's a horrible balance to strike so there's no plan right now for nWA until things clear up in the world well i think we were slowly getting closer to it i'd heard rumors of we're kind of looking at october of doing something if things continue going well and then suddenly the u.s anyway

had this giant spike and we're all back to square one now so i would be amazed and this is not coming from anyone in management. I would be amazed if NWA puts on my show in the rest of 2020, just based on how all this stuff is spiking up again. I just don't think it's going to be safe for the rest of the year for anyone to be putting on a show or having the crowd there and all that stuff. So do not take my word for it. At the end of the day, it's Billy Corgan's decision, but I would be surprised if anything comes in 2020. And of course, you know, I'm hearing rumors now that this vaccine is getting closer and fingers crossed, we can all get this vaccine and get back to normal as soon as possible because until that happens, let's face it, nothing is going to be resolved.

And this virus is just going to keep on spiking up. Well, you guys film in Atlanta. And Atlanta is one of the cities where the mayor basically said, no, we're going back, like lockdown. We're reverting back. We're putting the toothpaste back in the tube here. Exactly. I'm in Los Angeles and it's the same here.

And all the restaurants are completely closed down again. The beaches are all closed. I know you've just moved here. I think we were having a chat a couple of weeks ago. You're like, no, I've heard it's opening up again. and I was like, we'll see about that. And it was. It was briefly, but now it's closed down again.

I said to my friends, as long as I can go to the gym when I get out there, I'll be good. So I started my drive on Sunday. And on Monday, they said, as of tomorrow, the gyms are going to be closed. Oh, man, I invested in some power block dumbbells and a bench and stuff. I've given up for the rest of this year. I just wish I had room for a squat rank. That's the one thing I'm really missing. I don't have room for a squat rack in my apartment.

But you got to go to Ryback's place then. Yeah, that's a four-hour drive. It's a long way to go for a leg workout, eight hours of driving there and back, just to work out of legs with Ryback. We can make a YouTube video out of it. Me, you and the Ryback. Oh, yeah. We can have some feed me more nutrition supplements, too.

He'll appreciate that plug. His pre-workout is, I don't know what he puts in there. Maybe it's cocaine, but when you drink that, you're like, ah! Yeah, it's the wildest one on the market. I will say that. It's shaker, too, is very good. That shaker on the market.

That shaker cup is so good. Is he sponsoring your show? Is that the deal? No, he should, right? I just, I start every day with his pre-workout. And I mean, I'm not a coffee or caffeine person, but his pre-workout, like it takes me from a 10 out of 10, like a 14 out of 10. It's wild. That's the first one. That's the first pre-workout in history that I take less than the recommended amount.

Most of them, I take two, most of them, it says take one scoop, I end up taking two or three because I'm big and I'm used to it and all that stuff. His, I can't even take a full scoop of all. I'm a half a scuba of one of his. So it's wild. Yeah, it's wild. And I don't know if people really appreciate how large you are, because when you're in a ring around other large men, you know, you just look like a dude. But then when like someone like me, who's a normal sized human, meets you and you're almost a foot taller than me.

Yeah, almost exactly a foot taller than me. I'm 5'10. You're 6.7? I'm 6.6. 6.7 in my boots, I think, is how they used to be. They actually built me at 6.5 at 1 point, which is literally short. I was furious about that, naturally. because they build Seamus' 6'6 and me at 6.5

and I'm actually 3 inches tall of them. So I was naturally furious about that. But we got that fixed in the end. In the movie world, though, you are a giant. Yeah, I'm Andre the Giant, especially in the UK movie. Like, British people aren't generally as big as American people. I know you have all your basketball players and stuff like that out here and your clothes and everything are bigger out here.

But yeah, in the movie world, I am an absolute monster, which actually comes into play when it comes to, even auditioning for roles and stuff like that, there's a lot of roles that I'm just not cut out for. For example, I was put forward at one point while I was living in Manhattan for a role as a doctor. And even though there are doctors like me in real life, six foot six isn't that crazy.

I walk in the room, they take one look at you, and they, no, this guy's way too big to be a doctor. Can't play a doctor. It has to be a bouncer or a boxer or something like that. So you do get kind of typecast. So that limits my opportunities, I suppose, in the film world. But if it works, I'll do it. I can play action man roles or whatever it is.

