The Press Box - Paul Levesque on WWE’s Netflix Debut, How Streaming Will Change Wrestling, and the End of the 10:59 Problem

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Paul Levesque on WWE’s Netflix Debut, Wrestling in the Streaming Age, and Memories of ‘Raw’ In this special crossover episode of 'The Press Box' and 'The Masked Man Show,' Bryan and David welcome WWE chief content officer Paul Levesque, a.k.a. Triple H (3:25). He discusses how Netflix allows WWE flexibility in terms of the length of the show (5:40), how this move measures up with the move to Fox roughly five years ago (9:32), what sports leagues will be watching (21:10), and more. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: Paul Levesque Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on with Kate Middleton? Which cult is popping off right now? What the hell is a trad wife? And why are we so obsessed with them? I'm Jody Walker. And I'm Chelsea Stark Jones. And we're obsessed. Obsessed with all the pop culture happenings,

filling our group chats and for you pages. And we want to talk about them with you. Our new show, We're Obsessed, is for all the things we're loving, buying, watching, listening to, and spiraling over right now. Follow the ringer-dish feed on Spotify to listen to We're Obsessed every Friday. Yes. Welcome to the first ever crossover podcast between the Maskman Show and the press box.

It's time. It's time. It's crossover time. This is pretty exciting. This is a long time coming for us. It really is. And we had to find the perfect person who could put one. unmistled leg in each one of our worlds.

Mm-hmm. And guess who it turned out to be? Well, I know. Paul Levec, aka Triple H himself. The creative mastermind, would you say, of the WWE?

I think that's fair, yeah. The man who's making pay-per-views, who's going to be moving raw to Netflix starting on Monday night. Mm-hmm. The guy who we spent, I don't know, a few thousand hours watching on television back in our New York apartment. Oh, in TV and on TV and in real life, too. I'm sure there are a number of times you and I were in the crowd watching him sweat.

We covered a lot of ground here, but I just want to mark this as a pretty intense moment in our friendship. Yeah, first of all, before we get to Raw having commercials on Netflix and how Netflix could change the wrestling business, okay, sure, that was interesting. But you and I just interviewed Triple H to you. big deal. They're like the the the the benchmarks of our friendship, the tent pulls, the moments in time. There was a time we met where you appeared with a WWE video game or WWF video game. That was the beginning. Then when we got our driver's licenses, I think like basically the first thing we did was getting your little old car and drive to the sportatorium in Dallas for our first trip there. There were a couple more. When I first started working for for Grantland, you were my

plus one for to go see. What was that? It was at MSG. Was that the Survivor series? Or was it just a, well, whatever it was. Big, big events. This was one of them for sure. And here we are.

We covered a ton of ground here, man. We got commercials on Netflix. We got the future of the holy shit chant. We got how Paul Levec has tough conversations with talent. Who may want to be on the premiere episode of Netflix, but WWE Creative has other plans for them. We got all kinds of stuff. This is the only media podcast that the name John Millius will be mentioned in that you're here all week.

So here he is the man, Paul Levick, aka Triple H. We are now joined by Paul Triple H Levick, the night before, the day before Raw's move, Monday night Raw's move to Netflix. It'll be debuting on Netflix tomorrow, Monday night, 8 p.m. Eastern 5 Pacific. It's January 6th in case you're not paying attention. Thank you so much for during the show, man. Thank you guys. Thanks for having me up. I'm glad we can all actually make it work. Listen, technology's been a big part of the conversation as this Netflix and WW partnership begins. Yeah. When you were having conversations with potential media partners, How much of the conversation was about the technology?

How much of the conversation was about, well, can they handle what we're going to be giving them? Is everyone going to be able to see it? Yeah, look, I think that's always a part of the conversation in today's world. It's a conversation that we've been having for the last, what, I don't know, 10 years or so, right? Like, it's a conversation we were having when we started or when the idea was first brought up about WWE network, right? I think now, too, that technology is changing so rapidly. Like, we're in this time in the world where, like, between AI and all the tech that's out there, like, I feel like this stuff is changing on a, you know, a month-to-month basis or, you know,

the landscape that you talk about a year ago is not the landscape of today. And what's hot today might not be hot tomorrow or might fall by the wayside tomorrow and become sort of, irrelevant. You know, it's a funny thing. Like, you can talk to kids about technology and their lean on what is hot in the moment. Is it TikTok? Is it Snapchat?

Is it Instagram? Is it Twitter? Is it? Or X? Is it, you know, like, just all over the place. And it can change on the moment. So you have to get to pay attention to it. Otherwise, you end up being the old dude that's still on MySpace or something like that.

