My Mom's Basement - EPISODE 173 - SEAN O’MALLEY/FREDDIE PRINZE JR

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

UFC Bantamweight "Suga" Sean O'Malley joins Robbie in My Mom's Basement to break down his latest knockout at UFC 269. Then, Freddie Prinze Jr joins Robbie to discuss his new podcast, 'Wrestling With Freddie', which is part of iHeartMedia's My Cultura Network. Wrestling with Freddie - https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-wrestling-with-freddie-89045423/ 3Chi: Use code MMB at checkout to receive 5% off at 3Chi.com Bearbottom Clothing: Use code BASEMENT at BarebottomClothing.com for 10% off your first order **************************************** Subscribe to My Mom's Basement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIeZ96PqdsJYQ7DFLRx6MHw My Mom's Basement Merchandise: https://store.barstoolsports.com/collections/my-moms-basement Intro Music: “Basement Noise” by All Time Low Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/basement-noise/1499013757?i=1499013968 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/3Aq9W9BBCjsFOQqcYyO6IA?si=d9d0f74cf54a48deYou 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. Just stupid boys making basement noise in the basement, noise in the basement. Just stupid boys making basement noise in the basement. Yeah, yeah. Hello and welcome to this week's edition of My Mom's Basement, or I shouldn't even say this week's edition of My Mom's Basement, presented by 3C and Barstool Sports, because I am loading you guys up with episodes this week. It started with Tony Khan's The Best Friends, QT Marshall. It is continuing today with an interview with Sugar

Sean O'Malley and Freddie Prince Jr., who used to write for the WWE. You know, I've been telling a lot of people I interviewed Freddie Prince Jr. this week. They said, why, Robbie? Not only did he write for the WWE back in the day, he does the voice of Kanan in Star Wars Rebels. I mean, this guy is a fucking Jedi. So it was the perfect fit. He was such a good guy. Sugar Sean O'Malley, I have not had on the show in over a year. So it was nice to catch up with him right after the win and everything.

Before we get into it, let me remind you guys about our presenting sponsor, 3C. 3C is a federally legal version of THC. It is a more functional alternative to marijuana. It gives off a clearer head, a more functional high than weed in a lot of ways. It's my favorite thing on the planet. If you use promo code MMB at their website, 3Chi.com, you will receive 5% off your complete order. You got to be 21 or older. This is psychoactive. It's not just CBD. So remember that. it responsibly, but man, you can get the root beer candies, the taffies, you could get the eight ball candies, the disposable vapes, which I love the gummies, a classic hit, always good. I think they added blue raspberry to their repertoire as well.

Again, three chi.com. That is the promo code. M M B. Let's get into this interview with Sugar Sean O'Malley. Welcome back to my mom's basement, ladies and gentlemen. It is Robbie Fox, and I am here with the victorious Sugar Sean O'Malley. He had a great fight this weekend. It looks like the whole O'Malley fam I'm with over there. Just us two. So I'm on daddy duty. So if I were outside hanging out, she's running around.

So if I get up and sprint, because I'm after her. No, I love it. I've interviewed McGregor on daddy duty, and now Sugar Sean O'Malley on daddy duty. So it's one and one. How are you? How are you doing after this win? I see you're sporting a cast on your wrist. Is that all right?

Yeah. My thumb has just been swollen the last uh since the fight and i was just looking through all my braces and shit i'm like i don't even know if this is for my thumb or my wrist but i keep using it like i forget like it just hurts and uh i keep using it so i thought if i throw this on there it might help me not use it as much i need to get the x-ray but it's too swollen the x-ray right now. I don't think it's anything too serious. I can't game, though, so it's kind of throwing me off a bit. Oh, that's brutal.

And the new Call of Duty map just dropped, too. Or is that, like, you're itching to get at it? I'm itching to get at it. Itching. That's brutal. Talk to me about the injury. You said the rib injury leading into this fight in the post-fight interview. When did that happen and how?

That happened three weeks before the fight. I was grappling with Tankino, who was in my corner, one of my buddies, one of my training partners, coaches. He just had a body lock from the back. We were just grappling. We do a lot of straight grappling. And he had a body lock on the back, and I went to turn in, and he kind of pulled, and I just felt my rib and right then, that moment I hadn't sat out for the rest of the day.

I was supposed to spar the next day. Couldn't spar. So then I didn't grapple or anything for a full week. I know how ribs are. They don't heal that fast. So I didn't grapple for for a week and i and i tried grappling seven or eight days later we're just warming up in the first five seconds of grappling warming up i realized i'm like i can't i'm not gonna be able to grapple so i didn't grapple for for the extra two weeks so three total and uh went into that fight not knowing if if i was gonna be able to grapple or not. How did it feel when you were actually inside the octagon on Saturday night?

