The Joe Rogan Experience - #2423 - John Cena

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

John Cena is a WWE 17-time World Champion wrestler, bestselling author, and actor whose on-screen career includes installments of the “Fast & Furious” franchise, “The Suicide Squad,” and its spinoff series “Peacemaker.”https://www.wwe.com/superstars/john-cena Tony Hinchcliffe is a comedian, writer, actor, and host of the podcast and live show “Kill Tony.” His Netflix special, “Kill Tony: Kill or Be Killed,” is streaming now.www.tonyhinchcliffe.comwww.youtube.com/@killtony Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Get a free welcome kit with your first subscription of AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/joerogan Don’t miss out on all the action - Download the DraftKings app today! Sign-up at https://dkng.co/rogan or with my promo code ROGAN GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GAMBLER, [phone] or visit gamblinghelplinema.org (MA). Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Please Gamble Responsibly. 888-789-7777/visit ccpg.org (CT), or visit www.mdgamblinghelp.org (MD). 21+ and present in most states. (18+ DC/KY/NH/WY). Void in ONT/OR/NH. Eligibility restrictions apply. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino & Resort (KS). Pass-thru of per wager tax may apply in IL. 1 per new customer. Must register new account to receive reward Token. Must select Token BEFORE placing min. $5 bet to receive $200 in Bonus Bets if your bet wins. Min. -500 odds req. Token and Bonus Bets are single-use and non-withdrawable. Token expires 1/11/26. Bonus Bets expire in 7 days (168 hours). Stake removed from payout. Terms: sportsbook.draftkings.com/promos. Ends 1/4/26 at 11:59 PM ET. Sponsored by DK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. What's up? John Cena in the fucking house. Put these on. Yeah, let's put these on, pretend we're professional. What's up?

Good to see you, man. Thanks so much for having me. My pleasure. And there's no way I'm having a pro wrestler on without Tony Hinchcliffe. Of course. possible he's the expert he knows more about pro wrestling than i know about ufc yeah sometimes i translate little things here and there that's cool it's all right yeah he has to he has to and he's a giant fan of yours too you know what else is a giant fan of yours is brian simpson brian simpson was

going on last night about how intelligent you are it was really interesting you know sure was me yeah well you do speak fucking mandarin which is kind of crazy uh yeah yeah how long did it take you to learn that? Man, I was doing that for quite a long time. I've since kind of declined on the studies. A wonderful takeaway from the study of Mandarin. Just because you know a language doesn't mean you know the culture. So that was a fantastic experience. But I studied Mandarin for like a decade. And I would say like not even conversationalally fluent. It was a really tough hill to climb for me. But it seems like a really big hill. It's just a just, it's just a just different. You know, even if you can speak it and you read it, you know, the reading.

No, no, I didn't even bother to read. And, like, reading all the characters, understanding everything. Yeah. How long did it take you to learn? Around 10 years. Whoa. Yeah. And then, like, I mean, I would dream in Mandarin and, like, have conversations and kick down in that. So it became like a, like, a second language. But, you know, I lived in China for a little bit. I filmed a movie with Jackie Chan. So I was there for, like, six or seven months. I lived there in, maybe we were Inter-Mongolia, Yinchuan province, so like in China. Wow. And it was fun. Yeah, yeah.

You were in Mongolia? Inner Mongolia, yeah. What's the difference? I don't know, because I've never been to Mongolia, but inner Mongolia was, man, I was the only person that looked like me there, and everyone would say, look, it's big white guy, Hyundai, Hondah, Bahrain, that would call me. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. So what motivated you to learn that? It seems like such a task. Honestly, man, it was everything in my life seems to be wrestling related. It was wrestling related. Like WWE's reach spread everywhere. I mean, I've been able to, lucky enough to perform everywhere from like Moscow, Philippines, South Africa, Bangor, Maine, every place in between, except China. China was like the one place that didn't understand what we did. So it's literally like it's a universal language because you can turn it's like UFC like you turn the volume down but you can see like oh this is two guys best guy wins I get it uh China the Chinese just didn't get it so I figured if like

one of our superstars spoke the language maybe that would help break down the barrier and we got in for your idea uh it was my idea but the WWE offers and I think they still offer it they offer a free second language program so like when they rolled out the initiative of like financial advice and, you know, they'll pay for portions of your secondary education and free second language. This is like 2011, 2012, big talent meeting in like an auditorium. I'm one of the old guys at the time sitting in the front being like, these kids don't know how good they have it.

I should stand up and tell them to them like, no, fuck that. I'm actually going to lead by example and take a language. So I signed up right then and there for Chinese because I wanted to get us into China. Wow. And like I said, it worked, but it kind of only worked. And they, I think, I think actually right now China is experiencing what wrestling is to them. Because, like, there's, I've read articles that there's promotions over there that are thriving. So, like, now they get it.

Oh, so they have their own promotions. Yeah, yeah. And this is a fairly recent thing? I think so. Like, I just read recent articles that, like, pro wrestling is thriving in China and they have their own, like, their own way of doing it. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. That's wild. It's wild how, like, expansive the pro wrestling business is, that they would be that open-minded to say, like, let's give second language programs to the athletes. Well, you know, I just, it's weird. The origins of the business are carnival-related. It is like a carnival attraction. And then it was, like, ruthlessly territorial. And then when it became national, I was still trying to find its way.

It's almost like, you see pro sports doing it, you know, the more a sport succeeds. the more benefits they offer to their competitors and athletes. So, you know, WWE kind of hit that stride, yeah. It's just such a smart thing to do, you know? Yeah, well, you give your talent the opportunities to gain knowledge and wisdom. And the sad thing is, I don't know how many people did it, or do it still, you know. Was there anybody other than you that you know of? Two other people.

Who? Claudio Castignoli, who speaks, I think, four or five languages already, and he just wanted to take like a brush up course and Natty Nighthart wow yeah that's it that's everybody else is like not going to do it too much work yeah what was the not knowing the culture aspect so man I got I got put in a bit of a hot spot with um uh I I made a a pack to myself when I was like okay I feel fluent we would do these global press tours and I just happen to be on a global press tour I'm like you know what I'm gonna do 70% of my media in Mandarin, like in dialogue.

And I got to say, I did it. Like, I went over there, spoke, people were taking off the translator headphones. Like, life was good. Everything was great. At the very end of the day, as with all these press tours, you do like a bunch of prompter reads. So I'm doing prompter reads for everywhere. And it's like, hey, go this place and see this movie. Go this place and see this movie. And no, my bad, I didn't check the reads because it's like an end of a 10-hour day. You do a million of these things and one of them said like hey uh Taiwan see this this and and the the it was all in Mandarin and the opinion described Taiwan as a country so be the first country to

see this now over there they they look through a different lens like geopolitics are murky waters man and that's what when I learned of like I just said it left everybody was cool I did my thing like I read the prompt it was like a Ron Burgany moment like go fuck you something San Diego. It's like the most offensive thing you can say. So I'm like, man, you know, good job, John. You said you did 70% and people understood what you were talking about. And then they put that out and everybody was like, what the fuck did you just say? We don't, that's not how we do it over here. And again, just because like my takeaway and it was a pretty tense moment for me. Like I had to apologize to China and then apologizing

to China. I pissed off my home country. I'm a patriot. I love the, you know, United States of America and everything it stands for but like no one it was never enough nobody was happy everybody was fucked up and it was it was it was like murky waters for me personally and I it was weird like I'm not I think I might have been the only guy almost to get canceled for doing his homework you know like we're trying to like learn like learn and try to do something but the cool takeaway you know we can learn from every mistake my mistake was just because you know the language doesn't mean you know the culture did they even refer to as Taiwan. I think they referred to as Chinese Taipei, right?

Man, what was in the, I know what I read in the thing. So that's, again, I don't know enough depth to know that. And now, like, people like, oh, man, can you, can you speak Mandarin for this? I just won't do it. It's a skill that I have, and it's, but it's a skill that's going to remain with me because it's, I don't understand, I don't have the depth of field to know what to call that place in that region of the world. And I haven't done enough research. I don't have the wisdom. And I don't have, like, the, the cultural fluency, you know? So it was a cool lesson.

It sucked because I thought I was just trying to do something good, but it was a cool lesson. Was it really that big of a deal? Man, I thought, like I was filming Peacemaker Season 1, and when they came out with all of this stuff, I went directly to James Gunn and it was like, hey, man, if you have to fire me, I understand. Wow.

It was that serious. Yeah, and it was. But it wasn't even words that you wrote. Someone else, the WWE wrote it? That doesn't, no, no, it was. was for the movie I was promoted. Right. So the movie, the people that made the movie wrote it.

So I don't know. Like when you do these press tours, let's say, if I'm doing a movie for Warner Brothers, let's say, let's use a peacemaker's example. I'm doing a global peacemaker tour and we go into China or we go into South America. You meet like the PR person there and they have all the stuff you're supposed to do and they curate your experience and they hold your hand. You're like, okay, now we're going to go to this station. And by the way, they just want you to do some shoutouts.

So anytime I go anywhere globally now, as much as I want to thank fans for their attention and, you know, investing in the product, I really shy away from, like, speaking the language because I don't understand the cultural nuance. You know, I just want to be like, yo, man, thanks for watching what we do, and I love the fact that you're entertained,

but I want to speak to you at a level that I understand that I'm fluent because your boots on the ground here every day and I might say something that's a nice gesture but completely fucking offend you. And that's not good. That's not good for anybody. So was the teleprompter in English and you translate to Chinese?

No, everything was in Mandarin. And in Chinese, they have the characters, which are virtually impossible for me to learn. There's like an infinite number. But they also have what's called Pin Yin, which is it's kind of spelled out in English with phonetics. So it has the four tones. So if you were

to put something in front of me in Pin Yin right now, I could definitely read it. And I got good at reading Pin Yin, so I was like, man, I could send all these messages in Mandarin, and then more people will know about this movie and more people will know about me and more people know about wrestling and more people will be excited looked good on paper just my follow through is a bit weak you know it doesn't even seem like that was your fault right it's probably a PR's assistant assistant that's type that's probably in charge of doing the grunt

work of typing in all the different languages and the different countries like it's tedious from from what I know I know I'm going to learn a lot about you guys in this episode but from what I know about you you're you're into looking at looking things through different lenses and different perspectives. It also could have been somebody being like, I'm going to get this kid. But here's the thing. I do appreciate you saying like, it's not

your fault. That's not true. It was my fault. And I think that's when I can start to work on like, well, what did I learn from this? And I could easily blame a PR, an assistant. I could say somebody had a target on my back, all that stuff. I fucked up. Did you

suspect that somebody might have set you up? No. Well, you're saying, it like it's a possibility well man when it happened every every theory came like here's the thing the world doesn't revolve around me but my little world everybody was like they fucked up they did this on purpose i was like well first of all who's they so i was able to kind of eliminate all that and once i realized i could still go on working uh i really made a lot of people angry and for that that i'm sorry like again i was just trying to that's crazy just by saying that Taiwan's a country in in Chinese though right you know like those are murky waters to begin with you know like I'm not even thoroughly fluent on the U.S. policy I think it's like like territorial ambiguity or some shit like that like it's so weird and it's it's so fragile and I got into some water I shouldn't have been swimming in but that's that's on me it's not it was my fault and and I think that's important for me to bear the burden of that and be like yo what how can I course correct what did I

I learn who do I really, really genuinely have to apologize for offending. The biggest thing that was a kick to the nuts is when, like, people state side got pissed off. Because you apologized. Yes, in Chinese. And I understand it, I mean, completely, like, bowing down to the demand of this, gosh, what a shitty move by me. Like, I just, I should have taken a breath. Again, what did I learn? Don't be reactive.

take a breath find out what's going on find out the best path of action maybe give it a few days maybe give it a hot second and then move forward but immediately I was like oh they're mad

you want us to do this fine no problem I'll fix it right now man not only did I not try to fix the hole in the boat I sunk the Titanic but again it was a learning experience well it speaks to your character that you don't blame anybody else because I blame everybody else

I'd like who fucking wrote that don't you don't you know what you're saying or what you're making me say? The the release you guys have for the show I read it and you might be the only person so that was whoever handed it to me that was what they said

like I think you might be the only person's ever read it yeah man if if you're gonna take liberties with me at least I want to be able to read that you are right you know what I'm saying and I can't say I'm perfect with doing that but like I was handed a release I'm like I man can I just glance this over for

oh this says what I think it says. Okay, let's go. Trump didn't even read it. Just a... Tweet's their own? Yeah, no. It's very smart of you to read it.

You know, who knows, you know? Who knows? So this is, Tony, is this the full trifecta now? It's like if you've gotten all of your heroes on this podcast now? There's a couple more we can knock off out of the pro wrestling world. There's a couple more. Todd, let's... If you don't mind, if I can indulge.

Talk pro wrestling heroes. Who do we need to knock off? Well, I mean, in all reality, and it's a diabolical diabolical thing. Because, man, he can kind of invite anyone you want in here. You just kind of got to get him the wish list. I mean, you got to start with the number one, without a doubt, Vince McMahon, who started this gangster shit and spread it around. I would definitely have him, man. It was a little.

