The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Colin Cowherd Podcast - WWE CEO Nick Khan on WrestleMania 39, Vince McMahon, Audience + Business Growth

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

Colin is joined by WWE CEO - and former CAA Co-Head of Television - Nick Khan, to discuss the star studded card for the upcoming WrestleMania 39 at SoFi Stadium, the experience of working with Vince McMahon, how he plans to continue to grow WWE fan base, how he continues to find new talent, and how Vince McMahon’s return to the WWE after a hiatus has impacted the company. Follow Colin and The Volume on Twitter for the latest content and updates, and check out FanDuel for the best wagering and daily fantasy action! #Herd #Volume  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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18778-8-Hope, New York, or text Hope, New York, 467-369, New York, 1-800-2-4700-Wyoming or visit www.1-800-Gambler.netwest Virginia. Nick Kahn, my friend and former agent, stops by the volume today. practicing attorney to a mega agent to now the CEO of a public company, WWE. SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, the site for WrestleMania, April 1st and 2nd. The biggest stars will be there, and Nick Con joins us. So, WrestleMania goes Hollywood, Saturday, Sunday at Sofi, a spectacular venue, a spectacular venue, Roman Raines, takes on Cody Rhodes, Brock Lesner, John Sina, the amazing Charlotte Flair,

and others. So there are events weekly. This is your Super Bowl. This is it. Is it stressful for Vince, for you, for the performers? Do you, does it feel different? Well, look, I'll tell you this. I can't speak to being a performer. Obviously, it's not what I do. But going out in front of 75,000, fans a night or whatever it might be. I remember hearing a story from Sugar A. Leonard years ago. He said, there's nothing like a ringwalk. He said, you got 75,000, 50,000 people cheering for you, cheering your name. I'd get into the ring and I'd say to myself, holy shit, I actually have to fight, which I

always thought was funny. But for us, I think WWU is a well-oiled machine. We have almost 1,000 employees. Everyone's focus is on WrestleMania. So it's no more stressful than any other week at WB. So not that it's a playbook, but when you first came to WWE, you did things that you and I had privately discussed for years about my business, which is play the hits. You know, the top five to 10 percent of any business are going to be your most dynamic revenue producers. So you have really zoned in on your Brock Lesnar's, John Cena. Charlotte Flair has never had a bigger profile.

Roman Raines, you've elevated that. So is that easy? It's what you did in your career. So was that on your note card of things to do when you became, you know, the CEO? Was that one? Or were there things that I don't notice that a non-WWE diehard wouldn't notice that you had to work on? Or was the system and the platform pretty solid and it just needed tweaking? I think a couple of things.

the I play the hits and part I learned from you. So if you look at your content on your daily show, it's some version of NFL, NFL, NFL, NBA, LeBron, big story of the day. Right. It's not. And we had this conversation on day one of your show. It's not let's put on this personality from baseball who's only known in a local market. We don't need to mention any names.

Right. Right. It's play the hits. What does the audience want to see? So I think the way that Vince and team built WWE, was if you get a John Sina, if you get a Rock, if you get a Roman reins, showcase them. And if you showcase them, as long as you can build opponents consistently, and there's not just one person carrying the load, as big as Roman is,

all of the other superstars that you mentioned, they all carry a lot of stroke in our company. They all have big voices. So for all of those people to be on display over a two-night event at WrestleMania this coming weekend, we think it might give us a winning hand. So you've always had good instincts when you were an agent. And then you go to WWE, and instead of dealing with high-maintenance people like me, you're not high-maintenance. You're dealing with a billionaire who had created something revolutionary, transcendent.

