An NBA Six-Pack, Netflix’s WBD Pursuit, NFL Picks, and John Cena Finally Stops By, With Joe House and Matt Belloni

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The Bill Simmons podcast brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I have a new rewatchables coming for you on Monday.
Hopefully, we are recording it tomorrow. There's a special guest.

I don't want to jinx it and tell you what movie it is, but I will tweet it from the Rewatchables account. tomorrow after we record, after I know we've recorded it.
But it's going to be a fun one.

I'm excited about it. I am recording the intro for a very long podcast.

It's what time is it? 8.46 Pacific time. PT.
I wanted to wait until after Lions, Cowboys, because this Cowboys renaissance was so much fun. Who knows? They'd won today.

They would have had a chance to put some real heat on the Eagles. Of course, they lost.
They couldn't stop the Lions. The Lions offense just did whatever it wanted.
Dallas is now 6-6-1.

They're not out of the playoffs. It's not looking great.

They would have to sweep home Vikings, home Chargers at Washington on Christmas at giants to finish 10 6 and 1 i think the ship that has sailed is the nfc east because the eagles are 8-4 at the chargers this weekend house and i are about to do ringer 107 picks we both think the eagles can beat the chargers they're home for the raiders a home and home with washington and at buffalo so i i just feels like philly's going to get to probably 11-6 somehow so the ship has sailed for dallas except for wild card but they just lost to one of the teams that they would have been competing for the wild card so this might have been it it would have been fun.

One of the reasons I want to wait for the intro because if Dallas did beat Detroit tonight, and I actually thought they were going to hang C.D. Lamb got a concussion,

you know, fairly early in the game, which

didn't help them. But it would have been funny if they won this one because there would have been a real, maybe Jerry Jones was the smart guy all along, case.
But that has that ship has sailed too.

And probably Dallas's playoff hopes have also sailed.

So, for big picture, I think we have

probably know who eight of the seven playoff teams are. If we go Rams, Chicago, Seattle, Philly, Green Bay, San Francisco, Tampa, and Detroit.

That's probably the list barring a collapse from somebody. So somebody's going to get bounced.
We'll see what happens. It still might be Detroit.
That was a must-win for them tonight, three and five.

So we'll see how it goes. They play at the Rams next week, which will have ramifications all over the place.
Anyway,

on the podcast today, House and I are going to talk some basketball basketball at the top, and then we're going to do Ringer 107 picks.

Matt Bellany comes on next because we want to talk about this Warner Brothers sale.

And then, last but not least, John Cena, finally, first time I've ever had him on my old pod, on this pod, first time we've ever had John Cena, and we go for 100 minutes.

And he came to the studio, and I had a great time. So, I got to update the Bellany part really quickly, which I still think holds because we talked about all the

possibilities, all the ramifications. But

we recorded it six hours ago and Bloomberg, Lucas Shaw, our friend, and Michelle F.

Davis reported that Warner Brothers has entered exclusive negotiations to sell its film and TV studios and HBO Mag streaming service to Netflix, according to people familiar with the discussion.

So that means over the next few days, this could play out. They could agree on a price.

And then we will see what happens. Will the government block it? Will Paramount sue? Will Paramount, I don't know, can they try a hostile takeover while this is happening?

Who knows? But this is the biggest, biggest, biggest, biggest media story we've had in the entertainment world, I think, this decade. If Netflix, who hasn't bought anything, finally

buys Warner Brothers and gets all of their assets. So Matt and I talked about all the angles that's coming up.

So it's house, basketball, and football, Belany, talking about the Warner Brothers sale, and then John Cena. This is an absolute megapod.
It's really good. It's all next.
We're going to take a break.

And then, pro jab. This episode of the Bill Simmons podcast is presented by State Farm.
Having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm.

It's like expecting a linebacker on the football field, but getting a line cook. Sure, they both can handle the pressure when it starts heating up, but only one is stopping.
a touchdown.

You wouldn't settle for just anything for your team, so don't settle for just any insurance when it comes to getting the help you need. State Farm is the real deal.

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

We're kicking things off with a special part of today's episode brought to you by Michel Obeltra as the official beer partner of the NBA.

They know the best moments on or off the court are served cold. So let's crack open a six-pack as we dig into the most buzzworthy moments of the season so far and also a little NBA Cup as well.

And we'll talk about the superior play of the day. So Joe House is here.

We're going to talk football picks a little bit later, but I wanted to keep you on so I could have somebody to throw off some NBA opinions. We're going to do six opinions.
You like beer.

I don't know if the beer is going to throw you off. Look at it.
It looks nice and cool.

Six beers in there. I like that beer.
Six things. I want to start here, and we could make this the superior play of this Michelob Ultra six-pack that we're doing.

Shay Gilgis Alexander. Very boring to talk about.
Won the title last year, won the MVP, scores 33 points a game. He's an assassin.
His facial expression never changes.

Not that fun of a topic. Not a lot to say.
Not a lot of places to go. House, as we record this on Thursday afternoon Pacific time, Shay is averaging 32.8 points a game in 33.6 minutes.

He's almost a point a game. To put this in perspective, the per 36 guys in history who have been over 35 points a game.

Do you think Michael Jordan is on this list? I do. He is not.
Wow. Wilt Chamberlain, 1961-62, his 50-point season, 37.36.

Giannis this year,

35.78, just got hurt again. James Harden in 2019, 35.38.
And then Shea, playing no fourth quarters, basically. He's missed 11 already.

I think he's missed half of the season in the fourth quarter at 35.12.

He's shooting 55%, 44% for three, 88%

free throws. He's been 20 a night for almost 100 games.
The record's 126. That's a record I actually care about.
It's so fucking hard to score 20 a night. Think about that.

Foul trouble, a night where you're off, a night where you get hurt in like the third quarter.

They're on pace for a 75-win season. And right now, he's like a slight, slight, slight

MVP favorite on Fandu. I think he's plus 155.
Jokic is right after him. I don't see a scenario where he's not the MVP again if this team wins like 75 games.

What's the number where it's like he has to be MVP?

Honestly, to me, anything over 70 wins.

So 70 and 12,

there's basically no scenario if he plays the whole year and he's doing this that he's not the MVP. And he holds this level.
I mean, the hard thing will be:

how do you pay proper respect to the Joker? Because the Joker is going to average a triple-double.

And it's an impactful triple-double. I mean,

you mentioned Hardin in 2019 should have been the MVP.

or was that his MVP year? Which year did Westbrook still? MVP was 18. Westbrook's still 17.
17. Yeah.
I forget who won 19. In any event, the

case for the Joker.

Who won? Giannis. Yannis won.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
The case for the Joker is going to be compelling as long as this Denver team gets to like

55 wins, which is north of. I've got some injuries already.
Yeah, they'd have to be mid-50s. I don't know where they're at right now.

I think if we're over 70, I think it has to probably be Shay doing this. I'll throw one thing with Shay beyond all the numbers stuff.

He's hit the point. So I'm watching the Warriors game the other night, and it's really fun.
Seth Curry got to play. He was really excited for our girl Callie.

And they're hanging tough. They're throwing haymakers.
And they're at one point, did you see it? They're up.

They're up like five with like four or five with like five minutes left. And you're just watching it going, I know how this is going to end.
This is fucking Friday the 13th.

Four, he's going to come into the cabin and he's going to start killing people. And Shay just puts teams away, and you know, he's going to do it.
You know what shots he's going to get.

And now it's like, I've never seen a guard just do this relentlessly night after night since we've had league pass. Well, you know, Jordan was doing this.
We didn't have league pass.

You know who else agreed with you? I was looking to live bet. I wanted to live bet Oklahoma City.
Oh, when Golden State was like

four. You're just like jumping into it.
The mark is like, oh, here is 10 and a half. Like, even though the game was only four points, it was like, here, you know, they have to win by 10 and a half.

That, that's, that's, because I wanted some OKC. I was like, golly, man.
Kinks.

They're going to win so many games this year, and there's a million reasons for it. And they're like a perfectly constructed team and they're young and they're hungry.

And they even have, it seemed like they have a little edge from them, even from last year, to like show like, not only are the champs, we're laying the smackdown this year yeah but the shea piece i've personally watched it swing five games you're like oh they're gonna lose tonight and shay's like no we're actually not gonna lose i'm gonna make every shot right now and that's gonna be it so i'm starting the six pack with him we'll go to yannis really quickly talked with max kellerman on tuesday this is second for the six pack talked to max kellerman about favorite yannis destinations And my favorite was Atlanta just from a trade package standpoint.

Before I tell you, a mystery suitor, do you have a favorite Giannis trade destination? Because this really heated up last 48 hours and he did get hurt, but he's going to be back in a couple weeks.

I think Houston would be incredible.

I think that the combination of youth and

the KD,

last hurrah kind of vibe here. So what are you giving up?

I'm not sure. It's like

putting some Shangun in that? Santari Yeesen, maybe.

Is that getting a Giannis? No, no, no.

It's a big package. It's a big package.
It's a big package.

So it's like a Reed, Shepard, Jabari, Smith, Tari, and you're just trying to patch contracts together until you can get near the Giannis number.

I'm just hanging up unless Shangoon's in it. Okay,

that's fair enough.

If I'm the Bucs, I'm like, we're not just taking a shitty trade.

Two different people mentioned this to me in the last 24 hours. I just wanted to mention this team.

And it chills my bones.

The heat of miami

two different scenarios one has bam in it which i think if you're doing this you probably try to keep bam but pretty easily you can do the three brothers yannis and his two brothers they have to be in the trade you gotta take both of them okay with bobby portis and you get back hero and bam Yakashonis, who needs to leave Miami because he's a pick and roll guy and they don't run pick and rolls.

And picks. And that's one.
But I think the more likely one which is interesting to me three brothers

hero wear

who's good

wiggins and picks you think that's superior to Houston it's a three for one well hero I'm getting a top 45 guy in the league who can put up 25 a night I'm getting a really good young center who I'm shocked by how much he's progressed this year.

I think he's really good. I'm not positive he's perfect with BAM.

And then I'm just getting a bunch of picks and a tradable contract in Wiggins. What are those pickets? What are the picks? I'm just here, whatever my picks are.
Here they are.

I don't love it.

I'm sorry to do this. I'm sorry to do this.
Do you watch the end of the Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat? Miami was making a push.

Dallas was playing quite valiant.

Your boy Cooper Flag came through in the clutch. He did foul.
He fouled on a play that they call the block. That's fine.
He's getting some respect already. But Tyler Hero took a couple shots.

I was like, man,

this is not the time for that shot.

You know what, they'll love it? It moved up better.

Tyler Hero hoisting. Yeah.
Well, I'll tell you this. The Giannis stuff

is. a very hard pause button.
Calf strained. It looked bad when he fell down.
But then

they'll be super careful with it. So now this goes through January now.

There's going to be more unhappy teams, but yeah, the Miami piece of it because the Bucs bait, the thing that stood out to me was the

in the reporting, and a lot of people did some good reporting about it.

One of the people said that if he picks, if he decides he wants to go and he tells them the team, they'll try to get a deal done with the team out of respect to him. So if he says New York,

he could say that

that's basically Townsend Ananobi. There's so much apron complications with that.
Very good trade.

Yeah, but I don't know if the Knicks can send both guys in the same track. I'm still at the apron is the most crazy thing about that.

But

he could say Atlanta sounds great. Figure it out.
I mean, respectfully

to the great cities of Houston and Atlanta, Miami's got a natural advantage.

Miami has an attraction. The brothers, imagine what the brothers try to persuade him.
Three Three brothers.

Like, imagine my brothers telling me.

Yeah,

he's like the house brothers. There's like the meal ticket and then the two black sheep.
And they would be

going to use the house name on South Beach. You understand this? We're opening a bar.
Yeah. All right.
Speaking of Dallas, you mentioned them earlier. Obviously, I've been watching.

We have a lot of Mavs futures. They started out a little season from Helly, and then something has happened the last couple of games as AD has started to look like AD again.
Well, that's one thing.

That's one important thing.

They started to actually play a real point guard. So Jason Cade could no longer say that he was intentionally trying to tank to get Nico Harrison fired because Nico Harrison is gone.

So now he's playing a point guard.

He's right there.

Presenting a lot of AD stuff, and I know there's different trade possibilities for him. And I look forward when we launch the Max and Rich podcast next week.

Maybe Rich will talk about some of those scenarios. Who knows? Who knows what they're capable of in that pod?

I'm not trading Anthony Davis right now.

I'm keeping him.

Flag and Davis together.

I need to see this more. Okay.
I'm not,

I'm hanging up on all calls. I just want to watch this for another month because they had too many big guys.
They were playing Flag out of position.

They put, they did him a real disservice, which I've talked about multiple times.

But

now he's in his right spot where he's like a four. And now you have Gafford coming off the bench as like one more big man.
But basically, you have a lot of flag and AD together.

That's like a winnable combo as my 4-5. I think that's really hard to deal with, really hard to deal with defensively.
It's great for flag. I'm not fucking with that.

So your point is you're not trading Anthony Davis in any 80 cent on the dollar because Dallas has to move.

This is what you're arguing here. Like, why would Dallas at this point? Why do I have to trade him? Right.
Yeah, right.

Make me a real, am I getting yannis back like make me a real offer i'm not trading him for you know yaka purtle and emmanuel quickly and some picks like off

i'm i'd rather keep him and and flag has been i know you've you've been a little focused on it flag has flag and kinnipple have both look like they're 27 years old in some of these games that that's absolutely right the poise is i mean the edgecomb as well

i treat him like a like a he's all of them make dumb plays a little yeah but i'm just like the poise they're they're ready, they arrived in the NBA ready to play.

I don't even want to tell you one of the texts I had about Knipple to a basketball friends of ours of my comparison for him because I would get laughed off the internet.

No, I've just been really impressed. Should I say it out loud? I know who you're talking about now.

Havlicheck, I don't want to do it. I don't want to put it on him.
I don't want to put it on him. No, I'm not.

I'm denying everything.

Beep in that.

There's moments where he looks kind of like a taller Havlichek. I got to be honest.

He never stops moving. He's fundamentally perfect.
He's got great posture. Said it.
He's just additive. He can play like three positions.
And he just looks a little Havlichek-y to me. So good.

And Flag. I don't know if I've seen Flag before.
What is Flag? I don't even know. What is he?

Let's let it play out a little bit. But what is he?

Who is his doppelganger? I don't even know. He's doing stuff where I'm like, I don't know what that is.

He has disabilities.

You have to take a whole bunch of guys. And unfortunately,

my brain goes immediately like, what four white guys is he most like? I have to make a combination. It's tough to do the cross-racial comparison.
Tom Chambers in there.

And then I see some AK-47 in there. I'm not doing it.
We're not doing it. I mean, really, it's more Tatum-y than anything.
Some of the stuff he's doing on offense.

Same size, same kind of, as Tatum was trying to figure out his one-on-one game.

Next thing on the six-pack are in a fourth beer right now. We're in a fourth beer right now, ironically, with Jason Tatum, because here's what's changed.
Fourth beer Tatum.

Well, here's what's changed, House.

The Celtic season went from

we're one injury away from, we're probably going to be pretty bad.

So, why are we going to bring Tatum back, screw up a top 10 pick? We're not going to head to the playoffs anyway. I felt this way.

I saw them in person a couple weeks ago, and I'm like, I don't see it.

They've really, really turned into a decent basketball team. And Jalen has been a top 13, 15 guy in the league.
He's going toe-to-toe.

They just had this stretch where they played Orlando and the Knicks and Minnesota and Cleveland and one other really good team.

And they went four and one.

I forget the, there's a fifth team in there. They're all good.
And they really could have won five of the five. The one they lost was in Minnesota.
And granted, this is part of the Ant package.

Ant just made a couple of fucking crazy shots, which he does. I'm not like, oh, if he had to make that, that's what he does.
I get it.

But they kind of had Minnesota in a spot where it felt like they could steal the game. And

Missoula, I think, has done a good job. They have all these energy guys.
They have an identity. Their offensive rating is like surprisingly, shockingly, really good.

Kata's been a revelation as a center. And it's hit the point now where Tatum has to come back if he's if he can play.
Wow. Drew Smith has to play.

Well, if what's he going to do? So let's say he's cleared and ready to go in January. He's just not going to play for eight more months.
Drew Smith's already playing with the same injury.

Like these are, these could be eight, nine months.

From everything I've heard across the board, he's been relentless and a maniac and passed every checkpoint and has done everything possible to come back as soon as possible, 100%, not 94%.

And they're understandably being careful. But at some point, it's like, if he's ready to play,

let's play him. What are we we waiting for? We might be like a five or a six seed.
So I just, I feel more confident than ever with the way that this team has responded that he's going to be back. Wow.

Not reporting it. I just, I watched this team and I think they're in a good spot.
You're not saying that I've had four beers. You're saying it like.
It's my four beer opinion on the six pack.

But listen, the whole organization, like it's, it's, you know, they're trying not to talk about it. They don't want to put pressure on them.
But so what makes it, what makes you nervous about this?

um i've been wondering on this stretch of success that they they've had about the the challenge of this composition all season long which is fourth quarter scoring and i watched it a little bit against the knicks and um jalen's just like no it's fine i i we need a bucket i'll go get us a bucket uh

and i wonder out loud how sustainable that is in view of the workload that he's carrying like this stretch if you look at the the minutes the usage, the way that he's been efficient and the impact it has on the roll guys, he really does rise

all the boats. You know, he's the rising tide.

I don't want him to get hurt. So I'm knocking on wood with both hands, but that's not really.
We appreciate that. Can he do that for long?

That would be part of the reason for Tatum to come back because it would take a lot of pressure off of that situation. They've been really good about his minutes.

He's only been at 33 minutes a game this year. It's averaging 29 a game.
I was so happy because I've absolutely loved this Jalen season.

And he actually really did get better at a couple things, including he has this move now that he did not have before. And he would try to do it and half the time would dribble off his foot.

But he goes hard, like he's driving in the basket. And then he does like a hard stop and a really low crossover dribble.
that because these teams would always dive down and try to pick his dribble.

He does this hard, low dribble now, and then this little fallback 12-footer. And I swear to God, he makes like 90% of them.
It's like unstoppable.

It's like this DeMar de Rosa mid-range game that he just didn't have last year. And he's able to shoot threes, go to the basket, or get like his shot selection's been really smart.

And I was so happy for him on Tuesday in that Knicks game because I think that was a, that's a big, that was a big marquee. Big stage.

Big Peacock game, Knicks Celtics, and he sucked in the first quarter. And all these people I've watched, the Celtics out out here, I was like, oh, great.

Of all the games that he's going to suck in, this one, when everyone's watching. And then he rallied back and he killed the Knicks.
He did.

They didn't have OG, but he like really went after him and brought it to him.

So I think he's gone up a level and it's great for Tatum because when Tatum comes back, he's not going to have to be the Tatum from last year, right?

You're just kind of moving him in and giving him the 27, 28 minutes a game. Anyway, they're the sixth seed right now.
The problem with them is Brown, Pritchard, White, Keda, these four guys.

If any of them gets hurt, this Craters, they basically need 30 minutes from all of them. But this is the first time this five-game stretch, Detroit, Orlando,

the Knicks, and Cleveland, they beat, almost beat Minnesota, where it's like, this team's like pretty good. And you add Jason Tatum, who was the fifth best player in the league last year.

They're going to be better than pretty good. It's a shame you couldn't have kept Cornette.
See his game saving block. I know.

We love Cornette.

Couldn't pay him. Simons is a little bit of an X factor because I don't think Joe trusts him.
Yeah, sure. But he does have some good one-on-one stuff.

And I think they're falling into him maybe being the sixth man. Anyway,

fifth one, the Chris Paul

with an all-time, everything ends badly. Other times, otherwise it wouldn't end final season.

I just, house, I got to ask you, has there ever been a six months like this for an NBA team that you can remember? Starting with game seven against Denver

when

they took the most massive shit possible on the biggest possible stage, just terrible immediately, awful for Hardin. From that moment on,

this has been an absolute train wreck.

And I don't remember anything like this.

