The Undercover Life of J.P. Lehman

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Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Sir, you are a leech.

You are an absolute leech.

Right after this ad.

For those who are not watching and are merely listening, I do want to describe what you look like.

Go ahead.

I'm trying not to be insulting.

Insult me away.

You look like you just foreclosed on someone's loan.

You just took them out of their house.

It looks like

you caused the financial crisis, frankly.

Thankfully, I did not, but I'm going to take that as a compliment.

You're wearing a suit, power tie.

Again, I'm not saying that you're Mike Pence's stunt double, but

something to that.

Now that I see you face to face for the first time, and thank you for being here, Bob.

Of course.

Hub or

is what I'm calling you.

That is indeed my name, H-U-B-O-R-R.

You have a political affect.

It looks like you're in charge of some shit, man.

And I don't know if that's a good thing.

Some days it is, some days it isn't.

So you're here in New York.

You live in Charlotte?

Correct.

And what is your job as you, hub or?

Day to day, I'm i'm a managing director at a global investment bank that tracks i'm dressed for exactly what you expect me to be dressed for what does that mean it is wall street type stuff i mean i work in the consumer and retail space so i work with companies big and small i take them public so take them put them on the stock market so you can buy their stock I help them raise debt should they need debt to go and you know do whatever they need to do and I sell them so when you want to sell pablo tore and everything associated with it to the highest bidder you call me and i'll help you run a process find a buyer get you the highest valuation all that stuff but i do it for consumer retail companies sporting goods companies stuff like that i work for jefferies we're talking one of the biggest investment banks in the world yes seven billion dollars in net revenue last year five times bigger than the wwe to just pull an example clearly at random and not specific at all for the time being but you're an i banker does your boss at jefferies know that you're here right now Very few, if any, people at Jefferies have any idea, not only that I'm here, but what I may do on nights and weekends.

So your nights and weekends, which

is clearly in the vein of some alter ego, some may say superhero, others may say, depending on how, I don't know, 2008 went for them, super villain.

You're comfortable revealing your identity now

to the world for us.

There is, from my estimation, no stopping it.

So I'd rather go big or go home, Pablo.

I am an independent professional wrestler.

And your name?

JP Lehman, The Wall Street Fat Cat.

Weighing in at 80% equities and 20% fixed income, standing in at too big to fail from Wall Street.

This is JP

Lehman.

What are some of JP Lehman, the Wall Street Fat Cat's moves?

JP Lehman has a deep repertoire of moves in no particular order.

He has the inverted yield curve.

Crown, he's got his health.

He's got his wealth.

It is a typical vertical suplex, but when you put the inverted yield curve spin on it, it actually sounds a little bit better.

That seems effective.

That's a setup move.

Usually I'll set people up with the inverted yield curve.

Excuse me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's just the amuse bouche.

That is merely an appetizer, Pablo.

Wall Street driver by JP Lehman.

There is the IBIDA adjustment, which is closer to the finish.

That is a play on John Cena's finishing move, if you know John Cena.

He does the attitude adjustment.

It is putting someone on my shoulders and dropping them very quickly on their back to the mat.

It's a setup move for my finisher, John Cena, his attitude adjustment move.

Only wrestling fans will know about that.

And then if you work in finance, you know what an EBITDA adjustment is.

And can you please help us explain?

It is when a company is earning X,

but you adjust it up to make it look like or seem as though or pro form it such that they're earning Y.

But look at the rabid look on the eyes of JP Lehman.

He's doing all this in basically a suit, by the way.

Now,

the way I've kind of thought about this, and you tell me if I'm wrong, is the Venn diagram of those who know what John Cena's attitude adjustment is and understand what an EBITDA adjustment is, is probably one person.

And I think it's probably me.

And so, to me, this is sort of a play on words that no one else cares for, understands, or gives a rip about, but it gives me a chuckle.

In that way, you and I are not so different.

I've spent, you know, the preceding 10 to 12 to 15 minutes,

you know, beating up my opponent, and I'd like to finish them off with a move that I call the stock bottom.

The only way Levy can get out of that hole.

Stop!

That

is,

I think, probably obviously for many, you play on the rock bottom.

Exactly.

You do smell what you're cooking.

I smell exactly what I'm.

I appreciate that you smell what i'm cooking as well sometimes occasionally

So I'm not a huge lifelong wrestling fan or anything, as was recently established by our recent investigation into how wrestling infiltrated the 1998 NBA Finals.