Paul, during its lifetime, Raw was a two-hour television show, and it was a three-hour television show. What's your thinking about how long Raw should be when it's on Netflix? Look, I love one of the things that Netflix will provide us to some degree, right, is some flexibility. Anybody that's made live television, especially in what we do, probably the most difficult balancing acts you have is you have a couple of talent, sometimes more, sometimes sticks, whatever that is, in a ring. You've got camera guys, you've got directors, you've got producers, you've got live announcers, and you have to make this stuff all come together and end at 1059-57. Exactly. 1059-57, you cannot go off two seconds early in the night. You cannot go off two seconds later than that.

you cannot go off two seconds later than that, right? That is the exact moment of which you have to have this thing buttoned up, not feel like that finish happened three minutes ago and what are they doing, right? Like, where are they going and what are they talking about it? It feels like they're dragging it out. It's really difficult balancing. I can't tell you how many times we're at, you know, Gorilla and you're talking about something and it's coming down to the wire

and you're asking the producer, like, are they going to make it? Like, is this finish going to get on the air because it feels like they're not going to make it? And like, I don't think they're going to make it. You know, it's coming. But then all of a sudden, whoop, they do the finish.

And now you're like, now there's four minutes left. Right. And so you always have to have this plan B sort of sitting in your pocket. You always have to have another, like, well, okay, so that, they end early? Where are we going?

They end a little bit late? Where are we going? How are we doing? that and you try to have a plan in your back pocket and then you're reliant on professional announcers and the people that do that stuff to sort of carry you through it and work on the fly but also same with talent too as they're getting into their stuff whatever they have planned they might have had four minutes of stuff plan at the end and all of a sudden they get to the place where they need to be but there's only two minutes left and they've got to adjust on the fly it's

very difficult so having that flexibility that i think Netflix will provide it and provide us to some degree because of the format will be refreshing. You know, look, there are there are weeks where the show needs to be a little longer. There are weeks where the show needs to be a little shorter, right? Not every episode is going to be the great final battle scene and in an episode of Game of Thrones. There's some weeks that are set up episodes that sort of take you through things but can be more condensed where you don't have to have, you know, sometimes when the show is long you have to build collapsible things in there where you like I know this I know this might

go heavy because this is going to be really good and it's a promo whatever it is talking there's a chance that this goes really long and then that messes up everything you have after that timing wise so you have to have collapsible elements that can some of this is going to have to go away and you know it's it's a complex scenario but having that freedom I think is going to be wonderful. It was probably, what is it, five, five and a half years ago now that it was, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, the, that, the Fox network. And at the time, as a wrestling fan, that felt like this monumental achievement, right? We got WWEs back on network television on a weekly basis. This, uh, and I don't mean this in a fanboy sort of way, but,

but the move to Netflix somehow seems bigger, at least in terms of the way that, that wrestling fans and everybody are processing it, how would you compare those two moments for WWE, moving to Fox and moving to Netflix? I think of the time moving to broadcast television was a big thing, right? Maybe not as big as it would have been if you had backed up 10 years prior to that. But when you get to this moment, and I don't mean this as a knock to anything, it's just sort of as you're looking at it, right? Like, I have kids.

They're not as young as they, you know, I would like to tell me, but like, you know, from 18 to 14, right? And I don't know that they know anything of what, like, oh, this show comes on and it comes on at 8 o'clock. Other than WWE and or sports men, right? Like, there's nothing that they watch. My kids walk in the door. They're either on Netflix or Hulu or Apple TV or something. that that knowledge that that sort of genre of something comes on at a particular time and i think it's become less relevant and less important that it's not important because there's still a lot of

people that watch it still a lot of people that have it and that's their source but um you know there's nothing that says i don't mean there's nothing that says ABC and chill right Bill's, everybody's vernacular, it's what it is. And so I do think in this moment where you have 280 million plus homes globally and more, you know, however many people in those homes that are all going to get, starting, you know, tomorrow will all get raw Smackdown, NXT, the PLEs, globally, 80% of the global be covered by all those things domestically raw will be there. But like, man, that's just a, it's a massive, massive shift and a massive number.

And it also changes the fact that you don't have to watch something live, live in the moment. It's important. If you're a big fan, you don't want to get things ruined on social or whatever that is. But also, if you're busy and you're working, you can come back and pick it up later. It's right there. You don't have to set a DVR. You don't have to do all the other stuff. So there's just a massive opportunity and change.

And I think in this time frame, it's where young people are. And our product, that's where you pick our product up. I don't think you see a lot of people pick up like, I'm 48 years old. I just found WWE for the first time. And I think it's wonderful. And I'm a massive fan. It's usually something you pick up younger and you learn to love it. and then maybe, you know, you get busy in life and you have young kids and then you get out of it for a little bit,

but then as your kids get to the page when they start to pick it up, and you start to pick it up against, oh, man, I remember how much I love this stuff and you get back into it. I think there's that cycle, but I think it starts with youth. And I think in this moment in time, without a shadow of a doubt, Netflix is about youth. Let me ask you a related question to that because you mentioned old guys. David and I are old enough to remember. remember the creation of Monday Night Raw back in 1993. Me too. So insulting you. We'll insult to you. We'll insult to me.