Man, he would be great. Yes. I whatever magic you have out there and you have a lot of gravity Do you think he'd be interested in doing it? Are you kidding me? I think you would love it

Really? I think he would love it I don't know when the right time is but man Don't don't miss out in that opportunity At least send it out to the universe Yeah well I would definitely Vince if you're listening

Vince if you're listening Let's go I think this would be a great I think this experience would be a great one for you Is he still involved? Is he out? He's out he's out he's out totally yep it seems like he's the guy that'll be out for a little while and then

something'll happen they'll bring him back in no well well i don't know again that's that's way we were talking about like why is your last event in this place i'm like man because i don't choose the events like i don't all that stuff is so far above me but i know now he's out i in my eyes i'd like to think that like time heals everything and i believe in forgiveness and uh i also believe in like looking at the body of work but I also I also notice a lot of fragile stuff going on there I don't know I don't know I don't know yeah it's a hot subject it it is get us into another Chinese Taipei incident well no no man I'm again I've learned to become a little bit more accountable for what I say and yeah just how just because I feel a

certain way about a person doesn't exonerate them from being accountable for their actions right and just because he did start quote unquote all this gangster shit, that doesn't mean he doesn't need to be accountable for his actions. So let's figure out what that means and then figure out if we can move forward and bring that back in the fold or if it stays the way it is. What do you think, Tony? Do you think he's coming back? I think he would come here.

Yeah, I think he would come here too. And I think he, you know, that's one of the more entertaining people of all time. He created the entire universe. You got to remember, Hogan's Hogan because of him. Sina's seen as seen as a him. Yeah, every single. Stone Cold. He's like, that sounds good. Yeah, keep it going. We'll do the glass breaks

thing and they'll throw you beers. I like it. Let's do it again next week. So everything that we think... When he sits here, you've got to do that impression. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Stone Cold's another one that hasn't been on. Steve would be great. I think you would dig Steve. Oh, yeah. I'm sure.

Yeah. He lives out here too, doesn't he? Yep. Does he? Well, actually... Doesn't he have a ranch out here? I think he does somewhere. I think he does. Yeah, but... I think he's based out of somewhere else now, New Mexico or Arizona. He's on the, he, like, he's, like, kind of cool and reclusive. He, like, doesn't really do a lot.

It's amazing. He would be a good get. And I'm pretty sure. I guarantee you would do it. Yeah. Steve, if you're listening, I know you're watching. Come on. Come on.

Come on in. Let's talk some wrestling. The man. I mean, everyone has him on the, you know, the Mount Rushmore. Uh, Triple H, who runs it now, the son-in-law of Vince McMahon. Yeah. I mean, he. runs the entire thing.

I mean, you want answers to those high-level questions. Yeah. There's your guy. That's the guy you need to get in it. A lot of the stuff you'll probably ask today, I'd be like, that's way above my pay grade. This type of the year when life ramps up and demands more of your energy, more work, more plans with family and friends and holiday travel, all while it's getting darker and colder out, you can let it all drain your juice, or you can get out ahead of it with AG1. AG1 is a daily health drink that can help you stay one scoop ahead of all the, you can help

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Subscribe today to get this clinically backed formula in the flavor of your choice. Tropical, citrus, berry, or original to help you stay one scoop ahead. AG1 has a special offer today. If you head to drinkag1.com slash Joe Rogan, you'll get the welcome kit, a morning person hat, a bottle of vitamin D3K2, and an AG1 flavor. sampler for free with your first subscription. That's over $100 in free gifts. Just head over to drinkag1.com slash Joe Rogan or visit the link in the description to get started. Well, you don't, if you don't know the history, Tony at one point in time was offered a job

with the WWE before he really made it. No way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was offered a job to write for the WWE because, you know, Tony was a giant pro wrestling fan. And, you know, he already had a Netflix special so he was known as a comic before that was it before the Netflix special yeah the first one the one that you released yourself yeah really yeah it was only a couple years into me doing stand-up like seven nights a week at the comedy store all the time and somehow I ended up someone's like hey I have a friend in WWE if you want to have a meeting with them and just talk and I went in with straight up ideas this that the under the undertaker's brother comes back again this that the next like everything back and forth I can't even remember any of them that

It's been so long, but I went in with the whole thing. This guy's like, where the hell did you? Like, what, this is crazy. You just, like, did this? I'm like, yeah, I found out a couple days ago we were going to talk. So, but, yeah, they offered it, but I would have had to move to Connecticut and take a train to New York every night to go do stand up. And that would have just been exhausting and everything I heard because Patrice O'Neill, the late great Patrice O'Neill wrote for WWE for a while. Did he really?

Yeah. Yeah, for like a couple of years, I think. What did he, just wrote lines for them? Like, what did he do? The whole shebang. When you're a WWE writer, they make you write. It's not like a cute job at all. No, there's a lot of television, or there's a lot of content every week.

Right now, I think they got, they have three weekly shows. So that's 20, I think one of them's going back to three hours, 16s. It's like 50 segments of TV. Yeah. Every week. Yeah, but I remember when you were talking about it. Yeah. When you're talking about potentially doing it.

I was like, yeah, it was tricky. I was like, dude, you do not want to live in Connecticut. No, that's the main thing. If it was anywhere else other than Connecticut, it kind of would have made more sense. If it was in New York City, it would have been a no-brainer. If it was in L.A., definitely. But, like, fast forward, now you're more and more involved. Yes.

Well, this is the crazy thing. Like, we had talked, like, during the old days, like, we would talk in the green room. I'd be like, that would be your ultimate dream job. Yeah. Like, to make it as a comedian. and somehow be involved in the UFC the way, or excuse me, in WWE, the way I'm involved in the UFC, like very similar. Yeah, it's crazy.

It's insane. I'm going tomorrow night. I'm going to be in the front row at the arena in my hometown. Are they here in a moment? Oh, man. Are you messing with me? Are you going to, is your music going to hit and you're going to pop out? I got one more left.

This is what they do, by the way. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah. Oh, I didn't even know they were going to be in town. He's correct. There's a lot of, you mess with people, you're right. But then somebody like me will actually shoot you straight and be like, I'm not going to be there and I won't be there. And you'd be like, oh, now I'm just, I'm building the equity for people to mess with people.

Like I'm giving 20, 20 mulligans out there. Tomorrow. No, no. Music plays. Yeah, exactly. I heard a great story. You'll probably love this. You might even know the story.

But the Undertaker, his wife and his podcast co-host went to WrestleMania. They're up in a fancy suite. this was um which one was it the rock made an appearance did you yes you were there right this that huge finish at wrestling yeah yeah yeah yeah whatever it was just boom boom boom boom and all these legends were coming out this huge finish just like they can't even like follow it

the ultimate climax of a WrestleMania and one wrestler comes out interrupts this huge main event and then another one then another one anyway the Undertaker his wife and his podcast co-hosts were up in the suite Undertaker goes, I'm going to go use the restroom. They're like, he's been gone a while. The lights go out, the bell tolls. They're watching from the suite.

He's been gone for like 10 minutes, 20 minutes. He went and changed real quick. And then now he came out as the Undertaker. Yeah, came out as the Undertaker. They're in the suite like, oh my God, it's the Undertaker. They don't tell anybody. It's so old school and awesome that they keep secrets so locked up that their own loved ones, his wife didn't even know.

That's hilarious. That is so crazy. It's fun to be able to surprise a live audience Oh yeah Oh yeah I mean it's got to be a big part of it How did you get involved in pro wrestling? Were you a fan as a kid and then? I sure was

I think we have the same gravity of like Man I was a super fan as a kid But then I fell out of it Admittedly kind of when Hogan went to WCW So like I was into wrestling And then I wasn't And then I got into sports or whatever And then I got back into wrestling

when everyone else did when like stone cold steve austin became big the rock became big the attitude era hit and i was just um working a dead end got a job over at gold's gym venice and like didn't know what i wanted to do with my life how old were you uh 21 wow 21 i'd moved out to to california not to be famous or anything my degree was in canis and i wanted to like that was the center of the fitness universe in 99 2000 so like all equipment manufacturers are there i'm like man i'll go get a job with hammer strength or Sybex or like maybe golds or like put that piece of paper on the wall to to like get a good paying job it did not work so I ended up like front desk cleaning toilets selling protein bars in that order so don't ever buy a protein bar I'm just kidding I'm just kidding

but no I was kind of like a jack of all trades over there and a friend of mine Chris Bell and Mark Bell oh I know those guys yeah yeah they literally were like dude you talk about WWF all the time you know we train down in orange county and at that time chris bell was kind of like writing for this promotion you like would you want to do it and i man i that doesn't happen without them accidentally saying like yo we we we train to do this so his documentaries are fucking incredible bigger stronger faster and then the other one the pill one what was that one called magic pill no what was the one the addiction one uh that chris released but um bigger stronger faster so such a fucking great documentary the bell family i've been i've been friends of them for a long time great guys

yeah that that documentary like blew the lid off of like the reality of steroids prescription thugs that's another great one yeah crazy thing is he got addicted to pills while he was doing that because he had surgery while he was doing that and got addicted to pills while he's making a fucking documentary on people being addicted to pills that's how potent pills are a guy making a documentary a about addiction. He just thinks, well, I'm just taking these because I got hip surgery and I'm in fucking agony and then gets hooked.

That's how crazy it is. Yeah, they're strong. Yeah, I would imagine. Did you ever have an issue? No. No, as a matter of fact, I've had fusion in my neck, right peck, completely detached, reattached, both triceps reattached, both triceps scoped,

nose relocated. Like I got, I probably, I'm in, like, 10 physical surgeries where they got to go and correct something, never taken one pain pill. Wow. I have all the prescriptions in the bottom drawer of my house filled. And it's weird because at every facility, the first thing they, the first hill they climb is pain management. You wake up from anesthesia. You're like gray and murky. and I've been in a bunch of surgeries

and a bunch of different facilities the protocol is always the same do you want something for the pain here we got to make sure you take this with you because you're not in any pain yeah like I understand because you if you leave if you're feeling okay maybe you're high off adrenaline I don't know

and then the operation sets in of like holy fuck this is a 10 out of 10 I can't I need something I get that but I guess from falling down and hurting my body a lot like I know my pain threshold Yeah.

And when I, the, the worst one was probably the, putting the whole peck back on and then attaching it. But when I woke up, I was able to like mess around with a stress ball and I never took one pill. That's amazing. And I still have the full bottles of like summer labeled 2008 is when I had my first surgery. And they're just all there. There's a lot of people listening right now going, one if they're still good. One if they're still good. But, uh, the, got to find out what John's seen is towards them.

Yeah. It was weird because the medical staff couldn't. Couldn't believe it. Like, they're like, you don't want anything. No, because, man, it's a, I know how I am with this. It's, yeah, it's a fucking slippery, right? And I would just, I'd be high on opiates, opioids all the time. I got my first knee surgery, I think, in 93 or 94, and they gave me, I got an ACL reconstruction.

And they gave me Vicodin, I think. I'm pretty sure it was Vicodin. I took one, one day, and I felt so stupid. I was lying on, lying on my couch, watching TV, and I felt so, dumb and my knee still hurt you know it was just like it was distracting me from the fact that my knee hurt but I'm like I can't be this dumb I'm dumb enough

as it is I can't add to my dumbness with pills like I just saw it coming you know and also I knew a bunch of guys who had pill problems I wound up selling my pills to a friend of mine that would sell pills. Gosh I should have taken your idea could have made some

I made some cash I only made like a couple hundred bucks or something I don't even remember it was like in the 90s but but I remember just that one pill. And so then every surgery I've had ever since then, they always offered me stuff, and I never took anything. I got my other ACL reconstructed in 2003. Never took anything. I got my nose fixed. And it's like 2008. I got my nose reconstructed deviated septum. Yeah. The guy was insisting that I gave me two prescriptions for pain medicine. And I was like, I don't want anything. I was like, is it going to get worse than this? He's like, it could get.

I go, right now it feels like nothing. Yeah. It's like, but if you've been, again, like you, you've been beaten up so many times. Your body, you're so used to just being in pain. And I think for some people, it's just the daunting anxiety of pain itself is like they just want a pill before they even realize, like, I can kind of just, yeah, it sucks, but it's not going to suck forever. It's going to heal. So let's just deal with the suck and just lay here. Put some ice on it or whatever and just relax. And along with that, it's kind of like your body's natural way of saying like,

Okay, maybe push a little bit more. Try to get a few more degrees of range of motion in physical therapy. Like, if those senses are numbed. Right. And, like, shut off. Right. First of all, you do feel just like, I don't want to do anything. So you won't work.

In many cases, you won't work to do the work to get better. Right. Or you just numb. You don't know the messaging. You can't listen to your body. Yeah. Like if it's really, really in pain, maybe it's, maybe your body's trying to tell you something. I don't know.

