LIVE from Las Vegas Part 1: Shawn Michaels, Triple H, The Undertaker, Charlotte Flair | Canelo vs Crawford Radio Row

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Speaker 25 Ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us for daycap.

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Speaker 25 That link is also pinned in the chat. We got a very jam-packed show for you

Speaker 25 this early this morning. We got Sean Michaels joining us.
He'll be our first guest up. We got Triple H joining us.
We got The Undertaker joining us.

Speaker 25 We're going to try to get Bud's trainer, Bomack, to join us also. But this morning, the show is really wrestling heavy.
We got a lot of heavyweights coming in.

Speaker 25 Many believe he's the greatest wrestler of all time, a many-time champion. Here he is joining the stage right now, the legendary Sean Michaels.

Speaker 1 It's a pleasure, baby. It's an honor.

Speaker 34 Sean, how you doing, bro?

Speaker 22 I'm doing good.

Speaker 35 Good to see you.

Speaker 22 Sure, sure.

Speaker 35 Thank you very much. How you been?

Speaker 37 I am wonderful.

Speaker 36 Appreciate it.

Speaker 25 So let me ask you this.

Speaker 25 What's been one of your biggest challenges? Now you've kind of transitioned, running NXT.

Speaker 25 What's been the biggest transition for you?

Speaker 36 Tying a tie.

Speaker 39 Putting on the suit looking like a corporate head.

Speaker 38 No, look, I will say this.

Speaker 38 I don't know. You guys know

Speaker 35 probably

Speaker 39 better than me. You play the game, but then trying to, I don't know, help coach it or

Speaker 39 teach it

Speaker 38 is not always an easy transition.

Speaker 25 We're as great as you were, the patience that you need to have because things that probably came easy to you might not come easy to someone else.

Speaker 26 Well,

Speaker 39 thank you.

Speaker 38 I mean, first of all, but again, it's the same thing, right?

Speaker 38 And that was, I will say that's been the most challenging part was some things,

Speaker 37 I don't know,

Speaker 38 I was given a gift and when you're doing it and you're in the moment of it,

Speaker 43 you're not thinking about that.

Speaker 38 And then afterwards, so many things you go back and you try to teach and they ask you, like, well, how this, how that, how did this happen?

Speaker 31 And

Speaker 36 it was just there.

Speaker 40 It was just there.

Speaker 38 But again, that's been the part where I've had to learn how to convey that in the best possible message that I can.

Speaker 38 And I was fortunate to be able to have some time as a trainer and a coach before I was in the role that I'm in now.

Speaker 38 And now, again, as they,

Speaker 39 I'm able to meet them where they're at.

Speaker 38 Over the years, I've learned how to do that is understanding that not all of them are the the same

Speaker 38 and being able to again try to

Speaker 38 understand where they're at and not to be teaching for 10 years down the road, but meet them where they're at currently.

Speaker 24 And that's been the biggest help for me going forward.

Speaker 38 And again, one of the things that's also an advantage to us is we teach and then they move on.

Speaker 43 And so I at least get enough reps because you have a new group come in

Speaker 38 and you kind of have to it's sort of rinse and repeat so to speak with the exception of a small little detail things here and there but for the most part you end up covering the gambit and you at least get enough reps at it that it becomes a little bit easier the more you do it that's the biggest thing when you talk to great

Speaker 25 greats in any particular sport any particular thing

Speaker 25 what came easy is hard those that can do those that can't teach you did because you could do now how do show patience, show grace, and says, what came so easy to Shawn Michael?

Speaker 25 What was a God-given gift? How do I convey that? Because they're asking you, well, how? You're like, I just did it.

Speaker 25 And now you got to like, well, you have to do it like this when no one really had to explain it to you. You just had that God-given gift.

Speaker 40 Well, again, that's where I go back to.

Speaker 39 making them or doing my best to have them really define

Speaker 38 and delineate and detail what it is they're looking for and asking about.

Speaker 24 The hardest thing for us is a very

Speaker 39 natural feel.

Speaker 47 And also, as you gentlemen know, you almost can't teach timing.

Speaker 25 Right, correct.

Speaker 38 Timing is something that

Speaker 36 our business as yours sort of hangs on.

Speaker 38 Through reps, you can get close to it, but a lot of it is a feel and a timing thing.

Speaker 38 And trying to get them to understand that and to not, the biggest thing with that, because that may not always get perfectly in sync, but the closer they can get to it, the better chance they have.

Speaker 38 So a lot of it is teaching them patience in that respect and knowing that nothing is going to happen easy, but when everything is said and done, more reps is going to give you the better results.

Speaker 38 You're certainly not going to get worse if you're continuing to hit it time and time and time and time again. And again, that comes down to work ethic.

Speaker 38 And then when you get into the conversations of wanting to be great, as you guys know, a word that gets tossed around way too freely now.

Speaker 22 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 38 And again, trying to really help them understand

Speaker 38 what it means to try and be that.

Speaker 29 It's one thing to say it, it's another thing to put into practice attaining it.

Speaker 55 Did you always want to be a wrestler?

Speaker 25 Did you have any idea when you got started many, many years ago that wrestling would be what it's become? Or as we say in the South, wrestling. Did you have any idea?

Speaker 25 Because, you know, wrestling, and I know you know this, but a lot of people at home.

Speaker 25 Wrestling, wrestling, used to just be regional.

Speaker 25 You had the South, you had the Northeast, you had the Mid-Atlantic, you had the mid-that's where wrestling was. And then somehow Vince McMahon, he merged all this together.

Speaker 25 They had the NWA, and they merged all this together, and it became one.

Speaker 25 Did you want to be a wrestler? And when you started, did you have any idea it would take you to the places that it's taking you and it would become what it's become?

Speaker 38 I'm 60.

Speaker 38 So when I started, it was Southwest Championship Wrestling.

Speaker 47 I knew it 12 years old.

Speaker 38 I saw it one time. I got to stay up late, and all of a sudden, this montage comes on.

Speaker 49 Again, grainy, again, the production quality is horrible, but you don't know it at the time.

Speaker 38 And it was the most

Speaker 38 mesmerizing thing I had ever seen. And I was like, oh my goodness, that's it.
It was the perfect display of athleticism, but theatrics. And I just thought to myself, that's what I want to do.

Speaker 38 And I can remember telling my mom at 12 years old, Mama, I'm going to be a pro wrestler when I grew up.

Speaker 43 That's nice, honey.

Speaker 38 But in my mind, by the time I was 19 and got an opportunity to do it, being the Southwest Heavyweight Heavyweight Champion and having a one-bedroom apartment and my own car was going to be the greatest thing in the world.

Speaker 38 And in 1985, I had been, I had just started wrestling, and that was when Vince McMahon first began to go kind of global.

Speaker 49 The first WrestleMania

Speaker 58 was

Speaker 38 in Madison Square Garden. I was wrestling in Oklahoma City while WrestleMania was being shown on closed-circuit TV at the arena.

Speaker 38 But I was wrestling while that show was going on,

Speaker 44 and all we did was hear about it.

Speaker 38 We heard about it, but then you thought to yourself, like, wow, that's cool.

Speaker 47 But at that time, all those guys in the territory were telling you, he's going to ruin the business. He's going to kill you.

Speaker 31 He's ruining everything.

Speaker 38 Two years later, I'm in Minnesota wrestling, but we're on ESPN now.

Speaker 22 Wow.

Speaker 49 It was now on cable television.

Speaker 38 They're trying to compete with Vents.

Speaker 24 But now everybody knew that New York, New York was the place you wanted to be.

Speaker 38 So that's the time, again, it was probably 1986 that you started realizing that what he's got going on there is big.

Speaker 31 But again, had no idea that it would become what it is now.

Speaker 24 So no, I was somebody that got into it.

Speaker 38 I guess to answer your question,

Speaker 25 you knew early on this year.

Speaker 24 I knew this is what I wanted to do, but a one-bedroom apartment and my own car seemed like the greatest thing in the world.

Speaker 39 And now we have a life unlike I'd never possibly imagined.

Speaker 25 I sat down with Ric Flair, 16-time champ, sat down with John Cena. We had Uso,

Speaker 25 I've had many wrestlers and talked to, many said the greatest wrestler ever is Shawn Michaels.

Speaker 25 Ric Flair says your understanding of the moment and the timing and the theatrics of it, what goes into it, there's nobody even, I said, well, what about you?

Speaker 25 I said, he says, there's no one close to Shawn Michaels. He's the greatest.
He says, and that's no disrespect to Hogan. That's no disrespect to anyone.

Speaker 31 Dusty Rhodes, all those guys.

Speaker 25 There's no disrespect to them. He said, but Sean Michaels is the greatest wrestler.
When you hear someone as established and

Speaker 25 as well thought of as the nature boy himself, say that Sean Michaels is the greatest,

Speaker 25 how does that make you feel?

Speaker 38 It's the greatest compliment a guy could have.

Speaker 43 To even be in the conversation.

Speaker 39 Yes.

Speaker 24 And I always, I don't know,

Speaker 47 for me, whether it was Rick,

Speaker 38 I always tried to,

Speaker 53 our business is what it is, right?

Speaker 24 It's entertainment.

Speaker 26 Yes. Yes.

Speaker 38 But you can still love that. Again, I was still,

Speaker 38 even though, because I went through my ups and downs, you know, trials and tribulations,

Speaker 38 but when I was in there,

Speaker 38 I was the most romantic guy there was about this job.

Speaker 38 I was still the 12-year-old kid in there every time, especially when I was in there with Rick or some of these guys, but being at a WrestleMania with John or, I don't know, I was so enamored, I never fell out of love.

Speaker 38 with the opportunity of being able to go in there and do that.

Speaker 39 And so I think if there was anything that might have been able to set me apart from everybody, it's that I fully grasp and engaged with that love and that passion and that,

Speaker 39 again, that romance.

Speaker 39 Again,

Speaker 42 again, we say there's a certain, the old saying with, you know, there's a certain, you know,

Speaker 44 who can't be romantic about baseball?

Speaker 24 Who can't be romantic about football?

Speaker 24 I always, that's how wrestling was for me.

Speaker 38 It was my lifeblood. And so I always allowed myself to be in there in those moments, and I think that came across to people.

Speaker 49 I think they could see that I was

Speaker 38 so enamored with what I was doing in there, and I gave myself over to that in a way that made them buy into it was real to me while it was going on in there.

Speaker 39 Because every ounce of it was for me. And it was an opportunity to be able to, I don't know, to convey my love for this unbelievable job that I had.