Were you feeling it in there? Was it painful? Was the adrenaline taking over? So with my ribs, it was like I could hit mitts, no issue. My ribs didn't hurt hitting mitts. So all I did was hit mitts and run. And there was no pain in that you know if I took the only I'd feel it if I took a huge inhale and a huge exhale I'd feel a little bit but like for the most part I was good I just couldn't grapple so hit mitts and kickboxing

I felt very comfortable I felt very okay okay with going in the octagon. I wasn't thinking about my ribs. I was in a mindset where I was like, my ribs not sticking out of my fucking skin. I'll be able to fight. Thankfully, you know, he tried to take me down early, tried catching a kick, taking me down. And I just knew if I didn't hit the ground, I wouldn't have to deal with it. And, you know, or if he landed a body kick to my rib, I didn't have to deal with it.

So in the cage, I was solid. I was good. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't thinking about it. I wasn't in a good mindset. Were you thinking about it at all on fight week? Like, did it mess with your mindset? Oh, yeah. That was the toughest mental battles going into a fight.

Usually I'm pretty solid, focused. I mean, I was focused. I'm usually more confident in a sense to where I was like, if something could have went wrong, like if he would have taken me down, got me in a body lock or just taken me down in general and I'm trying to get up, like those are where I really felt my rib so i was thinking about that fight week you know you close your eyes and you see i think anthony pettis when he got body triangled by uh poirier or was it holloway or whoever it was when uh he like tried to turn and like i would have

visions like that like this fight really gonna is would have visions like that, like, this fight really gonna, is this going to happen like that? But I countered him out. I kept countering those, those negative thoughts with, with more positive thoughts. And I was just telling myself, I was like, I was prepared. I trust my preparation for what I was able to do in that camp. I did everything I, everything I could do. And, uh, I kept a good mindset and I did everything I, everything I could do. And, uh, I kept a good

mindset and I was happy with, with, with how I was, how I was organizing my thoughts. That makes sense. Yeah. And I mean, you looked calm in the cage. I saw your interview with Bisping on fight week and you talked to him about that, like calmness, getting yourself in that mental state. You said, I fight best when I'm calm. So I like to get myself in that state. When did you learn to control your emotions like that? Was it before you started fighting? Has that always been part of your personality or was that something you had to learn and

come with fighting? Yeah, I don't, I remember even like when I fought in LFA against David Nuzo, I was, I was very calm. I was very, I remember, I think that was probably like the first fight where I was like accepting whatever happens, happens. It was like, I was okay with, when I went into the fight, whatever outcome was, was going to happen, I was okay with. Um, and that was a very calm feeling. And I was just, I really enjoyed that feeling in the back like I'm okay with whatever happens like and I just

went out there and did what I did against David Nuzzo and then that kind of just carried on the rest of my career just you know I get that calm feeling from Elena I get that calm feeling from Elena. I get that calm feeling from being okay with whatever happens. Just be, I can accept whatever happens, unless it's a fucking perennial nerve kick. Can't accept that one. But I'm okay with the outcome as long as it's, you know, it's a, it's a fair outcome. You know what I mean? So what did you make of the performance on Saturday?

Obviously first round knockout. How do you compare it? How does it stack up with your other wins? Do you think? Yeah, I was happy with it, especially considering I was going in there. I would say probably 75% with like, I mean, I was a hundred percent spine on the feet, but a total all around MMA fight. I was, I was very, um, you know, I wasn't a hundred percent, but at that, the, the, the fight fight played out good. It was, it was a bound for a first round knockout my last two or third round

knockouts. Um, you know, it's been a good year for the sugar show. Three, three K kos three bonuses um do you have a favorite that combination up against cage was sweet i wanted to put his lights out you know similar to the eddie wineland where they're just it's just they're they're fucking out they're not they're not kind of crawling around days. So I don't know. I think the Thomas Almeida one was really sweet

just because I like Thomas Almeida one a lot. That one was, that one was epic. I feel like that was, that was probably my favorite one. Have you gotten a chance to watch this fight back yet? Like 30 times. Oh, really? Probably not 30, but honestly probably over 10, yeah. But I've watched it a lot.

So I wanted to know, did you have anything that irked you from the commentary team? Like last time when they pointed out that you were looking up at the clock, did they have a better performance this time? They didn't say as much. I think they might have heard my my uh analysis on their commentating i still think it's just like if they're gonna talk about that cheeto fight every time they need to go back and watch what really happened he didn't he didn't dominate me by the leg kicks like they're saying he landed one leg kick that landed on my nerve shut my leg off like and they were saying that they're

surprised that the guys that i'm fighting aren't trying to kick my legs i fought thomas almeida who's an excellent fucking kickboxer you don't think his game plan his coaches were let's go after his legs after that last fight they went after my leg they tried kicking my legs i had very good defense i would pull out or i would check it yeah he landed a couple and then i fought chris matillo who probably landed more leg kicks than cheeto and thomas combined so for them to say that they're surprised that the guys i'm fighting aren't trying to kick my legs i'm like you guys commentated the fights you guys saw they tried to kick.

