The Press Box - Covering 'WrestleMania,' ESPN Re-Signs the Insiders, and Tiger at the Masters

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

Bryan and David are in Fort Worth, Texas, to break down 'WrestleMania 38.' They talk about covering the event, the impact the sport has had on other forms of media, and discuss the art of wrestling (4:29). Later, they discuss the news that ESPN re-signed Adam Schefter and Woj, weigh in on the Tiger Woods tease ahead of the Masters, and touch on more sports reporting (33:05). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are certain moments and words that shaped a new era in pro wrestling. Austin 316 says I just whipped your ass. Brett screwed breath. Die, Rocky, die. Introducing the book of wrestling, 25 catchphrases that explain the attitude era. Tune in as we relive one of the most exciting, intense, and over-the-top times in WWE, with new interviews with the voices that made the promos, calls, and catchphrases into history. Listen now.

David, we're here in our mutual hometown of Fort Worth, Texas. We're here in your mother's kitchen. Yeah, that's right. We are coming to you live from the home of Leola Curtis in Fort Worth, Texas. I haven't been here for, wow, 25 years. Can I do a little play-by-play for the folks that might be listening via radio today? Please. So there's the hallway to your right where you would come in and have the kind of obligate.

awkward conversation with my mom. We should be really interested in what you were doing. Yeah, your mom is not, there's nothing awkward, but it's, but it's just, when you're 16 and you're talking to an adult, that, that is awkward. Yeah, exactly. The TV over here to my left is where you and I sat down and watched WWA superstars together. Mm-hmm. Compared to a lot of notes on professional wrestling.

Can we, can we tell the people how we met, if they don't know when we were 14, 14 years old. Please. All right. So correct me if I get this origin story wrong at any point. You and I had a mutual friend. I knew him from years of school in Fort Worth. You had just moved here and you knew him from church. Yeah. We went to his slumber party. Yeah. One of the one of the perks of being, I mean, okay, so as a preacher's kid, you move around sometimes and it's not great to be without friends. One of the perks is that sometimes people, the kids your age of church are obligated to be your friend. So this mutual friend, Seth, was like called me the night.

I moved to town the day before school started. And this guy, and this guy called me the night before. He's like, you don't know me, but I will meet you in the lobby of the high school tomorrow. Like your mentor at college. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that was so that was our mutual friend. And I remember we went to the slumber party and you and I were aware of each other. Yeah.

But I seriously doubt we'd ever met. And I doubt we'd really ever even spoken to each other. Definitely not. And Seth had a Super Nintendo. And I, to this slumber party, brought the Royal Rumble Super Nintendo game, as one does. We were 14 years old. Still one of the best wrestling games ever, yeah. And I remember bringing it in, and you looked down at it and looked up at me, and you said, do you like wrestling?

And I said, yeah, do you? In my memory, I looked down and looked up and I said, do you want to start a media podcast in 25 years? but I'm sure it was it was one of the two yeah and I want to say the weeks and months after that were kind of amazing because you know how when you're in that friendship where your friends with somebody maybe better friends with somebody else the other person's better friends with somebody else

but then you decide that you two were actually friends and you two are going to be best friends and you have these moments where you're like look at each other like hey we're going to be friends we're going to know each other and of course that happened. We knew each other. College, lived together after college. Let me just blow your mind with one more fact here. Uh-oh. That fateful meeting at the slumber party, you and me? That was

30 years ago this year. Oh my God. We've known each other for 30 years. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I can come to terms with that. That's a lot. But okay. And a top five subject During most of that three decades, David, has been professional wrestling. I was going to say, if we had this conversation, if we had this conversation

maybe on a different Monday, it might be a little bit harder to swallow, but we just had a good night together. We had a good weekend. And I was like, all right, for as old as I am, maybe, you know, we've accomplished a thing or two.

Let's shoehorn that into a media podcast. Here on the press box, a part of the ringer, podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoebaker, producer Erica Servantes. If our voices sound a little scratchy, it's because David and I were covering professional wrestling last night. I was covering, yeah. We were at AT&T Stadium, home with the Dallas Cowboys, to cover WrestleMania 38.

Now, a couple things about this. First of all, I love the vibe we had there because it was the vibe we had going back to high school here at this house. when we live together in the Lower East Side of New York. We were even sitting on the same sides because for whatever reason, whenever you and I watch wrestling, you would always sit on the right. Really?

And I would always sit on the left. Remember the apartment you'd be laid out on that plaid couch on the right? Yes, I do remember that. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I would sit on that fuzzy white chair to the left. Oh, yeah.

And I sort of looked up last night in the middle of this giant football stadium with 70,000 plus alleged fans in it. And I was like, still in the same spots. They were, they were actual fans. The 70,000 is what you're alleging, is what you're putting the attaching the alleged to. Um, yes. Yeah, we are. It's the more things change, I guess, right? Yeah. We also had this great vibe last night because it was almost like being in a newspaper press box where you were the beat writer and you were going to have to

deliver the gamer at the end of the evening. Right. You had responsibilities. And I was like the young reporter who had to write a sidebar. Yeah. So I'm just sitting out like talking in your ear and being like, Hey, look at that. Hey, remember that from 1989? Mm-hmm. Oh, it's fantastic. It was great. It was great.

I mean, it's like, you know, you watch wrestling. Half of it is nostalgia. Half of it is making jokes about the things you remember, which is why it's fun to watch with friends. But obviously, there's even more familiarity and even more institutional humor memory. When it's, you know, me and you, then it is just about anybody else. For people that don't know, when you cover a big wrestling event like last night. Cover.