But I also don't really see the story of Hub Orr, our episode today, as the story of one of the 100 most popular athletes in American minor league pro wrestling, which he is.

I see this story as a story about the conflict between your job on the one hand and your passion on the other.

And what happens when you realize that nobody who knows you from the former is going to find out about the latter?

That is correct, which is why for the past seven years, it's been possible to maintain, you know, a Wall Street day job with a whatever you want to call this night job.

The events occur at breweries, at VFW halls, at fairgrounds, all over the U.S., frankly, New York, anywhere around the country, 30 to 40 probably independent wrestling promotions, putting on events all around you all weekend

it runs the gamut of every degree and variety of lowbrow venue you can possibly imagine pablo

and i did not realize this admittedly i did not realize that i am at apparently all times including right here in new york city surrounded by wrestlers

but new york city is not where jp leman the unholy amalgamation of J.P.

Morgan and Lehman Brothers, the wrestler you'll you'll meet in a bit here, was born.

It's a long, twisty journey.

It starts with obviously being interested in being a fan of pro wrestling, which I've been my entire life.

And the first step is school.

It's like anything else.

You got to go to school.

And this gray-haired iBanker did.

He went to Duke and then the Kellogg School of Management thereafter.

And then he moved from New York, where he had worked for Morgan Stanley, to North Carolina to work for Jeffries.

But that's also not the school that we're talking about.

Because in 2018, Hub Orr mustered up the courage to ask his wife, the mother of his children, for permission to live his childhood dream and enroll in wrestling school.

And because this woman understood her husband in ways that Hub Orr's co-workers never could or would,

she said

yes.

And for the first month, I went went and I sat outside the venue and I just listened.

I was too, I don't know if scared is the right word, but I was not ready to take the plunge and go in and actually start for a lot of reasons, but one of which is pro wrestling schools have a notorious history of stretching is what they use, the parlance they use, stretching newcomers.

The idea is that you weed out those who are not really interested or in it for the wrong reasons and not going to put in the work.

So I was very concerned about walking in and now they see what you see.

They see gray hair.

They see a dad bod.

They see, you know, not someone who's serious about this.

And then I get stretched and then I'm walking home with like a broken arm.

So in the grand tradition of stretching, which sounds like a version of hazing.

Yeah.

What does that entail?

It entails, from what I understand, this is more of an old school concept, pain.

There's a famous story, whether it's true or not, which all of wrestling is, you could caveat with that, whether it's true or not, of Hulk Hogan's first training session in Florida, broke his leg to see to some extent, will Hulk Hogan come back?

And he did.

Right.

I think this is where I do need to channel my friend Dan Soder, who is an enormous wrestling fan, the world's foremost Macho Man impersonator.

I was always very proud of you, huh?

Yeah, a couple of those birthday gifts weren't the best, but you bought it with your heart.

Yeah.

When you buy all your heart, it's the best gift you can have.

I love you, son.

You're doing a good job.

Yeah.

I do need to channel him because he always reminds that,

yes, there is

a scripted storyline aspect, if I may break that fourth wall already.

But the f ⁇ ing physical risk

is unambiguously real.

Yes.

It hurts.

There's no two ways around it.

It hurts.

The first time you bump, you get in there.

For my first session, it was get on, here's how you bump, do 10 of them.

And you wake up the next morning and your neck, it's right here,

right here in your neck.

It feels as though you've been in a car wreck.

And then through bravery, stupidity, or something in between, you go back and eventually your body becomes,

I don't know if it's okay with it or what, but you develop some sort of antidote to it.

Yeah, I don't know if antidote is medically speaking what's happening there.

Right, exactly.

But you become accustomed to it.

The other thing is when you're in the ring in front of people, be it at a show or a training, there's an adrenaline piece of this that can't be overlooked where your adrenaline is pumping and that masks any of the pain.

But in some, I mean, there are injuries, there have been injuries, it's the way it goes.

Yeah.

I would like to relive with you some of that adrenaline because we have a bit of a montage here.

And if you are not watching this on our YouTube channel, I just got to jump in here to point out that this is worth seeing.

If you're only hearing this, what you got to understand is that when Hub Or describes the surge of adrenaline he gets when he transforms into JP Lehman,

the pain he becomes impervious to includes the pain of wrapping his thighs around someone's face only to be chucked backwards through a table.

Not to mention the pain of getting kicked right in the throat.

Evans, are you kidding me?

Oh!

Oh, I knocked him stupid!