So, hey, if that works, I'll do that. But the good news is when you get called into that room for a casting, you know that they're looking for you. You know that they're looking for someone like you. When I go to a casting, I'm generic, you know, average-sized guy with dark hair. Like, there's a hundred of me, you know. But the interesting thing is, and I've heard, this quite a few times. I know you're fairly new into your acting journey at this point,

but this doesn't happen for guys like me, but a guy like you, what can often happen is you go and read for one role, but they're actually casting six or seven roles of guys that, okay, he didn't get the role he specifically wanted, but tell you what, you would be perfect for this role. Whereas I go in, they've got one role, and there's me, and sometimes I've turned up at a room, a waiting room before, and it's horrible because you're walking down. I feel good, I'm walking down the street, okay, good, I look okay, I'm pretty big, they want a big strong guy. I walk in there and there's like six guys who are all more jacked and mean a look than me. I'm like, I've got no chance of this one.

And, you know, so it can be very heartbreaking when you're in those positions. But I'd say the more, I hate to call you generic looking, but the more I call myself that. You did. That's why I'm using that term. It's a horrible word to describe. But you have a, you have a frame and a face that fits into a lot more roles than I ever would. Well, then instead of calling it generic, we'll call it. all encompassing, all encompassing. I like that. That's a bit more positive, right? You and I will definitely never be in a casting room together.

Yeah, if we end up in a casting room together, going for the same role, either my agent or your agent has them a very bad job. One of us needs to fire them. When you get a script or your sides for the day, what's your technique for learning those lines? Again, going back to what I said earlier about the script constantly changing,

I don't tend to learn the entire script early on. An average script, just so you know for like a two-hour film, it's about 100, 110 pages long. So what tends to happen is you read this, you read it, read it, read it really, get it all down, get it all in your head, what the story is. But then on each specific day of filming, and there might be a four-week shoot, for example, in 20 filming days, each day you will get your sides for the day,

which is, you know, three or four pages of that script. that we are filming today. So then I'll, and you usually get them a day in advance or something like that. So you can work on your lines for tomorrow while you're going home and you're sitting your dinner and get up in the morning, get picked up and I'll be in the car learning them, going over them. And maybe when I get to the place we're shooting, I'll pull the director and, what, the actresses or whoever I've got scenes with that day,

pull them, do you want to run through this a couple of times? And we'll try different ways of performing it and very, very truncated amount of practice. time or rehearsal time because then we're okay guys ready shoot this first scene let's get on set now the the camera guys and lighting have been rigging everything already they're ready to go so getting costume and let's get out there and so you kind of break it up into day by day and then you'll find that because joe i didn't learn the whole script because three weeks in they've actually completely changed that final scene because such and such didn't play out like we thought it would when we filmed it so let's let's tweak it slightly and uh and then you just pick up from there you've really

found your footing in this acting world. And I kind of feel like it happened by, well, it's a lot of hard work, but kind of happened by accident because when you left WWE, this wasn't part of your plan. I don't know. I don't think you had a plan. No, not really. I knew this. To be fair, when I was leaving WWE, I did already have Iron Vengeance won kind of in my pocket. It wasn't signed, sealed, delivered at that point. But very soon afterwards, it was a nice join for me to jump into doing that I already knew the idea was there and they were pitching it to me. So I felt pretty comfortable that I was going to do that. But I would say six months before, probably nine months before I left WWE, I'd already made the decision that I was going to leave. My contract was

running out. I wasn't going to re-sign there. And I AmVengeance 1 wasn't around at that point. See, yeah, you were right. When I made the decision to actually leave WWE, it wasn't to jump to anything else. I was just so miserable and fed up with what I was doing that I didn't care if I sat on the beach for the next five years. I was not going to be on a plane flying. out Peoria, Illinois and wrestling or wherever it might be. Sorry, people are Peoria, Illinois. You're always the punchline in WWE locker rooms for some reason. That's always the go-to, oh God, it wants to be in Peoria, Illinois. Poor guys. Nice place, too. That's not so bad there, right? Shreveport, Louisiana is another one. Peoria, Illinois,