We use cover loosely, but yes. What are you judging? What do you want to see? Okay, so I have a new podcast that came out today, actually, called The Book of Wrestling. And it's a narrative podcast and a little bit more, this is a great synchronicity. But I go into a lot of why wrestling, in the first episode, go into sort of, you know, I built the whole episode around the phrase, you know, that stuff's fake, don't you? which is what you and I would always hear as a kid if you were like, oh, like wrestling.

And if the person wasn't a fan, they'd be like, they feel obligated to inform you that pro wrestling is staged. And, you know, the episode's about why this is, that's exactly the point, right? That's what we love about pro wrestling. I mean, it's why it's such a, I think, an incredible art form.

But so what you watch when you're watching it, you know, from the perspective of someone, quote, unquote, covering it or whatever is, it's about the performance and it's about the, the fulfillment of expectations or of hopes or the crushing of hopes, you know, I mean, it's how they tell the story that gets you to the, to the end point. And it's a lot of the times you feel like you know how it's going to end. I mean, a lot of times you can say with

great confidence, you know, what the ending note will be and the winning and the losing sometimes doesn't even matter to that. But, you know, you hear rumors about what's going to happen. You see if those are going to be fulfilled. You see, you see this kind of how they manage expectations and live up or failed to live up to them. And yeah, just sort of like, the whole thing is just sort of a, managing expectations is really important because the whole thing being put on is about, it's all the T's, right, up until the match and then through the match until the very end of the match. The whole thing is the building of suspense and you don't know how it's going to end.

And so it's just incredibly fun, even from a totally jaded point of view. to watch how they get to that in note. So there's the in-ring stuff like, did the performers land the moves? Sure. Did they do a good job? And then the second aspect you're talking about really reminds me of when we have a ringer TV podcast

and we're judging the showrunners on how they put everything together. I think I've said this before, but I feel very, like, I feel very strongly that either spiritually or literally, the concept of judging showrunners watching a show and saying this has bad writing,

I believe that originated with pro wrestling. Interesting. Because pro wrestling is a weekly live show and it had, and way before this was a thing in regular TV, had a culture which would grade the writing. I mean, would judge the writing. And when you do it in real time,

when you're talking about it, the night the show aired and it was live, it feels like you have a much more, one-to-one relationship with the writing team, you know? I mean, when you're literally there live and you're chanting, this match sucks, you do have a relationship with the creative team, right? You are affecting what they've made. And it really wasn't until, like, you started seeing it a lot at the last season of Game

of Thrones when you, again, the production time, like they were producing the show was really close to the time that we were reviewing them, you know? And people started in the production process was part of the narrative of the show, just like in professional wrestling, that you would see all these people just say, like, oh, that episode had bad writing. You know, not, it wasn't, it was never a commentary, well, it was less a commentary on the specifics

of the plot or the decisions, but just a blanket bad writing, you know, no? And that's, and I feel like that came from wrestling. So yeah, you do see a lot of, a lot of the sort of, you are engaging with that when you're there alive as a wrestling fan. I always say, you're not a good guy unless you're getting cheered. You're not a bad guy unless you're getting booed.

I mean, the fans in, wrestling are so much more important than any other sport. I feel, too, when we talk about TV criticism and wrestling criticism, writing whatever you want to call it, that there was this dawning awareness at the same time of all the mechanics of actually writing the show. Sure. Well, you learned the word showrunner.

That's a good example. The word showrunner, right? Or TV people start being like, oh, yeah, the B plot on this episode was X, something that no one would have ever said 10, 20 years ago. And that happened in wrestling, too, right? People became aware of how you put together a show. so they could sort of judge it on these very, very insidery terms.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, in pro wrestling, you know, the code of KFAB, as they say, used to be so heavily guarded that you wouldn't understand,

you know, you wouldn't have an idea of how the business worked unless you had been in the business. But I think in the age of the internet, anyone who's been in the business and been spit out by it, you know,

probably doesn't care enough about KFabe, as much about KFAB as they would if they were still in the business. So all these little were the terms, terms are getting out, the terminology, the concepts, everything has been coming out steadily for the past 25 years or 30 years or something like that. So yeah, people, people know, people, have slowly learned how pro wrestling works and are, I mean, if you, if you hang out with wrestling fans, as you did a little bit last night, the language, the, the vocabulary is that of being an

insider. Like, you can't talk about wrestling without talking about the push someone's getting or the, you know, or the gimmick or the whatever, like it's, you know, it's, it's, it's all insider terminology. By the way, being among wrestling fans, which I hadn't been in a while, there is no other group of people on the planet that stop each other more and say, hey, I'm sorry, where'd you get that T-shirt? Oh, yeah. I heard that all night last night. His official stuff, semi-official stuff, unofficial stuff.

Yeah. It's, it's funny. I was saying this to somebody. when I was, even when I first started doing this, 10 years ago or whatever, there was like three places to get shirts. You either get it from WWE or you'd get it from, you know, one of a couple high profile sort of like,

you know, replica shirt maker type or like humor shirt makers, you know? And now there's just, there's so many different, there's so many different places to get it. I was actually wearing a WWE brand shirt last night, but that was brand new. Like literally they'd put it in the shop that day and I walked over to buy it. because I liked it, but no one had seen it, right?