And somersaulting onto a garbage can.

He hasn't had luck, but with that!

Oh!

And also taking a metal ladder right to the head.

But in all of the JP Lehman game tape that I have watched, which has been a lot,

I also don't think that anything compares to the visual, the sheer visual, of him climbing up onto the turnbuckle and then front flipping onto every parent's nightmare.

Oh my god!

What I want your colleagues at this iBank to see is the still frame of you making eye contact with the camera.

And it's the whole, you may be wondering how I wound up in this situation.

You got a tie tied around your head.

You're shirtless.

And what is all around you?

That is Legos.

Legos are in the background.

That is probably of everything you just witnessed, the garbage can,

the

kick to the Adams apple, the being thrown over the top by camera.

The latter drew blood.

That one was pouring blood, but it didn't hurt.

What hurts the most are the Legos.

What penetrates the adrenaline shield is the Lego.

Is the feeling that any dad, I am amongst them, any dad knows from stepping on a Lego, you basically had your entire body flung upon.

That is correct.

I did a top rope front flip onto probably 300 Legos, each of which had between four and seven distinct points on the edges of them.

And so that reaction right there in that free frame is real.

And then the adrenaline kicks in, the pain subsides, and then you go into the, you know, the scripted or, you know, the selling

of the move.

Exactly.

So there's the selling, but then there's the serious.

How serious are the injuries when it comes to like your

battle scars?

So for me,

there are many stories of people severely injured.

For me,

my most serious injury was these two front teeth right here that are fake.

I was training on a Thursday night, I still remember in late November with a couple people, one of whom was a guy named Lucky Ali across the southeast who is now contracted by the WWE.

It goes by Saquon Sugars.

And he dumps me with a body slam, hits the ropes, and says, move on the knee.

Just

easy conversation, move on the knee.

What does move on the knee mean?

Move on the knee means I'm going to drop a knee, you move.

I, unfortunately, heard none of that.

So he drops a knee right across my face.

I don't move.

And I see teeth just everywhere on the map.

It's a Thursday night.

I have to go home to my wife and three children with no two front teeth.

What makes it all worse?

is that it was right before Thanksgiving.

So we have a lineup of friendsgiving parties that weekend

for which I am worried I'm going to show up with no front teeth.

We are new to a town.

So emergency dental appointment, 8 a.m.

the next morning,

where they can't give me full teeth and real teeth, but they give me plaster, which can get me through the weekend.

So I have two plaster teeth right here,

which is great.

Until I get to the Saturday night party with all of my wife's friends and some

people in the Charlotte banking scene.

And

about two glasses of red wine in.

I go to the restroom and take a look in the mirror.

And these plaster teeth are more purple or blue than your sweater right now.

And so I feverishly work to clean these teeth.

And during that teeth cleaning exercise, they all come out.

And so I have two teeth dangling like this.

And that was effectively the end of the party for me.

What did your wife say?

Strike one.

Said you got three strikes.

You're on strike one.

So thankfully, that's been the worst, I would say, or the closest brush with, you know.

Divorce.

Yeah, divorce,

you know, being a social pariah, anything in between.

But otherwise, she's been incredibly supportive.

I'm trying to analogize this to sports.

So forgive me if this feels, again, insulting and simplistic.

But if you are working your way up through the independent wrestling scene, which feels on some level like the minors.

Exactly right.

WWE would be the majors.

Correct.

What does the big show feel like to you?

I mean, miles and miles away, and certainly not something I ever got into this envisioning I would achieve.

I mean, I am 40 years old, give or take.

I was going to profile you based on the hair color.

That does not feel like die.

No, this is legitimate salt and pepper.

I earned it.

The impetus for all of this was February of 2024.

There was a local seminar, effectively, with one of the WWE scouts, a man named Gabe Sipolsky, who's been very kind to me with his time.

And he goes around the country, puts on these seminars, and will watch wrestlers wrestle.

And he'll give you feedback.

And, you know, in two cases, locally in the Carolinas, has said, you two, you're going to the show.

And so I went to one of these.

He watched one of my matches and he pulled me aside in front of probably 100 people.

And I was expecting nothing, by the way.

And he said, I love this.

This should be everywhere.

But after that, he said, we're never going to hire you.

You have, to borrow the language of your day job, clearly found a market inefficiency when it comes to the cast of wrestling caricatures.

There are guys who love snakes.

There are guys who, I mean, you just go down the list of like the types of guys, the templates of guys that have every sort of animal seems to have representation.