It's only rivaled by another era. with this very same organization, which is when the owner turned out to be a virulent racist.
Yeah. Like with

where his words were taped and

published when the team was pretty goddamn good. Right.
Had a chance to make the finals.

Yeah, that's a worse like in the moment thing, blowing the lead to Houston. They've had worse things, but this stretch, that game seven, the

aspiration scandal that we don't even know what the publish the punishment is going to be yet, but hugely embarrassing for everybody and a big plague over the season.

They signed your guy, Bradley Beale, who then immediately got hurt. They signed Brooke Lopez, who's just washed now.
He can't play, unfortunately.

Horrible start. Norm Powell, who they trade because they won't give him an extension, thriving in Miami.
The Lakers are thriving in general and look like a contender.

They have all this Chris Paul weirdness.

They don't have their pick. They're giving their pick to a team that might win 73 games.
And on top of all of this, the all-star game is here at the Aspiration Dome in February.

I can't think of a worse run than this. I mean, you didn't even include the legal jeopardy of Ty Lou's two best friends.

Oh, I forgot about that.

I think he was at some of those poker games.

He was all right, though. He was just playing.

Yeah, I forgot about that one. That wasn't great either.
So, yeah, this Clippers thing.

I don't see it getting better. They did win last night, which was

they beat somebody that

you're missing a point because, yes,

10-second rant. Jalen Johnson was a late scratch.
Like, here's the thing, everybody. If you're going to bet on the NBA, don't do it early in the day.
There are no good numbers early in the day.

Yeah, just wait till the last possible second. Goddamn clue who's playing.
I laid two and a half on Atlanta early in the day. Like, okay, I like the situation, blah, blah, blah.

Doing like sensible matchup stuff.

And, you know, five o'clock, Jalen Johnson's out. Oh, well, good.
Bye-bye, money. I mean, you have to hedge out of it, which I did.
Yeah, you got to wait till the last 10 minutes.

Sixth thing for the six-pack.

I'm kind of excited for the NBA Cup matchups. Can we rank these from four to one? Yeah, let's go.
Because I think all these teams are going to try. And

I'm always ready to watch any basketball team where I have 100% certainty that both sides care.

They're going to compete. Let's go.

I'll give you the four options. We have the all-Florida battle, Miami versus Orlando.
We have the Knicks going to Toronto.

Sun's Thunder.

Dylan Brooks just probably trying to as close to being kicked out as possible without getting kicked out. And Lakers Spurs,

no Wemby.

What do you got for number one?

I think Sun's Thunder is super live. I just think there is so much

because

the general public hasn't really seen

the Suns yet. People don't really have their heads.
They're betting on them all year. Well, they're number one against the spread.
They're number one in the entire NBA against the spread.

So, yes, I try and make profitable bets. I just need this Colin Gillespie thing.
I need

Connor Gillespie. Colin Gillespie.
I need some sort of explanation for how this happened, where this guy has become such an awesome point guard. They had him on the team last year.

This an unbelievable example of addition by subtraction. There were, you really can't overstate how much

it sucked to have,

you know, those three guys who clearly were not on the same page. Not saying a bad thing about any one of them individually, but it clearly was, you know, whatever was going on.

The vibes were so horrible. Yeah, Mannix texted Coach Bud.

Well, that too.

And your guy Bradley.

Mannix texted me that the vibe at the Clippers game that he went to last weekend was actually worse than the vibe from the Suns games last year, which I thought was the most damning thing I heard about the Clippers.

I hope I didn't. I'm sure he said that on his podcast too.
But

yeah,

better vibes. They really give a shit.
And I think there's a real Dylan Brooks conversation to be had. Every team that he's on really, really, really tries.
It's the one thing you can count on.

And over and over again, he's on the team that gives, it seems like it gives more of a shit. It's part of the reason why I'll forever hold Russell Westbrook in such high esteem.

Not, not, not a guy that, like, you know, style of play-wise, um, is I've ever been able to really wrap my head around. Always like, you know, where's the IQ element, especially on defense?

Um, hoops, IQ, I'm talking about, but goddamn, that guy cares. God damn, he tried hard.
God damn, he dragged a terrible Washington team to the playoffs.

He did rebounds, yes, he fills up this box score. All right.
So you have Sun's Thunder first.

I have Miami Orlando first. Okay.

I like what's going on with this Orlando team, and there's some interesting Palo questions.

I'm not going to bring any of them up, but there's just some questions, some things.

I always get suspicious when somebody loses their best player and then immediately looks like the team has fallen into place. I'm just monitoring.

Miami has been really fun to watch, and I hate myself for saying that as I mentioned every time. It's really fun.
They revamped. They went into the lab in the summer.
Like, you know what?

We're not going to be as last in pace any longer. I like their style.
What if we're first in pace? Let's go try that. Oh, you know, all of a sudden, here we go.
Interesting.

Let's push the ball, spread the floor. You have the ball, attack the basket.
That's why my guy Yakashinis hasn't played. That's not his game.
They should trade him. Trade him to free him.

Free Yakashunis.

I would put Lakers Spurs.

I would have Knicks Toronto last.

Yeah, that would be my four. I would go.
So you have Sun's Thunder one. I have Miami Orlando one.

So we'll flip those for one and two. And then Lakerspurs three, Nick's Toronto, four.
Okay. I think that's fair.
I just psyches for all of them. There's a great mix of upstart teams.

Like who had Toronto, you know, showing up and showing up in this instance.

And I think on that big stage, it's a good test because the Knicks are not going to be like, oh, yeah, let's accommodate Toronto here. That's going to be fun to watch.

I think they need to add NBA awards that I can vote for at the end of the year because I'm not allowed to bet on any of the awards. So I'd rather just vote for more awards.
You want more awards.

I want more awards. Scotty Barnes deserves some sort of award.

And I was thinking the category would be,

I never really liked watching you, but now I do.

Something like that. I've really enjoyed watching Scotty Barnes this year, and I did not enjoy his game for the years before.
And something clicked in his head. I like how unselfish he is.

I like his physicality. I've just really enjoyed everything he's done.
Thumbs up, Scotty Barnes. If we were going to be like, you know, even more gracious towards Scotty about it.

What was going on was the Toronto organization with this inexplicable tank concept that got Masai fired because he really couldn't explain it to anybody.

And they just kind of floundered and it never really made sense or translated into impactful draft picks.

And so they went the other direction and it's a pretty interesting team this year. It helps them that they have Ingram who can look like discount Durant sometimes and has that.

It was funny to watch him that one game when he hit the game winner.

They gave it to him and he flipped the ball almost like Rondo style before he started his move because he's like, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going left.
I'm pulling up and I'm making it.

He made it with like an incredible amount of confidence. Then the next game, they played Charlotte, and it was the same situation.

And Charlotte, because they have a good coach, was saying, there's no fucking way you're doing that move again. So as he started, they just sent two guys to the spot and double-teamed him.

But that's taking that load off Barnes, plus, he's older, but I've been really impressed by him. Anyway, that is, that's our sixth pack.

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We're going to take a break and talk football. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats.
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All right, before we get to the games that we really like, we got to talk about Fandu now live in Missouri. And to celebrate, we're turning to the expert

who's had more barbecue than any white man alive, Mr. Joe House, to rank his favorite Missouri dining establishments.
I know you've dabbled a few times here. What do you got?

Well, I don't think I'm going to rank the establishments. What I'm going to do is celebrate a very unique aspect of the Kansas City barbecue scene.
And

the nationwide, everybody claims they have Texas has its barbecue, Carolina has its barbecue. But there is only one place you can go to get burnt ends.
This place is Kansas City, Missouri.

And there are a number of phenomenal establishments that have really made their mark with the burnt ends. Now, if you don't know what I'm talking about, it is

the tip of a brisket. And over time, it's kind of evolved.
Now, a lot of times, what folks will do is cube up a piece of the sort of fatty part of the brisket, and then they re-smoke it.

It's been prepared, then you cube it, then you re-smoke it. They're magnificent.
They're a one of a kind. And there are several establishments in Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri.

I don't know who lays claim to the OG original. It might be.
Everyone's a winner. We don't need to pick a winning establishment.
The point is, go get some burnt tips in Kansas City.

Burnt ends in Kansas City. You could go to Gates, Arthur Bryant's.
You want to go to Joe's, Jackstack.

LC is apparently top of the list. I've tried a bunch.
I haven't tried LC.

That's got to get on my list. But Burnt Ends is in Kansas.
And Jackstack's actually with Dave Jacobi at MLB All-Star Weekend in 2012. I hope you got burnt ends while you were there.
Please tell me.

I made the mistake of eating too much, and then we had to do like an interview with somebody, and I was like in a barbecue coma. It was great.

That's what I do. That's all stuff you can do in Missouri.

You can also gamble in Missouri because Fandu is now live in Missouri and they're celebrating with a ton of great promotions and rewards for everyone. So sign up today.
Take advantage this weekend.

All right, let's talk about our favorite NFL games. A lot of football has happened since the last time we talked.
We had

all those Thursday, Friday games, Sunday game.

Suddenly the Pats are considered to be the best team in the NFL, which is even as a Pats fan who loves the Pats, I would say that's probably ridiculous, but speaks to where we are with the season where nobody can even figure out a team to make the favorite.

We do not have an OKC

in the NBA house, but what we do have is picks. And you and I, once again, started out great last week.
It went sideways.

I want to use this as an opportunity to talk about a bunch of games with a bunch of playoff implications. Can we stay away from Seahawks, Falcons? That's fine.

Numbers too big. Like the Falcons there.

Like the Falcons a little, but I'm not betting

the Falcons anymore. We're not betting Kirk Cousins against the number one defense.
Definitely not. No, thank you.
Seahawks by seven. No thanks.
Not doing it.

Bucks minus eight and a half against the Saints. I can never tell who's playing for the Bucks.
Way too many points.

The Saints QB is just good enough that I almost wanted to throw Saints plus eight and a half in there, but I feel like we've taken them before and they couldn't beat Miami last week. They're out.

Rams minus seven and a half at Arizona. There's some backdoor potential.
I just, no thanks. High favorite on the road.
I don't know what to make, Arizona.

And then, I mean, the Rams, the only, here's the case for the Rams.

Three pieces. It's Sean McVay in December.
He absolutely owns Arizona, especially in Arizona. And they lost last week.
So that would be the case.

They're going to come in and just beat the crap out of poor Jacoby Brissette. All right, I'll put them in the parlay pile.

The Maybies.

It's a really weird Dolphins Jets game that initially I liked the Dolphins, right? And then it ended up, it's, it's the Dolphins minus three is the line right now. Yeah.
I think it is? Yep.

But the Jets have been pretty good the last five games. I would.
To the point then I was like, oh, maybe we should take the Jets.

Then I'm like, well, if I'm changing my mind in the game, probably a stayaway.

The special team stuff is crazy in this. The Jets are first at DBOA, and Miami's fourth.
Yeah. So I guess that's going to decide the game.
I'd rather not find out with our money on it.

It's going to be 40 degrees, though, house.

There's your thing. There's your thing.

Now, I've said on a couple of podcasts this week, I'm no longer making bets based on what we think the weather is going to do because it really stuck us really in a sweet place in that Browns game where we were like, oh,

Purdy, can Purdy throw in the 50-mile winds in Cleveland? And then there were no wins. They get out of here with that.
But for sure, it's going to be cold in New York.

Uh, in the, I'm just going to call it the Meadowlands

on Sunday. And it's for sure the case that Tua is going to be the quarterback of the Miami Dolphins playing in the cold up there in the Meadowlands.
That's true.

Sounds like you're kind of intrigued by this one.

I like the way the Jets have been playing.

They are conceding

no ground. They are trying hard.

I've been

plus three.

Just put it on the tip. Just table it for a minute.

That would be my inclination, though.

Browns minus three and a half against the Titans.

Browns defense at home. Browns burned us last week.
I thought it was a really stupid game. Here's so initially I had this down.
Here's why I decided against it.

And I was thinking a lot about how the Browns completely effed us and everyone else who bet on them last week and all the stupid shit they did.

And it made me wonder, like, is this a secret tank team?

I was on Browns Reddit, really fun place, by the way. Enjoyable, enjoyable tour through the Browns Reddit.

And

I can't say they're enthusiastic about Kevin Stefansky. It was one of my takeaways.

And some people are like, we don't know if he's trying to tank, but if you were trying to tank, you would do some of the stuff you did in that game.

And it makes me not want to take them in this titans game so i think it's a stayaway is that fair yeah and and you know we have to like look at each other sunday afternoon and say we laid three and a half with chador

we we laid three and a half points with with with shador we great cassell had a thing he was on some show i follow him on twitter and he posts the clips sometimes i enjoy the great cassell clips but he had this thing about how he's still at the college speed and he hasn't graduated to pro speed.

And I was like, that's the perfect way to put it. It's like not quite at the pro speed yet.
So good.

The problem with the Browns is you go down

nine plus points with them and the game's over. Game's over.
It's exactly. They were 10 to 8.
I was like, they might be able to do this. And then it was 17, 8.
It's like, I'm done.

The coach thinks he should go for it from their own 30.

Do you know that San Francisco had five drives start on the Cleveland side of the 50-yard line? I'm aware. I watched the whole game and I was losing my mind.

They scored 21 points by starting on the 35-yard line of Cleveland.

That was the dumbest thing all year that I saw. We can't bet them.
It's a shame because that Browns defense is so good.

Yeah, we can't bet them. Can't bet them.
Next, maybe for me, the Vikings are favored by one and a half at home against your teamhouse, Washington.

Coming off a week where Max Brosmer just kept throwing picks like he was handing out turkeys on Thanksgiving as a professional athlete.

Your team look good, and it almost makes me not want to take them this week because they look good last week and almost beat Denver.

And I don't know what's going on, which quarterback you're getting, but I just, I don't want to be involved in this game if that's okay. It's just a stayaway for me.
You okay with that?

Yeah, it looks like Jay Danielson. Nicky Daniels, but then he's not healthy.
Like, I don't like that scenario.

Mariota

in Minnesota makes me nervous. Every

Minnesota offensive scenario makes me nervous. I just want to stay away.
It's fine to stay away. I just want to tip my hat to the Minnesota defense because that Seattle game was nerve-wracking.

I had my favorite bet, my best bet, I gave it out on the ringer pregame show, was Seattle minus six and a half in the first half just to cover a little seven-point line.

And the dramatic, possibly one of the greatest quarterback plays,

Brosmer, just a miracle cover for me in that spot. But that Minnesota defense had Sam Darnold seeing stuff.
Like he had Sam Donald's face. Don't let anybody convince you otherwise.

And Minnesota's defense was bringing it. They brought pressure.
I'm not, I don't want to have anything to do with that for this Washington team.

That's one of the reasons the Seahawks were a staya for me against the Falcons because I

haven't loved how their offense.

We keep seeing Sam Donald's face. Like three out of the last three years.
They really run the ball. They traded for Shaheed, and basically he seems like he's a punt returner.

And now it just seems like, like, I don't know, like JSN last week, who I had in

one of my leagues, but it was frustrating because it just seemed like they were like, you're not catching the ball.

All right. Parlay possibilities.

Rams Cardinals is in there. Broncos

at Vegas, I guess, but something scares me about Vegas. Like, they finally figured out just throw the ball to Brock Bowers all the time.
It does work.

It's within 50 feet and he manages. He's incredible.
And Denver is just clearly going to be this team that pulls wins out of their ass all year.

Ravens Steelers. Oh, that's Ravens minus five and a half.

I don't like the Ravens that much. I'm not afraid of them when the Pats play them.
I don't think they're that good of a football team.

I mean, there's been a lot written about this and discussed about this this week about Rodgers.

in the Steelers offense and how horrible it is and how it's like actually there's historical precedents being kicked now with how little the lack of explosive plays,

how he never throws the ball more than five yards. And no 20-yard completions.

It's like over and over again, everywhere you go, there's terrible stats about how bad the offense is. And then the flip side of it is that these games are always close.

I feel like this burned me last year with this mentality of Raven Steelers. It's always close, but the dogs do cover most of the time.
75% of the time, the underdog covers.

I just feel like the Steelers are shot offensively. I don't even know what you do if you're them on offense other than just try to run the ball.

Maybe they're going to be able to do that against the Ravens. But is the Ravens a parlay team for you or is this just a stayaway? Because I don't like them either.
Yeah, I'd be inclined to stay away.

The only thing I bet the under,

as soon as the number came out, because of classic AFC North, I think I got it around, I don't know, 43 and a half, something, but it might have opened far north of that. Either way,

I don't, don't, it's in a tic-tac zone. Well, here's one that I know you're going to have to.
Oh, no, it's not Tic Tac. It's Vegas zone.
Pardon me. Pardon me.
Vegas zone.

I know I'm going to be able to talk you into the Bengals in a parlay as a dog. No.
I know you're ready. No.
No. No.
No. Why not?

Because if the Bills can run the ball the way that they did against the Steelers, and I think they can run the ball the way they did against the Steelers, and it's the Bills at home. I kind of...

21% chance of snow house. I kind of don't mind laying the points.
I kind of don't mind laying the points. That Bengals defense

remains not good. It's better.

I think they're pretty frisky last year. It was a good effort against the Patriots two weeks ago.
That they were frisky against my team and that they were frisky on Thanksgiving. They're improved,

improving.

But going to Buffalo, this is, you know, Buffalo understands that

it can seed no more ground. I mean, I've I've been using that today.
Well, so the case for Buffalo,

because I think everybody feels like Buffalo's had a disappointing season, and it's basically because they don't get explosive plays anymore because none of their receivers can do that.

But I think they figured that out. No separation.
Now they're trying to do last year's Chiefs routine with like run the ball, run the ball, short passes. It's pretty good.

I always mention this. I keep track of wins, losses, either, or games.
You do? Buffalo has eight legitimate wins.

I think they have the most wins of anybody of just outright. I guess the Pats have eight.
Maybe a couple others have eight. Nobody has nine.
But they're eight. I have them eight, two, and one.

And the only either-or game was that Ravens comeback game in week one.

Other than that, all their wins are legitimate. And I said this last week: that Texans' Thursday night game, which seemed like a bad loss for them, they're playing on three days' rest.

They're playing a Texans team that I think you and I both love.

And they almost won the game.

They're very well suited, that Texans team to

turn

Josh Allen into a one-dimensional player. Particularly well-suited, the Houston team.
With all that said, Joe Burrow, with the playoffs on the line and the AFC North in absolute shambles.

I just think he's going to move the ball. Okay.
So maybe

there's an overplay for us, or maybe it's like Bill's money in the over, something like that. Okay.
I guess there is snow. I don't know.
Table it. All right.

The ones that i like the most what's the game you like the most the eagles

i have that down eagles minus two and a half at the chargers jalen carter's out

and i guess the question is does it matter where philly plays because their fans hate them aren't they better off playing on the road who's gonna are they gonna get cheers or booze because they're the the the la crowd isn't gonna be you know there's no la crowd showing up for the for the first time it'll be the philly transplants who live here but they're all gonna be so grateful to see their team in person they're not gonna boo the first time they go three and out.

Think about that. How are you doing? They're going to be grateful.
It's like, thanks for coming to see me 3,000 miles away. It's going to be a happy crowd.

It's an incredible number when we don't know for sure that Chester Herbert's going to play. This is, it's like,

if he does play, he's going to have a broken hand. Right.
He can't play on, they can't really go for on any fourth and short because he can't be the quarterback.

I think Trey Lance has to come out and be the quarterback. Anytime I see Trey Lance on the field, that's like, that's a win.
Let's go. All right.
Sign me up. Pussy of the Eagles, 10 days rest.

Eagles coming off a terrible loss.

They've sucked since the second half against Dallas. They've sucked.
So I watched all of that Chargers game last week because there was only three games.

And I was in a fantasy thing where I had Brock Bowers. I was going against somebody at Genti.
So I was like locked in.

And

I don't know. The Raiders kind of hung around in that game in a way that was a little disturbing.
And you realize like, and Max Crosby was doing stuff every once in a while.

The Raiders just aren't good. They're not well coached.
They just don't have enough talent.

But they kind of hung around in that game in a way that I thought would have been alarming if I was a Chargers fan. Plus, Herbert, you know, these guys, we saw with Rogers last week.