No one's familiar with it. So everyone just was coming up to me to ask me where I got it, just like right there. Like, you can go buy one. But yeah, people are, people love to know where you got the shirts. Given how much of wrestling is storytelling, high-level storytelling, when you're at an event like you were last night,

do you then need to go back and watch it on TV so that you hear the commentary and hear all that stuff to really get a sense of it? Yeah, it's one of the weird things about trying to actually, you know, write about it and cover it. You can't, you can't fully process it. without listening to the story. Well, sometimes you can't.

I mean, I'm not, I'd be lying if I said I went back and watched every single thing. But, you know, like the main event last night was Brock Lesnar versus Roman Raines. It was a pretty straightforward match. But, you know, I could probably do like a 75% job like discussing it. But what really matters, especially in the higher profile matches,

is the story they're telling, right? Like, we know that spoiler alert, like Roman Raines beat Brock Lesner and is now that. the unified champion and everything else. But like, and there, there were, you can see from your seat that, like, both of the guys were injured during the match and were getting beat up. But is the, it was the bigger story they were telling that, you know, Roman Raines got hurt

in the opening, in the opening bit, and he was just trying to overcome the whole way through, you know, whatever, like, or also like AJ Styles versus Edge. I mean, you could tell they were telling the story that, or you can tell that at one point Edge comes off the top rope and lands on, or AJ comes off the top rope and lands on Edge's knees. I was editing a piece about this match by Phil Schnyder that we published on the ringer.com this morning. But it wasn't clear from our seats as good as they were that the story, the literal story in the match from that point on was, you know, Edge was overconfident, wasn't expecting. He was trying to out, you know, trying to have this giant moment coming off the top rope. And he suffered the injury throughout the rest of the match, right?

He was like he never quite rebounded from that moment. A legitimate injury? No, no, no, all fake. Okay. But like that, but, you know, they would say he was selling the ribs the whole match. That's, again, insider lingo. Yeah. And by the way, it's so funny because I remember that moment with his knee injury, quote, unquote,

and turning to you and adopting an announcer voice without even thinking about an edge, edge nursing that wounded knee, David. Yeah, exactly. We just fill in the blanks. Totally. So you need to essentially, the thing you're missing when you're at an event. like that is what did the people say on television? What story were they telling about this match? Because they don't, because, yeah, it's not just play by play, right?

In the 70s and into the 80s, it was. Seventies, it was play by play. 80s, it became more of play by play with, you know, running advertisements for whatever was coming, whatever big show was coming up or whatever, kind of telling a different big story. They'd be talking about other stuff when two guys were in the ring or whatever, whoever the more famous competitor was, what he had on. his agenda moving forward, not what was happening in the ring of that moment in time.

But now it's it's about telling the story, right? It's about telling, it's about being a part of the narrative. And so yeah, you have to sort of, you have to know. And it matters. It matters the way that they, that the announcers, but the way the announcers treat the wrestlers tells you a lot about sort of what the company's investment in them is and that sort of thing. The level of enthusiasm and the level they're working them and all that stuff. Because that's all a reaction to that's all the reaction to what's what's going to like to what the fans are doing right like the fans if there's a good guy and the fans boo you then you know that they have to rearrange the storytelling presumably but the announcers then are the are the the the the straightest conduit to

the mind of the people in charge this is a good segue because i'm fascinated by wrestling announcers going back to when we were kids gorilla monsoon with the literally rose colored glasses yes or maybe they were kind of a shade of mauve going on to Vince McMahon, going on to Jim Ross. We had Michael Cole on the podcast last week, who was kind of the Joe Buck of professional wrestling in more ways than one. And I'd heard him when I was getting ready for the interview say in a different interview that he was an actor. And I asked him, when you say you're an actor, what does that mean? Here's what he said. I always tell everyone when they ask me about working for WWE in sports entertainment, I explain to them that I am a fake broadcaster for a make-believe sport and I use a fake name.

And I mean all of that with the utmost respect. I'm not poking fun at the profession by saying that. But I try to use that analogy to explain to people what it's like to be a commentator in sports entertainment. My real name is Sean Colthard. I came from CBS News. I walked into sports entertainment as a fan, not having any idea what I was getting myself into. I had to come up with a different name because at the time, Sean Michaels was a major star in the company and they didn't want to have two shons on the air. So I took my middle name and half my last name. So I have a name that doesn't belong to me. And I play a broadcaster on television. And it's really important that people understand that because yes, indeed, we do broadcast it, and we are commentators, and it's very serious at what we do. But there are many, many points that we have to act. And if we don't believe in certain storylines or we don't believe in certain characters, we have to make the audience believe that we believe. So we are actors. And, you know, in many ways, we're a scripted television show. So we have to do things the way that the writers and the boss want things done. And that's

why I consider myself an actor more so than anything else. Yeah, I mean, you see a lot of people cross over in the world of professional wrestling. Johnny Knoxville was on the show last night. That was amazing. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, I guess there's probably a little bit more of a direct parallel between what Johnny Knoxville does on jackass and what people do in professional wrestling. But you see the people come in the world of wrestling if you're an established personality and you have to play the wrestling version of your personality.

They always say the most successful wrestling characters, the ones that are you with the volume turned up, right? I mean, it's just you come in. You're still a journalist. You're going to continue to play the role of a journalist, but it's not the same job. I'm a broadcast journalist as Bobby Heenan used to. Exactly, exactly.

