Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - John Pollock and Wai Ting: Toronto Mike'd #472

Episode Date: May 31, 2019

Mike is joined by Milon Talsania as they converse with John Pollock and Wai Ting from POST Wrestling.

Welcome to episode 472 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewerasol. StickerU.com and Capadia LLP CPAs. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com and joining me is John Pollock and

Wei Ting from Post Wrestling. And Milan's looking at me like, what about me? Second billing. This is very unique. First time this has happened. I have a co-host for this episode.

Milan Telsenia from Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. Welcome, John, Wei, and Milan. It is a pleasure to be here, Mike. Thank you so much for bringing us here to the Toronto Mike Studios. I'm overwhelmed. It's great to be here. Is that true? Are you really overwhelmed? Because I hope that's true. That's exciting. I'm offended that you're taking that as a sarcastic comment right out of the gate here. No, I've been a longtime listener of yours and it's great to see where the magic occurs. I had no idea. I just assumed you heard about me for the first time when I reached out. I became aware of you through all of your coverage of Martin Streak.

As he was someone that I worked with for a bit when I worked at 640 Toronto, the previous Mojo radio and followed whenever you've done a show about him, I've always found him to be such a fascinating figure. And that was how I first heard of you years ago okay uh before i get to you wait no disrespect i need to go back to this 640 thing so you're is this let me get this right is this when jason agnew is that uh is jason agnew at all involved in this 640 story yeah well we were doing the the law which was airing on sunday nights on 640 and it was through that entryway that I got hired just as a board op when I was in university at the time and started working on various shows throughout the week on 640. Mojo Radio. And of course, I'm good friends of Humble and Fred. They

were the first morning show on Mojo. And this is great to hear. And we're going to dive deeper into that. But where did you come from? Meaning like, did you come from downtown Toronto or did you come from like Richmond Hill? I was born in North York and have lived in Toronto my whole life. So you're very local. Shout out to North York General, right? North York General.

That's me. That's my hospital. That's my hospital. I love it. Sponsored by Fast Time Locking. Okay. So John, you're already my favorite because you're a long-time listener and i had no idea that's great to hear way are you also a long-time listener i i'm not gonna lie i can't say i am uh but uh maybe i will be maybe i'm i'm soon to be a long time listener well thank you for coming uh if ever there is a jumping on point episode 472 is the

jumping on point mike that we are just going to bring a whole new world of wrestling listeners here to toronto mike thank you guys so much for coming and milan thank you for coming uh to help me co-host this episode because as i told you it was your suggestion i have john and way on this podcast because is it postling is your favorite podcast or your second favorite podcast? You're putting me on the spot here. I just need to know. That's like choosing who's your favorite child.

Wait, as a sponsor, it would be a conflict of interest for you to say number one is Toronto Mike, but we would gladly take second billing to Mr. Mike. Regardless. I feel like Sami Zayn on the electric chair here right now. I'm looking, we should keep count of the amount of references that might zoom over Mike's head

throughout this. Sami Zayn on the electric chair would be the first one. I will keep track because that, you're right, I'm like, I hope John and Wei know what that means because I don't know what he's talking about. We know way too well what that means, unfortunately. But you youngsters should know, Milan, you're not one of the youngsters,

but you youngsters should know that I was at Hulkamania in 87 at C&E Grandstand, and I remember being in the stands and believing with all my heart that Paul, Mr. Wonderful Orndorff, had pinned Hulk Hogan. I saw the three count, and we had a new champion of the world,

and then the ref said it was two and a half and Hulk ended up having that thing where the electricity goes through his body and he just gets stronger with every punch and then Hulk won that match. And that was it for you. That was, check please, I'm done with this entire industry.

You know what? I never connected those dots before, but yeah, like that's when I lost interest shortly thereafter, but that was like the peak and then it was a fall from the summit so uh that's why milan's here so thank you for being here buddy my pleasure thanks for having me on it's great to be on with uh john and way john and way now uh i learned from wikipedia that uh john's from philadelphia so my god so for like i've been doing this a while i've never had a wikipedia page in my life until someone brought it to my attention this past weekend that according to your Wikipedia profile, you're from Philadelphia and you grew up a big ECW fan. I'm looking at this and I'm like, first of all, my faith in Wikipedia descended numerous levels after reading this, this entry. I have never been to Philadelphia in my entire life. And I actually spent time on the

weekend researching myself to figure out how did this happen. And there was a book written by the WWE over 10 years ago on the history of ECW. And it randomly, it features quotes from different people. And one of them is John Pollock. And he gives this whole background of being a fan in Philadelphia. And I have no idea. There's, I am not aware of any other John Pollock that is in this space. And I don't know if it was maybe a joke that someone just labeled this fan John Pollock,

but that is the source of this material. So there is a book that backs us up. So that is the story behind my Wikipediaikipedia i thought that was yeah it was a funny a funny tweet and in way are you a toronto guy as well yeah yeah i came to toronto from hong kong when i was five uh but uh scarborough technically scarborough's toronto yeah as well not always but okay sure i'll buy that since the mega city i, I guess. You're right. Yeah. No, I'm a Scarborough guy. Cool. I'm very proud of this because I never biked to Scarborough because it's a long way from here.

Okay. But I was delivering a sticker. In fact, I got stickers for you guys in a minute here. And what was the intersection? Brimley and Kingston Road was the nearest major intersection. And I biked there. And I'm like, oh, this is Scarborough. Like I'm now biking in Scarborough so that was like one of my first one of my rare times I biked in

Scarborough so I'm just here to tell you I'm a friend of the Scarberians that's all I'm here biking it's a good place I was biking and then I was so I shared the map and I'm on King somebody a bunch of people from that area said you're nuts to be biking on Kingston Road i have to say ignorance is bliss i didn't know you're not it's not safe to bike i was just biking like whatever and it was okay it felt safe but wasn't rush hour but uh let's do the gifts milan this is unique okay so 472 episodes this is the first time this many gifts were presented so milan my co-host for this episode, give away these wonderful prizes you brought here. Well, the first one is for your lovely mom,

who is a big Fitbit fan. So we have a little bit of a Fitbit type of gift for her. It comes with extra bands as well. I know that's important for her. Okay, so, Milan, I'm, this is, okay, so a little back story is that my mom's Fitbit band broke and I told her she needs to go to fast time and

this is amazing. My mom is going, she's going to be blown away by this. So, you know, the way to somebody's heart is to, you know, be nice to their kids, to their mom. This is the secret, right? You've done it, brother. So thank you so much.

Oh, thank you. Wow. Feels like Christmas. I'm getting, yeah. Your favorite time of the year, right, John? This guy should be authoring my Wikipedia page,

I'm just saying. This guy knows his shit. I can say shit on your show, right, my man? Okay, this guy knows his shit. Whose show is this? Do you have gifts for our lovely guests?

Yeah, absolutely. I don't know how well this is going to come on the Periscope. We've come up with a new line of jewelry products as well. So for, can I say Mrs. Pollock? I don't know. You got to be careful now. Yes, my significant other. Your significant other.

Wait, are you legally married? Yes. Then you can say Mrs. Pollock. I don't know. She didn't change her name. She did not change her name. Modern woman. I respect that.

Significant other and your significant other. She changed her name. She did not change her name. Modern woman. I respect that. Significant other and your significant other. She changed her name. Mike, yes, for Mrs. I'm very old school and conservative here. We have new gifts and the future significant other

for Wei. That's a lot for sure. Wait, is Wei getting married? No. She just found out. Surprise. I have no other way to do this properly.

This is more awkward than a... You have a girlfriend? Yes, yes I do. She's gained some jewelry. Don't tell her Milan gave it to you. Just say you bought it. So we have a new jewelry product that gives for each of you for there.

We've also come up with a new line of men's accessories named after myself, believe it or not. So a new product so uh money bars tie clips that kind of a thing so we'll each be giving you one of those unbelievable uh we have a clock uh for post wrestling as well i'm excited for the cafe hangout uh you guys do a great job with that by the way and uh maybe a clock can can help you guys uh fantastic time the show a little bit better we don't have a clock already so this will fit yeah so uh maybe at you guys time the show a little bit better. I'm amazed we don't have a clock already.

So this will fit in perfectly. We'll keep this on time. Maybe at the end of the show. Wow, Santa Claus came for me. And John has a young son, as do I, I think similar age. So we bought a little Raptors gift for him in honor of yesterday's big victory. Absolutely. So just an appreciation of Toronto, Mike Mike and the great job you guys do at Coltsreston.com.

Thank you very much. Very kind of you. Since you gave us all gifts, you now have an opportunity to tell the listeners about Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. Yeah.

So we were previously known as Sears Watch and Jewelry Repair. We had 62 locations across Canada at one point. Of course, when Sears closed their doors last year, we had a location

at Scarborough Town Centre as well, represented by Way. Of course, when Sears closed their doors last year, we had a location, Scarborough Town Centre as well, we represent with Wei. Of course, when Sears closed, we branched out on our own. We opened up locations in 12 locations throughout Ontario, including our head office in Richmond Hill, Ontario. We do repairs on all types of watches and jewelry. And visit FastTimeWatchRepair.com for more information.

If you want to come by. How do you get 15% off a watch battery? That's the next thing. Mention Toronto Mike and you get 15% off any watch battery installation. What if you mention post-rest? Absolutely. Sure. You get 15% off? Done. The ultimate discount. Go in and say Sami Zayn. Yeah. Done. Sami Zayn. He's the

actor from Titanic, right? I'm starting to figure this out. No relation to Billy, but yeah. Close enough. Oh yeah, very good. This guy, I think he's watched a lot of Titanic. He's a big fan. So thank you, Fast Time, Watching Jewelry Repair.

Should I tell the people? Yeah, there's a bit of personal kinship I have with you guys in addition. October 30th, 2017. I know that's a bit of a that was the day we were fired yes okay yeah well that's also the day we found out that sears is closing canada are you kidding me yeah as well so it was uh what an awful day yeah it was it was a shitty perspective in perspective but i guess when life hands you lemons you make lemonade and that's what you guys have done with post-wrestling i guess the start of a an evolution of a new journey

for you as it was for us so So I remember that night very particularly. Got home. Man, my day sucked. Yeah, yeah. I think Ryan did. I couldn't find you guys because I didn't know what had happened. Someone had posted a link on Reddit, I think, because you guys had a temporary setup, I think, until post-wrestling started.

And I was happy to find you guys. You guys have given me a lot of, you know, long journeys home. We have a tough day at work. You know, at the end of the day, wrestling's at its best when it's escapism television. That's what I call it. You know, the male soap opera, you know, is referred to as before growing up.

And you guys are a big part of that. So again, thank you both for, you know, providing content and just kind of escapism television and escapism podcast, I guess. So yeah, So that day, October 30th, 2017. I do remember it well as do you guys. And yeah, I'm glad to see that you guys are doing so

great with your new program. Congratulations to you and thank you for listening to us. Oh, thank you. Yeah, don't sell yourself short, Milan. You did the same thing. You made lemonade out of these lemons. So, fast time. How many locations now? Twelve locations throughout Ontario. Damn.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And you sears up and left, and you, like a phoenix, you rose from the ashes. What's that? Almost 40 years experience,

so you're not going to let that go to waste? Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, 1979. Yeah, parents started the company, and we're continuing it to today. So, specifically, for those who don't know everything Milan knows about uh you gentlemen like what that day what was it October what was the day again 30s okay 2017 yes

what exactly happened that day to you guys uh so I'll start because it kind of began with me was uh I got into work so I we were all working for a radio program known as Live Audio Wrestling that went through many different Toronto radio stations. And in 2005, it was purchased by this upstart television company called The Fight Network. So me and Wei had begun working full-time for The Fight Network around that time.

So 2017 comes, and the company had gone through enormous layoffs earlier in the year eliminated their news division save for us and on that Monday I came into work and it was just another Monday and was just starting off just what I typically do that week and then was just one of the executives came in and just said hey John got to chat with you for a few minutes and just seemed overly excited. And as I was walking, you don't just get called over for just,

hey, just wanted to say what a great Monday this is going to be and just sat me down and explained everything to me. And like, I'll speak for myself. Like I had been very much bracing for this and kind of hoping for this at a certain point, just of where things had gone in my career with the company and got the notice that we're letting you go. And I'm just assuming this is just like a one-off.

And at the end of it, they mentioned to me that, you know, you and Wei have like a really great thing going. You guys should continue this. And it was like a light went off. It's like, you're letting Way go as well? And there was my lifeline. Because I'm just thinking, I'm going to be on my own. I'll figure something out.

But now knowing that it was all of us, and this included everyone with Live Audio Wrestling, that they were gassing the show. And that was about it. It was probably a three minute conversation and how soon they're like so the light goes off i guess at that moment but do you like once you find out way is also being let go you're already sort of in your mind realizing that you know you don't need the fight network like to broadcast in 2017 i mean as as I think as late as the weekend prior to hearing that news, we were already

discussing plans to, okay, well, if things don't really change around here by a certain amount of time, we were already thinking of going. So this really just kind of pushed us out the door and allowed us to execute a plan that we were going to execute anyway. Now, part of my ignorance, but if John, since you listened to the show, you might know that, uh, my brother is good high school friends with Jason Agnew. So in fact, so I've known Jason forever. So how does he tie into this? Like it's Jason. He's at, he's at live audio wrestling at this time too, right? and yeah they were they were part of these cuts as well and uh so yeah it was it was all of us that were essentially out here and that's that's where things were on the on that monday okay man okay cool i like this is like we're framing the movie like tarantino style like we we found out what happens that day then we can kind of go back and bring us to that day and then beyond because you're you guys have your own

show now so uh post wrestling you guys are the owners and operators like this is your baby yeah yeah which is the best right yeah i mean we made that decision like like me and way had kind of like done our kind of spin-off podcast from the law and we we realized at a point that it was something that how much further can we go within the fight network at this point and it had just become a situation where we were clearly aware of this so it was like this was the point like we either launch this or it's going to be a bunch of what-ifs that if we never try this on our own so we we made the decision that day to continue we were on the air that that Monday night just posting a show.