Correct.

But the thing that is most villainous

about late-stage capitalism happens to be A, who you actually are in real life, but more to the point,

it is

rich with potential.

when it comes to playing a heel.

And yet.

there have been many who have done something similar you go back to ted di biase million dollar man

i'm here i'm here the million dollar man is here you have recent examples matt hardy who was in the wwe did something called the hardy family office i could go on and on with people who have done the quote-unquote rich guy gimmick the reason i think i'm different not and i this is not a commercial or anything like that but it is sort of you know, why I wanted to do it, is I don't think anyone has done it with the specific Wall Street Street bent,

with the kind of knowledge and experience in a decade plus of actual Wall Street experience.

Of EBITDA.

Of EBITDA adjustments and sell side mandates and private equity dry powder and, you know, Cov Light term loan Bs and stuff like that that I can weave into the character that are completely legit and authentic.

Like actually you taking stuff that you do in your office into the ring.

All the time.

All the time.

JP Lehman, the best way to describe what the best wrestling gimmicks and characters are, is that they are the real person underneath the costume cranked up to 11.

Stone Cold Steve Austin is Steve Williams cranked up to 11.

The Rock is Dwayne Johnson cranked up to 11.

JP Lehman's probably a 13 or 14 relative to Hub Or.

Hub Or is nowhere near as bombastic or insulting or aggressive or combative as J.P.

Lehman, but there are hints and tinges of things that I would never say in my real life, but may have thought that for JP Lehman, there's no filter.

You know, I read a newspaper

when my opponent is being introduced.

I sit on the turnbuckle and I read the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times.

Legs crossed.

Glasses on.

Power pose.

Yep.

The reason I believe this works is just that experience and the ability, and it happens all the time, to hear something on a Wednesday in the office or on the road and translate that into the character.

So I have colleagues, you know, we travel a lot for work.

I have colleagues who are hotel and airline status obsessed.

And so I spent, you know, one promo maybe a year ago talking about concierge key on American Airlines and, you know, getting booze from the crowd.

The most notable one, though, if you'd like to go there, Pablo,

I feel like I have no choice at this point,

is the client call.

What is he going for?

This is one of the spots I do that people seem to gravitate towards that came directly from a singular moment in my career.

When you're an associate of an investment bank, it's long hours.

It's all-nighters.

It's all that kind of stuff that you hear about and read about.

It's all true.

You do it because you're working.

Cocaine.

Well,

for me, no.

But you do that, all that, because it's intellectually stimulating.

You like the companies with whom you're working.

It's above the fold Wall Street Journal stuff.

But most importantly, it's the compensation.

And so there's a day in early January when you sit down with your group head who delivers your comp for the year.

They say, here's your bonus.

And that is the singular day that you, you know, from a compensation perspective are working towards all year with all those long hours.

I sit down.

This is the moment.

This is the moment to get the bonus number.

And as we're sitting about to have this conversation, me and the MD in a room, his phone goes off.

Not only does he answer it, he says, yeah, I'm good.

No, nothing important.

And so I'm sitting sitting there like, this is the most important meeting of my year.

And for him, he very casually sloughs me off and says, yeah, and answers the client call, which he should.

So my 30-minute meeting becomes like less than five.

And I took that.

I'll never forget it.

And I love the guy, by the way.

He's a mentor.

I'm a huge fan of his.

So that's the job.

When the client calls, you answer.

But I took that.

And when I got traction with JP Lehman, I put it directly into my matches.

So during my match, sometimes a client client calls.

And if a client calls, I answer.

He's got a phone call.

He legitimately has a phone call.

Why did the referee not check in for that?

JP Lehman immensely distracted tonight.

Or is he?

That's called mixing business and more business.

That's multitasking at its best right there.

I like how you got to turn your real personal trauma

from

eye-banking life into physical trauma for someone else.

The best art comes from a sense of real despair and tragedy.

And so, when this wrestling scout

is coming to you and saying, we need this, we want this,

and we will never do this.

Which feels a bit like

another blow to the ego.

How does that make sense?

I never expected to get even a shred of a compliment.

You know, I was the old guy.

I am the old guy.

I'm not the guy who looks like a wrestler.

So the fact that he took time to say,

you should be everywhere, that's all I needed.

But

the addendum to that was, send me your social media.

I will blast it out everywhere and get you looks and attention from promoters across the country.

And that was the OSH moment

where

for years, for six years up until that point, this had been operating in the secrets and the shadows and the darkness.