Speaker 38 So I don't know. I hope that answers your question, and I have to hope that kind of gets it there.

Speaker 1 You know what? I have one question that always happens. It happens to all of us that have played a sport, regardless of what respect of craft that it is you do.

Speaker 1 Once you transition and you no longer can play said sport, have you been able to find something else that you're passionate about

Speaker 1 and that you love?

Speaker 1 That you can pour into the same way you did rats and that made you one of the greatest?

Speaker 38 I'll say this.

Speaker 39 For me, it's obviously my family, but it's also this.

Speaker 49 Again, it is now,

Speaker 38 because again, I had a wonderful change in my life with my faith and my wife and our children.

Speaker 24 Now I'm able to do this job, but I'm able to pass it forward.

Speaker 38 I feel like I'm fulfilling my purpose.

Speaker 38 I do one thing well in this lifetime, and it's wrestle.

Speaker 38 And I'm able to use that gift to give other young men and women that come through the doors of the Performance Center in Orlando, Florida, the opportunity to have the amazing life that I've been given through this line of work.

Speaker 38 And hopefully have an influence on them to live that in a positive and,

Speaker 38 you know, successful way, but still be intact when they're done with it. You know, again, whether it's

Speaker 24 the NFL, the NBA, or...

Speaker 38 wrestling, the WWE, we have good stories and we have very sad and tragic stories. I want theirs to be a story that ends with joy and happiness and peace.

Speaker 38 And so that's something, again, that Hunter put into the Performance Center when he started it 14 years ago was a culture that was going to be unlike the business that we broke into.

Speaker 38 And that is something that we, yes, we want to pass the tools of professional wrestling forward, but at the same time, we want the culture of our business to be different and to be more positive than it was when we got into it.

Speaker 31 We want to leave it better off than

Speaker 53 the way we came into it.

Speaker 38 And that's one of the things that we're trying to do, obviously, you know, from a culture perspective as well.

Speaker 25 You know, when you devote so much of your life and your time to something, when you give so much to something,

Speaker 25 it takes a little from you also.

Speaker 25 When you travel and you do what you do, because people think, well, well, Sean's only wrestling once a year because he's only doing the main event. He's only doing

Speaker 25 a Summer Fest or SummerSlam. That's not the case.
You guys are on the road sometimes 250, 300 days a year. And yes, it's entertainment, but you're actually falling.
You're falling on that mat.

Speaker 25 You're falling on those chairs. You're falling on that.
And so

Speaker 25 you play the game of football. You play the game of baseball, basketball long enough, your body, it takes a toll on your body.
How have your body, how did your body feel now at 60?

Speaker 25 that you look back on it like, you know what?

Speaker 25 Because people ask Ocho and I all the time, knowing what you know now about the concussions and the toll it's gonna take on your body, would you do it again? Yep,

Speaker 67 I probably would have started earlier.

Speaker 25 If knowing what you know now and how your body feels, Sean, would you do it again?

Speaker 22 Hell yes.

Speaker 24 I have had my back fused, I've had my shoulder replaced, I got two knees that I'm getting replaced in probably a month, and I wouldn't change it for anything in the world.

Speaker 24 Again, I knew that going in as you guys did.

Speaker 38 I knew the price that was going to come along with it. When I worked on the road, we did 286 days.
When I got a part-time schedule, it was 150 days.

Speaker 24 And I enjoyed every minute.

Speaker 38 I was fortunate,

Speaker 38 again, especially later in my career, to have a wife and children that understood that. They still support me now, as you know, that's so important to have.

Speaker 31 Absolutely.

Speaker 35 But again, it's a part of who I am and who I've always been.

Speaker 49 And they recognize that.

Speaker 47 So, yeah, I'm with you guys.

Speaker 38 If they'd have given me a chance to start earlier, I would have, but again, you had to wait till you were 19 to get a license in Texas to be a wrestler, so I waited until I was 19.

Speaker 25 You are a part of many, many blockbuster wrestling events.

Speaker 25 This one we have, Canelo versus Crawford, is probably the biggest event that we've had in the boxing arena in a very, very long time because you got two champions, undisputed champions, Bud in the 4-bit era.

Speaker 25 He's the first male to be a undisputed champion, two-way classes.

Speaker 25 Canelo has dominated the 168 division for the longest time. When you look at this fight, you look at it from a distance, an outside guy that loves fighting,

Speaker 25 what do you think? How do you think this thing's going to play out?

Speaker 49 So, I guess for me, the biggest thing for me is that

Speaker 49 I'm happy to see boxing back to where, I guess I'll say, at least for me, and I hope that comes across well, back to where it once was.

Speaker 39 You know what I mean?

Speaker 38 I think that's the most positive thing coming out of all of this, what everything's said and done.

Speaker 24 I will just say I'm not the most educated, but for me, it's hard to go

Speaker 49 against Canelo.

Speaker 38 And I guess, you know what I mean? That's just, there's so much there, a dominance there, and I guess in my lifetime, every time there's been a dominance like that in boxing,

Speaker 38 yes, it's got to end sometime.

Speaker 38 But I'm one of those people that just

Speaker 37 think that it's not yet.

Speaker 25 Well, I was going to ask you, but since you got to get both knees replaced, I guess there ain't no chance of you getting back in the ring.

Speaker 34 Not a chance.

Speaker 39 Not a chance.

Speaker 38 And look, even if they were, I'm so blessed and so fortunate to have done what I've done.

Speaker 38 But it is, I am so overjoyed to be doing what I do now and helping the future of the WWE and to be a part of that. NXT is just thriving on Tuesday nights on the CW network.

Speaker 38 And to help these young men and women,

Speaker 38 again, to achieve their passions and their dreams is something that

Speaker 38 I had no idea I had enjoyed this much, but it is so great because I think the business is in just tremendous hands for the future.

Speaker 25 When did you know it was over?

Speaker 25 When did Shawn Michaels know

Speaker 25 I can't do anymore?

Speaker 25 If I won another title, it's not going to change anything. When did you know it was time to step away?

Speaker 49 So my body still felt great.

Speaker 39 I still had plenty of left in the tank.

Speaker 31 But I had a match.

Speaker 43 Again, it was the one with Undertaker, WrestleMania 25, in Houston, that made me feel

Speaker 38 so peaceful in a way that I'd never felt after a match in my entire life. I can remember driving home because that's when we lived, we still lived in Texas, and we were driving home from Houston.

Speaker 24 And I looked at my wife and I said, honey,

Speaker 44 that might be the one that I ended on.

Speaker 49 And she looked at me and she said, what?

Speaker 38 And I said, yeah.

Speaker 38 I said, I feel a peace over me that I've never felt after a match before.

Speaker 24 And that's when we began to have the conversation.

Speaker 49 And it was the next year.

Speaker 39 They wanted to go back with one more with the Undertaker. And we obviously, you know, put my career on the line and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 38 And I just, it was just

Speaker 38 i i i had seen so many people struggle with it leaving and walking away yeah it's hard um getting in is easy sean is to get out

Speaker 38 well and i watched so many guys struggle with that and

Speaker 35 i felt like here i was at this opportunity where that wasn't gonna be the case it was gonna be you yeah and I was still healthy.

Speaker 49 I was still able to go. I was able to leave, as they say, on a high note.

Speaker 24 And so I just couldn't picture it any, it couldn't picture it being any more perfect than that.

Speaker 38 And so I made that decision and have never looked back and regretted it.

Speaker 31 Again,

Speaker 39 you know, I don't know.

Speaker 38 I just, it was something that I've had such peace with.

Speaker 38 And again, like I said, I feel very fortunate to have had that because I know so many have struggled with it in the past.

Speaker 1 Even though you have peace, do you miss it?

Speaker 44 I don't.

Speaker 39 Not being in there, the physical aspect of it, I don't miss. The travel, I don't miss.

Speaker 38 I guess I'm able now to still kind of get that same charge when we're sitting there and I'm telling a story to these talents where I'm trying to convey this is what we're looking for out of this match and we're going to tell this story and this is going to happen and at the end, hopefully they come unglued.

Speaker 38 And when that happens and it all comes together,

Speaker 38 It's that feeling once again, but it's you watching the joy in that talent's heart. And again, when they're finally getting it.
So

Speaker 38 it's in a different aspect that I receive kind of that charge that I used to have when I got in the ring.

Speaker 49 Yes, sir.

Speaker 40 Last question.

Speaker 25 Is there anybody that's currently wrestling, be it WWE, been an

Speaker 1 NXT, non-stop wrestling?

Speaker 25 Is there anybody that reminds Sean Michael of Sean Michael that you see?

Speaker 39 I'll say this, from an NXT standpoint, we have an unbelievable roster.

Speaker 38 I think somebody who you have to keep an eye on, he's 21 years old.

Speaker 49 And his name is Javon Evans.

Speaker 38 He's unbelievably dynamic, unbelievably talented, gifted. He just turned 21, I believe.

Speaker 53 And the future is so bright for that young man.

Speaker 38 He's going to be somebody that's going to be very big in the WWE.

Speaker 24 And obviously, I think probably before long, he'll probably be a flag bearer in NXT.

Speaker 38 So excited to see the trajectory of his career.

Speaker 25 Thanks for coming on. Give us a few moments of your time.
The great Shawn Michaels, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 36 Thank you all so much. Thank you.

Speaker 53 Appreciate it, Sean.

Speaker 25 Thank you.

Speaker 26 Oh, man, this was amazing to really sit down.

Speaker 25 And, like I said, I've been a wrestling fan. My grandfather used to take my brother and I to wrestling matches.
Savannah Civic Center. We used to go to Baxley.
We used to go to Vidalia.

Speaker 5 You want to get him? Yeah.

Speaker 25 Used to take my brother and I. We see all those, whether it was Georgia Championship Wrestling.

Speaker 25 And it was great. It was great.
And to sit down and have a conversation, like I said, I've interviewed Ric Flair. I've interviewed John Cena.

Speaker 25 Met a lot of wrestlers. And to sit down with Sean Michaels,

Speaker 25 it's been great. And I'm glad we got an opportunity to catch up with you.

Speaker 64 Stan, what they do, baby.

Speaker 5 What's up, what's up, bro?

Speaker 1 Man, listen, if I had your hands, I'd cut mine off, man.

Speaker 5 Give me some McDonald's, man, so I can get in shape.

Speaker 27 You know what I mean?

Speaker 55 We got legendary broadcaster Stan Barrett joining us.

Speaker 25 Stan, how you doing?

Speaker 30 Doing great, man. Doing great.