And we were, even though it was told to us, you know, by, you know, certain like legal representation that you should probably just lay low for this entire time period. We were thinking, you know, we don't want to go dark for what could be an indefinite period of time. I think when it comes to podcast listening, a big part of that is working into people's routine. And once you disrupt that routine, I'm very leery of ever being able to get back into that for people. Once you have a listenership, it just becomes Monday morning, this show is here. Tuesday morning, this show is here. So we continued that whole period until we could formally announce that we were launching something more concrete that was we were starting from scratch amazing this is a great story so uh milan's giving you gifts from fast time watching

you a repair but i have additional gifts for you guys so i mean this you're not going to go to any podcast and get this amount of uh you know gift uh this is this is this is the most gift-giving podcast in the GTA, right, Milan? It's Christmas in May. Okay, so there's a fantastic, wonderful local craft brewery, Great Lakes Brewery. You know they're wonderful because they sponsor independent podcasts like Toronto Mike. That's all you need to know. But also, it's the tastiest, best beer you're going to find. So if you drink beer, you should drink Great Lakes beer.

And there's a six-pack for all of you, even you, Milan. So three six-packs. You're each taking one home with you. Enjoy. Thank you. Courtesy of Great Lakes Brewery. Awesome. Now, Great Lakes is hosting TMLX3.

Milan, are you going to be at TMLX3? I will be there. Yeah, absolutely. Good. Good. I want to see you there. So June 27th from 6pm to 9pm, we're all going to collect. It's called the Toronto Mike Listener Experience. We're all going to collect on the patio of Great Lakes Pier. The Royal Pains are going to perform. They do great covers of 90s songs. And then I've got some epic speeches, give some love to Milan. And then there's a band called The Lowest of the Low

that are going to perform at this event. And that's amazing because tonight, not Scarborough, but East York, I'm biking to East York because I'm going to see tonight The Lowest of the Low at the Danforth Music Hall. That's tonight. So great band, great event, great people, and thank you Great Lakes Brewery, for hosting that event and for giving my guests these great six-packs. So that's yours. Palma Pasta. They are a fantastic Italian eatery.

It's like a retail store. You can go pick up the stuff and make it at home, or you can go to Palma's Kitchen and get the hot table food. Fantastic Italian food, Palma pasta. Go to palmapasta.com. There's a lasagna for you. I mean, I don't even want to do the math here. You might have to talk to your accountant.

You're going to have to talk to Rupesh Kapadia about this, Milan. But yeah, I got two meat lasagnas for you guys, John and Wei. Meat. And Milan, vegetarian for you guys john and way meat and milan vegetarian for you uh enjoy a frozen right now but you thaw that for 24 hours and you you cook it up in like 45 minutes at 375 you guys are going to be tweeting me to say it's the best uh lasagna you've ever bought so i'm gonna be so popular when i go home today oh yeah like man i've taken care of your weekends. I got palma pasta. I got beer. I've got jewelry.

I've got a clock. That's true. I've got a gift for my son. Wow. This is unbelievable. I got a gift for my mom. And you got something for my wife as well. I kind of lost that in the shuffle there.

Okay. Amazing. I can't believe it. Babe, look what I bought you. I'm already set to be the hero here. Mom, mom, mom, fast time couldn't help you but i went and bought you this i hope this is gonna take care of you oh son imported from milan that's right that's right all right so enjoy the pasta from palma pasta they're on skip the dishes if people

want to give them a shot or go to palmapasta.com and you should cater your events with them stickers i have toronto mic stickers this has been the coolest thing i've been biking stickers to people listeners and i've been mailing stickers to people i can't bike to and people are like sticking them on their laptops or i saw toolboxes or wherever and then they're they're sending the picture to me and i'm digging this man but you guys each get toronto Mike sticker as well from sticker you.com thank you well on you mentioned Raptors you bought uh John's uh son uh Raptor uniform or something uh pajamas yeah pajamas okay all right on that note let's hear from Brian Gerstein from

propertyinthes6.com real estate deals happening and I will evaluate your home and neighborhood for you. Call or text me at 416-873-0292 even if you just want a market update. Guys, the Raptors got the start they needed and I predicted that the winner of game one would go on to win the series and that Pascal Siakam is the most important player in the series and he has to revert back to regular season Pascal. So far so good. How big Raptor fans are you guys? And what would it mean to the city if we actually win the whole damn thing? Are you gentlemen Raptor fans? I'm totally like a bandwagon follower at this point.

I was at a time when the Raptors began and they were on the new VR. I was obsessed with the Raptors for about five seasons. And I would go with a friend of mine in high school when they had the Sprite Zone at the Air Canada Center. Which was alcohol free, right? And it was like 10 bucks or something? It was 10 bucks.

I used to go take my kids there. And him and I went, it was like every Friday, we went to a Raptors home game when they were playing. And I've never watched so much basketball in my life. Those were my peak Raptor viewing years. And like today, like we watch so much wrestling and MMA on a weekly basis. Like I have so little time to follow any sports,

but I did watch last night's game as we're talking on a Friday here. And I'd agree. I think that it's already enormous, not just for toronto for the country i mean it's amazing uh i thought that sportsnet did a fantastic job of really conveying that with not just you know outside of scotia bank arena but now all the pop-up jurassic parks that are going on to really give you the feel like this is a national event and there's so few of those where it does feel like when the raptors are playing in this series the country is on hold to watch this team absolutely no no way i noticed in that clip

brian called you why i think that's in tribute to kawaii leonard oh it must be yeah we probably spell it close to the same way um but no i'm very much a bandwagon fan myself and you know not even really all that ashamed about it honestly it's uh honestly. It's incredibly exciting whenever it's, much like wrestling, when there are heavy stakes attached to each game. And anytime the Raptors are this deep into the playoffs, obviously it gets my attention. I actually, I know a lot of people

who watch the Raptor preseason games and they're there for all the regular season games. They get kind of angry at the bandwagon jumpers. This happened with the Jays in 2015 too. I've always been of the belief, I like it. Like more the merrier. Like I like it when, okay, now the rest of the city, the rest of the country come on board, you know,

we're having some success and the more the merrier. That's just my positive outlook on this. It's like the stupidest argument. If you were to, if you were, go back to 2015 and they go all in of bringing all, and the amount that they spent to, to build this team, if they were not getting those television numbers and filling it with, you know, fair weather fans, it would have been a financial mistake that is not going to incentivize this company to, to increase their budget, to,

to go after these players and such. So if there's not a difference in business and television viewership, then what's the point? Like those are the people that ultimately are stirring the drink. I agree with you 100% except that I find it's a tough argument to make of the Jays only because a terrible team right now, attendance is way down and it doesn't seem to, it doesn't matter. But 100% I'm with you.

You're like, like the more the merrier because it tells the ownership there's money and success like winning translates into uh increased revenues like there's a direct correlation so yes i'm with you a hundred percent so milan you're the big uh you're you're not a bandwagon jumper like you've been there i know i know that you you went to a game of rupesh kapadia right should we tell the people who your accountant is can we tell them kapadia llp correct yes and you're saying it correctly yes rupesh was generous to take me to uh to round one to the orlando magic game when they clinched uh he's a great accountant uh and you were sitting beside uh drake is that correct uh not quite no i didn't get a massage from him either. Let's talk a little bit, just maybe

share anything you can about the services you get from Capadia LLP CPAs. Oh wow, we go back many, many years with Capadia. Rupesh and his crew does a great job for us and I know he's a proud

to be a sponsor of toronto mike absolutely um let's hear from rupesh who as you know i've been calling him uh the rock star accountant because this guy sees beyond the numbers sounds like a good wrestling game the rock star accountant rock star accountant sees beyond the numbers irs another that's to go over your head. No, Erwin. Erwin Arscheister. That's right. I think that was like close enough that I have some memories of it somehow.

Wow. Well, his kids are not with it now. Is that right? Is that right? So also, of course, as I say, it's not your father's accountant, but let's hear Rupesh. Hey, hey, hey, this is Rupesh here. And for all these condo buyers who are buying condos like that, there's no tomorrow. Please be aware if you're going to assign the rights to your condominium to any new buyer, you will have to

charge HST. And HST would not only be charged on the money that you're making on the assignment, but also on the deposits that you have paid. So please be aware. And if you're not sure what to do with it, please call us before you make this decision. You can call Rupesh or one of my associates and we'll be happy to hold your hand and walk you through the process. You can reach us at any time between 9 30 and 5 30 thank you i like the laugh great great manager so this is not for you uh milan because you're already utilizing rupesh's services rockstar accountant but john and way if you guys have anything of your business ventures here with post wrestling or anything at all you want to discuss with a, a rockstar accountant who sees beyond the numbers,

you have a complimentary 15 minute consultation with Rupesh Malone or I are happy to, to do the introductions. I suggest you take them up on it. Like just 15 minutes to run all these ideas or questions by him. He'll tell you best practices, his advice, his best advice,

and you can't go wrong with that. So that's available to you. Thank you, Capadia LLP CPAs. And Malone, not to put you on the spot again, because we're going to do this all in a bunch, and then we're going to, we got a deep dive with these gentlemen. Is it true that you're sending your child to Camp Tournesol French Camps this summer? That's the plan.

Yeah, yeah. My wife will be in touch with, I apologize, the lady's name. Justine? Justine and... Martine? And Martine, yes. Yeah, and we're looking forward. They have, I know, locations throughout the area.

We're in Newmarket, Aurora area, and we're looking at sending my son Jaden to the Aurora campus. 15 campuses across the GTA, several overnight programs. They're the largest French camps in Ontario. This is actually the final day of their seasonal sponsorship. So you need

to go to campt.ca and when you register your child for a French camp at Camp Tournesol, use the promo code Mike 2019. Mike 2019, it lets them know. In fact, Milan, you better use the promo code Mike 2019. You save some money and it lets them

know where you learned about Camp Tournesol. So thank you, Camp Tournesol. Hope to see you next year. All right, gentlemen, I want to get you to live audio wrestling. This is the show that Jeff Merrick was the host of back in the day, right? Is he the first host? Yeah, he

started it along with Donnie Abreu and they began the show on an online property called Virtually Canadian. And then that led to them getting onto the Fan 590 in 1999. And it was shortly thereafter, that's around the time Dan Labransky came on board, after that Jason Agnew. And I guess I was the next one around 2003

that I started working with them. And Wei, when did you show up at live audio wrestling I was actually an intern at the fight network first uh the television station we both went to school at Ryerson for television and that's how I kind of got into the industry was through the fight network and uh after they had purchased the live audio wrestling they all of a sudden one day needed a call screener. And the person who was, I think the GM or one of the head producers at the time, his name is Brian Sobey. He just knew that I was a big wrestling fan and a fan of the law and said, hey, why don't you do it? And I was like, yeah, OK. So every Sunday I would show up at the call at the radio station.

I would take their phone calls, call screen for them, and they would dub me Call Wei Ting. Yes, because I get it, Wei Ting. He's heard them all. That one didn't go over my head. I got that one now. So live audio wrestling, even for me who wasn't into wrestling anymore, I was well aware of this program.

This was a big deal. Live audio wrestling. I maybe, you know, it's, I always laugh when I think of Merrick as like the, uh, the, the, the hockey expert for Sportsnet. Like he's like the Bob McKenzie of Sportsnet because I always remember him back then as the wrestling guy. Like that's it. By the way, any of you guys plan to do a similar transition with the career? Are you going to stick with wrestling? I don't know about moving on to uh to hockey i really don't um like i'm just having so much uh fun being on my own that the idea of going going to work somewhere like you can probably appreciate this mike that yeah it's it's just such a it's such a volatile industry at the very at the very bare minimum um that i don't even know if it would be the right uh

career choice i mean all credit like jeff merrick was able to like he was not just like a wrestling reporter and a wrestling host i i hold it i held him at like the very top level that he was doing this at um you know i was talking to milan before the show that had it not been for the law i feel i would have probably been like you and eventually just moved out of wrestling. It was hearing a show that was talking about the industry, not in a tongue in cheek way, and instead looking at real issues that go on, whether it's behind the scenes and significant issues and talking to these people about the business of professional wrestling. And that show had a big influence on me so getting to go work there was a big deal for me at the time and jeff merrick was someone that i uh very much aspired to very soon milan's gonna take over with the questions because he's got a lot of

real hardcore interesting questions for you guys thank you for bringing those questions milan so i'm not i'm not exposed here but I'm curious in how this all gets cooked. So this is, what Live Audio Wrestling was interesting in that it didn't like, we all know these are, what's the term you like to use? These are,

wait, wait, you don't say like scripted. What is the term? Kayfabe? No, like for the fact that the outcomes are predetermined. Is that how you, so you guys don't pretend like wrestling's real.

Like you sort of talk about the, behind the curtains. We talk about it like any other movie review show would talk about a movie or a TV show review show would talk about a TV show. Yeah. Right.

No BS. It's straight up and this is how it is. And then you talk about it that way. So Merrick and then I think it was Agnew. And then, and we, so tell me how fight network radio takes over live audio wrestling. Like when does that happen?

And why does that happen? So in, in 2005, this was when the fight network was starting to assemble and was in the midst of getting their, their CRTC license to launch as a, as a digital sports channel. And they were, in lieu of spending all of this like ad dollars

and, you know, starting programs from scratch, they saw this popular radio show. And it was at a time when like I was doing that show for nothing. So it was like the idea that any of us would get that any of us would get get paid was kind of novel. And they bought the show and we met with the guys and it was pretty much just like we just kept doing the show. And it was you know, we had a new kind of ownership that controlled the show. And from there, they opened up an office in downtown Toronto. And that's how I got in there.

