Euro NBA Thoughts, Plus Cody Rhodes on Being the WWE’s Guy, Leaving AEW, Feuding With John Cena, and the Rules of Kayfabe

Bill discusses the Red Sox and news of Adam Silver’s NBA European league venture (2:50). Then, Bill is joined by WWE superstar Cody Rhodes to talk about his wrestling career, his father, and much more (13:52)! Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Cody Rhodes Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. In today's sports, everyone is constantly trying to outdo each other. Trick formations, infield shifts, constant rotation changes. Yet it's proven time and time again that strong fundamentals are the thing that will lead you to victory. Banking, no different. While everyone else tries to outdo each other, PNC Bank just keeps going right down the middle with steady, calculated money moves and the financial wins just keep coming. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865, brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Incorporated. PNC Bank, National Association, Member, FTIC. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything.

• 0:44Bill Simmons?

  And whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find the rewatchables. We do them on Monday nights. We're doing one day movie month this month for August. August is coming. RoboCop is going to be Monday. We're doing all bangers. It's going to be the all banger one day movie month month. I think, I think it's going to be all bangers. Pretty confident in that one, but you can watch that in the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. I think RoboCop's on Amazon Prime for free if you want to, uh, want to go check it out.

• 1:29Bill Simmons?

  I was just in Chicago for 24 hours. I'm a little delirious. I'm too old to fly. I don't know how the NBA players do it. Flying back to Chicago, it's like four hours. Got up super early yesterday, then flew back today, but I was at the, uh, the national, the sports collectors convention, uh, looking for stuff, really for the studio. I put it on my Instagram. I found one thing I was really excited about, this Bull Durham tobacco sign I got, but I got, got a couple other good things too, um, that I, when I'm going to do a studio tour on here, I'll do like five minutes explaining a lot of the choices, but, uh, but it was, uh, really fun to go back to the collectors convention. I had not been since COVID.

• 2:13Bill Simmons?

  And it's just massive now. And weirdly, there's less eclectic stuff than ever and just more old baseball cards from the 50s, 60s and 70s. I have no idea who's buying, who under 40 years old is like out there looking for like a Stan Musial card. I don't get it. But I had a great time. I was looking for all kinds of things for the background for here, but just in general, I was looking for basketball cards. 10 minutes to go, I found this amazing item. Hold on. So this is from 1924. It's a Holy Cross football doll. I'm pretty sure it's not a voodoo doll. Not positive yet. We'll find out, I guess,

• 2:54Bill Simmons?

  if, if anything crazy happens to me. But says HC, back when Holy Cross used to be really good at football. Found this with 10 minutes to go with the show. You never know. I got a bunch of good stuff, but this is obviously, I think I had this in the 80s. On the back, it has all the championships. This was the 86, my favorite team. Needless to say, I have a spot in the studio for it right behind the guest head. It's gonna be really good. Very fun to go to the collector's convention. The big piece I bought was this Bull Durham tobacco thing. You can see OJ, the OJ piece behind me. The juice is on the loose. So that's gonna be a staple of the studio, but I wanted a couple more things like that. Anyway, thank you for your patience with the studio. I know it sounds a little

• 3:39Bill Simmons?

  echoey. We're gonna work on all this. The lighting is gonna be really good. We're, this is, we're in the exhibition season. I think by the time we get to football season, it's gonna be absolutely awesome. So I'm excited about that. Less excited about the Boston Red Sox, who, last time I checked, had a chance to be like a pretty interesting playoff team with, with the amount of bats they have. Maybe they're working to win the World Series, but I really have enjoyed this season. Crochet, we have an ace. Roman Anthony, best young Red Sox player I think I've seen since Nomar Garciaparra in 97. You might want to throw Mookie in there, but I don't even think Mookie was as confident as Roman Anthony is this first year. It's nuts. They just have a Bregman's back. They

• 4:23Bill Simmons?

  have a likable team. Rafael has been, been really, he's cooled off a little bit, but he's been really good. But it's the kind of team where it's like, man, if this team got a number two starter, they'd be really, one more bullpen arm, they'd be really interesting. So what did they get? They got Steven Matz and Dustin May, who the Dodgers, who are trying to win a World Series, would like, take them. The Red Sox were first in payroll in 2013, the second last time they won the World Series. They were third in 2018. They're fifth in 2021, the last time they made a real playoff run. Since then, 12th, 11th,

• 5:03Bill Simmons?