Speaker 75 Nothing like the energy of fight night in Vegas.

Speaker 25 There's nothing like a fight.

Speaker 32 Vegas was...

Speaker 25 Vegas was built on fighting.

Speaker 31 Absolutely.

Speaker 25 Yeah, we got the casinos, and we understand that. But there's something about a buzz, the electricity that's in the air, when a big-time fight hits town in Vegas.

Speaker 1 And the funny thing about it is it took a fight like this to get that magic, to get that buzz back in Vegas.

Speaker 1 There have been many fights, but nothing just like this that brings back that feeling of Manny Pacquiao, Mayweather. Absolutely.

Speaker 76 I was here.

Speaker 74 We were here for eight days. I was with ESPN there.
We were here for eight days for that fight.

Speaker 69 ESPN said, we want to own this fight.

Speaker 76 So I was parked here the whole time, and

Speaker 75 you could just feel it ramping up as the week went on. And then by the time we got to the fight, it was unbelievable.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 25 You mentioned,

Speaker 25 you and

Speaker 77 Neil Everett, you got the transition.

Speaker 25 You're going to try to recreate what you guys had on ESPN.

Speaker 25 If I'm not mistaken, I think I read you're going to Twitch. Yes.
So

Speaker 25 you're taking your talents to Twitch.

Speaker 36 Exactly.

Speaker 25 What was the thought process in doing that?

Speaker 76 So our producer, Jeff Anderson,

Speaker 74 is really in tune with the digital space.

Speaker 31 Yes.

Speaker 74 And so he saw that Twitch gave us a lot of functionality to do live because initially

Speaker 74 it was mostly gamers on Twitch.

Speaker 78 Yes.

Speaker 78 And so, you know, exactly.

Speaker 79 So they need a lot of

Speaker 74 functional capability to go live. You got to be able to see the gamers, you got to be able to see the action on the screen.

Speaker 47 So

Speaker 74 we are sort of adapting that for sports. Now, it's already, Chad, you probably know the European soccer guys are already on Twitch and they're doing live shows on Twitch already.

Speaker 74 There's a bunch of radio stations that are streaming their shows on Twitch. So it's,

Speaker 74 you know, we think we found something really, really good in that platform that helps us go live, interact with

Speaker 69 fans who are listening to the show, watching the show.

Speaker 76 They can ask questions, they can comment, and we can deal with them in real time.

Speaker 74 And then we take the show later, we put it on YouTube and all those traditional platforms.

Speaker 40 I like it.

Speaker 25 We're going to get you out of here on this one: prediction. What do you think is going to happen? Canelo, Crawford, Crawford

Speaker 25 taking a big risk, going up, basically, pole vaulting three-weight classes. Canelo is, you know.

Speaker 64 Yeah.

Speaker 25 It's Canelo.

Speaker 74 The thing is, I think it's going to come down to: can

Speaker 76 Canelo handle

Speaker 41 Bud's ability to switch South Part Orthodox.

Speaker 1 Which is why he had boots in camp.

Speaker 62 Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 69 Versus

Speaker 74 Bud's ability to take a punch.

Speaker 40 Right.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 74 I don't know if, sparring-wise, he had anybody who's as big as Canelo in camp who hits with the power of Canelo.

Speaker 34 Canelo hits with.

Speaker 81 Because if you had somebody that big who hits that hard, he wouldn't be a sparring partner.

Speaker 22 Right, exactly.

Speaker 31 He'd be wearing a belt.

Speaker 82 Exactly.

Speaker 47 You know what I mean?

Speaker 74 So I think in the first couple of rounds, I mean, it's going to be interesting to see if Bud feels like

Speaker 26 I can fight him.

Speaker 27 I can stand in the middle and fight him. No.

Speaker 74 Or

Speaker 25 if he's going to box him.

Speaker 41 You know what I mean?

Speaker 25 I don't think he can get lured into trying to stand in the middle and trade with him because

Speaker 78 some heavy hands.

Speaker 74 So

Speaker 74 is it going to be a slug fest or is it going to be a boxing match? A slug fest, advantage Canelo. If it's a boxing match, advantage Bud.

Speaker 38 So we'll see.

Speaker 69 Styles dictate fights.

Speaker 28 Yep, always.

Speaker 25 Good luck to you and Neil on the Endeavor on Twitch. Congratulations on the great success that you had the 25 years at ESPN.

Speaker 40 Thank you, man.

Speaker 25 Appreciate it.

Speaker 74 Hey, man, I'm trying to be like you guys.

Speaker 79 You know what I mean?

Speaker 28 So if you have anybody with any more $100 million contracts, you know, tell them

Speaker 31 you got some people who are interested. All right.
We'll do.

Speaker 31 Good seeing you guys. All right.

Speaker 36 Appreciate you, bro.

Speaker 5 All right. Thank you.
How you doing? I'm good.

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Speaker 85 That's why Jimma Speg, host of the Psychology of Your 20s, sat down with Dr. Henry Ting, Delta's chief health and wellness officer, an instrumental voice behind this travel experiment.

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Speaker 85 Find out more about how travel can support well-being on this special episode of the Psychology of Your 20s, presented by Delta. Fly and live better.
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Speaker 33 Good, man. How are you?

Speaker 25 We're doing amazing.

Speaker 40 Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 25 Now, we hear there's like a like, you got something big that you want to announce. Is there any hint, you know, you want to like Devolve, you want to let us in all right now.

Speaker 50 I don't want to be the worst secret keeper on the planet.

Speaker 92 You know what I mean?

Speaker 93 Yeah, we got some big news today

Speaker 93 about the future and how things are happening with WWE, but it's going to be exciting, and

Speaker 60 I'm thrilled we get to do it here today in the shadow of Canelo Crawford. It's nice.

Speaker 25 Because if I'm not mistaken, WWE and UFC, now you guys are under the same umbrella, TKO through.

Speaker 26 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 93 TKO, it's WWE, UFC, PBR, Pro Bull Riding in there,

Speaker 50 the few other random things, but yeah, it's great to be partnered with him.

Speaker 6 It's great. Dana's a genius.

Speaker 95 Thrilled to work with him, and

Speaker 45 so far it's a wonderful collaboration.

Speaker 25 Is this secret anything to do with WrestleMania

Speaker 25 2027?

Speaker 31 I mean, could it possibly be anything

Speaker 31 in that direction?

Speaker 99 You are in the ballpark.

Speaker 31 I'm in the ballpark.

Speaker 22 You are in the ballpark. There we go.

Speaker 51 For sure. Yeah.

Speaker 46 I'm just going to say, sometimes secrets are hard to keep around here, so there might be rumors floating around.

Speaker 22 I don't know.

Speaker 25 To get in the sport of wrestling, I mean, obviously, you know, obviously, you know, your father-in-law and you guys, you're running, you're doing a great job of this right now, Triple H, doing what you do.

Speaker 25 But as a kid,

Speaker 47 did you always want to wrestle?

Speaker 25 Did you do other things? Or how did you get into the sport of wrestling?

Speaker 94 Yeah, so it's a funny thing is as you grow up, especially then, and it's one of the reasons why I did what I did within the company of creating what we call NXT, that's our developmental system.

Speaker 94 Because there was never a pathway to get into pro wrestling.

Speaker 97 If if you want to be a WWE superstar it's like trying to be a trapeze artist like where do you

Speaker 50 where do you start right

Speaker 95 and I grew up a huge fan really in the back of my mind you know man that if I could do one if you would say to me as a kid what's the one thing you'd want to do be a WWE superstar

Speaker 60 I did all the other sports started bodybuilding and lifting weights when I was 14 with the the mindset of if I want to be a WWE so I go to the shows see these guys huge I gotta get I gotta get bigger I I got to get there.

Speaker 38 So

Speaker 95 you had to find a way.

Speaker 55 I was lucky in that somebody pointed me in the right direction.

Speaker 31 I had met a

Speaker 58 world's strongest man, Ted R. Cedi, at the time.

Speaker 31 First guy to bench 700 pounds.

Speaker 66 First guy to bench press 700 pounds.

Speaker 71 And had a brief stint in the wrestling business.

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 66 Parlayed that into business for himself.

Speaker 31 Very smart guy.

Speaker 95 You know, I had met him and asked him, how do I get in the business?

Speaker 66 And he would always try to discourage me from it.

Speaker 95 And then eventually, when I bugged him enough, he gave me a number.

Speaker 45 I went and trained with Killer Kowalski.

Speaker 59 Killer Kowalski.

Speaker 50 Yeah, fortunately for me, it took off.

Speaker 37 But now

Speaker 6 we've changed that game.

Speaker 101 We've tried to make the pathway.

Speaker 50 So we recruit heavily in colleges. We have an NIL program.

Speaker 95 We call it Next in Line.

Speaker 101 We have NIL kids across the country that have an interest in WWE, that are part of promoting us to all these events that they go to.

Speaker 66 And then we work with all those kids that have an interest in this or maybe didn't know they had an interest, but

Speaker 95 you know better than anybody, right, like the NFL,

Speaker 71 it's such a small percentage of folks that get in there.

Speaker 2 You can be the best of the best and all of that, but then there's this moment in time where you have

Speaker 44 whatever the slightest

Speaker 50 difference and you're not going to make it.

Speaker 50 And this is a career choice for them where, you know, they come to Orlando, Florida, they see our facilities, they think, wow, this is like being in a D1 college.

Speaker 6 I have that level of professionalism.

Speaker 54 Let me give this a shot.

Speaker 6 And it's performance.

Speaker 50 So it's athletic performance.

Speaker 60 And if they can make it work for them, then the sky's the limit, just like any other sport.

Speaker 102 You got the base,

Speaker 25 that training center is in Orlando, right?

Speaker 55 It's in Orlando. We're in the process of building a new one now in Orlando.

Speaker 41 It'll be even bigger and better.

Speaker 95 Our main offices are in Connecticut and LA,

Speaker 103 but Orlando's the developmental.

Speaker 1 When I think about all you've accomplished, your thought growing up as a kid,

Speaker 1 always wanting to wrestle, everything that you poured into the sport,

Speaker 1 it's pouring back into you now.

Speaker 1 Are you able to have a life outside of wrestling at all where you can have other hobbies, other passions that you actually enjoy?

Speaker 50 Yeah, though, you know, I'm going to go on a limb and say, probably like both of you, I enjoy fitness, I enjoy being in the gym.

Speaker 94 That's my...

Speaker 46 That's my solitude, that's my church, that's my place.