I just, I don't know. Commentating would be hard. I don't think I'd be very good at it. But it's just like, I don't know if they don't remember watching the fights and they just say random shit or what. But it's just definitely, who knows? Maybe I'm just a pussy to take it personal. I got a lot of people that sent in

when i said that i was doing this interview with you that wrote what was your drink of choice after the fight what did you party with um god i went up to the hotel and i smoked a couple pops off a joint i had smoked in three weeks so i was so fucking high just sitting there like i didn't even want to go out like i was i just was just couch locked at the hotel eating pizza but i had the after party had to go um we went out and then the boys were there steve uh kyle big bradley martin had the team out so we had to have some happy dads um some just straight vodka shots we had a good time i didn't get blacked out like the last time before so i was able to keep it together and uh enjoy the

night with the team what's your reasoning for uh stopping smoking weed like three weeks out for a fight cardio munchies oh munchies munchies are a big one also i feel like i'm just a different level clear-headed i just feel so fucking sharp and i feel it's uh you know i'll do that forever i don't care if they test for weed and then i can smoke i'm gonna do that i just feel so much sharper so much more clear-headed and uh you know that post-fight blunt like the greatest thing of all time then too yeah it hits hard dude it hits hard especially after like after the fight fight stuff wears off um you know my i'm sore and yeah it hits hard feels good you've been pretty vocal about like wanting to make more before you start facing

these higher ranked opponents and there's been a ton of like back and forth about that dana White seemed to confirm that it's time for both of those things to happen at the post fight presser he's like yeah I think Sean's ready for the ranked opponents I think he's ready for more money so uh who interests you the most right now out of all of the names that are lined up Cheeto the rematch Domina Cruz Pedro Munoz I saw Marab the machine calling you out cody garbrandt i don't you know yeah yeah cody ain't calling me out we know that uh was there a party you rooting for cody to win this saturday so that fight could happen i like cody i like cody i'm a fan of cody um i like kai kar france too i never really knew much about him but i know we had short little talks here and there.

I like him there, but I like both those guys. As far as who's next, I don't know, dude. I'm excited right now to not have a date or an opponent in mind. It takes a toll on you. I knew I was fighting P pie with 10 weeks out for 10 straight weeks every single day every night every morning i was thinking about that fight thinking about preparing for that fight and uh it takes a fucking toll on you so right now i i don't want to even know who i don't even i'm not going to talk to you and see about who's next, what's next. Um, as far as, as far, as far as, um, money and stuff, I'm, I'm, I'm going to fight and just do what I do and, and,

and continue doing what I do. I don't want to, you know, I learned it's just not, it's pointless. Talk about fighter pay. How many fights are my contract? That stuff's all needs to be behind doors and, and I'm going to continue to keep it like that. I have a good relationship with the UFC and I want to keep, I want to keep it like that. So I'm going to fight with it off for me, just like I have been. And,

you know, if in the next couple of weeks, first of all, I need to heal up before I can talk about any fight names, any dates or anything, because I don't know what's up with my thumb, my rib. I still need to give that you know another probably three four weeks till that thing's even healed so i'd say latest april may something something around there as far as who i don't know i don't really care right now um whoever it is everyone's gonna watch yeah we know that like down the line your dream fight would be with yon for the bantamweight title that would be the biggest fight in bantamweight history

probably as you mentioned but aside from that if we could just give you a dream fight of like maybe just uh not a money fight but just something that would interest you aside from that that could be way down the line who would that be for you as matt just jokes i saw you mention aldo in the bisping interview would he be one aldo would be a trip dude that would be wild um you know i'm i really think my path's gonna cross with with aldo, Dominic Cruz, Peter Yan, TJ Dillashaw. Like all these legends, I'm going to fight someday. It just depends on, you know, they don't have a ton more years left. I still got a long time left.

So if I do want to fight those guys, it's going to have to be within the next couple of years. So, yeah, i can see all those all those big matchups happening and that just excites me i was taking a hot tub this morning just like in a such a good mindset where i want to get back to training i want to improve i want to get better because i know all these big big names are on the chopping board i know they're coming right around the corner uh and i'm gonna to be, I'm going to be prepared. I'm going to be ready for these legends. And, you know, so I'm excited.

I wish I was injury free and I could just get back to training right now. But what happens when you get in a fight? If you had to rank your top five strikers in the UFC, who would you rank? All weight divisions. Top five strikers in the UFC, who would you rank? All weight divisions. Top five strikers. Me, Zabit. Forget about Zabit.

It's been a while. Izzy, Max Holloway, Peter Jan. Wow. That's a good five. That's a very respectable five. This one was a question from our barstool gaming correspondent emmerich he said you and max holloway are dropped in the gulag together god who's making it out alive max plays some fucking serious call of duty i think uh you know

i play a lot too but i think he's got me beat in in the he plays. But in the gulag, anyone can win in the gulag, similar to a fight. I bet me and Max have similar skill sets in the gulag. I think it would be a coin flip. Have you played against Max before? I actually never have. I know he streams on Facebook. I he plays – he streams on Facebook. I stream on Twitch, which doesn't really matter. But, yeah, we haven't played together.