  18th, and ninth. Which doesn't make sense when you consider all the other teams that spend a lot of money are these big market teams that used to be like the Red Sox, the Yankees, the Mets, the Dodgers. And, you know, on the other hand, this Fenway Sports Group, which owns, they own Liverpool Soccer, they have Penguins, all a bunch of stuff, but Liverpool has just been buying, I mean, they're like, they're like a drunk guy at two in the morning, just buying cheeseburgers and pizza, just buying everybody, trying to get everybody. And then the Red Sox get Dustin May and Steven Matz. I'm still going to watch this Red Sox team. You're not driving me away this time. The Mookie Betts, I lost four years of my Red Sox life, and, and, and you're not doing it again. I like watching these guys. You

• 5:47Bill Simmons?

  can try to drive me away, terrible Red Sox owners, it's not going to work. I'm still here. One other thing I had for you. There's been some stuff written this week about the NBA's ambitious foray into Europe with the Euroleague. The opportunity is that Real Madrid and FC Barcelona in the Euroleague have not re-upped. They have their licensing deal is expiring in 2026, and they're basically become free agents. Adam Silver's been intrigued by this forever. I feel like, and that there's been some reporting about this too, I feel like the league is cooling off on expansion for the NBA and kind of looking abroad at

• 6:30Bill Simmons?

  this Europe thing as a real opportunity. And Adam's out there with his crew, meeting with all of these possible investors, with some soccer teams. Here's the opportunity.

• 6:42Bill Simmons?

  Paris growing market with Wemby, London completely untapped. Like, they don't even have like a regular Euroleague team. They have to like play their way in with the results. There's these massive soccer clubs that want to grow their footprint in basketball. So you have that too.

• 6:59Bill Simmons?

  So what's the NBA offering? Well, from what I've heard and from what's been reported, it's probably a 10-team league, but they could get away with eight. Maybe you grow it to 12. You get a guaranteed spot in the league. You get the voting rights, get better TV distribution, better sponsorship. You're not relegated. You don't have to worry about like, you know, that I think there's 12 teams in the Euroleague that are in there, but there's another six that you can get bounced out or if you don't have a good season.

• 7:27Bill Simmons?

  And there would be some sort of link to the NBA, which I think is the key here. There are exhibition games, which I've already announced a bunch of them. Manchester City and Paris, London.

• 7:37Bill Simmons?

  Maybe a tournament? And I've heard a couple of different ideas for this, and I don't even know if they've decided on what they want to do yet. But you could have, maybe in October, you have the two best, three best NBA teams and the three best teams from this NBA Euroleague. They have a little round robin. Maybe it's just champ versus champ, best of three. Maybe it's something in February with all the best teams.

• 8:02Bill Simmons?

  There's some sort of synergy thing, and it goes beyond just, we're going to have some regular season games over there and some exhibition games. I think, big picture, 20 years from now, what does this look like? The leagues are probably a little more intertwined, not too intertwined, but a little intertwined. So they are trying to lock down Real Madrid and FC Barcelona because they can get out of the Euroleague next year. They have AC Milan, I think, pretty much on board. On board, they're owned by Red Bird, and they don't have a real hoops team attached. The Milan team is Olympiakos Milano. Who's resigned in the Euroleague for the next 10 years. But so AC Milan, count them

• 8:41Bill Simmons?

  in in some way. In Paris, you could have PSG, which is owned by the Qatar Sports Investments. Been reported all week that Silver met with them. Paris Basketball won the 2024 Euro Cup, but isn't officially in the Euroleague. Maybe you have both of them. London doesn't have like a, as far as I could tell, they don't have a set in stone Euroleague team. The London Lions is the best one. They're a little independent. They're owned by Tesenat? I think it's called a tech company. But you could have the London Soccer, one of the Tottenham, Arsenal, Chelsea, any of those, buy one of those teams and launch their own, or who knows. You also have Manchester City, which has to be mentioned because they're hosting

