My Mom's Basement - EPISODE 114 - THE AEW SPECTACULAR

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Robbie brings you the audio versions of his interviews with The Young Bucks, Colt Cabana, Excalibur, and Jerry Lynn from Jacksonville. 3Chi: Use code MMB at checkout to receive 5% off at 3Chi.com HelloFresh: Use code 12robbie at HelloFresh.com/12robbie for 12 FREE MEALS! Bearbottom Clothing: Use code BASEMENT at bearbottomclothing.com for FREE SHIPPING on your first orderYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. I did all of these interviews in Jacksonville last week. It's four of them, and I actually did five. The last one is with Jon Moxley, and you're gonna have to go to YouTube to watch that one. All of these interviews are available on YouTube now. Look up My Mom's Basement with Robbie Fox on there. Subscribe, like the videos, comment, do all that stuff for me if you can. But today on this podcast, you will be hearing interviews with the Young Bucks, Colt Cabana, Excalibur, and the one and only Jerry Lynn. Before we get into it, let me remind you once again about 3C and their Delta

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Once again, it's promo code MMB at 3chi.com. Let's get into the first of these four interviews with the Young Bucks. All right, welcome to my mom's basement, ladies and gentlemen. We are not in my mom's basement we are on location uh at daily place is it dailies or is it dailies place dailies place it's my first time here and seeing seeing the entire setup you guys have is amazing like something that you guys definitely i don't know if you're jaded to it yet but you should be proud of the entire setup it's kind of become i don't want to say jaded but like our second home i'm just so used to it like okay but yeah like we've set up camp here yeah this is a tv studio now basically it's crazy trailers

in the inner bowels you see the the setups the actual setup out there where the ring is looks like an awesome venue for wrestling like i look at that i'm like man this sold out would be so much cooler than the limited crowd hopefully we get that crowd back soon to put people in there a lot of people yeah and, and it was crazy. It was a pretty nuts environment. It's kind of depressing looking back at it. I think we, what did we do, three shows that sold out here?

I think so. And looking back at the clips and seeing it and then going to like our first show here without the audience, like what a huge difference. I think the closest we've gotten to the old days was Full Gear. The last pay-per-view.

We won the tag titles against FTR. Like I can feel feel it again and hear it like they were loud when we won like that was the same reaction i felt beforehand where we had packed houses we're getting there though we've we've made it work obviously how many are you guys putting in here at this point someone just told us the other day it was over 20 right or something 20 oh i think you're talking about how many shows we've done here no no no like the people yeah i want it was 15 percent for now i think it moved to 20 to 25 i want to say i know we have a thousand about a thousand for the next week all right we're getting there which is sunday yeah so that's a big pay-per-view it's revolution i'm looking forward to it a ton you guys got a match against chris

jericho and mjf yeah Just on the AEW business side, what is the biggest difficulty about putting on these pay-per-views? You know what's tough is because we're EVPs, having a match and trying to make sure the whole show is organized, that is hard. Let's say tonight we don't have a match, so it's easier for us to just focus on other things. But when we have to focus on a match and everything else,

that's when it gets tricky. It's funny. Like, we always talk about it. We don't complain, but we finally make it into our office where we have a few of the guys, like the Good Brothers changing this now. And they're like, how do you guys do this? Like, every time I see you, you're getting pulled into one different direction i'm like dude it's crazy and carl anderson's like can i just take a walk with you and exit this room just to see how fast

you get someone someone grabs you i was like yeah come with me so i literally opened the door it was he's like no way he's like how do you do it like dude it's it's difficult yeah it's one thing to have the pressure of having to have a match, but at the same time, like Nick just said, trying to make sure the whole show is smooth sailing, all the wrestlers are happy. It's a lot of work. It's been two years now, and I think we've got a hang of it.

So I feel like we're finally there. Everybody kind of knows what they're good at. But by the time we're flying home, all our energy is done. When I have to be a father on, usually, what is it, Fridays? I'm not very good at it. I just sit on my couch and I'm like, let's just watch TV all day, kids.

Friday, we're pretty free. So the match against Chris Jericho and MJF is an interesting one. MJF was a guy that, I trained to be a wrestler for a month. And in my month in wrestling school, I got whittled out real quick. MJF was in the school.

Oh, wow. There's very much a vibe of like, oh, everyone knew. Like, he's got something there. He's going to be something. And seeing him excel in AEW has been amazing. Because it's like, man, that's what everyone thought, you know, was going to happen. What do you guys think about him as a heel? Because I look at you guys, the original Bullet Club stuff, the Mount Rushmore stuff in PWG.

Great heel work. How do you look at MJ guys, the original Bullet Club stuff, the Mount Rushmore stuff in PWG, great heel work. How do you look at MJF, a young guy? Man, he's like this weird prodigy. He just somehow, like you just said, you just knew. As soon as you heard him talk, you go, this guy's going to get the gab. So before I'd even seen him work, I just heard him talk, and I said, oh, he's got something immediately. He just knows how to venture.

And he speaks with such confidence like a true like 10 15 year veteran would talk you know so like right away i was like not many people can talk like that guy so he's got that going for him and as long as he just keeps talking trash he'll always have a place on a wrestling card because wrestling needs people like that and wrestling needs good heels right a guy like mjf he doesn't want to be the cool heel and get the cheers he really truly wants the booze he'll make you hate he'll make you hate him and not a lot of wrestlers like doing that but when it's time to be a baby face he'll at that point he will know how to be one because he's such a good bad guy yeah i think

he he's going to be a main player for a long time in wrestling. He's like an old school throwback, you know, 80s type wrestling heel. And there's not a lot of them anymore. So he stands out now. Who do you guys see as someone that could have a breakout year like MJF had in 2021 on the AEW roster? There's so many guys on this roster now. I mean, we especially, we look at the tag team division, obviously. Yeah. Because we help handpick a lot of these teams and it's like i don't think people have truly seen how good santana or an ortiz can be they've had a lot of big matches and big moments

but i think they've got a big run in them they're one team immediately like private party this new hill thing they're doing that's bad party yeah right away i'm like these guys got something top flights another top flight to me you just know of course this is a classic babyface tag team yeah jurassic express i feel like without an audience it's hard to gauge who's over but those guys have always been over so if we had a packed house those guys would be getting big reactions especially with jungle boy's new theme song that really helps yeah like a pwg type of smart audience when they sing that song it's like for real you want to cheer for you want to root for that guy you know and he's our buddy but at

brandon cutler he's gotten so good and people don't realize it because he's only usually on dark yeah so i i feel like if we could get him on dynamite quite a few times he he would be someone to impress a lot of people so there's a lot of them so speaking of dark you guys got a new commentator on dark all white this was a shocking shocking signing formerly known as the big show i just kind of viewed him as a guy that would be in the wwe for the rest of his career he would retire there i thought the same thing so how did this come about like i mean you guys have some history with with the big show i do yeah you do yeah uh you know what's funny is uh so tony i want to say it was about a month ago maybe yeah maybe six weeks he uh he he wanted to

tell us something and he uh he gathered us up with kenny he's like hey uh what do you guys think of signing the big show we're like what it just came because it pretty much i didn't even know he's a free agent same here i had no clue i think he quietly became a free agent recently yeah right uh and our reaction was like really i thought he would be a lifetime wb guy he's a well he wants to come play so we're like let's do it and uh so that was pretty much how it all went uh it's crazy uh we just uh saw him right now. Re-introduced ourselves, because I don't think he even remembers choke slamming. Right. We'll have to show him the clip.

He may remember, because that got a lot of play back in the day, because I got up so high for him. Yeah, yeah. Wasn't it in his entrance video or something? It must have been, yeah. I think it was. It got a lot of TV time.

Maybe if he sees that bump, he'll go, you were the guy who took that bump. And we've gotten a lot of BTE bits out of it. if he sees that bump you were the guy who took that bump and like i've gotten like we've gotten a lot of btb bits out right we've had fun with it so i'll have to he's gonna have to be on btb soon and uh we were just talking to machine gun and gallows and they're just putting them over big time he's like this guy's a sweetheart and then he walked into our room right after that and we said hello And we kind of had to run away from him. He was a meanie. Oh, sorry. So he probably thinks we ditched him.

He thinks we're playfamilies. As soon as he opens the door, he goes, oh, so this is where the meanie men guys go, huh? He's just already driven. Talking to me, of all people. Like, yikes. God, I'm going to get a knuckle sandwich from that guy later. Tony Khan, you just mentioned. He's just won Promoter of the Year in the Wrestling Observer Newsletters.