I'm sure we will. Yeah, I feel like that's a crossover bound to happen, especially now that the UFC is, like, doing stuff with the Call of Duty tournament and everything. They've got to get the Sugar Show in there. Do you like the new Warzone? Have you played it at all? Or because of your thumb, you haven't even tried it?

I played – I played, like like two games yesterday and i was like trying to slide cancel like clicking the joystick and i was like fuck i should not be doing that right now um so i did play a couple games out killed my shitty teammates i always play with this with the i have like a group of boys i play with that are that it's you know nothing better thrown on the headset just being in that lock into that world. But, yeah, I've played the new map. I don't have any good guns or anything, so it's kind of some of the ground loot's just dog shit.

But it gave me the itch. Dude, I want to get back on the sticks. I've actually been playing a lot of Madden lately too. Oh, wow. Who's your team in Madden? I've been playing with the Cardinals a lot, or Chiefs just hitting Tyreek on streaks. Madden's fun, dude.

You play Madden ever? No, I'm so bad at Madden. I mean, I've tried it, but like, I feel like I know DC is a big Madden guy. Maybe that's how you guys settle your little commentary beef. Game of Madden. Yeah, that's a good idea. I like that. Whoever wins gets stocked shit without any rebuttals i mean

he settled it with cruz i liked how he handled that he went right to cruz and they made that video together like i thought that was respectable yeah yeah i don't want any beef with dc i just you know he commentates my fights and i commentate on his commentating it's just that's how the world works but listen you're a dad now so you're in contention for the daddest man on the planet with him and max holloway i have full-time dad now it's pretty it's pretty crazy honestly she's she's uh she's over here in the kit oh darn you know making me some now she's on the phone with her plate you talk to the plate that's pretty crazy now has that changed your perspective on life just being a father

oh yeah life's definitely now that she's bigger i would say not as much but she was so tiny but now that she's like says dad dad like mama and it talks to her pretend she's on the phone with like a spoon and a plate and like yeah life's definitely my perspective's changed quite a bit with uh now that she's she's getting older it's pretty cool that's wild man you're you're one of the most like polarizing personalities where you could go hang out with six, nine and get tatted by him and then like do an interview as a dad. And I feel like you're the same person at both. This is strange. It's definitely a balance. Life's just a balance and I'm still trying to figure it out.

I don't think anyone's got it figured out, but I've got it. I've got to dial into where I know where, you know, what, what my priorities are and uh to balance that with still being able to have have a good time well i'm glad to see you doing well i appreciate you taking the time to catch up it was a great win this weekend and i'm looking forward to a huge 2022 for the sugar show thank you for joining the show and uh hope to talk to you then hell yeah robbie thanks brother by the way i make the best fucking coffee in the world so how do you take it a long process takes me about 15 minutes i gotta throw on a little jack johnson on my alexa listen to some banana pancakes

i heat up the heat up the water to about 185 degrees heat up the oat milk froth the oat milk blend my beans use my arrow press pour the water over stir it gently made love a lot a lot that goes into it but it's fucking i've been doing it every day for the last like five years oh my god i'm gonna add it to my uh bucket list like i try a sugar sean o'malley cup of coffee maybe you need to open a coffee joint when you're retired I know I was thinking about it but it's just I think it tastes so good because I make it with so much love and uh I couldn't make that for just anyone I can make you I'll make you a delicious cup so I can make my buddies one all right I appreciate that one day I'm gonna try your cup of coffee make it happen all right thanks Sean peace brother

all right before we get into my interview with Freddie Prince Jr., I want to tell everyone about bare bottom. They are on a mission to make the most comfortable made to last menswear around their soft and stretchy gear stretches with your body and your schedule. You will love their pants. I'm wearing their pants right now. I'm wearing the olive green bare bottom joggers, my favorite pants in my wardrobe. Now everything is built for value bare bottom joggers, my favorite pants in my wardrobe. Now everything is built for value. The softest, stretchiest clothes in the game for a great deal. You can get 10% off your first order by going to barebottomclothing.com slash basement. That's bare like the animal, bottomclothing.com slash basement. Let's get into this interview with

Freddie Prince Jr. And tomorrow, I will meet you guys here on this podcast feed or on this YouTube channel for a Christmas movie commentary. It's myself, it's Clem, and it's my older brother, Mike, commentating Batman Returns. It's a great episode. I cannot wait for you guys to hear it. Hello, and welcome back to My mom's basement it is Robbie Fox and I am here with the one, the only Freddie Prince Jr. He's got a new podcast wrestling with Freddie, Freddie, thank you for taking the time to do this and how are you. I'm very well man I appreciate you having me on the show. Thanks very much. And I know we said this off air, but on air it needs to be acknowledged, the hair is glorious. Thank you. It is a sight to behold and respect. said this off air but on air it needs to be acknowledged the hair is glorious thank you it is a sight to behold and respect thank you i really appreciate that you have such an interesting perspective on this podcast i listened to a few episodes of it and obviously i'm such a huge

wrestling fan so i know your history in the wwe and stuff like that but you're an actor a fan a writer who worked at the wwe you got to see how the sausage was made a little bit, and you worked with a lot of the top names. I'm sure you may know it's around this time of year. I don't know if you know it's actually today, if someone told you. It is 13 years to the day that Jeff Hardy won his first WWE championship. I know that this is a storyline you're super heavily involved with. You fought for this storyline.