We'll insult everybody at the same time. And to that point, WWE matches in syndication. It felt very different, right? It felt like it had been taped in some random arena that you couldn't quite put your finger on at some time that you didn't quite know. And then all of a sudden the product comes to cable and there's an immediacy to it. You know when it's happening.

You know where it's happening. It changed the product to some extent. Now that you're moving from cable to streaming, do you see an opportunity to change the product again? I do because there's, to some degree, there's some similar restrictions, I don't know, I mean restrictions, but some similar guidelines of what exists within cable or network. Like being on Fox and being on network was different than being on a cable channel. some of the rules and the restrictions and the way commercial times run and the way they go to affiliates after they go, you know, when they go off the air and eat, those were different. This will have some of those similar things, but a lot of it will be different, right?

And in the fact of like, it wasn't until you really got to, Nick Gonson said this to me today for a show he can ever remember being sort of where the, episodes weren't all the same was the Sopranos. Right now, you know, most shows, most, you know, shows that are episodic in nature, you know, an episode's 47 minutes, an episode next week's an hour and 20, an episode is an hour and five. Right, it depends on what they need. The art of the storytelling has a little bit more flexibility to it. There's not the same restrictions. There's not the same level of, uh, level of, uh,

control over the product. So I think it gives us some freedom and some opportunity to explore and try different things. Also, they have, you know, networks, cable channels all have a similar, I believe, sort of feel to the things that they do. So, you know, I hear people say this all all the time, but they talk about when Ra goes off the air, and then it's like, all of a sudden, now somebody's getting murdered because it's Silk Stockings is on Next, right? You know, you make those jokes, but those are the particular types of genre of shows

that were on those channels. Even Fox had a particular, like, you sort of, if you turn Fox on, you sort of see, like, oh, I'm watching Fox. It's all very similar, right? Jesus, Netflix has everything. They are a little bit of everything out there. And it's why they're the ultimate streamer, I believe, because they became, before anybody else could become them, they became ABC, NBC, CBS, USA. They became all those things.

And they have a little bit of something that could be offered on those channels. So there's a little bit of something for everything, which opens up Pandora's box of ways for us to sample and use different things and explore with. them and they like those partnerships. So I think it's a way for us to sort of expand what we do in the storytelling of what we do because in some way, if we do our jobs well, we offer people a little bit of everything over an episode of Raw SmackDown over the length of time of a year when you're watching what we do. Hopefully we've given you some funny stuff. We've given you some serious stuff. We've given you some emotional stuff and some, you know, drama. Like we've given you a little bit of everything. So I think we fit in that well.

and that'll help us be more rounded. That's interesting that you go there, because I was wondering when we're thinking about this move about what makes WWE perfect for this moment, right? Or perfect for this opportunity. There's been talk that, you know, that you're kind of a trial balloon for sports programming, right, weekly sports programming on Netflix and beyond.

But I, you know, I'm sure you remember or not remember, but you know as well as I do. You know, when national cable started with the Duma Mont Network, National Broadcasting, wrestling was right there, the center of their programming. And it was always explained to me that it's because, you know, you could set up a camera on the 50th row and that's all you needed. It was already, it was already ready for television. Is there something about WWE or about pro wrestling that makes it an ideal case study for Netflix right now? I think it's the blend. It is something that we talked about when we were first sitting down in

the room with them. It's something that we all talked about is like, yes, we, we're, bring all the components of live sport, the unexpectedness of it, the live component of it, the must see nature, the thing everybody's going to be talking about in the moment, which we used to say water cooler talk,

right? When Ross started in those days, you talk about water cool, it would talk. It's not as like water cool we're talking. No one goes to the water cooler. They sit at their desk and they text the guy next to it, five feet away and they talk on social media and stuff like that. That is trending on X is water cooler

right Instagram is water cooler it's perfectly suited for that live and in the moment but it's also evergreen it's episodic in nature so if I saw this week I want to see next week if I liked what I saw I want to keep up

with the stories and the characters you know so it has that must see right now but it also has the episodic and it's also evergreen in its you know there's not a lot of people that will go back and watch a Super Bowl from five years ago but I hear this from people all the time man WrestleMania is coming back next week I'm going to do a marathon and I'm going to watch you know I'm going to watch 10 WrestleMania's in a row or I'm going