And they were I mean, they were primarily focused on launching a television network, but for the longest time, like the television network didn't go into the U.S. And for years and years, like I maintained that the law was their strongest property because we were reaching an audience. We were bringing an audience already that we had established that was worldwide, that had a lot of penetration in the U.S. And I think that was worldwide, that had a lot of penetration in the U.S. And I think that was something that they understood and always wanted to be able to kind of translate that same level

of interest to the television network. So why does Fight Network Radio cancel law? Like, why? Do we know? So at the time, I mean, it was just something that they believed they couldn't make money off of. It was, you know. Like they couldn't monetize it? Like they felt they couldn't sell it? So in 2017, a lot is going on. So they purchased controlling interest in this wrestling company, Impact Wrestling, at the time. So they're very much putting their focus onto that venture.

And they make the decision in March of 2017 that we are gassing our news division. And it was really solid, like with our boxing coverage, mixed martial arts, and professional wrestling. So they got rid of a lot of very talented people, and they kept the law because they understood, well, we've got an audience here, we've got numbers. And the next question is how to monetize this. And it was a frustrating experience because we weren't in sales. And I knew that these people, they were out there. And I don't think knew the first thing about our show or what the law was. And, you know, me and Wei would go and say, hey, if we can bring in, uh, sponsorships, like this is, this is kind of the, our own jobs here. Like, are we like, how, how

does that work? And it was pretty much just that it was, it was not anything that we were going to be able to get involved with. So it was kind of like, we did the show, we brought the numbers and it was okay. We, we can't monetize it. It's interesting we did the show we brought the numbers and it was okay we we can't monetize it it's interesting because the hard part is getting the audience right like you know you what getting the audience is is everything and you had loyal listeners throughout the world as you said i'm surprised like i'm just surprised it's i'm surprised they were unable to monetize it i think i mean first and, it was a television station. And therefore, I think a lot of the sales staff might have had a background in television.

Unfortunately, you're talking about podcasting, which, I mean, as you know very well, is sort of a different world. You kind of have to operate a bit more intimate and personal level, even with your advertising. And I just, I don't know if the infrastructure is really set up for it that's fair now you get the bad news the same day as sears gives this terrible news to milan this fateful day now uh and you guys realize you need to go off and do it yourself now is there any possibility of uh i don't know i don't know what would you buy or be able to keep the name live audio wrestling like the branding was that ever in discussion or no it was never in discussion and honestly i didn't

want it i didn't want to be like i really wanted us to kind of put a line in the sand and we're starting new and yeah it would have been it would have been great to have our archive of all of our like we have you know 20 years of history that we've done but i knew that was never going to be something on the table that hey here take take all your stuff that's like when a musician uh loses uh the master tapes like i've heard these stories from bands who like don't have access to their own master tapes because some others so you don't you don't have your library of law episodes you kind of start from scratch and can you tell me a little bit maybe walk me just a little bit of the process of like like how you come up with the branding and

how you the infrastructure like how much of it existed like like like like setting up a studio and all that like take me to the we started with nothing um honestly like a lot of it you know is just kind of being familiar with the whole process of doing it ourselves for so long anyway we basically were in operation ourselves we would record the shows often from our own houses or you know just with like usb mics that are very affordable upload the shows ourselves because we took care of so much of the stuff when it was with the law we pretty much had all the tools that we needed in order to just do it all on our own the only difference is calling it something else and i guess you know spending a lot of time to build a website um you know design um uh the branding for it and things like that and you

know uh the name post wrestling i think we were batting around with a bunch of different ideas for a time um but you know they weren't really kind of sticking. You know, it was like they were either way too long, like we were thinking about Pollock versus Ting and all this stuff. Oh, like Merrick versus Wyshynski. Was it Wyshynski? How do you say that name? Greg Wyshynski. Yeah, whatever, right?

And then one day, I think just coming home from a drive, I was just thinking, oh, what if like instead of, because we're going to call it Pollock versus Ting, PVST for short, but what if I thought like, oh, what if we just, because we're going to call it Polyglot vs. Tank, PVST for short. But what if I thought, what if we just change the V to an O? Post, it's an actual name, and it kind of perfectly describes what we do. We do post shows for professional wrestling. Right, it works on multi-levels. The first thing I did was just look up on Google to see if this website was available.

And the moment that it was, I mean, I knew this is what we had to have. That's similar to when I was having a shower one day and my blog was under like my name, my name.com. And I had this like, no, man, I need a handle for this. And I said, and I had this moment of like, what about Toronto Mike? Like, because that's like my city and my first name. And I found out TorontoMike.com is available and the same thing. Like now you're off to the races. Sometimes the simplest name is the most effective and you spend so much time

because you're thinking of every scenario. Like I'm, I'm thinking that, you know, we have like an irreverent, you know, kind of presentation to us, but I also imagine,

okay, what's if I'm applying for credentials to an event what's the name what what is that going to you just look about a million different examples of how the name is going to work and ultimately it's going to be the work you put out is going to be defining the name on and it's going to bring either a positive or negative reaction from someone so before i pass the mic to mil, who's got some really meaty questions, like I can't wait to hear the answers to, uh,

let's like, so where have you come now? So you've been like, well, how many episodes give me a little bit of like where you're at now? What posts? So a big part of, I think what our transition is,

um, getting onto Patreon, which is a service that basically, uh, is sort of crowdfunding part for crowdfunding part membership service. And, um, that's really been the big difference maker for us. and the reason why we've been able to continue for so long. Is that why you pulled up in a Cadillac for this episode?

That's right, yes. Absolutely. To fit all the Palmas possums. From Scarborough. Yeah, you need a big trunk for all that stuff. But we have our main feed, which is we continue to put out the same amount of content that we used to put out for free.

But then for people who choose to support us, we give them bonus content. And therefore, we've kind of been up to, I mean, I hate to even make a guess, but something, I have to say, at least like 500 episodes probably right by now in between all our shows. I was surprised this past week you guys mentioned

that half of your listenership comes from the U.S. Is that something that's surprising to you guys? Not as much. I mean, the assumption is that the majority of our audience would be Canadian, which I get. But with professional wrestling, I think you listen to our show and I'm sure there's certain Canadian-ness, however you define that

to our show but I mean professional wrestling it's you know we've we've been able to kind of carve out a little niche for ourselves within wrestling and I'm not surprised that we get a lot of listeners as well from the UK where it's it's a real hotbed over there for professional wrestling um but yeah it's like US Canada UK are kind of the top ones. And that makes sense. I mean, Patreon being the kind of the revenue stream or whatever, they only take US dollars, if I remember right. I'm on Patreon too. And all my, unlike you guys, 99.

Although I have a bunch of stickers that are going. I sent a sticker to a guy who listens in Michigan and he's got it on his laptop repping the six. And then I got a couple more uh tom hicks in this so amber healy in the states that wants to listen but like 99 of my listeners are canadian as you can imagine and the biggest complaint i get is patreon wants only does this in u.s dollars but for you guys it's fantastic you got all these american uh american listeners and uh so you've you've got the patreon going you're kick rocking out the episodes have you like uh improved your your

setup like is it still the usb mics or do you have a more sophisticated setup i mean ways kind of handled all that stuff but we do have like a dedicated studio now in like uh in my basement now that we've kind of converted is just a studio and is a much more professional setup than it was on day one. Yeah, yeah. We use XLR mics. We have, do you care to know like the geeky stuff? Yeah, yeah, let's do it, yeah.

Yeah, we got Shure SM7Bs. Yeah, okay. And then just, I think I have a little, I mean a USB basically converter mixer. I forget the name of at the moment but um like a mackie or something it was not it's not a mackie um i'll pull it up i'll talk to you okay but what software are you recording in on uh we're very simple it's just like through audacity i use audacity it's super easy it's the price is right i think people are sometimes uh amazed that you

know the the level to to be able to do this is not so extraordinarily high that it's it's without reach like you can have a a well-sounding podcast at a relatively normal budget like it doesn't have to be this this extraordinary amount that you put into it i think you want to you know spend a certain amount so that it sounds good but it's like 10-15 years ago like this setup would not be feasible like it always you had to go to work at a major radio station to have like that kind of quality and to be able to have a career in this for the first year i think since after we were let go we were still using our same usb setup it was just honestly like most a lot of times because um my brothers were like music

producers so our my basement in scarborough was pretty soundproof anyway we just relied on like one yeti like blue blue microphones usb yeti that's the one right with the bilateral uh pickup pattern and it was just like we were doing our shows with one microphone and that's really all you need most of the time i mean often it just comes down to content right now we have like you know better equipment but i would say the difference in quality is maybe about 10 you know and and it's worth it it's worth it honestly like if if you can afford it but for people who are concerned about the budget to to get into this stuff it really doesn't take that much what you've essentially done and i applaud you for this is you've essentially started your own radio station.

Like, you know, now you, people are subscribed to your feed and you can, at any time you can put out a new episode and have it pushed to your subscribers and they can queue it up to listen when they're ready. Like, it's kind of amazing that you mentioned like 15 years ago,

what it was as possible. Like I remember helping humble and Fred podcast in 2006. And like there was no, not even really any good blueprints out there on the web. Like you kind of have to break all these eggs, but now, yeah, the barrier to entry is really pretty low.

And if you, and content is King, as you're saying, and you guys provide the killer content. So let me do a little housekeeping and then pass the mic. That's a great Beastie Boys song, by the way. Brief housekeeping to say

that if you are watching on Periscope, like on demand or live, you'll notice you didn't hear Brian's question. You didn't hear the intro music because normally I take a headphone. This is my little hack. I put the headphones underneath the camera and I jack up the volume just so people watching Periscope can hear what we're hearing in our headphones.

But I needed the headphones today because I only, I needed it because I, I need, I only have four outputs from the headphones. So, and they're all in use. So I think this is the first time in a long time since you were last year, Milan with Brian and Hebsey that I have four mics going for the Periscope so you won't hear things I want to thank blue sky agency because of course

this is one of those episodes where I needed uh their they they uh donated the chairs that you two gentlemen are sitting on so thank you and I want to say thanks to the painter Chris Brown Chris Brown painting because he donated the pair of headphones that you're wearing, Milan. So I always had the three, and then he donated those. So thank you, everybody, for helping to keep this real talk going here. Milan, why don't I just let you drive?

This is going to be difficult for me on Toronto Mike's, you know, but I'll pretend this is Toronto. No. Where do you live? Richmond Hill? Richmond Hill, Milan? Please ask away, man. You get some great questions.

All right, thanks a lot. You know, big wrestling fan, big listener of you guys since day one, really. We're in the electric chair now. Yeah, that's it. The real talk begins. Titanic reference, right? There was room on the board for both of them, right?

Jack didn't have to get off that door or whatever. Like, is it rose yeah what did you told her he would never let go she let go yeah anyway that bothers me make sure no spoiler alerts okay for that classist that's what that is okay you know how many people get upset today titanic came out and people ruined the ending of how titanic ended you guys were taking abuse on that i know uh, for the Marvel reviews you do. I'm losing the battle against spoiler culture, but it's just, it's sometimes mind-boggling.

Oh, wait till we talk about Riverdale, John. It's okay. Oh, boy. So, Milan, tap your head when you get to the spoiler culture discussion, because I will have some two cents on that. I have some passionate thoughts on that, so please. Okay, terrific.

I guess I heard you a while back on the, you were at a podcast conference. I forgot what it was called again. Content Talks. Yeah, they do a bunch of these in Toronto and I hadn't heard of them before the person organizing it contacted me about it. And yeah, they do these talks every month

on a different aspect of media and they invited me to talk about kind of this very subject matter about launching a podcast what do you attribute a big part of the big success to post wrestling.com is it i know you talked about sort of engaging the audience that sort of separates it from all these other wrestling podcasts you know um like i listen to wrestling inc with raj giri and melter and keller and all those guys but you there's that there's a bit of a personal touch I feel when I listen to both of you I think that that's it's very hard for me at times to kind of look at like I do know a big part of it is the dynamic that me and way have that I think really does

connect with people and I mean I look at it I think that I always tell people that are starting this that consistency is a big thing. Like if you're going to put out a show, do it every week. Just get that into people's habit that even if you have five listeners, treat it like it's 5,000. Be grateful for those listeners. And I think people like we do put out a lot of shows. I think people know kind of the consistency factor like we do. They know when they wake up on a Tuesday morning, Rewind to Raw will be there um so i think that that's a big thing is just repetition like you just get you do this long

enough people are going to find you and hopefully once they sample you they like what they hear that's ultimately what it's going to come down to i can listen today after this raptors game and there's going to be every sports talk host talking about it but i'm going to narrow in i i want to hear primetime sports or i want to hear this specific host talking about it. But I'm going to narrow in, I want to hear primetime sports. Or I want to hear this specific person talk about it. And Hebsey on sports. And Hebsey on sports, of course. So that's where you separate yourself.

Is that everyone's talking about the same thing. Why are they going to listen to you over X, Y, and Z? I enjoy the deeper dives you guys have taken. And the site has really evolved in just a short period of time. I look at the audio documentary on Owen Hart. I thought that was fantastic. Thank you. Sort of the, on the cafe hangout.

There you go, blue blazer. I'm sorry. The cafe hangout, sort of talking about the behind the scenes and the making of it and interviewing Trey Hillman, I think it was, the gentleman's name. Trey Lindstrom. I'm sorry, Trey Lindstrom. It was a fascinating, you know,

that's something I would never even thought of as a wrestling fan. You know, things like, I really enjoyed the segment you had with Nate Milton. Prior to WrestleMania, you talked about, you know, the racism, you know, with, you know, the WWE's history with, you know, African-American superstars is not great. You know, the whole Kofi Kingston thing

and that kind of thing I thought was fascinating. The Saudi Arabia shows you guys did last year, you know, when you raised money for the Committee to Protect Journalists coming off the Jamal Khashoggi's Khashoggi. So what's your opinion on WWE going to Saudi Arabia?