I did think there's some interesting there, and to you the point you just made is that when you say acting, the announcers that I talk to and write about on a normal, everyday basis, they are also acting. Yeah. We should be clear. They might not be acting like Michael Cole is on a WWE broadcast,

but when there's an exciting play, they're not delivering an authentic version of excitement on the air so much as this is going to sound like I'm excited. I thought you were going to say that they're acting like they like the people in the booth with them. But yes, you're right. It is a deliberate register that you reach to evoke a certain feeling or whatever. Yeah, and if you weren't acting, I think you'd be bad at it. Right.

But at least they could say that they were reacting to a surprise. a surprising moment, an unexpected moment in the game, whereas, well, Michael Cole doesn't always know what's going on. You know, he isn't always fully briefed on what's going to happen in the match. He's, it would probably, I think the calling himself an actor

is a little bit of, is sort of a much, it's a smart and sort of defense, but a kind of defensive way of talking about it because even if he were surprised, a lot of wrestlers, I mean, a lot of announcers in the 70s and 80s just sat down in their chair, and treat it like a real sport, you know,

just reacted to what was happening in front of them. But it's just, like, what a silly argument to get into about whether or not it's a real reaction when the sport is scripted, right? It's just so unnecessary to be talking about this. It's not an argument, but it's interesting to me. No, no, it's interesting, but I appreciate my whole goal calling himself an actor.

Yes, to just kind of take it all off the table. Yeah, exactly. Like, why would that be what matters? What matters is what you, is your performance. Yeah, but it did. asking about that. I was like, you know, you know all the results of the matches, right? And he said some of them, but some of them he deliberately doesn't so that viewers get something like a genuine reaction. One of the craziest moments in professional wrestling history, as just a point of

reference, is when Hulk Hogan joined the NWO, came out as the third member of the NWO, turned his back on all the gigantic Hulcomaniacs and got, had an audience just throwing trash at him for about 20 minutes in the ring, literally. It's a great moment, marred by only two, one of the most incredible moments in wrestling history, marred by only two tiny things. One, at one point,

Hogan accidentally called it the New World Organization instead of the New World Order. They've had to mess with that in post. Kind of important to get right. Right. But the other part was that Bobby Hennon, who you just mentioned, was on color commentary, and they did not, with none of the, no one in the booth was warned

that Hogan was about to turn. But because Bobby Hennon had made a career of being the bad guy color commentator to Hogan's good guy, he accused, he surmised, I guess he was so sure that Hogan wasn't about to join the villains that he thought it was an okay joke to make to say, well, Hogan's the third man. I bet he's come, because he was trying to insult Hulk Hogan as a character.

And then when Hulk Hogan really joined the NWO, everyone was just like, oh, Hennon must have known ahead of time. No, Hennon didn't know. That's the only reason he said it is because he didn't know, but it kind of ruined the moment. Yeah, he ruined the surprise. Yeah, because he suggested this thing that was clear, that didn't just happen.

I totally remember that. I remember Tony Chavani doing the classic straight ahead, play-by-play man response to that, which is, would you stop it? Yeah. How would you be serious? Of course, he's not doing that. He did.

By the way, on a slow day on your show, or maybe this show, we need to do wrestler announcer Rushmore. Oh. I actually think it's really hard. I think it might be harder than the NFL to do. Yeah, well, I mean, if you go back to, I mean, in the late 70s, all of the, the last standing territories, or the big territories at that point had announcers that were, that would be on someone's Mount Rushmore and deservedly so. Yeah, but that's the thing. You get into that, right? Well, you never saw so-and-so in the NWA. How could you leave him off your list?

Fascinating. Fascinating thing. A couple more for you on the art of covering professional wrestling. Is there a press box at wrestling events? Yeah. The proper press box at an event like WrestleMania is open and full. Because we were in regular seats, but there is a press box up there. Is it okay to cheer in the press box? It's the funny thing you asked that when I was, I think maybe the first time I did the press box, or at least started the event, you know, like actually had a press pass and did, you started the event in there, was in, oh God, what was it? 31, 32. I never get my numbers right. But I was up there and sitting with, you know, a bunch of people I know from the internet as, you know, just like any other press box, all these wrestling writers.

And it was, where was it? Maybe this was in Miami. It was in a football stadium, obviously, and the staff of the stadium was there, right? I mean, it wasn't just a WWB PR team. It was, like, the stadium PR people were there, too. And we were all, it must have felt like a totally normal football Sunday. You know, everybody was there and everybody was kind of chummy and getting ready, getting their notebooks out or their laptops out.

And the first match, Daniel Bryan, who's just a huge favorite of the fans, but particularly of the sort of like, you know, smart set in wrestling, which is everybody who was in the press box. Daniel Bryan returns and wins a battle royal or wins a ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship out and the entire press box just exploded. I mean, just we, everybody went nuts, high-fiving, going crazy. And I looked back and saw some of these like poor PR people from, we're used to working football games who just looked like they were going to die. They were just like, what is happening? That's amazing. It's like when Americans beat the Soviets and hockey. Yeah, exactly.