You have a broken hand, you get sacked, you fall on your hand, you're trying to protect the hand, you fumble. Like, there's so many ways this can go wrong

with a fucked up hand.

It just feels like stealing to get the Eagles at anything less than a field goal when I i honestly don't i i i'm not positive he's playing i'm not sure it makes a ton of sense for them plus even like he had a terrible throw around the in the red zone last week i i don't think he's been late set the guy that scares me in this game is vidal especially if uh carter's not playing i wonder if they can run the ball in them and but the thing with me is like should the chargers be like an 11-win team like it It's the kind of game you should lose.

Philly needs it. I'm with you.

I like the Eagles, and they should be able to sort this stuff out.

There's three that I really like. Well, two that I really like, one that I kind of like.
I'll give you the kind of like first. The Bears plus six and a half in Green Bay.

And you were on Green Bay last week. It was one of the ones we hit.

The fear would be Caleb and Lambeau.

To me, this seems like a flash sale line to me.

Like, why isn't this line three and a half or four?

There's still like a little untrustworthiness with the Bears, but I feel like with what they did against Philly and and how they ran the ball and how good their offensive line is, that the old Lombardi phrase, bad offensive lines don't travel, they have a good offensive line and they're an outdoor team.

And this seems like the kind of game they should hang around with. And it's a lot of points.
It's too many points.

Green Bay has been covered as a favorite by this number this entire season. Green Bay is great when they're an underdog or where the line is tight.
Green Bay, by this number, like look it up.

They flat out just don't cover it, don't come close to covering this this number um

i think the bears see that this what what helps the bears is that it's going to be freezing effing cold it's going to be like single digit cold yeah and they are going to run they're going to just try and run the football but to to the the the credit like the offensive line was a point of emphasis in the offseason and then they arrived with a head coach who actually can scheme up an offensive line a protection package and some run packages that are synergistic So it's not just we got guys, we got guys and now we have a plan also.

And the way that they ran against Philadelphia, now I don't expect a repeat against of that because by EPA,

Green Bay is pretty good, but they're only like middle of the pack in terms of

win rate in terms of defensive rush.

I think that the Bears will try and establish the run and that creates at least a little bit of room for Caleb. Nobody's asking Caleb to go, you know, win the game.

If you are, then you're going to lose the game because we're still early in his career. But I think that six and a half is a crazy number to me.

I like that they're going to be able to block. I also like that the one great thing he has is the scrambling.
His ability to get out of trouble three, four. And Drake May does this too.

Three, four times a game, he can just, it seems like it's going to be a sack and it isn't. And as inaccurate as he is, it's still a good quality.
I just think they hang around.

I also felt like we had the Packers in that Thursday game. There was a few moments where they needed a first down where they needed a play and I never knew where they were going.

And it would be like, whoa, Wicks made a play and Dobbs. And it's like, I didn't really trust Watson will have his one play long, right?

But I didn't really trust them series to series where they were going on like a third and seven, third and eight. And now Wicks is hurt.
He's got the red flag next to him.

I was nervous that whole game against Detroit. I mean, Detroit, you know, played

pretty good. I They're in a lot of trouble.
Different class, but the other fake, too many points for the Bears. Yeah,

I like the Chicago's finally got its secondary healthy, and it's a good secondary. Like we've been waiting all season.
Like every

highly touted Chicago secondary, this is the time that you need them against this Green Bay team. He has too many points.
Are we taking the Bears? A lot of confidence. Yeah, I think we should.

Cold weather team.

Built for

A Colts and Lambs.

Yeah. They're fine with it.
Great.

Jags Colts. I can't believe we're doing that.

Jags Colts. Jags plus one and a half against the Colts.

You're making a face. Why are you making a face? I just don't know what to do with this game.
This game comes. All right, well, I'm going to tell you.

It's going to be one of my picks. Oh, good.
Okay. Thank God.

Jags are plus one and a half.

Why does it confound you, by the way?

Because Jacksonville owns the Colts in Jacksonville.

You'll hear the stat a a million times. Raheem has it.
You know, he's been talking about it since Monday. The Colts haven't won in Jacksonville since 2015, something like that.

Remember, we were talking about home Browns. Outdoor Colts, to me, is a thing, too.

I thought Dimes looked terrible last week. He can't move.

Dimes can't move. That's the answer, right? Bad weather.
Because what they have to do, the Colts, is establish the run.

They can't have Jacksonville, who surprisingly surprisingly can put some pressure on the quarterback. They can't have him teeing up and teeing off on Jones.
He can't move. Jacksonville's not bad.

They're frustrating because of Lawrence. Thomas is going to hopefully be back more this week, but they can run the ball, which I've noticed with them.
Like they actually can

run inside right down the table. They can run on the outside.
Yeah, they can run the ball for real. At home.
So that's like the pathway for them. Can they do that to replicate that against the Colts?

You can't can't have Trevor Lawrence throwing the ball.

Then you hate yourself. 74% chance of rain.

I think that's good. If it's a bad weather, rainy outdoor game, I just like the Jags.
Okay. I don't want Daniel Jones who can't move around.
No sauce gardener in this game again.

And I think the Colts for the last month have just been different than those first seven weeks. There's just no question.
Every stat says it. Yeah.
Well,

they traveled. They had all of this travel.
They played away games, outdoor games, grass games. Somewhere in there, Jones got hurt.

And then it was supposed to be come home against Houston, get right, but they can't get right because

my man Danny Indiana Jones has a broken fibula, apparently. And they're like, it's fine.
He can move around on it. Yeah, it sounds great.

I also like this Jags home crowd.

I thought they were good in the Chiefs game. Okay.

Yeah,

I think that crowd can dial it up every once in a while. It's funny to take the Jags and then watch Trevor Lawrence and then send each other texts.
That all by itself is funny. So let's do it.

I'm endorsing this pick because. Well, one thing I was thinking for your Sunday show.
Yeah.

Like, I wonder if there's like a Jags by 14 and a half kind of like blowout bet.

Because like there's a world where this game goes horrible for the Colts.

You know, like Jones can't move.

No, but it's just like the Jags, like they pour it on, the weather's shitty, and all of a sudden you're like, whoa, in Jacksonville, they scored again. Eight to one, they're 14 and a half.

I'm just mentioning that. All right.
I like the Jags. That's one of the picks.
And then last one,

I knew we would agree on this one. Texans, Chiefs.
It's in Kansas City. Texans are plus three and a half.

It's going to be 25 degrees. It's a night game.
The Chiefs have major offensive line issues, including their left tackle is gone. I think Taylor's gone too.
Yeah.

And they have the best defense in the league.

This just feels like a miracle kind of matchup for them. Depleted offensive line, cold weather.
It's a cold weather and defense game.

And I don't know.

The Texans can run the ball. I just, I think they're really good.
And I think they're going to make the playoffs, which means they have to win this game.

They cannot lose this game and still have hope of making the playoffs.

Because they probably have to win their division, yes, the way this goes, right? Yes. So

you have this one too, Texans plus three and a half. Um, I like the under better.
I played the under because these two teams are both top five unders this season. Uh, I have a parlay option for you.

Okay, okay, okay. Now I'm not

Texans plus seven and a half, under 49 and a half.

Yeah, see,

I don't want us to parlay

teams any longer. This is a parlay I can endorse.
Like we lost last week. We both love Dallas.
We should have gone 3-0 on Thanksgiving. We love the situation.
We loved the way it looked.

And yet we took that and put that with the stupid Eagles.

Why did we do that? That was dumb.

Why do we do that? Like a team. play the team.
I don't want to make two team combinations anymore with our parlays because what we have to do is all these adjusted line things.

But if you want to do a Houston where like it's, it's correlated. The idea of Houston

covering that spread with the three and the and the and the total, you know, you push the total up so you're, you're going to finish way under the total. That makes sense to me.
Now you're talking.

That, that's like the, that, that's, I don't know if, if anybody would say it's, it's, it's positive expected value, but at least it makes sense.

Well, we could either do Texans plus seven and a half under 49 and a half, or we could do Texans plus four and a half under 57 and a half.

I'd rather do the first one of those two by far, by a long shot. Seven and a half, 49 and a half.
Yes. All right.
Yes, yes. So we'll mark that down.

So we have Bears, Packers, with the Bears, the Texans, with the parlay, with the Jags, with the Eagles,

and we need a fifth team.

This is where we've gotten in trouble all year.

It's always been bad right here, this spot.

We always have the four bets and somehow don't have the fifth one.

We can't lay the points with Cleveland. You're not, you don't want to go against Joe Burrow in Buffalo.
I don't. I don't want to go against Joe Burrow.
I kind of do, but I understand.

I understand your perspective. I don't want to do that.
You don't want to bet on Geno Smith and the Raiders getting seven and a half.

I mean, the Broncos haven't covered a number that big on the road all season. I I don't want to do that.
Okay. That's enough.

Rams cooking against the Cardinals. No.
Thanks. Back doors open.
You don't like that one?

I don't.

I don't want to

do the game with your game. Are we going to do the Jets?

Jets plus three against the Dolphins? The Tua cold weather. Just try to ride that one last time.

Tyrod Taylor.

The resurgent Aaron Glenn.

I kind of love it. We have a lot of Jets fans in our lives who hate themselves and hate their team and hate football, but there's a glimmer of something there with this current version of the Jets.

So if you look at the last

since week six, Jets lose to the Broncos by two,

lose to the Panthers by seven. Those are both two winning teams.
Beat the Bengals, beat the Browns, lose to the Pats by 13 in a game that was competitive for a half,

beaten up by the Ravens, and then they beat the Falcons last week.

Dolphins,

they got blown out in week nine by the Ravens, beat the Bills, beat the Commanders with your team when you're still missing dudes. In Madrid.
And then

barely beat the Saints last week. And it's like, the Dolphins are back.
Are they? They're five and seven. They can run the ball.
A-chan's been good. They can run.

They've reinvented themselves as a running defense with some pass rushers.

All right, fine. Fuck it.
Let's see the Jets.

We get Tua in 40-degree weather. That'll be fun.

See, at least like we'll be texting about Trevor Lawrence and saying bad things about him, but it will be fun to watch Tua in that cold weather because they're saying like it's in the high 30s and it's the feel-like will be in the low 30s.

And what Tua is going to feel like is getting the F off the football field. By the way, he has not been good.
It's not like Tu is the reason they're winning. What a great point.

It's not like he's been killing it.

All right, so our ringer 107. Today's Ringer 107 brought to you by a fan duel.

And we have Bears plus six and a half against the Packers. We both think that line's too high.
Texans plus seven and a half parlayed with the under 49.5 in Kansas City.

We think the Texans are a live dog. We love their defense.

Big, big, big offensive line issues for the Chiefs. 25-degree weather.
This is a three-point game. Three-point game, lower scoring just feels away.

Jags plus one and a half against the Colts and Danny Dimes's

semi-broken fibula.

Eagles

minus two and a half against the Chargers. We like when the Eagles are on the road because then they're not home with their fans booing them and yelling swear words at them.

And then last but not least, we can never find a fifth pick we feel great about.

So we're going to have to default to two in relatively cold weather, 40 degrees maybe, going against the Jets, plus three at home. The Red Hot Jets were three of their last five.
Yes, Jets.

Tyrod Taylor, the number one special teams, DBOA. Hey, folks, give that man a ball.
Give him a game ball. This team, all they do is win games, sort of.

That is, that's our ringer 107.

And all lines are subject to change on FanBill Sportsbook. All right, that was fun.
We're due for like a 4-1 or a 5-0. Maybe it'll be this week.
Thanks to the Jets.

Before we go, I wanted to give you a Thanksgiving story.

I'm here. Got to talk about food.
Do you have a good Thanksgiving, by the way, James? Thank you so much. Thank you.
Yes, incredible. Got to see family.

Went down to Raleigh, North Carolina. Speaking of great food scenes, Crawford Brothers, new establishment from the Crawford Empire.
Excellent, incredible Wagyu steak. Incredible.
Wagyu. Wagyu.

So had Thanksgiving, had like nine people over, had a bunch of stuff. My mom made her baked beans.

Our friend Sissy made her cornbread.

I don't even cornbread, like casserole type thing.

It just was like old school. I don't know how much butter was in it, but it was enough.
It was. In a casserole dish? Yeah, it was a long casserole dish with...

cornbread it almost tasted like cornbread but more like mashed potatoe kind of cornbread yeah it it was

imagining it. This up.
Yeah, you would have loved it. Incredible.
My mom's baked beans were out of control and also great for the intestines over the next couple of days, thanks to her.

We had the

sweet potato casserole. Awesome.
Had that.

We had

all kinds of stuff. Turkey, obviously, cranberry sauce.
We had all these sides. We had so many sides that my wife never brought out the mashed potatoes.
Oh, my gosh.

And we realized after the dinner that the mashed potatoes never came out because there was so much food, the mashed potatoes just got a DMP out of nowhere. It happened.
They were just in the fridge.

Yeah. There was cream spinach.
We had all these things. We had so much stuff that mashed potatoes never made it.

And my wife was like really upset about it because she's like, how do you not have mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving? I can't believe that. And I was like, A, nobody noticed.
B,

we were fine, but she really felt like that was the one thing you had to have. We also had two different versions of stuffing.
Forgot to mention that.

I was like, no, people don't notice stuffing, not mashed potatoes.

You know how much I adore your wife. She didn't miss the mashed potatoes.
Right. She didn't even know they weren't there.
She feels like they're an elemental part, and yet she, she also forgot.

Like, that's, you know, that, that tells the whole story.

Well, that just leads me to my point. Mashed potatoes.
Overrated?

You have nine people eating Thanksgiving dinner, not even realizing that mashed potatoes weren't out there. Well, I don't know how crucial mashed potatoes are to a Thanksgiving spread.

I just go ahead and say that because of all the other ways you can, you just described like six side dishes that are each in their own unique way.

Mind-blowing. You can have, and by the way, mashed potatoes a couple days after, awesome, incredible.
You can make mashed potatoes with scrambled eggs

and they have the effect of making the eggs as light and fluffy if you can get the ratio right.

And then you get some of that, some of the momofuku chili crisp and put it with the mashed potato egg. In fact,

go on dinner time live and ask ask Chef Chang to make you mashed potato

scrambled eggs and get some of that chili crisp. I'm telling you, this is an 11 out of 10.
You're going to love it. We should have done this as a first take segment.
Mashed potatoes need to step up.

They're getting passed by all the other potatoes. BMP.

Mashed potatoes haven't been good for years. Yeah, I love mashed potatoes.
So you know what I did at about eight o'clock that night? Yes.

I made myself a second whole plate of turkey, but I included the mashed potatoes. I brought back my friend, and they were happy to be there.
Yeah. You can put them on a sandwich.
They're very, very,

you know, versatile, the mashed potato. You can put them in a lot of different stuff.
Yeah.

I'm proud of you. That was my Thanksgiving story.
All right, we're going to take a break. Thanks, House.
We're going to come back with Matt Bellany and then John Cena.

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All right, I had to bring in our guy, Matt Bellany, Bellany, from Puck and from our podcast, The Town, which I love. It's great.

And it's been bustling lately because there is a Warner Brothers sale that's been happening in slow motion for months and months.

Call it a car crash. I got to say, Bellany, there's too much football going on.
There's too much basketball. There's movies.
There's screeners. I'm just not focused on it.

And I know you're covering this on your pod, but I wanted to bring you on. And can you just give me the idiot's guide? What's happening? It seems like there's three suitors.

We have Paramount really wants it. Netflix allegedly has the inside

whatever, but we'll talk about that. And then Comcast is kind of looming.
Those are the three suitors, correct? Those are. And the process right now is

they're getting bids.

And the guy running it, David Zaslov, who runs Warner Brothers Discovery, He is the chair of the committee that's evaluating all of these bids, and he keeps asking them to sweeten their bid.

And Paramount has said that we believe we are the easiest path to getting this deal approved. They think they have an in with the Trump people because they just bought Paramount.

They settled the lawsuit between Trump and CBS.

They did a big deal for the UFC. They're going to be broadcasting

the fight on the White House lawn. And they

are making a bunch of changes at CBS that Trump likes. They're going to release Rush Hour 4 because Trump wants them to, because the director, Brett Ratner, is doing a documentary about Melania.

So they've done a lot of things. You know, Larry Ellison is friends with Trump and has donated in the past.

They believe they have the easiest path to get this deal approved and that Netflix has a ton of problems getting this deal approved by the government because in the world of antitrust law, Netflix is the most powerful streaming service and they would be buying HBO Max, which is, you know, depending on what metric you use, third, fourth biggest streaming service.

So that potentially has some antitrust problems in this country. That is what Paramount is pushing.
And then today,

we get this letter that Paramount sent to David Zaslov at Warner saying that they believe the process is essentially rigged and that Zazlov is pushing this company towards Netflix because they are going to treat him better, they're going to give him a cushy job, and that they are

the sort of preferred buyer here.

Wow, that's a lot.

That's a lot.

You didn't talk about Comcast because they're involved too. Comcast is sort of an also ran here so far.
They are in the mix.

They are seen as potentially the company that needs this the most because they have

it the most. Yes.
And ultimately, many of the analysts that are watching this say the company that needs this the most will ultimately get it. I slightly disagree.

I think it's a combination of needing it the most and having the most money, which is what the Ellisons have. They have unlimited money because Larry is worth something like $260, $280 billion,

depending on the day. And they ultimately feel like they need it because they only own Paramount and they want to be a scaled competitor to Netflix.

And you can't do that with just the Paramount Plus subscribers. You put that together with HBO and the Warner Brothers Library, and you've got a pretty compelling value proposition there.

Comcast with Peacock does feel like they need it, though. Yeah, that feels like a one plus one equals three for a whole bunch of different reasons.

Cause I think, and Peacock's doing a little bit better. They have the Chivroy kidnap show.
They do. Everyone loves that.
Big hit, apparently.

Traders.

Yeah. They got NBA now.
Right. They got some NBA.

I feel like right now, everything's been kind of quiet from a disruption standpoint because everybody's got their little spots in the pecking order. And we're making less TV shows.

We're making less movies. We're making less everything.
Everybody's being super careful. Amazon could have been potentially a big disruptor, but they keep reorging.

The disruptor part that I think would be the most interesting is that Paramount got it. Because then it's like, all right, we are stepping into the boxing ring now.
We have a ton of IP.

We have money behind us. We have a football relationship.
We have UFC. We have this huge library of all these movies and TV shows.
And we can actually try to take a couple punches here at Netflix.

And I want to say that's why many people think that Netflix is going so aggressively after this. It's more of a defensive.
Well, that's going to be my question. Yeah.

Is this a defensive play or an offensive play by Netflix? They don't want that pole position right now. They don't want Paramount to potentially unseat that.
Absolutely.

And by the way, add in a little bit of a personal element. The head of streaming at Paramount Plus is Cindy Holland, who got fired by Ted Sarandos at Netflix.
Yes.

So they just stole the Duffer brothers away from Netflix. They did Stranger Things and they wanted to re-sign them.
And then they went over to Paramount. So there's like, was it a steal?

Well, not for what they offered them. They offered them movies in theaters to get them to go there.
Are the Duffer Brothers like directors of the kinds of movies you want to see in theaters? Maybe.

We'll see. They haven't ever directed one of those before.

I want to see the advanced metrics of getting the people after their transformative, huge show. Yes.
That is the HBO over the last 30 years.

HBO makes that argument all the time that we get the greatest show out of these people. And then if Netflix wants to overpay them to take them away, God bless.
Go there.

And, you know, it's like the guys that did Game of Thrones. They got overpaid by Netflix.
And what did they do? They did that

zero body problem.

What was that show?

Well, they did that one, but they also did the Garfield show, which was really good.

I still like those guys. But yeah,

they're probably not going to top Game of Thrones.

The show that Tom from

Tom from Successions did. Oh, the one that just aired.
That shows. Oh, right.
I have not seen that yet.

I'm still okay with those guys. It's just like

performance. They paid them Game of Thrones money to do Zero Body Problem, which was not successful.
Yeah.