Getting a lot of press for that. You guys must be proud of him for that, you just mentioned. He's just won Promoter of the Year in the Wrestling Observer Newsletters, getting a lot of press for that. You guys must be proud of him for that, working with him. Talk about what he's been like as a promoter, because nobody knew in the beginning what this guy's going to be like. He's coming from football. He's a massive wrestling fan. Nobody knows how the fan dynamic would blend in. How has the working relationship been with Tony over the past few years?

Right away, we knew he was a wrestling genius. I remember the first time we met him, he was giving us dates of shows that we had done. Christopher Daniels was with us, and he was like, CD, you hurt your neck on Nitro on this date. And we were like, he was just spitting out facts. We were like, how in the world does his brain work like this? But it does, and it's always been that way.

So right away we knew, all right, this guy, he knows what he's talking about. He's a wrestling fan, and this is something that he's obviously very, very passionate about. So as soon as we knew he was very passionate, we were like, we have to do this, and he's going to make it work because he loves this so much. That's one thing. Sometimes you'll work for a wrestling promoter and you're like, why is this guy a wrestling promoter? He doesn't even like wrestling.

That's the opposite of Tony. He loves this more than anybody. This is his baby. I think early on, two years ago you never even heard the name Tony Khan. I'd never had certainly. It's funny because I fast forward two years later people love him. He's one of these names that you hear now.

And in the public, it's all positive. So I'm proud of what's happened in two years from just picking up the phone and having a conversation with this guy. So now he's running this. We were just talking earlier about Daly's place. Look at this place. This is crazy. And it's not even his only thing.

He's got the Jaguars. He's got full. We were talking about wearing multiple hats. It's crazy. I don't know even his only thing. Like he's got the Jaguars. He's got full of me. It's, we were talking about, it's crazy. I don't know how he does it. I don't know if he ever sleeps. Like when does he sleep?

And he's the most energetic man. I don't think you've met him yet. I haven't energetic man. You'll ever meet in your entire life. Like he just, he's constant. He doesn't run out of energy. Yeah.

Yeah. So you guys are also involved in the booking process a ton as well. Where do you take the most inspiration as far as that goes is it stuff that you think here's stuff i've learned throughout my career in wrestling or is it your favorite stuff back in the day is it the stuff that you've seen modern where do you take the booking inspiration man for me i try to think outside of wrestling because i feel like so much has been done in wrestling so like i'll just kind of draw my inspiration from movies television television series, stuff like that. I try to think outside of the box.

I don't even think about what the other companies are doing or have done. Maybe, like, an idea that we've done, you know, back in the 80s that worked. It's like, hey, maybe we can bring that to TV and do it there. Yeah, we've done that. We've done that. With, like, stuff that we've done on TV, it was, I don't know, I. I don't know of a good example to bring up. I'm trying to think. But we've brought something that worked at PWG and brought it to here.

And it worked. And it worked on a bigger scale. So that helps. The experience helps. Like in Tony, he thinks old school and things that have happened in the past and trying to reinvent them. And I think Cody Cody with his dad, he thinks the same way. And like me, Nick and Kenny are always thinking about, Hey, let's do something new that's never been done. So it's a nice blend.

So it's a nice blend of all the styles. So it's like, that's why when you watch the show, you go, you can almost be like, Oh, I bet this was a Cody segment. Yeah. I bet this was a buck segment. I think all flavors create one nice little thing though like it's a recipe for a nice meal that's a good point yeah do you guys have a favorite moment in aew that you guys weren't involved in man oh man we sound so statistical i'm just thinking yeah because yeah because as soon as you're thinking of last year's revolution like that that or like the stadium stampede.

I'm trying to think of something that I'm not involved. You know what was special? I'll always remember this was Moxley's debut. Oh, that was great. That was something we weren't aware of. Yeah. And just, God, I miss a packed house. Just the reaction.

Like watching that back and you go, oh my God, that's how a crowd sounds. And the fan videos, people shaking. Like, oh my God, losing their minds. Stuff like that. The first episode of Dynamite, just listening to Cody's music hit and the arena just erupting

and just so ready for something new on television. One thing for me that I wasn't involved in directly, but like we helped get Orange Cassie a job here. And I just knew that it was going to work. And a lot of people didn't think so. And the moment the lights turned on and he was standing in the ring and the place erupted, it was like validation for me. Cause I knew, and I had to,

I had to convince a lot of naysayers about that. And when it worked, I said, I see, you see. I told you. It's like just hearing that and seeing what he's become in the last 16 months or whatever, it's been incredible. But I can say that about everybody. I can say that about Luchasaurus. When Trent told us, hey, you should check this guy out.

And we're like, okay. And we put him in that battle royal. And by the end of the battle royal, everybody's chaining Luchasaurus. Moments like that, private party really coming in their own, Darby getting over organically. Stuff like that. Watching things happen over time,

like week to week to week with the power of television and seeing these characters kind of blow up. It's like, wow, that's really cool. I remember Darby being under an Evolve contract and I saw a clip of him and I sent it to Tony, you, Kenny, and Cody. I go, we have to sign this guy. This guy's too good.

And it was like just one of his signature spots. It was him doing that little, like, tackle three-quarter. That's right. I was like, we have to sign this guy. It was going to be like Brian Cates throwing him. He used to trade those clips to Kenny in Japan. I go, look at what this kid's doing. He's crazy.

It's crazy to think that that was just like, what, three years ago? Yeah. And then now, look at him.

He's a big star. You know, another fun moment too was Sting. I was going to ask about Sting. Is that like, how is that not surreal

for you guys, that Sting in your company now? I'll never forget him just walking by because it was a very really great kept secret. Nobody knew about it,

just a few of us did. So when he walked by everybody everybody's just like what's going on here and like it was a moment where everyone kind of as a company came together again as a team it felt like we were all together watching being fans again yeah i love the way that sting is being used in the company too like the way that he's helping darby and getting darby over in that way is brilliant all right final question for you guys what is your biggest hope for aew in 2021 Like the way that he's helping Darby and getting Darby over in that way is brilliant. All right. Final question for you guys. What is your biggest hope for AEW in 2021?

I know mine right out of the gate. What a packed house. A packed house by the end of the year. If we can do it in a safe manner, of course, that would be number one. Yeah. Let's ramp those vaccines up. Let's get a packed house. You know, just to continue to be fresh and be the alternative to the wrestling world

and just to try to have fun. That's something that I've learned in the last year is just to try to have fun because, God, life is so short. So you have to try to enjoy every moment because you just never know when it's the end of it. So that's what i try to do every day is try to enjoy everything and and to keep winning the ratings on wednesday night hell yeah yeah hopefully maybe the only people on wednesday night soon yeah yeah we'll see about that yeah all right guys aew revolution going down this sunday i can't wait this tag match is going to be off the charts crazy and

you've got the exploding barbed wire death match. I mean, the entire card, top to bottom. Got a match that you guys are looking forward to the most? You just named it. That one, yeah. It's like FMW all over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't wait.

I saw them setting up the barbed wire and testing all the stuff. Explosives. They're crazy. Terrifying. I was going to say, do you get, like, scared for Kenny Washington? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's scary. It's going to be insane. Very loud. for candy washing? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's scary.

It's going to be insane. Very loud. All right, guys. Check out the pay-per-view this weekend. Young Bucks, thank you. All right. Thank you to Matt and Nick Jackson for joining me there. That was a great interview.

I've known those guys for such a long time now, so it's always good getting to sit down and chat with them, especially in person now in these weird COVID times, right? We all got tested. It was a safe interview, but it was just nice. Now, before we get into the next part of our podcast with Colt Cabana, let me tell you guys about HelloFresh. I've told you about them before, but I'm still using them, still supporting the pod. Basically, they'll deliver you a package with pre-measured ingredients, these amazing recipes right to your door,

and then you can make them. It's very easy. It's cooking made easy, fun. It's affordable. That's why it's America's number one meal kit. They cut out that stressful meal planning and grocery store trips so you can enjoy cooking and get dinner on the table in 30 minutes or less. With 25 plus recipes to choose from each week, there's something for everyone to enjoy. All recipes are designed and tested by professional chefs and nutritional experts to ensure deliciousness and simplicity. And over four out of five HelloFresh customers say HelloFresh helps them lead a healthier lifestyle with delicious, low-calorie, carb-smart, and vegetarian options available each week. I love cooking this stuff. It makes cooking easy for someone like me who

knows nothing about cooking. The recipes are very easy to follow. It's like following a Lego instructional book. It's that easy. And with all the recipes, it's even good for someone like me who has a bit of a weird stomach. I can't eat everything. Guess what? They got stuff for me too. So they'll have stuff for you, I promise. Go to hellofresh.com right now slash 12 Robbie. That's 12, 1, 2, R-O-B-B-I-E. And then use the code 12 Robbie for 12 free meals, including free shipping. 12 free meals. That's crazy. That's such a great deal. Hellofresh.com slash 12 Robbie, and then use the code 12 Robbie. That's 12 free meals and free shipping. All right, on to the next interview with Colt Cabana. All right, welcome to my mom's basement, ladies and gentlemen. We are not in my mom's basement.