And with that comes its own challenges. Was it the transition from representing sportscasters? Now, you had big names, Herb Street names, to now work. alongside Vince McMahon. Was the first six months, nine months, a year? Was it difficult? Was it, you take me? How would you describe it? So I'll ask you a question back and then I'll answer your question. When we worked together and I had the good fortune of being your agent, do you feel that I worked for you or that you worked for me? Well, it was symbiotic. I thought we worked. It was a great partnership. But at the end of the day,

my belief as an agent is that I worked for you. That's how I set it up in my mind. And yes, a great partnership. Typically, you don't feel that, oh, I just worked for this guy and this, that. It was never that way with you. But I always looked at it that way. And I always thought to myself, if I could help to deliver the goods to you, then you in return would extend the partnership and pay me commensurately or pay the agency

commensually. I took the same approach with Vince, had the good fortune of starting to represent W.W and their media rights ventures. So got to know him, got to know AAA. Triple H, Kevin Dunn, all the other good folks at WWE. So I had a really good glimpse of the company from the outside looking in. So when I started, I took the same approach. There was only one boss, Vince.

So I certainly try to get his buy-in on material things. It's no different than a client. If you have a differing point of view, you and I would talk about it in private. Yeah. And when we'd come out of the room, we were bonded. That was our position. It wasn't a, hey, guys, bad news. Colin doesn't agree with me.

So this is what we're going to do. You had your point of view. I had my point of view. You ultimately got to make the decision. Once you made the decision, it became our decision. And I think I took the same approach to WWE. The creative side. How much impact, I would imagine, substantial, did Vince have on creative?

And was he willing to let you early on tweak or give strong opinions on the creative side? I really haven't had much to do with creative. So certainly the talent deals I'm across, all the venue deals and all those things. Vince obviously created the entire company, but I think what he set up was a system in place with Triple H with a gentleman named Bruce Prischard, where the company could keep going creatively and keep thriving, even if one day Vince obviously knew he would leave the earth at some point, as we all will. I think the best organizations are set up.

So if one person, even the founder leaves, the organization keeps moving. And I think what you saw over the last six months or so was that creative continued to thrive, ratings continue to thrive, relevancy continued to thrive, but all credits of events for setting it up that way. You talked about platforms earlier. It's so fluid. The media's, you know, streaming was obviously what Uber was to taxis. It was a total disruptor to linear television. Sure. And so you have this entertainment company. This is going to be. on peacock streaming, right? Which is just continues to grow. I mean, it seems like a natural transition to Hollywood. But do you think there's something right now

either being created or that's been created that you're going to pivot to? Like, I know you, you're not going to stop here. Growth is the name of the game. There's always some other way to get John Sina, Charlotte Flair, Roman Raines name out there. Is there an unexplored platform? form or direction for WWE?

I think something that we're focused on. First of all, you're coming off of some of your highest ratings of all time, right? And that's while the ratings for overall cable television and broadcast are down. Part of that is certainly you and your team. Part of it is also the proliferation of sports gambling. Yes.

Where even for a game that was once a dud, you have more. Are they going to cover? Totally. Are they going to cover? Right. So whenever you see a ratings increase like that, it's usually a confluence of events, similar with your show.

Again, you have the product, but it just so happens that sports gambling is moving in the direction of it's moving. I think for WWE, we're really happy where the business side of the business is, but certainly there's room for growth. The one area that we haven't tapped into yet that we will be tapping into is our intellectual property. So if you think back 20 years, before Disney bought Marvel, Marvel had to beg for distribution of its movies. It's why Sony still has a piece of Spider-Man, which is obviously a Marvel property. It's why Comcast still has a piece of the Incredible Hulk, because those enterprises helped distribute those movies years ago.

You then saw Hasbro do it, an executive named Brian Goldner, who unfortunately passed away a year or so ago, really took Transformers and some other Hasbro properties into feature films, and you saw the reward on that. So for us, with a vast intellectual property that WWE owns, 98% of for characters like The Undertaker or Andre the Giant or Big John Stud. Those are things that we want to get into in short order. What would surprise me about the demographics of the WWE audience? 40% of our audience are women.

50% of the folks who attend our live events attend with a child. There hasn't been a fight in our stands, not jinxing it, in over 15 years. So what was the Harlem Globetrotters family-friendly environment when you and I were much younger is now the WWE family-friendly environment where people come with their children. It's safe. It's fun. It's PG programming. And people tend to like it even more live than they do on TV. And people seem to love it on TV. Roman Raines, I felt when you initially got to the company, it needed tweaking. I thought, has the look. has the body, has the presence. But he does feel today more popular

than like three years ago. That's my interpretation. I would be called a casual. But that's my interpretation. You look at the ratings. Is that right? And what happened? I think what happened.