Well, it's interesting because

from a Netflix standpoint, they've never bought anything. Right.

And they've kind of been proud of that. And there's this whole road.
And we've talked, I went on your podcast and talked about this about media mergers and why do people even do these?

We had a whole conversation about this. Netflix said this at

the Bloomberg conference that you were at. The co-CEO, Greg Peters, said there is not a good track record of media mergers.

It's a terrible track record. It is.
It just is. It's terrible.
And you're also assimilating different cultures. You're bringing in executives with their ideas.
There's always too many people.

You end up doing a lot of layoffs and a lot of cuts. And it's going great for Netflix.
So to me, and I haven't talked to anybody from there about why you're going after this.

I'm not even sure how much I believe, but it seems totally defensive to me because people are worried about Paramount. But as somebody who's a creator who makes stuff,

you kind of almost want Paramount to get it because now you would have like, now you have two people kind of going at it against each other for content, which would be, I think, great for everybody.

Competent,

it would take the legacy studios from five down to four if you merge Paramount and Warner Brothers. Okay.
They argue that they're going to increase the number of movies and put investment into that.

But ultimately, if you merge these services, if you merge the studios, it's one fewer buyers in the marketplace.

But if you put Netflix over Warner Brothers, you could get, I mean, Warner Brothers as a theatrical studio could entirely go away. HBO Max could entirely go away.

I mean, it's that kind of a merger where the fundamental playing field of Hollywood would change significantly.

Well, I know you've talked about this, but if Netflix got Warner Brothers, what happens to HBO?

Two scenarios. One is it goes away.
They absorb the subscribers. They transition.
I mean, that's idiotic. You can't do that.

Or make it a tile

on Netflix, where you go to Netflix and there's a little box that says, you love HBO? Click. Everything you'd ever want to watch on HBO.
That's one scenario.

What Netflix is telling people is that they would operate them separately and that there would be an HBO Max service. There will be a Netflix service.
Maybe they have the same back end.

Maybe they don't. But that the brands and services would remain separate.
I don't know if I believe that.

That's the kind of thing you say if you are trying to win regulatory approval of your big merger. But, you know, the goal of buying this is not to buy HBO Max necessarily.

The goal is to suck up all of those Warner Bros. franchise movies.
I mean, Netflix would own Batman, they would own Wonder Woman, they would own Minecraft.

All of these big franchises would become Netflix movies. And maybe they put some of them in theaters.
Maybe they don't.

Maybe they do it for a couple of years just so everyone gets off their back and Ted Sarandos can be a hero around town for releasing movies, but then maybe they backslide. I mean, that's the goal.

Or they take HBO Max and they spin it off and sell it.

There's a scenario where they buy this company or the studio and streaming side of the company at Warner, and then they take the studio and sell HBO Max to Comcast.

So then they can kind of take what they want and Netflix can take what they want. That's one scenario.
So that's a library IP play. They decide they don't need HBO.

They actually sell it off to make some of the money back and they're basically getting library and cockpock and Paramount. Yes.

I mean, that is very complicated because obviously, what is the value of HBO? It's the brand and it's all the subscribers, but it's mostly.

the content that is on HBO, which presumably Netflix would want to take for themselves. It's all those Warner's movies.
It's the full library of HBO shows.

You could watch the Sopranos anytime you wanted on Netflix. Like that is kind of the value.
And if they sell HBO Max to another company, what goes with it? Some of the library, all of it,

rights to the library. It's very complicated.
So we could get our scenario where they sell it to Apple

and we finally have Apple buying HBO, which should have happened 10 years ago, or you have Comcast buying it and just merging HBO and Peacock and calling it HBO because nobody knows what Peacock is.

Exactly. And

the key element there is that HBO Max is global and Peacock is only domestic. So Comcast would immediately become a global streaming player and currently they are not.

And Comcast has some other advantages, right? With the

they have the wiring for cable and these things that maybe could help them and some of them. Yeah, I mean, broadband is a declining business, but they also have theme parks.
Not for old people.

Not for old people. But, you know, Elon wants to make everybody a Starlink customer instead of broadband.
But, you know, the,

but remember, Universal has the theme parks. So that would be synergistic with the Warner IP if they were to get it.
Now, Warner IP is tied up at Six Flags.

If you go to your local Six Flags, there's like a Superman coaster, things like that.

But presumably, there would be IP plays that Universal could use in the parks and ultimately ultimately transition all those heroes over to the Universal Parks, which is a big business and growing for them.

Well, the scariest thing you said was that HBO would get absorbed into Netflix and basically be a little carousel tile.

I think that reminds me of like when going back in the early 2000s with wrestling when WWE bought WCW and basically just assimilated the roster and it just everything got lost and it just didn't work.

And, you know, I feel like there's an HBO audience. It's a distinct brand.
And I just think that's really hard to fold into something else. I hope that's not how this plays out.

Yeah, but there is a lot of overlap in those customers. I mean,

most people who have HBO also have Netflix, right?

Yeah, but don't you think the type of content you would expect from HBO that you might like veers a little bit different than the type that's on Netflix? Oh, of course.

I mean, HBO is still the best brand. in television because it stands for something.
Netflix stands for many different things to many different people, and it's dependent on the algorithm.

And it's not, it just means television, which is great for Netflix because it's allowed them to grow to more than 300 million subscribers, but it doesn't mean what HBO means.

You and I both give a show a chance on HBO because it's HBO, when we would not give that same show a chance if it was on CBS

or if it was on even Netflix. I would give every show a chance.
I am not a show snub. But perfect example is The Pit.
Did you watch The Pit?

I didn't watch The Pit. Okay.
But I knew a lot about the New York Times. The Pit won the Emmy this year for Outstanding Drama Series.

The Pit is a fairly conventional, extremely well done, fairly conventional medical doctor show. If that aired on CBS, no way it wins The Emmy.
No way it even is nominated. for the top Emmy.

But because it aired on HBO Max and had the premature of that brand, people saw it differently. And it not only was nominated, but won the top Emmy.

Well, I wonder what would have happened with The Beast and Me if it was on HBO instead of Netflix. Because I think Netflix has had some really good stuff this year.
And,

you know, like even adolescents, I thought that Garfield show was excellent. Like, I think if you took the best 10 things that have been on Netflix, they could go toe-to-toe with any other streamer.

It's just they also have a lot of other stuff. Yeah, look at the volume.
I mean, that's what HBO always says is that they have such a higher hit rate.

And I don't necessarily mean hits that are super popular, but hits that are good and that might be a good idea. Yeah, a higher batting average.
Yeah, a higher batting average.

And Netflix has so much content and so much garbage. They also have some good stuff.
And then the definition of good and garbage is different for every person. I would argue HBO has some garbage too.

They do. They do.
And when they miss, especially when they have the discovery documentaries and

all that stuff that they're putting on there. Yes.
When HBO misses, they really miss.

But to me, HBO is more of like a, they're like a closer. They're like throwing 60 innings.
They're coming in to pitch the ninth. They have an incredible K walk ratio.

And Netflix is trying to be a 250 inning starter. I just think that's apples and oranges.
I don't know how that fits in together. I do think it's interesting for Comcast, though, because

That's the one, if I had to rank them for how would this shake up the landscape, Netflix getting it is i think the worst case scenario because i then it then it's just they become like a monolith i i just don't streaming wars are over i mean yeah that's one of the analysts wrote exactly that this week if this if netflix gets warner brothers like it is over it is like the ultimate flex the ultimate i mean you what you made the ben affleck uh announcement on the phone to you today was ben affleck accepting the batman part after he won the oscar and argo and he's just like fuck it yeah now what can i do now i'm just gonna be batman i can do anything i cannot i cannot do wrong It just, but it's also interesting that Netflix thinks they need it.

If they're real about this, if they are not just going through the motions to raise the price, if they think

they are, they need this, then there's something going on at Netflix that we don't know about.

If they think they need this, because all signs point to a lot of growth potential, margins are great, you know, they have good shows, good content.

Like, what's going on there if they feel like they need the HBO library this badly?

Yeah, I mean, you could look at it the other way and you go, you got to keep growing even during times when you don't think you should keep growing.

I saw this happen at ESPN in the 2011, 12, 13 range. They thought they were invincible.
They thought they were going to have this lead forever. And within five years, it flipped on them.

And all of a sudden, they were scrambling and the subs were going backwards. And it was all because of decisions they didn't make in 11 and 12 and 13 when they really could have consolidated.

And then they almost made some misguided ones, right? Like, I don't think buying Fox was a good idea by East Do you buy Disney at all. I don't.
Especially when there's better stuff coming.

I've been a little more forgiving on that one. I think that it's a little underrated what they did get.
And we talk about Disney in a little bit of a different light since they did buy Fox.

They would have scale problems and they would perhaps be in more of a Comcast situation if they did not have all of that content from the FX networks,

they wouldn't have Avatar for their theatrical slate, they wouldn't have the X-Men and all of those Fox Marvel properties that they're going to exploit for the next decade.

There's a lot of stuff that they got from Fox content-wise, that doesn't now. Did they probably overpay?

And did it load them up with debt that may have made them unable to do other things that they should have done, like buy a video game company or do some of these other things?

Maybe that's a better argument, but on a pure content play, they did get a lot of stuff from that. Or you could have argued they could have invested that money in other places.

They could have spent even more on sports and could have bought electronic arts. They could have bought a number of other things that would have been potentially additive to their business long term.

Or they could have waited for a Warner Brothers scenario.

Yeah, so

the paramount piece of this.

If they did get this, if they do pull this hostile takeover, this is where I need you because I just don't understand.

Like hostile takeovers, it seems like it's something out of a season seven succession episode. Totally.

How often does this work? How legal is it? Is this going to end up in a scenario where just everybody's suing each other for the next five years and nothing happens until 2034?

Well, this is the opening shot of potential litigation. This is a pre-litigation letter that was sent today.
from Paramount to Warner Discovery saying, look, guys, we're on to you.

We saw that one of your executives was meeting with regulators in Europe, and there was a German newspaper report saying that they were lobbying for them to try to block this deal.

If the Ellisons have the inside track in the U.S., Warner Discovery was supposedly going to Europe to try to head it off there. And they're like, that's not fair.

If you are in bed with Netflix, I mean, Ted Sarano is the head of Netflix and David Zasloff at Warners, they were at a UFC match together not two months ago. They're friends.

If this is being directed to one company over us, we are going to sue you.

And that letter was directed at the independent directors of the company, the people on the board who are not hand-selected by the investors there.

They are the ones that are afraid of getting sued because if they go along with a plan that does not serve the shareholders but serves management, then they are liable if they are sued.

Now, I'm not saying that's correct. You could argue that Netflix just put in the most money.

They're offering the most money here from all the reporting. And if that's the case, then maybe they're just going to go with the highest bidder.

But if there is something sinister going on, there could be litigation. And even if Paramount just thinks that there's something going on, there could be litigation that spurs out of this.

I doubt there's anything sinister going on. You do.

Yeah, that's

really improbable to me. Do you know David Zasloff?

Do you know David Zasloff?

I know. He's been a good foil for you over the years.

He loves the spotlight. He wants to stay at this company so badly.
He loves that he gets to have dinner with Charlize Theron and a bunch of people at his house. He wants to stay there.

And Netflix from my reporting and others, like they're saying, yeah, you can stay at Warner Brothers.

If he splits this company as he wants to and turns down Paramount and splits it and then sells off the studio separately, he gets to stay in that chair longer.

And there are other incentives involved that Paramount is referencing, and I'm writing about in my puck newsletter, that

suggest he is doing this to keep himself at the company. Not saying that's true, but that's the suggestion at least.
And if that's the case, that may not be in the best interest of the shareholders.

So, Netflix, the other piece would be the sports, that there's some sports stuff that comes with Warner Brothers, too, on top of the IP.

And Netflix is obviously taking sports way more seriously and dabbling left and right. And

yeah, they have March Madness. They would have some baseball.
They'd have the Savannah bananas that we all love.

They do not have NBA. They do not have football.
So the big two are not coming with this thing. But Netflix is already getting some football.
They are. Yeah.

So the case, if you're Netflix is you're blocking Paramount.

from being like your 1B competitor like that you're just going to be fighting for the next 15 years who has endless pockets And now you're spending more with them.

Combined with you're doing awesome right now, that doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't keep trying to grow. I would think those are the two reasons you would do this.
Yeah.

Or some problem that we don't know about that, you know, growth is lagging or they're seeing engagement on their existing content or they feel like there's a cap on how big they can grow with the current assets they have.

I think also

I feel like more people have Netflix every year. I know, I know.
They do. It keeps people.
They kind trying to have to have Netflix.

If the problems were really significant, they would have to disclose them to their shareholders.

So, it's not like there's some ticking time bomb there that they that they're just not telling us about, but you know, they're doing this for a reason.

And if it's not just purely defensive and it is offensive, it may there may be some kind of uh stress point where they say, Okay, we've tried to make movies for 10 years now, and we can't get much traction on our movies.

Is that because you need to have IP in your library to make movies that people care about? They see the numbers on the movies that they license from other studios.

If you go on Netflix most nights, the top movies are from other studios. It's Shrek, it's Minions, it's the Warner Brothers movies like Superman that they just license over on Netflix.

And they're seeing that. And so they have the data.

And they're probably saying, like, if we owned all that, it would be so much easier and so much more of a growth generator for engagement than having to license them out and get, you know, get

raked over the coals every few years on these licensing deals. Maybe that's what they're thinking.
Yeah, I don't,

I see your point.

I don't know if I agree with it, but the one piece that I think, like, if I was running Netflix would worry me is like, they have a movie right now called Train Dreams that's fucking awesome.

Like, it really is. It's really, really good.
I really liked it. And it's on Netflix.
And I watched it on the PGA screen wrap I got. I didn't realize it was on Netflix,

but it is on Netflix. And it just feels like that movie should be a bigger deal because that's like everything you would want in an Oscar contender.

It's kind of the, it's a little like Coda a couple years ago.

I don't know who made it. I have no vested interest in it.
I just really liked it. And

yeah, if you're making movies and Netflix cares about having movies, like that's an example of that movie should be huge on Netflix, and I'm not sure why it isn't.

It's doing okay on Netflix for that kind of movie, but they, that's a movie they bought at Sundance, and they paid like 20 million. No, I believe it was 10 million for that movie at Sundance.

I saw it at Toronto, the film festival, loved it. I would love for movies like that to get theaters, but Netflix is not in that business, so it didn't get a theater.

I think that movie could have done okay if it had gotten a theatrical release. It's a really beautiful-looking movie.

That's the other element here: whether Netflix will shut down Warner Brothers as a theatrical studio if they get this deal. Um, they're saying that

the problem is with movies now, movie theaters are back in a real way, and people like going to the movies. And Netflix is smart.

And if they see like an audience drifting a little bit this way, they're going to want to keep a piece of that. Well, also,

maybe,

maybe, maybe not. I mean, Netflix has been pretty consistent over the last 10 years of trying to kneecap movie theaters at every possible opportunity.

Ted has said over and over again: it's not our model. It's not our model.
We do not put movies in theaters. We want people to watch movies on Netflix.

Now, they make concessions for certain filmmakers. They give them a two-week release for the Knives Out movies.
They give Freda Gerwig some IMAX.

Like, that's what they do to get these projects, but they would prefer that we all watch their movies on Netflix, not in theaters.

And that is very different from the Warner Brothers, HBO Max relationship, where they would very much like us all to go to the theater first and then on home video if we want to watch it there, fine.

So

how that shapes out is a key component here.

No, but you can't tell me like if Netflix had one battle after another and it was in theaters for three weeks and then went right to Netflix, like Netflix wouldn't sign up for that.

I think that's where we're going. Two weeks is there.
It's whatever it is. Yeah.

And it would not, because it's two weeks, it would not get a national release because the theater chains will not play movies from Netflix if they don't get a proper theatrical release.

So one battle after another would have been a Netflix movie for most of the people who saw it. Yeah, so that would have hurt one battle after another.

Yeah, one battle after another. What about the next Batman? Or the one after that? A lot of these movies,

they're advertising themselves as come see this on IMAX. Yeah.

March 3rd.

That's the thing is like Netflix is saying we will honor the theatrical release for these Warners movies. Maybe now, but maybe not after a couple of years.

The best thing for Netflix in the world would be if there was a brand new

A-list actor playing Batman movie that was only available on Netflix. They would love that because everybody would watch it and it would become a phenomenon and something people talk about.

The whole knock on Netflix is that it's just a sea of slop and you don't remember what you actually watched. So they can't create franchises out of their content.

It's very difficult for them because these franchises we know as brands, for the most part, are theatrical movie experiences that we got up off our asses, went to the theater, saw there, and remember.

And there was marketing everywhere for these movies. The rewatchables, how many rewatchables have been Netflix originals?

I don't know. I don't know.
Look at the list. Extraction, maybe?

Well, Triple Frontier. We've been saving it.
Okay, so you did Triple Frontier and you did extraction. No, we haven't done it yet.
Oh, you haven't? Okay. We're waiting.

But my point is, I know that you do mostly old movies, but the reason why those movies... We don't really do anything from the last five, six years.

But the reason those movies are re-watchables are because they're good movies and you love them, but because you remember them and they were moments in the culture that lasted in your head.

Like when you said you were doing weird science. I remember the billboards and marketing for Weird Science when I was a kid.

I remember that experience of going going to the theater and seeing that movie. And that's what Netflix is missing out on.
And

they have a hard time with that. So maybe if they buy Warner's, they'll change their model and they'll put movies like that in theaters.
My guess is that.

They had Happy Gilmore 2, and it felt like everybody and their brother watched that movie in the first three days.

Totally. But you know what?

That's a sequel to a theatrical hit. True.
Well, we'll see. Jay Kelly will be a good litmus test for this, right? Two big stars.
Jay Jay Kelly's a small movie.

I know, but George Clooney and Adam Sandler are on the cover of your Netflix character. So that's not nothing.
Yeah, they did.

Don't look up had Leo and Jennifer Lawrence, similar type situation. It was an Oscar movie that had two big stars that they could put on the tile.
And that movie did really well for Netflix.

But then again, Maestro didn't do great. for Netflix and that had Bradley Cooper.
So they've had star-driven movies.

That was not, that movie, it was very well done, but I wouldn't say it was a great hang. No.
Yeah.

The thing with Netflix is they're always going to keep moving and they're not going to stay stationary, which is how all these big media companies, I think, have gotten into trouble over the years.

If you look back at anybody, it's always like, we're doing great. Don't change a thing.
And that's when you have trouble. Even like Spotify, like being here the last,

you know, last five and a half years, like they're constantly like, what's next? What's next? What's next? We weren't even doing video three years ago, but they were like, this is coming.

We got to do this. And I think

the

analogy of, you know, thinking you can do no wrong.

The analogy for Spotify there would be, let's just buy up a bunch of podcast studios and pay a bunch of stars to do podcasts because we're freaking Spotify and we're making so much money, we don't know what to do with it.

And look at that. The ringer worked, and then what else?

Yeah, but I to defend that strategy, which was great for me and the ringer, obviously. Yeah.
they were trying to put the footprint in a, in a podcast, right?

And,

you know, at the time, I, they mistakenly thought it was defensible, but it was a mistake thinking that celebrities would lead to the same way it would be with TVs or movies, where you get a celebrity that would drive an audience.

And what you eventually realize is a good podcast drives an audience. Yeah.
It's the kind of stream.

I dare you speak of the royals that way.

But, you know, and then as everything's shifting to video, I think some of the things they bought made a lot more sense in the 2010s than 2020s. True.
No, they absolutely put a

flag down in the podcast space. But my point is, and we're spending money.
Yeah, my point is they overspent on an area that they were confident enough to go into because of all the success they had.

It led to the town with Matt Bell and it was absolutely.

But then the,

you know, the Netflix situation right now is: are they doing the same? Are they about to drop $60, $70 billion

on a theatrical-oriented studio and a streamer that is overlapping with what they already have?

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, they have so much money.
I thought the fact that it was a mostly

cash offer.

Yeah, about 85% cash, we are told. And then the rest in stock.
I was surprised by that because their stock's awesome. Anyway, so when do you think?