We are on location. You know, we are doing a wrestling interview. Keep the K-Fable alive! I know, he is wrong. This is my mom's basement, yeah. I can't believe you bought this AEW draping in the basement. Solely for this, and I can't believe you disrespected the interview by not wearing an AEW shirt. Oh in the basement. Solely for this, and I can't believe you disrespected the interview by not wearing an AEW shirt.

Oh, the worst. I heard bar stool, and I was like, okay, sports. But even then, I should wear a Jacksonville something, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, Tony. Yeah. Tony Khan owns a Jaguar. So we've got AEW Revolution going down this weekend.

We're airing the interview after. So it already went down, but it hasn't gone down yet. And it's like, I can't believe I won the championship and I'm the captain of AEW This is pretty well I he walked out during the barbed wire deathmatch both him works already picked it up and in Colt Cabana's the new champ No one fuck it and that's why I'm surprised you didn't bring the title here. They're doing the plate for you, right? Yeah, your name on it. Yeah, so Colt. I've been a fan of yours for a very very long time. I remember Yeah, I've actually designed shirts for you back when? You're putting your name on it. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So, Colt, I've been a fan of yours for a very, very long time. I remember. Yeah, I've actually designed shirts for

you back when I was in high school. Your podcast, The Art of Wrestling, was like my introduction to independent wrestling entirely. All these names that I had never heard of, going back to even, I think about the Pac episode all the time, because he talks about his anxieties and stuff, and as, oh my God, the most anxious kid in the world, I was like, shit, this is like, you know, I sort of, I listened to that and I was like, man, I could be a wrestler. If he could do it, I could do it. I went to wrestling school with Pat Buck.

I did not last. But going back to the art of wrestling, being the, I want to say, original do-it-yourself independent wrestler in merchandising, in the one-hour tea stuff, when you're here at AEW now, does it feel so full circle for you yeah and it is it's a different time in my career so when I started that you know I was uh it's interesting it was 10 years

ago so you know I was 30 years old fired from WWE thought that wrestling didn't want a part of me but I wanted to be a part of wrestling and I did what I had to do that was in my entrepreneurial spirits. And like, I just put it all forward. And now it's kind of odd because, you know, all of that isn't really asked of me. And I see like a younger generation, like Max Caster is like someone who just like pops out at me and I watch him do and I've watched watched him for years do, do, do the, you know, the rap, do the raps, you know, the freestyles and the rapping and making his own thing. And even, you know, this week, I know this is airing later, but you know, he put out a diss track on 10 and it's just like, I see a little bit of me, what I would have done if I was him in him. And some of

the, and some of the other people, like even Sammy Guevara and his blog and you and you look at all of and then you see fuego and everybody jumping in kind of the same way i had these cast of characters or people that would bring to to the spotlight like a pack you know at that point who maybe no one really knew his story you know a lot a lot of us get to spotlight everybody and essentially aw is a bigger picture of all of that because the bucks you know in their book they're you know they even said like they've learned from the ways that i kind of put forward and essentially the young bucks are like we want to spotlight our friends we want to spotlight cole cuban we want to spotlight kenny omega we want to spotlight all of these people and that's

aew is just a giant spotlight so it is it does seem full circle and it seems like what i did was correct and it worked and maybe not somewhere else in different you know style of wrestling but finally tony along with evps they were like we don't have to have that style of wrestling and now here's a place where we realize that that diy idea of working works and you can see right now it's tested where did that entrepreneurial spirit come from me from for you in the first place yeah well i i well first of all i was fighting to be a wrestler like i said i it felt like wrestling was kicking me out and i didn't want to be kicked out i wanted to do that for a job and yes i have like a business marketing degree but like what i learned

was i learned from the road. You know, I didn't learn it from a classroom and I don't want to knock college or university or even education. I believe in education. It's funny. We just had Jon Moxley in here and he's like, school sucks. Don't go to school.

I mean, I'm essentially saying that, you know, if you know what you want to do and you, and it doesn't have to be school, you know, like however you get educated and even now, like education is great to go on YouTube, you know, doing a Twitch channel now. Like, I'm going and educating myself on how to do it myself. So education is great if you know what you want to do. At that time, I didn't know I wanted to be a business person. I didn't want to.

I wanted to be a pro wrestler. That's all I wanted to be. And it's funny, years later, it's like, oh, I guess I am using that for the business of Colt Cabana. But it was just to scrap and to have a job and to make money and to do it as a wrestler. I didn't want to do it in any other way. Sure, my father was a businessman, a salesman. And I had a lot. And, you know, my brother and i both have very weird jobs where we do like these independent creative arts jobs but we also have to hustle a little bit my brother's an animator he's a director on family guy for 15 years yeah yeah whoa like we both have these weird

jobs from a suburban family that you know isn't really normal um both such cool jobs very cool job yeah he's a drawer and i'm a wrestler and like that's awesome yeah and if you if you're a parent done the podcast before my brother no he's never been fascinated in a conversation i'm a huge family guy fan oh is that right yeah i've had alex sulkin he's a writer on that show this show many times yeah i mean he's he i've he tried to there was a wrestling episode that he tried to sneak me onto. Really? But it was unsuccessful.

Yeah, but, so, you know, I think there's something coming from how hard my dad worked and the values that my parents instilled in me. But again, it was just scrapping to try to be in wrestling. It's so interesting that you say that to me because I look at it, like you just said in the Bucks book. They talk about following your blueprint. And I feel like so many people followed your blueprint,

even just looking at pro wrestling tees, like what you sort of started there and what you opened up to the independent wrestling world. Do you look at that and do you realize kind of the footprint that you've left on the independent wrestling business? It's a huge one. So I have this conversation with the Bucks a lot,

and this isn't necessarily for, I guess, what myself and Ryan Barkin did with Pro Wrestling Tees, but a lot of it is like the ones who know and appreciate it, like appreciate it, but so many people don't know the underlying things that have happened. And so many independent wrestlers, like when they're at the merchandise table, don't may not even know who i am you

know but and i'm not searching for credit it's it's fun to see that like it's been instilled in pro wrestling so much yeah and i even thought that the other day when someone was talking about i think lance archer and phoenix did a spanish, the wrestling move. And I was just like, I don't think a lot of people know about the SATs, the Spanish announce team who were a tag team in the early 2000s, Jose and Joel Maximo, but we know the Spanish fly. So they've left their imprint on wrestling, though maybe people won't know them. So if it is in 50 years of, you know,

it's so known that the wrestlers do their own shirts or work in the merchandise table and they won't know it's Colt Cabana but I know I have some kind of imprint in wrestling so it's fun. Alright, now I'm going to ask about a mutual friend of ours. I'm going to ask you for, I don't know, maybe your funniest story involving him. It's always hard. It's Mr. Grado.

I mean, Grado is one of my favorite people. It's been a while since I've talked to him. Is he a mutual friend of yours? Sort of, yeah. I used to design some stuff for him as well. And then he just got my Voxer one day and he started sending me Voxes at four in the morning. If you don't know, it's like a walkie-talkie app. A very wrestling community thing. And he would just, you know, Robbie Fox, it's yourself.

Which is funny because you guys probably have a very parallel story. Because he was obsessed with wrestling as a kid and bugging all the wrestlers. And like, I don't know if you own up to it or not. I do. You do. Okay. Which is great because. I'm definitely sending way too many emails to wrestlers, just like I was sending way too many emails to people at Barstool back then.

Yeah. Yeah. But I think it's once you've established yourself in something, it's fun to go back and own it. Same with me where it's like, I hid that I punched Hawk at WrestleMania 13. So I hid it's once you've established yourself in something, it's fun to go back and own it. Same with me where it's like, I hid that I punched Hawk at WrestleMania 13. So I hid it. But once I was established in the community, it's like, to me, it's fun now.