• 9:23Bill Simmons?

  this NBA game randomly. So I'm going to count them in as a possible one. Then you have the two Greek teams. Boy, I'm going to regret trying to say either of these names. Fenerbahce? Olympios? Maybe I got them. Both of them have notoriously battled the Euroleague over the years. So maybe one of those. You have Alba Berlin, which started this whole thing. They're on a one-year Euro deal right now, and they said they'd join the NBA already. That kind of got the ball rolling. And then The Athletic today reported that four existing Euroleague franchises, already mentioned Real Madrid, Barca Barcelona, Askel, which is in France, and then an Istanbul team, could all be potential defectors. Hmm. So I think

• 10:06Bill Simmons?

  this goes London, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Paris, Berlin, and Greece as your definite seven that are in this. I think Adam has those seven in his pocket and does, maybe doesn't know who the Greece team is yet. Maybe you could add Tony Parker's French team. That's at Askel. He's the president of it. You could add the Istanbul team. You could add Manchester City. All of a sudden, I'm at 10. Maybe there's an Israel team down the road. Maybe there's a third Spain team. Who knows? But they could take this right away. And if you look at the way the Euroleague is where

• 10:43Bill Simmons?

  You basically have this ownership. It's called Euroleague Commercial Assets. That's the company that runs the league, you have voting rights on league rules, financials, TV deals, et cetera. And then there's a B license that that's a one-year thing that you got to play your way in based on results and then a C license that's like basically a wild card. They could challenge this. They could offer the sponsorship, expertise, better TV deals. They could shoehorn some of the TV stuff into their things. They could do the schedule so that it complements the NBA schedule correctly. And and I think this is going to be going. Like I like I honestly wouldn't be surprised that this was going in the 26, 27 season. And what's really interesting about this, and I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago,

• 11:26Bill Simmons?

  that I felt like the NBA is drifting against expansion, which was a lock forever until they got $76 billion from the media deal. Then suddenly, you know, you need the media money and the teams that, I mean, the owners don't need to give up the media money for expansion fees because they made so much. I think this is the apple of their eye right now. And I think that's why the reports are coming out this week. That's why Adam is very publicly meeting with all of these people, even though it's private, but it's not. Stuff's leaking out. And and I think this is going to happen in a real way. And what's cool about it, I remember watching a bunch of Luka games when he was playing over there as a 17-year-old. I can't remember what team he was on. And the quality play was good. The crowds were great.

• 12:09Bill Simmons?

  It was FIFA, so the style of it was was pretty neat and it was a good enough product. It was just the players weren't quite good enough and it still felt a little, not rinky-dinky, but just compared to the NBA, it just definitely felt second class. I think if you can move that up where it's somewhere between first class and second class. And then you could also be a place, this could be a place where you park some of your retiring players. It was like, oh, your last year, you're going to play for this team. And maybe you go there, maybe they change the rules where you could get a little bit of an ownership stake if you go over for a year. They could do some things with this league that they can't do with the NBA. They, you know, they could bend the rules and make a little more European. I don't think they would do relegation with it, but some of the ownership stake stuff, there's

• 12:54Bill Simmons?

  there's a little bit of urgency with it just because of those two, those two Spanish teams are coming up on their license agreement. I don't think this is a response to the The Maverick Carter League that he's been trying to start that I talked about a couple of months ago, that's a little bit of a different format. It's like an F1 thing. You move from city to city for two weeks. Nobody really seems to think they're going to be able to get the, the kind of talent that they're bragging that they could get. I, I just think they're going to get their legs cut off by this Euroleague and I think this is a really, really, really interesting wrinkle. Oh, I'm thinking about when I'm 75, could the NBA have like a 45-team league? Who the fuck knows? Will we be able to fly

• 13:35Bill Simmons?