I always assume that people feel pain. differently. I mean, I just would imagine. Like, people feel hot sauce differently. Like, some people, they can't have any spice. Some people fucking can have, like, you know, death peppers and they're fine. So, all right, I'll throw that out to the group. Is pain a personal experience? I mean, there's no way I'm as tough as you guys. So, yeah, it has to be. But I think in other dimensions, you might be way tougher. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe, I think there's something. You don't know, Tony. I can't imagine the dimension. I went and visited a firehouse the other day and I was going down the pole going we like you guys wouldn't do that I would do that so in that aspect you're tougher than me yeah you can take ridicule and we can take ridicule really easily but I don't know how what it feels like for other people you know what I'm saying I mean I would assume that everybody feels the same but you know one of the reasons why I think maybe it is like it's different because my mom my mom has a crazy tolerance to pain like I'm like I'm

Like my guy who, my stem cell guy in L.A., my mom had a real knee issue, and he was treating her as well. And he goes, it's hilarious. Your mother's just like you. She just takes it. Like, she doesn't even flinch. She's sticking it. Like, he's like, that doesn't happen with like 75-year-old ladies. Like, take a needle and shove it into their knee and push it.

And she just doesn't move. And, you know, she's like, oh, it wasn't painful. It was no big deal. It's like, you know, a lot of 75-year-old ladies would be fucking sweating and freaking out and seeing the needle. I'm pretty sure I would be, yeah. But I don't know. You know, I don't know what it feels like to other people. Like when I got my ACL, my right ACL reconstructed, it was a lot easier because it was a

cadaver, and I recommend it to anybody. The difference between a Patel tendon graft recovery and a cadaver recovery is literally like six months. The difference is, it's the cadaver was so much quicker. Wow. Oh, my God. Because the cadaver, they take it, I mean, it's all swollen and everything afterwards, but But it's somebody else's tendon.

They take an Achilles tendon off of a cadaver. So it's 150% stronger than an ACL. They fucking screw that sucker in place, little tiny orthoscopic holes, not nearly as invasive. And then five days later, you know Matt Lichtenberg, I went to his party for his birthday party five days later, just walking around. And he was like, did you just have surgery? I was like, it's not that big a deal. Man. Like it feels fine.

You know, it was so much easier. The left one was brutal because they take a slice out of your. patella tendon and then they could take a chunk out of your shin bone and a chunk out of your kneecap and then they use those to screw this new tendon that they created into the shin bone and into your your thigh bone that was rough that one was painful as fuck and it took a long time before it felt normal took a long time before I could go down on one knee again when was that painful in the 90s and then the other one was two thousand early 2000s 2000 like two is somewhere running down, two, three?

I mean, 10 more years of performance surgeries, 10 more years of medical. Yeah, I just think it's the difference, because they still do that butel a tendon graph, and I think George St. Pierre had it done that way. I know a bunch of people that I'm friends with had it done that way. And I was like, oh, don't do that one.

Yeah. Do the cadaver. But people are worried, like, what if you get AIDS? Like, you're not going to get, Jesus Christ, you're not going to get AIDS from it, stop. And it's also, it's like you feel better before you are better, unfortunately, because the way the tendon works,

so when they replace a tendon with a cadaver, it's not like you have this guy's tendon in your body. What it is like is that tendon is a scaffolding, and then your body re-proliferates that with your own cells. So over the course of six months, my body had filled in all of what used to be a cadaver with my own cells. So you'll feel like it's better before it's better.

So a lot of MMA fighters, they start training too quickly and they blow it out again because it's still soft. That's always the concern. It's always the concern. In any, you feel good and you're like, man, I can do this. Especially animals, you know. Guys who are just used to pain and used to pushing, you know, and they just pop it out again. I know multiple MMA fighters that have had knee surgery and then blew it out while they were recovering.

And just a few months more. They could just be all right. It's impatience, you want to get back in there. And then it's even worse because you've got to drill into the same holes and pull it out and open you up. And it's more invasive surgery. They've got to remove the screws. And fuck, yeah. But I just, I don't think everybody feels pain the same.

I think it's a genetic thing. I mean, it's just an assumption, obviously, because I don't feel what other people feel. But I think some people just any kind of pain is just they can't function. They're just in agony. And I think those people are way more vulnerable. to the pills. That's just my assumption. That's a decent perspective.

I would agree with pain is a personal experience. Like there are people who, I mean, I've seen people like, I can't believe you go through that. And then people will be like, but you get the shit kicked out of you. I can't believe you do that. It's all relative. I would be shit in cufflinks if you get that stem cell needle out. I would be sweating right until the fucking final moment. moment like some stuff I can't take you know so I guess it is it could be combined with like

what we fear in life or maybe maybe fear of hard work or fear of effort who knows I don't know I don't know I think it's also being accustomed to pain you know so if you did you wrestle when you were younger no I played football you played football well that's just like that in that you're always in pain I mean if you're playing football you're always colliding with people you're always you got a shoulders fuck with you your backs fuck with you it's It's like it's never ending. I've always said that there's something, there's some value into losing a fight.

Oh, yeah. Like I grew up with four brothers and we kicked the shit out of each other and I was not always on the winning side. So very early on in my life as a young person, you know what it's like to lose a fight. Oh, it's very valuable. And I think that there's a lot maybe to do

with the pain conversation there if like just flat out getting your ass kicked and then being able to dust yourself off and be like, I'll get you next time, you know? Like, it's not over, you know what I'm saying? Right, right, right. We're brothers. We're going to fight again. You know, like...

It's also knowing, like, why did he beat me? What can I do to beat him next time? You know, like, if you don't have that in your life, also, if you don't know what it feels like to get your ass kicked, you get a little mouthy. I mean, how many mouty people do we know that have never been fucked up? And I think that's why.

Like, there's real consequences if it actually comes down. You start yelling and you get mouty. If it actually comes down to it, and we've all seen many of these videos on the internet where someone just don't... They don't know what the fuck they're asking for, what they're getting into, and then all of a sudden they're getting hit. And, man, I'm not perfect. And there are days where I'm short of patience, but when it gets to that weird spot of, like, yo, someone's going to get hit in the face, I always try to, like, lean on diplomacy.

Always, always, yeah. Please, let's not do that, because that fucking sucks. And I bet a lot of people say to you, if I was you, I'd be fucking everybody up. That's the dumb people always say that. But, like, it doesn't end with that. Then this guy gets his brother or he shoots you or he runs. you over with a car. Or you think you're going to fuck somebody up

and you get fucking handled. Right. Like, you never know, man. You never know anybody else's story. You know? You never know. To so many people out there that train today. It's so much different than when I was younger.

Like, you would assume that, like, I assume that a good, solid 10% of all men you meet have martial art skills now because of the UFC. Popularity of it. Yeah. Certainly, certainly in Western society. Yes. You know, there's a gym every plaza. Also, there's so many kids that like watch UFC and then play, practice with themselves.

And you could learn a lot just doing that. And guys learn a lot just watching it on TV and then emulating it at home with their friends. Can tell those who watch WWE because when those moments happen, they try to do something crazy. Oh, yeah. It doesn't work. Oh, how many guys have fucking thrown their buddy onto a conference table or something? Because they thought it was the way to do it. Oh, it's crazy.

You know, I mean, the fucking sheer amount of punishment you guys put. put yourself through is staggering. I mean, it really is staggering. But, uh, thank you very much. Uh, it is, is all for the, like, it's like a pro football player, pro hockey player, UFC. I think, I think the beautiful advantage that we have is that it's, we can, we can make choices on what we do. So when you're in you've seen, they close the door, it's kind of fucking best person wins.

You know, you got to, it's survival when we're in WWE and we both step in the ring and they ring the bell. We're working together. working together to put on the best show for the audience. And in that process, you can calculate the risks you want to take. And I think that's what allows somebody to be able to perform for 23 years. You know, I don't know. I know that age-old stat that everybody says about, like, the average NFL career,

what, two and a half years or three and a half years. I don't know what the stat is on average UFC career. Like how long, what's your window to be functionally profitable? UFC, but I know because our risks are calculated and we're working together rather than against each other, the math is, is way higher for you to have like a 10, 15, 20 year career in WWE, but that also is 10 more years have fallen down, 15 more years have fallen down. So it's weird, like you can choreograph the risk, but you have to do it time and time again. And the schedule in WWE just changed, like to do 70 matches a year now in WWW.

is like, man, you're a workhorse. We used to do 220, 230. Which is so crazy. 220 days of trauma in a year. Because you're getting, no matter what, you're getting some trauma. No matter what. It is. A guy body slams you, something happens, you're colliding, you go off the ropes,

you're smashing into each other. I get such a warm feeling when first timers go into the ring for the first time. It's like, oh, it's like a bouncy floor. And then they fall down once. and, like, the wind's knocked out of them. They're like, my brain moved. Yeah, yeah. Now you've got to do that again and again.

But it's weird. I've gotten to work with a lot of stand-ups. And WWE is kind of changing. I would say it's on the progression of a stand-up, making it to just, like, a stadium tour. But, man, when I performed, my sweet spot, we ran very parallel lives. Like you, I've worked every city,

Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom to Madison Square Garden, like to the Saitama Super Arena, to AT&T Stadium to Bangor, Maine or to Valparaiso, Indiana. Like, you go to all of these places. And it's like, Friday you're in one place, Saturday you're in another place, Sunday you're in another place, Monday you're another place, Tuesday you're in another place.

One day to drop your shit, one day to catch your flight out, do it again. Like, it's kind of, we're kind of like touring stand-ups in that regard. Very similar, yeah. And you're responsible for your own trans, and I'm speaking from my day. I don't know how it is now, because I got one left,

and then I'm done, but you were responsible for your own transportation, booking your own hotels. Like, you were, they were just like, hey, we're starting here, we're in here, good luck. Which is awesome, because you create, people are really independent when they go through that fire. And you weed out the people who don't want to be there. Yeah, because they're just the sheer work, the sheer workload.

Making those clubs and like making, doing a tour. It's, also the adrenaline, like, what do you do after a night? Like, most jobs, people can't wait to be done. And then go home and relax, and fall asleep, or if you're doing stand-up or obviously wrestling, you were just... You're done late at night and you're like, man, what the water rush? Yeah.

Fuck, what can I do better? This fucking killed. And then it's four in the morning. Yeah, you're buzzing. Yeah. You're buzzing. And it's also, it's really hard to have any kind of a normal relationship because you're just constantly not home.

You're constantly gone. Like, even your friends, like you really, as a touring comic, the best thing that I ever did is start taking friends. friends with me on the road. Yeah. Instead of just working with, like, random guys that I didn't know in different towns. Those are fun sometimes, sometimes. Like, you know, two out of ten times, you meet a new friend.

Yeah. Eight out of ten times, you're with some annoying alcoholic who fucking sucks, and they're annoying, and then they want to take you someplace, and, you know, you're getting trouble. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's certainly the normal life aspect of it. It's also, like, at full tilt, it's a very absorbing thing. It's a very selfish thing.

So I think not only you don't work regular office hours and you're a nomad, a gypsy, but especially from a W&E perspective, you have to, like you're a startup founder. You have to wake up thinking about it. You have to think about it all day. You have to go to sleep thinking about it. Wake up in the two hours of sleep did you get being like, I remember this line or maybe we can do this stunt or whatever. right and it's people who are in your sphere at least through my perspective and my journey man if you were in my gravity from like 2002 to like 2019 i wasn't a part of a team you did it my way like bus leaves at 10 if you're there at 1001 you're a fucking left like we're doing this and we're training here and then we're doing this but it's it's so it's so the end product is good so like the dream job of like man i never the six year old kid holding the paper belt can be an adult holding the real belt and get shekels for doing that.

And I don't ever want to, I don't want to put that in jeopardy. So you fuckers are going to have to get in line and we're just going to have to go. Like, you know, I was absent a lot in relationships because if it wasn't on my terms, it didn't exist. You know, because here you got, you catch lightning out of a jar. I'm a kid from West Newberry who's, you know, come from a family of five. and we there's always more broke but man we were a good level of broke and then now like hey if you just work hard at this thing you can kind of not ever be that again all right fuck this i'm doing this thing all the time but that comes with hey i'm getting married or like

my grandfather died or i got a birthday coming up or like hey man you missed another thanksgiving you're damn right it did because i'm doing the thing yeah you know so that it's also for me at least It was that as well of, like, laser focus, all things, WWB. Well, it's that in everything that you do where you want to really be successful. It takes, saying yes to the thing means no to everything else. I had Jensen Hwang on the podcast the other day, who's the CEO of Nvidia. Like, one of the biggest companies on planet Earth, huge company. Fucking dude still to this day works seven days a week.

And he was talking about when he goes on vacation. I go, do you go on vacation and just put it all down? He goes, no, I work. He goes, even when I'm with my family, I have to work. I'm working. I work seven days a week. I don't take a day off. I love it.

And he goes, and I'm terrified of failure. He goes, that's my motivation. My motivation is not. I want to succeed. My motivation is fear of failure. Yeah. Every day I show up saying, if I don't do this, we could fail, and I'm going to work seven days a week. Everybody thinks they want to be a CEO.

You think you want to be a billionaire? Like, you want to do that? You want to do that when you're 60 years old? Do you want to be working seven days a week all day long from the moment you wake up? He wakes up at 4.30 in the morning. He says he answers thousands of emails a day. I'm like, what? How is that even fucking possible?

