#72: Triple H on Pre-Fight Rituals, Injury Avoidance, and Floyd Mayweather, Jr.

"Why would I be wound up? I'm either ready, or I'm not. Worrying about it right now ain't gonna change a damn thing." - Floyd Mayweather, Jr. just before a fight, as recalled by Paul Levesque [34:20] Paul Levesque, more popularly known as Triple H, is a 13-time World Heavyweight Champion in World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE). He is also the Executive Vice President of talent, live-events, and creative at the WWE. In this episode, we explore everything: the teachings of Killer Kowalski, how he avoids and repairs injuries (even if on the road 200+ days of the year), pre-game rituals, and habits developed with the support of trainer Joe DeFranco, The Undertaker, and boxer Floyd Mayweather, Jr.. This podcast is not limited to athletic performance. We dig deep into Triple H's routines, and how he manages his responsibilities as a husband and father of three daughters. Enjoy, and thank you for checking out the products below! I use them, and they make the show possible. This podcast is sponsored by LSTN Headphones http://www.lstnheadphones.com/tim. LSTN Headphones are gorgeous headphones made of real exotic, reclaimed wood. Proceeds from each purchase help a deaf or auditory-impaired person hear for the first time through the Starkey Hearing Foundation http://www.starkeyhearingfoundation.org/. Check out the headphones that I love and travel with here: LSTNHeadphones.com/Tim http://www.lstnheadphones.com/tim. On that page, you can get a $50 discount http://www.lstnheadphones.com/tim. This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results http://99designs.com/tim. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Special offer: For the month of April only, you can get an additional $30 off http://www.99designs.com/tim. Give it a test run and share your results!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Why, good morning, you sexy beast. Would you like me to make you some breakfast? Oh, I'm sorry. I was having a flashback there. Folks, this is Tim Ferriss. This is an addendum, an urgent update recorded after this episode was completed because I was going through a roster of all the most amazing things I've been able to experience in my life. And at the top of the list was floating at zero gravity. Experiencing weightlessness in a shuttle and being able to, say, chase after globules of water floating in midair, or chase Skittles that you've tossed into the air. It's floating right in front of your face, say, five feet away. Or screwing around all the way around the perimeter of the shuttle like a hamster in a hamster wheel, if you were inverted in a way.

• 0:43Tim Ferriss?

  It's really amazing. And I loved it so much that I decided to give away a flight. So I am giving away a flight at zero gravity. And you can get it. There's no cost involved, but it's only possible this week. That is the week of Monday, April 20th. So jump on this right now. I would suggest that you pause this and check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com/zero. That's fourhourworkweek, all spelled out, F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R, et cetera. Forward slash zero, Z-E-R-O. So check it out. And now, back to your regular programming.

• 1:22Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Listen headphones, which are gorgeous and produce incredible, incredible, incredible.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 1:52Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Listen Headphones. Listen headphones are gorgeous, made out of real exotic reclaimed wood, but they are also doing good in the world. Proceeds from each purchase help someone to hear for the first time through the Starkey Hearing Foundation. I've been using Listen Headphones since they came out, partially because the founders started the company after reading The Four Hour Workweek, and now they're available in Nordstrom and all over the place. They're super high quality, and if you want to see the headphones that I travel with, that I love, both in ear and out of ear, so kind of big ol' old-school headphones, then you can go to lstnheadphones.com/tim. That's L S T N headphones.com/tim. You will also get a $50, that's right, $50 discount.

• 2:36Tim Ferriss?

  That's a big wop in five zero, folks. So go to lstnheadphones.com/tim, L S T N headphones.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by 99designs, which is your one-stop-shop for all things graphic design-related. They have thousands upon thousands of designers around the world. You put up what you want, whether that's a business card, a t-shirt, a website, an app thumbnail, whatever, and they submit drafts, mock-ups, and designs that you can choose from, and you get an original design you love or your money back. I've used them for years, including to grab cover concepts for The Four Hour Body, which

• 3:17Tim Ferriss?

  went on to become number one New York Times, and it really was a springboard for everything. So, go to 99designs.com/tim, and you can also get two things: a $99 upgrade, and, just for the month of April, just for you guys, you can get an additional $30 off. And that is a total savings of $129. So check out 99designs.com/tim.

• 3:44Tim Ferriss?

  Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. I am drinking tea with coconut oil in it because I am in ketosis, so my brain is running like Speedy Gonzales on some type of biochemical advantage. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I am here to do what I do every episode, and that is deconstruct world-class performers to find the tools, tricks, routines, habits, and so on that you can use, whether those people are billionaire investors like, for instance, Peter Thiel, who was the first money into Facebook, also co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, or celebrities and actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, tech icons like Matt

• 4:26Tim Ferriss?

  Mullenweg behind WordPress, WordPress.com, and so on and so forth. Musicians, we've got everybody. And I have wanted to interview a professional wrestler for a very long time now, after seeing the movie The Wrestler, but also having wrestled myself and having watched WWE and WWF before that, and then the rise of MMA. And I managed to get ahold of a fantastic, fantastic performer and incredible athlete, Triple H. So Triple H, who is a 13-time world champion in the WWE, but that is not all. He's also the executive vice president of Talent Live Events and Creative at the WWE. And we talk about just

• 5:08Tim Ferriss?

  about everything in this episode. His real name is Paul Levesque, and we dig into the questions of misconceptions related to both Triple H, his stage name, his stage persona in WWE, the important lessons he learned while training with a wrestler named Killer Kowalski, including getting hit in the back of the head with a phone book in a garbage bag, ouch. And we get into his longevity, how he avoids and also repairs injuries, pre-game rituals, including input from a trainer named Joe DeFranco, of course, his colleague in arms, The Undertaker, and even Floyd Mayweather. And who does he model? How does he view parenting?

• 5:52Tim Ferriss?

  Daughters and it goes on and on. We really dig deep. It turned out better than I could have expected and I expected it to be good. So I hope you really enjoy this. Of course, all show notes can be found at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast, all spelled out. And please enjoy my conversation with the one and only Triple H, Paul Levesque. Paul, welcome to the show.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Thank you very much, man. It's an honor to be here.

• 6:19Tim Ferriss?

  I'm so excited for this. You are a massive human being.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  It's a job requirement, kind of.

• 6:25Tim Ferriss?

  It does seem to be a job requirement and you have worn a lot of hats and have had a lot of different titles, a lot of different jobs. When someone asks you, what do you do? If they don't recognize you, how do you answer that question?

• 6:37Speaker 02

  God, it's funny now because I'm kind of in that, this weird kind of combo twilight zone of the last bits of my, my in-ring wrestling career, you know? Even then, when I did it, then I used to say I was an entertainer. And because if people, it's our, the WWE is a weird thing. Like, like it's one of those things, like if you, if you're not into it, no explanation can explain it to you to make you like it. And if you are into it, there's no explanation necessarily. You know, it just is what it is. And so to say, sometimes say, oh, WWE, like they would go like, oh, like the wrestler, you know? And it just

• 7:20Speaker 02

  had a weird connotation to it. When you say entertainer, oh, what kind? Oh, you know, WWE. It just took on a different meaning.