  from LA to London in three hours? I don't know. Will you be watching me at a virtual hologram, wondering why I'm still doing a podcast? Maybe. But keep an eye on all this. Read all of the stories. Joe Varden had one in Athletic today. Like, people are going to start reporting on this. Just follow this because there's a lot of money at stake and I think it's a chance for them to weave in some, some soccer clubs, some Qatar money, some Saudi Arabia, like so, some of the stuff they can't really do with the NBA, they can do overseas. And, uh, and I think, I think it's notable. Okay. Speaking of notable, Cody Rhodes is coming up in a second and, uh, he was awesome. We hadn't done a podcast together

• 14:16Bill Simmons?

  before. He came to my house. We did it in the studio and, uh, and we had a great time. So that's coming up next. Let's take a break and we'll do Pearl Jam and then Cody Rhodes.

• 14:53Bill Simmons?

  All right. We're taping this on a Monday. Cody Rhodes is here. We've never talked on a podcast. I, I feel like we're both members of the Bet on Yourself Club. Yes. You're like an all-time Bet on Yourself guy. I feel you are too, though. Yeah, but I mean, for you, you leave WWE and it's like, what's that guy doing? I remember seeing it from afar going, oh no. Where's he? And then it, it couldn't have worked out better, but it was, it was a Bet on Yourself staple.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  I think part of me, though, was also like, oh, no. A lot, a lot of. Well, you were married, right? But you didn't have a kid? So I was married. It's very important that I was married and to the story because I would always tell people, hey, I'm the one Rhodes who saved his money. So I'm, I had, you know, I had 10 years with WWE. I'm good financially. I can make these swings and bet on myself and do this unprecedented stuff. I'm going to try and do, but that wasn't entirely true. It, it, it became at one point a little bit more, oh, we are going check to check. I just bought a house in Denton, Texas, the first house I'd actually bought 10 years into my wrestling career.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  And that's when I decided to see a buy and, and, and where I was going and some of these shows I was doing. PWG in California, for example. Yeah. You have to want to be on PWG. It's not a matter of them paying you big money or anything like that. And then certain indies would pay great rates because you had the WWE name. But then if you wanted to keep going and come back, it was a whole. You're flying to Japan too, right? You're doing some Japan stuff? From here, because I, I ended up with New Japan. I would come in. I'd only come in for their big shows because they really loved like American cowboy wrestler. And they'd, they'd bring me in. I had the WWE name. They had a lot of respect and reverence for my dad.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd come in like once a month with Japan and that's was such a fun experience. It's a different type of wrestling, very different style and so much you can learn. I got to learn a great deal over there. You flying coach over there? No, no. Well. Trying to be honest with myself here. I was gonna say indie wrestler, like go and go just zooming down to Japan. I think because you're very right in terms of indie wrestler. I was lucky that Atlanta was my home for so long. Yeah. 10 years with WWE. So every status, the greatest delta status you could ever have. So I used, I was always my global certificates is what I used. And sometimes you'd have to wait till you're literally. Scan your boarding pass and they told you, I think it's going to be you.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  There's four open and my wife and I would actually do that at the time, just praying. Cause the other option was a little brutal for sure, especially if you're wrestling the day you land like,

• 17:34Bill Simmons?

  So it wasn't, so you did that, I forget what you called it. What was it called? The all in one where you guaranteed like, I'm going to sell 10,000. It felt like once that, once you got to 10,000 fans right away to go to the show, I felt like you had momentum. Cause I was following on the, on the dirt sheets. So I was like, oh, this Cody thing might actually, who knows? Who knows how this is going to go for this guy?

• 17:55Speaker 01

  I, I think probably the two, two really large factors in it all, going into the all in, this was an independent show by itself. Ring of Honor helped us produce it, but I think the big factors for me was I had the list right when I left. And that was a list of places I wanted to go, things I wanted to do. Nobody had really ever-

• 18:15Bill Simmons?

  I got nervous when you said you had a list, cause like lists are very controversial right now. I was like on the edge of my seat for a second there.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  This was just a list of opponents, list of places, and also nobody ever quits WWE. You, you end up, you, they quit you.

• 18:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, especially in your, what were your early 30s?

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:33Bill Simmons?