And I had a private social media account just for fun.

And I was ready to push the nuclear button and shut the whole thing down should the wrong people work, you know, social, whatever, that didn't understand it and wouldn't appreciate it, find out.

So I was ready to just go dark.

This would be a turning point.

And it took me 24 hours to just like wrestle with it.

The idea of this being the JP Lehman initial public offering, JP Lehman going public.

The whole reason I did this to begin with is you only live once.

You better do the stuff you want to do.

And since then, I haven't been lying about it.

I certainly haven't been saying, no, that's not me.

I don't do that.

If someone asks, yeah, that's me, you should come to a show.

And so it started to gain traction and real footing.

But that JP Lehman, you know, IPO, so to speak, was a really difficult decision.

I still don't understand the math.

Because financially speaking, I assume this is not a money-making endeavor for you.

Not in the least.

I could probably make anywhere between 40 and 60 or 80 bucks a show.

I often will ask the promoter politely, don't pay me.

with money, but give me time.

So I've got three kids.

I've got a wife, you know, a social calendar that she sets up.

And so if you allow me to come late and leave early, that's all I ask.

Now, if someone wants to pay me more than that and real money, then certainly we'll talk.

Not that, you know, 60 bucks a show is not real money, but this is not a lucrative money-making endeavor at this point.

I dare say that you are daring someone

to make you give up your day job.

I would say if the phone rings, I will listen.

But most importantly, I think this all works when both of these things happen.

The day job feeds the character.

Frankly, the character also impacts the day job.

So we often have to go into the offices of private equity firms, CEOs, everything in between founders and pitch them on our wares.

Like, why would you hire me?

You've built this business your entire life.

This is your baby.

This is your life.

Why would you hire me to go take you public or sell your company?

And in that pitch, in that presentation to you, there is a fairy dust sprinkling of pro wrestling in there when I do it.

What are the three points I want to get across?

And what are the most catchy ways to deliver those points?

And that is pro wrestling.

So I think it all works together.

So yeah, I'm open for business.

The parallel theory to all of this is that everything is pro wrestling.

Could not be more true.

The skill set, the moral hazards, everything, fact, fiction being blurred, all of this feels like the ultimate American metaphor.

100%.

And the one thing I would, for a pro wrestling novice, Pablo, what happens on screen and in the ring is a small fraction of why people are interested in pro wrestling.

No one watches pro wrestling saying, oh, that guy punched that other guy or that gal punched that other gal.

That ship has sailed.

The equivalent example, I think, is if you go to a Broadway show and you see, say, Hamilton, and you see Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington doing their thing on stage, that is part of the show.

What pro wrestling has evolved into is that now if you go to Hamilton or you go to a pro wrestling match or watch the show, you know that Lynn Manuel Miranda actually has beef with his understudy.

That's not part of the show, but you know that, you know, the understudy hit on his girlfriend.

And then there's all this drama around it that is not part of the show.

That if you, if you think about why people really like wrestling in 2025, when they have all these options, they know it is scripted.

It's because of the backstage under drama that kind of keeps people captivated, that enhances what you see on screen.

Right.

What you're saying is that it's actually great for business if you've actually foreclosed on your opponent's home.

Correct.

Very good.

Your opponents, by the way, just like

the Mortal Kombat totem pole of your last year, where it's like you're working your way through this system.

Who are the video game bosses, so to speak, that you're encountering here, such that,

yeah, people can get a sense of what this looks like?

So I've had some great matches over the last year, one of which was against a guy named Dan the Dad, based out of St.

Louis.

He's exactly what he sounds like.

He comes to the ring in jean shorts, a tucked, you know, dockers, a belt, a tucked-in polo, white new balances, heat, you know, glasses and a coffee mug, and he's your attaboy, go get him sport

kind of

gist.

He and I had a phenomenal match last July.

It was a ton of fun.

There's a guy I want to wrestle named Luigi Primo.

He wears an apron.

He's basically like a pizza chef.

You got it.

You You got it.

Yeah.

He twirls a pizza while he's wrestling the same way that I do a cell phone.

I was going to say, either this Luigi character is making pizzas or about to shoot you in the head.

He's the former, not the latter, exactly.

Noted.

And so he's on the bucket list.

One of my most recent matches was with a guy who's among the top three, I would say, independent pro wrestlers, you know, not only in the country, but globally, a guy named Effie.