and Shreveport, Louisiana. They're the two. Oh, God, Shreveport. I can't wait to see all the comments now for people that live in those cities. Sorry, everyone. I'll never be welcome back. there. Was there one specific thing that happened in WWE that made you go, that's it? I'm done. I want my contract to run out. I think it was probably a period of time of things slowly not going my way, I would say. So I always had from the very early days of my wrestling career, I always had the carrot dangled of, okay, I'm chasing this, chasing this, chasing, climbing up a ladder and then slowly making more and more progress. And I'd say probably around the time of, of Bad News Barrett, I felt that, okay, I looked great at the time. I got shredded. My

catchphrases over, the fans are reacting to everything I'm doing here. My merchandise was selling for the first time in my career, apart from Nexus shirts, which weren't really mine. I had a shirt that was the number one seller. I was like, wow, I'm really, I actually felt the first time, too, my in-ring work, I was actually happy with it for the first time ever. I know when I'd debuted in WWE in 2010, I was still pretty green. I'd only really been working six-minute matches in FCW and working with the calibre of guys who weren't actually that good on the whole. There was a lot of young green guys who was working with. So I always felt that I was a step behind, to say the least, when it came to working with a scene or Randy Orton and

those guys. That was in 2010. By 2014, I was that much more experienced and confident now. I had my own in-ring kind of personality and way of moving. And I felt that my matches were very strong, too. So at that point, I felt there was no reason not to pull the trigger on me and kind of moved me up to the next level and have me in more main event level spots and build the show to a certain degree around me or my character and that didn't happen bad news barrett all got completely taken away from me which i thought was a very bad idea at the time and i was given the role as the king of the king of the ring which i didn't want to do from the word go and um i was aware that there was no writing backing this up and i felt very much i'd been booked into a corner of just a dead end and

this isn't going to go anywhere and after it's so hard to get up over in the wrestling world that when you do get over you really want to cash in on it and make this count and so to have that taken away from me for what I thought was incredibly poor foresight of giving me the king of the ring and then to follow the king of the ring up with what I felt was really poor writing and booking it was the final straw I think after I dedicated so much time and effort into progressing in the wrestling world to see that that was my reward was very disappointed and I became disillusioned. And at that point, I felt that I need to get out of here.

Yeah, it's ironic that you'd say King of the Ring, you know, held you back because that's been used as a launching pad for so many people. Was it just that the writing around it, you know, had no direction? Well, first of all, I didn't like the outfit. And I was told several times I have Vince wants you to wear the outfit. I hated the outfit. I thought it was really hokey. And it reminded me something from pantomime.

I don't know if you have pantomime in the U.S., but that's something we have in the UK at Christmas time. People dress up in very, very, very, camp costumes. It's all a bit, you know, he's behind you and all that. It's a bit, it's a bit like tongue in cheek, which wrestling is a little bit like that, but if I'm supposed to be a heel and a bad guy, I'm wearing this outfit that nobody's taking seriously. If you wanted someone to do that, give it to Heath Slater. Heath would have loved that. It would have worked really well for him.

That's just not my personality. I'm a six-foot-six, broken nose, big, tattooed heel. who's supposed to be nasty. And wearing that outfit from the wood, the second I walk out, people are just not interested because it just doesn't fit, it doesn't fit me, it doesn't fit my persona.

Heath would have killed it. And why they wouldn't give it a guy like Heath, I don't know, or a Santino or something like that. But it really kind of neutered me. And then the writing that went with it was also non-existent. I could tell that consistently for about six months

after I won the King of the Ring tournament, I was using what I call filler. So you have these TV content, tracks that, okay, we need to do three hours every Monday for WWE Raw. We'll have these highlight moments, the main event, the opening, the crossover segments. But then we've got to fill an extra hour and a half or two hours of this show. And we just need to put somebody out there. And I felt for six months I was putting these filler spots of, we haven't really written anything for this. Just you go out there and wrestle this guy for five minutes and you lose. And that's it. There's no real

story and to be part in that position you accept it occasionally but to be put in that position for a consistent period of time especially after you'd previously been quite over with another character is just disheartening so um yeah well bad news barrett was so over and was that an instant thing did you instantly realize after you started saying this that you were that over no it was that was a bit of a journey because that started on something called the j b l and cole show which is JBL, Michael Cole, Cody, and a couple of other people have been doing this quirky internet show for a little while,

and they approached me as a day, Stu, I know you're not doing much on the show, I'm raw right now, do you want to be part of this show? It's a bit quirky, and I thought, you know what, I will do it? And Cody, notorious liar in the locker room, and I say that with all respect.