• 7:25Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  To people that don't understand what we do. So I always went with that. Right now, it's, it's kind of a combo, you know? We have a saying that we use at WWE, which is our job is to put smiles on people's faces. And it's kind of the overall thing of what we do. But I spend 90% of my day as an executive. So there you go.

• 7:47Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, we're gonna also, we're gonna dig into that and rewind the clock and look at the trajectory. But what are misconceptions that people have about you or Triple H or WWE?

• 7:59Speaker 02

  I think they don't, you know, they just see what they see on TV. They see, you know,

• 8:08Speaker 02

  The misconception for me is that I'm very much what you see on television, or I'm this character, or they see the simplistic things of what we do. You know, it's funny, even if you're this huge fan of the WWE, they get so upset over things like, "Well, good. Why would this guy beat that guy?" Just, you know, it's one of the terms right now, "He buried him." You know, it's a show. And what they don't get about our show is we are like this never-ending... You can compare it to whatever you want, comic books, soap opera, TV drama, movie, but it never ends. There's always another chapter. And they get so upset in the moment of not knowing, you know,

• 8:51Speaker 02

  not liking maybe the end of the chapter that they're on. There's another chapter, it starts tomorrow. It actually started right now when this one ended, you know, and they don't get that and they can't wait for that. And they don't understand all the complexities that goes on, you know, go on behind the scenes. So that's probably the biggest misconception is that we're just, you know, that the WWE is just a bunch of guys at its simplest form, they just go to the ring in their underwear and pretend to fight with each other, you know. But when you really break it down, it's a massive, global business.

• 9:22Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, there's a lot behind it. And I've been so impressed by it for so, so long. Not the least of which, and we'll certainly explore the physical and mental stamina. How many matches would you say you have had total to date? Televised or otherwise?

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Thousands, you know, if you break it down simplistically, and math is not my strong suit, so, but, you know, I started wrestling, I think, in like 93-ish? Just training, 92, 93 training?

• 9:54Tim Ferriss?

  Was this in New Hampshire?

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, in New Hampshire, I went to, I trained with a guy named Killa Kowalski, an old...

• 10:00Tim Ferriss?

  Who my mom loves, by the way.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 10:03Tim Ferriss?

  So I wanted to dig into that.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was, you know, one of the first guys to become kind of like globally known. And I started training with him at a school, if you want to call it that. It was like a little rundown mill building with a boxing ring in it, in Malden, Massachusetts. And I started training with him there. So if you break it down from there... To today of 20 plus years. And then, you know, once I made it to the WWE, which was 95, even if you just want to look at it from there and just say 20 years, 20 years, I probably, for a lot of those years wrestled 250, 280 days a year. Sometimes in the weekends, we did double shots. So we'd wrestle on matinee in the afternoon and then a night show. So it's a lot.

• 10:49Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of mileage.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a lot of mileage, yeah.

• 10:51Tim Ferriss?

  What were the most?

• 10:52Speaker 02

  The thing we always say, it's not the years, it's the miles.

• 10:56Tim Ferriss?

  Figuratively and literally, and it's a hell of a lot of travel. But before I get to asking about travel and all these different training aspects, what were the most important lessons you learned while training with Killer Kowalski?

• 11:12Speaker 02

  It's funny, a lot of the things, I think, as in life, he taught me a lot of things that I didn't know he was teaching me at the time. He would tell me a lot of things and I would be like, huh, he's just like.

• 11:24Tim Ferriss?

  The Mr. Miyagi approach?

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, you know, he had this, it was a very, it would have worked very well in today's millennial age, but like he had that his theory of telling you did something wrong was hitting you in the back of the head with a phone book that was in like a shopping bag, you know?

• 11:38Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  And, but yeah, he would just teach all the, he wouldn't say a whole lot. And then all of a sudden he'd come in and he would say, you know, God, you need to be spectacular. Make everybody look at you, no one else. And then he would just walk away and then you'd be like, what does that mean? Like, I don't, you know what I mean? You kind of had to figure it out. Now, there's a lot of things that he said to me then that I find myself telling the young guys now in a different way. But it's the same lessons, kind of, you know.

• 12:15Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any examples that come to mind?

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Well, just, just in how to be spectacular, but also how to break things down and to just look at what you do, like, never be.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Never be satisfied with what you do. If you don't do something well, don't do it. Unless you want to spend the time to improve that. Like, and still to this day, I see a lot of guys do stuff in the ring that I'm like, he doesn't do that well, but he does it all the time. I just, you know, you shouldn't do that. I have things that I don't do well in the ring. Just don't. It's just.

• 12:48Tim Ferriss?

  What would be examples?

• 12:49Speaker 02

  For example, there's this one thing that guys take where they, they, um, they go through the to- top and middle turnbuckle and hit the post.

• 12:57Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Right, from the inside and hit it with their shoulder. I just, it's one of those mental block things for me. Like, I can't, I just like can't seem to navigate going between the two turnbuckles and getting the thing. Like, I always get stuck somehow, or, I've tried to do it before and it's just one of those things like doesn't work out well for me. So, I never do it. And if guys will grab me in the ring over the years and say, like, take the post, and I'll just, no, you know what I mean? Cause I don't.

• 13:24Tim Ferriss?

  Mid-flight correction.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  I just don't do that well. I'm not gonna do it. And I think there's little things like that, that guys don't analyze what they do. They, they do what they do and then they go, and they say, oh, that was really good in the overall picture of things, right? It was really good. People really liked it. It was, but there were some things in there that weren't really good.

• 13:41Tim Ferriss?

  So, the, it averaged out well, but there were things they should have omitted?

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, and, and to me, I don't know, I've always been the kind of guy, if, if you're, if you're doing it, why, why wasn't everything what you wanted it to be in there? There shouldn't be wasted movement. There shouldn't be things that aren't what you want them to be. I don't want to do something just to get to the next thing, you know?

• 14:04Tim Ferriss?

  No, I do. And what are you particularly good at in that, in that, in that environment? What are the things that you, the strengths that you focused on?

• 14:11Speaker 02

  For me, it was never about, um, it was never about individual moves. And I think as the business, maybe some guys now look at that and, and they, they think differently because they, they might look at my style and say like, I was never an over-the-top spectacular guy, but I wasn't supposed to be. I was usually the bad guy. So, I wanted to have that. I wanted to be that constant and let the other guy be spectacular around me. And, um, for me, it was never about the spectacular moves. It was about the drama of the, the match. And I, I look at what we do as, um,

• 14:50Speaker 02

  We're more like Rocky, the movie, than we are legitimate, you know, like boxing.