Does this play out before the end of the year or how long does it go? Warners wants it to, but keep in mind, this isn't the end.

Even if they accept an offer and start negotiating with exclusively with one party, anyone can come in at any time.

Like anyone, if there's some super billionaire out there just waiting for this all to play out, and then they accept an offer, start negotiating the deal, and someone comes in and says, Wait a second, I'll give you more money.

That's I'll give you way more money than they're doing.

They can go with that offer down the line.

Excuse me? Neil Mohan just got just thrown his hat in the ring out of nowhere with YouTube? If YouTube did it, I think the government would probably have a word with them.

The merger of the number one and number two streaming services. Probably not going to work.
So Pluto and Tubi. Tubi.

Tubi is Fox. Tubi is Fox.
Maybe Tubi buys Pluto.

But Tubi. Flubo, that was a joke on Flats.

Roku. Oh, Roku.

Charlotte Collier just comes flying in off the top rope and gets it. I haven't looked at their valuation lately, but I don't think it's quite big enough to justify this kind of expense.

This is not easy. This is not, Paramount sold for about $8 billion.

This thing is going to sell for between $60 and $70 billion, probably.

It's just an entirely different animal, and there are only a few entities or people that can afford to make that kind of investment. Maybe it'd be the guy that bought the Dodgers.

The guy just has endless money. You mean the Lakers, the Dodgers.
Yeah, he's just, he's going nuts. I heard that.
Yeah, then they could air the games there.

I heard he's tiptoeing around some other LA assets right now, too. Oh, really?

Are you breaking some news here? Well, just keep an eye on him. Keep an eye on him.
I don't know if he's done. Not hard to follow the breadcrumbs on it.

All right, Matt Bellany, we can listen/slash watch you on the town

Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Your social clips are out there sometimes. Lucas,

might try to get get Lucas a better camera. I know.

Town on video 26. It's coming.
It's coming. Is producer Craig going to have like his own like producer cam? We should.
It really should.

I would prefer the camera be on him most of the time and not me.

Well, at least you figured out your camera angle finally on the BS Pod. I know.
It's not like up my nose. Yeah.
Matt Bellini, great Steve. You too.
Thank you.

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Game Day is all about the tailgate spread.

Listen, if you're going to have friends over, you absolutely 100% have to have a lot of things for them to eat. Everyone gets hungry.
They can say they're not going to eat, but guess what?

If you lay out the right kind of spread and you have some good, cheesy, creamy, melty dip with some good crackers, some chips, they're probably going to eat it.

So why not do creamy shells and cheese, melty Velveeta blocks, and cheesy jarred quesos? I don't know. Why wouldn't you? They're taking down one taste bud at a time.

Do yourself a favor, stock up on Velveeta before kickoff. I can't believe this hasn't happened before.
John Cena is here. So we won't be able to say that after this because it's happening.

It's happening. And it'll be like, hey, welcome back, or you're never invited here again.
One of those two.

Well, I don't know whether you're the 17-time champ or the 14-time champ because I've never, once they split the belts,

it just became super confusing to me. You won the WWE F/WE title, the lineage title.
That was 14 times. You might be asking the wrong guy.

But then you won the Universal one three times, which I think used to be the old WCW NWA title that moved over. You might be able to say any stat and I'd be like, yeah.

Well, I'm going to count the 14 because I count them for the, for the Boston titles for the century because we won six with the Pats, four Red Sox.

two Celtics, one Bruins, and then you're 14. That's 27.
If the NFL absorbs the AFL,

isn't it still a Super Bowl trophy? So we'll count the other three. That's great.
No, but I don't know. I'm just trying to, I don't know.
I don't know.

If the NBA absorbs the ABA, isn't the NBA trophy still the NBA trophy? I think.

Yeah, you're right. I think you're right.
I think you've, it's 14. I think the three

weeks in semantics all day long. Yeah.
I think

what's important about championships in our business is

it is pretty, it is the business card to show you're at the the pinnacle of your profession so regardless of like the origin story of it or whatever when we deem this leather and gold this thing that is manufactured like okay this is this is it you know it's um

it's it's not as muddy a water as like boxing uh but it's it is it is the symbol of like hey we're placing a pretty sizable investment on you Well, and it's the culmination.

I mean, you especially, like you played football late late 90s, you do some bodybuilding. You were in that, there's like on YouTube, that Discovery show where they did about, what was that? OPW?

I don't even remember. Ultimate Pro Wrestling.
Yeah. It was here in Orange County.
Yeah. So you're trying to figure out

what all that stuff.

But within five years, you're the champ. But I always feel like when that, when somebody wins the champ the first time, the championship the first time,

you can kind of see the disbelief in their face.

even though you know maybe you know it's going to happen but just like holy shit this actually happened and I did it and I climbed the mountain and I'm here.

Well,

I,

that's an interesting perspective. If you saw, I just was able to perform one last time in the TD Garden in Boston.

And on that night, I was able to have a match for the Intercontinental Championship, right? Which I won. for the very first time.

And the last look on my face is like,

what's going on? So I don't know if that wears off.

That's an interesting perspective because every person I've seen, when they win it for the first time, has some sort of like

look of surreal appreciation.

But it was the same look I had a few weeks ago when I won the Intercontinental Championship for the first time in 20, you know, my 23 years. I've never had a chance to go for it.

Well, it's like, think about it, especially because wrestling's been in everyone's lives from day one, right? So, like, I think about my son.

That's what we're trying for. Well, my son had the championship belt when he was six, seven, you know, and doing moves and beating, beating up a pillow and pinning the pillow and then doing this.

And then you think when you're an adult, it's actually happening. But I, even like when Hogan won, when he beat the chic,

you could, he seemed like everybody has the same look in their face, like, I can't believe it. And the crowd's going nuts.

Yeah, it's weird because you, you do make a good point. Like it is part of the curated experience of entertainment, yet it happens.

I also think there might be,

but I don't think this is our business particular, maybe.

Nothing truly happens until it does. You know, there's a lot of stuff that can happen between

even the bell ringing and the bell ringing again that

can change outcomes or whatever. And these are moments, hopefully anyone who's involved in WWE's, you know,

thought about their entire life. And when they happen,

there probably is a wave wave of surrealism that comes over them, you know? What were we like 27?

Man, again. There's 2005.
How old are you in 2005? You're like 27, 28. You're late 20s at that point.
Yeah, we'd have to worry. But you'd only been in the business for like five years.

Yeah, I don't.

So I don't know how much that matters. And I don't know how much I care about that anymore.
I think.

I'm just saying it happened fast. You went from like trying, oh, it'd be nice if I could get a WWE contract to

be in the chain. Holding the belt.
Yeah, that is a pretty fast at a wrestlemania yeah yeah but in

in all fairness uh in the in the class i was brought up in at the time you know life is a is a whole lot of luck and and i was very lucky to be brought in at the time that i was brought in

so many tectonic changes were going on in wwe i was in a very gifted class and yeah you were there were members of my class that were made champion far before me with just about or a little less experience so

it was just a case of good timing and i think opportunity is a lot about good timing and it's just a matter of what you do with it yeah it was such a strange era for wwe because it was like it coming off the most scorching hot time in the history of the company right you have this run with the rock and stone cold and this whole um he defeats wcw yeah well it's yeah the whole

the whole mindset of like attitude and racy programming and competition. And then it's all kind of washed away.

Like it was, we're, we're kind of in the, the middle of what, another boom in, in, in wrestling. No question.
You know, there's, there's multiple avenues of competition.

Uh, there's multiple outlets of programming out there. WWE has so much programming out there.

And to somebody like me who, who just doesn't have a lot of time to invest in everything, it's like, man, I don't know how we sustain all this, but to our consumer, they want more.

The more we can give them, the better. People are actually going to sit down and listen to this because this hopefully is going to drop some breadcrumbs on, you know, December 13th.
Right.

And they want more. They want to hear more.
If I could sit down with you for five hours, I have a feeling our consumers would hang in there for it. It's just,

we're in another, another golden age. You know, I certainly won was when it nationalized and WWF was put on cable television.

I think that with Hogan on the cover of Sports Illustrated, I think that was one.

I think the attitude era and the height of WCW, WWF competition was another one.

And I think here we are in yet another golden age, like a boom. There was a little mini one when you and Punk were feuding.

I remember that was the first year of Grantland, but I felt like the internet had gotten really good at trying to read between the lines of what was real, what was not real.

And it became like this own game. It wasn't as big as the things you mentioned, but something.
It's definitely some sort of little mini era. So like a moment of relevance is

different. Like that, that unbelievable night, that feel that Punk had was amazing.
And when it gets picked up by genuine sports outlets, like, oh man, he really did something great. Yeah.

The Montreal screen. It was good for you, too.

It was, I think it was good for everyone. Yeah.
The Montreal screw job is another moment that's like, wow, this got picked up by a lot of folks.

And it was a moment, but it was kind of in a lull in the business. And I mean, like, boom, I mean, like, sustained bull market.
Like wrestling is

on everybody's mind from 1984 to like 1988. And then from like 1997 to 2001.
Yeah. And now it's been like, I think, I think COVID helped us out a lot.

We were the only program that ran during the pandemic to

give fans entertainment. Right.
But it's probably been like 1819.

to 25.

Like it's, it's grown exponentially, the, the better TV deals, uh, being able to reach more global audience, having a crop of new stars and having the old stars kind of fade and transition, but like having the bullpen stacked,

I think is, has helped. And the fact that now it's, it's relatively easy to be a performer on TV.

And I'm saying comparatively speaking, before there was only one Monday Night Raw with two hours of broadcast time on it, now there's a bunch of different shows. TNA just announced another TV deal.

Like there's a lot of stuff going on. So there's a way for you as a performer to put your business card card out there.

You know, like it now has been, it's been a great time to be a wrestling fan and it's been a great time to be a wrestler. Yeah, it's a good point.
Cause

like when you came up, there was way less shows.

WCW got integrated in and there just wasn't enough time for everybody. Everybody was pretty miserable for the most part.

WWE had birthed SmackDown. So it went from two hours to four hours, but we absorbed ECW and WCW.
So they absorbed like 250 contract talent for four four hours of television, which

is usually no real plan. Because you're just kind of adding, it would be like if the NBA just doubled the amount of players in the league, but had the same amount of teams or something.
Yeah.

So it's it, and we went through a name change, get the F out. So we became WWE.
The XFL failed for the first time. Yeah.
Stone Cold Steve Austin was fired. The Rock went to Hollywood.

Triple H was hurt. The Undertaker was hurt.
Like people don't understand

the, especially performers now. It's very difficult to tell them.
You know, we we just

did Petco Park with like 46,000 people in it. It wasn't, we sold seats that didn't have a ring view.
You had to watch on a monitor, but you could say you were there. Right.

Man, I remember doing, it was formerly known as the MCI Center in DC, where Dave Batista's wife sang the national anthem, and there were 1,200 people in the building, not 1,200 tickets sold, 500 tickets sold, 1,200 people.

Wow.

In where I'm essentially going to have my last match. You know, like

it hasn't always been this prosperous. And

it really warms my heart to be able to look around the arenas and see the place jam-packed and the people excited, to see the promotion thriving, to see the talent really

do well for themselves in a performative aspect and certainly like a financial aspect.

They're getting paid a whole lot more than I was, but instead of like shaking my fist and saying, well, back in the day, we only made this much, I think that's a a great way to show like, I just want to leave the place better than I found it.

So now we got a bunch of millionaires because the company's doing well. Like it's leveled up.
It is leveled up in every aspect. Sports families are bringing us in.

ESPN has welcomed us into our family. Netflix has welcomed us into their family.
Like

we're out there all the time. We used to have to struggle to get like a good time slot in Germany.
And you have to do all these international TV deals. But now we're just on Netflix.

So that helps global touring, which can keep demand high in the States. Like it does so much, which can keep the business hot for longer, which we can pay talent better and create more stars.

It's all really, really, really good. I'm just happy to be able to see the beginning of this snowball and get kicked downhill and see where it goes.

You also seem like you have like four different generations of fans at this point, right? You have like people like me, anyone over 50, who probably were there pre, who remember like pre

cable,

who remember like when Killer Khan broke Andre the Giant's ankle and Sabisco turned on Bruno, all that, all that stuff.

And then you have the kids that kind of came up during that Hogan era that they got indoctrinated that. Then you have the kids.
Attitude era. Then the kids from Rockstone called that era.

And then basically your era through punk. And those people are now adults.

They're bringing them together. They're like your kid.
Yeah. Or they're bringing, or they're going after college and they can afford tickets now.
Yeah.

So it's just, it just feels like it's gone and gone on and on. And I also think that's what's great about the business.
Like, you're right. It does touch a lot of hearts and minds.

And everyone has their story. Everybody remembers like

their one moment from that era of like, no, but nothing was better than this. Right.
Comparatively speaking, I think a lot of people view Saturday Night Live like this.

Saturday Night Live is like, yo, no, this cast was the best and this skit was the best and this moment was the best and then someone else would be like how can you say that when this year was the best and this cast and remember this skit they've done so much great work and they've had so many rosters of stacked comedians that they do have eras and they do have like the best of this era and it is it is zeitgeist generational comedy so like if it if it moves you in a certain way you could watch some of those skits back with someone who's never seen him and be like they might not it might not resonate you know what i'm saying just like if you watch hogan chic was the first match i ever saw that hooked me but you show you know a young mind who watches the way the business is now you show them that match back it might not resonate with them you know what i'm saying it's just it was just it was what i needed to see at the time well they always say with snl that

what whoever whenever you're watching the show when you were 13 that's that's what you thought your favorite cast was and wrestling is probably somewhere between 10 and 13 that those when you were all in i remember watching with my son, and I knew it was going to happen because he was like this physical kid, like very, very expressive.

And I was like, he's going to get hooked. And we took him to the Staples for one of the shows.
And that was it. Man.
And you were, you became his guy immediately.

Well, he hasn't watched enough wrestling. No, you were that, you were, you were like the little kid catnip.

Thank you so much. I showed you two pictures that you had with my son when he was like six.
I was trying to think, like,

how many pictures do you think you've taken with little kids? So is it over a million? I don't know.

I think like 20, 22, 23 straight years of you posing with I could say as many as I possibly can, because if there was anyone that I couldn't or anyone that I refused, I'd like to think that I had good reason for it.

And I don't expect anybody to understand that, but like to this point now, and I'm not saying those pictures are over.

I hope they continue because I definitely not over as a conduit to bring new minds to the business.

But I would like to think from the second I was asked to take the first picture to right now, I have taken as many as I possibly can. Well, and you're always nice, too, because I always ask.

Not always nice. I'm a human being.
No, with the kids, well, the kids. You, you understood the game.
Yeah. And

the kids are like during the headlights, freezing as they're standing next to me. I don't think that's understanding the game.
I think that's understanding the life.

Like

the conduct of some adults.

I'm huge on respect. It's one of my core values.
I wear it on my hat.

Sometimes it is extremely self-serving. And I don't mind that.
We're all out to do our own thing.

Kids are so honest.

They're honest. And you can see when an adult wants to approach you and the kid does not.
And you can see when a kid wants to approach you and doesn't have the courage.

Or if that kid is courageous and comes up to approach you, even if it's, even if their social skills aren't honed, even if they're disrespectful, like I got to give a tip of the cap to a young person who

is confident in self enough to come up and

convey like, hey, I'd like to do this.

I'd like a picture. And there have been some moments where like parents are shoving their kids at me with the child does not want this.
It is a vehicle for the parents.

And sure, the parent may be thinking someday you'll wish you took the picture, but that's not someday. We're now.
Yeah. And that kid does not want any part of it.

And I'll politely try to get to the kid's height and explain that like, it's okay if you don't want to do this. It's fine.
In those situations, I want to try to take seconds I don't have.

I have

barely a few seconds to speak with adults who come at,

come at any sort of relationship agenda from a selfish perspective. That's all.
I was in the best situation. When my kids were little, my daughter is two years older than my son.

We would go like backstage to some of the WD stuff and she would be the handler trying to get photos for him. Nobody could say no to her.
It wasn't a parent.

And the wrestlers were always like, this is great. Yeah, yeah, I'll do it.

What's interesting about your career is

I got to ask, like, nobody retires in professional wrestling or boxing. Nobody but me.
Nobody, so why are you different? Why is this actually happening?

Because why should I believe you're not going to be back in three years from now? You don't have to believe anything you don't want to.

What I've

been able to do over 23 years

is turn a lot of non-believers around. Yeah.
And that is by my actions. I don't expect anyone to believe that like, hey, I'm retiring.
Oh, no. The precedent hasn't been set.

The precedent for wrestling retirement is like a wrestling wedding, like something's going to go wrong in the wedding. No one ever retires.
That's a good point.

Has there ever been a successful wrestling medicine? Never, never.

So

I understand the skepticism. And you'll know I'm serious when I never come back.
Why do you think The Rock kept coming back other than money?

Because he left a bunch of times and became a pretty big movie star star and didn't need to come back so you uh it's difficult there because you're asking me to think for somebody else yeah um

i know that i i want to do it forever i can speak from my perspective yeah every uh this is something i've heard a lot this past year man you're going out on your own terms that's bullshit i want to do it forever when you've been there live like to anyone out there who doesn't understand what wwe is or what just go live like um did you just look at the camera that was impressive sure indeed i'm just trying to, I didn't realize you were going to

perform on me.

I want to let everybody out there knowing, you know, like when you step in that building live, it's just a different energy. Yeah.

And I never want to let that go.

But

my body hurts. I'm a step slower.
I promised myself and the fan base, like when I started before I won that first championship, when I'm a step slower, I'm out.

And yet some people are saying you're having some of your best matches ever this year. Yeah, but it's all I have left.

That's what people don't understand. And I want to go out at a level that is still passable and

in some twinkles, admirable

and not have to rely on luck. You know,

I got one date left. I have given my heart and soul to this year.
It has taken a lot to just do 35 dates, whereas before I do 220 in my sleep, like it is time to move on. And 220 in a year.
Easy.

So the 80s, it was like 330. That's the thing.
It's trickle down. And then it's going to trickle down.
Now it's

now. I saw a stat.

I think LA Night has had the most WWE matches this year in 70. Wow.
And I see that. And again, it makes me smile.
It's like, now talent can wrestle longer.

Well, in the 80s, they're just hopping in cars and just driving to the next place and whistling. So when it got national, it was different.
Like they would, they would do

morning matinee in Toronto, and then they would do the garden. So, like, they would, there were like three units running everywhere.
It was, it was a true live event juggernaut.

Not that it isn't anymore, but it's more simple.

Do a ton of events as much as you can, you know, and it, that's, um, I think the, the concept of TKO is to try to pick your spots, try to make every event, you know, out of control special, as big as you can, and

look at the globe instead of just the U.S.

So you said your body's obviously different after

an entire century of wrestling. Yeah, it's a half century, a quarter century.
What were the worst injuries? I remember you tore your pec? I tore my peck, tore both triceps. Both triceps.
Yeah, yeah.

Broke my neck.

Yeah,

that was probably the most dangerous one, right? The most dangerous one because if

not treated, like most cases, my tricep tears,

that's serious.

But if left to its own devices, eventually some of it will grab on somewhere or it'll just like stay torn and I'll have a dent in my arm same with the peck like maybe it won't attach but i'll you know i can still move like 75 of my body when a disc ruptures in your neck and it gets um

pressed against the all the energy and the the cords and stuff that tell you to move it can shut that stuff down yeah so that that was uh weird because it was like outpatient i remember getting fusion and going to smack down the fusion yeah i was it was early on uh dr maroon did fusion on me in 2007 or 2008, but I remember going under on Tuesday morning and then going to SmackDown in Pittsburgh, like walking in to say hello to everybody.

And everybody's like, what the,

didn't you just get neck surgery? But it was, it was like, well, plus like the history of wrestling, some that sidelined some of the biggest stars we had, like strong colds.

True, but then again, like, I've all, you know, I started playing football at 15, so I started late, which is good, but I'm all, I was always in the pit, in the trenches, so to speak.

So you have eight years of full contact football. Yeah.