  That's really unusual.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  And a legacy, I had a great relationship with most people. I had, had big moments up and down the card and I just felt where I was at. It was time to move, but I had that list and the whole purpose of it was to mobilize. Hey, I'm not lying to you when I said, hey, I can do really cool stuff and, and, and I can do it better. And, and I'm going to go here, I'm going to go here. And they were all over the map. So that was a huge piece of it. And the other part of it was that underground scene was forming with, you could just see it. For example, WrestleCon is this convention where it's a lot of legends, XWW, independent talent, things of that nature. It will piggyback off of a big WWE event usually.

• 19:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  We'd go, a group of us, we'd go and notice we had a line around the hallway to the elevator, down the stairs and out the door. And then we'd see one of the legends, God bless them, not have that same effect. So there was just this general underground rumbling that was happening. That's why when the bet came up, somebody saying, hey, nobody can draw 10,000 in America other than WWE, it had been true up until that point. And I think fans felt they wanted to be in on that journey with us. The only way I can describe that original, original event was it just felt like Woodstock. Every piece of it. It was just, we didn't know what we were doing,

• 20:00Speaker 01

  but, but we, we were gonna fake it. We were gonna fake it till we make it. And the event, I mean,

• 20:05Bill Simmons?

  Well, you had some talented people involved too. I mean, that was the other thing. There's this whole class of whatever we're calling this era of wrestling, which I'm scared constantly for everybody involved, mainly because I'm old.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  In terms of the physical, what you're seeing them do?

• 20:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because I just, and this has been, we're going back, we're going back almost 25, 30 years here, but you just keep raising the bar and raising the bar and raising the bar with the stunts. I mean, mankind was what, late 90s, early 2000s, going through the cage?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Going through the cage and off the cage.

• 20:36Bill Simmons?

  The tooth coming through his nose, but there's come some point where it's like, I don't know if we can go any higher, guys, on the, on the ladder jump. And I don't know, it felt like we were hitting it.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  In, in terms of sports and sports entertainment, I feel like one of the things about our game is that danger has just continued to go up in terms of high spots and physical things that you're seeing and unbelievable acrobatics and real Cirque style motions, but it's, it's just evolved that way. It's really, so at the Nightmare Factory, for example, I, we get so many kids who can do a 630, who can do, you know, a Sasuke special. We do so, and it's really great. Once they have that, awesome, keep it. You will need it. You know, some of the, you'll hear people today say it's, it's not about the, the moves, it's about Moments and then you'll hear kind of the old timers talk about storytelling versus

• 21:30Speaker 01

  the action itself and the actual truth is it's right in the middle. It's really right in the middle. The modern audience has seen what can be done and I think that right now WWE is probably at its absolute best and if they don't know why they're at their absolute best, that to me is one of the reasons why you've got the king of storytelling in a sense with say a Roman Reigns.

• 21:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  King of storytelling and and you've got a Mr. Heyman behind the scenes and Triple H at the helm. But then you also have guys who are just so unbelievably. If you give them the time, which Triple H gives them the time to go out there and do something physical and impress and steal the spotlight and take it. There's a lot of really special folks like, for example, Mexico, we were just talking about Mexico City, Monterrey had two shows this weekend. WWE now works, you know, we're overseeing AAA or however we're we're putting it, but that's part of the WWE family now. And to see their level of talent and lucha libre skills in the ring, which is again, next level to two people who are on

• 22:36Speaker 01

  All In for Pentagon, Phoenix, both of them with WWE now. So to have it all seems to be the ticket to success in the wrestling industry and keeping it successful.

• 22:46Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to think of the levels to this because like I remember when Snuka was

• 22:52Bill Simmons?

  when he was jumping off the top rope. And by the way, we didn't have YouTube back then. So when he jumped off the top of the steel cage, which I saw, I thought it was like 25 feet. It was like, I don't know, 10.

• 23:03Bill Simmons?

  In your head, it was 25.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:05Bill Simmons?