• 14:57Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  It's about the story that you tell. So if the story is really good going in and you care about the two characters and then you make that emotional story play out through those two characters non-verbally in the ring, that's the magic of what we do. It doesn't matter if, you know, um, yeah, it makes the highlight reel, like, oh my God, he did this one spectacular move was crazy. I don't know how he, he made it through that or whatever. It's, it's not really about that. Cause tomorrow there'll be another guy can do that move better than you just did it.

• 15:27Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  And it'll be even more spectacular. He'll come up with another way to do it that's even crazier.

• 15:31Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you mentioned Rocky, right? It's, it's, it's, uh, it's about the story arc, not just a handful of really good lines of dialogue.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And, and that's the thing of it. And you'll watch, it's, it's one of the things that works. We have the WWE Network. It's a lot of old content. People will go back and they'll watch WrestleMania one, you know, um, over and over again and how great it is and or WrestleMania three and all these things. It's because it's an emotional story. If it was just about the moves, it wouldn't be so impactful to you still. It, the, the emotional story, that's why people will go back and watch the movie Rocky over and over again, because it's a great story. Um, they very rarely go back and watch, you know, there's exceptions, Muhammad Ali and, and Foreman or something, you know, um, moments in time, but the, the average person, unless they're like a boxing

• 16:20Speaker 02

  connoisseur, doesn't go back and watch boxing over and over again.

• 16:23Tim Ferriss?

  No. And you know, it's fascinating about the examples you just gave, like, uh, whether it's Ali, Frazier, or whatever, those, those in real life ended up being like story arcs because you would have this back and forth and this drama and the thrill and manila. And there were all the elements of sort of the, the monomyth or the.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, and, and even when you go back and usually watch those fights, you go back and you watch them in a show that now chronicles the story of.

• 16:50Tim Ferriss?

  That ties them together.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It chronicles the story of those, those epic contests, you know, and, and that's the, the reality of the story, you know, it's, um. You know, said all the time, if you know who's in the ring fighting, you'll tune in and you'll watch to just watch two guys fight for no apparent reason. It's not that interesting unless you're a connoisseur of the of what they're doing. You know, if you're if you're watching the UFC and you're a big mixed martial arts fan or all those things, and there's a lot of those, but they're very into the the what's going on scientifically and, you know, the chess game, the technical chess game that's going on. But that's not the general public. To hit the general public, they need to know something about the two guys and why they're fighting.

• 17:34Tim Ferriss?

  Right. The uh, the fighting now. At your peak point in in your your onstage wrestling career, you mentioned 200 and something like 250 to 300 days of the year. You're probably traveling, something like that?

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Traveling, yeah.

• 17:51Tim Ferriss?

  And uh, what were some of the keys to your longevity, being able to maintain that? And I know we have a common connection in Joe DeFranco and and he's mentioned that you very, very rarely, if ever, miss training days. And then maybe you could speak to that, but even if that means coming in at two, three in the morning to train. What are what have been some of the keys or practices that have allowed you to sustain that type of torturous schedule?

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Um, I think, you know, you you speak a lot in your in your podcast and in your books and everything about routines and having things that you do. And I'm very big in that way. And I like I like to have my life kind of like when it when it gets chaotic, it bothers me. And it's it would sound silly because the like what we do is chaotic at all times. Like my day varies and, you know, people talk about when you do live TV like Monday Night Raw for us, we work on that show and editing done. And like, sometimes guys are walking out the curtain and somebody shouting a change to them as they're walking through the curtain, you know, it's it's

• 18:59Speaker 02

  so the chaos is there. But having that consistent thing. So for me, I had very distinct things, like if I was In the beginning, there wasn't as much supplements and it was a little bit more difficult. But as supplements became more available, I would, I'm like big on the preparation part. So like if I was gonna get on a plane to fly to Japan, I would take either containers or later when they were there, I would make my own protein shakes, right? I'd put the two scoops of protein in the thing, I'd put some oil in there, whatever I needed, I'd put the top on it, no liquid in there and I'd stick it inside my carry-on bag. So, and I would time it in my head.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  So I'm on the flight for, it's a 16-hour flight, I've got three hours, I need to eat every three hours, I'm not gonna count on the food on the plane, that will just be bonus food. So every three hours, I have a shake for every three hours. And I'd set my watch to go off every three hours, time to eat. And I'd get a shake out, get water, drink my shake, put it in, go back to sleep, right? Whatever I needed to do. When I landed, I would check into the hotel, second we checked in, I'd ask them, is the gym open, can I go train? Even if it was to get on a bike and ride for 15 minutes, reset that. I learned early that it seemed to me, anytime I did that, I didn't get jet lag. Anytime I did that, I seemed to, like, we can use wrestling terms, like, I'd get kick out faster, right?

• 20:26Speaker 02

  So while everybody else would be in the building dragging that day, I'd be like, I feel great. Like, you know, I don't feel so bad. Getting your blood flowing, resetting your clock. You know, if we were in Australia, I would always, like that last day there, I would force myself to stay up. Because then I could sleep the whole way home and by the time I landed, I was, I'm landing in the morning and it's perfect, like I'm just waking up and it's great, you know, and do the same thing. I'd land, I'd try to find a gym, whether a hotel, something, ride a bike, reset my clock, do the deal, you know? So those routines and regimented stuff, and same with my training. Um, when new guys would start a lot um on the road, like internationally, when we're all

• 21:08Speaker 02

  traveling together, it's hard when you go overseas, you're on a bus, there, there's a gym set up for you, but they don't know how like, how do I get to the gym? I'm not sure. Am I supposed to go downstairs? Get on a bus? I don't know. The guys would always come to me and say, hey, like, we've always heard that you go to the gym every day. Can I go with you? So, yeah, I'd meet downstairs, a bunch of guys would come down, we'd all go to the gym together because I would go every day. I didn't like missing it. I didn't like, you know, it was, to me, was that regimented thing. And I can look back on my career and say, I think part of that regimented stuff is why I was able to maintain it or, or maintain that schedule. Because I was one of the guys also that really, truly believed

• 21:51Speaker 02

  in that when you make it, the job gets harder. It's not the other way around. You don't make it and then go, okay, now I can cruise because now I'm, I'm the guy. And now that means I can say no, and I can not do these things. I felt the opposite. When you get there, now it's your responsibility to not say no. So, you know, I, I've had times where I've worked 64 straight days and just everybody else went home. I went on a media tour. Everybody else went back home. I went to something else. I did that for years, you know, and, that, um, that regimented, having those distinct patterns, so to speak, um, I think helped, helped keep that.

• 22:30Tim Ferriss?

  I think it helps preserve your bandwidth also for making decisions about other things. So you don't have to decide each morning or each day what all the elements of your routine are going to look like.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's funny. I heard you talk, uh, just recently, I listened to your podcast and my research for this, because I've read your, your books and I, but I, I, hearing somebody speak is different than what you put in your mind of how they speak.

• 22:55Tim Ferriss?