Gets up at 4.30 in the morning answers all these emails, works all day long, constantly problem solving, making AI chips. It's fucking crazy, right? But that's with everything. You want to be at the top of the heap? There's only one way. Yeah. When you see something difficult, look.

easy, there's a bunch of 4.30 in the morning wake-ups that made that happen. I think with everything in life, anything in life where you really want to excel at it, there's no shortcuts. Yeah. It doesn't exist. That weeds a lot of people out. It does. It does.

And there's a lot of, man, armchair quarterback is the easiest and best position on the field. Yeah. I can do that. All he needed to do is do this. Sure. Go right ahead. Yeah. Take your best shot.

Yeah. Good luck. Yeah. It's interesting because it must weed out so many tasks. There's probably a lot of talented people that you've seen over the years that just didn't have that drive to constantly improve and succeed and really be thinking about what they're doing all the time. I like that statement because I think the talent is doing it all. You could have a... No, you can have one.

You could smoke if you want. I don't care. We have fans in here. Yeah. Yeah, with fans to suck out all the smoke. I think the statement of, man, so many talented people. didn't make it. They may have, they may be an acrobat, they may be a fast talker, but that's not the only attribute that makes one special, you may be a great joke writer, but man, if you, if you

don't master stage presence, I mean, be a great joke writer with stage presence, but if you can't lug the tour, you're not, you're not talented for it. Well, it's, it's really the grind. It is. It's like the all-encompassing things. So when someone with great athletic ability decides that it's not for them because eventually that is one thing about WWE for all the arguments of like backstage politico

everybody understands the sound of money and no one refuses it like I fucking hate this guy but I got to give him another match it may not be but I now have to give them a 10 year contract but when they go out there if the noise is there

even if the they's fucking hate you you get another match. I'm proof positive of that meritocracy at work. Like, everybody fucking hated me. Why did they hate you? I was just real different. Like, I was just really different.

In what way? So, I didn't rock, I didn't roughly any feathers when I kind of entered the business, kept quiet, did my stuff, but I also didn't connect with the audience. And I don't know, maybe you guys see this in stand-up or not,

but then I got like a personality of like the white rap guy, like the white hip-hop guy. You know about that? But like, I fucking went, I fucking went all in, you know, urban gear, like, and I'm a hip-hop head. So it's like, oh, man, this is my sweet spot. This is the avenue. This isn't all of my personality, but this is one level that I can show that I think everyone will get. So if you go to Madison Square Garden, you get it, but if we go to Wheeling, West Virginia, you'll also get it. And you may like it in some places

and hate it in some places, but everyone will get it. I will not be selling apathy. but in doing that I never followed dress code I was saying disrespectful shit about my peers like I kind of did it my own way so I was I was kind of ruffling some feathers

backstage or just I was taking big swings because I was gonna fucking get fired anyway the alternative was lose my job so I was like fuck it I'm going down swinging and then the people behind the curtain were like ah the kid's disrespectful to the business he doesn't care about the business

all the while I just want to keep my fucking job you know so the days behind the curtain weren't really invested but they were also humble enough to be like there's noise out there got to give them another match and one match at a time times 23 years of compounding interest we're here what did vince think about your hip-hop he hated it and then loved it and and and i think i think i'm thinking for somebody but i think from his perspective is, like, when I hear somebody's idea for a personality, man, I want to be this sports agent guy or whatever, oh, yo, I have the idea of what that is in my head. And if their projection of that idea doesn't match my projection in that idea, I'm like,

ah, fuck, I hate it. But that doesn't mean it can't work. So I think what maybe would happen was my perspective of the white hip hop guy from the mean street of West Newberry. And Vince's perspective of John Cena the rapper we probably missed like he had an idea and I had an idea and usually he will craft it to

his vision I got to give him respect for allowing me to kind of to run with it you know well it's probably that fear of being fired that like keeps you on the edge dude that was it of like the Nvidia guy of like I don't want to fail I got the sit down

of like hey we're going to cut you because it's not working like you're out there for your matches you hear the same it's not working and I there's no argument there I'm like fucking all right I got to touch the sun I got to make it I got to play for the Yankees I got my one at bad a moonlight Graham and then they heard me rap in the back of the bus and was like man Stephanie heard me rap in the back of the bus it was like you know you want to do that on TV I'm like lose my job or fucking rap yeah let's go let's do this yeah so is Stephanie's idea and it was a fucking accident dude it was an

accident it was my final my final overseas tour for the WWE and the boys just spend time like that's the one time they get the whole group together is overseas because you don't want to be hurting cats like in Amsterdam or something everybody rides on the bus you go from town to town so like to pass the time the boys just do whatever and they were to a freestyle in the back of the bus and I normally just fucking kept to myself because I was raised in the environment of like keep your ears open keep your mouth shut don't do anything less spoken to so I did that but I also didn't make any connections with people who were putting their lives on the line for me.

You know, some of the guys you really beat the shit out of, in the rings are like your best friends. So I didn't have any of those connections. And I heard these guys rapping. I remember playing roller coaster tycoon on my laptop. Foam matching up, putting it away. I'm going to the back of the bus. And just waited my turn and then filleted like 12 guys.

And Stephanie was like, how the fuck did you remember all that? Like, no, no, it's freestyle. You just make it up. And she's like, well, make up something about me. and we were boarding a plane. And I literally, like, utilize the plane, the people getting on the plane, what she was wearing, what she was eating. She's like, would you do this on TV? And that's where we got a chance.

Wow. That's crazy. Off to the moon. Like, I got a shitty chance on a small spot, and that worked. So then I got moved to, like, the dog shit Saturday night program that nobody watches. But the cool thing is no one's watching. So, like, I can do whatever I wanted. So I started saying more racy shit and dressing more outlandish and having more personality and, like, claiming ownership of the show.

I call myself Mr. Saturday Night. And it's the shitty show. You don't want to be Mr. Saturday night, but I did. And then that got another match and got another match. And one by one, it kind of brought me here. Wow. Just a fucking happy accident, man. That's crazy.

All the way to. And even when the bells were like, hey, the whole thing's a fucking accident. You want to start training? Fuck, yeah, sure, all right. Great. You want to start rapping? Yeah, fuck it, sure.

Let's see what happens. That's amazing. It's a happy accident. And for it to go all the way to last year's massive heel turn, he went heel, dude. That was this year, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, that was this year.

Yeah, it's been a crazy year. It's been a year. Yeah, that was. That was a man. And, man, one, literally, perhaps, other than maybe Hogan, right, the greatest heel turn in wrestling history. When a good, good, good, good crowd-pleasing guy goes bad, bad, and dark,

you had moments, the things you were saying, the way you were saying them, epic, iconic, iconic heel-turn, cold, dark, working with the rock, he was in cahoots. That's the good guy, Cody wrote. You can, like, see the people's faces. That's the fun thing. It's like, the stuff is so simple, but it's the, it's the, it's,

If you take out the crowd in that situation and just put those three guys, it is really fucked up what we do. But when you add the audience in the back and all of their faces and what's going on, that's what makes. Bro, even your face, you got like a mean guy face all of a sudden. It's like you look like a different person. That's interesting. I was having a bad day. Well, this is also when you'd already done a bunch of acting. Yes.

Like this is this year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is February this year. Yeah. How much of the creative. of control do you have

over the aspects of that heel turn? Like for example, one thing that I thought was the coolest. I was in the front row of WrestleMania behind the Spanish announce table. So I'm directly across from the entrance,

you know, the giant rest of me is a football stadium in Las Vegas and there was no music and it was a black background. Normally he's the most color with the most iconic. loud wild music no music black background and in white letters it just said Sina and you just walked out with literally the statement was I'm not here to

entertain you people basically is what it felt like and I loved it I mean this is the main event of mania you are so entertained I mean I want to entertain you fuck I fucked up yeah I'm I'm I have a I have a degree in pro wrestling but my masters is in healed them like It's like the bad, I just love a bad guy. And even ever since that bad guy turn, I feel like, and I feel like most bad guy fans do, now newly connected with the back to the return of the good guy. Yeah, there it is. Oh, I mean, it's, it was literally just.

I used to come out like a Tasmanian devil. Yeah. And it's just reversed it all. And it seems like nothing, but it's iconic. Just cold as ice. everyone else for four hours coming out with colorful music and pyro and all this stuff. And there's the guy that normally did it the best and the biggest, just really not giving a fuck. And WrestleMania, if you're going to do it, like you give your best entrance for WrestleMania.

And this was, I guess we were going for the shittiest one. But it just rang the opposite and simple and true. The Octagon isn't just in Las Vegas anymore. It's right in your hands with Draft King Sportsbook. the official sports betting partner of UFC. Get ready because when Dwabishwili and Jan face off again at UFC 323, every punch, every takedown, every finish, it all has the potential to pay off in real time.

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Restrictions apply. Bet must win to receive bonus bets which expire in seven days. Minimum odds required. Four additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dKNG.co slash audio. Limited time offer. So like, for example, those things, those details, that's you mostly pitching to the creative team. Like, for example, like the, even just the white letters, the black entrance. Is that, how does that kind of come together?

So I think that's, and I've been lucky enough to kind of take this perspective of not knowing everything and realizing that even with 23 years of fluency, I'm not the smartest guy in the room. I don't know the technology they have and what they can do. Now, granted, a black LED board, I could probably come up with that. But what I like to do is lean on my resources. Like, hey, let's go to production and see what production is thinking. and I don't want to tell them what to do because I want to hear their ideas first and production was like

what if we just went basic? I'm like, how basic can you go? Yeah. What if we just blacked everything out? Yeah, but I know from what you guys have said you also like to light the, no, no, what if we just black everything out? You guys would do that?

Oh, that sucks. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah. So it's not me with all of these things. I don't have enough depth of field to touch all the bases, but I will go to every department and say like,

like, okay, entrance is a big part of what we do. What do we do for lighting? What do we do for production? Go to camera. Like, how do you guys want to shoot it? And then it trickles down when you talk to the talent you're working with. How do we portray this message? And then, of course, it starts at the top with creatively, I want to make you a bad guy.

So we're going to do that. Okay, sure, we're going to do that. How do you want to do that? But I think it's getting, we have a lot of talented people and just allowing them to do their job and let you know, like, oh, I was kind of thinking this. and then tell him like, yeah, that's a good idea, let's do that. Yeah. You know? That's amazing.

Because I don't know what I miss if I'm making all the demands. To show you the contrast, his opponent that night came out to, I think it was 40 people on red, white and blue dirt bikes, all dressed like American people. Nitro circus. He comes out elevated from inside of the stage wearing this super gaudy mask that he has to take off. Fireworks, fireworks, fireworks, fire, sparks, smoke, all of these different things. and he just comes out, blank-faced. I just got my bunk sock on the back, just run on. There you go.

It's so funny hearing Tony talk about this because for people who don't know, the way Tony runs Kill Tony is basically a version of a WWE event. I mean, it really is. Like when he does the arena shows, he has everything set up, like a WWE event. Yeah.

I mean, even the thing we did with Shane, when Shane was playing. When Shane was playing Trump, when Trump and I were supposedly feuding online, Trump had said something about me online. And then Trump's talking shit, like as Shane's talking shit. And then the music plays and I show up behind him. It's pure pro wrestling. Oh, yeah. It's pure pro wrestling.

And MSG's on their feet shocked, you know. You're surprising this crowd that things are just there for a comedy show. Yeah. And, well, there's the panel. I guess that's what we're going to have tonight. But the surprises, the ups, the downs. And then he brings up Joey Diaz. So it's like, boom, boom, kind of like that big finish at mania that I was talking about.

Yeah. Superstar, bringing up a superstar, you know, music, music, smoke, fire. Yes. All these little things. The more you make it important, the more important it becomes. Yeah. As what he's saying is, like, when Trump was there, this was as Trump was running for president, and Trump thought that I was endorsing RFK, so he got mad at me.

So I said, I am here to endorse someone, and I brought out Joey Diaz. I mean, which is great because you're going to get revealed, but you're going to get revealed, but you get a different reveal and it's like everybody went nuts but it's like the audience they're into it

like they're into pro wrestling they want all the heel turns they want all the chaos they want all the pageantry and the fire and the explosions and all the shit you get any live audience

they're into all that like watch a college football game watch a soccer game overseas or a football as they would say like the fans it's like a group think of energy that's fucking

nuts. Yeah. Like audiences want it. It doesn't matter where you're at. Like what, man, when comics just go out and light up a stage and they have that fucking stage presence and they just slay a set, the fucking audience is rolling in the aisles. Like they, you let them in. And they can help make a joke that might not hit the night before.

Slay. Like, it's all about the moment. It's all about being there and reading the people. And the fun thing about WWE is you can go out there with an eye. And I can only imagine this is kind of like stand up where if you got your set and you tell the first joke to crickets, you may try another joke. And if that's crickets, you got to fucking pivot. Yeah. So we go out, we go out and do something and, oh, man, they're into it.