Speaker 61 I go to ground and have that foundation for me is training and all of that.

Speaker 95 But then other than that, it's my wife and my kids.

Speaker 22 You know,

Speaker 55 my family, you know, it's not like my wife wasn't in the business as well.

Speaker 95 My family, all of that.

Speaker 45 So sometimes hard to get away from, but

Speaker 60 I say this to people all the time,

Speaker 53 and I think you two will get this.

Speaker 60 People talk about work-life balance. It's bullshit.
There is no such thing.

Speaker 27 If you want to be great at something, there ain't. No.

Speaker 66 And all you can really do is your best at whatever it is you're doing in that moment.

Speaker 2 So when I'm at work, I try to be at work.

Speaker 46 When I'm with my kids, I try to put work aside and dedicate that time to my kids or my wife or

Speaker 46 whatever that is that we're doing and not sort of be, oh yeah, I'm at my kids.

Speaker 3 Game between places at my kids' game or with them, but I'm on my phone the whole time trying to do business, right?

Speaker 95 I tell people I'm going to be off.

Speaker 92 for an hour or two, I'll pick back up in a little bit, now I'm with them.

Speaker 41 And, you know, that's, it's hard, it's easy to say that, harder to do it, But that's the goal for me.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 103 you know,

Speaker 55 I'm thrilled that at this point in my life, I still get to do what I love.

Speaker 48 You know, a lot of people,

Speaker 58 when they finish football, they finish basketball, they finish wrestling, whatever it is, it all just stops.

Speaker 39 And that's hard to handle.

Speaker 58 For me, it's never stopped. When I couldn't do this anymore, I was already plugged in maybe deeper than I even wanted to be and everything else.

Speaker 58 So, you know, for me, I've been fortunate that that passion that I have for it still continues to this day. And I say this a lot for me, it's almost like now as I get to help these other kids

Speaker 27 grow and

Speaker 60 find success in this business, it's almost like watching your kids do it.

Speaker 58 You know, your own career is fabulous. Your own achievements are incredible.

Speaker 58 When your kids do it, when your kids reach their goal, when they have that moment, you know, it's a different level of pride.

Speaker 58 And I think that's where I'm at with it now is watching these kids succeed and do do what they do to me is almost more than my career was.

Speaker 25 H, how hard is it? Because, and you had Shawn Michaels before you came on, and he was so gifted. You were so gifted at what you did, and it came natural to you.

Speaker 28 And when

Speaker 25 you try to tell someone else how to do it, and they say, well, how? And he was like, why can't you pick that up? Because it was so easy to you. How is it that you, because I think.

Speaker 25 The greater the athlete is probably the harder it is for him to do it because a lot of things were God-given. And he doesn't understand, he or she doesn't understand how they did it.

Speaker 62 He just did it.

Speaker 98 It just came natural. I find that all the time.

Speaker 94 Look, I like to think for myself,

Speaker 54 I think to some degree I was gifted for it, but to some degree I wasn't.

Speaker 56 Sean is one of the most incredible athletes I've ever seen.

Speaker 97 I've seen him, right, and can do stuff.

Speaker 95 And,

Speaker 60 you know, one of my favorite opponents, I've said it all the time, I think he's the greatest in-ring performer of all time, his athletic ability,

Speaker 94 second to none.

Speaker 101 I didn't have that.

Speaker 37 I had to learn the other aspect.

Speaker 60 You know, to me, I don't know, this is reference to my childhood, but to me, I was much more Larry Bird than I was, right?

Speaker 22 Anybody else could.

Speaker 45 Yeah, because he wasn't the most athletic guy, couldn't jump the highest, couldn't run the fastest, but his knowledge is all that stuff, right?

Speaker 55 So I had to put in the work on the other side.

Speaker 41 But I have seen that a million times over where you see guys that are incredible at what we do, and then they try to tell it to somebody else, and I'm like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 41 That's totally wrong.

Speaker 36 Like, you don't even know why what you do do works.

Speaker 55 You know, and

Speaker 50 it's tough for people to get, but it's,

Speaker 99 I'm a big collaborator for stuff.

Speaker 60 So if I'm trying to explain things to somebody or try to get them to a certain place is not working, let somebody else take a stab at it.

Speaker 6 It just takes that one sometimes

Speaker 32 buzzword.

Speaker 98 or the right perspective for somebody to go like, oh, he told me I didn't get it at all.

Speaker 100 What you just said, they get that.

Speaker 94 You know, and that's

Speaker 94 a different take.

Speaker 60 And sometimes they just got to figure it out for themselves.

Speaker 26 For themselves. Yeah,

Speaker 5 no, but

Speaker 25 when growing up and I know you say you came to the sport, so how long have you been in this thing? 30 years?

Speaker 58 Oh, yeah, I started

Speaker 31 92, 93. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 25 So by that time, Vince had already kind of like taken it from WWF to WWE.

Speaker 25 But we were talking to Sean, and I grew up in the South, and so it was Georgia Championship Wrestling with Gordon Solomon.

Speaker 33 Yes.

Speaker 25 And wrestling was regional. You had the Mid-Atlantic, you had the Mid-West, you had the Southwest.

Speaker 27 And so now

Speaker 25 what Vince was able to do was bring all of that under one umbrella. And so now you didn't have, you know, and it had the NWA also.

Speaker 31 So I remember all the time.

Speaker 55 NWA, AWA, yeah, and it was all over the place, yeah.

Speaker 25 So my grandfather used to take my brother and I to all these little, you know, to see Bobo Brazil and Crusher Blackwell and Andre the Giants.

Speaker 62 We saw all Dusty Rhodes, all these guys coming up.

Speaker 25 And I remember like, man.

Speaker 35 Man, I want to be a wrestler.

Speaker 25 But then football kind of kind of like captivated me. Was it like that for you? When you saw it for the first time, did you understand like, man,

Speaker 35 I kind of like that. I kind of digged.

Speaker 36 I think I could do that.

Speaker 59 I did.

Speaker 101 I did. I was a kid and very young, but man, it was for me.

Speaker 44 And I was fortunate. I grew up in the,

Speaker 60 born and raised in New Hampshire, right? So Boston sports for me.

Speaker 41 I grew up in the Larry Bird era, the Parrish and all those guys, right, Mikhail and all that.

Speaker 58 I also grew up in the Carl Yostrumski and the Red Sox era, right?

Speaker 60 Like everybody, that Boston sports scene was incredible.

Speaker 101 But for me, I was aware of all that, and I'd go to some of that. But the thing that resonated for me was wrestling.

Speaker 101 And like you, I was fortunate when cable came in where I lived, I got the WWE, but I got the NWA, I got Georgia Championship, I got Florida, I got Texas, I got the AWA.

Speaker 53 So I had this

Speaker 50 well-rounded sort of view of what the business was because they were all slightly different.

Speaker 22 Vince was a genius that saw cable coming and the regional going away and national becoming the thing and eventually global.

Speaker 60 To some degree for the talent, that time frame was almost better because the guys that you saw that were successful at the highest of levels, like in WWE, had been places for years, honing their craft.

Speaker 26 Yes, yes.

Speaker 50 Right? You just read about them in magazines, but maybe you hadn't seen them.

Speaker 25 You got wrestling magazine. I don't know if they still have, though.
Do they still have wrestling?

Speaker 31 They do, but

Speaker 45 who reads magazines in our house? You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 31 Everybody, everything's wrong. It's a click now.

Speaker 41 Yeah, it's a click, and you're there, and you get all the information.

Speaker 60 But yeah, the time was different, and that ability to go all those different places.

Speaker 6 Now we get these kids that come in from college in a couple of years.

Speaker 38 If they start doing this and they start training, hopefully within a couple of years, they're on NXT.

Speaker 66 They've got national exposure on the CW that

Speaker 99 people could have only dreamed of years ago.

Speaker 6 And it's changed. And you know what's an interesting thing is like you talk about football.

Speaker 100 If you go slightly back just before my generation of it,

Speaker 24 football wasn't the money-making thing that it is now.

Speaker 99 So you had guys like Wahoo McDaniel, Big Cat Ernie Ladd, who were wrestling in the offseason.

Speaker 25 Wahoo played for the Broncos.

Speaker 28 Ernie Ladd played for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Speaker 41 Absolutely.

Speaker 98 And for a lot of them, they would play if they, you know, unless they were top guys, like the money was better year-round in wrestling than it was for the short season of football.

Speaker 95 And a lot of them gravitated out of football and into wrestling full-time.

Speaker 25 Some of them had to get part-time jobs because you're right.

Speaker 25 There was not, I mean, we look at it now, you see guys making 50 and 60 million dollars. Even it wasn't like that.

Speaker 46 No, there were very few guys making six figures.

Speaker 41 Yeah, right?

Speaker 101 Like very, very, very few. Very few.

Speaker 25 Basically, basically, only your quarterbacks. When I got in the league, you know, your quarterbacks, and then you had the top defensive lineman like Reggie White and Bruce Smith.

Speaker 25 But for the most part, there were not a whole lot of guys making $500,000 or a million dollars. That was just unheard of money back then, unless you were the top, top, top guys.

Speaker 33 What do you think is the ideal?

Speaker 25 So, because you have to be, obviously, you have to be able to be able to entertain, but you have to be athletic, you have to be able to scale, be skilled, and people don't realize that, okay, yes, entertainment, but you hit the mat.

Speaker 31 Oh, without a doubt. You hit the table.

Speaker 35 You run into the turnbuckle.

Speaker 25 The accumulation of that, it adds up, H?

Speaker 103 Absolutely. You know, our business is like getting in a car crash every day.

Speaker 33 It is.

Speaker 104 You know,

Speaker 60 and it's day after day, and there's no offseason, and so it's a tough, very physical business.

Speaker 24 It's not for everybody.

Speaker 25 But what people think, you know what they think, H, people think because they only see the SummerSlam and they only see the big events that that's all they're in.

Speaker 31 That's all they do.

Speaker 25 No, that thing is like, and

Speaker 25 Sean Michael was saying he traveled in the beginning 286 days.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 37 Yeah, we all did.

Speaker 95 Then. Now it's different now, right?

Speaker 94 It's much more a weekly, you know, you're wrestling once, twice a week.

Speaker 95 It's a lot better family life for people, right?

Speaker 97 We have brought that into a place.

Speaker 94 When you're trying to build a business, you got to do it differently.

Speaker 73 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 94 And now it's in a different place, and the money is different, and everybody's living different.

Speaker 66 But the physicality is still there.

Speaker 36 It's still the same.