And he is, you know, I don't even know how to describe it, but within wrestling and beyond, an LGBTQ icon.

He's beloved.

And he has built himself up and this incredible following.

You know, he does professional wrestling on an independent level as a full-time job.

That was the biggest match of my career.

He is the current reigning and defending GCW, which, if you think about this hierarchy of wrestling promotions across the country, it's WWE and AEW at the top.

There's another one called TNA Wrestling that's close behind a couple others.

GCW, Game Changer Wrestling, based out of New Jersey, is the single top of the heap in independent, kind of quote, minor leagues, as you described it, pro wrestling.

And Effie is their champion.

And Effie came to Charlotte, put his belt on the line against me with close to 600 people hanging from the rafters in this brewery that could barely, you know, barely hold that many.

So the fight poster, I'm imagining, kind of sells itself.

Sells itself.

You know, LGBTQ icon versus Wall Street fat cat.

Styles make fights.

And that was a clash of styles for sure.

I knew something was up or that this was an atypical show when in the second or third match, I just hear in the, we're just calling our match in the back.

And I just hear JP Lehman, the whole crowd.

And so I'm like, oh my God, like they're here.

They're, they're here for me.

And what that did was that shifted the way in which we had to set this match up.

So typically I'm the heel.

I'm the bad guy.

There's a structure and a format for a bad guy versus a good guy.

But in this case, we kind of realized in that moment, the structure may be flipped and that I may end up being a babyface, which is a good guy.

And so we restructured the match to be a bit of, you know, a bit of a mix of me not purely being the heel.

Folks,

the electricity in the air cannot be denied.

JP Lehman is one of the rising stars of 2024, if not going to be a rising star in 2025.

This man has a complete package.

And so we get in the match.

The match goes all around this venue, through the crowd, every which way.

The first thing we used was computer keyboards.

So JP Lehman's, he's got a variety of kind of signature matches, one of which is the stock market street fight.

He's got one that he hasn't used yet, but when, you know, when it's time for that next final boss, it's going to be the Hell in Excel,

which is obviously a play on WWE's Hell in Excel.

But somehow scarier, actually.

Yeah, I think it's just a modeling exam, an Excel modeling exam.

It's probably pretty boring.

But this is a stock market street fight.

So we went out in the crowd.

Somehow, don't ask me how, J.P.

Lehman found two keyboards, two computer keyboards.

What he did then was he, I don't know if you know about this, he popped the top on the keyboard.

And that is where you take the F1 key off of the keyboard.

Oh, wait.

A keyboard.

Keyboard warrior JP Lehman is here.

He's trying to control off the lead.

Effie here.

Everyone on Wall Street knows this.

What is that?

Why?

First thing you do when you sit at your desk, first two things you do.

You unplug your mouse, because no one uses a mouse, and you, you know, take the F1 key off of your keyboard.

I'm totally unfamiliar with this ritual.

The F1 key is, I believe, the help key.

And you move so fast when you're an analyst and associate, you move so fast with your keystrokes that you'll sometimes inadvertently hit the F1 key, and that stops your progress.

You're saying the world of banking can be so intense that you must amputate parts of the keyboard so it doesn't get in the way.

That is correct.

So I grab my keyboard and again, a Venn diagram of one who appreciated it.

I hold it up and I pop the F1 key right off.

Not a soul thought that was funny or enjoyed it or got it, but it gave me a chuckle.

And we proceed to get into this lightsaber duel with keyboards.

And so I hit one, he hits one, we duck one, and then he ends it by, you know, popping it over my back and we move on to the next.

The next

turned out to be just so happens that JP Lehman had brought his putter and a couple golf balls with him because you always got to be keeping your swing tight.

Wait a minute, what is that?

I think that's a golf club.

And there's a sequence wherein Effie plants me with a snap mare, picks up the golf club and the golf ball and putts it, but misses.

Heavy.

Not an avid golfer, probably an 18 handicap, something like that.

So JP Lehman boots him in the gut, gives him a snap mare, picks up the putter and the golf ball, and then goes right back at him and putts it right in the hole, so to speak.

And so, big pop from the crowd.

The crowd enjoyed that.

That's just now, that's just that.

That's pure athleticism.

I mean, that it doesn't get anything that.

Yeah, I'm just a specimen from an athletic perspective right there.

I think shirts off, you know, sweaty, but

draining putts.

Draining puts, kicking butts, as J.P.

Lehman likes to say.

And then we'd be back in the ring for some garbage can, you know, door action.