Great. All right. We have them. We just got to maintain their attention until we get to act three essentially. But if you hear fucking crickets, you're like, all right, we're switching it up. Fucking pivot right now. And that's the beauty. That's one of the things that I love them.

most is the it's not just me and the other person out there like the audience is the act every like that moment only means something if you put a blue screen behind the people it is super fucked up like what the fuck are they doing and why does that mean anything right but when you let the level of the audience and everybody's on their feet they're oh no like it's fucking everything it's everything that's why tony's so interested in the coordination of it all and the setting in the sabotage and all the chaos that's involved in all of it these are these are these are human emotions that are universal. Everyone understands betrayal,

jealousy, anger, disappointment, failure, excitement, like these are universal things that you don't, if we don't speak the same language, you still have felt these things. And you could watch that, no one spoke in that clip. But you could watch that anywhere in the world,

I'm like, that kid just got fucked over. Right. Oh, what's gonna happen next? Like, that's the beautiful appeal of it. You know, it's, we don't hit too far, above our weight class, like we try to send large scale, universal messages based on true, real human emotion that we all know.

Yeah, and up to that day, that moment. Like, even that thing that we were just telling you about me bringing, him coming out, that being a reveal, him bringing up Diaz was coordinated literally, I think, 15 minutes before go time. Like literally me with a big piece of paper going, hey, Joe, what if we have we? did this he confirms it so i go to hair and makeup where they're finishing up shame as trump which

in itself is just hysterical i pitch it to him he loves it i go to dia as i say rogan's gonna bring you up and and the thing happens quick whereas with almost you know every form of entertainment that we're used to other than wrestling and like kind of you know kill tony in this instance everything's so pre-planned that if we over pre-planned it we would wouldn't have had the topical RFK endorsement because it was like news that day. Yeah, sure. And so again, that inspiration, you know, totally comes from there. Because what else is doing that? At MSG, 10 minutes before the show, reorganizing things. So now we have to go to production and go have Rogan's LED ready and then Diaz in that order, you know, it literally comes from that.

And when it goes right, there's not a better feeling in the world. Oh, exactly. I just get to sit back and watch. Yeah. But it's so funny that that connection with pro wrestling is really why you've made Kill Tony the way it is. Yeah. Like, without your love of pro wrestling, it would be such a different show. Like, if it was just run like a traditional stand-up show, there's so much else going on that makes it the biggest show.

Yeah. Well, it's long-term storytelling. We had a guy on on Monday that had been doing it 14 years. And man, he just, his timing was off. He struggled. Even after the minute, I go, you've been doing it 14 years? He goes, yeah, man. I go, how do you make money?

He goes, I do this. I go, you do this for a living. He goes, yeah, I go, you must have better material. I'm going to give you another shot. Do another minute. Here we go. Ladies and gentlemen, and I introduced him again. And he bombs again.

and literally I was talking with it about it with Stephanie after the show because she just happened to be at Kiltony on Monday and she goes guy a guy like that you know what happens next I go hopefully

hopefully the guy gets pulled out of the bucket in a month or two has a great set puts it together realizes oh his timing was off he wasn't taking a breath he wasn't connecting with the crowd he was just memorizing his stuff and the story begins begins to be told about this guy.

And sometimes it happens in reverse. Sometimes somebody starts off, you know, fire hot. Rocket strapped to the back. Yep. And then, and that's kind of the sadder thing, right? It's starting hot and then never being able to touch that again. Have a moment like your first time. Well, it's like we were talking about people with talent.

We all know someone who killed during open mic days that we're like, wow, this guy's going to be huge. They have like undeniable talent and they just can't manage it. They can't figure it out. They self-sabotage. They get addicted to drugs or alcohol or whatever it is. There are so many things. It's not just the ability to go out and do the task well. There's so many variables that will fuck you up.

Yeah. Dude, you're right. So many gifted people have just have that roadblock in front of them. Which is why I think conversations with successful people are so important because you get to hear those stories. You get to hear, like with Jensen the other day, he was talking about how NVIDIA was basically bankrupt. They were on their way out, and someone gave him a chance, like some one guy that was an investor gave him a chance, and then they wound up becoming successful. And then there was these moments, and people need to know that you're going to have those hurdles. You're going to have those roadblocks.

You're going to have to figure out how to adjust. It's not easy. No one who has been successful at anything will tell you. the whole ride was easy yeah but a lot of the time sometimes man sometimes we'll be in it i so i've been through like three generations of knowledge and learning uh 23 years in in the business that are operating at a high level i have seen thousands and like it is the man if you're a stud in pwee football league then you go to this junior high school and then you're the number one player in college and then you're the number one played high school and number one

player in college eke out a spot in the NFL and then a year later you're gone because the funnel just gets so thin like wwe has like 200 personnel in their nxte development program right now maybe 10 will make it maybe and of those 10 like really honestly maybe one will make it and what the hope is is over a six year period of those classes of 200 that get matriculated probably every four months, so we're talking 6,000 people, I'm hoping one makes it. Wow. In five or six years, I need one because my top guy right now, my Roman reigns and Cody Rhodes and the Charlotte Flares and Becky Lynch's of the world, like, they'll last half a

decade to draw. Maybe if we're lucky, maybe we'll get it more. They can, you know, maybe parlay it into a decade or two, but that's an anomaly. You've got to play the legit math of like, after five years, I better have. somebody in the on deck circle so out of like five six thousand i just need one but it's still everybody's biting their fingernails of like we don't have the person yet it's so many folks just don't make it just don't make it yeah that's that's the parallel to stand up yeah it's man so that you know there's so many people that we were talking last night in the green room thousands

and when i see them like in the ring do stuff i'm like i could never do that but they just won't they just don't make it. It's just there's so many things that fuck people up. So much self-sabotage, so much inability to stay the course. Being our own worst enemy. Mm-hmm. You know, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Happy accidents though. Fuck it. Well, yeah, happy accidents, but not just that. It's you being able to stay on course and you being able to recognize that, you know, okay, this didn't work. What do I do? You want me to rap? Okay, I'll fucking rap. Like, a lot of people would have been like, I'm not fucking rapping. That's beneath me.

I'm here to be a wrestler. I'm not a gimmick. I'm not going to be a buffoon. Yeah, I'll be a buffoon. Yeah, because it beats work and a real job. It's not only that. It's part of the entertainment of it all. Even the cringe aspect of it.

Yeah. For people are like, what is going on here? It's great. He loves that shit. Oh, it's the best. The best. You know who my guy is right now? Dominic Mysterio.

Love Dom. Oh, my God. So he's... Were you? No, you're here. I was gonna... You weren't at Pecco, were you? No.

Oh, gosh, we had fun over there. I bet. I was... I caught a lot of it, yeah. Man, that kid's good, too. Like, good human beings, too. I happen to be in Salt Lake City doing a gig. I was doing stand-up in one arena,

and the WWE happened to be in the other arena in Salt Lake City just a few weeks ago. And I'm like, ah, darn, but I look it up, and it's a 5 p.m. taping of WWW. So I hit up my friends at WW. I go, I'm coming in. I'm bringing my openers, right? Anyway, Dominic Mysterio is in a triple threat match. And his whole thing is he's wrestling royalties.

Ray Mysterio's son, but he claims that he might be Eddie Guerrero's son because his father's, you know, one of the ultimate good guys of all time. So basically he takes on the traits of Eddie Guerrero, whose whole thing was cheating and lying and stealing, breaking the rules in original ways all the time. And he's doing a triple threat match, which means there's three guys at once, right? But if someone beats anybody, you could lose your belt.

And his Intercontinental Champion, I think it's Intercontinental, right, is on the line. And he gets thrown outside the ring. And I'm having fun, right? I go, Dominic, cheat, do something, right? And he's kind of on the other side of the thing. And he lifts up his head and looks at me and goes like that. He gives a big wink and then he goes back down again.

And I'm cracking up. I go, did you see that? I'm next to Polly Shore. I go, did you just see him wink? He goes, yeah, man, what's he going to do, bro? But these two guys in the ring of wrestling and one of them has the other one in a submission hold, a camel clutch. I can't remember who it was, but anyway.

And I'm like you, I literally, even me watching since I was a kid. And even though he just winked at me, it was just a. enough time. I forgot that Dominic was over there because this action in the ring is really happening. Something's about to happen and you hear the bell ring and I look over and there's Dominic with the hammer in his hand ringing

the bell and the guy lets go with the submission and the referee goes what the hell and something I hadn't seen in 35 years of watching this thing he's innovative enough to find a brand new way

to cheat in the That's twice. Yeah. A brand new way to cheat. And the crowd, everybody's cracking up. Yep. It's a whole new, right when you think you've seen it all. This guy, who you would love, he's literally like built like me.

He flexes like Nate Diaz without flexing. And he's just braggadocious. Oh, yeah. He thinks he won. But the ref's like, no. And hold on. I got to cut to Dominic. He just loves it

Yep There's our guy Dirty Dom Dirty Dom Yeah And the crowd Just loves them That's all of us right there

That's Maddie Edgar Joe DeRosa Polly Shore me It was DeRosa's first real wrestling event He had the time of his life Childlike Wonder I love getting people in there live For the first time

Yes There's something funny about a wrestler that's not built, too. Oh, yeah. And he's the champ. And all these other guys, that guy pented. Man, he just whipped my ass.

Dirty dumb. He just whipped my ass. For real, I just lost the Intercontinental championship to that, son of a bitch. Covered in gold. Yeah. Probably, what, five, nine, hundred.

No, he's a tall drink of water. He's tall than me, but he's a 170 pounds soaking wet. Yeah, exactly. He's such a uniquely American form of art. Yeah. It really is.

It's weird because in pockets of the world like it's Japan has their own style of doing it Latin America has their own style of doing it the UK has their own style of doing it

but this yeah like the Japanese is very strong style with respect to martial art the English style is very like catch as catch can

a real like technical expose the Latin American style the Mexican style is high flying the the American offering of like steak, sizzle

apple pie ice cream fourth of july everything like huge and that's all vince right a lot of it so is it all ever one person right it's not a lot of it is a lot of it is but like promotions like world class championship wrestling were we're some of the first to use music vance was the first to be like rock and roll and get over here and get on cable and let's let's blow this thing out i want to do it it's it's not just something we have in a local vfW with cigar smoke and guys taking side action on carnival tricks. No, this is a fucking thing.

And we are going to make this a fucking thing. Yeah. You know. It's also a fucking thing where a lot of it is not televised because you're just traveling around the country doing these shows. Yes. So the business model has kind of changed where media content is king now. So from what I understand from TKO, and I know their executives will correct me, but from

my perspective, we have scaled back on the live event only. offerings which helps you know lick the wounds it's weird it like you don't bump enough or you don't bump as much but you kind of need to get in there and bump to get your callous and to get your wind and timing so it's it's kind of you get your signals crossed but anyhow the content that is provided is always available for media or or 99% where it used to be the opposite we used to do like four live shows one TV taping so you'd have four live shows under your You know, you do, you do like Lafayette, Little Rock, Pensacola, and then TV in Orlando, you know, and that would be the end of the run.

And then you'd do it again of like Bangor, Portsmouth, Providence, TV in Boston, you know, like, and then you'd go for another week and go somewhere else. But it's different now. It's like every piece is televised for the media, which is great because we get a lot out to our fans across the world. but like I learned I learned how to fail in those non-televised events I could take big swings because it's like man

if I'm on the middle of a card in Valparaiso and I kind of fuck up in a gymnasium with 3,500 people they might tell me to fuck off but there's also the last match

that's going to send them home happy so let's try this new weird thing and that's where like me being invisible starts you know it's just like I can try it who cares because it's an environment where you don't want to fail and now it's we there's way more advantage on getting our content

out there but production is super slick it's like really precise everyone's really good and um I don't know how many people go out there and just like like Dom like that was an example of swinging big I'm gonna fake ring the bell right well people even get that who cares let's try it like he's he's the only one of those guys who will or very few of those guys will stand on an idea like that where the other guys are like no I want to have a good choreographed performance because I want my stuff to look good because it's on television and going around the world you know I loved the non-televised events but there's just there's not there's not it's not a good business model so how does a young person coming up now learn how to fail that is I think a conundrum

that we're facing because you're failing in front of the world right you know it's it's weird you can have you can it's like you work out your set but you can't do it on small clubs before you go to arena it's like you would you would work out your set at home and then you just play the into it dome or you play barclays center like you don't have a small room to be like all right it landed oh man i'm going to rework that one you don't ever have that you just have this you put it together in your head you think it's okay and then you're out there so i i don't know um i'm not saying it can't work. I think it can because analytics show that it does work and we

have a lot of people watching now but from my perspective I really enjoyed the carefree nature of just going out and being ready for anything and it being okay if I fucked up and I failed if I told some bad jokes

I could come back and be like that didn't work that didn't work and then you have a partner to be like oh and this didn't work but this slayed why don't you do this again like literally that's where this came from just fucking around at live events and oh my god there's noise i'll do it tomorrow night we're in a different town let's see if they get how did you come up with that was a dare my brother happy fucking accident my brother dared me to do it like when we um when i was in the middle of the

the rapping wormhole i made i'm a platinum rapper i made my own album so like in in in in making it yeah yes that's amazing drink it in drinking in uh in making the album we would bring home all the tracks and like my little brother was our test audience and he would do this dance where he would like shake his head and keep his hand in front of him like that is man look at you he's like you won't do that on tv and again i was on the programs that no one was watching so it's like no one's watching anyway yeah fuck you i will do it on tv and i did it on some meaningless saturday show and there's a little bit of noise so i took it with me on the road for the next week and did it on the live events that weren't televised there's a little bit of

noise okay like this is my thing now this is my thing and I just you can't see me and like that's now it's a thing yeah yeah yeah so it's I did it on a dare wow but like I also had I was in a place to be able to tell my brother okay I can waste two seconds on an inside joke between you and I that's the dare it's not going to ruin the match but if you're watching if you're the Only one person watching Velocity that night. You'll be like, inside joke, got it. All right, let's like shouting out your gaming group. Like seven people get the joke,

but this is one of those things where it kind of fit and it stuck. Wow. It's just so many of those things in your life. So many of those like fortuitous moments. Well, you know, admittedly, I have an optimism bias. I will admit that. But life will deal operational.