Speaker 98 It's not there.

Speaker 61 And, you know, I say this to everybody.

Speaker 44 The casualty rate's 100%.

Speaker 45 No one walks away unscathed in our business.

Speaker 2 You're going to get injured. It's going to happen.

Speaker 25 It's just a matter of win.

Speaker 98 Yeah, and you've got to deal with that. And then

Speaker 94 if you have the right mindset and you're driven, you come back better and you come back harder.

Speaker 100 But the thing in our business that's interesting is it's not always the most athletic.

Speaker 46 And you said it a little bit ago that sometimes the most athletic guys, it comes easy to them.

Speaker 92 And

Speaker 53 when shit gets hard,

Speaker 47 they don't push as hard.

Speaker 46 In our business, sometimes I can make you a list of the guys, you know, Hulk Hogan,

Speaker 44 love him to death, biggest star of all time, not the most athletic guy on the planet.

Speaker 60 You know, John Cena, not the most athletic guy on the planet.

Speaker 60 You know, a lot of those guys.

Speaker 44 The list of people who are incredibly,

Speaker 105 they have incredible charisma, incredible crowd presence, incredible ability to control a crowd and tell a story.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 6 That's more important.

Speaker 93 Charisma is king in our business.

Speaker 41 Absolutely.

Speaker 49 So the athleticism, doesn't matter how fast you can run,

Speaker 98 doesn't matter how much you can bench press, just matters if you look like you can, right?

Speaker 6 And so

Speaker 60 it's a different mindset, right?

Speaker 25 That's what made Rick special.

Speaker 64 Rick could talk.

Speaker 41 Rick could talk.

Speaker 25 Dusky Rose, guys that can talk and can, like,

Speaker 25 limousine ride.

Speaker 6 When you talk about those folks in that timeframe, when people can still quote their promos from that generation

Speaker 6 after all these years, like, you know,

Speaker 22 half the kids today that are running around doing the limousine ride, jet flying, you know, alligator shoot wear and Rolex wear, they're doing all that stuff.

Speaker 94 I don't even know if they've ever seen Rick wrestle.

Speaker 22 You know,

Speaker 22 and

Speaker 45 the same, you know, with Hogan, people can still repeat that, his catchphrases and his moments, The Rock, you know, Stone Cold, all those people.

Speaker 60 But Dusty Rhodes, people still talk about his hard times promo.

Speaker 101 Yeah.

Speaker 41 Right?

Speaker 47 Like, those things are iconic.

Speaker 58 That is what we do, right?

Speaker 60 We are, I say this a lot of times when people don't understand, like if we're talking to network executives, they're trying to figure out what we are.

Speaker 2 I say, we are less boxing and more Rocky.

Speaker 48 Right.

Speaker 2 We're not the sport.

Speaker 50 We're a movie about the sport.

Speaker 98 And Rocky is really a love story.

Speaker 47 Yes.

Speaker 41 Right?

Speaker 61 Just happens to have boxing as a background and the metaphor for all the things he has to overcome and do.

Speaker 60 Our business, when you talk about that emotion, you talk about the storytelling, you talk about all those things, that's really where it resonates.

Speaker 6 And those are things, it's why our business is evergreen.

Speaker 54 Very few people, unless you're an incredible

Speaker 60 student of the technical aspects of it, nobody goes back and watches a Super Bowl from five years ago.

Speaker 61 People will go back and watch WrestleMania 3 to this day.

Speaker 48 Yep. You know, 40 years ago.

Speaker 26 They still watch Hogan and Andre.

Speaker 99 Yeah, 40 years later, they're still watching it, right?

Speaker 60 It's the story, it's the spectacle, it's all those things.

Speaker 94 That's where we're different.

Speaker 50 We're a spectacle in storytelling.

Speaker 54 The athleticism is a huge factor of it.

Speaker 95 I don't want to negate it.

Speaker 49 The in-ring product, all that stuff.

Speaker 45 But that ability to speak, that ability to control the crowd, that innate charisma, you know, that

Speaker 55 in other sports,

Speaker 94 if Connor McGregor comes back and fights in UFC tomorrow, he's the biggest draw they have.

Speaker 25 Because he can sell it.

Speaker 45 And he hasn't won a fight in what, 10 years?

Speaker 22 He's fought probably in almost 10 years, right?

Speaker 94 Like, it's incredible.

Speaker 50 Mike Tyson, Mike Tyson announces he's going to do something here.

Speaker 46 Everybody pays attention because

Speaker 60 he has that charisma and that innate ability to make you want to pay attention.

Speaker 26 H, thank you, man. Thank you.

Speaker 26 Appreciate you coming in.

Speaker 84 Thank you for having me, man. Appreciate you, bro.
Honor.

Speaker 62 It's good to see you.

Speaker 35 Thank you very much.

Speaker 25 Anytime you need us, you know how to get into it.

Speaker 36 Appreciate it, man. Appreciate you.
Same here.

Speaker 97 Thank you. Hopefully, we'll see you at a show soon.

Speaker 31 Appreciate you.

Speaker 1 I can wrestle if you need me.

Speaker 22 Let me know.

Speaker 22 What are you doing, guys?

Speaker 34 Good to see you.

Speaker 25 That was,

Speaker 25 he actually runs the,

Speaker 25 took over for his father law.

Speaker 26 Undertaker. Yeah.

Speaker 22 WWE.

Speaker 25 That's Triple H.

Speaker 1 Hey, shit.

Speaker 62 The Undertaker. Doom.

Speaker 22 What's up, bro?

Speaker 27 I'm good. Good to see you, Undertaker.

Speaker 68 What's that, baby? What's up, bro? Good.

Speaker 5 You're good. Have a good thing.
I'm good to see you.

Speaker 25 Good side over here.

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Speaker 87 Take that gratitude from those experiences into your daily life.

Speaker 85 That's why Jimma Speg, host of the Psychology of Your 20s, sat down with Dr. Henry Ting, Delta's chief health and wellness officer, an instrumental voice behind this travel experiment.

Speaker 8 I love that the dream trip versus, you know, the around the corner trip both have very similar mental and social perks and benefits.

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Speaker 85 Find out more about how travel can support well-being on this special episode of the Psychology of Your 20s, presented by Delta. Fly and live better.
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Speaker 25 Man,

Speaker 25 how you been?

Speaker 31 I've been good, man. Busy, but we're good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, busy is a good thing.

Speaker 27 Busy is a good thing.

Speaker 25 Man, you you know that meme, everybody should, that meme.

Speaker 75 I got more memes than I know what to do with, man.

Speaker 75 Is that when you know you made it when you got memes?

Speaker 31 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 26 You actually made it.

Speaker 1 You have officially arrived once you have memes.

Speaker 25 So how you been?

Speaker 26 I've been good, man.

Speaker 106 Really busy.

Speaker 72 A lot of things happening with WWE.

Speaker 81 Yeah, just trying to trying to lend a hand where I can.

Speaker 25 Yeah. When you got into the sport, did you have any idea that the WWE would be this, would grow to what it's become?

Speaker 110 Absolutely not, man.

Speaker 75 We were just trying to

Speaker 57 fill up arenas, make a little money,

Speaker 75 and maybe sell, you know, back then when I started, there were four pay-per-views, right?

Speaker 70 There was the big four, and you know,

Speaker 70 that was it. We were trying to sell pay-per-views, sell some t-shirts, and

Speaker 105 no clue, no clue that Netflix was going to come along and the kind of money money that

Speaker 111 these deals are

Speaker 67 just crazy.

Speaker 72 You can't imagine, you know, back in 1990,

Speaker 26 what 2025 is going to look like.

Speaker 25 And talking to Rick, Rick was talking about how he used to wrestle in high school gymnasium, and he would wrestle three or four or five times in a single day

Speaker 25 in order to, you know, because there was no money. I mean, you guys making $50 or guys making just enough money to put gas in their car and go to the next locale.

Speaker 25 And here we are, guys are making real, real, real, real money. They got families, you know, they got wives, they got kids, they have nice homes now.

Speaker 25 It's a different era now for wrestlers.

Speaker 26 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 113 Yeah,

Speaker 111 we call that paying your dues, right?

Speaker 110 When you come up.

Speaker 81 And it's not even like, there's so many times where I would have to go and help set up the ring

Speaker 105 just to get on the card.

Speaker 35 Right.

Speaker 70 And maybe even have to sometimes chip in for some, you know, not make any money, right?

Speaker 112 That's just how important ring time was.

Speaker 105 And when we didn't have a, you know, you didn't have a PC or

Speaker 77 all the, you know, the ways to prepare as we do now.

Speaker 110 And

Speaker 73 I was telling a story earlier about the first time that I went to, I went to like an HR block, paid my, like, I'm one year in the business.

Speaker 81 Right.

Speaker 106 And I got this bag full of receipts, right, that I'm giving this guy.

Speaker 109 And he says,

Speaker 70 and he's reading it like I wrote it down wrong.

Speaker 63 He said, you drove,

Speaker 67 in eight months, you drove 45,000 miles. And I was like, yes, sir.

Speaker 110 And he says,

Speaker 110 and you made

Speaker 114 12,226.

Speaker 63 And a guy was serious, he was an old-timer, right?

Speaker 105 And he pulls his glasses down, he looks over his glasses, he goes, son, can I give you some advice?

Speaker 72 He said, you might want to find a different line of work.

Speaker 106 But I mean, but yeah, that was paying your dues, dues, and now here we are.

Speaker 110 Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 And speaking of line of work, growing up as a kid, did you actually know you wanted to wrestle from jump, or was there something else you wanted to do? For me, I wanted to be a marine biologist.

Speaker 1 I wanted to be a veterinarian because I was in the animals. I was in the killer whales and dogs of that nature.

Speaker 35 Then football came on.

Speaker 1 And that's what happened.

Speaker 102 Right.

Speaker 73 No, I was a big, big fan as a kid of wrestling.

Speaker 41 But again, I thought I was going to play football.

Speaker 31 Right, right.

Speaker 96 And, you know,

Speaker 70 that was always, I thought that was my dream.

Speaker 2 That was your way out.

Speaker 27 That was my way out.

Speaker 67 I ended up playing basketball.

Speaker 114 And then wrestling kind of came back around.

Speaker 72 You know, I was training at this gym

Speaker 72 between, I think it was between my junior and senior year of college.

Speaker 109 And this guy's working out, and he's like, hey, man, you ought to go through this wrestling school with me.

Speaker 64 And I'm like, man,

Speaker 105 I'm going to try and play some pro ball overseas, right?