I think it's one that it's for them to be able to enter this deal and expect no criticism when you trumpet the fact that you are involved with all of these humanitarian efforts, that you're part of all of this, you know, this message of inclusiveness and pushing like our women's evolution is such a big part of our identity in 2019. in 2019 but for two days out of the year we will go to this country where someone of syrian heritage is not allowed to compete on the show where women are not allowed to be uh competing on the show and that we're going to run you know promotional ads for this country in exchange for an exorbitant amount of money there is a hidden price to that and that is the backlash you're going to get and it's something that i feel like we like owe it to talk about these these issues and not just cover this like a wrestling show because this is not uh it isn't a wrestling show it's it's very much

they the government of saudi arabia is paying the wwe to be able to take over their messaging for a day and and promote themselves and and discriminate in the process. Are you surprised they haven't taken more flack? They're having a show next week there. And I know last year with John Oliver and he brought it up, it's been really quiet this time around. This one around has not had the same level. The last show was in November,

which was a month removed from Jamal Khashoggi's murder and was kind of at the peak level of coverage. But this time around, I think a lot of people don't know how to approach this show. And is it going to be that suddenly everyone is upset about it for the month leading into it? This is a 10-year deal. This is the third show of the deal. year deal this is the third show of the deal and the way we've gone about it is that we are going to treat these shows as much less like wrestling reviews and more so looking at what is what is the latest that is going on on the political level with this country and the wwe's role major or minor

in their messaging it's amazing to me this company almost seems bulletproof at times when it comes to public relations i think of um owen hart business did not suffer after uh i think of chris benoit business did not suffer after i'm not trying to compare all these i know they're all different even when the whole bullying stuff was going on with justin roberts jbl the bill de motte situation i think this company just seems to get away with murder literally i mean i think a big part of the reason for maybe that is because they're really the only game in town. If you're a fan of basketball, you're not going to stop watching the NBA

because you don't like a certain player. Similarly, if you like professional wrestling, if you love the art form of professional wrestling, if you're a fan of this particular wrestler, this is the only show that you can watch them in. That might be starting to change. Right now, as angry as fans might be at something like that, there's no other place for them to go to.

But if something like an AEW starts to take hold, now you have an actual alternative. Now you have an actual way of protesting beyond quitting wrestling entirely. When I think, you know, wrestling fans, even if you're not really proud of what the company, the WWE is doing, I don't, I think it's unfair to like

demand of a fan to just stop watching wrestling cold turkey. I loved what you said Monday night. You talked about, you know, All Elite this past Saturday was proof of how much shit we've been taking as wrestling fans.

I'm paraphrasing you, but kind of just shows you how much it feels like we've been watching wrestling on a curve, grading it on a curve. Yeah. And it's, you know,

I talked about earlier about escapism television, and that's what it was when I was... I used to look forward, you know, during the Attitude Era and kind of a thing. I know there was a lot of shit during the Attitude Era, but I used to look forward, you know, to watching these shows, and it just seems like work now.

I can only imagine what it is for you guys who do this as a career. I fall asleep. Like, you fucking have baron corbin and main events like this company's just not listening to its product or to its to its customers as a business person that's i don't know how they keep getting away with it well they're they're at an interesting point in the company's history that because of them being able and smartly so to attach themselves to the sports rights bubble they've been able to position

themselves as live sports that is going to be minimally offset by by DVRs and therefore they landed these enormous contracts last year with the USA Network and Fox that is going to guarantee them for the next five years a billion dollars in television rights so at a time when your audience is is declining at a significant amount, revenue has never been higher. So they have now been able to, in essence, cushion themselves from that criticism and that if we lose X amount of viewers, we have so much fixed income now that the week to week, the month to month, we're less attached to that than ever, which was the complete opposite of the old industry where everything was geared towards the next Monday at Madison Square Garden, the next big show every month

that we have to put on a great presentation to draw people because we're living and dying based on the live game. But we as fans suffer for that, in my opinion, because you've talked about the year-to-year drops. It's staggering, the ratings drops. You look at Raw and SmackDown on your news updates every week. And at a certain point, Fox and the USA Network are going to have to bring this up. I'm sure.

When you're paying billions of dollars for rights fees, you're right. The way it was before, it was almost the next pay-per-view. It was very pay-per-view driven. It was very card driven. You could literally have next year in Tampa for WrestleMania, a triple threat between Jinder Mahal, Baron Corbin, and Yoshitatsu, and that thing will sell out. Because the brand has now become so much stronger than the actual card

or any thought to put in compelling storylines anymore. Well, it's also at the point now that if not one person bought a ticket to a stadium, not that that's going to happen, they're fine. Like they can live off television revenue alone, and that's going to be making up so much of their revenue for the next five years. The gamble that they're playing is, are we going to fall at a level worse than other cable networks,

other television? Because Raw is still, and SmackDown too, are among the top, most watched shows on cable each week. But as you're declining, wrestling has always been able to, unfortunately, attract a lot of people, but not be able to get the same level of advertising as, say, another major sports, because there is that image factor

that they've been able to rehab somewhat, and that's why everything with Saudi Arabia, all of this ties together. Is that our people that might be spending advertising dollars on the WWE looking at something like that. And saying, this is still a sleazy wrestling company. And I don't want my brand associated with that. And thus far they've been able to overcome that. And they're still winning at this. But the end product suffers.

You're seeing it with UFC, with the new deal with ESPN now. They don't have pressure now to put on that compelling big mat pay-per-view card. It's probably why Brock Lesnar signed with the WWE again. It's the same. They've been able to cushion themselves now with a fixed level of income. Exactly. And it's, you know not to like make a direct comparison but it would be very much like if if we were paid x amount of dollars every single week would you

have the incentive to go out every week and produce the same amount of of shows and get the same level of guests when regardless of whether you get an alist guest or someone no one's heard of you're getting this amount guaranteed. It just, it changes the mentality. Does all elite change the equation now though? You got the confound who's bringing in a lot of money. This is the first time you're going to have someone since really the Ted Turner days of WCW that can compete financially with Vince.

And that's what audiences are ultimately hoping for is that this is going to be the, what's going to spur on the company to look at someone that is aggressively going after their their market share that they've had uh dominance over since wcw and ecw went out of business what's the end game here you think you get vince is in his 70s now you have uncle paul as you call him paul of x triple h all his different uh you know hats that he wears does he take over next especially with the xfl coming up now i'm assuming you know vince but

you know i think it's all over luck i think he's put in charge of that uh very accomplished executive he's going to work his damnedest to make sure that the xfl succeeds this time around he's got a second chance does that mean now paul avec takes more of a an ownership a creative storyline role with the wwe because it seems to me this is a lot of this is the whims of one man it's the the creative gets a lot of shit, excuse my French here, kind of a thing. I know you spoke with Kurt Bauer in the past, and to me it just seems

like it's Vince. It's not the creative. That's the issue here a lot of times. You got, I'm going to go on my tangent here, but you got the 50-50 booking drives me nuts. The guys that they brought up from NXT in January, you only have a first chance

to make that first impression sort of thing. And they fucked it up with EC3 and all of these guys. And to me, creating these stars, they just got to get back to the fundamentals. And that's what they've gotten away from. Yeah, I mean, Vince McMahon is Lorne Michaels. I think that's the best comparison

for those looking at the same structure of Saturday Night Live that it's it's ultimately one person who is going to be able to like what you see on television like that good or the bad it really lays at his feet and you can look at this as a broken creative system the way it's in place now when the XFL starts I think that's going to answer a lot of your questions. Because thus far, to the surprise of a lot, Vince McMahon has been, while he is backrolling this entire thing, he's been pretty hands-off. This has not been the XFL of the last iteration where he was all over the media like a madman and presenting this as the WWF's version of football. This has been a much different presentation where all of our luck has been front and center so once this league starts is it going to be the vince mcmahon that is micromanaging and spreading himself thin um if so then yeah i think it would create that that opening that the wrestling product you would have to be able to delegate more which i think people

would be in favor of but i don't know if that's gonna i see one thing way and get your thoughts on this the number of superstars, wrestlers, that have become disgruntled and have gone public, and I've just got a rough list here. You guys probably have a longer list. Sasha Banks, Luke Harper, The Revival, Gallows and Anderson, Ty Dillinger, Dustin Rhodes, Dean Ambrose, Jon Moxley,

some of the agents I've already left. Is this now the turning point because of AEW now in the picture? You're seeing a lot of these stars now who used to not say a word, you know, was very sort of hidden, who are now talking out at the displeasure. The interview with Moxley on Chris Jericho just recently, and you guys talked about it on your program.

It was fascinating to me. Yeah. I mean, you know, certainly theew um success has taken things to a different level but i would say even before that you know with the the rise of the independence and new japan pro wrestling i think a lot of uh people seeing life outside of the wwe and the ability to make a steady often very healthy income look at look at what cody accomplished prior to aew forming um i think gave a lot of people hope and gave them kind of like, I want to say just the lack of care to offend their current employer.

For a long time, I think it was their only option. And if you wanted to be a professional wrestler and make good money doing it, you had to basically work for one company. But now that that's not the only option i think a lot of people are taking creative freedom over perhaps uh financial i heard i heard bully ray dudley on jim ross's podcast a while back and this is being done on purpose he's saying that the wwe when we were growing up it was stars you had hogan you had macho man you had the ultimate warrior there was a flag bearer, you know,

and then later on with Steve Austin and The Rock, John Cena. And they've sort of gotten away from that model where the WWE is, that is the brand. Yeah. And, you know, and again, is that being done on purpose? Like, I look at Roman Reigns coming off,

that's sort of their big star, but they don't really promote him. He's not the, who could right now on that roster could host Saturday Night Live? Yeah. I mean, in terms of like having that mainstream star, they don't have one. And that's why you build things around the brand. And in that sense, I mean, so much of it, again, we're not looking at living and dying based off house show revenue pay-per-views, which, you know, translate to having that big star that's going to bring in your casual audience that's going to be able to see something

that is gonna be a major difference maker business-wise. The problem with that is that's where you see those declines in house show revenue, in television numbers, because you don't have that transformative star. And it's at a time when you've never had more talent under under contract and that that begs the question is that is our way of presenting these stars like what would happen if a Dwayne Johnson was starting at day one in NXT today does he become the rock in this system maybe he does but maybe he doesn't as well how many of those stars have we seen that are just

they're slotted in a place and they're not able to get to that next level? And that's where you're seeing this frustration from a lot of talent who believe they have that ability and they're handcuffed. Is Paul Levesque the answer? I think that that's a different voice and people watching the NXT product,

which is kind of his vision, that is something very different that I think the question is, is that going to appeal to a broader audience? I always believe that when you see something work at a micro level, I at least want to try it at the macro level and find out. People had the same issues that, well, being the elite draws this many viewers on YouTube, it's never going to translate. Well, so far, they've hit a home run every time they've taken the next step up the next one now is going to tnt and being able to find that level of viewership on primetime television is this the end of live events you think just getting back to the live events i

mike and i grew up at a time or similar age sort of i remember when they used to draw um they used to sell out at maple leaf gardens on a monthly basis when hogan you know hogan versus kamala and hogan versus bundy and you know i remember that do you see the end of liveogan, you know, Hogan versus Kamala and Hogan versus Bundy. And, you know, I remember that. Do you see the end of live events? I, you know, I look at the sort of the influx of the guaranteed money you talked about coming from Saudi and, and from the TV deals, you know, with AEW coming on maybe a lesser rush, you know, schedule for, for the talent, you know, so you think this is going to be the end of live events coming up? If you are looking at this strictly as you're going through their earnings report and looking at this, that's an easy area of the business you could eliminate and not feel the pinch from in a heartbeat.

The counter to that is wanting younger talent to have experience in front of live crowds, to be able to have that experience, keep them busy. And it's also a place to tour smaller cities that you're not going to be bringing your big Raw or pay-per-view events to. So that's kind of the argument against it. And the WWE, they're slow to move away from the way things have always been done. All Elite Wrestling is taking the total different approach, that we are not going to be running a full touring promotion. We're going to be giving our talent a lot of time off so that they are not constantly

on the road and and give them a better quality of life so you're going to you're going to see the the opposite from all elite wrestling over this next year and beyond and for wwe i feel they'll always have um a touring aspect to it but at this degree where your talent's on the road so much i think it's an issue to look at, especially when house shows are drawing what they are now. You guys are big on the production values in a way. You're an expert at this kind of thing. Are you surprised that the look of the show has not changed in years?

I don't know if that's a Kevin Dunn or a Vince McMahon thing, but it's the same look. You watch a show from 99 to 2019. There's not much difference. Yeah, I mean, I've always felt like a big part of the reason why they did advance so much in the 90s was because of Nitro. And because the competition decided to take those steps and add, you know, incredible big sets, pyro and things like that. So I think until they have a reason to go bigger or change things up, I mean, in particular, it's the backstage segments that are a killer. They look so dated.

They look so fake. They look so corny. We're not even talking about the scripting, but we're just talking about the way they look. And you look at what other kind of independent, even like Impact, I thought, they were the first to really kind of experiment outside of the bubble and like shoot a lot more kind of DSLR documentary type of backstage vignettes that I think are a lot more modern and feel a lot more real and look a lot cooler than I think what the WWE is presenting. So I think it all kind of comes down to, you know, maybe a bit of stubbornness and like,, hey, we've made this much money and our stuff has worked for this long,

so you listen to us and we present wrestling the way we want to. I think it also comes down to perhaps their infrastructure and how they shoot and how they produce. They tend to shoot, I think, a lot on the day of, and I think it just turns into what it looks like because of a cookie cutter formula. Right. I think a lot of that will have to come from an overhaul.