So when I joined the company was at the height of COVID, even pre-vaccine, you know, COVID. So we never missed a week of TV. We shot out of Florida. our producers, our writers, our talent, all put their lives on the line to make sure that that could happen and that we could deliver the product to our fans. Really grateful for that. Roman, who has had bouts with leukebia, had to take a moment off because at the height of COVID,

obviously with that pre-existing condition, he had to catch his breath and make sure he didn't put himself into jeopardy. When he came back, he came back, as we refer to as a monster heel, a bad guy, if you will. What I... found and I think what fans would tell you is that typically the best performers are the ones who act like themselves but amplified and by the way Roman's a lovely guy great guy but he's sort of the handsome guy who played football I'm sure when he was younger prior to being married did a nice job on the dating scene you know he's sort of that guy yeah so that's who he is as a character but amplified if you look at Dwayne Johnson John Cena same things versions different versions of the same thing. They were themselves but amplified and I think that's what's really worked for Rome. Charlotte Flair feels to me like the most popular woman ever in the sport. Is that true? She's big. She's as big as it gets. And one thing, one of the many things that I admire about Charlotte, if you look at Rick Flair, obviously she's the child of a really successful

performer. And she's a grinder. Grindr. And I think what happened was because, you know, in that generation, I think Flair's sons thought that they would be the next great wrestlers. And his daughter, Charlotte, real name, Ashley was sort of overlooked. So she had to almost prove herself more than she would have had to prove herself had she not been Rick Flair's daughter. She puts in the work. And you know the drill. Yeah.

The key to even having a chance at success, you got to put in the work. Yeah. You got to grind. Gives you a shot. What percentage of your time is spent with Wall Street is spent with, you know, Vince is spent on television production, scheduling. A significant amount with Wall Street, significant amount with Vince, significant amount with scheduling our live events and on many other things.

Production is not my area of expertise. And the folks who run it, it is their area of expertise. So I don't give them notes on it. It all looks great to me. They always hit their numbers and we're good to go. But all the other items you mentioned, a good portion of the day spent on that. say I was always struck. When I'll be there Saturday. I'm always

struck by the ability to have this production. It's live. And then it's over. And I mean, stuff is on trucks in 90 minutes. Do you ever worry about with wrestlers because they're such performers, like a deep bench? Do you think in terms of that? Because I feel like you've asked a

little more of your stars, which is smart business. Sure. Right. LeBron and his prime, we need to play 78 games. Is developing a bench, how valuable is that to the WWE? Hugely valuable. A few years ago, certainly prior to me getting there, I think what Triple H and Vince and others decided was, instead of just mining the independent wrestling scene, let's create

our own developmental system, which is called NXT. Yeah, we've talked about this. Yes, NXT. Tuesday nights on USA. Very interesting programming. A lot of our current main roster, raw and Smackdown Superstars, came from NXT. So that's been extremely valuable for us.

Because for our folks, like any other sport, you have to practice enough before you get great. You have to practice in front of an audience too. That's what matters. It's not simply, and I'm not suggesting this is a simple task. It's not simply throwing a football 30 yards down the field. It's being able to do it in front of 100,000 people. We're the same for NFL players.

You could do it in the park. There's a lot of good streetballers and basketball, but put them in prime time, put them on a team where there's rules. It's a lot tougher. What's your team like that finds the people, discovers the people? You and Vince obviously have a great say in the end.

There's a certain it quality. Again, presence, looks. What would be the process from, we think we found somebody interesting, to actually is on an event? So first, we show. shifted our recruiting a couple of years ago and really have gone after college athletic programs. Yeah.

And the thought behind that was, if you look at Roman Raines, played football at Georgia Tech, didn't make it to the NFL. If you look at another guy, we have Big E played football at Iowa. Yeah. Didn't make it to the NFL. If you look at the Rock, played football obviously, the University of Miami. Warren Sapp comes in after him, takes his spot. Rock ends up in the Canadian Football League, you know, hoping he can figure it out. and at the end of the day, it didn't work for him in that venue.