He's not mean about it, but he likes to just tell bullshit stories about people. One day I walked in the locker room and he was telling all the guys in the locker room that when he was a kid, he used to watch me wrestling. and I was wrestling as a character called Bad News Barrett who would walk into the ring and say,

hey guys, got some bad news, the shows cancelled. That was Cody's kind of running joke. So anyway, when they approached me, said, do you want to be part of it? Cody's in it? I was like, yeah, you know what, make me bad news, barrett. I just come up and I give everyone bad news.

So that became a character for a little while, and it turned out on the internet show that had a pretty small viewership, but it was like 100,000 hits a week on YouTube, which for a WWE thing isn't actually that big. but we again it was getting popular on there and all the YouTube comments were I've got some bad news bad bad so anyway it turns out Vince one day was shown this by JBL he liked the character he thought he was really funny and he decided then to put me on the the main roster doing this which I was

immediate well this this isn't really going to work it works in this quirky quirky world of JBL and Cole show which is all kind of a bit hocus pocus and a bit pantomime but I don't think this is going to work in the real world but he said no just give it a shot just do promos and I'd say for the three or four weeks when I was doing the promos, it was a bit flat and fans didn't know what to make of it, but then slowly, but surely, they became accustomed to the cadence of the speeches and what was coming, and there was almost that anticipatory moment when they got to chant along with the catchphrase, get the zinger at the end, and then I disappeared, and then slowly but surely it was winning people over, and then there was a moment, I think it was the New Orleans WrestleMania. I think it was 2014, if I remember

correctly. WrestleMania 30. That was the one. So, WrestleMania 30, the Hall of Fame was on the night before WrestleMania.

I was there. Hall of Fames, although we are honoring the greats of our industry, they can be torturous to sit through. They're sometimes four and a half, five hours long, and a lot of times the stories

and the guys tell them the stories on stage, they're not the best promo people and they're wittering on. There's a lot of downtime, and it can be a lot of shuffling around. But anyway, Vince decided the show was needed a bit of life injected into it and he sent me out to do a bad news barrett promo towards the end when everyone

was kind of ready to go home and they sent me out and i did this promo and for the first time ever the entire arena who were watching chanted i'm afraid i got some bad news with it and that was the moment okay this is getting over like it was the best reaction i'd had up until that point and i walked to the back and vince's high-five in me he was really happy and it kind of energized the crowd and i think two days after that is when he put me back in the ring and i re-debue and i re-debue as bad news barrett as an in-ring guy, not just a promo guy. And they have me beat Ray Mysterio,

which anytime you get to beat Ray Mysterio on TV is a huge, huge moment for anyone's career, of course, a legend like Ray. So that kind of kicked me off in the right direction. And then it was easy after that. And every time I went out, fans were reacting and I was getting baby-faced pops for the first time in my career.

And ultimately, yeah, it was a cool time, definitely one of my highlights in my career. But it's not just the line. It's how you deliver the line. Because if I say, I'm afraid I've got some bad news, no one cares. But it's your accent in the way that you deliver it that makes it over the top and that much better. Yeah, that's it.

I mean, anytime you get to add something character-wise or persona-wise, the accent helps, the growl, the laughter, whatever it is, I realize very quickly. And then I'd be coming to the back and I'd say, hey, Vince, I need to add something to this. Can I add a gavel? I love gavels. I think it'd be really annoying.

That will piss people off. And then one day I went to the back. I think it needs one more thing. I'd say, do you remember the old brood entrance where they'd come through a ring of fire and they'd rise up in the middle of the stage? And he was like, yeah, I like it, I've got just the idea.

And then a week later, here's me expecting to rise, you know, six feet in the air and he's got this giant sizzleift and I'm now 50 feet in the air. I think swaying all over the place. And naturally, as Vince does, he made it even bigger. And that was so cool when he went,

when I got that and I knew, okay, this cannot fail now. This is so ridiculous that this is just going to worry. and people loved it then. Do you think that was the most over that you ever got in your career? I'd say the most over I ever got was Nexus.