And every single, every single quote-unquote journalist was just like, yeah. But that's the point. You know, like, the hardest thing when you're covering this thing full time is to stay engaged as a fan, right? To stay, like, to actually care. Because you watch about it so much. I mean, you watch it so much. You've seen it for so many years. I think it's a real badge of honor if you could, like, get that excited about the outcome of match

because it's showing that you're staying engaged, you know? just like, you know, if you're watching with a watching basketball with somebody who's really smart, really smart writer and they can, you know, point out defenses and tell you what the coach is thinking, that's them staying engaged, right? For wrestling fans, like actually, we're wrestling writer. It's like actually just like investing yourself even a little bit in what's going on. Our boss likes to joke about the aggregators whenever he's making proclamations about the NBA. Dude, this was my first experience with the wrestling internet aggregators. Uh-huh.

when I did the Michael Cole interview. Oh my goodness. First of all, there's a whole bunch of them. And I don't know if they're all owned by the same thing, but there's just like the, it was a very aggressive aggregation and also all these websites had transcribed either the whole interview or a whole lot of the interview. One place will usually transcribe it and the rest will steal off that transcription.

And do the credit so and so. But it was amazing. I mean, there were all these headlines like, you know, Michael Cole comments on this. Michael Cole talks about his hearing loss. Michael Cole talks about the number. I was like, wow, it's a very efficient, like we are going to find out what he said in there that we think is newsworthy and put it online so that people will click on it.

Yeah. That was really interesting to me. Different posts for every, for every bit, for every item. Swerving back to media here, we got to talk about Pat McAfee. Because he is a sports podcast host, that airs on sports radio. I'm pretty sure he hosts it a sports podcast. He is a color commentator on the wrestling match. Friday nights on Smackdown on Fox.

He is a media guy generally. He was competing last night. And he was so popular. Yeah. With the crowd. Yeah. I almost thinking we've talked about this like Barstool and I'll have 100 conversations about this.

And I know he spent like five minutes in the Barstool Empire. But there are these people who have this kind of fame that I think the world, the world does not quite have their arms around. And when you are in a stadium with 70,000 people, allegedly, and Pat McAfee, again, a sports talker is in the ring. I don't know it does 100 of the things. And 70,000 people are fired up when you're coming down to the ring. Do that?

I mean, how many people could do that? How many people have that experience in their life? I mean, yeah, how many people, would get that sort of reaction. I mean, it's just a vanishingly small list, right? A short list. And they're cheering him because he's Pat McAfee and he's entertaining and because he likes wrestling

and he treats wrestling with respect. And he's learned the moves. He's not just like I'm a famous person who's in there screwing around. Oh, no, he's a better wrestler than a lot of people whose careers are being a wrestler. So what's he going to do in that world? We know like the podcast is huge.

The gambling money is huge. he was big at the Super Bowl. Does he going to just have like a giant second career? You're right. The money that he's making from his show, from the Pat McAfee show is beyond enormous, right? Which I think is sort of the point. There's a direct line from there to the cheers

because when he decided to start being the Smackdown color commentator every Friday night or even before that when he was getting involved with NXT, they sort of made it, they sort of blurred the lines and made it seem like this was his first match. It was not his first match. He'd wrestle a couple of times in NXT-WV's developmental league, kind of, you know, doing his first stuff. Not as a developmental wrestler, but because I think there was an easier entry point there for him before he became a

color commentator. But the point is he doesn't need to be a color commentator. He certainly doesn't need to be a wrestler to, you know, he's got enough money that he could start his own wrestling company if he wanted to. He doesn't need to be doing this, but he's a fan. I mean, that's the thing. And as a wrestling fan, you might turn your nose up at a celebrity wrestling at WrestleMania. Like, listen, Johnny Knoxville was about as popular as you could get, but you could understand why a fan would be like, why does Johnny Knoxville get this match and not my favorite wrestler who was left off the car? Sure, he's worked hard his whole life to get to this moment. Johnny Knoxville is just here for a paycheck. I mean, that, not Johnny Knoxville, again, not in particular

Johnny Knoxville, but you would say that. But Pat McAfee, you know why he's there, because he loves wrestling as much as you do, right? So, like, there's all the fame and there's all the accomplishment and stuff, but why does he get that kind of uniformly just huge reaction from everybody there? Because he, there's, I mean, even more so than some of the wrestlers, like, he has, there's like very clear evidence that he cares about this more than anybody else. Right. Right. And that's what we all care about, right? Wrestling fans love nothing more than like the sort of validation of like a mainstream article. They don't care what it says or like, you know, or just, or someone hearing a celebrity they like

or a musical artist they like saying they like wrestling, it's that sort of validation, because it's always been an underground thing. And to have someone on the level of McAfee, not only loves wrestling as much as we do, but has gone the extra mile, has dedicated the past decade of his life to becoming a wrestler just for the hell of it.

I mean, that's, that's about as easy, a guy to cheer for as you can imagine. Next year at WrestleMania, in Los Angeles, can we have a sports radio host battle royal, mainly for the purposes of just walking them all down the aisle and hearing how many people respond. Like I think Jim Rome gets a pretty big response in that world. There's enough crossover.

Colin Coward, maybe, you know. The problem with Colin, because he is a great personality for that world, the problem with Colin is just that he just dresses too, to sort of normally, right? You're never like a nice, A nice, like, light blue button-down shirt is never going to get you booed the way that he deserves to be booed. He needs to be wearing sequins or something. Okay.

Well, that's something I'd definitely like to see that. If we can make that happen. Dan Labatard come down there. I just, I want to know what does the pro wrestling crowd think about America's sports radio hosts. That's a great question. Well, let's march them all down. Let's get them down there. I mean, listen, there are been other, quote-unquote, broadcasters that have made that, that have made their appearances, right?