  But he was one of the first ones, Macho Man, and people got a little more airborne, but it really felt like the Hardy Brothers. Those guys when they started pushing in the 2000s, but then that we've had this other level of it in the last 10 years where I'm just scared the whole time. I remember thinking like a pile driver seems scary. Although that's basically mostly been outlawed, right? The pile driver?

• 23:27Speaker 01

  It was outlawed actually at WWE up until Kevin Owens hit me with a package pile driver.

• 23:33Bill Simmons?

  That was unfair.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Post the original, there are a return to Saturday Night's Main Event, which

• 23:38Bill Simmons?

  Which by the way, was laid out in this Netflix show, which was incredible.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Which you've seen and I've not seen.

• 23:43Bill Simmons?

  Oh, really?

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Yes, it's

• 23:45Bill Simmons?

  Unreal.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  We have not

• 23:48Speaker 01

  I know WWE has been saying it's an unprecedented look into our industry.

• 23:51Bill Simmons?

  Certainly unprecedented.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Apparently it is because I I haven't seen it. I keep hearing it's a really great episode and they they really did dig in there and and show a different side or a side people haven't seen.

• 24:02Bill Simmons?

  Hoarding it from you?

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Of a I don't know what they're afraid of, but I I I think it's gonna be great. I've heard good things. What did you think?

• 24:10Bill Simmons?

  I I mean, I had heard we were going behind the curtain. I was like, yeah, right. It's behind the curtain, is it?

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really is. Like especially um talking about the scene of heel turn is like almost a

• 24:23Bill Simmons?

  whole episode and and just how that's laid out and whose idea it was, how they kept it a secret.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 24:30Bill Simmons?

  And uh.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  I'm intrigued.

• 24:33Bill Simmons?

  It's I was surprised, but I feel like a lot of people know this anyway. So you're lifting the veil off for very few people. I thought it was really neat. I I actually thought it was uh it was the stuff I had always wondered about but never knew.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:48Bill Simmons?

  Um, and then you get to I gave me new respect for like how much thought you have to put into every aspect of the behind the scenes stuff.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Maybe that's the goal. I know when I.

• 24:58Bill Simmons?

  You sound like down on it.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  No, no, gosh. For me, my whole outlook on it has been seeing these people in a different light, not rear ripley out there in the ring, not CM Punk out there or myself. My whole thought process is if if that's endearing to a completely new audience that now wants to come and check out what they do, you know, what we do and see it. For example, if you come to a WrestleMania, if you come to a SummerSlam, you're you're gonna be a wrestling friend for life. Usually there's always something.

• 25:28Bill Simmons?

  Well, there's the stages. How old are you? You have one kid or two?

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Two. No, one. I'm sorry. One. Sorry. I don't know why I said two.

• 25:34Bill Simmons?

  How how old is your uh your kid?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Four.

• 25:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so six is it's like between five and a half and six. That's when it gets you.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  She's been a she came WrestleMania when we were in SoFi.

• 25:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  She was just because it was pre bedtime because it was a west coast show. So it ran earlier. That's probably my favorite photo ever because I got to go see her, have a moment with her. And just this great photo in front of 70, 80,000 something people right before the first WrestleMania main event I ever got to do. Yeah, it was really special, but unreal. My whole thought process is for new fans.

• 26:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  That don't know. And then they see somebody like Rhea Ripley, for example, or Punk, and they want to follow them into the actual. Now I'll watch the actual show. That's how I've always thought it would be a good thing. The veil has been lifted a long time. Certainly there's parts of it that haven't been seen, but kayfabe does not mean what kayfabe used to mean.

• 26:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  And I always tell people, I'll give you a thousand dollars if you can tell me what kayfabe means. If you can actually tell me because it's it's a one word definition and nobody ever gets it. But to me, it's all about capturing a new audience because I feel the hardcore wrestling fan is they're pretty much like myself. We're in, we're going through it. I've watched my whole life. I love it. I'll continue.

• 26:52Bill Simmons?

  There comes a point where you're there in your.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:55Bill Simmons?

  And I don't know what age it is, but it's just you're there at some point. Having kids helps because it kind of regenerates a lot of it.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Having having Liberty's only four, but just seeing her react like a Bianca Belair.