Speaker 112 And every day I'd come in, he'd hit me up.

Speaker 114 And then of start kind of catching up with the product again.

Speaker 72 And it was a lot different even then than what it was when I was a kid.

Speaker 106 And I've always kind of been very

Speaker 105 pretty practical and I know what my abilities are and what my abilities aren't.

Speaker 70 And then, you know, I started thinking about it, like, do I want to be the 12th man on a bench in Lithuania

Speaker 32 at 21 or 22 years old? Right.

Speaker 63 And then I, you know, kind of like, well, damn, there's not a lot of big athletic guys in wrestling at the time.

Speaker 106 And that's kind of how it started.

Speaker 110 And once I started training, then it was like, okay, yeah, this is it. This is what I want to do.

Speaker 25 But you mentioned it's a lot different now than it is.

Speaker 77 They got NXT, where they got the training program.

Speaker 25 Triple H was on, he's saying they're building an even bigger

Speaker 25 down in Orlando. That's where they send all the guys that people want to pass through and think they can make it into WWE.
That's where they go through.

Speaker 25 You guys didn't have that, so these guys now have an advantage that you guys didn't.

Speaker 25 And they have guys that come like yourself, and they have Sean Michael, who's the director of that, to go back there and help them guys out.

Speaker 25 Have you found it difficult to be able to share what you know with kids? Because those that can do, those that can't teach,

Speaker 25 you could do, but now sometimes they ask you to teach.

Speaker 31 Yeah.

Speaker 106 No, and that's a great question.

Speaker 75 I think the biggest thing for me is that we have so many athletes now.

Speaker 31 Like we recruit.

Speaker 77 Like we will have people at the combine.

Speaker 31 We go to colleges and all stuff.

Speaker 77 Yeah,

Speaker 77 we go to, you know,

Speaker 113 we'll go to the Combine, we'll go to Pro Days, and

Speaker 31 we got people there

Speaker 54 because we have to continue to feed the system.

Speaker 73 Yes.

Speaker 25 Right?

Speaker 63 When I came up, either you had it, like, this is, I was a fan, I want to do this.

Speaker 73 You have a certain understanding of the business, right?

Speaker 110 Even as a fan. Right.

Speaker 31 But we're getting people that have never been.

Speaker 25 Y'all like the Army now.

Speaker 64 Y'all looking for a few good men.

Speaker 22 A few good men. A few good women.

Speaker 70 But not understand.

Speaker 106 We're taking them from ground zero.

Speaker 110 So

Speaker 56 they're not even, they don't understand the business or any concept.

Speaker 105 So trying to,

Speaker 31 the way that I come up and the way that my process was, yeah, sometimes I get some blank stares like, I have no idea what this man's talking about.

Speaker 72 And then you have to continue to break it down and hopefully they feel.

Speaker 5 We talk, let me ask you.

Speaker 33 H was saying the big, the most important thing is an athletic system.

Speaker 5 It's charisma.

Speaker 25 It's being able to hold this microphone and do what a Ric Flair could do. Do what a Dusty Rhodes can do.

Speaker 62 Do what a Rock can do.

Speaker 25 Do what a John Cena could do. Captivate that audience.

Speaker 33 Hold that audience.

Speaker 25 They're hanging on everything that you say.

Speaker 31 People still can recite that Ric Flair, Jet Set,

Speaker 62 Limousine Ride, Role Leg Square,

Speaker 53 Alligator.

Speaker 31 He's wasted more liquor in a weird than you made in a lifetime.

Speaker 25 They know that.

Speaker 25 Would you say, what do you think is the most important thing that a wrestler needs to have in order to be what you become, what Shawn Michael was, what Rick?

Speaker 72 You have to have the ability to make somebody care, right?

Speaker 2 Bar none.

Speaker 73 There's been a lot of guys that have made a lot of money that could wrestle a lick.

Speaker 79 I mean, if I'm being honest, right?

Speaker 31 But

Speaker 31 again, you put this in their hand. Yeah.

Speaker 70 You're on the edge of your seat like, oh, shit.

Speaker 59 Right?

Speaker 114 That's number one. You have

Speaker 113 They don't have to love you.

Speaker 64 They can hate you.

Speaker 64 It doesn't matter.

Speaker 70 They just have to have...

Speaker 105 You have to be able to make people feel a certain way.

Speaker 35 And if you got that,

Speaker 70 everything else can take care of itself.

Speaker 79 You don't need to be...

Speaker 106 We always say Luth.

Speaker 105 Luthes is an

Speaker 105 old-timer that could really wrestle.

Speaker 96 He could do it all, right?

Speaker 75 So you don't have to be Luthes,

Speaker 63 but man,

Speaker 72 if you can make somebody feel a certain way, then you've got a really good chance of being successful.

Speaker 25 That's dope. If I ask you, give me your Mount Rushmore wrestlers.
If I get you get four heads to put on there, the greatest wrestlers of all time, who would you put up there?

Speaker 73 So, again, I go back to who

Speaker 70 were the most, I guess, instrumental in the history of wrestling.

Speaker 109 And I put Andre the Giant on there,

Speaker 59 Hulk Hogan,

Speaker 114 Stone Cold,

Speaker 112 and the fourth,

Speaker 73 Ric Flair.

Speaker 47 I think those

Speaker 63 guys are synonymous with the history of our industry, right?

Speaker 106 Now, there's been guys that are better talkers.

Speaker 41 Yes.

Speaker 73 Other guys have been better wrestlers.

Speaker 112 But for guys that had impact,

Speaker 31 those are my four.

Speaker 25 And a lot of people don't,

Speaker 25 really, Andre was at the very, very beginning, because Andre started. I remember him.
I saw him in Baxley, Georgia.

Speaker 25 When it was Georgia Championship Wrestling. Because it was, you know, South, it was, you know, you had mid-Atlantic, you had the Midwest, you had Georgia, Florida, you had Southwest.

Speaker 25 And so I got an opportunity to see him, and I just remember as a kid looking,

Speaker 25 like, there ain't nobody, there's no man in the world ever been this big. You're right.

Speaker 31 Yeah.

Speaker 70 And what most people didn't understand with Andre, and this is what he was doing back then,

Speaker 106 he was in a different place

Speaker 75 every day, right?

Speaker 70 He would be down in Mid-South, and then he would be in California, and then he would go to Japan.

Speaker 77 He was the international superstar long before anybody else.

Speaker 70 He was the first guy that was on Johnny Carson and all of those shows.

Speaker 31 And

Speaker 25 he didn't talk, but people was in awe of his size.

Speaker 25 Nobody had ever seen a man that big. He had never seen a man with his hand that wore a size 23 ring.
And whatever size he was, he weighed 500 pounds.

Speaker 5 He could step over seven feet tall.

Speaker 25 So, like, am I ever going to see somebody that size again in my life?

Speaker 31 I better enjoy this.

Speaker 102 Yeah, and it's just a spirit.

Speaker 57 I remember going, I grew up in Houston, and I I remember him coming to Houston Wrestling, which was the Sam Houston Coliseum there.

Speaker 41 I think I might have been 10 or 12 years old, and got close enough

Speaker 70 to shake his hand, and it was just like...

Speaker 59 It was like a catcher's mix.

Speaker 31 Oh, my hand was lost.

Speaker 72 But then, 10 years later, I'm in the same dressing room with Andre the Giant.

Speaker 1 That's dope. That's dope.

Speaker 59 Now that's a full circle moment.

Speaker 96 Yeah, and.

Speaker 25 I remember when him and Big John still at fault.

Speaker 67 Dude, I'll just say this about Andre.

Speaker 113 If he wants to be alone, he can be alone.

Speaker 25 I mean, Rick was telling stories like: if he liked you, he liked you.

Speaker 25 If he didn't like you, he didn't like you, and there was nothing nobody could say or do, and the match was going to go how he said it was going to absolutely.

Speaker 26 And what are you going to do?

Speaker 41 What are you going to do with Andre?

Speaker 31 Whatever he says.

Speaker 33 That's exactly what you're going to do.

Speaker 25 Now that we see the UFC, all this is under one umbrella: UFC, you know,

Speaker 25 the boxing

Speaker 79 and PBR

Speaker 25 I mean and you see the crossover peeling you see this big because I guess this is like I mean this fight here is as big the buzz of electricity that you have like Pacquiao and and

Speaker 35 yes

Speaker 25 if this is coming because the way you guys put on a SummerSlam and you SummerFest and the way you guys do that

Speaker 25 this is kind of like similar to the buzz that this is creating is very similar to what you guys do.

Speaker 73 Yeah, well, again, this is a

Speaker 73 this may very well be the fight of the decade, right?

Speaker 31 I mean,

Speaker 70 these kind of fights just don't come along.

Speaker 37 No problem.

Speaker 114 And there's just something

Speaker 105 different about this caliber of fight, right?

Speaker 106 I mean, I was at De La Holla and Trinidad and Tyson and Linux.

Speaker 63 Yeah. Like, it's just a different kind of buzz.

Speaker 54 And then when you put the machine of

Speaker 31 TKO and

Speaker 68 Netflix behind you.

Speaker 25 You got your guy Turkey.

Speaker 34 Turkey. Yeah, Turkey.

Speaker 34 Yeah, his excellency.

Speaker 63 I mean, and he is such a huge sports fan, man. It's just, this is crazy, the buzz and

Speaker 70 the attention that's going to be on this fight this weekend.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm excited.

Speaker 60 Do you see any,

Speaker 25 when you watch today, and I know you're still a fan of the sport, when you watch today, do you see anybody, any young undertakers coming up?

Speaker 106 It's hard. I mean, I see a lot of people that are coming up that are going to be, that have potential to be stars.

Speaker 73 Now, whether

Speaker 111 they're characters or what they are similar to mine, like, I guess the closest within the past few years, obviously, was Bray Wyatt.

Speaker 70 We lost him last year, but he was

Speaker 31 in that category of Undertaker-esque.

Speaker 57 Yeah, I don't know that anybody's really honed in there, but we have a lot of of young talent coming up.

Speaker 70 And it'll probably be debuting really soon because the machine, again, you got to do it fresh, yeah.

Speaker 25 Did you pick the name Undertaker or did he give you that name?

Speaker 70 That name was given to me by Vince.

Speaker 70 He had this envisioned in his mind, this character.

Speaker 73 And basically, he needed a big guy with very limited personality.

Speaker 5 I'm your guy.

Speaker 70 Yeah, so again, but it was something that resonated with me.