So he came into ours. So it's not just male athletes that were after. It's the female athletes also at all these athletic programs. If you're the great sledgehammer thrower at the University of Alabama and you're thinking, okay, do I go get an office job? Do I go work for UPS? No, come work with us. Like we have an opportunity.

So once they're in our system, then it comes down to every other job. This, your brain, this is your heart. And certainly for us, your physical and athletic ability. And if we see it, and it is always hard to describe, as you know. What gives you it? It's hard to describe. Right. You get a good look.

You put in the work. You don't take yourself too seriously. Even the Colin was right. Colin was wrong. I hadn't seen anyone else do that. It's brilliant rather than simply sitting there and saying, I'm right, I'm right, I'm right, I'm right. So for us, it's once they get in the ring, once they're in front of an audience, can they do it? You know it when you see it.

I remember when the NFL didn't have a team in Los Angeles for a team. which is just crazy. Crazy. And it shows you the power of the league when you have teams in Green Bay and Buffalo and none in Los Angeles. Every franchise, Subway, Pizza Hut. This isn't a hoagie town. You're going to be represented.

So to me it seems so natural. WrestleMania should be in Los Angeles a lot. That's the obvious one. What goes into deciding your biggest matches of the year? Who makes the decision? And why do you choose venues? So just quickly on the LA not having a football team for so many years, part of me believes that because the NFL is such a New York based company, that, and you know this drill, you

lived in the Northeast. Right. The West Coast is looked at differently by the Northeast. It is. So even when I started at WWE and we had the return of live fans, we scheduled a show that you attended at Allegiance Stadium in Las Vegas. Yeah. Some of the folks who at work at WWE with me said, you know, historically we haven't done great in Vegas. And I said, having been born there, I'm not saying it makes me the expert, but haven't been born there, live there for so many years.

I said, look, let me lay out a couple things. I said, number one, there's no one in the history of humankind who has said to themselves, let's go to Vegas for a Monday so we can see Monday night raw. There's also no one who said, let's go to Vegas on a Friday and make sure we land by 2 o'clock. local so we can be in our seats by five o'clock local for Smackdown, which ends at 7 p.m. I said, also, we don't want to go up and compete against football. So forget Sundays, we don't want to compete against the sports book on Saturdays. So if you go during football season, you have, I get it's not free entertainment, but you make a $20 bet, you can hang out in the sports book.

Let's not compete against that. But if we go in August, when there is no NFL, when there is no college football, when there's not a lot of action in the sports book, post-end. NBA finals regular season baseball, maybe we'll have a shot. Lo and behold, I think we did 60,000 tickets. Yeah. You were there was a big event. Oh, it's great.

So all of that goes into the equation of where do we want to be when? Los Angeles this coming weekend at SOFi is intentional. It's our media rights deals are up in October of 24 in the United States. The right of first negotiation with both of our incumbent partners, who we love, Fox and NBCU will obviously want to hear every conversation with them first. But other folks will be attending because it's easy to go to SoFi if you live in L.A. It's a five o'clock start time, West Coast start time. As you know, there's three things that the West Coast undisputably destroys the East Coast.

Three things. Weather. Weather. It's not even close. Sushi, not even close. Start an end time of sporting events. Not even close. So we're going to have a lot of good folks.

there this Saturday and Sunday, and they get to check out our product in person. Always a far easier sell for us if you've seen our stuff live. When you seek either incumbents or new partners, what will be the two most important factors? Do they give us the latitude to grow our product? Do they realize in a 52 week a year season, year round, sometimes you're going to go down a little bit? A lot of times you're going to go up. These things ebb and flow. And are they actual partners rather than just cutting us a check. Check's great. But eventually, as you know, with any partner, there's going to be bumps in the road. Right. So you've got to have someone there who's on your side. I think that's the most overused term in business right now is we want to be a good