  Right. You're like, God, that guy sounds a lot dumber on audio.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  No, no, but you know, you, you put something in your head and then get there and go, that's not what I expected at all. So I, I listened to.

• 23:05Tim Ferriss?

  I sounded more like Barry Manilow.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Yes, much. Yes. Um, you, um, you spoke, uh, now I forget what I was talking about.

• 23:13Tim Ferriss?

  That was, that was bad interviewer etiquette on my part.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 23:16Tim Ferriss?

  We were talking about routines.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's bad memory on my part, is what it is.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  Routine, oh, I know what I was gonna say. Yeah, I, I believe that, um, like, training is almost like a meditation, right?

• 23:29Tim Ferriss?

  Totally agree.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Anthony Robbins say, he doesn't, didn't meditate because he didn't like shutting off. He's the opposite. He wants to just keep going. But I also believe you need to reboot your brain because your brain will get stuck in like, it's, it's like when you go to sleep and you can't stop thinking about something you got going on at work and you can't get it out. And in the morning, you realize like it was actually gibberish that was in your brain going on. Um, I, I think training, when you do it well, if you're into it, like you can't focus, you can't be in the middle of trying to do a heavy set of something and be thinking about another project. You have to be in that moment and it allows you to reboot.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Which I kind of believe is what meditation and all that stuff is. Anyways, it's just a reset button for a second that just allows you to go like, okay, start over, clean the plate, and now let's do this again, you know? And that's really, to me, what training is.

• 24:23Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 24:25Tim Ferriss?

  Digging a little bit more on the routines, uh, for instance, uh, in the, in the last, let's just say, as you've gotten older, in the last, uh, handful of years, how do you, what is your pre-game ritual, if you have one, before you're gonna go out and compete and perform?

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, so that just became a necessity of, uh, of age of, I never.

• 24:48Tim Ferriss?

  And just for people listening, if you don't mind me asking, how, how old are you?

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Forty-five. But so, you know, for years, when I was doing all that stuff with wrestling, uh, you know, wrestling, all those dates and, and everything. Um, it's funny because some of the younger guys would, would joke with me about it, like you're like the old school guy, like I would literally be sitting in the chair up at, we call it gorilla position, right before you walk out the curtain, uh, it's named after an old wrestler, Gorilla Monsoon, but, um, I would just be sitting in a chair, my music would hit, I'd get up and go to the ring. And like, they would say, you don't warm up at all, so I'll walk to the ring, it's good. Take a good warm-up, you know? I'll start slow, it'll be fine. Um. Now I have to like stretch and warm up and Joe DeFranco, you mentioned my strength and conditioning guys.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  One of the things when, I'm really bad with years and dates, but four years ago, as my career was kind of winding down and I was, but I was, I was still wrestling fairly regularly and I, I had had this problem, I thought it was a neck injury and uh, I'm really having all this problem with my neck and my shoulder.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  And I, I um, I got into a position with a company where I needed to go make a couple of movies for them. Long story, but I went to go make two movies. I ended up taking about a month off from the ring to go make these two movies and then was supposed to come back. While I was making the movies, one day I went to the gym to train and um, it had gotten to a point where I couldn't raise my left arm up like over my shoulder and my neck was really bad and I'd been going to see our team physician, uh, you know, the guy that runs our medical and I'd been, you know, getting stuck with needles and dye and MRIs and things. And they kept saying like, it looks great. We don't see there's clearly something nerve going on here, but we don't know what it is. Um, and they kept doing all this stuff and went to gym one day and tore my bicep.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  And it didn't hurt at all. It like snapped. I looked down. I had the big gap in my arm. I was just mad more than anything. I was like, oh.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  It just rolled up like a Venetian blinds.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  It tore at the top, so it just popped down and made like this divot there, right? And uh, and I heard, I had headphones on. I heard it and I looked down. There was this divot. I was like, son of a bitch. I can't believe it. It tore my bicep. So I'm like mad. I put my weights down and like literally I was done training. I was just gonna do like a couple of extra sets of biceps or whatever. And uh, I called the guy to come back and, and get me and as I went to go outside, like I was sweating and now pissed, so I'm just gonna leave. And I go to put my sweatshirt on and as I did, I put my sweatshirt, like threw my arm up over my head to put my sweatshirt on and realized like, wait a minute. Like I can move my my arm all the way around my head like that. I couldn't do that.

• 27:23Tim Ferriss?

  Your shoulder mobility.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was like my everything came back and hey, wait, my neck doesn't hurt. It was all from like this bicep. And um, I had to get surgery and the whole thing and it but it got me to a point in my head like I'm getting older, I'm falling apart a little bit like I have to start. Maybe I should think about trying to train like an athlete instead of just like going to the just be a bodybuilder and just looking good or whatever. So I'm not like a guy that just like called the local gym like I have to then like dig into it. So I start like researching trainers and everything and um.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Ironically, I end up probably where you did in your quest to do when you did for our body, which is you start researching all these guys that become the best at what they do and I I come across Joe DeFranco. It keeps coming back up Joe DeFranco. So then I called Joe DeFranco out of the blue one day and just say, um, you know, hey, I was I was actually because he was in Jersey and I was in Connecticut. I was thinking maybe he could recommend me to somebody. And uh, he said, can I come and meet with you? I'd like to meet with you and just so I can analyze the thing. I still had my arm in a sling and everything and just finished making the movies. I didn't have the surgery until after I finished making the movies. And um.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  He came and said, uh, after we met, he's like, you seem like a really great guy. I'd like to take a stab at doing this with you. I'll drive up here. I'm willing to do it and drive up and uh, there's a thing. He's awesome.

• 28:50Tim Ferriss?

  He's a great guy and for and for people who aren't familiar, uh, he's he's very well known for a lot of reasons, but does a lot of work with uh, football athletes. Training for the NFL Combine.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:01Tim Ferriss?

  And uh, that's how he ended up the the chapters in the four hour body where I I showed how unathletic I am, uh, but how much Joe could improve my performance. Attempting to simulate the combine for for a handful of chapters, but uh, please continue. I just wanted to give some context for people.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, thank you.

• 29:16Tim Ferriss?

  Great guy.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, and um, just wealth of knowledge, incredibly smart and um, he said to me, um. So this will be a difficult transition for you because your mindset is totally different. You know, I'd never been with a strength and conditioning guy. Everything I learned in the gym was from bodybuilders or powerlifters. I just I just went to the gym and trained with guys and learned everything I could, but I was a sponge for it and. You know, Arnold was my hero and you know, like just was a sponge for all that stuff and and but that's how I learned it. So strength and conditioning and the whole stretching and mobility was totally foreign to me. And he said, uh, this is gonna be a tough thing for you. We'll see if you can do it because tough with old dogs, new tricks. And I just went to him and

• 30:01Speaker 02

  I said, dude, I will tell you this, I'm, I'm all in. Tell me what to do. I'll go do it. But it changed my life, changed my life athletically. I went from a guy with, you know, gimping going upstairs because my knees were killing me. I've torn both my quads and my knees were really bad and all that. I have zero knee pain now. I'm as strong as I've ever been. Um, I don't have physical issues, but it's because of that type of training and Joe and um, you know, he was the, one of the guys that got me like, when you do wrestle, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get you in this kind of shape and then you're gonna, here's gonna be your pre-match ritual of, you know, your stretching and your mobility. We're gonna light your body up, get your nerves kicking and firing and then you're gonna go, you know, and, and um,

• 30:47Speaker 02

  that's what I do now and it works out a whole lot better.