to do this or my favorite WrestleMania was this I must have watched that WrestleMania 30 times you know I think to go back and and catch up on you know a certain era of what you watched or the guy that was or the woman that was the the biggest star to you when you were younger show that to your kids it's evergreen in that sense so it makes sense for the platform on all levels live episodic right like it in a in a time when you know subscription is the thing we're sort of if you're a big WWE fan and you're watching you're tuning in for the live but you're also there for the weekly so you're it sort of makes it turn proof for you you're

there for the big PLEs you're there for all of it plus you can go back and watch all this stuff whenever you want to watch it it's sort of an ideal platform for you um to be able to catch all of this when you want to and on any device you want like it's in a way we're custom made for that you know whereas some sports it might be lesser to a degree the live component but i don't know it's difficult to see it's small. Almost every box they have for what works. And a lot of that was in the first conversation around,

man, we're just not going to go live. We're not going to do live, live sport. And we kept trying to tell them, like, we're not a sport. Big writing staff and production staff and everything else. Like, it's a part of what we do. And that makes us different. Like, you know, we can script the finish of the Super Bowl. And, you know, if we do our jobs well, you know, if, but if we do our jobs well, it's always going to be a great game.

It might make you debate it or the direction or the choices or whatever those things are, but that's part of the fun of it. And it's, you know, we're always going to hopefully deliver to you something, whereas sport might not. So it checks all the boxes. Paul, you told Pat McAfee last summer that you thought some sports leagues that might have games on Netflix. in the future will be watching closely, your partnership. What kinds of things in particular do you think they'll be watching? I think every sport out there, everything that does live content that people want to, you know, if obviously if you have a live sport, live content, whatever it is,

and you are looking at what's happening right now, streaming is where things are headed, right? like to some degree cable and network television are declining. Streaming is on the uprise, right? That's where everything is headed. So if they start to transition, if people like Netflix, which is sort of leading the way, which would make me believe, like everybody else would believe that others will follow, they start to get into live event sort of production and distribution,

that's an opportunity for you. If they do that well with us, If we're successful with them, that's an opportunity for them. If they handle that live, it's like, you know, I'm sure it's the Tyson, uh, Jake Paul fight in a way of like, I'm sure the NFL was watching that. I'm sure we were watching that. You know, like, hey, how is this going to go for them? What is this going to look like?

How is it going to feel? I'm sure people will be watching us for that very reason. And seeing what those numbers look like, especially on episodes. of a live show like that, but that's weekly and, you know, how much demand for that is there? What does that look like? And also another thing that we bring to the table that not many folks do is we're global in nature. You know, our product is simple to understand. It translates in any language very easily.

You can put it out there. So, you know, I've been everywhere in the world. But luckily through my job in WW, we have never been to a place on the planet. where people didn't know who we were anywhere. And, you know, football players can go to another country and walk around and nobody knows who they are. And they're not really in American football. And it's growing. Don't get me wrong.

And I'm not comparing us to the NFL because they're the juggernaut here. But there's a difference globally for us, for Netflix globally, which is a global brand, right? Like, we're a global brand. They're a global brand. I think that's the game changer for us. And I think it enhances WWE's global nature. I think you'll see us grow exponentially

in those international markets. You've seen it over the last year or two strategically with Nick and I going into those international markets and WWW going in there and really rolling out in a bigger way. That's all very strategic. And I think you'll see more of that.

Wrestling nerd question. You mentioned, you know, there's a potential younger audience here and how we're all old men having this conversation. But your roster has got a lot of young people on it. Your roster has a lot of people who I'm sure are very excited about this move to Netflix. How much backstage politicking or lobbying was there for you for people who want to be on the raw roster versus on the Smackdown roster? Were there people who are very motivated?

Yeah. Look, that's every day. And that is nothing to do with Netflix or it has to do with everything we do. So if there's something big coming up, I just don't understand. why I'm not on that PLA. Why wouldn't I be on that PLA? It was like, well, because the story that you have doesn't get there. Like, not everybody's going to be on everything.

Not everybody's going to be. I have that talent with every, that conversation with every single talent about everything we do, right? You know, and rightfully so, if you want to be in this business, you want to be big, you want to have the opportunities, you want to be on all the biggest stuff, you know. I've had the same conversation with 100 people about this first episode of Netflix. Like, guys, it's one show. Like, it's one show.

We're going to try to, like, touch on a lot of people. But there's only so much real estate within the show. You're not going to be on that show. Maybe you'll be on the second one. Maybe you'll be on the third one. Like, you're going to be on these shows. But, like, it's not everybody. We can't put all $200 or whatever we have on one show.

which is not going to work. Do you have special techniques when you have those kind of conversations to calm somebody down who might be a little bit worked up? I think, you know, most people, they're emotionally shooting their shots at it. And they want to be heard. And you want them to be heard. And you want them to feel like they have a say. I never want talent to feel like it was, I don't know what's going on it.