I mean, Mario Lopez has been around it a lot. I'm pretty sure Maria Minunos. If we're counting like entertainment tonight type host, Maria Minoos had a WrestleMania match. Obviously, there have been the Bob Eukers of the world who have had various run-ins in the early days of WWE or the WrestleMania season. I mean, there's been some crossover, but I love the sports radio host gimmick.

It's a good idea. David, let us do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. You know what's coming here because I actually showed you this last night

at AT&T Stadium after we walked as we were walking out of the arena. There was an all-timer tweet from the Hollywood reporter. And for people to truly understand this tweet, you need to know that the first letter of every word was capital. Here's the tweet. Louis C.K. wins Grammy for first special

since sexual misconduct allegations. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. This is a really specific category, but I guess someone had to win it. Thanks to Adam Waltonbaugh and Cameron, if you've now decided that you're definitely not watching the Grammings next year, congrats.

You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, David, a few quick items for you. One was, we had two big signings last week in Sports Media World. Woge and Schefter. Adrian Woznarowski, NBA insider for ESPN, Adam Schaefter, same job on the NFL.

They usually report on free agents. They were approaching a free agency of their own. Oh, yeah. And there was a lot of interest from gambling companies. Because, you know, we talk about there's this crossover now between the media world and the gambling world. And, ooh, they have all the information. But who's going to go where, but who's hurt, who's going to play?

What if we could get our hands on one of them. Yeah. ESPN re-signed both of them and sent out the press release on the same day, which seems like a really big deal in our little world. I thought a couple of things about this one is the Jimmy Patero era at ESPN. It's been very different than John Skipper era. One way it's different is Jimmy Patero likes to build around big stars,

a small handful of really big stars. Yeah. It's almost like the Rams, you know, approach to team building versus, I don't know, some other teams. Yeah. And if you think about what is Jimmy Petrero ESPN, Stephen A. Smith, Joe and Troy now making a combined $30 plus million a year. Woj and Schefter. Yeah.

Top 10 stars in the ESPN universe. So it's a continued thing of like, no, no, no, we're not going to let somebody get away just because they're expensive. Actually, that's the person we want to go resign. Yeah. And promote them even more. Yeah. Rather than having this big sort of middle that I think the Skipper era had. sure what do you think that from a from a talent point of view though i mean there's got to be some

point where you're like yes i will you know i'm deeply interested in what you know giant brinks trucks full of cash that some of these that said that some of these you know these casinos or whatever gambling outfits are offering up but who among us is not interested in a giant brinks truck full of cash but but this is the point is that if at some point you're getting offered enough money i mean there's another there's a dollar figure that ESPN can hit where just like it's probably not worth just the ambiguity of my career going forward trying like trying to basically do like a sports startup in-house at a gambling company. So that's my second point.

Both of these guys are newspaper guys going way back. Shefter, Denver Post Rocky Mountain News, Wojj on the East Coast, a guy who wanted to grow up and be the next great New York City sports columnist. I think it's a big bridge to cross to go from ESPN, which is not 100% of journalism company, but is a lot of journalism company. There's lots of journalistic ambitions within lots of other ambitions to cross that bridge and go to a gambling company. I think that's a big deal in somebody's life.

Again, maybe someday there is a Brink's truck big enough or heavy enough that makes you do it. But I think if you, I think if you and I'm not, this doesn't come from either of them, this is just me talking for you to do that, you're really walking away from something else and probably walking away from something that a whole lot of your career was based around and a whole lot of things you dreamed of being were based around. Yeah. Well, think about, I mean, I'll admit, I have a pretty narrow perspective on a lot of the things that we talk about on this show. I mean, we both, I mean, everybody, I think in life does. And we, we, we, we, we, we,

we zoom out and expand when the subject calls for it. But that's all to say, if you told me right now that that Darren Ravel was like 10 times more popular than before he went to the action network, I would just grudge, I would just assume that you were telling me the truth. But I know from that where I'm sitting, like, I almost had to Google Darren Ravel's name to make this point, right? Like, he's just so far sort of off the radar. And so I don't, I, yeah, I mean, I think that that's got to be part of the calculus too, right? We wouldn't fault anybody for doing whatever they wanted to do. And maybe just from a totally like entrepreneurial point of view, like that, those sorts of business ventures would be of interest to you, but you're right.

If you're a newspaper person reaching the sort of top of the heap is very well may be the goal. And staying there is a testament to everything you've accomplished, right? You're not looking for an exit strategy. You're looking to, you know, I'm going to defend my, I'm going to win the title at WrestleMania and defend it here next year too. That's a guarantee. You know, I mean, you're just going to, you're staying there is important. Totally. And if you leave, they're going to try to develop somebody else. Yeah.

Now that person may not be nearly as good as you, but they're going to go shopping for somebody else to fill that role. Yeah. To compete with you. And they're going to promote the hell out of it. Yeah. It also touches on this whole like institutionalist versus journalists on their own debate that we've been hearing in, in a lot of different forms. Yeah. Like, do you need the journalism company as an important to you to be a part of a journalism company? Or do you really just want to do what you do and find ways to,

to do it however the hell you want to do it. That's all in this part, too. It's true. There's some point where, like, if you're offered so much, I mean, there's a lot of advantage as to working for yourself. But at some point, if you're, like, one of the top two, three, four, five people at a company the size of ESPN, I think you probably have all the perks of working for yourself and also an HR department you can call when you need to.