So when that moment actually happened, when the culmination of that happened, like I'm a kid watching that, losing my mind. It meant so much to me that moment. Like, what did it mean to you? What you just said is what I hoped Jeff's fans would feel. Jeff's fans, I never felt got serviced in the WWE or in life. Anyone who's not mainstream, if it's not something familiar to the mainstream, they just ridicule it until it goes away.

Or if they see it make money, they harvest it and dilute it and turn it into a croissan'wich or something and uh I always connected to Jeff and I thought every outcast in the world connected to Jeff and it was such when Freebird said it was his idea to make Jeff champion but it was my story that got him there. And he asked me to come up with that story and to write those promos. And, and, you know, the whole philosophy on that was, I didn't want to hide from Jeff's problems and Jeff's issues. And I didn't want to hide from any sort of drug addiction or any sort of addiction issues at all. And so my father in the seventies, he was a huge standup comedian. He had the number one sitcom in the country. He had just stolen the Caesar's palace

gig from Bill Cosby on some slash shit. Cause he was a straight gangster like that. And he probably knew Cosby was a scumbag anyway, but, uh, but he was, you know, he was the man, but he messed with drugs big time. He had enough quaaludes in his system to kill a horse the night he shot himself in the head. So my whole philosophy on the Hardy promos was I never want anyone calling my dad like a junkie or things like that. How do I make my dad a sympathetic character? I had my whole life to figure that out. So I tried to apply that philosophy to Jeff, and we took away the black and white and only focused on the gray area of life right like the gray star wars fans would be like gray jedi's they're real

we'll get into star wars i gotta bring it up i've literally got a lightsaber tatted on my arm here so i got the canaan lightsaber right behind me right back there in that box yeah i mean i would be oh and you can see the mandalorian yeah i would be remiss not to mention yeah i've been exposed well we're both exposed together yeah so yeah so the the gray area was really where i tried to focus on and and i really just tried to again there's like how how do you make an addict sympathetic it's been done before hollywood's done it a million times so i really focused on that and it was a crazy team effort man it was a crazy we had a lot of wild stuff to derail that and I talk about it in an upcoming episode that we recorded we talked the whole the whole episode is the Jeff Hardy storyline and uh we talk about

the night of Armageddon we lost power we had no no way to have lights or shoot. And then in comes, it was like, it was like, what's his face? Viggo Mortensen in the Lord of the Rings. Like in comes, in comes Stephanie McMahon with the wind in her hair and we're shooting and she's not settling for anything else. And I'm looking at her like, there, we have no light. And she's like, we're going to find it. And everyone's digging through, I got a flashlight, I no light. And she's like, we're going to find it. And everyone's digging through. I got a flashlight. I got this. And she finds this crazy green pen light.

And I see like a whiskey highball glass. And she goes, will this work? And I go, yeah, give me the light. Give me the light. And I shine it through the highball glass. And it looks really cool on Jeff. And I say, OK, Steph, you shine this on Jeff. I'll hold these cue cards and

I'm gonna move them around Jeff so that you can kind of like search the whole field and you know move in pain right every movement should be motivated by pain so when I moved the card that was his kind of cue to like hurt and then go up here and find it because we didn't always have time to memorize stuff we it's um it's live you know it's it's tough so uh so we just do this whole thing and the whole time i'm looking at steph and i'm like i love you like not i'm in love with you just like i i was sit ready to sit there and be like wow we're screwed like i was not solution oriented in that moment but her last name is mcmahon and this is her company and there is no fail there's he's down in the foxhole with you guys

her hands are getting dirty literally dirty digging through trash do whatever we can find and once i see someone willing to roll their sleeves up like that i had a whole new and we had our issues believe me stephanie and i do not see eye to eye on everything um but man i i respect the hell out of her and it was all because of of that moment. And still to this day, I respect the hell out of her. That's awesome. I want to go back and rewatch that promo now and look for that. I'm going to because I have to. Stephanie McMahon, gaffer, extraordinary.

So a lot of fans, I feel like put this dark cloud over the idea of a writer's room in wrestling. And it may be because a lot of times wrestlers will leave a company and they'll say they had frustrations with the writer's room or a writer. How justified do you feel that is from someone that worked in the writer's room and was trying to make this product better? I'm sure everyone has the intention of let's make this the best product it is. Absolutely.