Of course. So Grado, yeah, he's... His energy... One of the funniest people I've ever talked to. Yeah, his energy and charisma, it's real. And that's why he's become a star. He became a star in wrestling, and now he's a star in Scotland. I've met people've met people from scotland and now my first question is always

like do you know grado and they're like of course he's friends with everyone first of all i don't know if there's stories i can tell on here that are i mean i know it's barstool but i i don't know if those are even possible but um well one just came out matthew posted one on bachamania which was a great one where that those five-star wrestling shows were something else and i think people wanted to do like a podcast on the history of the five-star wrestling shows because they were something else but for me amazing an american being flown over like every every other week over to scott over to england or the whole uk and yeah grado and i were there to save rvd and rvd had no clue who i mean he might have known who i was and he had definitely no clue who grado was

so we save rob van dam and then he starts clearing house and of course he just super kicks art grado because he's just some random guy in the ring uh and um i know people were looking at my i did a real reaction because first of all to me there was even though it was on television at the time it just seemed like there was no pressure so i just wanted to be me and i feel you are the best performer when you are just you and i'm like rob we're here saving you buddy like i feel i wanted to add to the eventual matthew post yeah i feel i did exactly almost became a meme in that moment yeah it sort of works for rob van damme stoner character though sure you didn't even know maybe yeah you could definitely retcon it in and be not maybe he definitely he definitely did it um so talking about another independent wrestler that

i spoke to earlier today for the first time ever and not just an independent wrestler he's a legend of the business but jerry lynn the guy who spent a lot of his career on the independents most of his career do you look at him as a coach now in aew do you work with him at all well what's fun for me is i don't know if you know i'm i'm both a coach and a wrestler for aew oh yeah so i'm sorry for not knowing no it's okay so i i when he's he hasn't been my coach many times but we'll also we'll sit back and kind of give notes together as coaches yeah and something that was very cool jerry lim 30 years in the industry he was watching me give notes to the wrestlers so i did a match they all come back

and i was like hey i'd like to see this and i i like to see that and he took me back and and i was like oh jerry you have anything to add he's like no i was just listening and then once the wrestlers left he was uh he was like i didn't even think about that that was a great note and i was like really and he's like yeah like i like i just like to hear from everyone i like you know i'm always learning he's like well i just learned i wouldn't have thought of to do that in that situation and so um to hear a guy like jerry lynn be able to step back and say i'm still learning at 30 35 years in wrestling or whatever um is pretty cool and i think it's great that we have coaches like that that are chill you know that uh and i've had wrestlers after yeah i've had wrestlers afterwards come up to me and just be like that was such a i i wasn't scared to come back and get notes from you or get critique like and

and i'm because i've been in that situation i'm not looking to yell at anybody i just you know i want to nurture and make sure everyone becomes the best wrestler they are that they can be and jerry lynn is very much like that and so i love working around jerry and it's always a pleasure and like you said you know i as someone who did the independence for so long, I romanticize the, first of all, Jerry Lynn was one of the first wrestling stars I ever wrestled in 2000. In 2000, I think, like being an independent wrestler, coming back off ECW and going to WWE in between, I wrestled him a couple of times in an honor and a pleasure. But I think of like the eddie sharky years

from minnesota 93 jerry win with like blue and yellow yeah it's got the bullets varsity jacket yeah yeah and you look back and you go and you see he's doing like awa and wwf jobs and then you think about his story how he's like doing these jobs and he got over to michinoku he's doing smaller japanese shows and he's making friends and And then somehow that connects him to a WCW lightweight. It's just like that part of the wrestling is what I love. And like hearing those tales and then being able to talk to Jerry and hearing the stories. He's one of those guys that I feel like never got like the do he deserved in wrestling. So I'm just trying to make everyone a Jerry Lin mark at this point.

There's so many. All of us don't. You know, there's. Yeah. Listen, there's the top guys and the top guys and then there's right there's thousands of people who have been able to make a living and i think if we can just respect like if we realize how hard it is to make a living for 20 25 years if you're not a top guy it's like how do you even of course you know i hope people like go like Cabana never really even got a TV run.

He's made a living at wrestling for 22 years. I hope it snaps with people. And it's like, Oh, Oh, that makes sense. Frankie Kazarian is another guy. Like he's at a couple,

you know, where they, I don't know if they put the belt on him in TNA. I don't even remember at this point. I think tag titles. Yeah. I don't know if they put the actual title. He's another guy.

It's like, you have to think about why and how they've been around and made good livings for so long. Christopher Daniels, right? Of course. Of course. Of course. What do you find most, I don't know what's the word here,

not pleasurable, that makes it sound weird, about coaching? What do you get the most out of coaching? Yeah. Well, I like to think that I'm a good coach because, because I, yeah, because I've had bad coaches and I think, uh, I think leadership is so important and it's, you know, people really don't coach how to coach. And I think you have to take the experiences and it goes two ways. It's like either you get drilled so hard that then you become that asshole who was telling you, because's what you know and you feel it was done to you or you say to yourself, I've had some really bad coaches and I don't like the idea that i can help nurture and and bring

people up and bring wrestlers up and say like yeah like maybe i didn't like the way you did this um but why don't we explore or do something else and and almost uh nurturing um confidence because you need as a wrestler you need to just like, it's art. It's subjective. It's not objective. So you need to be able to do everything and figure it out. And if coaches narrow people down and don't let wrestlers figure anything out, wrestlers will never become the stars that they become. We look at the top guys and it's just like they became that because they were able to figure out who they were. So I like that idea a lot.

And I we started this earlier talking about like the business of wrestling. Like my I have a business mind. So I my mind is very like puzzle puzzle attic. Yeah. Does that make sense? I sort of I feel like I understand what you're going for. You're trying to fill in the blanks. Like if we do this and this.

Yes. This could happen. Yeah. So it's mathematic and very puzzly for me it's how i look at everything so i love the idea of like structure of matches and why and structure of character and i like dissecting the art of it i really do so do you see yourself being a coach long you know for a long time in the future do you you know i want to do everything do everything. People know that I can commentate. People know that I can podcast.

I don't know if you had one passion where you're like, man, right now I'm feeling like in 10 years this is the only thing I'm going to be doing. Or do you like the Renaissance? You know I like it. The way my career has been structured, I feel that's how it's going to be. There's always that little jealousy of Jericho

because he's just like, I want to be a rock band. I want to be a podcast. I want to be for like there's always like that little jealousy of like jericho because he's just like i want to be a rock band i want to be a podcast i want to be a wrestler i want to be a movie star and then he does it all at the highest level it's like oh man like i i want to be a coach i want to you know i want to do everything i just it's almost like i i don't want to like sink myself into one thing because that's what happened and you know i've said that it's like i sunk my whole life into one thing i got fired and it's And you know I've said that. It's like I sunk my whole life into one thing. I got fired, and it's like, oh, I'm screwed. So I've always had all these buckets and baskets.

So if one goes down, I have other stuff to do. All right, final question for you. What is your biggest hope for AEW in 2021? I've been asking everyone this. A lot of people are saying we want the live crowds back, obviously. Yeah. So what I've concluded with my own self-thought process of all of this is what I love about wrestling is nostalgia and performance.

Like, those are the two things I love about wrestling. And the nostalgia here is great. Jake the Snake's around. Sting, all of a sudden. Sting's around, yeah. I love the way I touched on this a little bit with Moxley, but, like, the way that they're being used, these talent in AEW. It's not like in WWE where sometimes,

and I don't want to just throw shots here, but they'll bring in the veterans and they strap them to the title right away and their main event to wrestle them. And everyone's like, what the hell? We wanted the younger guys that we were invested in. AEW is using the older guys to get the younger guys over. Yeah, I mean, Tony's doing a great job he

won the observer booker of the year for a reason the fans are really enjoying his booking and so you know for that reason it's just like I want to say like what do I hope I hope it just we all continue moving forward and it just keeps on growing um and yeah of course I want the fans back because the other side of that is performance. I love performing in front of a crowd and you realize that you miss it so much. I mean, I get a little bit of it from doing it in front of nobody or the minimal amount of people, but I just love the packed amount of people.

So what I hope for AEW, I hope the Monday and Tuesday shows will now grow on YouTube. I hope Dynam Monday and Tuesday shows will now grow on YouTube. I hope Dynamite gets bigger. And I hope I can help elevate it whichever way I can, which a little selfishly wants to be wrestling-wise, but also coaching-wise too, of course. All right. Thank you, Colt. This was awesome.

Good job. Thank you to Colt for joining the show. That was another fun one. Before we get into the next two interviews with Excalibur and Jerry Lynn, let me tell you guys about Bare Bottom Clothing. I love this new brand. This is, I don't know if they're a new brand, but they're new to the podcast. And they sent me some stuff.

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Excalibur and Jerry Lynn hello and welcome back to my mom's basement ladies and gentlemen we are on location we are down in Jacksonville and I'm here with Excalibur one of my favorite commentators in the wrestling business going back a long time, going back since I got into PWG, God, 2011 I think I got into it. So this is a long time coming. I'm glad that you showed up in an Oasis shirt because, oh my God, I'm such an Oasis fan. Let me ask you right away.

Are you definitely maybe over What's the Story guy? I didn't expect this interview to get off to such a tough start. I think actually What's tough start. I think actually, what's the story? I think. It's tough. Yeah. Slide away on Definitely Maybe and Rock and Roll Star and Columbia. It's a Sophie's choice.