partner. Want to be a good partner. Don't tell me. Just be a good partner. You don't need to tell me you're going to be a good partner. So that's what we look for. So we have traditional media, which I'm part of, like a premier radio and a Fox. And then you have, you know, the Amazon's of the world. Also, in terms of like capitalization, you know, we grow up in a domestic world. Now it's all global. Money comes from everywhere. Could I argue there's value in getting a company overseas? You already have a bedrock. You have your business domestically. That's not an issue. Could I argue there are advantages to having somebody abroad ever buy or be your primary partner. Potentially, look, let's talk about primary partner. So it's a heck of a lot

easier to do a deal with an entity that's in 180 countries than to go to 180 countries and do 180 separate deals. Especially forget the easy countries. United Kingdom, Australia, sub-Saharan Africa, we have relationships there, we know what to do. I don't know how to do a deal in Finland. Like that's not my area of expertise. Right. So even our international team with your strong, do they really know in Paraguay what the best outlet is for our product? You end up taking the highest money deal, which can sometimes hurt the product. Right. Certain countries, you don't want to be behind a paywall.

It won't work. Even if you look at the last cricket negotiations in India, the folks who got the digital rights, which was Viacom, Reliance, and James Murdoch, they're basically offering it for free. On an Avod saying, we understand the culture in India, people are not going to pay for this. So we'll have it ad supported. We'll make our money that way. We'll get the biggest audience possible. Looking to get more out of the NBA season?

Well, now's the perfect time to download Fandul, America's number one sportsbook. Right now, new customers get a no-sweat first bet up to $1,000. That's free bets back if your first bet doesn't win. The promo code is always Colin. FanDuel has tons of betting options. I like the same game parlay. Bet a little, win a lot. Fandul's app is safe, secure,

easy to use, and you get paid your winnings really fast. The no-sweat first bet up to $1,000,000 promo code Colin, make every moment more this season with Fandul, an official sports betting partner of the

NBA. 21 plus in select states, Fandul's offering online sports wagering in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino LLC, gambling problem. Call 1-800 gambler or visit fanduel.com slash RG, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee, Virginia. 1-800 next step or text next step to 533342, Arizona. 1-88-78-98-9-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat, Connecticut. 1-8009 with it, Indiana.

1-800-5224,000 to visit KSgambling, help.com, Kansas. 18777-7-0 stop, Louisiana. Call 1-800-3-27-50-50 or visit wwwW-W-Hourpline.org slash problem gambling. Visit www.md-Gamblinghelp.org, Maryland. 18778, Hope, New York, or text Hope, New York, 467-369, New York, 1-800-5-2-4-7-4700, Wyoming, or visit www.1-800-gambler.netwest Virginia. How do you view the paywall? As an individual performer, I always felt in my business the first 25 years is to build an audience.

And then like Howard Stern, that becomes less relevant and monetizing when you get into your 50s and up, monetize it. If you lose some audience but monetize it to a much higher level, that's always as an individual felt like the right play. Al Michaels, we know who he is. Yep. Who's writing the check now? Yep. does it work that way for a business that your brand is established? You have a wildly loyal, young and growing audience.

Where is that line? Check, monetization, growth. I mean, how do you view that? How does Vince view it? By the way, it's a dangerous line in our business, and I'll tell you why. If you go back, this is going back a long way, but if you go back to the 60s where boxing was one of the top three sports. let's say before the NBA became the NBA before Bird Magic when it was still pre-stealers NFL before Montana came in and boxing was Ali and Sugar Ray and all

these guys one of the unfortunate things that happened to boxing is they went behind the paywall for almost everything right so they went to HBO when HBO offered more money when very few people had HBO so fewer eyeballs on their product especially with kids if your parents didn't subscribe to HBO you weren't watching the fights. And those were rich parents. Those were rich parents. Right.