Could be putting a bar on the back of my neck with heavy weight for an extended period of time plus all the you know combative action that's involved in the sports entertainment it's i think it's just overall wear well and also as you're as you're as the 2000s are going along we move into the 2010s wrestling is just becoming crazier and crazier with the with the bumps so it's the so that's all that's all the bar keeps raising that's all performative choice yeah if you see the stuff that i do it's not

it's as crazy as i can get Yeah. But it's you're not doing the Shane McMahon jumping 25 feet off of a steel case.
And again, those are performers' choices.

I'm, I tend to lean more on

why are we fighting? What is the story?

What is the reason I want to go in and yell for one guy and boo the other guy? And I think

I, my hat's off to the athleticism that some of our performers possess.

But, you know, like that, the average NFL career is only so long because you have to be the best athlete. Yeah, if you're tight end, if you're gronk,

that's not going to be a 20-year career.

So, again, the more, the more you ask of yourselves, and I'm not saying for people not to try hard, but there's a lot of different ways to tell stories in wrestling.

Do you worry that, did you worry as this was happening that the

bar was getting too crazy for what the bumps were?

No, I've, and again, I don't, I don't mind performers choosing to take their time to do what they want with it i totally respect that i've always had a good

uh understanding of what i can do and what i can offer yeah and

i've only tried to go outside of that maybe once or twice and that's when i'm like oh my god i i almost killed myself so it's do you remember what was it um i try to take a like i don't flip over well And I try to take a suplex where I flipped over.

I didn't practice it. I just wanted to do the best I could for the person I I was with.
It was like, yeah, don't worry about it. I'll figure it out.
I want to be okay for you. Almost broke my neck.

Like it's just stuff that

thinking that I was smarter than the business. Right.
You know, and those, those were mistakes, but I'm, I'm, I'm okay.

You seem like out of all the other people who became superstars, almost like the, the most self-aware of what you could, couldn't do, how far you should push your character.

I mean, you didn't, well, you didn't become a quote unquote heel until this year. I mean, you did it earlier in your career, but that's not,

that's not my choice. It's not my choice to go out there and

play a good guy or a bad guy. That's, that's above me.
That's a level above me.

But it's a little bit your choice. You were one of the biggest stars in the

that they had. You have some say in it, don't you? I don't view it as my choice.
I don't want the stress of that. I've never done this.
Like,

I don't,

you, you tell me, am I a good guy or a bad guy? Tell me who you want me to face. How long have we been working together? And that's what I want to get into the sand.

This is the story I'd like to tell. These are the details I'd like.
Like, I never pick opponents. I've never curated my stuff.

Hey, we want you to turn heel or like, hey, the crowd's booing. You guys should turn me heel.
No, it's not that. It's not my sandbox.
I think in my perspective, a pro

takes the tools that you're, or takes the

subject matter that you're given and tries to make it something special. So you trust the people who are paid to make these decisions, that they're going to make the right decision.

Whether I really, that was Vince forever. The answer to that's yes, but whether I trust them or not,

it's their choice to make. So they say,

be a good guy. Okay, no problem.

In my mind, this is what I think a good guy is, and this is how I think a good guy would act. Is that okay? Yeah, sure.

Like, that's the difference. i i

do see a lot of performers spend their time invest their time to try to curate their own destiny yeah and again not wrong it's the wrestling is a chicken soup business there's no wrong way to do it

i just always wanted to know what you need

the outcome you want

the piece in the chessboard I can play, and can I do it my way? Like once we get all those things together, can I do it my way? Is that fine?

Well, there's one other piece that you're really good at. And it's funny because sports talk is a little like this, Taylor, being on TV or being in crews.
I've talked about this a lot on my podcast.

When you're with somebody every day, when you're with them once in a while, when you're on a show that has five people on it, you have to sell the other people and they sell you.

And it's a quid pro quo, right? And if other people that you're with are doing well too, that's good for you. And if they're selling you, that's also good for you.

And a lot of people don't understand that. Wrestling, I think, think, is the ultimate example of that because talk more about that.
What do you mean?

Well, to have a good match, both people have to buy in. You have to sell the person you're with.
They have to sell you. It, you know, it can't just be a one person thing.
It's got to be both of you.

And I think you've been really good over the years at always having good match. Like there, there's been other people right like this, right? Like, like Ric Flair was always like famously.

always had good matches, was always good at the other person, always came off well. When they wrestled with Rick Flair, I think that was the case for you.
So, it again, it depends on the match, right?

Like, um, and I've been in all sorts of stories, yeah, when you are told, uh, hey, I'm the good guy, you're the bad guy, you have four minutes on television, and the purpose of our four-minute commercial is to make John look unstoppable.

So, the way you can do the best for me, for you, and for the match

is

to bump like a madman and lose. Yeah.

A flip scenario of this is

the famous Suplex City match with Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam after he defeated The Undertaker.

How does one follow breaking the streak? The most mythical thing in sports entertainment that a lot of us thought would never end and this beast breaks it. Yeah.

I'm up next.

How do we follow that? I think I went to that match. It was in LA.
So you probably did. I did.

I thought you were going to do that.

Exactly. So how do we make this guy

who won this huge thing definitely not a fluke? If I went out there and had a 50-50 performance with Brock Lesnar, Brock Lesnar is capable of making anyone look fantastic by the way.

But that didn't help Brock. That didn't help the story.
And it didn't help all of us. I can't say that night was a good time.
But watching you getting annihilated. And that's another thing.

When you sit there live, it is a one-episode thing,

but it's not. It's the vibe that gets weird because people are like, oh my God.
So is he going to really get hurt here? What's happening?

Do knowing there's a lot of things here, and I love talking about this. I could, I could talk about it all day.

What is the purpose of the match?

Well, it's always audience reaction, right? No. What is it?

It depends. The purpose of that match was to get Brock Brock Lesnar over strong on our most

cherished, strong, and believable intellectual property. If he can beat The Undertaker, he's a beast.
If he just destroys John Cena, I want you. Now he's a monster.

I want you uncomfortable and looking over to your shoulder at your friend being like, who the F is going to beat this guy?

And along comes somebody like Roman Reigns. Finally, he can do it.
You know, like, and

those moments,

you leverage that SummerSlam, that single serving packet

in a microcosm. This is why I said you got a lot of stuff there.

In a microcosm, and this is the first time I'm reflecting on this year, because it's a narrative that's going, but we got one left, so who cares?

The match Cody and I had at WrestleMania, which was awesome. Some people would say different, but it was not the end of our story.
It was like the end of act one.

Knowing that, like, you got Cody, you got to turn bad. Eventually, this is going to happen.

We need you to peek at SummerSlam. That's the end.

Performers get in their head, just like they get, you had said, like performers want to, want to show the best they can, thinking that's best for the match.

They also get in their head that like WrestleMania is the end.

I got to go out for WrestleMania and tear the house down. I'm not saying you don't.
It's like the NFL playoffs for wrestling business. But if it's the first chapter of your book, it's not.

You can't end the book in chapter one. So we had a very, by design, we had a very methodical match with a very simple end.
And we thought, you know, we thought we would have

some parts and players. Those disappeared.
It didn't matter because it was the end of act one. So we had like act two and then act three.

And then if you compare what we did in April to what we did in August, which is

one of the matches was awesome. Maybe it was the summer.
I got confused. The one slam one was awesome.
Because that was the end of our story.

And that's the ride we're taking fans on. But

it's as difficult to conceptualize as you're not coming back. Like, no, everybody comes back.
You just, you had this match of WrestleMania that left me. I wanted more.
Yeah, no kidding.

You're going to get it. Yeah.
Because although we know that like WrestleMania is the end of our season, when it came to Cody and I, that was just the beginning for us.

And certainly just the beginning for me after them

choosing to say, well, now you're a bad guy. Okay, I'm a bad guy in February.
I got to the middle of April to figure this out. What's the best way I can do it?

And what's the best way I can do it to integrate it? And then

look at my morality in August. You know what I'm saying? That's a short time to accomplish all that, but you have to be

rating a TV season. Like if you're doing

breaking bad or something commit. Yeah.
You got to get, you got to get suplexed 19 times and lose sometimes. Yeah.

To know what's on the other side. And the Cody thing

had to do with Cody and I, me with me and Brock.

I'm getting killed for Roman.

I'm hoping, like, man, keep going. Hope you get over.
If it's not you,

Brock's going to keep on this path and hopefully somebody, you know, but like, it's,

I never ask, how can I look good? When I sit down with an opponent,

I have, I love anecdotes. I have a first time I've ever worked with AJ Styles.
Yeah. He is the nicest human being in sports entertainment.

And I always have some sort of, I can find some energy of like, you said this about me in an interview once or like, man, I don't like the way you work or whatever.

AJ is such a good guy. And I sat down and I'm like, man, this is, this is going to be okay.
Why are we fighting? It's like, what do you mean? Why are we fighting? I want to be the champ.

That's not good enough.

Take a second to yourself, figure out why we're fighting. I went on my bus.

scoured the web to try to find out anything this guy's ever said, just anything, a sentence that never speaks bad about anybody. Yeah.

So then I came back to him and, like, literally, after two and a half hours, he was finally like, okay, this is, this is AJ, this isn't Alan.

But maybe AJ's thinking

that if you were never around,

I would be where you're at, and I'd be so much better. Because when in that ring, I am better.
I'm like, we got it.

And we built our story, culminating with even the match at the Royal Rumble, with,

I, AJ, am a better in-ring performer.

You are charismatic, but hella lucky. You put these two in a ring together and I will run circles around you every time.

And that's where audiences are like, your son would be like, hell no, that's my guy. Anybody that watched TNA would be like, our guy's finally getting a shot.
This dude's awesome.

Wait till he can do his stuff.

And now you're divided and now you're interested. And that's an issue that you can run with, but you have to sit and ask, why are we fighting?

Well, you just tapped into the most important word in the history of wrestling, jealousy.

It's been like 80% of the rivals, rivalry. That's because it's something that people understand.
Yeah. Those stories have to come from a place.

Redemption, jealousy, anger.

Why you and not me.

Whatever it is. It should have been me is great.
It always stole this for me. They did that with Hogan all through the 80s.
It was Paul Orndorff was the first one. It was great.

And then Macho Man was the best of all. It's an emotion we all have.
We all can understand. And I think that's why it's like,

I want to be the champion. I never rested that.
That's never good enough. There has to be something more.
And when you have that, it's great.

Like anytime you have on the mic, if you ever get lost, you know where you are because I'm supposed to feel jealous of you. Anytime in a match, you know how to act.
If

you are jealous, or if you finally are cresting that hill and now you feel confident, how do you act? How do you move? What do you think the audience will believe?

The answers to these questions aren't perfectly placed, but man, they're easier to come by. So instead of being like, we'll do stunt after stunt after stunt, you can build this thing.

You know,

just going back to AJ, where

he completely in the beginning of those matches out wrestled the hell out of me.

And I didn't, I was out of my place. We told the story of I'm going to be better than you, and then you are.
And my world is crumbling. And then finally, I start doing a little of my stuff.

The racket is more of, it's more like throwing ham bones. Yeah.
But then I start hitting him with like my best stuff and he kicks out. And I'm like, who the, who is this kid? Why won't he go down?

Yeah.

And maybe he's right. Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe my world is crumbling. Like

those are

just by just by saying, like, I think this is why we're fighting. You can dig into so much.
And

I know this.

A lot of performers don't do that because I'll always, in a post-mortem sense, if I watch matches, I'll watch and be like, okay, you did this and this. Why were you guys fighting? What do you mean?

They told,

we got, we were on the main event. We went out there for a match.
Yeah.

Okay, cool.

All right.

And again, I'm not saying that someone who doesn't ask or answer that question cannot be successful.

But if you know the story, think of sports.

Some games a lot of people watch. Yeah.
And some games they just don't. There's games on all the time.
Games of everything on all the time.

But if there's a rivalry or if there's meaning, like college sports, like Chiefs, Cowboys, 57 million people on Thanksgiving. Man.

An important game for both teams, two famous teams, two good quarterbacks.

And there's a million stories you can tell. But there's an ego piece to this, though, which it sounds like you were always thinking about what was good for the business, the storyline.

How, how could you think big picture months and years in advance? And then there were other people who, especially the stories are more famous in like the 70s and 80s of like, I'm at this spot.

How do I keep this? How do I, how do I, and that this was a big topic after Hogan died about that he,

you know, his, the big criticism with him,

at least in the 80s and 90s, was that he didn't pay it forward. That he was always trying to hold on to what he had and not

so again i think there's a lot there uh and and i always

i always try to look at life of like control the control but what can i do right

uh wrestling was a territorial gangster business and it was cutthroat so if if you did have something going you wanted to keep it it's it has its origins from carnival performing which is the even more cutthroat it then gets nationalized just just because it gets nationalized,

just because

we end segregation, you can't change it. It takes a long time to change people's mind.

So just because it gets nationalized, you don't take the gangster out of the guy. You know, like

they still have to operate like that.

Any story I heard about

non-meritocracy,

I don't like it. I don't like it.
And there'll be people to criticize my career or my actions or whatever.

They have the right to feel how they want.

I believe best person, best idea wins. And I believe sports entertainment is the perfect meritocracy because you know the sound of noise

and promoters, whether they like you or they don't. There are these age-old tales.
Well,

I didn't get the shock because a promoter didn't like me. Promoter didn't like me, hated me.
Everybody hated me, but they heard the noise. So they got to give me at least one more chance.

And in that one more chance, you got to get the noise again. And if you get the noise again, you get another chance.
And then you get another chance.

And then eventually the promotion, the office, they like you. Because not only with all these chances, have you got the noise every time, but in my case, I want to be a reliable employee.

I want to be somebody you can invest in and bet on. I want to carry myself well as an advocate for the company I love.

My job is to fake fight. I am doing the thing that I, as a six-year-old with the paper belt, I'm doing it.
I don't want this to go away. Right.

And there'll come a time when someone does it way better than me that, okay, great. No problem.
It's your turn. You know, like,

so again, I guess I enjoy hearing that because you're not wrong.

stamping your territory and being the top draw.

You know, you want to see who somebody really is, give them power. You want to see who somebody really is, take it away.
Like,

I don't blame anybody for trying to keep where they're at,

but I've always operated the way I'm going to keep where I'm at is put us out there, put a mic in my hand, put us out there and let the bell ring.

And I'll always get the noise and I'll always be as prepared and ready and like on my game as anyone you put me in there with, no matter what. And when it's time for me to go, I'll go.

The power thing's funny, Kev. I was just talking to my old agent, James Baby Doll Dixon, about this, who reps all these TV people.
Talk to me about the nickname. He's great, Baby Doll.

Well, he calls everyone Baby Doll. So he just became Baby Doll.
Right on. But we were talking about somebody who, as they ascended, kind of became more of an untrustworthy asshole that we know.

And I was like, I just didn't

see it in the early stages. I didn't realize they were going to be like that.
And he was like, that's the thing.

Everybody's got it inside them, but you don't know what's going to happen until they get some power. When they get power, something shifts.
And I don't know, though.

I mean, like, I just thought it was an interesting take.

I was like, oh, so I'll give you not everybody has it in there, but sometimes if it's in there, and then all of a sudden you get opportunity and power, it can be a better thing.

Well, I mean, I'll give you another take. You're right.

It's not fast as a person wins, right?

It's opinionative, objective, it's floor gymnastics.

So

it's kind of like if you're cool or not.

I don't know how many folks came from where they came from to wrestling, like being cool.

Right. So it might, it might be a little imposter syndrome.
It might be a little like lack of self-worth.

A lot of performers, including myself, want to be out there because out there, it feels like home, you're comfortable, you're accepted, but you kind of struggle with who you really are.

And if people see your flaws or imperfections, then maybe it's all gone. Like

it's weird. Like

I've told the WWE, I'll never be able to thank them, especially the audience, for making me the human being I am today.

And it's just time under tension. I think if my career were shorter, maybe my decisions or my perspective in life would be different.

But I've had to go through so much or I've gotten to go through so much.

I've been told, you're a good guy. You own the sandbox.
No problem. I get out there.
And the noise is opposite of the good guy.

I've had that for a long time. So I still have to traverse the obstacle of like, how would a good guy do this?

And in doing that, man, humiliated, embarrassed, bullied, picked on but all part of the act because when you're in the arena it's part of the act business is business you know people have grabbed the microphone and attacked me personally they we blur the lines a lot gosh fans of my bald spot they do have somebody to get a hair transplant i'm so glad i'm so grateful but like

you're out there and

it's very fragile and uh

I've seen so many gifted people like not make it because it's so very fragile. You need to have like so many things in line to have a sustained

good career. And that a lot of that is like having control of your mental health, you know, and I think a lot of the

and having a really thick skin.

I think especially you came in the 21st century during the internet era as wrestling was completely changing into this different, all the message boards, all the cheat sheet, everybody had an opinion.

Then social media comes with Twitter and Instagram stuff becomes meaner and meaner and people become faster to jump on or off somebody. And you're just navigating this the whole time.

I've also tried to be patient. I think you can just let things play out.
You don't always have to answer every question. You can leave people wanting more.

You can wait.

And like,

again, I was, I was getting bullied live before message board. So I had a really good, I had already been through it, you know, but um,

I think it's, it's funny. Like you come in right around when LeBron comes in, right?

LeBron's still playing, you're still wrestling, stuff that in the 1970s to think that somebody would still be at the top of their game in their early 40s in basketball and their late 40s in wrestling seemed pretty inconceivable.

And you both had the ups and downs. He had a bunch of, like, his big thing was the decision.
when he became basically a heel in real life for, you know, six, seven, eight months.

He's getting booed in stadiums,

just feeling the wrath of the internet and just how people are, which you felt too. And you just kind of at some point,

it almost like it gave LeBron more focus and more inner strength. And it kind of helped him achieve all the stuff he achieved in the second half of his career, like he wouldn't be denied, you know?

So, in some ways, you could say it was like the best thing that could have happened to him, but it's weird to say that.

Well, it's weird to say because it is what happened. Right.

In my case, I guess

I always try to look for a good explanation.

In our business, when you hear negative noise, the knee-jerk reaction is to jump on the audience, to turn a heel, so to speak, to be a bad guy.

But that's not what I was told.

The person who can make those decisions and the creative body making those choices. saying like, we're not doing that.
Well, that was Vince.

And even now, like in some cases,

let's take the year of retirement.

I think a lot of people were wondering what would happen if John Cena turned heel. Here I am, if I turned heel.

And then when I did,

it left a taste in people's mouth that they didn't like it. And like

they wanted other stuff.

I wanted a music change. I wanted a uniform change.
I wanted him to act like this. I want.

Well, we've been talking about it for 15 years. I got never thought it was going to happen.
I got 11 months to do this, 36 TV appearances. It takes five years to get a guy over,

regardless.

If you turn him, it's going to take a year or two on television for it really to sink in, especially if you really want to get into it and then

be able to flip and then get a get a guy to get a nice or get a performer to get a nice flip on the other side when it's time to turn again.

I don't have the time to tell to tell the right story, but that that's besides the point because I'm told we're going with this story. We sure are.
I'm going to do the best I can.

And to be able to hear the audience be surprised and then kind of like,

this is not what I wanted.

It's not that you may or may not have wanted me to turn bad. It's that a lot of people started to realize.

Like when I i came out in intuit dome i was like 36 dates that's it it's hard to conceptualize the first time i put a counter on after vegas

and it went down to like right down to 24

it was like whoa

and then we started peak then the site started to pick up like 15 left 12 left 10 left

so you're glad you structured it that way mentally it sounds like like that you had it that you had it all for this whole year like this

stuff is by design because I knew it had never been done. So, how do I continuously send messaging of like,

you're never going to believe it, you're never going to get it.

I have to reinforce the fact that this is it. I still don't believe it, which is fine, which is great.
And hopefully, 10 years from now, we can sit here again. Like, oh, he really did it.

Are you coming back yet? 2038. I'm like, oh man.
Yeah. Yeah.
He was alive. So, um,

I've been in, I've been in a high level of performing for 23 years.

Uh, I have minimized foolishness in my life.

I've been compensated fairly. I have my health.