So this is twofold. First thing, I don't think writers are 100% necessary. I think there's a lot of wrestlers that can, and if they don't, should write their own promos. For every wrestler that can't, a writer's necessary. However, you have to spend time with the talent, okay? Otherwise, it's your words coming out of their mouth and it may not be their their their speed their pace that you can make someone look like crap and your sole

function as a writer is to get the talent over the first promo i wrote for jeff was horrible it was now when i wrote it it was freaking gold man i wrote every line that writers would never let me say, because my movies were all sweet rom-coms and you have to fall in love with the sweet boy. Okay. So I'm looking at this. I'm like, this is so good. Like, I wish I could say it. Well, that's why I wrote it. Right. So I'm showing this to Jeff the first time and he's not clicking with it at all. So the promo sucks. It's not, it instantly sucks because it's no longer about him. It's about me. So I'm listening to the words that he says, we had no time together. I never got to hang out.

We're still not friends to this day. I don't know his number. I emailed him every promo, weeks and events, never emailed me back. I don't think he even saw him. It was probably a work email that he didn't check. So this was all on the fly. I'm just listening to how he speaks. I know he talks and he keeps saying instead of imagination which was a word I wrote in there he's saying imagination and so I'm changing that and he starts talking about you know how the black and white and or he didn't say black and white he was talking about good and evil and so I turned that into black and white right and so it was just listening to how he spoke so that first promo we did together

was the worst of all the promos we did because Cause I didn't know Jeff. Like I'd seen Jeff talk, but again, those were other people's words, not his. And he had never been known as a talker. Right. And so my goal was to make, make that work. And so if you go in there and you're like, well, make what I wrote awesome, then you suck. So you have to go in there and be like, all right, this is Play-Doh and this is what I made, but it isn't dried up yet. So let's, let's reform this. And, and once we got pretty good at that, then I was able to just write everything. And I'm telling you, man, I made it sound like I would spend a week on those promos when I had it, I was writing them in five minutes and then just watching whatever I wanted to watch on TV. And I wouldn't turn it in until a show day because I

didn't want 40 people to see it. Right. So that takes us to the second fold of this. I'll be the first to acknowledge not all the writers have good ideas. Okay. There's plenty of the ideas that get shot down and you're like, oh, thank God. All right. But there's a handful of them, at least when I worked there, and this was a long time ago, that had good ideas all the time. They would pitch you 10 ideas and seven of them were great. And if you're batting seven for 10, that's awesome. But when we go to production,

which is the production day, the day of Monday Night Raw, the day of SmackDown, which we shot on Tuesdays back then, there's 40 people in the production room and each one of them is allowed and encouraged to give notes on every segment, every match and every promo. Now it's one thing if Bruce Pritchard, who I love, says there's a lot of talk and that gets your segment killed, right? That's okay. There's too much talk in wrestling already almost i feel like everything should be in the ring backstage segments are always kind of weird to me um and even though i get more love for those than my entering stuff um but that's one thing you can deal with but once

you get 40 people giving notes on dialogue in a promo it's really difficult now people crap all over the writer's room for this but understand this this, the same thing goes on in Hollywood. When I read a script from a, from a writer in, let's say in the nineties when there wasn't a script, a romantic comedy out there that didn't come across my desk before it went across someone else's. Okay. So this is a while ago. There's eight, 18 dudes before me. But back then those came through, I would read the script and based off

the quality of that script and whoever else was going to be involved, I would say yes or no. From that moment, every draft of that script got worse and worse and worse and worse. And it wasn't one time because of the writer. It's because there's eight producers, 14 executive producers at the studio, and each one of them wants to have a fingerprint on this script so that when someone says, oh, that part of the movie was so cool, they can say, oh, that was my note. That's not a bad thing. Every human wants to have some involvement in it, but it does at times often damage the quality of a script. And the same thing is true for WWE. So it's not always the writer's fault a lot of times

I don't believe an agent should have dialogue approval over something I wrote because I feel I'm a better writer than this person in that company they did and so you would have to finagle those things and not always write your best script first which is weird but that happens in Hollywood too because they know they're going to get a bunch of crappy notes and so they they go, yeah, okay. And they just put an asterisk on the line and then they change it to whatever they want. And then before the executive can criticize them again, they go, hey, that was a great note. And then the executive's ego is satisfied

and they go, yeah, okay, good. I had an influence on the script. And that's what like the real sharp writers do. Like Meryl Streep is famous for, if she doesn't like a note a director gives her, she goes, I just don't know if I'm good enough to do that it's meryl friggin street all right now she may talk trash about mma but i don't give a shit about her opinions on mma you know i really that was like when i first got hired by barstool she gave that speech like a week later and i didn't even have like the rights to publish

my own blogs but i'm the mma guy at barstool so had to, and I like went behind someone's back. I hit publish. And that wound up being a big thing. I had a little feud with Meryl Streep. It was good. Everyone got some like, why you can't, she don't know what a rear naked choke is. Like don't worry about what Meryl Streep says. She doesn't care what Hoist Gracie says about She-Devil. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's all good, man. It's all good.