• 30:49Tim Ferriss?

  What are, what are, as opposed to going from the gorilla position straight out to the, to the ring? What are, and I can, what I'll provide for folks, uh, obviously lots of links to everything that you're up to, but also I'll ping Joe and get some links to exercises and, and some videos. What, what does that look like now? What are some of the exercises or the sequence?

• 31:08Speaker 02

  It's um, it's a lot of mobility stuff, Cossack squats, um, you know, um.

• 31:14Tim Ferriss?

  Is that a weighted Cossack squat or is that?

• 31:16Speaker 02

  No, no, he'll, well, it depends, but usually I don't like if I'm getting ready to go for a match, but like he'll have me do Cossack squats into, um, maybe just like a, a squat, but when I come down, I'm pushing my knees out to the side to stretch my groin out into some type of like, um, uh, eccentric explosive push up, but just getting things to fire my nervous system, wake my nervous system up, but then also just open my joints up a little bit and just warm my body up. But it's never anything like I see guys running up and down hallways and doing all these things to get a sweat going. I'm never at that point, but when I'm done it, I always feel like alive, you know, as opposed to just kind of physically

• 32:00Speaker 02

  shut down, but mentally aware because I'm about to go to the ring. So, you know. No matter how many years you've been doing this, you're still like nervous and like freaking out and um to to then have your body just kick in and wake up boom and you're there, you know what I mean? And that's really what it is. But it's it's just a he varies it, but it's a little series of exercises. It just makes me go.

• 32:25Tim Ferriss?

  How long does it typically take?

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Five, 10 minutes.

• 32:27Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it's nice, nice and sweet.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it's not. You know, I just go right from one thing to the other. It's it's a good little deal.

• 32:35Tim Ferriss?

  I'll ping Joe. So people, you can you can find that at the show notes at fourhourblog.com. Uh, the fear factor, what you guys do is it can be very dangerous. I mean, there are risks involved. When you're when you're nervous or have been nervous, uh, what does your in inner dialogue sound like when you're preparing yourself to go out when you've been most nervous? What are you saying to yourself?

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Um, so it's changed over the years. I used to get really intense and really like almost like um that same level of intensity. If you were gonna go for a personal record squat or something where, you know, you just get in that zone of intensity and just nothing else is around you and you're in your own little world and just on fire, ready to tear through this thing. And that when I was younger, that used to be the thing. For me now, it's much more of an inner dialogue of you have been doing this for 20 years. You know how

• 33:39Speaker 02

  to do this. Like, relax and this is fun. Like, and there in somewhere, there's that inner dialogue in me saying, could be the last time you do this. Enjoy it. You know what I mean? Like, um, Undertaker and I had a conversation a couple of years ago about this. Like, you you it's it's a little bit of like, you can still do this, like, and calming yourself down. But at the same point in time, like, don't forget to enjoy this moment. Like when you're out there, because you might not get another one. You don't know, you know, and and and injuries do happen, especially as you get older. So and you can't think about it once you're out there. And that's the thing for me. It's always been.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  This emotion and nerve and this my music hits and the second I walk out it's gone. Like I don't have any of it. When I'm in the ring waiting for the other guy or whatever, I don't have any of it. Um, and it's an interesting thing to me that, um, I'm friends with Floyd Mayweather.

• 34:39Tim Ferriss?

  Incredible athlete.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I was walking him to the ring one time and, uh, I think when he fought Marquez. And, um, we got there early and like his guys came and got me and I wanted to watch some of the undercard and then they came and got me and they said, you know, Floyd just wanna say hi before he starts getting ready and stuff, chat with you for a few minutes. So I came, we, Steph and I went backstage with my wife. And, um, we get in his locker room and he's laying down on the couch watching basketball game. And we come in and say hello and all that. And he's like, can I have a seat? You know, now he's, we're talking a little bit. But I'm trying to be ultra respectful of him. He's about to go in, you know? It's just massive fight. And so I, uh, the second there's like a lull in the conversation, I'm like, all right, man, we're gonna get out of your hair and, and head back and, and we'll come back here when it's time for us to get ready

• 35:25Speaker 02

  for your deal. And he's like, man, you don't gotta take off. You can sit down. I'm, I'm enjoying the conversation. Have fun. And he's like, completely relaxed. And I said, so another lull in the conversation, I go, we're gonna run Floyd. I, I don't wanna be in your way. And he goes, Hunter? I'm telling you, I'm not, I'm just chilling, watching the game. And I said, you're not wound up about this at all? And he goes, why would I be wound up? I'm either ready or I'm not. Worrying about it right now, I ain't gonna change a damn thing.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Right? Whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen. So I've either done everything I can to be ready for this or I'm not.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  It's a fair point. I sat back down. We watched a game for a little.

• 36:07Tim Ferriss?

  You're like, all right, wanna be here?

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. He just, he just is very, uh, calm and relaxed.

• 36:12Tim Ferriss?

  That's amazing.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  And I, I think when you feel in your mind that you're ready, you're ready. And you're gonna have those nerves, but it's, you know, it's there.

• 36:19Tim Ferriss?

  When, when you were coming up, let's just say when you, when you would hit your stride somewhat, so you're starting to, uh, make the ascent through the ranks and really become popular. When you thought of the word successful, who was the person in your head at that time?

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Um, I don't know, it's hard to say because I looked at in inside of the, inside of our business, there were guys like for me, um, you know, my favorite performer character was Ric Flair. Um, just kind of felt like overall, he had the best package of everything to offer. You know, there were guys that were great showmen, very popular or guys that were great at one thing, very popular. He had the kind of the combo of great in-ring performer and made everybody look good, this great character, all, all these things. In, inside the wrestling business, that was a component of success for me. Um, just that level of performer, the way he handled himself in the ring.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  I always wanted to be the in-ring kind of general and understand. And I, it's one of the things I prided myself on at the peak of my career was, um, I could tell you at any given time, if there were six people involved in something, I could tell you at any given time, if I closed my eyes in the ring, where they all were. Like no matter how much they were moving around and what they were doing. I knew where they were. I knew what they had in their hands. I knew like just on glimpses as I was moving around the ring. I always felt like it was my job, if something was gonna screw up, that was my fault. It wasn't because he didn't know what was coming. It was because I didn't control that. Um, so I always felt like the control was mine to take because it was what I could count on.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  I couldn't rely on, you know, this might get screwed up because maybe there's a confusion between those two guys over there that's supposed to do their thing. So I always took it on me to make sure I was there to tell them, this is coming up. Be ready. Here we go. Get the chair, whatever, you know? Um, Flair was very good at that. So that was like for me, from that point of view, was a success, um, component. But there was a lot of things that I looked for. Wrestling didn't define me as far as what I saw was successful. I looked at and, um, you know, I looked at my father-in-law and Al Vince, I looked at that as a guy that...