And, you know, I mean, there's like some benefits to that. If you followed the Tiger Woods tease here in advance the Masters? Yeah, only peripherally, because I keep seeing it on work. slack what's going on played a practice round on sunday he played augusta before that this is tiger woods who was in a car accident in february 2021 so that's 13ish months ago really 13 months ago like almost amputated leg or something almost lost his right leg and it was kind of like will tiger woods walk again will tiger woods play golf again under any circumstances and he's come out and said i'm never going to be a full-time golfer again. That's just where I play every tournament. That's just not

going to happen. But I might play again. And all of a sudden, you have this walk up to the biggest golf tournament of the year where he's out there giving it a shot. It's kind of unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty wild. And what a story. I mean, that's why, you know, listen, that's why we love pro wrestling, right? When something great happens in real sports, when there's something like this happens, what do you say? Like, oh, God, it would have been, it couldn't have been any better if it were scripted, you know? It's a real storybook sort of situation here for Tiger Wood. Couldn't have written a better story.

Speaking of which, or I guess the opposite of which, I went to masters.com to check out the latest update. This is how the story on Tiger were playing the Sunday practice round began. Tiger Woods knows you cannot win the Masters before it begins. But in the still of a sultry Sunday twilight, Woods might have poured the foundation to a game plan that will shake his fate this week. A couple notes there.

The still of a sultry Sunday twilight. You and I are sitting here in Fort Worth, Texas right now. It's a little much for me. I'm going to be honest. Yeah. It's a little, it's a little,

it's a little, it's a little much. It really is. Also poured the foundation to a game plan. Not exactly sure the verbs and, uh,

yeah, just line up with that one. No, but yeah. This is that, dude. Tiger Woods coming back is going to make media people do really weird things. It is going to be on TV on CBS. It's going to make people write weird things.

Just a blanket warning to everybody. Great sports story. Potentially not great sports writing about it. Just a warning. Oh, man. Final peg of this very, very busy sports stretch for us, David, is the final four. Duke North Carolina super matchup was happening on Saturday night. Yeah, during WrestleMania.

Dude, that was, and everybody said this on Twitter. So I'm going to say it one more time. Of all the hyped games we've been given, like, oh, this is the one everybody's waiting for. Can you believe it? And the reason they were saying that, because Mike Schiafsky, it's last season at Duke. It could be, and turned out to be his last game ever. Duke in North Carolina conference rivals that had never met in the NCAA tournament. It lived up to the hype.

It was incredible. Yeah. You don't get many like that. I am fascinated by media duke hating. Are you as fascinated by this as I am? Can we talk about this last week, or is this just an offline conversation? We may have touched on it,

but I want to talk about it some more. Well, because there's all this, you know, Bill on his podcast, stop me if I'm reading myself, Bill on his podcast, well, no, before the Kang, I haven't listened to the Kang episode yet, but Bill on his podcast a couple weeks ago

was talking about how, with Coach Kay retiring and sort of all the sort of, you know, legends of the of the you know top basketball programs of our childhood sort of having moved on he was like are there no you know are there any more of these are we past the age where there's going to be the school that transcends the sport right are we past the age of like coach k and duke are just are always good or always a you know a page one story um obviously it was dean smith it was um well john calipari still coaching but you know i mean he may be the

the one exception that unites people in a certain way. But that's my thing. It's not about the schools being Derry Tarkhanian. It's not about the programs being transcendent, or it is about the program being transcendent, but I'm more interested in the questions. Like, are we done hating, are we done hating schools? Are we done hating coaches? Is there ever going to be a school Calipari accepted because he's of the old guard?

Are we ever going to be motivated to hate a college coach like we've done with these schools, Duke in particular, for so long? I just don't see it happening because I think without the longevity, without being, it's so hard for a school to have 20 years of success and to sort of be viewed that way. I just find it hard to imagine that the next Mike Shoshchewski could ever get the amount of hate that Coach K has gotten. So I think you're onto something that we need to confine it to basketball because Nick Sabin, you know, like college football is rife with us. And every college football Saturday is just let's all hate this. guy some more. Yeah. Let's watch this guy fall on his face in front of everyone. I think March Madness actually does a good job to, in that sense, to keep college basketball sort of egalitarian

in a way because there's so many schools and there's so many young coaches who get the opportunity to shine and get the opportunity, you know, get some front page headlines and get some hype behind them. And those, and that is now their recruitment tool for the next five years, you know. And so So it really allows, I think, that opportunity. Obviously, it's a little bit easier to have a basketball team shock the world, right? Because it's just all you need is three or four good players and run a good luck, you know? But in college football, it's really hard to imagine anybody shocking the world without, you know, five top tier recruits on the offensive and defensive of lines, right? I mean, you have to have

sort of a baseline of recruiting excellence for, like, institutionalized. And the players there are three years, they develop. The dukating, the unanimity of dukating is fascinating to me. Yeah. Because you and often talk about how the sports media has changed. Everybody all of a sudden was against

NCAA amateurism. Yeah. It was kind of split in the 90s. And then all of a sudden it was like, oh, wow. Everybody started reflexively defending players rather than defending management. at least most of the time. Didn't used to be that way, 20, 30 years ago.

In college basketball specifically? No, just in all sports. Oh, yeah. You know, you didn't find a lot of pro-management writers. You found lots more pro-player writers. For sure. The whole world flip. Duke hating is kind of like that.