It's a matter of understanding that it's happening. You know, don't get in your own way. Yeah. Like, say yeah, come here, sit with you guys. This is a new experience for me. Like, yeah, let's do it. Okay, great. Man, first wrestler to ever retire.

Yes, that's a good idea. We're just going to do it. Yeah, but you'll never be able to come back, yes, but let's just do this thing. Like, life is throwing me an opportunity to create a year's worth of programming narrative narrative that I think will be interesting. The alternative is to do what everybody else has done

and maybe hang on too long. People are like, man, you should have left a few years ago. Now, let's do this. Rap, let's do this. Do you want to train? It involves you working at this shitty job where you're probably going to, I try to be a cop and fail that was going to go down and join the Marines.

That's lifelong employment. I'm really good with structure. I dig uniform. Like I give me what to do and like a code of conduct to live by. I have a feeling I would have fit in there. Great. I love being in shape. They feed you over there?

Like, I think I would have done okay. But life put an opportunity in front of me. And I was stupid enough to say yes. Going out naked in the Oscars, I was just on Jimmy Kimmel last night. He's like, man, you want to do this bit? I'm like, dude, I am super tired. I'm on a different coast. He's like, let me send you the bit.

And I read it. I'm like, yo, fuck. All right, I'm going to do it. What did you do? At Desjardin Insurance, we put the care in taking care of business. Your business to be exact. Our agents take the time to understand your company so you get the right coverage at the right price.

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It's shuffled out there with an index card over my dick. Oh, that thing, yeah. Yeah, but like, man, in a room full of not even peers or contemporaries, like the pantheon of the professional goal that you try to read. I don't know any of these fucking people. I don't belong in that room. Right. And he's like, yeah, man, just kind of walk out there naked. It'll be a fun bit.

And he's right. It would be a funny bit. But I could have got in my own way of like, now I got to fly. I'm exhausted. I'm going to make a fool on myself. I don't know any of these people is my first impression. I can sit on the couch. Like, that's the easy part.

The tough part is like life has dealt you this opportunity. Fucking say yes. 15 minutes before the show when you get a good idea. The easy thing to do is be like, do the show. The hard thing to do is be like, yo, let's fucking swing. Let's go for it. So it's not, like I think those moments happen to a lot of us. And it doesn't have to be a lottery ticket.

Granted, holy hell, I've been given a lot of lottery tickets. But it could be something as simple as like, yo, you're in a crummy mood. find a way to be kind like life just gave you an opportunity the person getting your coffee was like you'll have a nice day you could stay crummy or you could be like fuck thank you very much appreciate that appreciate your time like that's an opportunity you know life is just a matter of like us reacting to what life throws at pivotal decisions and it doesn't need to be a world changing decision i think now i don't want to say nowadays i think we always think that like the decision needs to change the world no it's you just need to fucking commit and do something as a 12 year old

i want to start working out and i liked it and i just fucking keep working out and now it now i can't live without it as part of my life it's a fabric of my life but in working out i've learned structure and discipline accountability essentially budget you if you take in too much and you don't spend enough you're going to have some excess like these lessons that opportunity can teach you if you allow it, me fucking up. The thing I spoke about at the beginning. Like, the easiest thing to do is your fault. But if I take it as an opportunity of like, all right, you missed, what do we learn?

Where's the gain? Yeah. You can move forward. And I can move forward and wholeheartedly apologize to those I've hurt along the way. And they don't need to forgive me. That's on their terms. I can't control that. But man, the sleep is a little more sound at night knowing like in learning this lesson

or having this opportunity, fuck, dude, I kind of trampled on your shit and I'm so sorry. Like, I had such a shitty relationship with my dad. And just recently, we've mended fences and he's 80, so I'm glad I've done this because, I mean, we don't last forever. He's going, we're all going to the dirt soon, you know?

But I just wanted him to be something else. I always wanted that motherfucker to change. I wanted him to be something else. And finally, I got out of my own way. The hard thing is meeting that guy where he's at. The hard thing is allowing. him to be who he is take the weight off my backpack and say like yo I might have needed you to be this in my life but because you weren't man because of your

absence in being the dad that I had in my mind I got all these fucking cool male mentors who kept me gave me a key to the gym at 15 and said you better fucking be here in the morning and like dude I still can feel a key in my hand from Dave knock the the Dean of Students at Cushing Academy who who bet on me. He was like, man, if you get your grades from C's to A's and you play two varsity sports, this place costs in 94,

this place costs 35 grand a year. We will give you aid and you will have a place to learn. And that allowed me to become an adult. It allowed me to, the opportunity of being in a diverse group of students who, man, there's like royalty that goes to that school. And then there's fucking poor kids. My roommate was a basketball player from Compton.

And then we got kids with generational wealth through their name and buildings after. But when it's just like 450 kids in a social experiment, money goes away and you just kick it. So I learned to be friends with everybody. But I wouldn't have learned that in West Newbury where it's 99.9% white,

1,200 people in the small town, no stoplights. You either leave or you never leave. Like just little things like that. You know what I'm saying? Like, man, I should do this. And deciding to meet my dad where he's at. And be like, dude, whatever I thought you were, you're not you're just you and i love you for you and man when we sit there's some shit that he'll

say that's all fucked up you know he said some shit yesterday that like i don't think john's last opponent should be there and people listen to him because he's a wrestling fan he's like in the kind of like their weird subculture zeitgeist and i want to call my dad i'm gonna be what the fuck are you doing but then like no he's doing what he does this is him this is the dad i this is the John Cina I love. This is this is the guy I can sit down with and and part of that is being able to process all that, but the opportunity I get from that. I've learned about my father's story. I've learned about what he wants to do with his life, why he does what he does, maybe what he wanted to do, dreams he didn't have so I can gain wisdom from there. But it's just that that's

the hard part. It's like getting out of your own fucking way to do the thing you really want to do. The easy thing to do is the whole grudge against my dad. What I really want to wanted to do was tell my dad I love him and sit down with them and be like yo let's fucking break bread yeah talk about whatever you want and now we do that and it's great but that's like that's a small example of the easy thing to do is sit in the couch and say fuck it somebody else's fault right the tough thing to do is like life is handing me a moment right now and dude I don't bat a thousand I mean it's more like major league baseball I'm hoping 300 gets me in the hall of fame like if I can capitalize on 30% of the moments that

life gives me and squander the other. 70% I believe I will go into the ground being like, man, I earned life. If you can capitalize on 30% of the moments, you are in the 1% of human beings that have ever lived. I earned life. Yeah. So I'm just trying to get that, make it to Cooperstown. Yeah, that's the reality.

And also the reality is if someone doesn't give you what you need, it gives you a desire to get what you need. So many. Sometimes it's a gift to not have, like, doting parents. like oh my goodness like i said i would never have gotten those the beautiful guidance i got it in life i always had father figures because i was searching for it and they they found me and i was also savvy enough to be like this guy needs to stick in my life for a little bit it sucks and he fucking pushes me but i got to keep this guy around like just weird stuff like that i hear

a lot of wrestlers a lot of times what do you want to do here i want to be champion okay The math of that's really slim. I never wanted to be a fucking champion. I just wanted to wrestle. And if you're good, it'll take you places where one day you can hold one of those. But if you start with the goal of, I want to hold one of those. Man, am I pigeonholing my goal?

What the fuck do you really want to do? I just wanted to wrestle. And if I got fired by WWE, I would try to go to Japan. I would try to go to Mexico. I'd try to go to the UK. Fuck it. Because I just wanted to do it. But that also meant I would put my best foot forward.

And I wasn't shackled to, I need to be champion or I'm not validated. I'm not successful. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Just give me a chance to go out there and get the noise and whatever else falls into place, fuck it, cool. Because what I want to do is just go out there and be in the arena.

It's funny because they talk about the noise, the way we talk about the laughs. Yeah. It's the same thing. It's the same thing, man. It's the same thing. Yeah. You know, and I don't need to be the most decorated person, but it's weird because and not even trying.

I have a resume that people will now measure up against like, oh, you got to win X amount to pass the hurdle. So it's weird. Like, I didn't even try to do any of that. All I tried to do is, like, you'll just get me out there. And when you look at what I've done, and you've followed a bit, like, it was weird. I was in the main event of WrestleMania this year.

And to talk to people, they were like, oh, man, that's crazy. The last main event of WrestleMania I was in was 2012. So you'd think that like, oh, John Sina, this guy's, everything handed to him. He's always at the top. That was my first main event, WrestleMania appearance as an attraction in like 13 years. And in that span, I worked new wrestlers. I worked for lower-level titles.

I sat ringside and crushed three beers and then got fucking squashed by The Undertaker as a fan. Yeah. Like, I did all sorts of shit, you know, but because it was never about. Like, I'm not a success unless I'm in the main event of WrestleMania. No, that's just a position with a ton of stress. Just fucking get me out on the course. Just get me in the arena. Have me in Section 1 shaking hands of people from Australia,

and I'll make it the best fucking time they ever had. It doesn't matter. Just get me out there. What I don't want to do is sit on the bench. Right. You know? How did you go from that into acting? Like, what was your first?

So originally, it was a business. choice. Vince opened WWB Studios and with the idea of if we make these guys movie stars, more people come to the arena. Now as a young 20-something on the road, people chant your name every night. I'm like, more people in the arena. That sounds fucking great. And his first movie was supposed to be with Steve Austin and it fell through. They were about to shoot in two weeks. So movie pre-production is way longer than that. But he was like, you're going Australia to film this movie The Marine. And it was tough. It was tough. tough. I went from arrive in a town at noon, work out, get a good meal in, crush the show,

have some beers on the rides in the next town, fall asleep, do it all again. And it's like this whirlwind of electricity to, okay, you're in hair and makeup at six o'clock. We're doing an explosion today. So the lights are going to be weird, and we probably will get to you around 5.30 p.m. You just said it's 6 in the morning. Yeah. So what the fuck you want me to do from here until 5.30. Just hang out. And I couldn't, like, as a young 20-something, I wanted to be in the electricity. I couldn't handle the nature of the business. And therefore, my passion wasn't in it. I wasn't fully invested in it. I am fucking here with you guys right now. We are talking about this. My mind isn't elsewhere on other shit. I want this to be, I want to give you all I got,

so I'm here with you. I was never there in those movies. I was always back in, fuck, maybe if I had the feud with this guy or if I could have done this, I was never there, and you could see it in the performance. So I kind of got run out of the movie business. I did so many shitty movies in like 2009, 10, my best friend, agent, Dan Bame at the time, I was like, man, we're never doing movies again, right? And, you know, as an agent, he's supposed to be the guy to pick you up,

he looks and be dead, he goes, nope, we will find another way, though. He was honest. We are never doing, we were run out of town, but we'll find another way. So we did. We did, hosted some live shows, hosted some game shows, did little appearances here and there, and then Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer

gave me a chance on gosh, train wreck. And it was a very small part, but again, like, just get out in the arena and do your best. And look, I was in a fucking room with comics, like funny people. I don't belong there.

But they created an environment where I wasn't judged. They only showed the good joke. that they didn't show the fucking 20 takes or I tried to tell jokes that sucked the only ones that made the final cut were the ones that made people laugh so they provided an opportunity for failure and at that point I've been playing the same characters in 2014 15 I've been playing the same character on TV for 15 fucking years and now I'm like yo I get to do something different I can do this for 12 hours you want me to sit I'll go fucking read a book I don't care I'm in so I accepted the patient process of movies and then and then I After that, I got a little bit of noise in train wreck, and then Judd sent word to Tina Faye and Amy Poehler, who were filming up the road in Long Island, be like, if you got a spot, you should hire the kid. And they made me a drug dealer in their thing. And then, like, things started to roll downhill, but it was very, very small parts at a time. And here I am. That was 2015.

Here I am a decade later. And I'm still trying to advance to fluency. By no means, am I like, I'm the 17-time champ. of the acting community. Those are the motherfuckers I was looking at when I was naked, you know? Right. I'm aspiring to try to be that.

But it's basically the pivot happened when I was like, yo, if you just invest in this, the hustle you and patience you put into wrestling, at least you know you gave it your all. You know, be coachable, be professional, be reliable, be interested.