They don't ever tell me anything. I don't want talent to feel like they're a part of it. It's really tough to do. And I can't, you know, when I say I have those conversations, I can't have all those conversations. If I answered every text and call from talent that are calling me to say, can I just talk about where I'm headed and what I'm doing? I wouldn't do anything.

I wouldn't sleep. I wouldn't eat. I would just be on texting and talking to people on the phone all day long, explaining to them where they're going and what they're doing. It's just impossible to do. So we have to have those conversations to do others and everything else. But, you know, it's rightfully so. It's how they should feel.

It's how I would feel if I was a talent. Like, what do you mean? I'm not on that. Why am I not on that? That's ridiculous. But it's the storytelling that we're doing. But I also think that there's something that telling these talent, like, look, you're not going to be on every show, but it's also why your stories are more impactful. It's also why, you know, for a lot of people, they're more over.

It's supply and demand. if I see the same thing every week, weekend, week out, same talent, same storylines, same everything, you burn out quick. You can spread those things out. You can spread that love out. This PLE is going to be about these stories. This PLEs will be about these stories. Some are going to criss-gross.

Some are not, right? And I think that's important. It took a little bit for people to get to the place where now they're starting to understand like, okay, I'm world champion, but that doesn't mean I have to be on all. on everything, right? Like, I cannot be on, I'm making this up, but I cannot be on bad blood

because I'm going to have this huge role at survivor shoots. Got it, right? And I think that's where the, there's a nuance to it in their creative that they're beginning to now understand of like, okay, I got it.

I see where my stuff is going and I see the carrot down the line. line. You're not just telling me, no, no, you're not on this PLE, and I don't know when you'll be on another one, you know? I think it's taking the fan sometime to sort of adjust in the same way, watching some of your, the storytelling unfold. And since you've taken over creative, there's a lot of big cards, though, that are happening right now. We had Saturday night's main event. We have this raw on Netflix, and that's obviously not even mentioning the regularly scheduled PLEs.

We got the Royal Rumble and then WrestleMania right around the corner. This is a lot of big match booking that you have to do in a relatively short amount of time. Is there worry about overextending yourself or the performers' storylines, the burnout? I mean, or is it just peddled to the medal until WrestleMania? No, we've sort of been working through this for a long time, right? And look, is there worrying, there's worry about everything for me on where this goes and what it does? But I cannot never, I can, I can not recall a time in the business, at least on my end,

where, you know, we sort of, if you look at the last few months, like you did Survivor Series, you came right off of that with Saturday Night's main event. You did the holidays. You know, once you got on the other side of the holidays, like, well, you have Netflix on the Six. Great. But you also don't want Smackdown to feel like less then. So I wanted that first episode of Smackdown of the New Year to feel big as well, right? Yeah.

got the six well yeah but still I still have another show on Friday this week and then you know when when talent are talking about it or the writers you're talking about it's like well geez I really should be on the episode on the I should be on that first episode of the six right well we have an episode of 13th too yeah you're going to be on the second episode and you're going to main event the second episode as instead of being a piece of the first episode right so it's trying to space that stuff all out and we've had to get ahead of the storytelling to try to make sure that there's enough

storytelling to blend across things and you know when fans look at it and they're like I don't understand why this match with it's right there why didn't they put that on that car like it's ridiculous

it's also a three hour show and there's one seven days later so just that one will hold a week and you'll get to this one and I think it's also okay. We're doing things now. Like we have, you know, you see us promoting Cody Rhodes and Kevin Owens for the Rumble

and we're not even past Jan 6 yet. And we also, we have all the episodes in between and another Saturday night's main event before we even get to the Rumble. Those are the puzzles to try to put together. So when you start thinking about that,

all these episodes leading up or leading up to and beyond Netflix. All the Smackdown episodes, I can't feel like it becomes the B show with all the buzz around Netflix. Saturday night's main event again. The Rumble,

you come out of the Rumble, you've got an elimination chamber and now, like at that point, I don't remember what it is exactly, but I think once the elimination chamber happens, you're six or seven weeks to WrestleMania, like you're cooking, like you said, your foot is on the gas. It's trying to be judicious about how

you can never just put it to the floor and try to run the track. You're going to go off the road on the curves. You're going to, right? Like that just doesn't make sense. You've got to go as fast as you can, but it's got to be controlled. You have to know where things you're going. And you have to long-term plan.