And I think from from up top, like Vince is going to have to be convinced that, hey, like, why does their stuff look like this? And ours looks like this. He has to be convinced that they need to change it in order for things to be different. I don't think he watches his own product. I don't I don't think he's watched NXT. Who knows? NXT probably isn't watching it every week, but I mean, his

own product, like that's, I mean, and again, that's his counter-argument is looking at I've never been paid more for my product, so why am I going to change it? And that's going to be, like that's the argument against it. I think Wade brought up another great point too earlier

that they're calling it global localization. Is that the term that they're using, you know, in the UK? I'm calling it hoarding of talent. I think this is so obvious what they're trying to do here. They don't want to, they'll hoard the talent. They're not going to let these guys, men or women, have their talent shine. And I think we as wrestling fans

are really going to suffer for that. Well,lers themselves i mean absolutely it's it's odd because like you know so many of these wrestlers they come up like and their goal is to be signed by the wwe but i think a lot of people are coming to the realization now that achieving that goal isn't necessarily what it's cracked up to be because if you're somebody from the uk and you fought for so long to try to get that nice deal you're pretty much stuck on NXT UK and who knows for how long there are a bunch of people stuck in the performance center who aren't really getting a look at the end and you know if you're all the way stuck stuck out in the UK like somebody like a Tyler Bate or even a Pete Dunn who knows when they're going to make their transition finally up right so I think a lot of people

are considering that right now that maybe the WWE is not the best place for them um as much as you know they grew up watching wrestlemania sure and all that um like if you're someone like a tessa blanchard for example i think she's a potentially be a huge star like why would you want to go to the wwe yeah it's you know that's the thing now is that you're you're finding that there's ways to make a full-time living outside of wwe and also be really happy like this is a generation that have grown up that i mean these these are performers that want to be out there performing their art it would be akin to a musician that grows up with the the aspirations of being signed by a major label but then being signed by that label and getting a very narrow, like this is what your music is going to be.

These are the lyrics we're handing you. And you can't release your album for another five years. And maybe we're going to keep you just playing in a studio because we're not ready to put you out in front of the public yet. And these are key years in your development. I mean, we're talking about the physical component of professional wrestling, where it's a short window to be able to be at your athletic peak and to make the the

most amount of money you can during that window i think cody's been the real trendsetter in this last we saw him in wwe like i don't really follow too much the other stuff i'm a wwe guy but um last we saw him he was fucking stardust you know and you look at what he's done since it's been phenomenal and I think that he set the template for for future for the future he was the one that left without any guarantee of anything and it's been an eye-opener to many that okay there is life outside of the WWE because many of them grew up and WWE is all they know and it's like this foreign world out there that there's suddenly a light is being shined upon that I can do a lot. And what, what is the difference between making a seven figure

downside versus maybe low sixes, but that's more than enough for me to live off of. I can be, I can make my own schedule. I can retain much more of my percentage of merchandise sales, and I'm going to be a lot happier. And that is worth the difference in what I'm going to make. I think the Dean Ambrose, John Moxley thing is good with an eye opener forener for me the way he left i thought he left on good terms i thought he was going to come back and now for him to show up on aw i was a little bit surprised by that roll accounts did seem like he left on good terms but um i think obviously the frustrations that he you know expressed were sort of a different story um it seemed like he you know was not at all happy with creative in particular with vince mcmahon but i thought he was incredibly smart in the way he didn't really ruffle any

feathers on the way out and look at what he's able been able to do since since then if i think he but he's ruffled them now though he's ruffled them now for sure but the key is to not let that be known i suppose until you're out of the, until all contracts are kind of settled and now you can kind of say whatever you want. I got a question. What's AEW? This is All Elite Wrestling, which is this startup group that's being funded by the Khan family that own the Jacksonville Jaguars. So they have run, they had their first show this past weekend, a pay-per-view, and they're going to be starting on TNT in the fall. So it's a competition for WWE. Kind of, right? Because it's not going to be head-to-head.

They're going to have their Tuesday night show. It's competition. As much as I think they like to downplay it, I mean, it certainly is. Absolutely, it's competition. Do you see WWE fans sort of leaving the WWE? Because what was shocking to me way back when when WCW closed,

at one point, Monday Night Wrestling was drawing upwards of what, 12, 13 million people? They were Mondays. It would be that many. It was phenomenal. When WCW closed, I thought that all those fans would shift over to WWE.

They did not. No, they left. And whether it was eventually UFC they gravitated towards or just ultimately moved on, period, they found their entertainment somewhere else that was not WWF that wasn't for them and that's going to be a part like will this attract a lapsed fan that has not watched wrestling in 15 20 years I think that when they launch on TNT I think there's going to be an enormous amount of curiosity at the beginning and the big key is going to be several months in what is what is their average

audience going to be each week and how many of those people can we translate into into pay-per-view buyers into ticket buyers and and show that this is a brand that tnt can make money off of what do you guys predict i think that they're going to get off to a pretty healthy start i don't know if they're going to be doing a million viewers every week. I don't know if that necessarily is the barometer for success. I think ultimately TNT is looking at this much more than just a simple one-dimensional television viewership is the be-all, end-all. They have a relationship now with AEW, with their streaming platform, BR Live. And I think they're looking at this being something that people are accustomed to. The big show in professional wrestling you pay money for

that's something the average sports fan you don't have to pay 49.95 for the raptors in when they reach game seven it's your sports fans know i can watch a game for free if i have it on my cable package for wrestling they are trained to know that the big show i will shell out you know it was 50 this past weekend for canadian wrestling fans has there been a deal announced yet for with tsn no they're they've had talks uh but there's there's nothing finalized yet okay what about like uh the zone is this uh is there is are they in on the in the running to get uh you know streaming rights or whatever the zone has not shown any kind of there's no wrestling on the zone,

which I'm surprised by because I think that's a natural fit for what they're looking for is just eyeballs and wrestling fans to me. Like if you're giving up big contracts for boxers and mixed martial arts, like Bellator is on the zone, but no professional wrestling at the moment, at least for the U S they internationally, they've they have worked with pro wrestling groups. Okay, before I give the mic back to Milan,

you're doing a fantastic job, by the way. Oh, no, hope I'm not rambling too much. I got to actually focus on levels and things. It was nice. I felt like I got a break. I almost went for a bike ride. I thought I'll save that for later, but it's been fantastic. I got the real talk questions coming still.

Oh, the real? Thank you. We got to close with the real talk. So firstly, I heard you say XFL is coming back. Like for us non-wrestling fanatics or whatever, that's interesting. Like I remember XFL's first go at it. Oh, you've got to catch a 30 on 30 on the XFL.

It's fascinating stuff. Yeah, it's coming back next February, and they're going to try and do what the AAF failed at. And they've got tremendous exposure. They're going to be on Fox. They're going to be on ESPN. And the gamble is that after they're getting their production fees covered for these games, which is a sizable amount, but they're not being paid for the actual programming. the actual programming.

And so you're going to have potentially a lot of people watching this product. And hopefully at the end of this, it'll be a gamble that pays off that they land their big television deal. There have been quiet whisper. Okay, sorry, go ahead. No, I was just going to add to that.

I think a big, like you probably seem very surprised. And I think we all were when it was announced, but I think, you know, for Vince McMahon, you got to remember like he's in his seventies right now. He's got all this money.

What is he going to do with it? You can't really go anywhere with it. I think for him, it's always been a bit of a sticking point, perhaps, that he's always believed in this. And certainly, in a time right now where TV rights for sports are at an all-time high, perhaps he sees it as the perfect timing to bring something like this back. And the bar for success as well. In 2001, 5 million viewers is a failure.

Today, 5 million viewers? They'll take that. Big time. There have been quiet whispers about NBCUniversal sort of maybe making a bid for the WWE. I know after UFC sold for in excess of $4 billion a few years ago. Do you see that happening? Or is that just...

I definitely don't rule out the idea of WWE ultimately selling the company at a certain point. They've always, whenever they've been asked, it's always the token line that we're open for business. I think if they got the right offer, they would... I don't think there's that attachment by Vince McMahon that this is the family business and he will never part with it. I don't think he thinks like that. Disney will end up owning WWE. They own everything else.

Disney or a Fox? Look at the amount Fox has to deal with now after selling off. But Disney owns Fox. Right? No. They own some of their properties. Okay, because I know the Simpsons, for example, which is a Fox production, is now owned by Disney.

Fox itself, like Fox News, Fox Sports, they sold off those properties to Disney. So they have all of this incoming, all this income now from that sale. Oh, I see. But they have a lot of money to play with themselves. Okay, and Milan, just one more thing.

Sure, sure. I'm always naturally curious. So we have a, when it comes to sports media, the newcomer is The Athletic. Does The Athletic cover wrestling? Do you know, Milan, anybody? I'm not a subscriber to The Athletic. I don't believe so.

I know that they're getting into MMA in a big way over the next little while. And your friend, Gare Joyce, did a great article on the Sportsnet.ca on the big read on China just this past Sunday. Gare Joyce is a fantastic and a highly underrated sports writer. I'm just throwing that out there. He's a big wrestling fan. I know he did an article

on Charlotte Flair earlier too on Sportsnet. Because I'm wondering if it doesn't make sense for a upstart digital news outfit like The Athletic to gobble up you guys. I'm just saying. The Athletic should bring on, not that you guys would want

to give up any independency but is that a word independency? I think John and I are fiercely independent I again Great Lakes actually was fiercely independent I stole it from Great Lakes so but we're all I think we're all at this table fiercely independent but I just think it's a natural if the Athletic wants to branch

out into wrestling to bring on John and Wei I don't know this is me spitballing here because I wanted to hear my voice on my own podcast. It's been a long time. I won't speak for Wei, but I have such an, I think the week I was let go and I was on the phone with a friend of mine

and I said that I think my new goal is that I never want to work for someone again. And that's the goal. And I don't know, maybe that'll change. By the way, we're almost the same boat here. Exactly. We're all business owners here. So I guess,

yeah, like 40 years for you though. We were all upstairs here. To me, it's like, it's, it's never been kind of like a monetary drive. And it's like,

you know, we go back to, to the wrestling discussion we just had. It's that if, if I'm making enough that I'm like, you know, can, can pay my bills and I'm happy.

I mean, there, there's no amount of money that will put me back into a situation where I'm unhappy doing work. And, you know, you always change. Two years from now, I might have a very different look at things.

And it's wonderful. But you two, is it 50-50, the ownership? So I'm 100%. Aren't you technically our president? No. Do you give yourself big fat titles? Our banker had to, like, we had to designate a title. So I think Wei is technically the president.

See, I'm founder. That was my title. I'm a founder. But okay. It doesn't mean shit. When you're running a company with two people, you basically do everything. But you two haven't had any,

have you had any significant conflict yet at all with direction and decisions with regards to the post-wrestling enterprise? Have you all been the same page i mean it happens but i wouldn't say it'd be anything major you know i think we we both have a lot of respect for each other's opinions and if one can convince the other that this is the way it should be then yeah there are certain matters where i defer to him and there are matters where he defers to me depending on our areas of expertise that's the clip i'm gonna pull when I learn that you two had a falling out. All right.

So by the way, with regards, I'm just looking at the cup of water that a waiting is drinking from. Is it making you nervous around the equipment? No, no, no. No, no, not that at all. No, no. This thing is like 900 bucks, this mixer here.

So please keep away from that. But I'm not nervous at all. I'm just looking at, that's the TMDS cup and I'm thinking like, and i don't repeat myself but tmds that's toronto mic digital services which is not even a year old it's like it was all kind of coming together about a year ago but like that's what feeds my family and pays my mortgage right now and i was thinking like is there an amount of money where i would go back to working for the man and like lose my independence like and it's a

really high figure like you're gonna have to pay me millions of dollars for me to give up what uh i've started with tmds and it sounds like you guys are cut from the same cloth it's like you just have such um like once you're doing your own thing like it's really rewarding when you can just you know if i wake up with an idea like me and way can do whatever we want you can do it it's like i don't have to deal with with with any and and let me be fair at the fight network we were very much on an island there where it was it was both good and bad it was like no one no one we reported to no one we did not have to you know go over like oh you can't say this there was none of that so they didn't really know the show,

which meant they really weren't out there selling the show for us. But at the same time, they left us alone. And I don't think that would be the case at many different media companies that we had complete autonomy on our show. No, I thought we were in an extremely lucky situation, honestly, to be able to receive a steady paycheck

while pursuing our own things that we actually enjoyed. Yeah. You know, being a business owner we actually enjoyed yeah um you know being a a business owner as i'm sure you know you end up putting probably a lot more hours into your day than you probably would when you're working with somebody else and you know it's it's to me it's it's it's a balance it's it's not necessarily like one system is so much better than the than the other if there was kind of like fear for you you know, your longevity while working for another company, because you could be fired at any second,

we kind of have those same concerns working for ourselves. If not, that, that might even be ramped up even more so, but you know, it's, it to me, it's just like a different game.

Is Patreon, is that, is that except the sole stream right now for you guys? I would say it's the main one. The main one. Okay. That's one thing I work for myself. What I realized realize what brings me comfort at night is diversifying that like i have multiple streams now i don't i have a patreon too and it's not nearly as successful as yours so

the the john and wave fans are uh far uh we're very lucky you're very lucky with you so but i do have a patreon but and of course there's sponsors. But then I find myself producing corporate podcasts and doing Hepsi on sports and doing typical old school digital marketing stuff just to get multiple streams. So if this stream and that stream disappear, I can still pay the mortgage. But enough about me.

Milan, you're doing a great job. I just wanted to touch on that. I didn't know. You're dropping some things. I will say, though, you are doing this great job. I just wanted to touch on that. I didn't know you're dropping some things. I will say, though, you are doing this AEW this and XFL that, and you're saying all these names, and once in a while somebody's got to speak for the guy. Oh, you don't hype me up, please.

I apologize for going too far. No, no, don't apologize. I actually like the fact that episode, what are we, 472. Are we going to beat the Merrick episode? I want to go longer than Merrick. You know who killed the Merrick episode was Dan O'Toole from Jay and Dan. I don't think we're going to get close.