And see where the chips fly and fucking say yes. Well, it's also you had the The objectivity Like the introspective objectivity To look at your past performances and say I wasn't really in there It wasn't and I got right out of town

Yeah I lost the job So like here's that Here's that mulligan What fuck I'm I'll never work in this town again I will? All right let's go let's try What else could go wrong? I've already fired me You know

So again an environment And no one does it alone the people I was around, Tina and Amy are the same way. Like, only show the funny shit, but try whatever you want. Like, fail, it's okay. And just because you're around people who do comedy for a living, all we need is three seconds and we'll be patient enough to give you what you need to give us that three seconds. You know?

Yeah. It's just such a fun story, you know, and there's so, there's only a few guys that have managed to make that leap from WWW. Obviously, The Rock is the big one. Sure. You know, I mean, he's the biggest one. Yeah. To make that leap and now become a giant movie star. Well, I think it's a leap a lot of people can make.

It's not from lack of talent. We talk about, like, obstacles and, like, we're in our own way. WWE is all-consuming. And you've got to remember. Like, I was their biggest act. So at 220 shows a year, for me to be like, hey, I need six months off to film this action movie. That really fucks with the bottom line. Oh, yeah.

So the answer is no. Right. You know, and, and now with less live events, it's still, you, you want to be on television. It's like, okay, I need to somehow leverage my relevance with this to what it's going to do to film that. In WWE, if you're not, I'm going to retire on the 13th. They will be moved on by the Royal Rumble. And that's, that is real facts. I will be forgotten.

That is not a plea to sympathy of like, always remember me by the Royal Rumble. and the road's wrestling man nobody gives a fuck because they're focusing on what the show is that's like three weeks after i retire three weeks after i retire nobody's going to give a fuck and that's not i'm not saying like what i did was meaningless i've lived the moments they're great people move on so when if i'm a talent who's on tv and finally got one of those spots and edged my way in do i is this the right time to leverage taking myself off a tv to do four months on something that isn't going to come out for another 18 months and then I got to go back to TV hoping people still care that my ringwork is still polished that I still have my

finger on the pulse like it's it is we can get in our own way sometimes you know what I'm saying yeah so I was just at the point in 15 16 17 where I was like man my body's kind of banged up I'm a little older I would like to take some time off and how I talked about like every five years you needed somebody in the on-deck circle. So I'm running at the front for like 15. They needed someone in the on-deck circle. And then they finally got some folks. So they're like, yeah, we got folks.

Yeah, go do the thing. It's fine. Go do it. So my passion for it was ignited at the perfect time when the office side of it was like, that won't affect our bottom line too much. Go give this thing a try. So, again, just happy accident, man.

And I'm grateful for it. So now you're in the situation, you're going to retire. Yep. And then are you just going to go all in on acting now? So that's, again, beyond my control. If I could... Is that the goal, though? Is that what you would like?

The goal is to live useful. That's it. The goal is to live useful and not lack like a depth of purpose in my life. You know, I can't control if the phone rings and they say, if you want the kid in the picture, that's way beyond me. what I can do is when someone bets on me do my fucking damnness for every dollar I want to give him 10 back I want to show them that you I want to show you your time was well spent today I want to give you my heart and soul and when I leave here you may be like uh not my cup of tea

but the fucking kids are you know like that's that's all I'm trying to do so if I can do that maybe I get another maybe I get another match maybe I get another phone call but I also realize my mortality in in the retirement like it's over but Also, there'll come a day where y'all out there are like, ah, the kid's not cool anymore. I'm done. I'm on to the next shiny thing. I'm grateful for what I got, and I know I don't control how many times the phone rings.

I just want to, I never want to phone it in. Right. And when my time is up, it's over with, man. I'll do the rest of whatever life is. Do you think about that, like what the rest of life is? Do you have other interests? I sure do. Sure do.

Love messing around with music. I never read as a kid So I'm reading more than I ever have Love cars I'd love to just drive That like just being in a car and driving Not track stuff Just like going on long drives

Love that I see a bunch of sticks I love an occasional stick With some conversation I love boy did I miss out On loving connections in my life So I'm like I have them now

And they're fucking so cool So if a day is just spent With friends Or a week Or like, man, with WW, I've been around the world, like 12 times. I haven't seen shit. I've seen the inside of arenas, a hotel bar, and a fucking airport. Yeah.

I want to know what Tokyo is all about. I've been there like 20 times. I haven't seen shit. You know, I'm like, and I don't know if I'll ever get tired of that. Like, I always have a curious nature on to what's next. I don't know what that'll be, but I never want to wake up and be like, man life's taken forever you know what I'm saying I think there's always something to do with the day so I don't I don't know would I love to continue to tell stories and get paid for it

fuck that's a great gig but it's also beyond my control so instead of being like I'm going all in on acting and I want to do this and one day I want to win an Oscar and when I'm saying that approach is bad I'm just saying my approach is like man when they do call be grateful and don't be grateful in the easy times. Be grateful when they ask you to work a 60-hour day or be grateful in that press tour

when you have to read off the, or when you get to read off the prompter and you're doing 86 reads and the reads are so you can dress up in the costume and all that other shit

like that's that's kind of more of where I'm at. That's a great approach to life. How did you develop this philosophy? Is this...

Dude, I'm not supposed to be here. Like, I'm from fucking West Newberry in Massachusetts. I'm not supposed to be here. And that's another thing. There's not a day

that doesn't go by where I look at someone I love and connect with and be like, man, what a life. I understand how lucky I am, and I understand I have been awarded more opportunity than one human being should get. And it's, from what I've tried to boil down to it, the best way to honor that opportunity is to do your best to try to live a good life. And a good life is that's almost like pain everybody's perspective of a good life is different i've come up with core values and i try to live by those fuck i'm human i ain't perfect but like again if when i go into the dirt i feel as if i didn't waste it and i don't mean grind like homeboy from invidia that's that's a grind and i think a lot of him there's fear there but also a lot of a lot of that effort he loves it and that's what

that's what an ideal life to him is about and if he goes in the ground working 70 hours a week he'll go in with a smile on his face. You know, I just want to go in when it's my time. I want to know that I honored the luck I was given by not fucking squandering it, by not wasting it. And that doesn't mean grind to a monetary number. It just means live a fulfilled life where the sleep is sound, the love is real,

and every day you're driven with curiosity and purpose. And I don't know what the fuck that is. And it could change. Man, I thought I was born to be a WWU superstar. And then the elbows start hurting a little bit. And you're like, ah, man, I'm born to be a storyteller. And then you realize it, like, I'm not in control of any of that shit. That's just luck.

That's somebody being like, oh, I liked them in this, put him in that. Yes, no problem. I think a key factor you're talking about here is gratitude. I was born to honor the luck that I've been given. Yeah. And just try to do my best to live a full life. Like, that's it. Yeah, and that having gratitude about the life that you live and being happy,

God, it's so hard but so important And it's tough when you use that word Because it's such a I know It's a new agey bullshit word Like nah man It's a real word though

Real thanks Yes Is hard Yeah Because you have to be thankful For the suck For the pain You have to be thankful

For the lesson For the journey Like and these are Again these are all Like slangy hashtagy terms I don't know what the fuck else To call it So I'm just calling it what it is

They've been They've been co-opted by people to just sort of bullshit and use those words, but the reality of those words is strong. It's very powerful. It's like grind. Grind is another hashtag word, you know, but like there is some realism to it. But from what I've figured it out thus far, that's my path. And when the facts change, so does my opinion. So we can come back here in a few years and I'd be on some other shit.

But right now, that's kind of where I'm at. Well, it's such a, the gratitude word has been really co-op. by goofy people unfortunately but it doesn't mean you shouldn't use it yeah real word and and if if the word makes you feel weird come up with your own word right thanks yeah whatever having thanks because I'm with you there some some words make me feel gross yeah just about how overused they've been but like I I can't stray away from that one yeah I mean we talk about gratitude all the time we're we're always like talking about how we're living the dream yeah like just

being happy we do just shooting the shit I know people are paying attention I know what you guys doing a lot a lot of people if you're still with us I can't believe it this is great yeah I was thinking I was talking to my buddy the other day Peter Shore the owner of the comedy store and I was telling him about how just a few weeks ago because I'm now that I have a place that I like and a car that I like and a job and everything everything's finally it appears how I have always considered what the dream is is that I was saying to my buddy the other day who I came up with, who I really started with, and I'm talking about like 14, 16 hour days at the comedy store. I'd answer the phone at 11 a.m., because back then they didn't even have a website. Hello, you want tickets tonight? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Work all night, put on the t-shirt at 8 p.m.

tear tickets and check IDs until 2.30 in the morning. So I would hit overtime by like Wednesday or Thursday, but they couldn't pay overtime because the comedy store in 2007 was half to quarter empty. Anyway, so they would cut my hours, and I was paying $400 a month to sleep on my buddy's couch in his living room, and he had a bedroom, and my other buddy, Maddie, had a bedroom. But Sandy was like, you know, he was like, the apartment was registered in his name. And I mean, terrible couch, terrible setup. I'd have to go through one of their bedrooms to go to the bathroom.

So if you have to pee in the middle of the night, you're kind of tiptoeing. through you don't know what you're going to make noise you don't know what you're going to see whatever and i was talking to matt a month or so ago and i go i think i still owe sandy a little bit of rent money because i just simply didn't have it back then isn't that crazy he goes you do i he mentioned it last time as we were talking about how successful you are there's an accountant right there so i venmoed him out of nowhere i haven't even we haven't even talked since pre-pandemic he's got a family i'm out here this that i venmoat him a thousand bucks out of nowhere and I go 2007 rent money as the as the the memo part of it and he hits me up saying thanks and we're communicating and then I remembered that at one point I couldn't even afford the $400 a month for the couch and there was another comedian that was a door guy at the store that did have the 400 a month because he was getting help from his parents so I got downgraded to a bean bag for like a month or two I was sleeping for the spine oh

just horrendous exactly a sore back for two months just in pain all the time but doing what I loved so much of what you're saying about enjoying the process enjoy what you're doing because I really did back then and I think about that now more I've been thinking about that bean bag and that couch and that living are more than ever the last few months you know it's like that's talking about gratitude it's like those are the things that that's who you are is enjoying that process you know and making the best out of it and in in in in my case of a similar story and from what I'm hearing from you is like you you wanted to be there you were not going to give up the bean bag oh yeah there's there's there's a lot of folks out there who are put behind the

eight ball and really have to dig themselves out of a trench when I moved out to Venice and I was working at gold I was sleeping the parking lot in my 91 continental yeah everybody's like oh man you were homeless I'm like no no choice was my choice yeah I didn't want to leave my old man had a room for me nobody ever leaves west newberry my dad was like yo come back you got a roof over your head you get some fucked up job over here you don't have to pay rent so i had choice i stayed in the car because i wanted to yeah life was great i got to see like the bodybuilders of the two thousands i got to train at the gym and shower at the gym and the rock came through there's like a old picture of me in the rock somewhere where i'm in my gold gym club store shirt and he's

fucking doing this one and like i got to see all these people and it was fucking cool and i wouldn't left if they took the car away and I had to sleep in the parking lot like I was by choice you know you you slept on the bean bag because you wanted to be there and the fun fact look at that that's that's that's that's that's that's that's that's me in the background right there no no keep that on I'm taking the phones off I'm going out yeah that's me right there he had just taken a photo with me that's me wow that's DJ wow yeah that's crazy that's 1999 wow fucking rock was white hot selling out every place probably's staple center anaheim coming in and press some weights wow wow that's crazy yeah what a what a that's so

like that's where the perspective is exists yeah because I shouldn't have even been in the fucking club store selling candy bars I should be you know and in in in West Newberry doing what everyone else does like that's the that's the tail you know and I'm not so I'm grateful for it yeah yeah there's a lot of people out there on beanbags right now listen to this you need to hear stay on the beanbag stay on that beanbag

24 more hours who knows 24 more hours something can happen yeah and the success would be so much sweeter all so much sweeter if you do it that way I mean if you were a trust fund kid and you had plenty of money and your parents gave you 100 grand a year to go out and pursue your dreams

and they paid for your apartment man man you know I don't want to fuck on anybody's flexed You're right, but at the same time, if you understand that, right? If you understand I was put on the board ahead of everybody else, I was born on third base, again, that shit's beyond your control. Right. But I think you need some failure to understand that. So if you're grateful for what you have, you will swing and miss and be accountable.

Right, because you can't really control what you have. You can't control where you start. Right. You can't control where you start. You control where you're going. or how you respond along the way yeah and and the kind of person you are to somebody who's born on third base i think also will dictate your perception uh from the from the eyes of others if you feel you are greater than fuck we're all human beings dog like nobody greater than nobody right you know uh everybody's

out there struggling and and all of us especially in this area of the the pale blue dot we all believe in capitalism so so the fact that you were born on third base means everybody's doing their job and the whole system's working like you can't think you're when you start getting like i i never use this word i feel bad even saying it deserve when you start getting the deserve mentality of i deserve this fuck it what the fuck do you deserve me yeah that's crazy you know have you earned this have you earned it and if you feel as if you haven't what steps are you going to take to earn it if you're born on third and you feel bad about it take some steps to feel good about it.