It is, yeah. You could say a Noel and Liam's choice. Yeah. You looking forward to Revolution? I mean, this is airing after the pay-per-view, but we are taping it before, so. What a great event it was. I hope everybody orders the replay available on pay-per-view and Fight TV.

Yes, totally, totally looking forward to it. I think every time AEW's had a pay-per-view, we over-deliver. Yeah. And so I didn't expect Revolution to be nothing nothing short of that i mean it's just like the incredible amount of talent that that we've accumulated and uh it's almost impossible i mean you can you could pick any any two people at random and pit them against each other yeah you know you have a great matchup so yeah i think you know now with the revolution being the culmination of so many different arcs

I think it's going to be I think it's going to be awesome and I'm personally looking forward to every single match on the card for different reasons. Now that you're doing live TV on a weekly basis and you've got the pay-per-views a couple times a year, what is the biggest difference

as a commentator in calling each? Do you do a lot more prep for pay-per-views? Is it more prep for TV? What are the differences? views a couple times a year what is the biggest difference as a commentator in between in calling each do you do a lot more prep for pay-per-views is it more prep for tv what are the differences um i try to do the the same amount of prep but you know i mean i try to treat them with equal importance i think the the toughest thing for me is calling Dark, actually, because a lot of times the matches for Dark, we don't know that until the afternoon of the show. Whereas for Dynamite, typically we'll know things a week in advance,

maybe a couple weeks in advance. And so I can start jotting down notes, pulling things together. Whereas Dark, sometimes it'll be, you know, local talent or an indie talent that I'm not that familiar with times, you know, 15 matches. And so that's prepping for that on a show day is tough. And so I try to cram in as much as I possibly can, but it's tough to give the same level of attention to that

as it is to Dynamite or pay-per-views. You know, pay-per-views, we've known what the matches are for a month. I've been working often on my notes and stuff like that for a while. But yeah, so I mean, it's tough, but I think the good thing is with Elevation coming up, then the load will kind of get split in half and I'll be able to prep a little more how I like to. Totally.

And you just mentioned on AEW Dark, you're bringing in indie talent all the time. AEW is not you personally, I guess. But I would love to take it back to the start with PWG because I'm such a PWG fan and it's a company that you were one of the founders of. Did you meet SuperDragon on a wrestling video game forum? Is that correct? Yes, yeah. SuperDragon and I actually ran a, or co-ran a video game,

wrestling video game site in 1996, you know, the very early days of the internet. And SuperDragon would, at the time, like he emailed us asking a question and it was like, hey, I'm a wrestler in California. And then we just started talking over email and became friends through that. At that point, when you're starting to talk to him, starting to become friends, do you want to be a wrestler?

Is that your dream? I had been a, I had done backyard stuff, but I never thought it was a viable profession. And, you know, so it was something that I wanted to try, but not something that I ever, because, you know, I'm not the most athletic guy in the world, so I didn't think that it was necessarily, I was going to be main eventing one day,

but I definitely wanted to try it, and so that's how I ended up moving to California to try to pursue that. So you moved to California. You move in with Super Dragon, right, for a little bit. You train. Do you train under him? Does he teach you how to wrestle or no well so there was uh there was a couple guys it was um it was revolution pro was the school in california the original revolution pro not the uk one yeah and uh american wild child this guy ron rivera he ran it he was

friends with conan and so we had um you know we had access to a lot of the luchadores that would uh you know if they had a show in Tijuana maybe they would come up to Anaheim like Juventude uh yeah would come up and and so uh yeah but I mean I primarily worked with Super Dragon but there was you know a few a few other guys that were really you know influential and you know more experienced guys but looking back on it now, they were more experienced because they had been wrestling for two years and I had been wrestling for zero years. Whereas, you know, now I've been around the business for 20 plus. And so it just, it seems so funny to say that.

What was the inspiration behind starting PWG? We had had some bad experiences on the ind on the Indies with, with promoters just taking advantage of people. There was one show where it was a 9-11 benefit show and the promoter left at intermission with the, uh, the entire, uh, gate, you know, the charitable donation. And so everybody, everybody was working the show for free. The fans had already paid for it. And so when we realized that he was gone, we just all agreed to go out and, you know, do the second half of the show because the fans had already paid for it and so when we realized that he was gone we just all agreed to go out and you know do the second half of the show because the fans

had already paid we had already agreed to work for free and so uh but you know there was it was experiences like that where we were just like well why you know why break our backs for somebody else when you know we can we can do something our way and you know kind of put on shows in a way that we would like to see. And so that was kind of the impetus for PWG. I co-founded it with five other guys. And so each person had a different vision of what pro wrestling could and should be. And so it was interesting.

And over time the the number narrowed down to just kind of uh dragon and myself with dragon just kind of being in charge of of most everything and me just kind of clinging on for the ride and when you're looking at all that the whole pwg journey in hindsight was there a moment or a match where you look at and you said man that took us to the next level or was was it kind of from the start, things all clicked with the company? Because we look at it now, obviously, it's like the premier super indie where everyone knows you're buying a PWG DVD. You're definitely going to get some amazing match of the year quality matches on it. Was it like that from the start?

Not from the start. I mean, I think in the early years, we were just kind of finding our way and, you know, deciding what what the shows would look like. But I think it was Battle of Los Angeles in 2006, which had the it was the first show that the Dragon Gate guys came over from from Japan. And, you know, we kind of looked around at it was like a who's who of the american indies and these dragon gate guys there um and i think we just kind of like we're like oh wow we've got something here and then from there on i think there was a steady upward progression and you know right around the time that you became a fan in 2011 you know that was really like the the heyday for steen and generico and those guys and and those were you know really really pivotal matches for us that then would set the stage for

the the next generation of guys that would come in around like 20 2014 2015 and then those guys would set the stage for the guys that came around like 2018 2019 and so you so, you know, it was interesting how there's all these different eras. And, you know, none of it was intentional, but it just, you know, things happened. The guys would get signed. The guys would, you know, become unavailable. And so we'd have to go in a different direction, bringing more guys. Yeah, that's so cool for me to hear.

I was just such a big fan of the company, like the beginning days to where it got to where it is now. Do you recall, I mean, there's the famous Bryan Danielson versus Claudio match where the headlock match. They famously both told the story that Super Dragon was apparently livid with them after this match. Do you recall that?

So, I don't actually know if I was in the building for that one. I think I might have called that one in post. The match that... I love the match. If people haven't seen it, it's literally... They hold a headlock for 10 minutes. 10 minutes.

Just a headlock. And by the time that they get out of it, the crowd, you know, the pop of... It's just like, it's such a weird, unique match. It feels like if you're watching movies and you watch a weird art movie, but you're like, eh, they kind of nailed what they were going for yeah well so the one i do remember being there for was the brian danielson versus kenny omega match where um everybody i

think was expecting you know this just hard-hitting fast-paced match of the year like you know something like i mean literally two of the top wrestlers in the entire world i mean almost in any era of their careers yeah and about six minutes in kenny omega says stop what's your name and they do this whole john jacob jingleheimer schmidt routine and they start dancing and do-si-do-ing around the ring. And I'm on commentary for this. And I'm just like, what the hell is going on? And, you know, the crowd enjoyed it. And the crowd was very happy. But it wasn't the match that I think anybody was expecting.

And so there was a lot of conversations around that. But, you know, I mean... Were you trying to hold back your confusion on commentary? Yes. Every reaction of mine was completely legitimate in that. And so that's the great thing about pro wrestling and pro wrestling guerrilla in general is that it was a place for guys to experiment and it was a place for guys to kind of get these, do these more, I mean like you said, art movie or concept

style matches out of their system. And so it was a great breeding ground for talent. I mean, you have some of the best wrestling minds in the business all, you know, fighting to get their viewpoint and their perspective on wrestling across in front of, you know, one of the hottest crowds anywhere in the world. Yeah, absolutely. So you won, what was it, television announcer of the year this year in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Congratulations on that. Thank you very much. I want to ask you, when you started doing commentary, was it just as, hey, we need someone to do commentary so I could step up and do it?