There's no doubt about it. It was just a crazy period, especially for a guy like me and the rest of the Nexus guys who we literally went from being unknowns to being the main bad guys in professional wrestling for about six months. And the reaction we were getting everywhere,

it was genuine hatred, fear, excitement that the crowd would get. and it's very hard to capture something like that. So I'd say that's the most over I had ever been. But as an individual, definitely bad news about it. It's completely not having the benefit of feuding with John Cena or the benefit of having this gang of guys with me or having this amazing impactful entrance

where we ripped the ring apart. For a guy who was just kind of organically getting over by just doing a promo, really. That's definitely the most over I ever got. Well, Darren Young, Fred Rosser, recently said on his podcast that there was plans to bring Nexus back at WrestleMania this year. Was that something that you were going to be part of? So I was called about it probably in January. I was obviously working with NWA at that

point, but my contract with NWA didn't stop me doing other things. There was no restrictions to it. But they called me about it. They made a pitch to me, which I hadn't actually spoken to anyone in WWE for the best part of four years in management anyway. So this was really the first contact that I'd had pretty much since I'd left. And they had this idea. I didn't think it was very good if I was going to go back and do something with WWE again. I'd expected to be a bit more impressive than what they were offering me. So I turned it down. It wasn't going to work for me. And I wish them to the best of luck. I believe they were still going to do something with Darren and a couple of others. I don't believe Ryback got the call. They didn't want, they didn't

skip Javille back there. He was a bit upset about that. I joke. So if you're not going to be there, Ryback's not going to be there. What's the point? Yeah, I think so. But then we're going to do something. I don't know exactly what was going to play out, whether it was like access or something like that. But what was pitched to me just wasn't exciting at all.

So I turned it down very quickly. So what does it need to take for you to want to step back into the ring? A million dollars. A million dollars. Two million dollars. I don't know. I mean, in all honesty, to step back in the ring is it seems like a small commitment. It's just one match or whatever, but the work needed to get back to that one match

and to get my, not only back, I'm in really good shape. I stay in shape, but there's a difference between being in shape where I pump by and I do some burpees and things like that and actually being in wrestling shape. And it would take me weeks, maybe even a couple of months, of regularly going to a local wrestling ring, bouncing around it, working with guys and getting myself back into that. And then there's also the mental commitment of getting back into that world

to that level. So I wouldn't want to just turn up and take two bumps. And great, Royal Rumble spot, you walk in, 30 seconds, you dumped it out, wave through everyone and get out again. I wouldn't be interested in doing that. I'd want to, if I did ever get back in the ring, I'd want to do something good. And I'd want to be in a significant position on the roster,

and I wouldn't want to be just the filler, which is kind of how I left wrestling. So that, like I say, is a big commitment, though. I'd have to be, I'd have to make sure my wrestling game was back on point, my fitness was ready, my body was all ready for it, and it's not just a simple case of quick phone call, yeah, I'll see you next week, I'll be there. It's way bigger than that. As simple as it sounds, to just get back in the ring, it's a lot more difficult. Well, you mean, you mentioned earlier that you're 39, so 40s on the horizon this year,

it's a big milestone. Does that, you know, do you look at that and go, there's a lot of things I've got to accomplish now? Not really, no. I'll be honestly, I'm not really a numbers guy when it comes to age. I will tell you that the way I felt when I left WWE in early 2016 and even pictures and photographs of me from that time, I literally felt 10 or 15 years older then than I do now. So having this more relaxed lifestyle, not being beat up constantly,

not having to get up every day at 4.30 to get your 6 a.m. flight, not dealing with the stresses of what being a WWE superstar entails. I'd say that I feel so much younger now. I remember seeing CM Punk when we did the Ultimate Beastmaster show together and hadn't seen him for a few years at that point. And the first thing I said when I saw him was like, wow, you literally looked 10 years younger the last time I saw you. And he said, yeah, that's exactly how I feel.

And it's just the toll that that lifestyle takes on you is incredible. And especially when you are not enjoying it and not happy is one thing going through it when you're mentally good, but you're physically beat up. But when you're physically beat up and mentally beat up too, it's an awful thing to have to live. through and it's also an all-encompassing lifestyle where you don't get two weeks to go to be through on holiday and go spend some time with your mates or whatever it's no 365 you are with us every hour of every day you wake up you're doing phone calls promoting and then you're traveling and then you're doing this that and the other on tours and it never ends so it can be a rough

lifestyle if you're not enjoying it for sure it's funny that you mention how short these nights are of sleep for you guys because I sent you the picture of the first interview we did in 2014 and you texted me back like, oh, I must have had two hours of sleep that night. Yeah, I remember the drive over from the arena the night before that. And I remember looking at my watch and they were like, right, you've got me in the lobby at like 450 AM and I was looking at my watch. It was already 230 or something like that. And I was like, wow, this is going to be a really, really rough one.