Speaker 109 When he was showing, everything was on these big storyboards, and I'm in his office, and he's showing me this.

Speaker 112 And

Speaker 70 immediately my brain is like, oh, this is

Speaker 70 like I knew, I didn't know what it was going to become, but I knew it was different and I knew it was special.

Speaker 102 And yeah, I was like, yeah, this is pretty cool.

Speaker 25 How many people over the last 15 years have called you by your real name? Or everybody just call you Undertaker?

Speaker 102 Most people call me Taker.

Speaker 105 Taker or Dead Man, right?

Speaker 81 Dead Man was my nickname.

Speaker 110 And yeah, sometimes people, you know, they'll say Mark and I don't even turn around.

Speaker 81 But if I hear Taker, I know, hey, what's up?

Speaker 31 Or Dead Man.

Speaker 72 But it's kind of funny, like, when you're in public places and, you know, somebody, hey, Deadman, and everybody's kind of looking around, like, what the hell is wrong with him?

Speaker 25 What do you think the number one story that resonate with wrestling fans?

Speaker 31 The The number one,

Speaker 72 they have to, again, it goes back to that connection that I was talking about.

Speaker 67 If they're invested in you and they care about,

Speaker 31 so one of the things that

Speaker 113 a lot of guys, it takes them a while to figure out because they're so athletic now. Right.

Speaker 72 That that's what they want to put.

Speaker 41 That's what they want to display.

Speaker 78 They want to display.

Speaker 73 They want to display their athleticism.

Speaker 75 And that's great. Right.
But at the end of the day,

Speaker 114 your audience will get desensitized.

Speaker 54 or you have to continue to push the influence boundary, right?

Speaker 73 Like, okay, I've seen you do a double backflip off the top rope onto the floor to somebody, and I've seen that a couple times.

Speaker 110 Now what do you got for me?

Speaker 31 Right. Right?

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 72 if you can get them invested in the character, and if somebody does that character wrong, now you got them.

Speaker 106 Yeah. Right? Because that's what it's all about.

Speaker 72 If you love somebody, you're going to pay money to see that dude kick the other dude's ass.

Speaker 102 Right.

Speaker 67 Or if you don't like that guy for a reason, I want this guy to whoop his ass, right?

Speaker 31 I'm going to go.

Speaker 25 Whether he wins, I want somebody to beat him or I want him to win, but I'm going to go see it.

Speaker 106 That's the gist of what we do.

Speaker 32 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 109 We storytell and we try to get people invested in the characters.

Speaker 105 Wrestling isn't, and I tell people this a lot, especially the young guys, when you were asking me earlier.

Speaker 57 Wrestling isn't about wrestling moves.

Speaker 105 Wrestling's about telling stories.

Speaker 32 We use the moves to help tell the story.

Speaker 48 But it's all on a connection.

Speaker 114 And

Speaker 109 that's the biggest thing.

Speaker 113 Once that light bulb goes off,

Speaker 72 then you got a good chance of doing well.

Speaker 88 I like that.

Speaker 80 You got anything you want to add, Ocho? Nah, that was it. That was good.

Speaker 34 Man, it's been amazing.

Speaker 25 I mean, to sit down and to watch, like growing up, like I said, I've been a fan and know

Speaker 50 the wrestling and to see you at H and to see Shawn Michaels.

Speaker 25 And I sat down with Rick and I sat down with John Cena and to like, like you said, to watch guys on television, and all of a sudden, through this job, allowed me to sit down and sit across from you, man.

Speaker 25 It is indeed an honor.

Speaker 102 I appreciate you guys making time for me.

Speaker 73 This is,

Speaker 49 I enjoy y'all.

Speaker 29 I love y'all's banter.

Speaker 26 I've been big fans of y'all's career.

Speaker 73 That other career you guys have.

Speaker 34 I appreciate it.

Speaker 38 Yes, sir. I appreciate it.
All right, man.

Speaker 68 Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Speaker 34 Thank you, boss.

Speaker 25 It's a pleasure, baby.

Speaker 25 How are you doing?

Speaker 22 I'm better now. I'm with you, too.

Speaker 1 I like it. I like it.

Speaker 25 I like it. Welcome to Nightcap.
Well, daycap, Norman Daycap.

Speaker 8 So, how have you been?

Speaker 74 Good?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I'm here instead of SmackDown.

Speaker 22 So,

Speaker 5 get the night off.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 25 Look, everybody knows your famous father.

Speaker 5 Who's that?

Speaker 22 The nature boy.

Speaker 62 The legend.

Speaker 25 Growing up watching your father, is this what you always wanted to do?

Speaker 22 No. No.

Speaker 8 I don't think growing up in the era that my dad wrestled and being an athlete and seeing what the women were doing at that time, I wasn't like, oh, I could be like that.

Speaker 8 They were just so glamorous and sometimes in bikinis, but whipped cream bikinis.

Speaker 22 It just wasn't like,

Speaker 8 I don't know.

Speaker 8 It wasn't a dream of mine, but my little brother wanted to be just like my dad.

Speaker 8 Yeah, and he had a really bad drug addiction, so I thought if I started wrestling, that we could wrestle together. And he ended up passing away, but now it's like, I'm living both our dreams.

Speaker 8 So I just thank him for having the guts to do it.

Speaker 1 So if wrestling wasn't your dream and it was a dream of your brothers,

Speaker 1 what would you have done if you didn't transition into wrestling?

Speaker 31 I don't know.

Speaker 22 You know?

Speaker 7 I think personal training or something within the sports realm.

Speaker 1 That's a good one.

Speaker 8 That's what I always played sports. Right.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 1 Something there.

Speaker 102 That's dope.

Speaker 25 You received a lot of online hate because you came back from an injury and you immediately got a title shot.

Speaker 90 Yes.

Speaker 25 And how, look, because everybody's probably saying

Speaker 25 you got fast track because you was Ric Flair's daughter. And so there was all, you probably always had to deal with hate because of your famous father.
And you probably

Speaker 25 were able to deal with it a lot better than others. Not in the beginning, but as you got older because you had to deal with it for so long.

Speaker 16 Kind of.

Speaker 8 Well, playing sports growing up, like no one cared what you looked like. Right.
And like, also, if you're the best player, you were the best player. Or team captain or hardest worker in the room.

Speaker 8 Like no one gave a shit, excuse me, no one cared

Speaker 8 who your dad was. They might have wooed at me.
So like I was used to that, but

Speaker 8 being in the entertainment industry that also,

Speaker 8 you know, it is, it's sports and entertainment.

Speaker 8 I just wasn't prepared for the online hate dealing with like why does she look like her dad?

Speaker 90 I don't know, I'm his daughter.

Speaker 22 Things like that.

Speaker 68 Like I'm like, why is that like such a a big deal?

Speaker 8 But I definitely obviously got in the door easy because of my dad. But there's,

Speaker 22 I mean, you don't do what I've done.

Speaker 26 Yeah, you got to put it on.

Speaker 34 Oh, I did everything.

Speaker 8 Like, I've carved out my own path.

Speaker 8 But I still have that chip on my shoulder.

Speaker 8 Because it's like, no matter what you do, no matter how many firsts you've had or how many awards, accolades, or best match of the night, it's still like, oh, Ric Flair.

Speaker 8 So, but it's okay. Like,

Speaker 8 you need haters in this world, right?

Speaker 34 If you don't have haters, you got a problem.

Speaker 1 Have you been able to deal with that and navigate having the haters regardless of the work and understanding?

Speaker 22 I know I have.

Speaker 68 When I first started, it was hard.

Speaker 8 But I think it also propelled me to where I am today.

Speaker 30 Right.

Speaker 8 Like, it made me, like, I think, work that much harder.

Speaker 25 You mentioned, like, when you was growing up and your dad, the women, it's not like now,

Speaker 25 you and Tori Wilson.

Speaker 8 When I was growing up. No, and the women definitely paved the way.
They just weren't given the opportunity or the platform to show the world what they could do.

Speaker 8 So did, I mean, they had to do all of that

Speaker 8 so we could do all of this. And I'm definitely aware of that.

Speaker 25 But the women, I grew up watching your dad very young age.

Speaker 25 You know, basically, they were the fabulous moolah.

Speaker 5 That was really the only move.

Speaker 33 And, you know,

Speaker 25 you would see one woman's match. a month if you were lucky if that if you were lucky they were just eye candy that was it and uh but now you guys you know you and bianca Belair and all these,

Speaker 25 and Sky, you guys get center stage. You guys get events.

Speaker 5 We do.

Speaker 25 You guys get main event.

Speaker 5 When you think about it, like, man, I got 20,000 people cheering.

Speaker 22 Oh, I've had like 101,000 people at AT ⁇ T.

Speaker 22 So I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 22 That's what I'm talking about, Charlotte.

Speaker 8 I'm the first main event at MetLife. No,

Speaker 8 I think for me,

Speaker 8 what's

Speaker 8 still like, I still can't believe I'm here is I can remember sitting front row when my dad wrestled Sean in Orlando when he retired. And I was a fan of wrestling.

Speaker 8 I was a fan of my dad, but I didn't really follow it. I didn't have a favorite superstar.
I was like, oh, Sting, he's like super sexy.

Speaker 13 Right.

Speaker 8 You know, like Triple H or Andy Orton. But

Speaker 8 I didn't really follow it. So to be sitting front row and then seeing all these grown men crying over my dad retiring and all these woo signs, I was like, oh, my dad means a lot to this business.

Speaker 8 Like I had no idea.

Speaker 8 I think I was a little sheltered from it. So to know that

Speaker 8 that little girl who sat, well, I wasn't little, I was in my early 20s, who sat and watched her father retire, I have now been on more manias. I'm Maine Vitmania, he didn't.

Speaker 8 I have surpassed the things that he's done in the industry.

Speaker 8 But also to be a part of the industry that he helped create, not knowing that this was like the path for me.

Speaker 8 So that's what's like crazy. And it's all happened in 10 years.

Speaker 8 So you can just change the course of your life

Speaker 8 if you put your mind to it.

Speaker 8 I truly believe that.

Speaker 25 When I had him on my show, I talked to him and I asked him, Did he want you to do it? He said, no, he tried to talk you out of it.

Speaker 35 He did.

Speaker 8 Because it's a hard life. I mean, it's a lot different now, but it's just like

Speaker 8 the traveling, it's non-stop. We don't have an off-season.
You're away from your family. You're away from your kids.
It's like, it takes a different kind of breed to do what we do.

Speaker 25 That's what he told me.

Speaker 25 He said, Shannon, if you're single, it's perfect.