• 27:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Because we put Bianca in Clash of Clans is like a skin crossover where you can make the character look like Bianca. And seeing her emulate the hair whip and sing the song a little very much opened my eyes to I take it so seriously and try to get so nuanced and deep with pro wrestling and the story I want to tell that night in the ring.

• 27:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  It's sometimes not that deep. Sometimes it's just big, bombastic fun.

• 27:35Bill Simmons?

  But that's, that's what was interesting about the show. So I watched, I was with my son, my son's 17. He got sucked in around age five.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:43Bill Simmons?

  And my wife and daughter were at a concert. So it was just us and I got the, I got the screener. I'm like, let's watch one of these, see if it's good. And we're watching and we're all in, we watch all five. But it was the little stuff like. Like Bianca Belair was asking, I think it was Rhea Ripley, like she's like, I really loaded up my ponytail tonight. You good with that?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:04Bill Simmons?

  And, and, and Rhea was like, no, no, I'm, I'm okay. And she's like, I'm telling you, it's like really heavy tonight. Just be ready. And it's like little stuff like that. Where I was like, wow, that's really interesting that she's worried about the effect of.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:19Bill Simmons?

  But that's just the kind of stuff you wouldn't think about when you're watching this.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, also too, Rhea Ripley probably totally fine with it because most wrestlers I know have a weird sense of like, yeah.

• 28:30Bill Simmons?

  Bring it on. Yeah.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:31Bill Simmons?

  Nothing.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm so, it's so toxic.

• 28:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  For example, Cena turning on me, my hands aren't up once on those belt shots. And by standards today, it's like, please put your hands up. Please. It's just this weird, alpha, toxic, like, yeah, let me, it's, I don't even know how to describe it, but I think.

• 28:51Bill Simmons?

  Well, you had the craziest one. What did the, your pectoral ripped off your?

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, this guy over here just went.

• 28:56Bill Simmons?

  And you just said, fuck it. And you wrestled hell in the cell?

• 29:00Speaker 01

  I did.

• 29:00Bill Simmons?

  And you had like, I mean, it was kind of gross. It was your whole side of your body was purple. Had no idea how hurt you were, but obviously you were really hurt, but what you could do. And it was kind of an amazing match.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  It's a, I think the idea, so many lies went into making it so that I could get in that ring that night. Cause I was just refusing to do old school, hey, let me be laying there backstage. And who did it? I just.

• 29:27Bill Simmons?

  Like you get hit by somebody driving a van with a COVID mask on.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  It was, it was the first, the first main event I'd had with WWE and Peacock had a bunch of like subs went up on it and they told me that. And it was hell in the cell with Seth Rollins. This is spinning out of my, my coming back at WrestleMania.

• 29:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I screwed up the backstory. This was like your big moment.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I'm, I'm back. And what I said all along is, hey, I can be in the main event. I can, I can handle it and I can be in it and I can do well for you guys. So this was my first main event and here I am. Oh, I'm going to have to go away. I wanted to at least give them something to remember me by. And.

• 30:03Bill Simmons?

  Is that some son of a wrestler shit though? Like where?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Oh, big time.

• 30:06Bill Simmons?

  Like you kind of grew up in the world and you just kind of understand differently that there's a different level of respect with.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  But going through an injury like that. But here's the thing, it's son of, it's son of a wrestler for sure. However, had my dad been alive, he wouldn't have let me wrestle. Really? Cause my dad didn't look at me like a wrestler. My dad wanted me to be an actor and thought I was. Oh, you're like Michael Corleone? He, he. Disappointed you had the family business. He legit, he was, he was very happy when I got into it, but my dad just babied, I'm the baby of my family severely babied me and, and just took care of me in the greatest way. I, I, to me, greatest dad ever, but if all the other old school wrestlers were like, yeah, that's it right there. That's, that's old school. All of, he would have been the one to be like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Why did you do that? So that part of it was old school wrestler and, and really, again, like I said,