And then obviously, you'd never know, right? I can't see my eyes there. My eyes look. I did have an amazing ability that after one or two hours of sleep, I could get through another day. Because you forget, like I would meet you guys at like 6, 7, 8 a.m. I do all the media rounds and stuff like that.

Then I'd get to the arena. I'd have a full day at the arena. Maybe 10 p.m. that night or 9.30 p.m. would be my wrestling match. Then I'd cool down, shower. Go to the, that was probably a Tuesday. So I'd go to the airport hotel, maybe sleep for three hours. I'd be up again at 4.30. to get my flight home to Tampa then at that point.

So it was, yeah, it's, it doesn't sound too bad when you, okay, it's just two days, but no, this is my life. This is always like this. It never ends. Like, and there's no light at the end of the tunnel. You've got a great balance now, though. You know, you're a leading man in films right now. You're doing commentary for NWA.

Maybe there's a situation where you step into the ring and do something in your commentary role with NWA that leads to some sort of story. Yeah, of what's just a bit of. on here. One of the things I'm most grateful for at the moment is the balance I have in my life where I get to spend time my girlfriend. I get to go on vacations. I get to, okay, cool, this film rolls come up. I'm going to do that. This cool, this cool, this cool, I'll go do that. I like that variety and I like the fact that I, if, you know, things, things don't sound good. You know, I'm not going to do. I'm just going to hang out with my girlfriend and go drink wine in Pasarobles, which I did a couple of weeks ago and enjoy life a bit more. So having that, it was great. It was great. But having that balance is very important to me at this point. And maybe when I was a younger man, I didn't think I needed that. But once you've had it, it's hard to kind of envision giving that up ever again. So I enjoy the variety of suddenly getting a email from an agent saying,

hey, these guys want to work with you on such and such, what do you think? And okay, cool. I wasn't planning to, but that sounds really good. And that's how I'm going to spend the next four weeks of my life as doing this thing. Or whatever it is. So, yeah. With I am vengeance, retaliation's out now. You've done all your press.

This is your 43rd interview. And thank you. 40 third and final. Wow. It's been long four weeks. So, but that now behind you and now it's just time to, you know, have everyone watch this thing. What's next? Well, what's next is I'm going to close my windows, close the door and make sure I don't

catch this virus, wearing a mask everywhere and all that stuff. So I don't know. I mean, in all honestly, like the rest of the entertainment world, it's almost impossible to predict right now. Wrestling-wise, I'm probably not going to be doing anything in that world for a while. unless I get a phone call from NWA and they've come up with some plan going forward. Acting-wise, there's nothing going on at the moment. I know there were a couple of weeks ago when we spoke. You mentioned they were starting to open up again now,

but I imagine things are closing down again soon too with all this virus spiking up. So I don't know. I can't travel back to the UK currently. If I travel back to the UK and see family, they make you go in quarantine for two weeks before you can even do anything. So it's pretty wild, but I'm fortunate in the, I'm not strong, stressing about paying my rent or my bills or anything like that. So I'm not in a position to complain about any of this stuff. I know there's a lot of people out there who have it worse than

I do. I'm just happy that my family and friends all seem very healthy and long may that continue and fingers crossed. They get this vaccine out soon and we can actually go back to do what we like doing. That's the plan. That is the hope. But congratulations on I am vengeance retaliation, which is available everywhere on video demand, a video on demand. I paid for it like a good friend. Good man. I wish I had a link to send you the company who distributes it here. I've asked them for some links to send people. They didn't send me any. We actually had a PR company who set up about 20 of my interviews. I believe they had links. So I need to put you in touch with them. Next time, give me a shout, I'll put you in touch with the PR company. I was okay paying the $6.99.