Place it right on Effie.

I go up for my signature top rope centon, miss it, land on the garbage can.

That hurts.

Stock market, street fight, anything goes.

F-A-I, God!

The open!

One, two, three!

And then Effie puts me through a door for the one, two, three, followed by, he gave me a little surprise at the end of the match, too.

What was the surprise?

He

beat me.

One, two, three pin, and he leans over to me, says, get up.

I'm going to give you a kiss.

And we hadn't planned that one out.

I was, you know, whatever.

It's all show.

I'm good with it.

My wife, you know, wouldn't give a rip.

And

he lays a big one on me right in front of 600 people.

Effie with the kid.

Oh, my God.

And it was a fun little, I guess, cherry on top, I guess.

Well, I was not ready for it.

We didn't script it.

We didn't call it beforehand, but he planned one all meet.

Yeah, right there in the ring.

Didn't have access to the help key in that scenario.

No, that would have been helpful, but, you know, such is life.

You live and you learn.

You roll with it.

Oh,

man.

That is, you know what?

That's what progress looks like.

That is.

That is indeed.

Exactly.

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What I love about this is how hyper-specific these references are that are teaching me something about finance.

Finance.

Finance.

Yeah, it's I've been told by various bankers that I have been mispronouncing finance.

Finance.

Which is a key distinction from finance, which is for poor poor people.

Your words, not mine, but finance is JP Lehman.

Yeah.

And then EBITDA, I mean,

a refined palate calls it EBITDA.

EBITDA.

EBITDA.

That's how you know.

That's how you know your old school kind of ex-Lehman is EBITDA.

EBITDA is a little, you know,

doesn't really roll off the tongue the way EBITDA does.

Right.

People say croissant.

Exactly.

Now croissant.

How is that?

Yeah, no.

Look, the old money dripping off of your vocal cords there.

Exactly.

I love, I just love that I'm learning as much about finance, finance, there you go, as I am about wrestling.

These two subcultures that seem like they are not, well, as per your thesis,

not at all overlapping, except for you.

They're not, except for me.

But recently it started to shift.

And the reason I say that is yesterday walking down Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rd out of nowhere, I had two guys and I saw it in their eyes from a block away.

And they walk up and they say, are you the wrestler?

That was a little bit of a, oh man, kind of moment.

And then there have been several airports, and this is all as new and weird to me as, so this is not like a pat on the back.

This is all, I'm not ready for this.

The stock chart, though.

Oh, it's up and to the right.

Yeah.

We're talking hockey stick shit.

Exactly.

But but wait wait wait just how what's your reaction how do you

you process this in such a way do you how do you deal with people who now are stopping you uh in the in the daytime i deal with it the same way i typically deal with

fans and and spectators after the show which is my normal bent which is the JP Lehman facade goes away.

Unless they want it, unless they give me a phone and say, call my brother and go off, do a J.P.

Lehman spiel on him.

I'm, you know, I'm just happy to meet them, love to see them.

I'm a little bit put off when it's on Park Avenue in New York.

I'm not ready for that.

What's the airport like?

What was that like?

You know, I ran into someone who I don't know who you know follows my social media, has been to a couple of matches, and on an airplane from New York back to Charlotte.

And the unfortunate thing was he was sitting in first class and I was marching back to coach.

That,

yeah,

so a little part of JP Lehman died on that day.

Yeah, I can only imagine like to

know that your medallion status has been outranked.

It hurts.

And that was a painful lesson, a painful day.

But, you know, I am actively traveling as much as possible to get that concierge key status back

and live the gimmick, so to speak.

Are you ready?

I mean, truly.

The call that comes or the meeting that you're called into where someone swings around their monitor, and it's you reading the newspaper on a turnbuckle, shirtless, or staring into the camera on a pile of Legos,

or

sitting on top of a garbage can splayed out, or kissing a dude at the end of a match.

Do you know what you're going to say?

The whole way this has evolved, I think, has put me in a position now where I'm comfortable with it.

I've gotten enough validation externally from people who've come up to me.

And this is, I don't want to go too hokey or too corny, but people have come up and been like, man, you know, I had one guy, a guy I went to college with, he was like, I've got four kids.

He's like, I got this job I hate.

He was like, you know, you're living.

He's like, this is awesome.

And so for me, it's now shifted from this weird, kind of shameful box into this real sense of identity and pride where, yes, I could certainly be a 40-year-old, you know, finance professional for whom my only passions are golf and watching the stock market.