I don't know what that is. But if you're born on third and you feel you deserve it, to me, that's fucking sprinting through a minefield, dog. Yeah, that's not a good path. And I don't ever, I don't ever want to fuck with somebody who turns like a hundred thousand

into 10 million or a million into a billion. That's good investing. That's, I mean, that's the system. You learned how to work the system. It's just in the process, if you think you're better than, yeah, murky waters, man. In my perspective.

Well, it's just a terrible perspective anyway. Like you're... Because it's all... Right. It's all kind of Fugasey. Like, there's all just paper IOUs or whatever. It's just digital ones and zeros. Like, are...

If it melts down, are you really better than anybody? You know what? A lot of times it's also a defense mechanism. You know, you pretend that you deserve it. You pretend you're better than other people. Because maybe you don't feel enough. Right. Again, everybody's walking through their old mile, but like, I don't feel validated.

Right. Or I want attention. Or I don't know. I don't know man I don't know yeah yeah it was crazy hanging out with Steph McMahon and how human she was and hilarious and human I was telling her because I was telling her like man you know I always wanted to be a pro wrestler when I was a kid and then I realized I wasn't going to be tall enough and I wasn't going to be big enough and then lately I've been meeting these guys and they're not that huge and when I tell them that they go look at me you know Sammy Zane hilarious guy yeah literally told me that he's like you could have done it I'm like yeah I can't Guess I could actually done it. You could probably still do it. And I was probably step that. She goes, do you think you can do a little something?

I go, I can hit a super kick on anybody at any time from any place. What's a super kick? It's Sean Michael's old finishing move. It's like a high sabot kick. You would literally, you would faint from laughter because you actually know how to fucking kick through a wall. But it's a, it's a kick. And the goal is not to hit the guy. Right.

Exactly. Come real close. Yep. And she's so cool. She goes, oh, that'd be funny if next time, you know, I'm with Triple H, you just super kick me out of nowhere. I'll sell it. I'll fall down the whole thing. I'm like, I know.

Stephanie, this is crazy. There we go. There is. Yeah, that's a perfect example. Man, this is, you're on it. Okay, so the guy flies through the air and you kind of catch them. That's just one example. Like, that's a really good example right here.

But it could be from standing anywhere. It's just pretty much that high, that high kids. You can do that? I can do that. Are you flexible? like that I'm flexible at least I think I am I don't know we'll see I wasn't throw I was throwing a rock at the tree the other day for the first time in forever and I'm coming up about 15 feet shorter there it is there that's what she looks like

yeah yeah whoa that looks real yeah it's on it's like it's really hit that's on there two of the best right there it's on there yep you really got that kind of flexibility yep I don't slap your leg at the same time and it makes everybody actually think that you did it. If I did it to somebody, you'd be like, dude, you just fucking kicked them.

Because slap the loud. Yeah, it's like stomping the ground when you punch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Slide a hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's magic in the business, man. Yeah, there is.

I want to see you out there. Hey, I wrestled with my pillow for like eight hours a day as a kid. I would do the entrances. I would record off of the cassette player. Remember how you used it after? Dude,

I had a whole, we had a whole league in our basement. Yeah, yeah. I didn't need the pillows because I had four brothers. We had belts, league, personas, like, and in one persona, I would get my ass kicked all the time, and then there was one persona that could not fucking lose. Like, we kept standings and stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it's, I don't know, man. I don't know. That's amazing. My brothers and sisters were all much older, but we had a music class teacher in my grade school that didn't give a fuck about his job. He would just sit in the corner and play piano the whole time and let the kids do whatever we wanted. And again, we had entrance music. We were all different people.

all the time, we'd run it back again, the entire 45 minutes, jumping off of desks, cabinets, chairs. It's crazy how many injuries didn't happen. It's amazing how resilient kids can be when we were that. The energy of youth, just bulletproof. God. Yeah. It doesn't make sense how arms and legs and heads and necks weren't broken.

You also don't weigh that much back then. That's a big part of it. Man, you're so full of energy. Man, I can tell him getting old because I can be like, is that chair okay? I'm going to be sitting for a while. Am I going to be all right? Is it going to be good? I'm like, oh, man, this bed's going to kill me.

Yeah. It's laying down like this. The bean bag? Oh, my God. I'd spend four hours in that thing. You'd have to cart me off. I think I'd just sleep on the ground rather than the beanbag. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Back then, it seemed like the better option. It was the better option. Yeah. Probably. That's hilarious, though. Yeah.

Have you talked to them about possibly doing it? something uh i mean no not exactly at one point there was a little a little chatter but come on dude i think you can come up with an insane character right around the corner i have big shoes to fill over here it's 30 entrance we need we need bodies yeah i show speed did a good job at that man he got drilled out of his boots he took uh the streamer famous streamer internet guy he took what's called a bump from hell he got speared at the was that the rumble yeah yeah yeah he was he does some wild shit he does he got in the cage with dan uh the hangman hooker yeah and he's he's like he's game for anything yeah he has like um like a kinesthetic awareness like he's obviously

an athlete yeah and he's brave like look at this shit watch his mother just leave screen see you Oh, man. Oh, my God. You can't fake that. Oh, my God. But, like, you also have to, the reason that looks so good, a lot of that is because of Braun, but also a lot of that is because of I Show Speed. He committed to the fall and really tried to fall with snap and with quickness.

Like, he's good, man. He really is good. And, like you said, like, I've seen a lot of the other stuff he does. He does well. He'll get in there and mess around. Oh, yeah. Well, he really sparred with Dan Hooker and Dan beat the shit out of them, but he hung in there.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just crazy enough to try, you know. It's also interesting, these YouTube guys, they're just becoming famous. And there was no avenue for them before. You know, they would have had to have been cast in a TV show or become something. With limited spots. Yeah.

And now they're doing it completely on their own and becoming huge. I mean, these got like 50 million Instagram followers or something crazy. Yeah. And a bunch of content and a bunch of revenue to match that. And like. And always working. He's always doing something. Put some stuff out there.

Those guys hustle. Yeah. It's all, all the content creators out there, people don't understand the hours. They may end up getting some financial reward, but when you break it down to hourly wage, they're working 24 hours a day. Seven days a week. Like, they don't stop because a lot of the content they make will have short shelf life. They're not essentially putting gone with the wind out in the universe. like it's like you're only as good as your next one not the

last one or the one you did it's like you're only as good as what you're doing five minutes from now and if you drop off the map someone will replace you like that oh my god yeah there's so many fucking streamers there's so many people that are doing contact they work hard they do they work hard and even even the the ones where it seems like a man to a perspective of like I don't understand this still the effort that goes into that and it's not just what you saw it's like okay you got to have a repeat performance and then you got to keep coming and keep coming and keep coming and keep coming like I do a movie and like I said it's out in 18 months in 18 months they've already put

out 10,000 videos right you know like it's it's bananas it is interesting that nobody saw that coming too nobody ever thought that that was going to be a thing I just think it's because we get so used to stuff we get so used to consuming in a certain way when something is new for us it's like oh man I don't know if that's going to take off but there are young people who are experiencing everything at the same time and like no this is cooler right it's way easier to do this also he's really young and when you start young there's not a lot of expectations on you no you can kind of just do whatever you want and if it works great young and courageous yeah like just go for it yeah yeah that's it's also a great

example for other people that they're thinking like I'm kind of entertaining I just don't have an avenue let me just start making videos you got a phone yeah you got a chance Isn't that crazy? That's all you have to do is have a phone. It's nuts. You see the videos where he was sprinting with Ashton Forbes, you know, that super jacked guy that does that morning routine that everybody made fun of? Because he has this, like, morning routine where he dunks his face in water.

And then someone hands him his gold watch and he puts it on. It's like really kind of silly. Yeah. You know, and he had a whole series of races with him because he couldn't believe that this YouTuber guy could beat him. Because he's like, this fucking super jacked ripped. guy who a lot of his online content is him running and he just looks like a force of nature

and I show speed beat him like three times in these races but he didn't want to believe that he lost so he wanted to do it again let's do it again let's do it again I show speed talking shit to him he did it again see you can find it's very funny it's very funny because when you look at

the guy like this guy looks like he can run like a horse and I show speed is actually faster than him I think he He sprinted an actual Olympic sprinter. I mean, he started fucking around a little bit, but he held his own. That's crazy. Yeah.

That's crazy. He was like right there with an Olympic sprinter. That's nuts. He won the goal with the guy that he raised. Really? That's, he's like right next to him. That's crazy. Like, and he's not even fucking training like that guy is.

Imagine if he was. Like, that fucking guy, if he wanted to, like, fully invest himself into sprinting, He's only what? 20, 20 years old. That's wild. Wow, really? Imagine if that kid fully invested in that and then became an Olympic gold medalist as well. So that's where my mind goes as well.

It seems like you can. But also, why? Why not? Because it'll make his streams even bigger. Will it? I don't know. Or will sprinting against a gold medalist, getting in the cage with a fighter, getting in the ring with a champion, and going to that guy's house

and besting him in his own thing. Like, he should keep doing that. He shouldn't go into one. The lane he's in, I think he's doing pretty well. Right. It's almost better losing to the fastest man alive by that much. Or like, so I can tell by watching that, like, I love potential.

And you see that and you're like, oh my God, potential. Right. This guy could, he could win it all. It's finding a video with him sprinting against that Ashton guy because it's kind of wild for what this guy's got the world by the nuts right he should do what he's doing

exactly what he's doing I only know him from that appearance at the Royal Rumble like he got booked on the Rumble because he has a big following I'm watching the Rumble I go who's this I show speed guy and I go wow that kid took a hell of a bum so I know him this Ashton Forbes guy

now look at the way this guy's built oh my he's talking shit while he's running Oh, man. And he fell. He's yelling. 40 million people. Is that right?

The number of views in the corner, 40 million? Unbelievable. Wow. Oh, man. Look at that. Wow. Yeah, they raced a couple times. Yeah, they raced a bunch of times.

And the other guy, didn't that other guy, he played football, right? Not in the NFL, but I think like college football or something. Look at this fucking size of them, too. The other guy's fucking. super jacked. Like, that's his whole thing. His online content is him running, being super jacked. And he has to deal with I Show Speed talking shit to him. And he's saying, like, play some of this.

The first one I slipped. Second one, you barely beat me. Let's run again. Well, I got to beat you three times. Come on, that's up. See, when I see that, right? Yeah. It's not a six. What is you, 25? 26.

That's hilarious. So I see this and be like, this kid should be a wrestler. Right. Because he is athletic and he can talk shit and back it up. My God, this kid would, he would be a 20-time champion, whatever. No, he should do this. Are they running barefoot on the fucking concrete? I think so.

Oh, really? Yeah. That would be bad decision. Come on ass. I think they're. Come on ass. That was pretty close Yeah, but he started before him

Yeah Started before me and still lost Started before He started before me He's still lost Yeah Like he should He should be doing that

Yeah But like you see the sprinting potential I see the WWE potential He should do neither He should just do that Right And just just keep crushing I guarantee you

They'd probably want him to do it again Oh my I think he did a thing He just went to like The Performance Center Do a thing And like He's really good

Really good He's got great instincts He's got great timing That's amazing. Yeah. And he's only 20. I mean, there's now, like, this is like full multi-camera, really good shooting. And he's speed versus pros, I think, because he's kind of doing that idea, you just said.

Yeah, like where he goes, he goes to people's expertise. Look at that, 46.2 million subscribers on YouTube. That's wild. Yeah, so I think, I think, like, he should just do that, you know, like, whatever he's doing. I mean, he's obviously doing it. Does he have, like, a team behind him that's. I'm editing all this shit now? I'm sure.

Probably. Oh, look at that. He's learning how to do flips. Oh, that's crazy. So he's really in it. Yeah. And I think it's just like show up for a few days and then go on to the next discipline. Wow.

So he does everything. Smart. Very smart. He spent all summer going to a city every day. Everything was live streamed for like 24 hours straight. They'd go to a city, show up. What's the coolest thing to do in the city? And do it?

Like, what kind of shit was he doing? Go to the city next day. ride all rides, try all the games. A bunch of kids following around next day. They were here in Austin going to Terry Blacks. I think he went and did stand-up with Mark Norman in New York City. That's cool, that's cool, man. He went on stage for a second.

That's wild. He's so young, too. Only 20. Yeah. That talented. And just brave and courageous and going for it. Like that's, regardless of what you and I think, he's doing exactly what he should be doing.

You should just keep doing that. And obviously not getting in his own way. Not at all. All the things are saying, like capitalizing on every opportunity. Story yet to be told. Yeah. Story yet, still got a lot of life left. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. A lot of life left. Yeah. But we'll see. He's doing great so far. Yeah. Amazing. I think we wrap this up.

It was a fucking awesome podcast. I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much. It is a real big opportunity for you to have me on here because the the W. folks that you have had, I think I'm still, I only got one date left, but I still think I'm the active one. I hope this experience has been good for you guys. Oh, it's been amazing. I hope you have more of the guys and gals from us in on your show. Absolutely. Every one of them's got a great story. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think your philosophy is contagious and I think it's really

good for people to hear. And I think there's a lot of young people out there that are really going to benefit from a lot of the things you said because I think it's rock solid. That means a lot coming from you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Tony, you're the man. Awesome. Thank you, guys. Appreciate you. Let's call it.

Bye, everybody. Good power off.