But here's the problem. The PR company will only allow you 20 minutes for an interview. So you wouldn't have got this full hour, you see. Yeah, we can't do that. everything. Well, when things get back to normal, now that we're living in the same city, we'll have to go out and have a beer together. Yeah, maybe we'll get you involved in Vengeance 3. I'm trying to pitch that Vengeance 3 is done on the beach in like Malibu or something like that. That would be an expectation for it. If so, we'll get you involved and try and get a roll in there somewhere. Maybe I'll beat you up. I don't know. Oh, my God. What an honor that would be. I will, now that I'm here, and I've only been here a few days, now that I'm here,

it's time for me to hit the ground running and start putting in the works so that when those calls come, either from you or from someone else, I'm actually ready. Good, good. I mean, in all honesty, it's fun. And one of the worst things you can do in acting is overthinking and overcomplicate everything. You know, I'm sure you've got your reel together and all that stuff. There's no, there's no real science to it. And a lot of it is, does the face fit when you walk in the room, the second you walk in,

sometimes they've decided yes or no. Right. If I add any advice, it's don't put too much pressure on yourself, which is easier said than done, because that's what I did for my entire wrestling career and I still do inacting to an extent. But the more natural, you can be and more relaxed you can be, the better it tends to work out. By the way, for people that are just listening to this on the podcast version, they are missing out on your beautiful quarantine beard that you have. I actually trimmed it about a week ago. It was getting too wild at one point and starting to tickle my,

lips a little and all that stuff and getting bits of food stuck in there. So it needed a little trim, but I quite like it like this now. That along with the hair. The hair, I'll show you the hair. The hair is, wow. Wow. Yeah, that hasn't been cut since I think January. So I had the option of shaving it at one point. I decided not to. I think I might have missed the window now because as soon as I shave it, they'll be, oh, okay, we're opening it up again. So, yeah. John Gold has a shaved head. Yeah, so too scared to go to the barbers at the moment. That's the problem. Well, actually, the barbers are closed again.

Yeah. Can't even get one if I wanted to. Well, congrats on everything. It's such a pleasure to catch up with you. And everybody should go check out I Am Vengeance, retaliation, video on demand. And also watch I Am Vengeance here in the U.S. on Netflix. Yeah, cool. Thank you very much for having me on the show.

It's been a while. I know we've been trying to set this up for probably six or seven months. we've been trying to arrange this. And finally, we had the, everything came together, the universe conspired, and here we are. And it's perfect timing, because we don't have to talk about a movie coming out. We can say the movie is out and people can go watch it right now. Thank you again.

This was so great and congrats to you and everything. My pleasure. It's great, having you here in L.A., and hopefully we'll cross past soon when this virus goes away and we can go out for a beer and get Rye back over too. Let's make it happen. All right, good deal. Well, there we go.

Check out the movie. Number one, because it's great. And number two, because Stu is great in it. I am vengeance, retaliation. You know, I'm looking forward to seeing the third and the fourth film since Stu said they've already written scripts for them. And you heard the man here. He said he just may have a role for me in the next one. So we need to make sure that this film is popular enough, does well enough, so that there is a third film so that

Stu and I can be in a film to get. How cool would that be? Oh! Take a screenshot. Let us know you're listening. Tag me. I'm at Chris Van Vleet. Tags Stu. On Twitter, he is at Stu Bennett. On Instagram, he is Stu Bennett's official. And I hope you love this one. He's such an easy guy to talk to. And it's so interesting hearing what his process is for movies, how that's so different from wrestling. And, you know, I'm thinking maybe we should make that road trip to Vegas. It's about a four-hour drive. But I'm thinking that we should make that workout video with,

stew and Ryback. It'll be me working out next to two giants. So, yeah, that'll be great to see that. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. And like I said at the top of the show, we've got a bunch of interviews on the way.

Muhammad Hassan, Daniel Puder, and Eric Young, along with a few little surprises that'll be peppered in. Make sure you subscribe so you don't. miss out. We'll see you soon. This is Brandon Kelly, the host of Blue Wire's new podcast, Golden Gold. From Lionel Messi to Marta to Pele, our show takes a deep dive into soccer superstars. From Zlatan Ibrahimovych's brash confidence with the play to back it up, to Megan Rapino's heroic outspokenness and World Cup flair. Each episode examines a personality of the world.

game. We'll dig into Maradona's Hand of God performance and subsequent downfall. The teenage trio at Dortmund that signal the next generation of superstars and that infamous headbut that slung Zinidine Zadan from glory.

Golden goal soccer stars and the moments that made them. Premiering this summer on Blue Wire. 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

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