It's like six hours. No, I don't know. I can't remember. By the way, he had a great time on the show, Dan O'Toole, but he was destroyed by the commute from Orono to this location. Oh, that's really far. Wow. So anyway,'s really far. Wow.

So anyway, it destroyed them. Who's like the white whale you have left? Well, one of the names that keeps coming up who should come on is Bob McCowan, for example. Right. Like, I need to do a 90-minute real talk deep dive with Bob McCowan. He's got to sit here.

I can look him in the eyes and we can get some answers here. And Bob's been difficult to secure as a guest. Do Rogers and Bell present a problem when it comes to guests now for you? Most of my... This is real talk starting early. Then we'll send it over to you.

But most of my Bell and Rogers guests do not ask permission from PR before they come on. Yeah. When a Bell person does ask permission, it never ends well. I've had multiple Bell Media employees told that they could not come on Toronto Mic'd. And it's really annoying, but I know.

I can't understand. It's like that aspect of it, it's just like, I don't want to be in any of that. We're just having a conversation right here. Like, why is there someone miles away from here that is analyzing this conversation? You listen. Milan listens. The way you don't listen, you're out of this conversation. But when have I ever

railroaded somebody on this show? Like 472. That's not what I do. I'm not going to get you. I'm not into getting you. How would I get another guest if my job was to get you? Now it's gotcha time. No, I don't do that so i don't know why because the cbc people all all ask permission because there's some very strict

rule at cbc about getting permission before you do like an external thing and they all ask permission and they all get the permission it's always granted for a cbc person they always say yes you can go on toronto mic to whatever i just had some bad experiences lately with some Bell Media people. But I like it when I ask a Bob McKenzie on who works for Bell Media. Bob is going to decide for Bob if he comes and does Toronto Mike. Like Bob's not going to go to PR and say, can I do Toronto Mike? So it does depend on like how senior you are and like how scared you are of like management, I think,

whether you're going to ask permission but when yeah so i like it when they don't ask permission because then they can come on easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission always and they like i said i don't get anybody it's but yeah it's good question because uh lately a lot of my guests have actually been like outside the mainstream media and i and sometimes i wonder if maybe i'm asking more people outside of that pr protected universe just so i don't have to worry about the hassles of pr nonsense well like us like i i only want to talk to people that want to be there if this is something that you feel you are required to do this interview because i'm i'm promoting something that i ultimately you're guest number

five in a media tour right i'm not all that interested it's like i did enough of those where it's okay you got 10 minutes with this guy oh yeah and you're in just in the rotation it's like i need more than 10 minutes and it's i don't need guests it's not like we live and die based on on having guests it's you know if if i have someone that i think is going to be entertaining for our audience engaging great i will make all the time in the world for it but if they don't want to be there then i don't want to be there, then I don't want to do the interview. No doubt.

And I've only had one experience where it felt like they didn't want to be here in 472 episodes. But, and again, I do that. Like a lot of PR people are like, hey, can this person come in and promote that? And I'm very clear, like that person can come on. This just happened with a wonderful young actress

who was promoting a CBC digital series. And the PR person said like, hey, we need to push this digital service on CBC Gem. And I said, well, I will have this person on because I like some, I've seen her in some things and I think it'd be cool to have a condo with her, but I'm gonna do like 90 minutes of my thing. And at some point in my thing for 90 minutes,

I promise that we will talk about this CBC Gem series. Like this is the rules. And then if you like it, we can do it. If not, then go to another show, I guess. But Milan. Just getting back. Yes. Are we at real talk yet?

Yes. Before we get, just a quick question. SummerSlam coming to Toronto this August. Post-Wrestling, do you have any plans? Are you planning to do a meet and greet locally here? What are we planning? Funny you should ask because I guess maybe should we break the news? Sure.

Sure. We're going to get exclusive here on Toronto. Mike. Yes, we are planning a post wrestling live in Toronto Q&A show and also meet and greet the morning of SummerSlam. So Sunday. Awesome. This is going to be a second city in the John Candy Box Theater.

So yes, tickets are, I guess, on sale now. Yeah, but we will formally announce it. But the announcement is officially Monday on our show. So people are either, if you're listening to this, you are getting the exclusive live, and you can grab tickets now. But we'll be announcing it to our fan base on Monday. Yeah. So there you go.

That's a big exclusive, right, Mal? Way to go, buddy. Look at Milan getting the exclusive out of us here. Our. There you go. So there you go. That's a big exclusive, right, Milan? Way to go, buddy. Look at Milan getting the exclusive out of us here. Our lips have been sealed. This was something we did starting in New York this past WrestleMania

and we loved it. It was successful beyond, I think, our expectations. So hopefully there's enough of a market in our hometown. I think it'd be a lot of fun to meet people.

Congratulations. The Owen Hart audio documentary, just a quick question before we leave that part. I know you worked your tail off on that, both of you guys did. He did. Is there another plan to do another topic down the line? Except the Montreal Screwjob?

Yeah, the Montreal Screwjob. I got more feedback to that than anything I've ever done in that week plus when people listen to that. So I understand like it's an area that we can definitely go into. Like there's dozens of other topics. I've got an idea now for one

and I've kind of started researching it. So I'm not committed to it yet, but I definitely will be doing more because it was an incredible follow-up. I'm not going to try and be able to get to the level that the Owen Hart one was because I know it's a very unique story and very close to many Canadians

that followed Owen Hart. And it's just, it's a tragic story. But yeah, I would, I'm definitely going to do more of them. Terrific. Okay. You did a doc, you did a documentary at some, hey, I have a little audio more of them. Tropic. Okay. You did a documentary at some... Hey, I have a little audio for this one.

Hold on. But let's play this. Where are you here? Oh, there it is. Hold on. So you did a Bret Hart documentary at some point? Yes. This was in 2010 when we were at the Fight Network.

And it was a project that just grew from we were just going to do Bret Hart was coming back to the WWE this was in 2010 so 13 years removed from his exit from the company and was going to be working at WrestleMania that year and I just thought it'd be interesting to do what led to this return

talk to some people in town because there's some interesting people that live in the city. And that grew from a feature into a full-length documentary, which it all changed when we interviewed Carl DeMarco, who used to be the head of WWF's Canadian office. And we interviewed him. It went well. And he said, do you have Brett lined up? And I said, no, we don't have Brett for this. He called up Brett and Brett agreed to do a sit down with us.

So that changed everything. We got a budget approved to go to Calgary. And that opened us up to do additional interviews with Hart family members. And Stu was alive back then, right? No, he had passed by this point. He died in 2003. But we interviewed a lot of them. And this idea began January 5uary 5th it was the

day after he showed up on tv it went to air march 28th it's a 90 minute documentary and i mean way did and uh another producer george barbosa george barbosa did an incredible amount of work and in this you know under three months to produce this i can't believe that we did it in that time span and that was span and that was uh something that was i was really proud of the end product but it was that consumed us for three months awesome so you only do these long form dog things on members of the heart family is that correct i guess so that's been the pattern we did do something about jim the anvil night hurt he married into that family right he passed away too yeah he's a wrestler yeah i remember the one of the angriest i ever got was after we had put that

documentary out it aired on the network and then they put it up on the fight network's youtube channel and then they wanted to go make it a private video and the person who will not name came over and said guys guys, I'm sorry. I accidentally deleted the video. And this thing had already gotten like hundreds of thousands of views. Oh, man. And it was like, it's the lowest I think I've ever seen way was just how did you delete this thing by mistake? And it was just one of those.

Man, I'm not going to spend any more time. I don't remember it. To be honest. He's wiped it. Remember this? No, not really. Okay, well then I guess it wasn't too low for him. It was so low that he had to block it out of

his memory to continue. Perhaps so. I'm the one that holds on to things. Okay, Milan. Real time time? I know because I saw that you were going to... What's been all this? Yeah. Yeah, what has been? No, it's all real talk on Toronto Mic'd. But were you planning to bring up

the Nate Milton episode? Are you going to bring that up? Yeah, I think I kind of talked about it. It was just an organic conversation you had with Nate. I know you guys go way back with him. For Kofi Kingston? Yeah, just before WrestleMania. But it was regarding racism?

Only because you and I had a little chat about... Yeah, you've talked about diversity and all that. I just thought it was really interesting listening into on you, you know, going deep dive in your, I think we knew that Nate had very kind of obviously, you know, personal thoughts about it.

And he had a lot to say about it through, you know, just seeing what he would post on social media and things like that. And I think it was just an idea to bring him on to, to talk about a very specific issue. It was, I think it's a story in wrestling, especially with the rise of Kofi Kingston, um what it means to somebody who's african-american watching a representative

get that spotlight in the wwe so is he the first wwe champion other than the rock wwe champion yeah that's fascinating to me i didn't you know the rock i i mean i guess you would have people kind of like, you know. Look at the like, Booker T's, Mark Henry. Right. But it's been, I mean, it's been a certain, you know, it's been something i can't i can't share the same perspective as nate of like how he's watching this program and maybe how some of these characters that maybe it's not hitting me the same way he does when he sees a performer out there that's doing what whether it is subtle nuances or just aspects of this character that

can that are either just offensive or just ignorant as well so yeah that's somewhat of south asian descent you know jinder mahal is really the first representative we've had someone from india really and i know they've there's talent like kavita devi i think and yes um but before that who was it it was tiger ali singh and the great khali and that's not you know um it's more of a comment than a question. I know, but you know, and I just look at the way they, the treatment of minorities, look at someone like Shinsuke Nakamura or an Asuka, these should be huge stars. And I'm not saying it's race, but it's, this company hasn't figured out, I think how to, there's so much money to be made

off these talents, I think. And maybe Jinder Mahal wasn't the right guy, but I understood sort of what their concept was um from a business perspective anyways yeah and i think as well like it's also you know uh members of you know wrestling media as well that have you know various backgrounds that now have platforms to be able to talk about this and come from a different perspective like this is this is a very like white male dominated industry so i think the more voices the more representation like that's something that as we talk about like it's people can now kind of have these platforms and these are kind of the conversations i'd like to have you seem we're doing more of that on post

wrestling i think so absolutely absolutely andreas haleale is a guest on this week's Cafe Hangout. Okay, terrific. Similarly, he talks about... What does Cafe Hangout mean again? What is this? That's our live show we do on Thursdays. So it's a live show for several of our patron levels, and then we put the show out on Fridays.

But that's where we have guests on and take calls. Cool. Now, what platform do you use to do the live shows? We've been using YouTube, YouTube youtube live yeah um just kind of it it's we've already had a bit of a bit of a presence on youtube and it just seems to be it's pretty easy for everybody rather than go to like something like twitch or anything like that no i'm with you in fact i wanted to do this with uh youtube live and the they said uh the rule was to do it with mobile you had to have

a thousand followers. Oh really? I don't know if you guys got grandfathered in or maybe you have more than a thousand followers. So I don't have a thousand followers

on YouTube. I haven't really pushed YouTube. So everybody follow Toronto Mike is what you're saying? Yeah. I need a thousand followers in order to do

with mobile. We got to break the Leo Routens record right right, on Periscope? Yeah, which is at like 2,700 or something like that. But Periscope, like for me, it's a relatively new phenomenon around here. Like I only introduced Periscope, I don't know, a couple of months ago maybe. And it's been a lot of like just trial and error and moving things around. And yeah, so.

I'm going to segue off Raze. Question for Mr. Pollock. Riverdale. Yes. We're going to get into the deep dives now. I used to read... No, I don't watch Riverdale,

but I was a huge fan of Archie Comics as a kid. It's a very different representation on the television series. What the hell was season three? Like, I enjoyed season one, you know, with the whole Jason Blossom

who killed him. Yeah. Wait, is that a spoiler? Are we doing spoilers here oh gosh should we talk about spoilers before we talk about I don't know what

the Venn diagram is of wrestling fans Toronto mic listeners and Riverdale watchers I imagine it's very tiny it's one big circle come on man so season three

with this whole gobbly gooker ghoulies and goblins yeah I thought it sucked I thought it was a really rough season to get through it's my guilty pleasure

that me and my wife watch every Friday night on Netflix but this was a season that it thought it was a really rough season to get through. It's my guilty pleasure that me and my wife watch every Friday night on Netflix. But this was a season that it was a real tough go. And the fact that they were so committed to this. Like what I like and what I hated about Riverdale this season is that it's a season long mystery. Right. That you get the answer to at the end of it. So I mean I find that part captivating.

It's just unfortunate that this was kind of a mystery that it just got so off into the realm of Dungeons & Dragons that I think it was really tough to stay grounded. And the most grounded character, very sadly, is Luke Perry, who, of course, passed away in the middle of filming of this past season, who kind of just disappears on the show. There's no real explanation as to his disappearance.

Exactly. But I did like the fact that, is this spoiler alert, season three, the series finale, season finale anyway, they sort of did a Bobby Ewing kind of wash away at the, you know,

Dallas sort of cleanup at the end, sort of focusing on the new storyline after next year. Yes. Yeah. Also like fast forward. Yes. So that's kind of interesting. They kind of given you the climax for next season.

And now we have to go back and find out how they get there. Exactly. Wade, do you watch Riverdale? No, not at all. No, me neither. I haven't started watching Terror's House yet. Oh, you should. I know that's your show, but I love American Vandal.

Oh, yeah, that's great. But I just heard that there will not be a season three. Yeah, it was part of the purge from Netflix. That was one of many that Netflix has just gotten rid of. I do feel American Vandal will probably get picked up somewhere. But after two seasons, I feel I got the joke. Season one was phenomenal. I loved it.

Season two, I watched it of loyalty to the first. But it was after two. It's not like I was clamoring for season three. WWE can learn from a storyline perspective, a continuity, about things like that, that we just don't see anymore. And I'm tying it back to wrestling. It's so different though, you know, like they produce week to week.