Or when did you start looking at that as like a passion or something that, hey, this is going to define like a lot of my career going forward? It was by necessity at first. It was that we needed to put out dvds or you know i think our first show actually came out on vhs as well get out of here and so that's i mean what a collector's item that would be the first pw pwg show on vhs i want that now in my collection somewhere i need that if you have it i'll buy it off you

um and so so yeah it was it was just by necessity and it was you know a lot of us are just joking around and um yeah like the commentary style is you know obviously so laid back you're cursing on commentary you got wrestlers stepping up to the booth with you there's so many moments i look back at some of my favorite moments in the company's history are just the moments where you and kevin steen were laughing so hard you're crying because he was doing you know a sammy zane impression or something like that and it's you know i mean it's that's reminiscent of or you know i guess aw dark is a little reminiscent of that because taz and i have you know such a uh casual rapport but um yeah i think i think it was there was it was danielson's last match in pG, when he got released from WWE,

did an indie tour. He came back, yeah. Won the PWG championship and then he beat Hero for the championship in his last match. And just that night, knowing that then we had Battle of Los Angeles coming up the next show, it was really like,

wow, these guys are performing on such an amazing level that you know if i if i'm not taking this as seriously then i'm doing the the product in the ring a disservice and so it was around that time that i really started to i think transition you know i mean i still like to have fun on commentary yeah do like my little inside references for people that have been watching for for years but you know i like to to try to make it accessible um to to newcomers and you know i mean really to to kind of call the action in it with a sports type feel you know mainstream sports type feel rather than a a pro wrestling type feel if that makes sense do you take inspiration from like sports commentators in that case then do you look at like you know maybe a commentator would a wrestling commentator would say jim ross is my idol or gorilla monsoon is my idol do you look at someone that called

hockey and you say that was well yeah i mean so uh um you know i grew up in uh i grew up in detroit right around the time that the red wings were you, you know, multiple times Stanley Cup champions. And so, like, just, you know, that is always in the back of my head. And then, you know, modern day, I think Mike Breen, who's the NBA announcer for ABC, he's the passion and excitement that he brings to basketball, along with weaving the stories through the play-by-play and things like that. That was, was really inspirational to me. And so, you know, I mean, I've, you know, I've been a lifelong wrestling fan. So working with JR and Tony, I can't imagine what that's like for you.

It's a dream come true, but you know, I don't, I don't, I wouldn't be true to myself if I was trying to do a JR or Tony impression. I want to kind of stay, stay authentic to my voice and my perspective on pro wrestling. And I think, you know, I think we make it work and, you know, I was winning the, um, the observer award was, it was, it was a shock and it was a very pleasant surprise, but there's no way I could have even been, been in the position to win it without uh jr tony and taz because i mean i learned so much from them every single show it's their um you know i mean they've been calling pro wrestling for you know a collective 60 60 plus years if you think about

it that way and you know they've seen just about everything you can. They've called every type of match. They've pitched every type of promo or, you know, things like that. And so just being able to learn from them week after week has been an amazing experience. Do you have any particular lessons or stuff that you learned from either Tony or JR or Taz where you look at and you say, that was, like, such an important thing for me to learn that I didn't know before uh jr one of one of the first shows um i think it was either fighter fest or fight

for the fallen in 2019 uh jr said to me he's like you got good points but we don't get paid by the word and so and i realized you know like when when it's a pwg show and i'm calling it by myself i can ramble on for as long as I need to to make a point. But when I have to pass the ball between two other guys, being concise and really making a point with an economy of words, that's something that for live television, I hadn't done a lot of up until that point. And that's a lesson that really kind of stuck with me. And what has it been like for you calling Dynamite each and every week? Like you went from calling a PWG show a month to now being one of the faces of AEW in terms of like, you know, we tune in, we see the three of you at the commentary desk every day. Has the last few years of your life just been completely different, completely changed? mean it's i mean just on a purely practical level um you know i before this i had a you know i had a day job that that

you know i'd go to you know monday through friday and wow you know aew has allowed me the chance to to have a career in pro wrestling and so you know rather than going to an office you know five days a week i'm you know i'm on the road um with people that you kind of came up with right like the backstage locker and there's a lot of guys that come from that indie scene that you came up with the pwg scene it's it's been said multiple times by by multiple people like after you know after we have like a really red hot like action-paced match and be like wow wow, this is, this is like a PWG show with a budget. Yeah. And so it's, it is, it is cool to see that. And it's cool to,

to walk into the building and see so many of my, you know, my colleagues from years ago and especially, you know, because guys, guys careers take them, you know, obviously very many, very different directions. And so there's, you know, there's people that you get close with and then, you know, maybe they get, they would get signed or they would go to Japan or something. And then you don't see them for a while. And, you know, now here, like Bryce Remsburg is a perfect example. He was a guy that I met, you know, early on in our, both of our careers. But because he was, you but because he was on the Northeast

and he was having a family and doing all that, and I was based on the West Coast, we didn't really see each other. We'd stay in touch a little bit here and there, but since AEW started, it's just kind of picked up right where we left off in terms of our friendship and our camaraderie. I think the entire locker room was a lot like that that's what you kind of get a sense of it it's awesome and uh you know all the backstage stuff the behind the uh being the elite stuff like you get a sense that everyone's having a fun time everyone's having a

blast backstage i just had jerry lennon here and he was saying you know i've never had a more fun job of my life he said i hope aw stays around for 40 years so i gotta have a job for 40 more years he loves it so much yeah i mean i i concur completely that's um you know i mean it's it's it's unlike um just about any any locker room in wrestling because you know i mean pwg part of the the mindset was that um you know we want guys that want to be here. You know, we want guys that, that care about pro wrestling, that aren't just looking for a payday or guys that have bad attitudes and things like that. And I think that's, that's very, very similar to the AEW locker room where, you know, I mean, of course there's,

you know, interpersonal squabbles here. Name names. No, I'm kidding. I think for the most part, if there is something that happens, you're able to hash it out because at the end of the day, everybody wants to be here.

Everybody realizes that you're more or less in on the ground floor of something that is you know has the has the the potential to live on for 40 plus years totally people still feel like you know it's it doesn't have the the budget of an upstart company but it it has the feel of it in that like it still feels almost like an underground thing even to the fans like this is our thing we're getting behind this and we're going to make it something that like you said lasts for generations to come well you know i mean i think it's it is it is a startup in in that regard because you know everybody within the company wears multiple hats yeah you know like like kenny omega as well as being our world champion

um is a you know he's he's an executive producer for AEW Games. And so he's, you know, he's working on that stuff where, you know, and that might be something where, you know, in a different company, you know, he could have like a consulting role, but he wouldn't be hands-on, you know, emailing the developers asking about this, looking for status updates and things like that.

And even Tony, right? Between running the Jaguony right between running the jaguars between running fulham and aew i don't know how that guy finds the time of the day it's it's it's crazy and um you know and so that there really is that that that startup mindset here where you know everybody knows that you've got a just just because your job title is this, there's so many other things that need to get done. And, you know, like somebody said, like if the ring crew didn't show up one day,

if they got stuck in travel or something like that, that nobody in the locker room would even think twice about going out there and setting up the ring. And that's, you know, I think that's really different from a lot of places, even indie places. In a small way, you could kind of see it in the front of the pandemic. In the beginning of the pandemic, you guys sent the roster out there to be the fans right away. And it was like, hey, react like your fans. Go crazy. Some wrestlers might be too cool for that.

But nobody in AEW was. Everyone said, we want to make this show as great as we can. We want to make as much noise as we can. So there's the small ways where we could kind of even get glimpses into that. Yeah, and I think that also speaks to the heart of the matter that everybody in AEW is a fan of pro wrestling. I mean, there's some people that pro you know, pro wrestling is my job. You know, I don't really watch it anymore.

Yeah, a little bit jaded. But I think if there was somebody that came into AEW like that, it's definitely rekindled it. I mean, like Tony Schiavone, for example. He's somebody that didn't watch wrestling for, you know, 20 years after he left WCW. Yeah.

And, you know, now that he's around our locker room and he gets to see the product week after week, it's rekindled his excitement for it. He'll go back and he'll, Jerry Lynn, for example, he was talking to Jerry, and Jerry was talking about this match he had, and Tony's like, oh, I've never seen that. And he, you know, jotted down a note in his phone.

He's like, when I get home, I'm going to watch this. And so, you know, I mean, that's like, that's the kind never seen that. And he jotted down a note in his phone. He's like, when I get home, I'm going to watch this. And so that's the kind of passion and excitement that's shared through the locker room. Do you have a favorite moment thus far in AEW? Do you have one that sticks out as like, man, that was awesome? I mean, there's a lot. You know, seeing Revolution last year with the Bucks versus Kenny and Hangman.

I mean, that was kind of a PWG match on a very grand stage. Yeah, it really was. But seeing matches like when Scorpio Sky wrestled Chris Jericho, that was prior to AEW was a match that I don't think anybody thought could ever happen. You mean Orange Cassidy and Chris Jericho? That's a perfect example right there. You know, but for me personally, though, Sky is a guy that I've known since he began training

back at Revolution Pro in Anaheim. And so to see, you know, his progression from, you know, this kid to now this guy that is standing toe-to-toe with one of the all-time greats of pro wrestling, that is, I mean, for me personally, that was really, really cool and really rewarding. And, you know, reminded me of the fact of how lucky we are to have AEW, you know, for moments like that. Yeah. All right. Final question. I've begun the interview with an Oasis question.