If you don't, you're doomed. It's the way it worked. And you have to be disciplined. You have to look at things. The biggest trick, and I'll tell you, this is the biggest trick to me is like, you can have that stuff all laid out. and you can have it be man I know where

everything's going this is great we got all these shows templated out and man they all look really good stacked into the beginning of the year to rest of man and all that stuff and then Bronson re-breaks is ankle yeah and you're like oh man it's one domino falls and the whole world goes down and you're like all right

well scrap all that and let's start over and we sit down again and try to look for the next you know from here okay start over from here to WrestleMania. You get that piece taken out. Where are we going? It's a part of the, it's a part of the game. It's a part of the dance. But that's the beauty of live TV and what we do. The great thing is it's, it's flexible and you pivot. And I have a belief that, and I said this, you know, out of last year's chaos going into WrestleMania and all that. Like, I truly believe that out of that chaos greatness comes. It's, it's been, proven to me over and over and over again that a lot of times you plan this stuff out and you think it's great something happens it all gets thrown up in the air and then you come up with something and when you get there you're like actually this is better yeah this is better than what we had like this you know kind of worked out great in the end um you just always have to be on

your toes thinking you're going to have michael cole and pat maccafee at the announce table on monday night why'd you pick why'd you pick those two to carry raw to the netflix age I think Pat, first of all, Michael Cole, to me, is not taking anything away from anybody else. But right now, Michael Cole is the voice of WWE. He is the, you know, I had said this to JR in the Attitude era. He was the soundtrack to our, you know, movie or whatever. Michael Cole is that now to me. There's nobody better.

I don't know if there's ever been anybody better. are funny for me because for a long period of time he was directed in a particular way, but when you sort of let him go do what he does, and, you know, the amount of our business to some degree different than anything else is the storytelling that you have to do, knowing the stories, continuing to play them out, watching what you're watching, calling what you're watching, and then the amount of traffic ins and outs and, promote this and promote that and here's what we're coming up next where we're where you're going with things it's it's I would never do that job in a million years you could offer me the

ultimate amount of money and say do play by play on a life three hour money that I run I don't I don't care if you could offer me the world I would not do it like I did that commentary like twice when I was telling was like I'll never do that again I hate it um but he's amazing and I don't think that there's anybody better so I think he is the perfect guy to be that voice. And then when you talk about young and fresh and McAfee brings, somebody asked me the other day, what does Pat

McAfee bring to the table that nobody else can bring? He brings Pat McAfee. Right? Pan has this amazing ability to do the storytelling, to stay on point, be completely off the cuff, be

funny, be seriously be all those things and make you feel like you're sitting on a couch with a good friend cutting up on a Saturday afternoon or whatever it is with your buddy watching wrestling

and just enjoying it like if you've never met Pat I feel like you watch him on the show and you're just like do I like to sit in a living room with him and just watch this show and have fun he's just a fun guy and I think he brings that youth he brings that youth

and that way that young people watch these shows to the table. I would love to see the bulletin board or whatever the whiteboard that you guys use. How crazy is the plan between now and WrestleMania? Let me ask it this way. How much between now and WrestleMania do you feel like is pinned down? Man, if the last 30 years of my life has taught me anything, as nothing has pinned down, you know, it used to be a saying here all the time, show me the stone it's written.

on, right? Like, all of this stuff, we do a lot of creative, I like to anyways, do a lot of creative on whiteboards. So when we get together for long-term creative, there might be 10 white boards down a row in a long room and we're all sitting at a table because at any point in time you're looking at, does that make sense to hear? It's like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle, right? And you have to keep going back to the box to look at the picture. You're trying to put the pieces in there. You write something, but like I said, you can have it written out and Brox and read, Greg sankle or, you know, even, I'll give it to you

this Friday night, we had a show written up, man, it was really good. And moved a lot of stories forward. And then we get word talent are injured. And it's, you know, went in for an MRI. and it's worse than we thought and he's out okay well all right so we got to rewrite that whole storyline and then uh we like literally finishing the production meeting and like we just said all right guys have a great day and my phone buzzes and i look down and it's medical and i get the so-and-so has flu uh really bad uh we're telling him don't come to the building and setting them home no can't

cannot work. Okay. Everybody don't go anywhere, sit back down, because I got to rewrite that aspect of, we have to sit down and rewrite that aspect of the show. That's constant. So do I have in my mind an idea of, do we have WrestleMania written out?