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Saw business that was one thing, but had a vision of it being something else. He saw this little territory business and thought, there should be one global brand that everybody watches because the world's getting smaller. Cable is taking over and so he had this vision and then he just kind of set out doing it. I looked at Arnold, I remember, you know, as a kid, um, reading Education of a Bodybuilder and very structured, methodical set of, here's what I want to do, here's what I want to be, and here's how I'm gonna get there, you know, um, that, those kind of things and those kind of people were success models for me.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Arnold, um, was that in, in the structure. You know, I, I just said it to him a few weeks ago, like for me, I say this in interviews a lot. The gym taught me everything I need to know for life, you know? I walked in a gym at 14, I fell in love with it. Um, I, I fell in love with the end result look, right? I was always in awe of these big, powerful, impressive guys. I think it's part of what I dug about wrestling, you know? I enjoyed the, the physical and all that stuff of it and, and fell in love with that really, wholly. That's probably what led me to the gym at first, but, but just the, the discipline of it and the, the going to the gym.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  When I say it's like life, the more you put in, the more you get out. The harder you work, the better the results, you know? Um, if you're willing to prepare, to sacrifice, and it's not just about going to the gym, lifting weights and then going out and goofing off the rest of the time, it's your life. So if you discipline your diet, if you discipline your rest, if you don't go to the party with your friends, if you don't do all these things, your results follow suit. Um, you know, I, I, I just did, um, I just got inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame, Arnold's International Sports Hall of Fame. Congratulations. Thank you. And, but I, I bring it up because Evander Holyfield was there and he told this story and I never heard it said this way before and I'm, I'm sorry Evander, but I'm gonna steal this. Um, he, he told me that, you know, he was giving his speech and he said that his coach

• 40:49Speaker 02

  at one point in time told him, uh, very, like his very first day, he said, you could be Muhammad, you could be the next Muhammad Ali. And, uh, he said, do you want to do that? And he, he said he had to ask his mom and then he went back home and he came back and he said, I, I want to do that. And he said, okay, is that a dream or a goal? This is a difference. I'd never heard it said that way before, but it struck to me so much so that I've said it to my kid now. Like, is that a dream or a goal? Because a dream is something you fantasize about that just will never happen, probably. A goal is something you set a plan and work towards and achieve. Is that a dream or a goal?

• 41:31Speaker 02

  I kind of always looked at my stuff that way. So the people that were successful models to me were people that had structured goals and then put a plan in place to get to those things. And I think that's what impressed me about Arnold. What impressed me about my father-in-law to this day, he's still very much a, you know, here's the goal. There's how I'm gonna get there, you know?

• 41:53Tim Ferriss?

  Energizer Bunny. That's amazing. I mean, you guys are seem like peas in a pod from us. Stamina and endurance stamina.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  You know, and to you, I've heard you say it before. When you have that goal in mind now, it's not, I gotta do this thing to get that done. It's you. You can't wait to do that thing to get that done because it's gonna get you closer to your goal.

• 42:11Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Well, it's the compass that allows you to find order in the chaos too.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:15Tim Ferriss?

  The parenting, I don't, I don't yet have kids that I know of. At some point, I would love to have a family. How do you think about being a father? What type of father do you want to be? What do you think is, is important in that role?

• 42:32Speaker 02

  That's a tough one. I have three girls, three, I have an eight, a six, and a four.

• 42:41Tim Ferriss?

  Very well spaced.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And that's it. We're done. Yeah. But it's, man, it's, it's hard when the pressure as a parent, if you, you know, hopefully if everybody takes the job seriously, you know, you're giving them the examples of how they're gonna live their life. Kids don't do what you say. They, they do what they see. So how you live your life is their example. You know, I've heard it said, and I believe this is like, the way I treat their mother and the way I treat them is what they're gonna look for in a, in a significant other. That's like, you gotta think, oh, yeah, like, so what do I want them to have in their life?

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Holy cow, and I gotta do all that stuff. It's a lot, you know? And then you add in all the other things of life. It's a very, it's a very difficult challenge.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  But you you wanna you wanna teach them right from wrong. You wanna teach them. You wanna give them a path and a direction, but at the same point in time. You know, you learn as much from your failures as you do from your successes. So you can't. You can't give them everything. You wanna help them so bad. Like, I'm watching you make a mistake and I wanna help you, but. Go ahead and make the mistake because you gotta learn from that mistake. You know what I mean? And it's it's tough to do, but you have to. And there's no manual. That's the hard thing about kids, right? There's no manual that comes with it and. You're just doing the best you can. I remember when we got our first one home, we the hospital, they. Put it in the car seat and you take the thing home and then we walked in the door and we put it on the step and we were like.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  What do we do now?

• 44:26Speaker 02

  We just stood there looking at her for a little bit like, what do we like? What do we do? Just like eventually she cried and we had to feed her and whatever. You don't know what to do. You just. It's like, you know, we have a kid. Holy crap, you know, just.

• 44:44Tim Ferriss?

  Figure it out as you go.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, luckily I was, I gotta go on the road.

• 44:52Tim Ferriss?

  The. The aspect of routines that we touched on earlier, I'd love to to to bring back into focus for a second. Specifically morning routines. What is what? What does the first 60 minutes of your day look like? And I'll probably ask a bunch of really irritating nitpicky questions because that's how I am. But what is what is what is when you wake up? What is the first sort of 60 to 90 days, 60 to 90 minutes of your day look like?

• 45:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I wish I had a really cool example of that, like, you know.

• 45:22Tim Ferriss?

  I wake up, I go in a cryo chamber.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Cryo chamber is like at this elaborate ritual of. Mind altering, spiritual, like jumping in a hot tank and a cold tank and a mind involves my kids waking me up in an ungodly hour after I, you know, like. We. We work under the premise of my wife and I and to me. She gets this even more than I do because she's got all the roles and all this stuff. And then. She's mom and when you're the dad, it's it's it's a big responsibility. But the mom like. If anything happens, if they wake up, they go to her first. You know, when the kids wake up in the middle of the night, unless they're scared, they might call dad if they're scared, but usually it's mom because they just, mom's more the comforter, right?