I'm going to close it with an Oasis question. Liam or Noel, which team do you choose? Final question. I've begun the interview with an Oasis question. I'm going to close it with an Oasis question. Liam or Noel, which team do you choose? I mean, I think you've got to go Liam just because, you know. I'm a Liam guy. I mean, he's the cooler one. I get that Noel wrote the songs. I get that Liam might have been the reason why the band broke up in the end but I mean come on with the parkas with the lean

with the hands behind the back yeah I mean you know yes Noel was like the he was like the adult in the room and Liam I guess the adult me is team Noel but like adult me is team Noel

but like young me is team Liam Liam's the one that you want to be when you grow up or the one you want to be when you grow up

and then when you grow up you're like maybe not you can't stay out and party all the time somebody's got to keep the lights on around here

it's no good alright thank you Excalibur this has been awesome it's been a long time coming for me it was cool getting to talk to you about PWG, AW

all that stuff. Of course. I'm excited for Revolution coming up this weekend. Yeah. Thank you, Robbie. It's my pleasure. All right. Welcome back to my mom's basement, ladies and gentlemen.

I am here with the legendary Jerry Lynn. I don't know. Legendary sounds like I'm just old. No, I'm using legendary because you're one of my favorite wrestlers, truly. Going back through when I got super into ECW, the two guys I gravitated towards were you and Rob Van Dam. I think actually the first thing that made me gravitate towards you wasn't even the matches.

It was your attire, your gear. I'm a huge gear guy. I used to design some stuff for the Bucks, for Cody, for Luke Gallows. You have some of the coolest tights in wrestling history. I want to start there and just ask where the inspiration from those came from. Actually, those tights, it was the yellow and black and silver and all that. I'm not asking about the preppy varsity, Jerry Lynn, from before that era. Was there such a thing?

Early in my career, probably the cheesy 80s baby face stuff. Those tights were actually just a remake of my Mr. JL tights. It was in WCW and Sandra, who does a lot of the gear of the guys now and gals, I asked her to make some tights for me. And she said, sure. And she said, I have this new material. It's kind of shiny. She says, it doesn't stretch as much, but we'll try that.

And she made them, and I got so many compliments on those tights. So I had them made in WCW, but I don't even think I wore them in WCW. Because I was doing the JL thing, and i already had three outfits of the jl different colors so i busted them out in ecw and i got a lot of compliments on them but i came up with that since it's part of the jl thing i came up with that because it was about seven and a half years in brad uh brad reagan's why my brain fart in his name, he's the one who trained me. And he called me up one day to help him out at his camp. He was running another session.

And I said, Brad, it's been seven and a half years. What do I got to do to get a break? He says, well, the business has changed. It's all TV now. So you've got to come up with something visual that will grab people's attention. So hopefully they won't change the channel. It's all about grabbing people's attention. And so I knew on TV at the time, and before WCW,

I've been going to Japan a lot for Michinoku and another company. I saw a lot of cool masks in it. So I thought, no one's doing it in the States. So I thought at the time, the Power Rangers were super huge on TV. So I thought I'd come up with something like Power Rangers, sort of alien-like and whatever. And I was working in a screen printing shop at the time. And I was friends with one of the guys in the art department.

I asked him if he'd help me design this outfit. And he came up with the design. And that's how the whole, those tights came about. That's amazing. I mean, I didn't even know that Sandra was like the person that made them. She's, I would say, maybe the most prolific gear designer that has ever been in wrestling at this point. She's been in the business for so long.

Yeah, and she didn't actually make the first JL outfit, but she made those new tights. The shiny ones, yeah. Let's talk about AEW. We've got a huge pay-per-view this weekend at AEW Revolution. I want to ask where this whole journey with AEW and you began. When did you get the call to come in as a coach for AEW? Well, for me, it was, I think, mainly because the Bucks.

Because I've met them a few times on the indies, on different shows and stuff, and I got to wrestle them once. Only once. I wish it could have been more. For Chikara, the King of Trios tournament who who were you with i was with uh it was me tommy dreamer and i think it was oh like a team ecw i think maybe two yeah team ecw maybe it's too cold scorpio i'm thinking against well the first night it was Team WWF, and it was 1-2-3 Kid. Oh, yeah, I remember that when he came back and had the 1-2-3 Kid singlet on. Aldo Montoya.

It was tremendous. You had some fantastic matches with Xbox as well. I mean, the chemistry between you guys was perfect. That was when he first came to Minneapolis, because he went through Malenko School in Tampa. And his grandparents were living up in Minnesota. So he came up there and we clicked, we hit it off right away. So we would get together every day and watch whatever videotapes we could find of anything, whether it be Mexico, Japan, England, whatever.

And we kind of, we liked it all. So we kind of incorporated it all into our matches. Yeah. And we just clicked right off the bat. Those are such fun ones. Like everyone always brings up the RVD feud, I'm sure. But that feud is also just tremendous. I talked, gosh, it's been too long.

Probably a year or two ago, I did his podcast. And I told him, I said, even early in our career when we still really didn't know what we were doing I told him I said that was some of my favorite work because we got together every day just about we were best friends and every time we wrestled we had everyone thinking we hated each other's guts and I thought we did our job yeah so so the Bucks call you come up I'm sorry W they they offer you the coaching position right away or do they say are you interested in this it was weird because the

very first pay-per-view the all-in yep before it was aew and i thought about it uh even though i've worked for all the big leagues the big leagues weren't very long it was like a year each one you know whatever so most of my career was still on the Indies. And even when I worked for ring of honor and TNA, I still could do Indy shots. So most of my career was on the Indies. And so when I saw what they were doing, I called up the box and I said, I really admire what you guys are doing. I said, most of my career has been on the Indies.

And I'd just love to be a part of it. Can you use me as a special guest referee? And they said, sure. And so that night after the show, they were kind of telling me a little bit, not just very vaguely about AEW, just saying there might be a big investor who wants to start up a new company. And I couldn't tell you how many times

over the years I've heard that story. Yeah, I'm sure. So I just put it on the back burner. You know, they didn't give me any details. But so when, I can't remember what came first. Was it the announcement of the company or all in? I mean, all out. They did double or nothing, right?

And then I think they did maybe all out after that or was it it they did all in, all out, and double or nothing? Okay, maybe it was the second one. The order of those three maybe mixed up in my brain. It was confusing me. But so on the next pay-per-view, I called him up again, and I said, yeah, I was just wondering. I said, I really don't want to get in the ring anymore. I said, would you be interested in using me behind the scenes

as an agent or something? He said, sure. And it was Nick. And he says, have we sent you a contract? I go, no. I said, this is the first I've even heard of it. He says, all right, I'll email you a contract and you take a look at it and let us know. And that's how it all started.

What's it been like so far for you? It's been amazing. You look like you're having fun. Every time I see you on Behind the Elite or when you're on AEW Dark, you always look like you're having a blast. I'm having, it is a blast. I mean, and when the Bucks, when they first talked to him about the contract and that stuff,

they said, Tony really wants to change the way a wrestling company treats its employees. And it's been like night and day. Wow. This is the best company. I'm not just saying it. I've had a lot of jobs outside of wrestling before i broke into wrestling and to support my wrestling habit early on

and i think the longest i was at a job i was working for mystic lake casino up in minneapolis for two and a half years otherwise i couldn't find anything i really enjoyed doing yeah and so and so my point is this company is the best company I've ever worked for in the business and outside of the business. You're treated like a human being and not just a number. You know, that's amazing. Yeah. I've seen so many talent from the company tweet praise for you and say that you're one of their favorite agents to work with. I'm sure you've seen it, too. I mean, it's pretty frequent on Twitter. I just tell the guys because I'll have a lot of them ask me, are you my agent tonight? I go, no, but you got to ask for me.

Then the company will know that you enjoy working with me. Who were those people for you when you were getting into the business who you looked at and said, man, they helped me out a ton. They gave me some great advice. I'm aging myself. Baron Von Roschke, Sheiknan l casey terry taylor uh eddie gilbert um and do you try to impart stuff that they taught you onto the other town now oh that's how you that's how you uh pass it down yeah guys and i you never stop learning i'm still learning i've learned so much from arn and jake and dean and you know i got i was fortunate i got to wrestle dean years ago in wcw and stuff but i still learn a lot from him you never stop learning because everyone looks at everything at a little different

angle and so you never stop and so that's and i always tell when i do seminars and stuff i tell everyone and even the guys i'm working with now, I tell them, everything I'm preaching to you, I'm 100% guilty of. But that's how I've learned. Yeah. And what does being a coach entail necessarily? For someone that doesn't know, AEW calls you guys coaches or agents. What does that entail on a week-to-week basis for you? It's a lot. It entails a lot because you're not just coaching them on how to, I kind of like to Kate Fabe, so I don't want to say too much, but you know, on how to do things right to take you from looking indie-rific to professional. And also you're assigned a segment on the show. So you're really a TV producer also. And you got to make sure, especially when you

have that. Is that something that was, was like different for you producing on live television or is that something just through being in the business you kind of picked up on the cues of i first got to do it in tna when i got hurt so luckily they made me an agent so i could still get a payday there you go you know first thing you worry about when you get hurt is do i have a job and that's another amazing part of your career when you started establishing the x division and that nWA TNA era with Christopher Daniels and AJ Styles. Some crazy matches. Oh, AJ. I had a fun feud with AJ.