Cable was not prevalent. Certainly, premium cable was not prevalent. So you have to actually have money back then to watch a product that should be available to the masses. So if you look at the steady decline of boxing, that's one of the big factors. Then pay-per-view was figured out. And boxing said, oh, instead of just being on HBO for whatever HBO was charging in 1992, $10 a month, $20 bucks a month, we can charge $50 an event, $70 an event.

that will make more money in one night. Sure, but with no reinvestment in the sport, what are you going to be in 20 years? And if you look at boxing now and you say, wow, they could do a heck of a lot better job. Or if you look how great of a job UFC did, how great of a job Vince and WWE did, it was always to make sure that the product

was available to the masses. Smart to me. Who's your rival? I don't know that we have one. There's two answers in my mind to that question, Colin. Either we don't have one or everyone is our rival. What I think about often is people, even our age, are on their phones at night on TikTok. So watching free content, watching free content.

They're texting their friends. They're messaging their friends. We have to make sure our product is exciting enough not just to get you into the venue, but to make sure you watch at home. So if there are other opportunities on your phone that are better, we're dead. If we continue to have a strong product, that we're not. product that resonates with the fans, we're in great shape. How many people now at WWE?

How many do you employ? About a thousand altogether. How many on the creative side? 50 to 75. These are writers? Writers, producers, meaning the writers obviously write the content, the producers helped to execute on the content with our superstars, our wrestlers, which we call superstars, the producers and the writers will work with the superstars to make sure that the matches

and the interviews go off the way that's intended. How far ahead, for instance, would you begin the process of WrestleMania? Months in advance. Months, months, months, months in advance. If you said now, where's the creative team with their process? They're months ahead of WrestleMania. Obviously, a huge focus on Saturday and Sunday to make sure we can execute what the plan is, but they're months ahead.

And they know that's the way it should be because, again, 52 weeks a year, three to four programs a week. If you're not months ahead, you're going to get caught. I always thought you had a certain dexterity. You were very nimble on bad days. I haven't had a lot. I think we both had really nice lives, but especially the Vegas years. Those were lean years for you and me.

They were brief. I always thought you were really good in chaos. Again, as somebody from the outside, Vince leaves, Vince comes back. That may be viewed by some as chaotic. Was it in the building? No, not from my point of view. Number one, he's a controlling shareholder. He's the founder of the company.

It's his right to come back. And he graciously says, hey, it's our company. Factually, it's his company. And I have a good fortune of working there and working with him. So if he decided he wanted to come back, that's the way it was going to be. And for me, in terms of chaos and looking at it, I sort of, I had a law school professor who said this to me. I was looking at two different law firms when I was a second year student or something. like that. And I see, you know, it's a hard decision. And he said, a hard decision. He said,

a hard decision is if you got 20 bucks and you don't know whether you should buy groceries for your kids or keep your lights on. That's a hard decision. He's like, this is easy. So to me, even when I was an agent, I always wanted to talk straight to my clients, straight to my colleagues. What was the worst that could happen? Client fires you? I prefer not to be fired, but okay, I can deal with that. You're like, oh, it's embarrassing. Not embarrassing to me. That's the ups and downs of life. What's the other bad thing that can happen? Oh, the agency fires you? That's not my preference. Fortunately, CA never fired me. And they were great to me. But so why if that happened? So people are like, oh, that guy got fired. I don't care about that sort of thing. So when chaos comes

around, I like to try to stay calm in it and figure out what's our path out of the chaos. What would surprise me about Vince? Obviously smart, driven, passionate. What would surprise me? He can be an introvert in private settings. He does not dominate a room, especially with people he doesn't know. He's a really good listener. And the rule of thumb with Vince is you can say anything you want, as long as it's said in a respectful way and in private. And if you think about it, those are kind of your rules and my rules. In private conversations that you and I had had about your career, I would not say those in front of a group of other people. Maybe you, in front of Anne, other close confidants, but that's your business. So if I had a different point of view than we talk it through

in private. So it's all a stylistic thing. He's also extremely generous and has financially helped. He won't say it. He doesn't like to take credit for that. But has financially helped a lot of people, which not that many people know about. But I've seen that side. It's a very sweet side. Does he still, you know, they used to say the late great Bill Russell threw up before. every game, which is hard to fathom. But that was the kind of anxiety. He viewed it as a real positive, like when I stop being nervous. Steph Curry's talked about this. There is an anxiety, even as the best shooter in the world. What's Vince like on WrestleMania night? Definitely not the throw-up guy, but definitely the we got to be laser focused here.