• 46:06Speaker 02

  So it's, it's all those things. So that's even harder job. But, um, you know, we, we train late at night. We get home, we try to get home every night, no matter what, to, to spend a little bit of time with them and put them down. And, and, uh, you know, read them a book, whatever, get them in bed. So Joe comes to my house around 10 o'clock. So by

• 46:26Speaker 03

  PM.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I, I get them done, you know, we get them in bed, um, change, and then Joe's there. And we start training and usually, but you know, by the time you warm up, it takes me a while to warm up. I'm at 10 o'clock at night.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  You, you train and do all the stuff. By the time we get done, usually it's one o'clock, you know, in that ballpark. And then, you know, you, you, you, you get into bed after one o'clock. They're up at like six at the latest, you know, and they're in the room. So there's no really cool ritual. I wish I could say jump in a cryo chamber. It's usually me stumbling downstairs with them, um, to try to make every morning, my ritual is, um, I, I am, I'm also ironically out of your book, Dave Palumbo.

• 47:13Speaker 03

  Jumbo Palumbo, yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Dave, um, has, I've been friends with him for years and he, um, he's a big, um,

• 47:23Speaker 02

  ketogenic diet guy. So he like works with my diet a lot when I'm getting ready for a WrestleMania stuff. So Dave's kind of my diet guy uses protein powder, species protein. But so every morning, roll downstairs, two scoops of, of whey protein, a bunch of Starbucks coffee, powdered Starbucks coffee, uh, some macadamia nut oil and I make a shake and that's the start. Like you just gotta get the kick in.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  So powdered Starbucks macadamia nut oil. What else was in there?

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Uh, two scoops of isolate protein.

• 47:54Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  And, uh, some ice, blend it all up. It's a Starbucks, uh, smoothie kind of concoction, but very healthy and has enough caffeine in there to at least make me realize what's going on.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Get them ready for school. My wife and I get them ready for school, uh, jump in the shower. Either depending if I'm getting ready for like WrestleMania, it's either uh, throw sweats on because I'm gonna bring them to school and then get a workout in because usually I train twice a day when I'm getting ready for WrestleMania or something, but uh, train and then off to work. If I'm not getting ready for WrestleMania, it's shower, get ready, suit, bring them to school. You know, we drive them to their school, get them to school, get them in their class, do all the stuff and then drive to the office, start the day, uh, get home at, you know, 7:30, 8 o'clock at night and repeat.

• 48:45Tim Ferriss?

  And this is all in Connecticut, is that right?

• 48:47Speaker 02

  All in Connecticut, yeah.

• 48:48Tim Ferriss?

  And the, the HQ is, I want to say, I'm gonna get this wrong, it's not Stamford, is it?

• 48:52Speaker 02

  Stamford, yeah, yeah, yep. See it right from 95, right off the highway.

• 48:56Tim Ferriss?

  Close to the UBS building?

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, down the street, not far.

• 49:00Tim Ferriss?

  Brian used to live, I used to work there. I guess the, the, yeah, slip of the tongue, live there was probably appropriate, he pretty much lived in the office. Uh, what is your, uh, what is your role currently at WWE in the, in the executive capacity?

• 49:14Speaker 02

  So I am the, um, executive vice president of talent, live events and creative. So if you look at the core of what we do as a company, like from the, the product itself, Ross MacDown, all that, and we're a lot more than that because we have movies and music and like, um, it's, I, I say all the time, it's like saying Marvel's a comic book company, but that's the core of what we do. Um, I control those aspects. So talent, and that goes from, we have a department, talent relations, which is like their HR, and they handle everything that has to do with talent from their travel to, um, and anything that has to do with them.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  All the logistics of WrestleMania week, you know, what talent are doing, there's a thousand appearances for talent, literally in the week of WrestleMania, they have to handle all the logistics of getting who, where, making sure nobody's late, and all, all of it, it's a maze. Um, from to talent development, which is the biggest probably thing that's closest to my heart that I do, which is where do we find talent? Where do we recruit them from? Where do we, um, where do we, um?

• 50:32Speaker 02

  Where do we recruit them from? How do we train them? We opened a performance center in Orlando, Florida, to a developmental territory or a developmental system that I have called NXT.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  That has become kind of like an alternative brand.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Through to how do they then evolve and and get into the main roster of the WWE? So basically what we did is kind of created college football to get guys ready for the NFL. And then the the last part of what I do is is creative, which Vince is kind of the ultimate filter of creative. I'm more.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  While I I weigh in a lot on that stuff and the content that's going to go on the network and all these things and I weigh in on it from a creative concept. But I'm also approving T-shirt designs and banner designs and going through all that stuff through all the different departments and doing the approvals of all that day to day process. Sounds like quite a few hats. It's it's a lot of hats. It's funny, I used to marvel at

• 51:37Speaker 02

  Vince's ability. When I first started coming in the office. I I've had a a working kind of behind the scenes relationship with Vince since probably I started in the WWE in 95 since like early 96. I just was always fascinated with the behind the scenes of the business and how it actually all came together as much as I was doing it in the ring. And he and I just kind of clicked in that sense and we started working together and I didn't meet Steph, his daughter, until quite a few years later. And then we ended up having a relationship and the whole thing. But I had this working relationship with Vince and as time went on and I got more and more involved in that and then kind of later in my career, he kept always asking me like, when are you going to stop messing around in the ring

• 52:21Speaker 02

  and come do some real work in the office, you know? You need to be in the office, I need to get you in the office. And I used to marvel at how many hats he wore and how quickly he could change them. You know, he'd be. Talking about a foreign tour and box office receipts or, or, you know, um, a touring strategy or a marketing strategy for that. And then two seconds later, he's looking at a T-shirt design and approving colors and that. And then that would go away. And now he's, he's, you know, looking at some new talent or he's like, it's just with so many hats that he, that he wore and it used to amaze me at how quickly he could change gears. And I find myself now having to do that same thing. Um, and it's, it's really cool to see yourself grow that way because I used to think,

• 53:06Speaker 02

  how does he keep that all straight? And at first I couldn't keep it straight. And now you just, you learn it, you know, you, you, um, you learn that, you adapt to that process.

• 53:16Tim Ferriss?

  I know we only have a few minutes left. I feel like I could ask you questions for hours. So maybe we'll do a round two sometime.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 53:22Tim Ferriss?

  This is great. Uh, the, I'd love to ask you some rapid fire questions. And, uh, I think we could do an entire session just on productivity. But just really quickly, what is the, the book that you have gifted most to other people? Or any book you've gifted a lot to other people?

• 53:38Speaker 02

  Um,

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Hmm. I don't know that I could answer that question. I don't give books much.

• 53:50Tim Ferriss?

  Not a problem.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Most of my friends aren't big readers, I guess. I need to work on that.

• 53:54Tim Ferriss?

  We can come back to that. What, uh, what, what band or song have you been playing most on your iPhone? Or, or, uh, in the car or otherwise?

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Um, so lately it's, it's been anything heavy, Metallica, Motorhead. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm in like training mode for WrestleMania. So I, I at 10 o'clock at night, I need to put something on the stereo that just makes me, uh, gets me in ass kicking mode.