Speaker 25 You don't have a wife.

Speaker 28 You don't have a girlfriend.

Speaker 25 You don't have kids.

Speaker 25 You're just to work out. He said, for me, I just work out, wrestle, on to the next.

Speaker 5 Wrestle, work out, on to the next.

Speaker 25 He said, but when you get a family, you have kids, it's a little hard with the travel that you have to do.

Speaker 25 It's not like it was when he originally started because he was telling me there are some days that you have to be able to get.

Speaker 8 Well, it was harder then than it is now.

Speaker 68 It was a lot harder.

Speaker 25 He said, but he was wrestling two, three, four times in a day. Now, you you guys, you know, if you look, you might wrestle once, maybe twice a week.

Speaker 8 It is definitely more family-oriented,

Speaker 8 I will say. Right.
But it's still hard.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 28 It's to travel. It's big, though.

Speaker 68 It's to travel and be, yeah.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 the fact that you guys are so busy, your schedule is so hectic. Yeah.
You travel so many days a day.

Speaker 8 When we don't have an offseason. Unless you're injured, you don't have an off season.
So when I tore my knee, that was the first injury in eight years.

Speaker 1 Right, so then now I'm thinking about outside of football, I have other interests. I have other hobbies that I really like.

Speaker 1 When do you ever have time to enjoy things that you like outside of wrestling?

Speaker 8 Well, the business has evolved. So where before we were on the road four to five days a week, and now we don't have as many live event shows that aren't televised on the weekends.

Speaker 8 So really we just have SmackDown,

Speaker 8 Raw, and if we're overseas, we have like the bigger televised events like WrestlePalooza coming up September 20th.

Speaker 8 So we do have more time, but I think you just have to,

Speaker 8 if there's something that you're really passionate about, you have to set time aside for it.

Speaker 8 Okay. Oh, like Seth Rollins now being on the NFL network.

Speaker 85 Like, that's so great for him.

Speaker 8 Like, he loves football.

Speaker 8 He's able to find something else that he loves to do with wrestling. I know wrestling is his passion, but to see him doing that is really awesome.

Speaker 25 It's been reported WrestleMania 43 is going to be in Saudi.

Speaker 8 Crazy, right?

Speaker 68 Whoa.

Speaker 8 I don't know what's more crazy that it's in Saudi or that it's out of the United States.

Speaker 68 That's what I mean by that.

Speaker 8 Like, it's always been

Speaker 8 our Super Bowl. It's been in the United States since what, 1985?

Speaker 8 So now that it is overseas, that's what makes it like

Speaker 8 how global we are.

Speaker 8 Well, I think that for WWE, we've had so many shows there now for the last couple years. I feel like it is,

Speaker 8 I can't, I don't want to say home, but it is, you know, we wrestle there three or four times.

Speaker 8 So to have a a WrestleMania there I could see

Speaker 8 it being a big deal because we've had crown jewel we're gonna have the Royal Rumble but again WrestleMania has been in the United States right so that's I think the wow like that's that's how big the company has become or World Wrestling Entertainment when you when you you've been around this sport for a while now and you see what Bianca Belair, what she's been able to accomplish.

Speaker 28 I mean, when you see what she's done, how does that make you feel? How proud of you of her?

Speaker 8 Oh, when I saw her sitting at the press conference, I had no idea she had wrestled in Saudi nine times.

Speaker 8 So when she came up to the main roster, she really, when I thought about it, I was like, oh, she's right. Like, she's been in almost every big show there.

Speaker 8 She's the EST for a reason, and she really is a role model inside and outside of the ring.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I was like,

Speaker 8 just

Speaker 8 proud sister sitting there watching her.

Speaker 5 That's dope. Yeah.

Speaker 25 Do you like, you like, you like tag team, you like a partner, or you like solo?

Speaker 5 Oh,

Speaker 8 personally, I like solo.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I don't like sharing the spotlight, but I am in a tag team with the one person I don't mind sharing the spotlight with, and that's Alexa Bliss. And I'm having so much fun.
She's great. She brings out

Speaker 8 definitely a different side of my character for TV, so it's great.

Speaker 25 Oh, yeah. So how much longer? I mean your dad, if your dad still had, if his body would hold up, your dad would still be wrestling.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 25 Is this something that you're like, okay, I got another three years, I got another five years. How much longer do you want to go with this, Charlotte?

Speaker 5 I don't know.

Speaker 8 I want kids one day. That's the thing.
I can do both, but it just depends on the time.

Speaker 31 Like, I don't know.

Speaker 8 Right now, it's...

Speaker 8 What do I have coming up? NXT Homecoming Tuesday. We've got WrestlePalza, Royal Rumble, WrestleMania.
So the shows keep going. It's just whatever happens between now and five years.

Speaker 25 If you were to have kids, are you coming back? Are you once you start that family, you're done?

Speaker 8 I think wrestling's in my blood. I don't know any different.

Speaker 8 Like, I love it, but I do want to be a mom. But I think Trish Stratus coming back and having all these one-offs and she's 50 looks better than half the roster.

Speaker 8 She's killing it. So, I don't think that door will ever close.
It's just, I do know I want to step away to have children. Right.
And when that time is.

Speaker 28 So that's,

Speaker 34 I just saw, hold on, I just saw some

Speaker 25 wrestling couple.

Speaker 25 She's stepping away because she's having a baby.

Speaker 28 I forget who it was.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I forget who it was. Oh,

Speaker 35 my girl. Yes.
Naomi. Yes.

Speaker 35 Yes. Yes.

Speaker 5 Yes. Yes.
Yes.

Speaker 8 Yes. I'm so happy for her.
So she had the championship.

Speaker 68 Yes.

Speaker 31 And then she had to relinquish.

Speaker 8 She had to, yes.

Speaker 8 But she'll definitely come back and win the title again. again.
Right.

Speaker 8 Or take her title back that she never lost. Right.

Speaker 25 So, I mean, that means you'd have to be off at least a year, and you're going to need to probably, you know.

Speaker 8 I couldn't manage on the side with a little baby bump.

Speaker 22 I would just like waddle to the ring.

Speaker 1 I like that. That's dope.

Speaker 25 So, in other words, you're going to be a lifer. You're a wrestling lifer.

Speaker 25 You'll do what Shawn Michaels does. You'll go down to NST, and then you'll teach the women

Speaker 25 to do what you do.

Speaker 8 So here's the thing.

Speaker 8 I do believe when you are good at something, it doesn't mean that you're going to be a good coach.

Speaker 8 I'm not saying that I couldn't be a good coach because I do love it, but right now, what I like more is helping the girls inside the ring.

Speaker 8 My mind isn't there yet to be like, oh, I have to be on the sidelines helping.

Speaker 8 Like, I feel like right now it's more like, all right, you got to keep up with me. Right.
Let me see what you got.

Speaker 8 Like, that's the mentality, so I haven't switched switched off yet to where what that looks like. Triple H has done an incredible job,

Speaker 8 like going from what he meant in the ring to what he means now.

Speaker 8 And I'm just not there yet if that's something that I want to do.

Speaker 25 How difficult is it? Because you know, like, you know, this is entertainment, and you got a script, and you got to follow the script.

Speaker 25 And sometimes you might get injured, but hey, it calls for 30 minutes. We got to give it 30 minutes, even if my back is hurting, my knee is hurting, my elbow, my shoulder.

Speaker 68 That's life.

Speaker 64 Yeah.

Speaker 8 it's life. You just gotta do it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I don't, yeah.

Speaker 25 Have you ever been hurt early in a match and, like, damn, I still got 30 minutes to kill?

Speaker 8 So, I've only been injured one time, but when I tore my ACL, MCL, meniscus, I finished the match. I didn't stop.

Speaker 8 But I think I injured myself more because my ego wouldn't let me stop.

Speaker 8 So, I got injured like in the first two minutes, and I kept going. I finished the 10-minute match.
And I was still losing the match, but I still had to finish it.

Speaker 10 I was like, I'm not stopping this match.

Speaker 14 But it was in front of the troops.

Speaker 8 So it was a tribute to the troops show. And I was like, these people give their lives for us, and I can't finish a silly wrestling match.

Speaker 8 So like, I'm out there going, like, you just have to finish it. But if you go back and watch that match, like, I landed on my head, I landed on my, like, it was an ouch.
It was brutal to watch.

Speaker 8 Like, I needed to be stopped.

Speaker 25 Did you know when you injured yourself, did you know you were injured?

Speaker 8 By the end of it, I was like, I can't walk.

Speaker 31 Like, I could not walk. I couldn't move.

Speaker 1 So, you understood how severe it was?

Speaker 78 I did.

Speaker 8 Well, when I, like, the first ding, I was like, oh, that don't feel right.

Speaker 31 Right.

Speaker 8 And then when I fell off the top rope on my neck, I was like, oh my god, did I break my neck? And then, like, 20 seconds later, I could move, kept going.

Speaker 8 And then I did another signature move that I had, and it, like,

Speaker 8 I don't know, I started the move, and the next thing you know, I was like flat on my face.

Speaker 8 But all the other things that I had to finish the match, I could use on one leg. But I was like, oh, this is

Speaker 68 not

Speaker 68 injured. Something right.

Speaker 8 Something not right. Because I've never, like, you've never been injured before.

Speaker 31 I've never been injured.

Speaker 8 Like broken noses, teeth knocked out, things like that. Exterior things, but not like interior.

Speaker 25 Damn, Charlotte, you mean to tell me you was walking at the end of a match, you was like a jack-o-ladder?

Speaker 90 I was in Germany.

Speaker 8 Yes, and Carmella knocked my teeth out, and like I'm like walking back.

Speaker 7 Actually, the referee Charles actually handed me two of the teeth.

Speaker 8 I was like, put them away!

Speaker 25 To see the excitement on your face, even though through the torn knee and the knocked-out teeth, you can see the passion that you have for what you do.

Speaker 25 And that's why you're so good at what you do, because you don't look at this as an occupation, you don't look at this as a job, you enjoy doing what you do, so you don't see this as work.

Speaker 5 You see this as.

Speaker 8 I wake up every day grateful. Yeah, like you know how some people are like, oh, I got to go to work today.
I'm like, oh, I don't work.

Speaker 5 I love my job. Right.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 25 I love it. Charlotte Blair, ladies and gentlemen, wrestling royalty.

Speaker 26 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 102 And she's on nightcap or daycap.

Speaker 64 Charlotte, thank you so much.

Speaker 14 Thank you. I appreciate it.

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