But yeah, so I get people's complaints and criticisms and sometimes they're legit but a lot of times it's just it's their criticism is the straightest line and unfortunately the line is there is no straight line it's yeah it's a map that is a thomas guide which is a term young people don't know we had to use maps before our phones told us where to go and it was like looking at a spider web. It was impossible to get anywhere. I'm surprised. I missed out on auditions because I just couldn't find them. So, you know, that's what it's like going through that process. It's incredibly difficult, even if you have something great. Yeah. So you mentioned, even though you were so heavily involved in this Jeff Hardy storyline,

you didn't work with him a ton face-to I suppose who were your favorite talents that you did work with face to face a ton and in your time at WWE oh man that's it's a long list man I had I had some good times I loved R-Truth I loved every opportunity I got to work with Truth I didn't get many because he was on Raw and they had they had the more seasoned writers and they felt I could help Smackdown more um so I was over there more but I loved Santino I still love Santino to this day um all the girls I worked with I really loved if I would have stayed they were going to put me Stephanie told me this uh originally they're going to put me in charge of the women's division and then the first time I quit when I came back she said they were gonna make me the head writer of smackdown and they were disappointed when i left i started laughing she said why are you laughing

i go nobody wants that job i was like vince doesn't even read the script until it's showtime i was like no there's no way i'm taking that job she's like well that's not true i'm like that's 100 true and you know it's true we talked about it a year ago so uh so yeah man all the all the female talent like in like look there's a reason all the women i've worked with in movies i'm still friends with to this day because i'm not a piece of shit and uh and so that's why i got along so well with with the wrestlers there too because i wasn't a piece of shit um so i really i'm still friendly with with eve torres to this day i was at her wedding with henner i was gonna say the uh brazilian jiu-jitsu connection

you have there she's the reason my kids take jiu-jitsu you know what i mean like they both fell i trained with john jocks machado but i used to train with henner and hiron and alex stewart over there but it's just it's an hour and a half drive for me to train for an hour or i can go to john jocks machado in 20 minutes and train all day so uh so yeah man they she's responsible though for my for my daughter starting my daughter didn't think it was cool until she saw Eve do it that's awesome yeah man so I still have a lot of love for them you know I'm really tight these days he didn't even work there when I worked there with with uh Xavier Woods because he had me host his up up down down uh dungeons and dragons game for their season three yeah yeah so him and i have become super super tight he was on your

podcast too people could check that out yeah yeah he was a guest on the podcast man and i just i love him to death he was the first like in he was here sitting right in that black chair right there cool he was the first one i had he just happened to be in la but uh but yeah man i love wrestlers they're very blue collar actors aren't very blue collar but the ones that are i'm friends with um that's why i'm friends with more stuntmen though like before like i'm still friendly with my very first stuntman he got super buff i didn't so he could no longer be my stuntman not like a lot of stunts and romantic comedies this was when i know you did last summer but uh but yeah man so wrestlers have always been uh i think that and stand-up comedy are the two hardest and and require

the most commitment of any entertainment art form in the business and so i have a lot of respect for both yeah i could absolutely see that um have you seen heels the wrestling drama on stars no and i feel really bad i was just curious because you know yeah yeah and i think kia was kia on that show kia was on the other show kia stevens was on the other wrestling show that i didn't watch but i everybody thinks i'll like it and i play a lot of video games and don't watch a lot of tv and i have two kids and three dogs so the free time i have is usually call of duty or sea of thieves and uh or playing like dungeons and dragons like after the kids go to bed with friends here at the house last night we played some katan it was amazing and uh so yeah so i don't watch a lot of scripted television just because i don't have time

for it but i haven't heard bad things about it my buddy thinks i like it it's. It's a good show. It's well-written. It's by Michael Waldron. He's a friend of the show. He wrote Loki. He wrote the new Dr. Strange. He's really good writer. Oh word. So it's definitely crazy. Here's a secret story. Maybe it's not secret now, but here's a story about Dr. Strange. It was supposed to be a horror movie. Oh yeah.

Oh, so everybody knows this already. Is it not a secret anymore? Sort of, I think. Yeah, it's sort of out there. Well, that's why the original director, well, it's disney and they're not bringing horror they're not allowing horror into the franchise so that's why the director walked off because that one wanted to make a horror movie and they didn't i would love to see them expand like and i love the variety i'm such a big mcu fan that i'm like give me a little bit of everything like that would be kind of neat it's so crazy now there's's a standup comic named Mark Norman,

who literally just had a joke talking about how hard it was for adults when he was growing up. And he's a little bit younger than me. I'm 45. I think he's probably 37, 38. And he said, you know, they worked all the time. They complained that he goes, adults were losing then kids were winning. He goes, adults are winning. Now he goes, we watch avengers we love captain america we play video games we do this we do that and it's so true man i mean you can see the background behind me that's not for show like that's all the crap that i like i got like a baby