• 54:19Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, if you could only do one or two physical exercises for the rest of your life, movements, what would they be?

• 54:28Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  I think if at this age, if I could do like freestanding, just bodyweight squats and like pushups and kind of bodyweight exercises would be where I'd be at because I think you can stay in phenomenal shape doing them and you don't need a whole lot of space or equipment.

• 54:47Tim Ferriss?

  I should at some point introduce you to a buddy of mine named Travis Brewer, who is a top competitor at American Ninja Warrior and you guys could could trade workouts. I think that'd be amazing.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:56Tim Ferriss?

  Easy.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I bet you that's awesome.

• 54:58Tim Ferriss?

  He's a little monster.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  I bet.

• 55:00Tim Ferriss?

  What advice, this will be the last question before I ask you where people can find out more about you online, but what advice would you give your 20-year-old self?

• 55:15Speaker 02

  Don't take it all so serious, you know, and be more open.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  It's, man, when you're so focused on making it and you're, I always had fun in the business and it was one of the things that I like, I could, I can look at it now and say like, I didn't take everything so seriously that it was detrimental to me, but like there were times when it just, something happened, it just eat me up, you know what I mean? And I would be, yes, just couldn't take it because I was so hungry to get to that next place. And you need to keep that, that perspective of where everything lays out, you know? There's times when I, when, over the years, when we've looked at each other and my friends within

• 56:06Speaker 02

  the business, little group of guys, and we'd always look at each other and at a certain point in time, you just laugh and go like, it's the phony fight business, wrestling our underwear, you know what I mean? Like, what am I getting all worked up about? You know what I mean? And, and I think that, that is the biggest thing, is just not taking it so seriously and then, and then being open to stuff, you know? It's, it's funny.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  I mentioned that I listened to the Anthony Robbins interview with you and I was fascinated with it. I met Anthony one time and it was probably 2000. I was just kinda like getting to a high spot in my career and it just happened to be in a hotel. I look over next to me, he's checking in next to me, I was like, "It's just a big giant dude," you know? And, uh, but I recognized him from TV and he looked over at me, he said, "How you doing?" I was like, "Great, how are you?" "Good." And he, you know, I grabbed my keys and I went and get in the elevator and he gets in the elevator with me and he looked at me and said, um, he goes, "Forgive me, I don't know, I don't know what you do, but I clearly see people looking at you and I clearly see you're somebody and I don't, what do you do?" And so I tell him who I am and what I do and I said, "I've seen you

• 57:14Speaker 02

  on TV," you know? And, um, you know, one of those two second chance meetings in an elevator, right? And this really impressed me that I get back a couple of weeks later and I get a big box of like the cassette and his books and all his stuff that he had written me this handwritten letter and sent it, didn't know how to get ahold of me, sent it to the WWE office, whatever. Two weeks, a month later, when I come back through the office at some point in time in my travels, they give it to me and I'm like, "Wow, this is amazing." I was too young and stupid and unopened at the time to foster a relationship or I listened to the tapes and I, and I read the books and, and all that stuff. And if I'd have thought about it, maybe I would have reached back out to say, "Thank you" and like, "Hey, like, this is really cool," you know? And he invited

• 57:59Speaker 02

  me to one of his, his seminars and, and, you know, I was just at that time like, "I'm doing good," like, you know? It was close to it. I wish I was more open to it. I wish I could have had the bandwidth to not be so absorbed in what I was doing in my moments going forward that I could have said by this guy, "He could teach me so much and man, I should call it and just..." You know, foster that relationship because he put the, he put the, put the hand out and I was like, "God, I don't, I don't need a hand." You know, and it's, those are things that I look, there's other opportunities in my life that I wish, "Oh, man, I wish I would..." That was right in front of me and I could have grabbed that, but I was too narrow-minded to see it, you know?

• 58:40Tim Ferriss?

  Well, this has been fascinating. You're a fascinating guy. I would love to do a round two sometime, but we're out of time. I know your schedule is incredibly impressive to me. Where can people find more about you online, say hi, and so on?

• 58:55Speaker 02

  It's, uh, so, Twitter, uh, what's my Twitter handle? It's like a, it's an @TripleH?

• 59:04Speaker 02

  I don't know. I just know how to push the buttons on it.

• 59:07Tim Ferriss?

  If you search @TripleH, easy peasy.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, WWE.com is, is for our, um, for our company and our site and all that. You know, I do stuff on Twitter and whether anybody believes or not, I actually do it. It's not somebody else doing it, it's me. So if it's terrible, it was me. If it was really good, it was me.

• 59:27Speaker 02

  You know, the, uh, if you want to go back and, and look at my career, the WWE Network is a great place to do it. All the historical content is on there.

• 59:38Speaker 02

  You know, that's, that's really me. But, you know, for me, I'm, uh, I know you say I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated by this process and what you do and how you do it. And I'd love to do this again because I, I think these kinds of things, it's funny. A lot of things I said in here when you asked me questions today, like I'm, I feel like I gave you long-winded answers. I apologize if I did, but like,

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  so I'm, I'm almost explaining it to myself as you're asking me, like, I never thought about it that way. So I'm kind of explaining it to you going like, "Yeah, that's really cool."

• 1:00:08Tim Ferriss?

  Not long-winded at all. They were, uh, you're a great storyteller, you're a great story creator, uh, an incredible performer. I hope I am, I'll never be as big as you, but hopefully I will be as bulletproof as you are when I'm 45. So until next time, thank you so much.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  Thank you very much, man.

• 1:00:28Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Listen Headphones. Listen headphones are gorgeous, made out of real exotic reclaimed wood, but they are also doing good in the world. Proceeds from each purchase help someone to hear for the first time through the Starkey Hearing Foundation. I've been using Listen Headphones since they came out, partially because the founders started the company after reading The Four Hour Workweek. And now they're available in Nordstrom and all over the place. They're super high quality. And if you want to see the headphones that I travel with, that I love, both in ear and out of ear, so kind of big all old school headphones, then you can go to lstnheadphones.com/tim. That's L S T N headphones.com/tim. You will also get a $50, that's right, $50 discount.

• 1:01:12Tim Ferriss?

  That's a big wop in 5-0, folks. So go to lstnheadphones.com/tim, L S T N headphones.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by 99designs, which is your one stop shop for all things graphic design related. They have thousands upon thousands of designers around the world. You put up what you want, whether that's a business card, a t-shirt, a website, an app thumbnail, whatever, and they submit drafts, mockups, and designs that you can choose from. And you get an original design you love or your money back. I've used them for years, including to grab cover concepts for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become number one New York Times. And it really was a springboard for everything.

• 1:01:56Tim Ferriss?

  So, go to 99designs.com/tim. And you can also get two things, a $99 upgrade, and just for the month of April, just for you guys, you can get an additional $30 off. And that is a total savings of $129. So check out 99designs.com/tim. And until next time, thank you for listening.