And that's true. I would just say long form storytelling is, and not changing your plans last minute is probably. John, are you looking forward to the 90210 reboot? I'm, I've definitely got my doubts. I'm going to tune in and watch it out of curiosity. It sounds like a strange concept

that will either be a big hit or very disappointing to the audience it has. I did watch The Return a few years ago which I mean they tried to weave in

the older characters but I felt like there was really no grand interest in the newer characters. Now Mike and I are big Tiffany Abertheisen fans she will not be part

of this reboot. Yeah but I liked her in Saved by the Bell. I like 9-11 I are big Tiffany Amber Thiessen fans. She will not be part of this reboot. Yeah, but I liked her in Saved by the Bell. We're big Kelly Kapowski fans. Not so much Valerie Malone. Can I ask you guys your policy on spoilers just before? Because I have some Marvel stuff I want to talk about. But do you have a policy? Not a proper policy.

My problem is there is no policy, and it just seems like it's a new rule per person of what you're allowed to talk to. We can talk about the Raptors game today. That's no problem. Of course. But a movie that aired three or four weeks ago, we're not allowed to.

So there's no magic date when you can start talking about something. You also have to give advance warning. We have different rules for different mediums, and I find it to me, I treat our show or our website like it's a newspaper so i'm going to talk about news once it has occurred i'm not trying to ruin anyone's enjoyment of something but let me be specific here okay so um the avengers wrapped up right endgame yeah so i would say if you haven't seen endgame by now

it's probably not a high priority for you. They did a real deep dive on there. Okay, so in your mind though, by now, when does that click in? Do you wait? I know you don't have it documented, although, wait, you should document this. If a movie comes out,

do you give it four weeks before you'll spoil it? Well, I think you can say it anytime as long as you give proper warning. But as far as general references in the body of a conversation without spoiler warning i don't know i want to say maybe i also think it depends on how important the movie is how much people people care about it like okay but people really care about it people really care about this one so i i personally give it maybe like a week and a half two weeks you know like when the whenever the russo's or i I feel for a movie, I'm just, I don't feel like that's sufficient time.

Really? Yeah. Okay. For a movie, like maybe for a television show, although I mean, Game of Thrones just ended and these series, like a lot of people are like a couple of seasons behind or whatnot and then everybody's like, okay, here's how it ends.

I just, and i don't have all the answers here i'm you know i just think that it's a lot of the it's the perceived and i'm paint brushing here of the responsibility is put on uh whoever is is reviewing the show talking about the show and i would push back a little saying that if you are someone let's say you did not want the raptors game to be spoiled for you because you had to work thursday night you couldn't see the game fair enough but if you're going the next morning onto sportsnet.ca or you're going onto twitter and you happen to see that the raptors won that's on you and not on sportsnet and not on fans that are talking about this game that happened

and i think that's similar to movies too that if you don't want to get hit by a car don't jaywalk because you're if you want to avoid the spoiler you do have to take precautions in 2019 the raptor comparison is ridiculous because uh sporting events are news like uh there there's no expectation well what is wrestling because that is what we get hit with interesting so sport what's interesting. So wrestling is not broadcast live. Oh, it is on your... I'm so weak. Yeah. Is there such a thing as spoilers in wrestling?

Of course. Absolutely. It should be treated... Trust me. I got a complaint a few weeks ago listening to our podcast that before we got into our review, I said I didn't enjoy Raw

and I ruined whether I liked or dislik enjoy Raw and I ruined whether I liked or disliked Raw. That was sarcasm. No, it was not. Tough to read sarcasm on Twitter. I think things have changed now. I feel like wrestling, though, you should

treat it the same as sports. It's predetermined outcomes, but it should be treated the same as sports in that once it happens in real time, it's fair game to tweet about it or talk about it on the podcast i mean it depends on the fan you know some fans watch it like they watch game of thrones and you know we're also talking about now um there's a tournament in japan called you know the best of the super juniors a lot of people want extra care when it's you know a niche promotion that they might not have the chance to watch uh live so it's sort of a case by case basis. And I think, you know, there are sites that will have

different policies on it, like a place like squared circle on Reddit, they spoiler tag, almost everything. Right. Right. And, you know, people seem genuinely like, you know, respectful of it, but for us, it could be very different. I know like Dave Meltzer, they probably don't really care at all. I think John's approach is certainly more from a journalist perspective where he treats everything as, you know, if it's out there, it's out there. I tend to err more on, you know, the kind of like story and also entertainment aspect of it. Somewhere we find a happy medium.

Now, Ross Weston, he does a morning show, 92.5. Ross and Mocha. Ross and mocha that's right so he you know there was a a big event on um what's the hospital she grays anatomy and i could spoil it now it's been many years now but mcdreamy dies okay mcdreamy i know you didn't know this john i ruined it for you no my wife watches great anatomy so i, so I'm up on it. John, are we going to do any Dallas spoilers? Who shot JR? Do you guys even know? It was the woman, right? It was Kristen.

Okay. Who shot Mr. Burns? Worst series finale ever. Who shot Mr. Burns? Maggie. Maggie shot Mr. Burns. That's great. This guy knows who shot who.

He's the biggest Dallas fan in the world. I love Dallas. But it was the worst series finale. But you're young to be a Dallas fan. I grew up on the reruns that aired on TNN that were after school. I love Dallas. But it was a war series finale. But you're young to be a Dallas fan. I grew up on the reruns that aired on TNN that were after school. I just,

I couldn't get enough of it. My mom used to watch Dallas and Knotts Landing. You remember? Back to back. Of course. I never got into Knotts Landing. What about Dynasty?

That was another big one for these. I never got into it. I know they remade it on Netflix. Okay, so Roz Weston, it's a Thursday night the show would air live

on TV. It would air on Thursday nights and McDreamy dies. Like this was a big deal because my wife was a Grey's Anatomy fan Weston, it's a Thursday night. The show would air live on TV. It would air on Thursday nights. And McDreamy dies. Like, this was a big deal because my wife was a Grey's Anatomy fan at the time. McDreamy, it's a big deal. You guys know how big deal it is, McDreamy on this Grey's Anatomy, big deal, okay?

Patrick Dempsey. Patrick Dempsey, yeah. Friday morning on the radio when people are driving to work or whatever and listening to like Drake or whatever, 92.5, Roz Weston comes in and says, McDreamy diedy died last night oh my god i'm so upset i can't believe mcdreamy's dead see i felt that i feel i still feel like that's a dick move because it a lot of people will record it or whatever pvr it or whatever on the thursday and maybe they can't get to it thursday at 10 o'clock they're gonna watch it maybe friday night or on the weekend

or something so friday morning broadcasting that on terrestrial radio to me i don't think that's cool you're looking at me like i'm wrong malone what are your thoughts on that i agree with john i think if it's out there it's out there i mean what you're not supposed to talk about such a water cooler topic the next morning i think you got to be i agree with mike i think you have to be conscious of the other people in the room um again depending on how how mean, if it's a TV show, I guess nobody really cares about then who cares, right? But if it's something that you can perceive, it means a lot to somebody else in the room,

I would be respectful. What if the movie like The Usual Suspects were six cents? Yeah, I would expect, I would personally be, how long? Honestly, even something like the six cents, don't know i i agree with with mike in that that sense i feel like it would be upwards of like several months that before i would feel comfortable we talked about you you mentioned six months okay what's the point of talking about something that many months removed the sopranos and cares everybody watches at a different time actually breaking bad is a better example instead of sopranos but breaking bad i write i write a lot of stuff on

toronto mic.com and i kept my uh entry i wrote about the breaking bad six months i waited six months before i clicked publish it could have published it i think you could publish it anytime you just give fair warning to the people i mean if you're if you're advertising breaking bad review people should know what they're looking at yeah you're right and your reddit's an interesting point because you're right on reddit when they have the spoiler alert you got to click into the thing like it's more than just saying spoiler in the thing like you actually have to go that extra step and click in to see the spoiler but uh i felt like for a movie six months and although as time progresses when it comes to television i feel like the it's getting closer.

Like it's nothing like yours, John, where you treat it as news. And maybe I'm the one out to lunch, but if the news like reported on who got the throne in Game of Thrones, like the night after, we were all watching a Raptor game, first of all. Nobody listening to this podcast

was watching Game of Thrones live. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But to me, no, I think that's dick. Maybe you can do it. I'm all for fair warning. If I was, I don't know, if I was in a position of doing a morning show and I'm doing an entertainment segment

and the biggest series finale was the night prior, am I doing a disservice by not talking about it? I read this really interesting article about a month ago with all of the end game discussion about where we've gone with spoiler culture now and specific to movie reviewers now that it's a spoiler almost to say if you like to dislike the movie because you're painting a picture already that it's now veering movie reviewers towards almost writing you know a glorified press release for a movie and spoiler culture is now almost becoming corporatized because it eliminates criticism for but that's that's ridiculous now i'm gonna make this up okay let's say who's a like okay let's say there's a character named uh

uh hornet head or something this is i'm making this up in the avengers there's a hornet head i don't know i don't want to go with ant-Man because there is an Ant-Man, but Hornet Head dies in Endgame. Like, to me, that's a spoiler. But whether you like or dislike a movie, this is not spoiler. But if you're writing 500 words about why you didn't like it, you're going to veer into plot points.

But I think that's okay as long as you don't veer into the plot points that reveal like deaths or twists, like, you know, Sixth Sense or The Usual Suspects and these different things. I think it's a format too. Both of you on a podcast,

you can kind of pick and choose. If you're on terrestrial radio and you're live, how do you give enough spoiler alert warning? People are tuning in at different times. Someone's going to get upset

no matter what. Just don't tweet as it happens, like who gets the throne. I just think, I don't know. Maybe I'm, although I think Wade agrees a bit. I think there's different sensitivity for almost everybody with everything. And I just think, I don't know. Maybe I'm, although I think Wade agrees a bit. I think there's

different sensitivity for almost everybody with everything. And I would say, you know, most often, I think if you give fair warning beforehand

as much as you can, people will forgive it. Okay. Is that a question? Sorry, can I ask? Yeah, okay. We're talking about Bob McCowan,

and I know you're a big fan of the primetime sports roundtable. It's a question for each of you. Sort of your dream, what would be your dream roundtable on post-wrestling? You guys have to choose. On post-wrestling?

Way. Jeff Merrick. And if we're making a fourth, who would be a fourth one? Vince McMahon. Vince McMahon, yeah, that would be fantastic. Maybe a Dave Meltzer. There's a lot. I think in wrestling, I think there's, you know, I think in wrestling,

I think there's a ton of really talented reporters, more and more, that are emerging or that have been doing this for a long time. Those would be some of them. Okay. I'd love to talk to some of the more kind of like technical producers of professional wrestling. I'd love to like be able to talk to Kevin Dunn

about some of his philosophies. You know, other people that have been in the industry for a long, long time, you know, behind the scenes. of professional wrestling. I'd love to like, be able to talk to Kevin Dunn about some of his philosophies. Um, you know, other people that have been in the industry for a long, long time, um, you know, behind the scenes. I,

I'm very curious. Perfect. Now let me ask about a couple of former, uh, Toronto Mike guests that you might've worked with. And I don't know how the timelines work, but at the fight network, did you work with Caroline Shved?

No. So where, cause I remember you asked a question. Ashley Docking. Ashley Docking, not Caroline Schwed. Not Caroline Schwed. Because she never worked at the Fight Network. No. My apologies.

I'm getting my young Sportsnet woman confused here. So you worked with Ashley Docking, and that's the question you asked the question, right, Milan? To Ashley, yeah. Because Milan only asks questions of the sports media guests. We were under the same roof, like within the same parent company she worked with the fantasy sports side of things and I I guess like you know I think John would have less interaction with her but like maybe a couple times I might have like shot stuff in studio with her um uh but beyond that not not too much interaction unfortunately but she was just always incredibly friendly,

incredibly energetic and fun personality that everybody seemed to enjoy having around. She was the perfect host that they had. I wasn't surprised at all at the success she's had now at the fan. I'm responsible for her success. Right, Milan? You can speak to that, right? Yeah, she got appointed shortly after she was on your show.

I'm driving down Black Creek and I see her face on top of the billboard. I'm like, I know her. A lot of people that we work with have gone on to great success in Toronto sports media. Can you name some of those people? Sarah Davis, who was on TSN

and moved on to NESN for a time. Massachusetts, and now she's back. Laura Dyken was there for a while. Her dad lives across the street. Really? No way. Well, and now she's back. Laura Dykin was there for a while after. Her dad lives across the street. Really? No way. Okay.

Well, there you go. Cool. Hello, Roman. Location revealed. Well, I haven't revealed the location. You know, someone that did work

at the Fight Network, he's now, you know, probably the biggest sports, or combat sports commentator is Mauro Ranallo, who did a lot of traditional sports, but then really, really found his calling with combat sports.

He's now one of the voices of the WWE. He does Showtime boxing. He calls Bellator MMA as well. So he was there from 2006 to 2009. He was there for three years. Robin Black is another name you might recognize from his musical career or much music, but also a big name now in combat school. So not Robin Thicke, Robin Black. Robin Black, yeah.

I wish it was Robin Thicke. Now, Mike, did you know you've had some pretty impressive guests here? Maestro Fresh West. Multiple times. Tyler Stewart. Yes. Molly Johnson. Molly Johnson, my favorite guest.

Did you know Way has interviewed Gary Bettman? Oh, my God. Trish Stratus. I did. Gino Carano. I did not expect you to bring this up. Tell me more. Not at the Fight Network.

At the Fight Network? Quote, unquote, interview. I think this was during, oh, man, it must have been like 10 years ago when we started doing these where I guess we had a lot of people who came from sports backgrounds working as producers in the fight and I guess they had all these connections to you know sporting events and they wanted kind of these like celebrity interviews basically so they for some reason somebody thought that I was a good candidate for it maybe just because they considered me

pretty unusual as you know somebody who did these types of celebrity interviews and I think the direction that I was given was very much like like stuttering John from the Howard Stern show so I was kind of sent on these things and I basically would ask ridiculous ridiculous questions that were that I'm not all all completely proud of uh today to be honest with you but there was a time where I I was a huge Tom Green fan I was a huge fan of you know that type of style yeah me too man yeah so um you know i went out there and just kind of like with with a videographer and we just had a lot of fun like way was cabby before cabby school i interviewed cabby as well actually but no he was cabby before before any of us yeah is g Gary Bettman a douche?