Very fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, I'd be remiss not to bring up the RVD feud. I'm such a big fan of these matches. I want to start by asking you, do you have a favorite match that you had with Rob? My favorite is one that wasn't even a pay-per-view match. It was at the arena in Philly.

I think the date was 9-11 or 9-17-99. And it was one where I was supposed to wrestle him, but at the beginning of the show, they said impact players jumped me and they sent me to the hospital. And so I can't remember if it was Lance or Justin was wrestling Rob instead. Well, then, of course, there was a run in. And then there was, I think, maybe even Rhino ran in or something.

So I came in with my ribs all taped up and helped Rob clear the ring. And then I was leaving the ring and Rob grabbed the mic and challenged me and said, the people came here to see me fight and challenged me and so I limped back to the ring and off to the races we went. Well the whole first part of the match was you know Rob was over it was just RVD, RVD, RVD and there was a spot in the probably halfway through the match where well I was I was going to say at the beginning, right away, he jumped me and we ended up doing some spot where we ended up at the double clothesline and we're both down because he was already half beat up from the impact players and stuff. And I was already beat up. Yeah.

Yeah. So halfway through, I was on the apron and he clotheslined me and I went through the table and it wasn't like a table spot where you, all right, let's rearrange the furniture here and stuff. It was just out of nowhere. You guys did a lot of that stuff. You running off the apron, jumping off a table into the crowd. Sometimes the legs would collapse and I'd eat the rail. So after the table spot, the refs came out and other other people are picking me up and they're carrying me back. And halfway down the aisle, I just stopped and I pushed them all off me and I went back to the ring.

And after that, it was Jerry, Jerry. So it was like we took the crowd and flipped them. And from that first false finish going home everyone was on their feet and you can tell i still get goosebumps thinking about it i get goosebumps thinking about it yeah uh the whole crowd is on their feet and after every kickout you can see people with their hands on their heads and stuff and it was like it was so amazing why after one of them rob says to me he says effing awesome i said i lay there and I go, we got him. And that's my favorite match just because of how the crowd was.

Yeah. You know, how they were reacting on every kickout and stuff. It was just amazing. Just electricity in the air. Did you guys face any criticism for those matches being, quote unquote, like spot fest? Because I watch them now and I look back and I go, you could place this match on an aew dynamite show today and it would seem like a modern match but you hear some of the veterans of the business now saying oh we don't like the flippy style we don't like the spot fest those matches sort of i don't say introduced the spot fest but were super influential to the current

style of wrestling did you hear criticism from them back then or no i don't think i did but i never really i never really uh like where would you hear the criticisms usually you hear them in the sheets message boards and stuff like that and now it's online and back then you didn't even have online and back then yeah there was no internet or anything you didn't hear from like other older wrestlers though being like oh my god you guys no no one really came and criticized us really and you know i remember the like immediate reaction walking in the back in ecw like say the ecw arena after some of those matches where the boys just like man that was something like we've never seen before oh ecw is great where everyone sat in the back and watched the monitor, watched each other's matches.

And there was a lot of times you'd come back and everyone would give you a standing ovation, you know. Is that the greatest feeling in the world, when, like, your fellow peers are actually recognizing it as well? Yeah, it's nice when, you know, because they know what a hard grind it is. Yeah. So it's a nice feeling that they appreciate, you know. Everyone rooted for each other.

We always wanted to go out there and put on the greatest show and even a lot of the so-called house shows were pay-per-view shows you know everyone went out and gave 110 all the time in acw um but uh with rob because i remember i mean i started watching wrestling when i was six so i've been a fan all the time but i never really thought about getting into it because back then everyone was a bunch of giants even when I broke in they were a bunch of giants literally Andre the giant but uh um so and growing up as a fan I always was like I didn't want to see a good guy good guy match you know i wanted to see a good guy bad guy yeah i want a yay and a boo you know and so when i started with rob i guess for me it was it was a part of i wanted to make it fun for me too and but i wanted to make it fun for the fans to see two good guys wrestle yeah that was my goal did that become at that point like one of your favorite

styles of matches to wrestle? I talked to The Undertaker recently about his favorite style of match and he said it was when he would get to wrestle a smaller guy like a Shawn Michaels, a Rey Mysterio. He had great matches. And he said that that was just his favorite dynamic. What would you say your favorite dynamic of a match was or is today? like a good guy bad guy when the bad guy's got a lot of heat and the crowd really hates his guts like kid cash yeah it makes it so much easier and it's so much fun because you feel like you're starting ahead at that point you feel like you're almost starting ahead oh yeah yeah definitely because this business has always been based on human emotion and psychology. And so it's so fun to just take the people on an emotional rollercoaster ride.

Just be like, yeah, kill him. Who are your favorites to watch in AEW now? Looking back in the monitor, when you watch a match, who are you like, damn, if I was 20 years younger, I would want to be in the ring with that guy right now. Oh, boy, that's tough. There's so many of them. I'm sure, yeah. And so many different styles.

One of my favorite things about AEW is there's so much great comedy stuff. There's so much great high-flying stuff. You've got the good big guy stuff, someone like Brian Cage. I can't really. I always wished I could wrestle the Bucks more as far as the so-called X Division style stuff. I'm sure Chuck and Trent wish they could have wrestled you a little more. Oh, yeah. Actually, yeah. I got to wrestle both of them.

Trent in NYWC and Chuck. I can't remember all the... I know there's a promo that Chuck cut on you back in the day that was like, you know, went viral reddit or whatever because he was just getting all ridiculous with it so i know you guys had like a little back and forth there and they're just such big fans of you yeah going back to their old shows i remember you did like a guest spot on was their hotel show yes yeah and i was on high spots afterwards they apologized i said is this all about pooping and peeing and and of, they wanted to talk about the cradle pile driver, which I also want to talk about. Oh, yeah. Your finisher.

It's amazing. What was your reaction when you saw that on the side plate of the AEW tag title for the first time? Well, at first I saw it on social media, and I thought someone's ribbing me and just Photoshopped it. You know, I was like, what? And then, gosh, I've been hitting the head a lot. I can't remember a lot of how things come up

but uh maybe i was talking to nick nick or matt and they said uh so did you like the little shout out with the belts i said that's real they were yeah i said i thought someone photoshopped it i said no i said i'm so honored It's a pretty damn cool thing to have. Yes, it was very flattering. I was shocked. It was very flattering. I was very honored. How do you feel about pile drivers being banned in some wrestling companies today?

Well, it's a tricky subject, right? I took the tombstone from Justin Credible off the turnbuckle. Yep. There's a lot of trust there. Yeah. So it's got to be someone you really trust. And I think I did that. You know how that came about, that pile driver?

No. In ECW, I couldn't think of a finisher. And Nova was very innovative in coming up with cool stuff. So I'd ask Nova one day, I said, can you help me come up with a finisher? And he said, sure. And so the next week, he says, remember Dynamite Kid in Japan doing the cradle pile driver? I said, yeah. He says, why don't you try that? And that's how it all started. Did it just take immediate, like you knew the first time you did it, like, oh, this is a great finish. Well, like you said, it's very

dangerous. And with that one, when you get them up, when you let go, it's, you got nothing except maybe bend your knees a little bit so the head doesn't slide down farther yeah so i tell them a certain way to base on it so i can protect you and i think if i started doing that in probably 99 and i did it till 2013 i think i only had like four mishaps wow and so it's dangerous anytime you're dumping someone on their head. Wrestling is, you know, dangerous itself, I know. That's why the tombstone or the ban of the pile driver stuff, it's a touchy subject for a lot of wrestlers because it's like, I don't know, is that more safe than something else, another move?

No, not really. I mean, you kind of increase the odds of how dangerous it is, but we all forget how dangerous it is just getting in the ring. If you hit the ropes wrong, you can snap your knee out or your ankle. Look, Rob did a baseball slide, hit the cable on the apron, and broke his ankle. There you go. So anything we do in there is dangerous. I mean, we take it for granted. So it's just certain moves will increase the danger percentage.

All right, final question for you. What are your biggest hopes for AEW in 2021? I hope AEW becomes so successful in its realm for the next 30, 40 years, because if it is, I will never retire. I love my job.