Also,

you have a side gig. You can be the star in movies.
I appreciate you saying that. That's also beyond my control.
I don't know when the phone rings next. But

in the height of all that, in doing 220 days a year for, I don't know, 10, 12 years straight.

The most important thing in my life was WWE.

And it's not anymore. And that's okay to say.
I'm still obsessed.

I'm still passionate about it. I'm not obsessed.
I was obsessed. Yeah.
Very passionate about wrestling. On my days off, I'll on my free time without any compensation.
I will go anywhere I can.

If, if, you know, my partner and I say, hey, you have an off day, what would you like to do? I'd like to go watch younger talent perform and critique them. That's what I enjoy doing on my time off.

So I'll always be around it.

But man, like,

how much more more do I want? You know, what

there's always another crowd to perform in front of, but like,

gosh, maybe if my actions set an example

for this class, hopefully my actions about political behavior over the course of 23 years have set an example.

I can tell you in my perspective alone, I don't know if this is truth, but from my perspective, there is a lot less political activity now, 2025, than when i started in 2002.

so it ain't i can't i can't say it's done but i can say it's greatly minimized and if that's because of me great if it's not great because that's what i wanted in the first place so maybe as a the first wrestler who actually retires i set a precedent for young people to be like man i want to i want to strive to give it like two decades and then go out like go out the biggest way i can It's also a different business model for athletes.

Do you keep holding on for one more and then one more and then one more or take a look within yourself and be like man

i can give you guys like the best year i can

can we figure out what that is and figure out what the compensation is for that we just saw this happen in the nba chris paul who decided to have one last year in the clippers and he hung on too long you know it was he was 41

and then they waived him today as we're talking about this wow it shouldn't have ended like that but but it should have because

that's what you want Like, I don't, I do not blame any performer for wanting to continue to get out there. It is, it's beautiful, man.
I'm going to, I'm going to miss it so much,

but I've seen it. Yeah.
And I don't want to be it. And now with one left,

man, if I have to pump myself full of adrenaline to make sure that I, I give all I got, I, I have enough left in the tank for one match.

Well, so I was at the first Netflix raw the night before the fires here. You came out.
The two notable things from that was Hogan came out and got really booed and almost like

some,

I think some famous wrestling people would have kind of felt the crowd energy and turned it. And it was almost like he didn't know what to do.
So that was one notable thing.

And the other one was when you came out and it was clear it was like this purposeful angle that everybody had put a lot of thought into and nobody tipped me off on it.

But as I was watching it, I was with my son

and I was like, oh, this is smart. They're going to, they, I, I see what they're doing.
They're making this like the year of Cena.

He's going to make one last run at trying to, trying to win the title. And like, I see what they're doing here.
Um, and I think it, I think it went better than anyone could have expected.

The heel piece was the thing. It seems like you have like small regrets about it.
Not at all. No? No, I have.
You don't think it, do you think it went perfectly?

Or like, what would you have changed if you did it over again? What is perfect? Here's, here's what I do know.

Perfect is, is never achievable. I think that's a sucker's chase.
When I look back on it, could I have given any more than I did? Not a bit. Yeah.

I over-prepared. I tried to go to

every corner of my emotional well-being.

And the cool thing is, like, when the audience began to turn,

we turned. Yeah.

So, like,

they helped it out. And that dynamic was a little bit ahead of schedule for, let's say cody and i but it made for a great showing for the summer so

you you choose you uh

make uh again anecdotes make new day a bunch of heels they're aspirational pastors but they're bad guys the crowd booed them and then they loved them nobody wanted to change them good but hey it's time to change them good You know, let's try John like this.

I know we have limited time, but let's do something really big. Okay, it didn't work, didn't mean I didn't get my all.

You know, um,

I often talk about uh a main event on WrestleMania I had with the Miz a long time ago, where the rock came down to interfere.

Everyone knew Rocky was coming. Match between Miz and I was lackluster

as far as audience involvement because they were waiting, obviously, for Dwayne Johnson, who wouldn't want to be just looking towards the entrance.

Yeah, Miz got knocked out, won the championship by the concussion. Like, we, we beat the hell out of each other, we couldn't give anymore.

But I didn't, looking back, I didn't understand all things. And maybe we should have done something different because we should have just got rock out there earlier.

But that piece was also, again, it's WrestleMania. I think we had to blow it off.

That piece was a building block for a year later in Miami because the next day on TV, we challenged each other to the Miami WrestleMania.

So it was like leveraging WrestleMania for another WrestleMania. I just wasn't used to it.
I didn't get the perspective. And it worked.

It ended up being one of the most successful events in company company history. So when you say, like, oh, man, you

seem a little bit like this. I don't.
It happened. It was great.
And it helped. It like it paid off.
And this whole year, I think, has been special in that regard.

People have bought in. And I'm so glad because after this, I don't have another chance.
If they didn't buy in, I just would just go. You know, fake an injury in July.

It's like, no, no, I would, I would do the rest of my dates. And

then then I could look back and be like, man, I held on too long.

But in these shows, like it's now become, you want to be on these shows. We have tons of people watching.
We have sold out arenas and stadiums. It's a chance for you to show your business.

Well, you made one mistake. Please, I'm open to criticism.

Why wasn't the last match in Boston?

That, again, that's way beyond my control. I'm not a, I don't book the live event calendar.

Well, my guess is that if it was up to me, every match would be in Tampa.

But that my guess is like that's they knew the Boston. The mistake is I didn't have 36 matches in Tampa.
I know, but you're like the Boston home team, though.

Trust me, it was great to be able to go back there one last time.

My guess is they thought that could be its own thing and your last match could be its own thing and they didn't need to combine those two things. You never know.

I don't know if the garden was available. Possible.
So you never know. Like that's a thing of like, man, it would be perfect if.
Perfect for you. Like you don't, you don't know the routing.

You don't know

the live event hurdles that they have to go through.

It was an emotional event, it was great,

and and it was like the last, the last, then you can get a bunch of last ups, the last SmackDown in Chicago where I started.

Yeah, um, the last time in TD, the last time in MSG, my last raw, my last premium live event or pay-per-view in San Diego. And then, of course, the last match.
And

in trying to create the atmosphere for the last match, folks in Creative were like, hey, we want to do like this tribute thing. And

I never booked myself. Yeah.

But I called Triple H and I said, I have an idea. You'll know how to do this because I don't know how to write television.
But I think if we do a tribute show, one of two things are going to happen.

It's either going to be too much or too little, which means it's not going to be good. Why don't we take Saturday night's main event? Everyone knows it's John Cena's last match.
The

video packages, you want to trickle in there throughout the night, no problem. Then we go to the match, have the match, that's the night.

But beforehand, on a night, I know people are going to be tuning in. We're going to have a sold out.
It's going to be definitely an item, a ticket you want to have in your hand. And

that last piece of relevant energy that I can get an audience member to tune into.

Show the future of your business. Have top-name WWE superstars, CM Punk, Charlotte Flair, who you put it together how you want.

Have them have non-canon exhibition matches with the future of the business. Bring kids up from NXT.

Get them in a building with real noise, with real energy. Let them get under the bright lights.
Maybe, just maybe, like,

I want to be here. You know what I'm saying? And they get to wrestle people with experience and wisdom.
And in non-canon, non-exhibition matches where nothing's on the line.

It's just a chance to see, it's a chance to hear the music of your favorite superstars against someone you have no idea.

And

he said, that's a great idea. And they're going to do it.
I have no clue what the plan is, but I know it's, I, that's how I want to go out. Right.

I want to, I want the people who are tuning in for me to be like, yeah, but you see that other kid? I'm watching next Monday because he's awesome. Or she's awesome.

You know, like, what a better way to tip the cap and try to

keep, keep the thing going. You know, what would you tell 2003 John Cena?

If you could give him, go on a time machine, give him like two tips of advice. What would it be? There's going to be this thing called Bitcoin that the Winkle bosses are going to debut in 2012.

I'd give him a sports almanac. I'm kidding.
I'm kidding. No,

I don't.

I don't, it's weird.

I get asked that question a lot. I don't, I keep.
You get asked that question a lot. Yeah.

I feel like a jerk. Do you want to ask another question?

Well, give me one thing you would have told yourself. I don't know if that works.

Like,

I don't know, first of all, to see your generational self is a weird paradox. And who knows? But like

to

cut someone off about like,

even if it's like, hey, man, just keep it up. It's going to be crazy.

What the fuck does that mean? Right. Am I going to go crazy? Like, what's, what's I just

things have happened the way they've happened, and that's how they needed to happen.

I'm going to use my new John Cena mentality to just look forward and not, not think about how I asked you a question that a lot of people have asked you.

I'm going to try to spin it into a positive and just ask another question. Yeah, go for it.
Yeah.

You got one? I thought that was a really good one.

Who was your biggest mentor when you were coming up?

Like looking back into that 03, 04, 05, did you have anybody that became like a Mr. Biagi? No, Vince, without a doubt.
Interesting. Let's talk about that because he was on the docket.

As you know, I did the documentary

that

you were interviewed for. And we had a whole segment about the ruthless aggression.
Like that was kind of your big moment. You were like a rational confidence young guy, John Cena.

Like, fuck it, I'll do it. I'm in there.

But what, so how was Vince at that point when he took you under your wing? Like, what'd you learn? How did he help you? So

he was just

really kind with his time.

He would explain things. Here is a person making a lot of, if not all, the choices.
Yeah.

I

am always in search for a good explanation.

And he would always give one.

And in giving the good explanation, you would get a nugget.

And because Vince had such fluency in every avenue of the business, a lot of performers are worried about the stunts.

I think one of the benefits of doing 220 shows a year is

pace.

And if you obsess over the physical aspect of the business, you might get exhausted. You might burn out.

I

love the technical aspect, but then I also became obsessed with the theatrical aspect. And then I also became obsessed, especially when

before I won my first championship on the way to getting relevance and the way of shifting from the obscure Saturday night program to SmackDown,

I became interested in the business and not my business. Like, how can I take from this place to make as much as I can?

The business. How do we get more people in the arena?

And

the...

The only person it seemed like that had a good explanation for a lot of those questions was Vince. And that allowed it, allowed just a wealth of information to be dumped on me.

I had full faith and trust in him. I think he had full faith and trust in me.

He also had a really good track record of, I think this person can carry us for a little while. And he was usually right.

He wasn't afraid to try, which is another thing I learned from him. Like, do not be afraid to swing big and do not be afraid to fail.
Be accountable for yourself.

i'm glad you said that that's one of the one biggest things i've learned in life i think people are too afraid to fail it sucks failure sucks man get back up i know i go for the next thing but it's like

it's not it's uncomfortable yeah and and failing is bad taking accountability for failure that's even a heavier weight but gosh man i just

What was your biggest failure? Like when you look back, like the one where you were like... Blowing the completely disintegrating ruthless aggression.
And it almost got me fired.

So here I am, a young whippersnapper debuting in Chicago because the Undertaker's sick.

I get to challenge Kurt Angle to a match on SmackDown in front of a sold-out house at the formerly known as Rosemont Horizon. Yeah.

The Olympic gold medalist says, what makes you think you can stand out here with anybody else? What do you have that I don't? Ruthless aggression. I slap him in the face.

That was great. That's aggressive.
Yeah.

And then the match we went on to have is pretty ruthless but then like he won but with like a roll-up pinfall and then the aggressive ruthless young kid goes like man you only got me by that much and then the next thing they did was like a backstage taping with the undertaker where the ruthless aggressive kid is so

starry-eyed that the undertaker has given him advice and like hey you did a great job

shakes the undertaker's hand that is neither ruthless nor aggressive. So, this is what I mean by like being ready for opportunity.

That gimmick, those two words, that personality, I could either lean into being aggressive and ruthless. And we all know what those things are.

We all have an idea in our head of what is ruthless and what is aggression. Or I could do a 180 and be like the most passive, aggressive, passive.
I was neither.

You were in no man's land. I was neither.
And I didn't have the technical ability of my peers. And they gave me this beautiful moment on a silver platter.

No one told me it was an attitude. No one told me.

But I didn't take advantage of it.

That was my biggest failure because a year later, they're like, hey, we're going to let you go. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, okay, I get it.
I got it.

Like, I could see the cheers against Kurt Angle, then a little bit with Chris Jericho. And then I'm turning heel on Billy Kidman on Saturday Night Velocity, and nobody cares, you know, like

I blew it.

I blew it and was lucky enough to get a second chance. Well, you had, we talked about in the documentary, the, you're rapping on the bus.
Yeah. And Stephanie hears it.

And then all of a sudden you're, that was it. But the rock had a very similar kind of, there are always these moments where it's going one way and one little small thing happens and it flips.
Yeah.

And in Rock's case, he was like, man, just

you're going to put me with these folks. Just give me the mic.
Right. And in my case, I got lucky.
Somebody heard me on the mic and was like, would you be

okay doing that on TV? Hmm, let me weigh my options. You're going to fire me or do this on TV.
Looks like I'm your rapping kid from West Newberry. You know, like this, just, yeah, sure.
Great.

I'll do it. But I think the cool thing was

I essentially failed fast.

You know, and I was held accountable for my failures. Kid, obviously this isn't working.
You know, yes, you're correct. All right.
You know, like that's,

I get it. And it made me like, all right, I'm going in.

And I just had a conversation with a young talent the other day who is trying to find themselves. And they

expressed like, oh, man,

I think I have my why down to this.

I said, okay, but what is. what does that mean?

Like, I went from wearing boots and tights and carrying my laptop to playing Roller Coaster Tycoon to like, you're the rap guy. Fine.
I'm the rap guy. I'm going to buy my gear in the hood.

I'm going to get faded up at the barbershop. I'm going to tell everybody I'm throwing this jersey out tonight.
I'm going to wear diamonds and then switch the diamond for a steel chain.

I'm going to wear five-fingered rings. I'm going to wrestle in sneakers.
I'm going to wrestle in jorts. I'm going to wrestle in yellow corduroy and blue sheepskin suits.

I'm not going to look like everybody else. I'm going to make my own music.
I'm going to freestyle everyone in the parking lot so they know it's not rigged and no one's writing my stuff.

I'm going to come out with my own album. We're going to make music videos.
I'm going to do concerts. I'm going to work clubs in between SmackDown and Raw and pay-per-views.
Like

I was, it was it. It was me.
You went for it wholeheartedly. And three years later, I'm in a theater with Adam Crolla watching you in the Marine.
Yeah.

Man, I feel like I still owe you money for that one. No, we enjoyed it.

What?

that's that's maybe that's also uh certainly a failure i mean i got run out of the movie business so that's that's a big failure too yeah for some some people you'll never work in this town again kind of enjoyed those action movies what do you think you were the one well what do you think was your career your career year what do you think was your best year because i felt like as a writer i have like three years in my head where i was like i was really had it going that year i really feel good about how that year went the stuff i did and i have fond memories of it do you have a year like that gosh Gosh, I like this one.

25. I like this one.
Really? Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean. It was certainly probably the least taxing physically because you've really

36 matches? Yeah, 36 matches. Versus 220.

It's weird. Like, if you talk to a performer who's done that schedule, you don't have time to do anything else.
It's kind of like being in season. But like the preseason is so tough for NFL.
Right.

The helmet feels heavy and like the first few hits hurt but then when you get in it it's like yeah we got another game don't worry about it we got another game we got another game you get that callous and your timing gets great and it's like

you get in a zone you get in a flow state it's really tough to get in the flow state with like 36.

sounds like almost like playing golf like you're better off playing golf five times a week than one yeah

and then maybe like once a month. Right.

Which is casual. Where I'm going to give you five minutes to hit a bucket of balls before you go out there.
Oh, sorry, you have three minutes to hit a bucket of balls before you go out there. Right.

So give me your second best year.

I don't know, man.

That had to be one year where you look back and you're like, oh man, we were humming that year. So I think the

year in Miami that culminated at WrestleMania with The Rock,

I thought that that was a pretty, and the reason I choose the two things

is because

a year-long build in 2011 or whatever it was in WWE is unheard of.

Is this possible? And it worked. A wrestling retirement is unheard of.
Is this possible? And skeptics will be skeptics, but with one left, December 13th is it.

I can be like, it worked.

Was everyone

critically happy? They're going to weigh in on everything. I'll always be criticized.
You'll always have your opinion of like, I would love to this. They booked it wrong.
He did this wrong.

I know a lot of folks showed up and I know TKO is doing well. And I know our fan base is still interested.
The fact that we were able to do a tournament to get to the last person.

So now the shows I'm not even on. Who's it, Gunther and L.A.
Nighter left? Yeah. And the shows that I'm not even on have gravity and like, oh man, I want to kind of see what goes on.

What a cool idea of like, well, John isn't going to be there, but the presence and the idea of this. And then, of course, it leans into like my core value of meritocracy.
Yeah.

And same, same, same thing with on the 13th. Man, we'll give you a chance.
See what you can do. Please, I'm, I'm begging any young performer that gets out there, steal the show.

I would love them to just talk about you and not me. That means I have done my job.
I did the performer thing again. I want to send the message to whoever's ever on the thing.
That sounds great. Yeah.

Gunther has to be in top five this century of

guys that I'm sure is a great wrestler, but the next day you're in the shower, just like, fuck.

I mean, those chest slaps. You took me to a weird place.
I don't know if the topic wasn't. No, just like the chest slap.
I just can't imagine the next day. Those seem like they hurt.

I would say the Lesnar suplexes would be the number one.

The

Gunther chest slaps. I don't know what else is in the pantheon for you for like the next day, you're just like, oh, I'm feeling it.

I think for me, it's performers who

lean on

like really

like beating the hell out of you. There is a certain magic to what we do.
Yeah. And so you're talking like the hard clothesline slash just

I would borderline and to say like like

unsafe striking, unsafe maneuvers, like where

I don't know, the feeling that the realism trumps the ability to

like what should be first and foremost is we're going to give the best we can and we're going to walk out of there. And nobody gets hurt.

And there is a certain magic to our business. And there are certain performers, Brock is one, where his stuff is physical, but he's one of the smoothest.
Like

he's just a really great performer. Randy Orton is another one.
It's like

great performer and his stuff looks great and his timing is beautiful.

Seth Rollins is another one. CM Punk is another one.
The list of folks who understand the magic. Yeah.

And again i don't fault anyone for their style it's it's it's their lane to choose

but i do know for me personally speaking my math would be a whole lot less if every night i i beat the tar out of my opponent and i expected them to beat the tar out of me you know you just you you ride down that injury avenue a lot more frequent than you you would if you if you understood the like the magic of our business Nick Khan wanted your Mount Rushmore.

So this isn't my question. Yeah, sure, sure.
Mount Rushmore is, what is it?

He wanted your four. He said you would actually give it to us.
No, not President.

Washington and Lincoln.

Is that Mount Rushmore? No. You got to give us the four.

Wrestling Mount Rushmore. You're saying that's not Mount Rushmore? We need a wrestling Mount Rushmore from you.
That's mine. That's what I'm doing.
Come on. Lincoln wrestled the bear.

You can either give me

the four best you ever saw.

Or the four best you ever wrestled. No, you got to do it.
He demanded it.

He's in control of this December 13th show you got to do right by him

i would like to think that the relationship i have with nick con he does right by me and i do right by him that's fair that's fair yeah so rushmore is off i gave you it

i gave you mount rushmore can you give me can you ask another question can you give me the three

so you don't want to do three best wrestlers you ever wrestled that's a great question that's basically rushmore No, it's not. Okay.

You talked about Mount Rushmore. I gave you Mount Rushmore.
What is your real question? What do you want to know? Three best. The three best.
So you've three best people you ever wrestled.

The three best people I ever wrestled. Where you were like marveling at how good they are.
Seth Rollins.

Sean Michaels, Seth Rollins. Sean Michaels, Seth Rollins.

And it is very tough to narrow down to a third.

I've had incredible chemistry with people.

It's tough because like. Well, so let's concentrate on those two because Michaels is usually somebody's answer for this question, right?

So, what was it about him that was just different than all these other guys?

He

can make this a champion.