Yes. Do I think it will change 100%. Do I have a plan B? Yes. Do I have a plan C? Yes. Do I think those are completely relevant? No. Like there could be changes where all of that stuff at any given moment, we just go like,

all right, erase all the whiteboards and let's start over. You know, it's just the nature of the beast. It's what we do. And you can never just say, this is it. This is what we're doing because, and, you know, we talked about talking to talent about things earlier too. It's one of the risks you take when you tell talent something. hey, this, you know, no matter how much you say to them, hey, this is what we're thinking, this could change, right? But here's what we're thinking. If they like that, whatever changes is now catastrophic to them. Like no matter whether the end result ends up being better or not you've just devastated them,

because in their mind, that is locked in stone. That is where they're headed. And now, no matter how that is, somewhere in their minds, they're feeling, why am I always getting screwed over? I don't understand. There's nothing, it's more just what it is, you know. Raw on Netflix is going to have commercials, at least for those of us watching in the United States. What was your thinking and what was Netflix's thinking on having commercials

versus a commercial free raw? Look, I can, my guess on their part would be money. It's like part of this like, you know, they're paying us a lot of money. They've, you know, they're in the business of making money. So they've got to have ad times and they've got to sell things, even though it's a subscription product. Like there's other factors that go into that for them. For us to some degree, like, it's a funny thing. Like, sometimes there are times where they tell us, like, you know, for whatever reason,

hey, you can have an entire first hour commercial free. And I know nobody out there that watches the show or, let's say, do television will understand this because they will hear this and think like that's the most ridiculous thing ever. Commercial free live television is incredibly difficult. Like people don't understand that. To be able to go from this match ends, you've got to get them out of the arena. You've got to go backstage. You've got to go to this other stuff. You've got to be ready to go on every single thing.

in real time, in that moment, if something crashes, if somebody gets injured, there's no place to go. There's no commercial to go to. There's no, hey, we can go to this, right? You can only go to so many on-campers. You can only go to so many backstage things

that if they're not ready to go, something happens and you've got to get out of the ring. If no one's ready to go, like, all right, well, just run a package or something. Like it's incredibly difficult to do. So having those breaks in there to some degree is helpful. Yeah. There's less commercial time.

It's going to be more manageable. At least for now, right? Anything can change, but at least for now. But I also think this will be a work in progress for us, right? Like the formatting is slightly different here. The opportunity to how we work with things is slightly, different. So it's going to take us a minute also to get to where we feel comfortable and we feel smooth getting in and out of everything and going where we need to go. But I think it'll be a better

experience for people. You know what I mean? It's just a part of what we do. It makes me laugh whenever people say like there's so many commercials this week. Nope, same exact amount of commercials we had last. You know, I'll give you that maybe we didn't do as good of a job of managing the time in between the commercials. But it's the same amount of commercials, but we didn't change anything. The format's the same. But before we let you go,

one quick question, then Brian can get one more in. You mentioned, obviously, there's people at Netflix since the beginning of TKO. We've got some, obviously there's the executives at TKO

who are now involved to some degree in your product. Not all of the people involved now are die-hard wrestling fans. Do you have any great stories about bad suggestions you've gotten from people that don't know the business? Remember the ding-dongs back in WCW, I think, were the quintessential story. Oh, you still remember it now.

Yeah. Sometimes bad is good. Yeah. No, you know, the wonderful thing in my experience so far with KCO on every level, they let us do what we do. You know, they sort of make myself leaf fitting the team. team, I think there's a sort of an inherent understanding that, like, yeah, I don't know how to write wrestling and I don't know how to write this and I don't know how to do it. And you guys

seem to be doing it very well. And the numbers are good and we're selling out and ratings are good and we're making great business deals. Right. At an incredible run this year of sellouts and business is good. Right. So there's no reason for that. to come in and sort of give that take or advice. And if they come to us and even on business deals, there's a sort of a, hey, we're thinking this. What are you guys thinking and why? And if we're giving them the why and in our experience and here's our reasoning to that,

like I'm a big believer in if you're successful and certainly RE and Mark Shapiro and all those guys at TKOR, if you can logically. tell them a why of something. Like I feel like they're logically business people to where, hey, I believe this, but then you give them the whys and the what fours and all that and they're sort of like,

yeah, okay, that makes sense. Run it the way you guys want to run it. We'll see how it goes. And they've been very, um, wonderful. I can't say enough good things about it. It's been great.

And, you know, I know sometimes, um, when people bring up TKO, they're thinking about certain, people coming in and changing things or whatever. It's not that way. It's been a wonderful working experience.

On our side, they're more as sort of the management of the business and helping make decisions, but they're more to assist than they are anything else. And even on that side of it, like working with Dana and the things that we're working across of combination events and things like that has been, it's been great.

They're wonderful. And also, you know, they have a very robust business that's, that's in some manner similar to ours, in some manner completely different, right? But there's some similarities there. So what I love is the aspect of there's opportunities there where if we're looking into something and we'll like, hey, UFC does that. We can call Dana and say, hey, or we can call the other folks there on the business side,

say, what's your experience with this? How did that work? And it helps guide our decision makings. And I think they have the same opportunity with us. So it's been a wonderful working relationship. I think the synergies are incredible. one. And so far, I think on both sides of it, and the overall TKO sense, it's been incredibly successful. All right. The last one's a quick one. Your performers, Paul, do exactly what they're supposed to do.