No, I don't know. I don't know a thing about it. They talked about cost certainty. Did you boo him? I did. I mean, my question to him, and he was just passing through, this was like at the NHL Hall of Fame ceremony.

It's that somehow I got to be on the red carpet for asking questions. And I think this was a time when the UFC and MMA were still illegal in Canada. So my one question as Gary Bettman, who was not doing any media or finished with all his media, he was just passing through and I was like, Mr. Bettman, can I ask you a question? And he's like, he gave me, like, he saw me, I guess

and thought, oh, this man seems like a nice gentleman. He seems harmless. Yeah. And I asked him, do you find it odd that MMA is illegal in Ontario, yet something to do with, like, you know fighting on on the ice is okay and he's just like no it's a good question the smoke that came out of his ears i bet that happened to me like i had to do not not like the way in uh i found it very entertaining well thank

you i i did one where i was doing a story on uh on concussions and i ended up we had a producer there by the name of dave rutherford who was a producer at the score for years, worked with Mark Hebster. And he would get us into all these, like he knew everybody in town and could get us into these like private events. And I find myself at some NHL gala and I go up to Brian Burke to ask him for an interview. And I work my way up to ask him about concussions. And he got so upset. He just cut the interview off at that moment. His lawyer once sent me a cease and desist because of a comment on my blog. He was, and I love Brian Burke.

I think he's fantastic. The next Don Cherry. I think he's outstanding, but that day I was not his biggest fan. Can I ask, is it the biggest faux pas if I go to the washroom? Oh, no, of course not. Go, that's why we have all these people to cover.

Go to the washroom. You warned me ahead of time, and I know I'm making it. Yeah, can I tell the people that? I did say, does anyone need the washroom before we begin? I took you up on it. Wade took me up on it, and you did not. But please, just take off your headphones and disappear. It's okay.

Now, Mike's been trying to get Trish Stratus on the show. It's not going well. But if you could put it in words for me. Now Mike's been trying to get Trish Stratus on the show. It's not going well. But if you could put it in words for me. Richmond Hill's finest, yeah. While we have Wei here, do you have any Wei-specific real talk questions? No, I just thought it was cool. I'm interviewing Gina Carano and Trish and they were some of my favorite

athletes. That's a pretty cool thing. It was very cool. I was incredibly blessed to be able to be given those opportunities and hopefully if people found any any of those interviews somewhat entertaining then then great awesome it was just it's such a part of my life that i don't even really but they're called uh streeters right is that what you call those we actually had them in studio uh we had gina carano in studio for that particular one um and these would always be piggybacking off of like the real interviews like we have our actual reporters to like, you know, serious like questions.

And then I would just be there asking my stupid stuff and they probably wouldn't know how to take it. But Trish is just so awesome. Like, you know, she has a history with the law as well. Getting her start as somebody. I don't know if she was a call screener or something. I feel like she hosted or something. She was like a co-host for a time. Yeah, 99 or something, but she was like a co-host. I feel like she hosted or something. She was like a co-host for a time. Yeah, 99 or something.

I believe that almost kind of indirectly perhaps led to her stint in the WWE. So I think she had always kind of been around. And every time, like to this day, if we see her, she's incredibly friendly with us. So she's just like such a sweetheart. That'll break your Periscope record for sure. Oh, yeah. Definitely.

For sure. Do you think there's a correlation um between the success of the wrestling product and to post wrestling or are you guys just so you know it's interesting because like if anything i think since we've become independent i feel like wrestling's popularity um at least in the mainstream i feel like has been decreasing because the wwe's popularity has been decreasing yet on the WWE's popularity has been decreasing. Yet on the independent level, in the international levels, it's been increasing. So I found that people, our audience are still as interested in wrestling as ever, but not in WWE. They're more interested now in the things outside of WWE. So I feel like we've been still pretty consistent and i kind of look forward to seeing

what aew uh brings because you know it's it's been less of a shift of just our audience going away and maybe more so our audience focusing on other aspects of professional i think it's a real compliment to your program and that and i'm one of them that i can't watch the three hours i basically pbr but i look forward to listening to your show. And that's, I really, you know, you guys fill in the blanks, you do it in an entertaining way. Thanks. And that's, and I hear a lot of the feedback at the end of your show from people.

I think that's what it is now. It's the same experience actually that I have. And, you know, watching the three-hour show, taking notes for the three-hour show, like you said, can seem like work sometimes. But I always enjoy my conversation with my friend, talking about it afterwards. It's like going to see a bad movie you might not like the bad movie but talking about why you don't like the movie afterwards kind of you know i'm just kind of curious about the business

model because if this was the attitude era type popularity right now is that good for post-wrestling business i think the more uh fans that you're drawing from the better but i i think like our audience is kind of like they're diving into new japan they're diving into the like we'll see numbers when we do like a bonus patreon show covering like a big new japan event and the spikes we'll get when we do our g1 climax events so i think we have an audience that's watching a lot of different wrestling that we're trying to do our best coverage of as well but certainly i think if you're growing the pool that much more and we're talking about

several millions watching wrestling on a Monday night, the hope would be that at least a higher percentage of those people would be going and looking for more coverage and hopefully stumble upon us. You've done a brilliant job, both of you, in terms of sort of teasing, you know, from a Patreon perspective, you know, like sort of

leaving the fans wanting more. You know, so you invite them and sort of hang, you know, with the of leaving the fans wanting more, you know, so you, you invite them and sort of hang, you know, with, with the reviewer on the review of SmackDown episodes and the, and the, you know, the pay-per-view post show,

but then there's still enough content that people find compelling to join the Patreon and, and wanting to listen. Yeah. I mean, a big thing was having enough free content out there that I didn't want to put everything behind a paywall because I don't think you're going to grow your audience that way without having a lot of content that it's like we're in an ability where we can put a lot of free content out there with the hope that people

are going to find us and hopefully like it they're not going to I'll get a great idea this episode's going behind the paywall you got to become a Toronto Mike patron if you want to hear this this one's not going on the regular feed that's a great news but I want to become a toronto mike patron if you want to hear this this one's not going on the regular feed that's a great news but i want to give a quick shout out to mike cohen he says awesome toronto mike especially looking forward to your interview with john and way you should talk to them about marvel some great insight from these two in addition to the current going on goings on in mma and pro wrestling and then I got lots of happy emojis here. But did you guys like Endgame?

Are we allowed to talk about Endgame? I don't know. Just don't reveal. I loved Endgame. I thought it was one of my favorite movies I've ever watched. I went on the Thursday night. It came out and it was in just a packed theater.

And it was incredible. Just having that live experience in a movie theater. I've had it one other time when I saw Rocky Balboa, when that came out in 2006. And you had a whole theater chanting Rocky during the boxing scene. And that to me, it's like, that to me is the most fun in a movie

when an audience is just like at the edge of their seat into everything. John, I need to know if you made it through Endgame without a bathroom break. You know what? I did. And that was my biggest concern going into it. He was planning for it, though.

He was expecting it. Wearing diapers. Yeah. But then I got into my seat. And I had the mentality, if I have to go, I'm getting up. Because three hours is a big ask at a movie theater to sit there for that long. And I was in the middle seat because these were assigned seats. And I knew I am not getting up during this movie.

And I ended up being okay. Well, you've seen it multiple times, right? I've seen it twice so far. I mean, it is a three-hour movie, but I do want to go back one more time to see it on the big screen before it's out of theaters. For me, covering wrestling for so long, I judge so much of my experience at events now,

judging by the crowd experience, because that's how you tell whether or not a wrestling match is successful you talked about you receive press credentials at a wrestlemania but yet you'll go into the crowd yeah like like often i guess in football doesn't matter so much because they seal you in in these stadiums in the press rooms but for wrestling the crowd noise is everything so i had to go out and experience it but you know for endgame it was kind of like one of those experiences that I will put up there up against, you know, any major stadium event. Like the type of rabid audience that was there on opening night coupled with like just a beautiful pacing of all these incredible moments coming out.

And what really added to the whole experience was the fact that John and I have started to do like a MCU rewatch the year prior after Infinity War starting from like Iron Man. So what made you decide to do that? Cause you're a wrestling show. I'll tell you. And now you're doing Marvel. I'll tell you.

It's cause we casually talked about infinity war after it come out. And John, I guess had seen it with his friends and he, at the end of the discussion asked me, well, what's up with the captain America? Why wasn't he in this movie? And I was like,

what captain America? Why wasn't he in this movie? And I was like, what? Captain America, why wasn't he in this movie? And I told him, Steve Rogers is Captain America. So he had gone through the entire film not knowing that Steve Rogers and Captain America weren't the same, yet it was the greatest. He was very embarrassed by it, and I think, you know, whatever, understandably, but it was, I think, the greatest, you know,

blessing in disguise because it spurred on this idea that we had for an extra Patreon show where we would go back and re-watch all of our MCU movies from the very beginning. And it added a great deal to my Endgame experience because so much reference was made. How do you handle the sharing of the Patreon-only episodes with Patreons only? Like, is there a special feed you only give to people who are Patreons? There's a custom RSS that's built within Patreon.

And I think part of the reason why we like Patreon so much is because so much of the infrastructure is built for podcasters. They have custom RSS feeds that they'll send out to anybody who subscribes at that tier. And we don't really kind of... Our only job is to upload our shows and now i'm thinking i should i should do this like i should have a patreon only show a lot of people what they do in in particular this is youtube where um if they're on patreon

they give out their stuff in advance maybe a few days in advance before it's released to the public um i think generally our audience, I feel like they would support us even if we didn't have any bonus material because they just want to see the ship continue to run. Right. One of my favorite segments, sorry to interrupt you, is just when you talk about your father. Oh, yeah.

I can relate. I don't know if it's an immigrant dad thing or what, but when he walks into the room, you can just see the look on his face I remember one time he walked into that room when I was watching that Sammy Zane, Bobby Lashley sister segment the other time was one time when Hornswoggle, I know it's a lot over your head Mike

Hornswoggle and DX and when he goes under the ring and my father walked in the room you can just see the look on his face this is why I came to this country yeah kind of look on his face you can watch this i can't imagine what i love those stories because i can sort of relate and i think it goes to the show that you guys have a lot i'll tell you my dad actually likes the stuff half the time and i that that i can't understand if you can't understand me watching

it i can't understand him liking half of it because english is not his first language right no it's not right yeah but he still enjoys it. You know what? It's weird because I've told him multiple times, hey, dad, this is not real. People aren't really, for the most part,

aren't really punching each other in the face, yet he still gets horrified at the violence. So no matter how many times I tell him, hey, this is staged, he believes it.

Milan, you did a fantastic job. Is there anything left on your list you need to... I'm sure I'll think of a thousand things on the drive home but it's a real pleasure to meet you guys both

oh likewise this has been so much fun yeah thank you for the gifts and thank you for taking care of my mom's Fitbit watch issue fast time watch and jewelry repair

people and if they come to the Richmond Hill location they can meet you right sometimes yeah it's happened right I don't know yeah yeah you have a couple of listeners yeah i mean and they that's

like a bonus i don't know if that's uh incentive enough but uh if you want to talk rustling or riverdale or uh terrace house uh i'm gonna start watching that way john and way i i don't listen to your podcast because i but but now that I hear there's like I feel like to come to Patreon just to hear the Marvel Comics stuff now you've got me hooked there

but amazing discussion like I'm rooting for you love that you're fiercely independent just like just like me so awesome

and John I didn't know you listened like now I'm honored that you I've got the bookie show I'm already in the first

okay so the bookie show recorded yesterday with Mark Weisblatt from 1236. The first 60 minutes, ad-free and just the most wonderful tribute to Bookie, man. You're going to love it. The line that he wrote in iMagazine, Mark, wake up.

You're having a nightmare. Yes. Great line. Rest in peace, Bookie.ie we're gonna miss bookie but we still have john and way thank you guys from post wrestling milan thanks again for helping me i could never have done that like i was listening like this guy i hope i didn't ramble too much and hope uh i'll know because i thank the guys for being patient oh that's with a novice broadcaster you did great it's great to talk about all this stuff. It was amazing to not have to carry the load on this podcast. It was kind of strange.

Hebsey on sports is one thing, but on this show, that never happens. Here's your spin-off Patreon show with Sidekick Milan. And that brings us to the end of our 472nd show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. John, what are you on Twitter? I am John Pollock on Twitter.

P-O-L-L-O-C-K. O-C-K. Yes, and I'm at way, W-A-I-0-9-3-7. 0-9-3-7, that's your birth year. 37 is your birth year? It's my credit card and we're representing Scarborough proud

yes and Milan are you at what are you at Fast Time you're not on Twitter yourself right

at Fast Time WJR no at Fast Time WJR follow is that you doing the tweeting for Fast Time WJR or is that a secret

real talk sure okay I didn't know if you had people doing that okay Follow Malone. Is that you doing the tweeting for Fast Time WJR? Is that a secret? Real talk. Sure. Okay. I didn't know if you had people doing that. Okay. Great Lakes Brewery is at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthe6.com is at Raptor's Devotee.

Man, that was awesome last night. Palma Pasta is at Palma Pasta. Sticker U is at Sticker U. Camp Turnasol is at Camp Turnasol. And Capadia LLP CPAs are at Capadia LLP. See you all next week. Maybe the one who doesn't realize there's a thousand shades of gray. Cause I know that's true. Yes, I do. I know it's true.

Yeah. I know it's true. How about you? Are they picking up trash and then putting down ropes? And they're brokering stocks, the class struggle explodes.