A lot of people really hated Duke, but all of a sudden it was like, oh, everybody hates Duke. Yeah. I don't know if you've watched the Bomani show on HBO, but like you did a very, very funny Duke comedy piece on his first episode. Oh, no. What do you do? Oh, dude, got to watch it.

No spoilers. Okay. It's worth it. But it's just funny. It is worth pointing out that there was, you know, we did, Bill did it a 30 for 30, or they did a 30 for 30 at ESPN, but I hate Christian Laytoner, which was just like emblematic of, I mean, was there ever. But see, that's fans.

You're right. I think Christian Layton was an absolutely hate-to-figure. Bobby Hurley of those teams. I was rooting for UNLV at the day, right? But there is a certain, again, I don't think your like average big-time columnist in newspaper was like, you know who I hate Duke? I think it was, in fact, I think they probably liked Duke. I think they liked Coach Kay.

I think they liked what he stood for. Yeah. I just think it's interesting, one of those interesting ways the world changed. I got one little bit for you from the announcing of the ANCA tournament. Go ahead. You know how athletes have a cliche when they're being interviewed after a game? They say, give the other team credit. Yeah.

We lost or we won narrowly. Hey, it's not about me. give them credit. That has crept into announcing when the athlete leaves the locker room for the broadcast booth. And it has especially crept into the announcing of Grant Hill, who is on CBS's number one team on the NCAA tournament. This was from the Arkansas-Gonzaga Suite 16 game. Arkansas's Audice Tony blocked the shot of Gonzaga's Andrew Nebhardt. listen to how

Grant Hill, who's on the lead team, again, called this play. To the basket. Nice help again. Swad it away. We swung that at the beginning with the block. And Jim, we swam that at the beginning to the game on a fast break.

It started early. It continues all a ball game. Pursuit. Look at that play. Unbelievable. Success and accomplishment. Nitty, gritty. And we talk about the play of, of,

Nimbard is struggling, but give credit to Tony. He has been fantastic. Okay, so this was a game icing block. And Gran Hill wanted to make sure that we give credit to the person who had the game icing block. Imagine LeBron against the Warriors. Give LeBron credit for running down the court. Well, yeah.

That's exactly what we're talking about. Yeah, we're going to, and by the way, you can go ahead and give him credit. You don't need to say that. You're the color analyst. You can just dispense the credit for you. I counted three. Grand Hill give them credits during the final four. I can't wait for tonight.

Give them credit. Jim Breeze, by the way, I believe said this during the Super Bowl halftime show. Give them credit. No, no, you do it. That's your job. Give Grand Hill credit, man. He's good at calling a game. Last quick thing for you.

Scott Hastings, David, is the color analyst for the Denver Nuggets on altitude sports. You might remember Scott Hastings from the early 90s NBA. He was sitting on the court before a game last week doing a live shot talking to the studio. And someone in the studio asked

if the Nuggets Ford Jamichael Green was going to play that night. Now another television person might have said my sources are telling me or I'll check. Listen to how Scott Hastings handled the question of whether Green was going to play. Before I let you go, Hastings,

I saw Jamichael Green warming up behind you. Any word yet on if he's able to go tonight? I think he was questionable coming into this game. I'll ask you. Where do you go? Hey, Jamichael. You playing? No, he's not playing.

That's how you do it. I got to wait for all these letters. I got to wait for all these letters and stuff to come out. Just has to do. He said he wasn't playing. Amazing. Thank you for that amazing insight. We appreciate it.

us the answers that we're all wondering. He turns around and just yells. And he got the answer. Isn't that what we all want? We should all be as efficient as Scott Hastings. Good work, dude. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. All right, let's do it.

Thursday's headline about Adam Levine selling his Los Angeles home was he's got to move like Jagger. Today's headline, David comes from listener, S-D-M It's from the British tabloid the Sun. The men's World Cup draws out for this fall. And on November 21st, England, we'll be playing Iran. And the Sun, David,

thinks this game against the Iranian men will be a very favorable matchup. What was the Sun's strained pun headline? Is it, it's Iranian men, hallelujah? You got it. Yeah. Well, you just said Iranian men. That was it.

I heard it. It was too hard otherwise. Yeah, that's true. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Coming up Wednesday, very special treat in these parts, David. Iron Eagle.

Oh, yes. NBA announcer, college basketball announcer and a NFL announcer on CBS. I'm sure that like if Marve Albert, now Michaels, who are both great guests, but I'm sure if they were like our age, they would be just, wonderful podcast guest at all. But Iron Eagle is like the top of the mountain in terms of like how skilled he is, it doing his job and how fun he is to hear talk about his job. You want to hear one little taste from this? Please. We got to talking about how the official reviews now that are just out of control change the announcer's ability to call a game ending play.

Oh yeah. That's the announcer's highlight reel, right? It's good. They win. They win. Here's Eagle on what the official review has done to that very precious moment. So, you know, what I've noticed with a lot of announcers, and this is a really tough game to play, on a buzzer-beater, we know they're going to go look at it. We understand that. We know that they're going to go to the monitor. If you incorporate that as part of your call, that's there forever. So I've tried to at least create a little space between a game winner and then the next part of reporting, which is, yes, they're going to take a look at this. But if the first thing you say is they're going to take a look at this, I know no flags became a big call on football.

And I just never, I never went there. I don't know why. It always bothered me on the highlight that no flags wasn't glow. Like, yeah, no, no shit. no flags no shit shoemaker and i will talk masters and other stuff monday and we'll have more lukewarm takes

about the media david see you then see you later bryan