They blow the crowd's mind and the crowd starts chanting, holy shit. And then somehow that gets dumped because of television. Yeah. Is the holy shit chant coming back on Monday? Well, first of all, there's a lot of factors that we have to write holy shit television. So, okay. So you check that off. The talent have to deliver holy shit moments. Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm a little,

look, the first time they bleak the holy shit out of a show for us, I was like, what do you mean they took, like, because they went fully to black at one point. And I was like, what do you mean they did that? Like, why? They've never done that before. It was like, it was this, like, when I get off the air here,

I got a live television show to get through, but when I get off the air, somebody and I are having a phone call about this because I'm out of my mind on this. And it's sort of, well, the standards and practices changed and all this stuff. You know, I'm a little unsure about how that'll be. I'm sure that'll be a conversation as we move forward. I think there's a little bit less, you know, there's less of the restrictions. There's less of all of that from a content standpoint.

I think we don't want our show to become something that it doesn't need to be. I'm not a big believer in, you know, oh my God, this show would be so much better if everybody could drop the F-pop. Who cares? Like, put it this way, have you written such a bad television show that you need that to make it work? And I'm not saying it can't work. It's like being a comedian. You can use every curse word there is as a comedian and it can be a comedian. awesome. You can also not use any and it can be awesome. Like right, there's a way to do both,

but I'm not a big believer in it needs it to be successful. And I'm also a big believer in that rarities of those things create moments. So if somebody does say something that is a bit crossing a line or on, you know, when rock came in last year and you know, not because he's the TKO board, but it's the rock, right? So if he drops it up, what am I going to do? Like, listen, buddy, right? Like, it kind of is what it is, and you have the biggest star in the world on your television show,

so you kind of go like, oh, he did it, to be it, we'll move on. And it was, it was shocking, and it was, like, the whole world was talking about that moment, and you know, him making Cody bleed and all that stuff. If we did that on a weekly

basis. It wouldn't mean anything. And I shared this story with somebody the other day. I was friends for a long time with a prolific writer in Hollywood, John Millius, wrote Apocalypse Now, a lot of things. And he and I would talk a lot about storytelling and things like that. And I remember one time he said to me, he said, man, he said people don't understand drama. He said that the shotgun fire, I'm sorry, machine gun fire is boring after 10 seconds.

He said, you can have a fight scene. People just shoot machine guns. 10 seconds in, it doesn't matter. It's just noise at that point. That doesn't make a difference. He said, I would much rather not shoot a one-minute machine gun scene and take two people in an intense dialogue with a gun on a table with one bullet in it. I can write the 20-minute scene around that that will make you on the edge of your seat the entire time,

trying to figure out what's going to happen or have two guys. with their hands-on guns in a moment where there's that intensity between the two and you don't know if someone's going to pull and shoot or not and you know you can build this incredible drama I believe that I believe that the profanity I believe that blood I believe that all those things do they all have their place can they be meaningful tools yes do them all the time they need nothing mean nothing you build the drama in the right way and you added a pinch of those things can be game changing, but you have to be disciplined with them. You know, and that's coming from a guy that was in the attitude era where, you know,

we started to do things in the attitude era that were, oh my God, can you believe they did that? And then it was every match, every segment, everything, and it meant nothing. You've got to be disciplined with it. So I think Netflix presents us with some freedom to do some things, but it's not going to be a free-for-all. It's not going to be, you know, there was a moment when we first signed where people like, oh, my God, they're going to go off the rails. It's going to be crazy.

It's not going to be that way. We want the product to be able to be enjoyed by everybody. All right, Paul Levick will be presiding over the first episode of Raw Netflix on Monday, starts at 8 p.m. Eastern Time for the thousands in attendance. the millions watching at home. Paul, thanks for coming on with us. Thank you guys very much. All right.

That is the Masked Man Show and the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. He's David Chewaker. Production Magic by Brian Waters. You went to a little scheduling, David, for the rest of the week? Yeah.

This is going to post on Sunday, but people might not listen to it until Monday. It'll be back midday Monday with another episode of the Masked Man Show worldwide on Tuesday, mask man again on Thursday, and we'll be, well, you can do your part. Well, we're going to have a little press box update on Tuesday, I think, because we got a lot of stuff to talk about.

I mean, the Washington Post, David, is losing more riders than the WWE did during the Monday Night Wars. I mean, they are walking out the door to the Atlantic to the Wall Street Journal. We got a lot of stuff to catch up on. And Joel Anderson and I back with another press box on Thursday. I will see you, my friend, on Tuesday with more lukewarm takes about the meeting. See you then, David. Later, Brian.