yoda to my left like i'm the same exact way a baby yoda i got a you know i got a solid comic that's like not even a valuable one it's just one that i really liked yeah solomon grundy great character great villain in the dc repertoire i would so i said i i'm a huge star wars fan and i wanted to ask you because star wars has been a thing in my life since i was born like my brother named his firstborn luke and he's my older brother so he introduced it to me his daughter's middle name is ray so it's like such a family thing and he introduced wrestling to me at the same early age like it's always been a thing in my life what is it about these things that makes people such lifelong fans because i know the day i die i still love wrestling and star wars so i think my personal opinion is that it's a it's a literary tool archetype characters are the most not only

the most relatable characters but the most predictable characters it's why law and order has been on for 500 years um archetype characters and george lucas was great at this when he was making movies you were who you were right right? There was no in-between. There were good guys and bad guys, and that was it. And he would define these characters in specific ways. So let's look at like my favorite Star Wars villain, which is Darth Maul, most people's favorite, right? The video games, the stupid Force Unleashed ruined Darth Vader because you could literally kill him

without taking any damage, which is so stupid. Well, those aren't canon anymore, so. Thank God, there's no such thing as canon, by the way. Like what you like, I don't get you. It's, yeah, head canon, that's what I say. Everyone has their own head canon. Exactly. So Darth Maul is Sisyphus. And this is by

definition of George Lucas and Dave Filoni, not Freddie Prinze Jr. So Sisyphus, if you don't want to check out Greek mythology, you don't have to. I'll explain it. He was cursed to roll a boulder up a mountain for all eternity, only to have it roll all the way back to the bottom when he gets to the top, or regardless of how high he gets at a certain point, it's always gonna roll to the bottom. And he knows this going in. He knows his life is destined for the uphill climb for repeated failure after repeated failure

for all eternity. And that is Darth Maul. And that's why people love him because human beings, and it's more men than women are incredibly hard-headed it's the reason sayings like Albert Einstein comes up with doing the same thing but expecting a different result is insanity yeah man we're guys and we're stupid and we'll run our head into a wall twice because we think maybe the first time we didn't do it hard enough to break it you know what I mean like that's how we are. So we relate to a guy like that.

Now to the point, and so many people have blurred the line, right, of the good guy, bad guy, and made our good guys, bad guys, like a stone cold Steve Austin, that now that line gets so muddy that it's an accepted way of storytelling. So when we don't see those characters we suddenly start to get angry and upset but originally star wars was never supposed to have those it's only until just recently they only let one han solo be han solo yeah if everybody gets to be a han solo then no one in the movie's cool yeah no one's in the movie is cool like if everyone's balky from perfect strangers then everyone's just a goofball.

And you don't see the heart. You don't see the love. This show's too old for you, but it was a funny show back in the day called Perfect Strangers. It is a little too old for me. I'll admit I didn't get the reference. A little? No, a lot.

Okay. So, but the point is there's a reason there's a straight man and a funny man, right? There's a reason that that dynamic exists. If there's a reason Walter Matthau exists if there's a reason walter math out and jack lemon made any movie they wanted to even when they were 90 years old and did grumpy old men and grumpier old men there's a reason that movie could still make money even though no one from the younger generations knew who the hell they were but it still worked because it was

a classic example and as those lines get blurred I think you start to lose audiences and wrestling blurred that line huge now granted it was the most successful period in the history of wrestling but once that line is blurred it can never be unblurred so when you see a wrestling character come in now as the pure baby face we hate him we hate him and when we see him come in as the pure villain we love him and it's all darth maul's fault you can blame ray park and and and sam whitworth like it and so once we get reprogrammed as an audience i'm the only guy that liked the first act of solo well no no i'm not everyone 45 and up like the first act of Solo. Well, no, no, I'm not. Everyone 45 and up liked the first act of Solo because it was slow. It was drawn out and everything didn't, we didn't learn everything

about the character in the first 30 minutes, but that's every pilot you watch now on television. That's one of the reasons I stopped watching TV and getting back into video games. I was just like, man, you hit me with a whole season in one episode, that's the new norm and guess what I'm not 18 to 35 I'm no longer the key demographic they shouldn't be making this shit for me I don't buy as much stuff as you guys do I know what I like I already bought it I don't want anything else I don't care about what toothpaste you sell because I already decided that I like this one so you know it's all a business like my uncle Ron used to say, show business, which words bigger. And we always have to remember that, but you know,

as audiences get programmed, they're going to want more of those hybrid characters and stone cold made. You can blame stone cold and Darth Maul. They, they, they changed the game forever. And those are always our favorite characters. Now, the ones that might kick your ass, but they'll still do the right thing. That's one of my favorite comparisons ever i think you're the first person to ever put stone cold and darth maul in the same sentence together and it's perfect for this show because we talk about star

wars and we talk about wrestling on this show so freddie thank you for the time it's been great getting to talk to you um i really appreciate it and everyone check out wrestling with freddie it's a great podcast great stories great guests appreciate you man i have not seen your show before i'm definitely gonna watch it because you're just a younger version of me so uh that's awesome that's a great i'll take yeah we like all the same stuff man yeah thanks freddie thanks bud