So, WrestleMania night going into the show, that's not the night to be cracking jokes. and anybody who wants to do that, if you're going into a quarterback Super Bowl game, you're going to go crack jokes with a quarterback, give him space, let him breathe. If he wants you to come around

and say, hey, let's crack some jokes, you come around and crack some jokes. But it's not that sort of anxiety with him. He doesn't operate that way. Yeah. He's such an iconic figure. I wonder if part of what made this whole thing work

and continues to work is that Vince still works out. he understands the life, the physicality of the wrestler. When I look at Vince, it's such a, Dana White, by the way, similarly. Totally. You know, Vince, to me, I feel like he's an athlete to this day. Is he? He is.

And look, I think, even think about your own life, from my point of view, you've never been a big drinker. I'm not, maybe when you were 20. Well, last night, Ann and I went out. That's different. That's different. You're with your wife. You're having a good night.

That's different. I'm talking about in business setting. or this, that. Part of why I've never seen you be a big drinker, you got to work the next day. Right. And you've got to have the goods. And in our business, collective business, you've got to earn your keep every day. So the, hey, I'm tired, I can't do it today. Okay, maybe you can have one day like that. But if you have a week like that, you have a month like that, you're going to have a problem. I think it's the same way with the vincers of the world, with the Danas of the world, they got to go every day. So whatever they need to keep themselves fresh and clear-headed is

what they're going to do. There's never been a moment since I've known the guy, Vince, or Dana, where I've ever spoken to either one and they're like, ah, just tired. I'm feeling a little down today. Never. It's the same opening of a phone call with each of them. Hey, how you doing? Good. How you doing? You have time to talk business? Yep. Boom. We talk business. There's never, ah, you know, my kid is going, everyone has their problems. And you know this drill. If you really want to get ahead. You got to understand no one really gives a fuck about other people's problem. We've talked about this before. Like, oh, calling my flight's delayed. You know, it's another hour. Just call me when you land, man. Like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, we all got problem.

Even I shouldn't rush to Twitter and complain about Delta. People do that. All day. They do it all day. And I get it. They're trying to get Delta's attention. I get it's frustrating. Yeah. When you fly and things delayed, no one gives a fuck. It's sort of like, you know, the middle of the night, if you've ever stubbed your toe on your bed. Right. You tell the person the next day, you should see my toe. No one gives a shit. And I don't mean about serious things in life. If a friend's really sick or whatever, of course, you care about that.

But when someone's like, oh, I have the flu. Like, okay. Take some therapy. Call me in three days, man. Like, we got to move here. Vince is that way. Dana's that way. John Sina, Charlotte Flair,

obviously Brock Lesner. Yes. Who, again, is such a unique physical presence. finally, does how the audience react, not just ratings, but do you watch how the audience reacts to your wrestlers? Can that elevate or puncture a career? To us, that makes or breaks our performers. So if the audience is into someone,

even if us folks in the back of the house haven't seen it, we're going to give that person a push. If we think someone's a big star and the audience, now we'll stick with it for a while. early on with Roman Reins, it wasn't working the way WWE thought it would work. They stuck with it. They stuck with it. Finally, when he went heel, again, the villain character, it worked like wildfire.

And you hear the audience's reaction to him. The head of the table, they acknowledge me, whatever it is that he's saying, they react no matter what. Someone once told me, they said, you know what the opposite of love is? And I said, I don't know, hate. And they said, no, apathy. They said love and hate are close cousins there. Right, right. So if you love our performers, that works.

If you hate our performers, that works. If you don't care about that. And difference is the killer. The killer. That's the killer. Volume. Make sure to check out the Dremon Green show. I brought Dramon Green into the volume because one of the more entertaining voices in sports,

unique perspective, understands behind the rope. Also chops up with guests like Gary Payton, Zach Levine, Tracy McGreney. ready, make sure download the Draymond Green Show wherever you get your podcast, only on the volume podcast network. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.