But I'm really proud that I've, my wife has too, and I have allowed myself to really chase this thing down.

And that for me is the validating point of it, that if someone pulls it up and says, look at this, you idiot, or what are you doing?

I'm not as upset about that anymore because I've had just too many people say, this is cool.

This is awesome.

This is inspiring is too strong a word, but this is interesting.

Well, I think sometimes the highest compliment

in finance, as well as a more artistic creative pursuit, is to be jealousy-inducing.

What I think is probably more likely is that, and what I would be more proud of, is if someone leaves a show and say, I want to play guitar, or I want to pick up an easel and a canvas, and I want to paint, or I want to learn piano.

These are the things I've always wanted to do.

I'm convinced everyone has a quirk like this.

This is a weird quirk.

And you either suppress it or you embrace it.

And I feel like, and this is, I've thought this for forever, all too often as we get older and get jobs and get families and get responsibilities, we suppress it and just put it out of our mind.

And so I'm hopeful that other people will embrace it as well.

I had a business school.

I went to, you know, Duke undergrad, Northwestern for business school.

And my business school roommate, one day, she was like, I wish I loved anything as much as you love pro wrestling, which is an absolute, like, not a compliment, you know?

Like, that is a weird thing to tell a 28, 30 year old grown man in getting his MBA, but it definitely resonated with me.

I was like, everyone has one of these things, they just need to find it and foster it and cultivate it and let it bloom.

My goal here is for someone to tell me, I wish I loved anything as much as you loved listening to someone tell you that they got told that they wish that they loved anything as much as you loved wrestling.

Well said, Pablo.

Very well said.

the videos of you that I have seen, that I've enjoyed, that I have been wincing at at various points, it is very different from you.

I've now sat across from you for quite a while, and I found you, despite having crashed the American economy, to be a delight.

And I just wonder when I'm going to get to meet JP Lehman, actually.

You want to meet JP Lehman?

I mean, I thought that's what was happening here when I walked in.

So you want to meet JP Lehman?

If we could

arrange JP Lehman.

You expect JP Lehman to show up here for free?

Pablo Torrey, J.P.

Lehman doesn't get out of bed.

JP Lehman doesn't catch a cold for less than a $4 million fee.

You think I'm a circus monkey that's just going to dance for you?

Do I look like Larsa Pippen?

Do I look like Jordan Hudson?

Okay.

Am I some quasi-celebrity that you're going to latch on to for pseudo-relevance?

Okay.

Pablo Torrey, I know you.

I know your type.

You are a barnacle on the hull of the passing frigate that is mainstream sports culture.

And trust me, Pablo.

I don't use your name and mainstream in the same breath lightly.

You barely deserve that.

Sir, you are a leech.

You are an absolute leech, okay?

Did you know that?

So you're, hold on a second.

The eye contact is disconcerting.

Oh, no.

I got to take this.

I'm sorry.

You mind if I take this?

Thanks.

Bradford.

Yeah, brother.

Hey, it's JP.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

No, no, I'm not busy right now.

Look, so capital markets are frothy.

Dry powder and private equities are robust.

My team has 100% bandwidth.

So let's get you a deal and find me a fee.

This feels very insane.

All right.

Racket Club tonight?

In racket?

Maybe steam, sauna, shower, the tribathlon, martini afterwards.

All right.

Tell Chelsea and the kids I said hello.

All right.

Yeah.

Let me clean up some trash.

Ciao.

Okay.

You're a leech, Pablo.

Okay.

You hear me?

You are an absolute leech.

Look at me.

I am client-facing.

I am revenue-generating.

I am a fee machine.

And I will knock that silver spoon out of your mouth and send you back to that ivory tower faster than you can spell EBITDA adjustment.

Unless you forgot, Pablo, my name is J.P.

Lehman.

I am the Wall Street fat cat.

I am the BSD of NYC.

I am too big to fail.

And you and your stupid little show

can take that

to the bank.

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.

With a Wealthfront cash account, your uninvested cash earns 4% annual percentage yield from partner banks with free instant withdrawals, even on weekends and holidays.

4% APY is not a promotional rate, and there's no limit to what you can deposit and earn.

Wealthfront, money works better here.

Go to WealthFront.com to start today.

Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC member Fenra SIPC.

Wealthfront is not a bank.

The APY on cash deposits as of December 27, 2024 is represented as subject to change and requires no minimum.

Funds in the cash account are swept to partner banks where they earn the variable APY.