He would look at that and be like, okay,

need to bump around for that book. Then I'm going to super kick the book and then beautifully fall on top of it at the same time.
He just,

his, his performance, and

Seth is of the same vein. His performance is like Randy falls into this category.
But then again, there's like guys who have had crazy chemistry with AJ Styles, CM Punk, Kevin Owens,

Dwayne,

Edge.

Now you're just listing guys. But like, I've had

23 years. I think those are the two.
Yeah.

Because

of their,

like, they can just work with anyone, anyone. And I've been lucky enough that, like, I was anyone a few nights, you know?

Who was the one that jumped the highest from where they started, where years later you were like, wow,

you really, you really did it. Cody.
Cody Rhodes. Cody.
Okay, explain that one.

He asked for his release from the company and left.

Did you feel like he was a good wrestler when he left? I felt like he had, man, the first time I heard that kid speak was at the Hall of Fame in Chicago when him and his brother inducted his dad.

And I'm like front row going, I'm out of a job. Like, or Los Angeles, it was like wherever he's, I'm like, this kid is coming for me.
I better go back and practice.

And, you know,

generational talent, so big shoes to fill.

And,

gosh, he, he did the best he could with what he had, but he realized that, you know,

start up here and then you watch the stock go down.

And then essentially the company dissolves of like i gotta go and then like my man this what is going on with this guy and back he comes and he's at a

he's our guy now i don't think there's any arc better than that like to be kicked out or to to to be out of the club and then not only earn your way back in but earn your way back in and prove that you can compete and perform every day at

the the top level, not a top level, like the top level. And it seems like he learned some stuff from you that he talks about like i i think you were an important person for him man

whatever whatever anyone has between their two ears is just a matter of like

your application of it

you know i if if that's the case i'm grateful for the moments i've shared with cody i'm grateful for the moments i still share and will share um but he's he's doing it And I think that's important.

Like he's doing it, regardless of where he got it from. Like I said, I got tons of information from from my mentor.

I think that the best way to honor that information and honor that wisdom is to put rubber to road and make something happen.

Undertaker. Yeah.
Was he that much of a leader behind the scenes?

Yes. Was he the number one?

The most respected personality.

And

you could even feel that in 03 as you're coming up. You're like, oh, that guy.
Don't fuck with him.

Until about like recently,

and even still, I think that

his name still carries weight. I don't know because I'm not a new performer.
I know what I know. Yeah.

But in looking at

like,

I'm so grateful to have experienced phases of the business. Yeah.

And I'm so happy for where it is now.

The locker room essentially

doesn't need a

spokesperson because all of our people are professionals.

You know, it's not like pirates are herding cats anymore or like

we don't need an internal police force

because we're all professionals.

But that being said, a lot of the fraternity, a lot of the bonds, which led to great programming. Yeah.
That stuff has dissolved. So it's weird.
You want to look back and romanticize how things were.

But how things were was like, man,

you better get a $200 advance on tonight's show because you're not going to get paid.

So that's just how they were. And I had fun and great times under

being welcomed into that fraternal business. And he was literally, he was very instrumental in that.
I had my first drink with The Undertaker.

What do you mean, like first drink ever? Oh, yeah.

I was 26.

That was your first drink. And he was like,

I sat down. I'm like, hey, he's like, oh, like, hey, I don't,

oh,

you know what? I'm going to go for it. Yeah.

Because I have this wise figure who has, who is very stoic, doesn't say a lot.

Welcome me in. Like, that is, okay, I understand why I don't do this.

But I also understand that I want to do this.

I'm okay. I'm going to give this a try.
And I'm so glad I did because in that one conversation, I still,

I see us at that bar.

Some of the lessons he gave still stick with me. Yeah.

The two things I vividly remember from that conversation. Always take care of your crew.

He never let any of the boys pay.

Never say goodbye.

I got so hammered when i was like man when is it time to go it's like go whenever you want just don't ever say goodbye and i was don't ever say goodbye that's such good advice and i was so happy the undertaker's an irish goodbye guy

i was i guess so but that was that was a maybe he's irish that was a tip he bestowed on me it's a good one i was so out of place i turned to him i was like man thanks so much and then so many people that i'd never talked to i said i said goodbye to everybody yeah but then it just put me right back in the seat and i stayed there a little bit longer but i i really thought it was important to know that like he was like always take care of your crew take care of your crew irish goodbye when it's time to go it's time to go so when it's time to go it's time to go it's

it's we got one left you know it's time to go so but i he's just he was tremendously respected. And I think because of that, he was,

he certainly had a great relationship with Vince and could could act as a conduit any anyone who can bridge that gap and that's another thing it's not there's no gap anymore yeah there's no like office and the boys it's like everybody's in it together everyone's accessible you can go up to paul it's not like vince wasn't accessible but vince also did everything

so now like vince's brain is split in a bunch of different places there's paul there's nick there's chris la gentle there's matt altman there's anybody in talent relations there's like you can get answers through all these folks Justin Scleese with live events, Derek Castle with merch and Ethan with Fanatics.

Like I can get a good explanation without spending or asking the man to spend minutes he don't have. You know, so it's not, it's, it's very little,

it's us versus them.

It's all we, you know, it's like, I like it like that. I like it like that because I was never a big us versus them guy.

Did you ever think the WWE could survive and thrive without Vince after seeing like how, like you just mentioned, all the things that he did.

So of all the things he did and of all the things he taught me, one of one piece that was very important

is that

no one is irreplaceable.

And that's the truth. The one thing that needs to stand firm is the consumer's belief in what we do.

And Vince has so much knowledge.

I think what's happened is unfortunate because you have this individual with so much depth of field

who can still offer things.

And we no longer can pull from that well.

But it doesn't mean we don't have able-bodied folks who can't put on creative programming. So

I never wanted Vince to go because I love him and I know how much he loves the business. But he taught me, like,

we're all going to go,

all of us. And he taught me that not only through saying, through his actions.
I was there the day he fired Stone Cold.

You missed the date. Got to go.
It's biggest attraction.

I got to let people know this isn't okay.

So

things happen. We got to let people know this isn't okay.
It's time for you to go.

Everybody goes, man.

Everybody goes. So,

so because of his words, yeah.

Yeah.

So you're either going to be wrestling Gunther or LA Night or LA Night. Yeah.
That's a great topic shift. Look at you.

Look at that.

Hey, yeah, you got it. You got it.
I've had you for a long period of time. And now it's time.

God, it's time. I know.
I know. I've been here a while.

And then that's going to be it. And you're going to actually retire.
Yes.

And you have Little Brother coming out, which I'm supposed to promote because Dave Burnett is my friend and he's one of the producers. I don't know when.

Whenever it comes. It's a fun comedy, me and Eric Andres.
Yeah, it's coming out like next year at some point. Yeah.

You'll see me at WWE events. I'm going to be involved as long as they will have me

until I need to be replaced. But I will look like this.
So you can be involved as like a personality.

I will make sure you get to your facilitator. And I will go up and announce her?

I don't know. You don't really like announcing.
No, I would love to do it. I think the announcing crew we have now, I'm such a big fan of Stu Bennett and Wade Barrett.
I think he's,

he is carving out an excellent legacy for himself. I know Michael Cole's getting a little long in the tooth.
He's probably wanting to move on. I would love to sit at the table.

I think we have, man, I love listening to Big E call. This would be a good angle for you where you're jealous of Michael Cole this whole time.
You got to sit here as we all took these bumps.

I knew I was better than you this whole time. Yes.
Listening to you. And that's why I think I'm out.
You reel me back in.

You have to have

the time to regularly commit to being an announcer. Yeah.
Like, I know, I know Pat McAfee struggled with that. He split himself in a bunch of different directions.

And gosh, I don't, I don't blame anybody for going until you can't go. Right.
But like, he didn't, he didn't have it in the tank. Like, he can't be, he can't be everywhere at once.

So yeah, he's, I, I actually thought he was doing a good job as the

announcer. But at some point, you can't, you can have just too many jobs in too many places.
So that was a, you were like, hey, man, 36 dates must have been easy this year. I did too many jobs.

The original. Because you're doing a movie as you're also doing this.

I was in Budapest going from like flying from Budapest, like do all night on set in Budapest, fly to Indy, do Indy, fly back, land, drop my stuff off, go film.

And like doing that until post-Wrestlemania, like back and forth to Morocco and Budapest and all these crazy places that weren't easy commutes.

And it's just, you think you can do it because like, oh, I'll sleep. I'll sleep on the plane or whatever.

you don't it doesn't happen and then you get upside down and you're like super fatigued but like I, I, I threaded the needle just enough. The, uh, the plan originally was to do like a full year.

This is just goes to show my ignorance of the business.

I wanted to do 220 dates.

Just take a year off of everything, hop on a bus, do a full WWE calendar, and like totally say goodbye. Thank goodness that the business isn't like that anymore.

Cause I would be, if you took a gingerbread man, just broke him, I'd be done. They only needed me for 36.

Did you ever ask your half-brother Dom Toretto for any advice or no? I ask Vin for advice all the time. You do? Yeah.
You stayed in touch with Vin?

We text back and forth all the time. Really? He's like, he's a really good dude, man.
And like, he's,

there's another guy who's like,

he keeps to himself. But if you know him, he's like a really wise, genuine dude.
I love how loyal he is to Paul Walker.

Man, like he's, he keeps the memory alive in all these different ways and it's it always seems completely authentic to me he just like really loved the guy and he always wants to like bring him up i just in a good way i also know he cares about his body of work and he cares about the people he works with yeah and that's also cool you know um

no cool guy shout out to vin i definitely keep in touch with i mean it's funny because it's not like you weren't famous but that franchise is basically like you're entering the marvel universe when you're in a fast movie and i get to be it's a total yeah i get to be jacob total when they're like i I had some notes about whether the bring it all on.

I don't know, the relations, but I just

didn't really seem like you guys had a lot in common genetically. I got to wear the cross.
And as they would say, it's in the books. Do you have to do any fake, fake driving preparation?

Any sort of were they teaching you how to

drive? Because you're doing, you're, you're, they have. car full of cameras right and you gotta it just seems like it's this weird weirdly hard acting that you wouldn't think would be hard.

So because you got to pretend like things are coming, this is happening, skies crossing.

Two things about me. One, I love to drive.
And two, I haven't never, thank goodness, shut off my imagination. Yeah.
Yeah.

So like doing bumblebee, working with bumblebee was a long stick with a tennis ball. Peacemaker eagly was a gray bowling pin.

Fast, a lot of times you're driving green screen. Yeah.

It's just a trip to imagination list. Just throw yourself into it.
Yeah. Did you feel like people didn't know who you were in the fast universe? I don't like who is this guy? That's the thing.

Like, I don't expect anyone to know who I am. And I don't care.

Because it feels like it's, and I'm a, I'm a card-carrying fast and furious guy, but it's not, it's like this universe that's over here in a lot of ways. So and it's massive and it's global.

So is WWE. Yeah.
That's what I mean. It's almost like, I wonder what the overlap was between the two ways.
I think again, like, I can't say how much WWE WWE has prepared me for who I am.

Here's a, here's a, a genre where you can go around the world and little kids come up to you and do this, but no one in entertainment knows you.

So a lot of the opportunities I've had, people have no effing clue who I am. And that's okay because I just want to do good.
I figure it's just like when in wrestling, when nobody knew who I was.

Yeah.

All right. All I got to do is go out there and get the noise.
And then I'll get another chance. Just go out there and get the noise.

And I don't care that people don't know who I am, that don't know my story. What I care is at one point, someone was like, I'm going to bet on you.

And maybe it's to say a few lines or a cameo or whatever.

Dob needs a brother.

Connect the dots however you want. We would like to bet on you.
I feel like that brother would have come up in the first eight movies. Hey, man.

I'm glad it came up in the ninth and I'm glad it was me. So in the bottom of the ninth, I made it in.
You know what I'm saying?

Just try to do the best you can with the opportunities and don't care. Like, I don't, I never care about who knows me and who doesn't.
I don't even know where Vin ends and Dom begins at this point.

I just picture him like hanging out, like he invites you to his birthday party and he gives a speech to everybody and he's like.

to me familia and does like one of the coronas all around yeah and just the coronas and does this whole thing i i just feel like he's merged i i bet there are folks out there that would have that perspective about me to say, like, I don't know where John Cena, the WWE character, ends, and where, like, John begins, right?

So, you were the first era of the people that didn't have the gimmick or like you actually just used your name. You want to talk again about luck.
That was not my choice. Right.

And now, that's basically almost everybody. They want, they went from an edit, an attitude era of like edgy TV.
And for a hot second, they were like, we want more realism.

I snuck in. Yeah.
Like, in them, like the Indiana Jones where the thing is like closing. And I snuck in, like me, Brock, Randy, Batista, Shelton, Benjamin, under the thing.
We got it. You know, and

it's so many people would look at that and be like, well, you don't own your name.

I don't care. So many people, because of what WWE has done, is.
have put the IP out there, have allowed me to get so many opportunities.

So I could be greedy and try to cash in on like, give me every shekel that that is attached to that name because it's my name.

Or I could be grateful to be like, because of that name, I did this, this, and this, which they have nothing to do with.

And then it vaulted into this, this, and this, which they have nothing to do with. And every once in a while, there's a ball cap and t-shirt thing that

they, they absolutely get what they've earned. You know, but it's weird because it's like, man, you got to use your real name.

But some people come at it from the perspective of like, do they own your name? That's weird. It It just is what it is.
I'm so lucky. I'd like to see you at a couple more big Boston sports games.

I think would be a good 2026 and beyond for you. Like lean into the Boston thing a little more.
We count your titles. You would like to.

27 titles in the 21st century. Thanks, Ken.

You count them weird. What do you mean? You counted them weird.
What? Well, I counted the WWF ones. WWF slash E.
Were they all E or were there a couple F's in there? I think they're all E.

They're all E? I forget. I never really,

I always thought they should have won that lawsuit.

I get it. The other one was first, but it always bugged me.
Sometimes it's not worth it. Yeah, I guess not.
And they move seamlessly to WWE.

What a great way, again, to like, no, we're going in this direction. No one's going to get it

until everyone gets it. Right.

And man, I had folks in like 2014, you still with WWF? Yo, it has been WWE for like a decade now. Now no one.
Yeah. like no one the f is out

so good choice you had to get rid of the f in one of your moves right

yes

yes

when they when they got when they went pg

so again a great a good explanation right um

brock lesnar's move was the f5 yeah i had a similar move where you pick a guy up we both pick guys up he he is is a little bit more strong where you helicopters yours was the fu

but it came out of nowhere. Like,

I'm a middle. So again, the match is not about me.
I'm a middleman for Brock to beat to go to the Undertaker. But the more you can make that middle match exciting,

the cooler it is because it's a good one-off of the fans. So

I didn't try to make Brock look bad, but I was abrasive with my trash talk

and was like, you have the F5, I have the FU.

And that's where the

name of the move happened. So I kept using it.
And then as we evolved into PG,

I was told like, hey, we, we can't use that anymore. And then switching it to the attitude adjustment has been incredible because like,

it's so weird that art imitates life. Like I'm,

I'm always trying to change people's perspective or offer them a new perspective. So literally I'm.

trying or or leaning into the fact that you can adjust your attitude no matter what at any moment. And that like really changes the dynamic of anything.

You know, it's what if the if the move was still called the FU,

it'd be tough for me to sit here. Yeah, seriously.
You know what I'm saying? It evolved because it had to, but it rather than swimming upstream. Yeah, okay.
It's the AA. It's the attitude adjustment.

All right. December 13th, Saturday night's main event.
Yeah. We don't know who you're fighting yet.
I hope for the sake of your chest, it's LA night. So you don't have like dark maroon slap marks.

I'm asked one. Yeah, it'll be fine.
All right. And I got two.
Keep going. I got two big old.
Who's favorite in that match? What's that? Gunther versus L.A. Knight.
Who's the favorite?

Man.

Pretty close.

Two guys who have been doing really well the last couple of years.

I like the edge that L.A. Knight has.
Like he, he operates on a nothing to lose sort of thing. I think, I think many times, this is,

I think many times he might be his own biggest hurdle.

But gosh, if there's a dude willing to bet on himself, it's LA night and I admire that.

It would be fitting if you beat somebody with the LA in his name in your last match. It would also be great if it was in Boston.
But none of that shit is in our control. Yeah.

It sounds like you just would have done Tampa. 36 in Tampa would be glorious.
It feels like you're becoming like a Bucs fan. I don't even know if you're focused on this patriot.

This is going to burn this room up. I don't even watch anymore, man.

Well, you're too busy.

You're flying back and forth from Budapest and you're wrestling and making movies. It takes time.
I don't even know what day it is, man. Yeah.
All right. John Cena, congrats on everything.

I'm glad we found out. That's how we're ending it? We're ending it on a downer of like, I don't even know what happened.
No, we're not happy. It's not a sports anymore, man.
We're ending it on.

That's how it goes? That's the last moment we have.

Well, I could make you do a freestyle rap.

No, you can't make me do anything. You're going to ask me to, and I'll say, no.
That's a great idea. That's, yeah, that's nice.

I'm happy for you that you feel like this last year was, in some ways, your favorite year. Like, that's a great way to go out.

How many people get to retire on their terms where they're actually happier that way now? You used it. You said it was my terms.
I would do it in infinity if I could. This is not my terms.

These aren't my terms. What is your terms? My terms is do it forever.
But you can control when you stop doing it and you're controlling it, which is a good thing. Well, again, I asked if, like, hey,

company, do you think this is a good business idea? And they agreed. So we're able to do it.
What I love most about the year is

i think it will keep on giving moments after it's done yeah i think people will begin to continue to reflect and like oh but maybe it was this was the story they were trying to tell i think as it's weird to talk about it because wwe is so at the moment like something happens on television and people are like i hate this or like this is the greatest

And it is, it has been a year-long story. Yeah.
And people will digest it once the last one happens on the 13th.

And then I think they'll reflect, especially when they realize that I'm not coming back. And then, like, you could dive into like, oh man, what were they really trying to do across a year?

It's never, it's never been done before. Um,

I, I would not, I could not give an ounce more of effort. I don't think there's a single thing I would have changed.
And I like that it isn't perfect. I like it.
Like, I, I like that parts changed.

I like that dates and cities changed. I like that the last one isn't in Boston.
Um,

all the stuff that, like, it would be perfect if, no, life isn't perfect. Like, you just do the best you can with what you got.
And I, I, I personally like all that stuff. That's it.

I like the patience angle is good too, because you're right. Everybody's like, yes, no, quick, move on to the next thing.

Scroll up and down on my reels. Something as simple as like

in my last title defense, having Liv Morgan assist and beat me in the the same way that I turned on Cody, but she did it better than me. Yeah.

Just being able to like, hey, wait, you're going to get a call back to this moment in February, in November, but just wait for it, wait for it.

And being able to pay it off that late in the game, like, I don't know.

And whether that means anything to anyone else but me, I just, I like to know that I'm, there's not a moment I'm not thinking of. There's not.

We're doing everything we can. I'm doing everything I can.
So I just, I hope it,

if it doesn't, nothing ever stands the test of time, but I'll be very good on the 13th, knowing that like, all right, I gave the best I could this year. I truly, all the wisdom, tricks,

knowledge, physical ability, strength I have left, effort, seconds, time, you know, advice, whatever, every,

I don't have anything left, you know, and, and the 13th is, is going to be special in that regard of like putting a period on this. Did Dom Toretto RSVP yet or no?

Can't make it. He's got to save the world.

I don't want to. That's where he's going to be able to do that.
I don't want to tell you what it's about, but there's cars involved.

You get selfish that way with the cars. Duty calls.
John Cena, thank you. Great to do this.
Thank you. All right, that's it for the podcast.
Thanks to John Cena. Thanks to House and Bellany.

Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well.

New rewatchables coming on Monday. I'll tell you the movie on Sunday night because we haven't taped it yet and I want to make sure it actually gets taped.

But in the meantime, you can watch on HBO and HBO Max

our first installment of this season of the Music Box series. It is the Jeff Buckley documentary by Amy Berg.
It's awesome.

It premieres on HBO Thursday night and then you can find it on HBO Max as well. So go check it out.
Have a great weekend. I will see you on Sunday with Cousin Sal live after the Sunday night game.

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