• 30:58Speaker 01

  I lied on the way. I, I kept it so, the, the information was true. WWE's doctors looked at me and said, he can't hurt it any worse. That was true. Couldn't hurt any worse, but also. But it didn't mean it hurt. It, that was the part, yeah, I was like, oh, I'm good. I'm good. And, uh. Was there a moment like 15 minutes in where you were like, shoot me in the head. This is the worst idea I've ever had. It's probably two minutes in. Okay. Um, cause I hadn't done anything. And so it, it attach, detaches here by my armpit. Yeah. The other part is connected to your collarbone, right? So when the detach here, it just falls. There's nothing there anymore. However, it would cramp up into the collarbone spot. So anytime you did anything, it would cramp up. It was giant. It

• 31:43Speaker 01

  literally is sticking out this much. And when that happened, it hurt more than anything. Did you feel like your collarbone was just gonna come out of your body? Explode. You're gonna literally explode. That was the only thing for me where I thought, ooh. And, and also everyone was under the impression, oh, they're gonna go like six minutes. This is, it's fine. It's not gonna be much. That match was awesome. You're in there with Seth Rollins. There's nobody better. And we got like 25 minutes. There's tables involved. He pulls out a toolbox at one point, hidden. We just went for it. Cause again, wanted them to have something to remember me by. I was, I was, uh, I hate saying it, but I was really ashamed. I'd never been hurt. Yeah. And then I finally got to the spot and I got hurt. Like he's, he's. Here and you know Nick and Triple H and all these guys saying, hey, we're you're right,

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Cody, we're gonna go all in on you now. And then I I felt like I'd blown it. So I wasn't gonna do, I wasn't gonna leave that spot that night without at least leaving a very large mark on hopefully the fans.

• 32:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're like, I've come this far. This is

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:43Bill Simmons?

  What's seven year odyssey to get back here to this moment. I'm not, I'm not leaving now.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  I think in my documentary, I said, it's a peck well spent, you know, like it's, it's just a peck. And you know something crazy about the peck surgery? Dr. Dugas did my surgery. He's done like so many great athletes and wrestlers, but right before, right before the surgery, he goes, you know, this is mainly a cosmetic surgery. And I said, what? He goes, yeah, plenty of people don't repair it and they're, they are fine. I'm like, I don't want to sit out for

• 33:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Six months for cosmetics reasons. And then the next thing you know, you're out and like, I'm like, well, no.

• 33:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, trying to make you feel better.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  I think he was because I was like, I don't know. I was told this was very serious, sir. But yeah, he said that right before it happened.

• 33:28Bill Simmons?

  You're healthy now though, right?

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:29Bill Simmons?

  That's the only injury I've had the entire time I've been doing this. Cause you're right. You're right in that wrestler prime. Wrestler prime's like,

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Do you know the exact age?

• 33:36Bill Simmons?

  I would say it's like late 30s into like the 42, 43 range because you have enough, I would say enough experience.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  It's 35 and 42.

• 33:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  You hit it.

• 33:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  And now

• 33:47Bill Simmons?

  Your mic skills are gonna be the best they've ever been.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  35 to 40. You nailed it though.

• 33:51Bill Simmons?

  But it's like, it's honestly like a stand up comedian or something. If you're a stand up comedian, you're going to clubs for 10 years, perfecting.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:58Bill Simmons?

  How to feel in front of whatever crowd you're doing, how to, how to have hecklers bounce off you, everything. And then you kind of figure out who you are and what your act is.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  The big, the big thing is who you are and how you can handle every situation and

• 34:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  And, and what you do is stand up comedy is such a great parallel because what you do in a live setting, we were in a Mexico City.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Two nights ago, and we did this spot where bad guys are beating up my partner on the outside. And they did it so many times that I used to watch Undertaker do this thing when I was the bad guy. Undertaker come down on the floor, he'd snap the chair together where the whole crowd could hear it. So just the acoustic of, oh, and then he'd chase us around the ring, but nothing actually happened.

• 34:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  It was such a less is more situation. And I got to do it the other night, and it was just something that we felt in the moment and trusted the crew would know what's happening. You hear that chair, you better run.

• 34:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Otherwise I have to hit you with it. And I felt so great because he actually was there at the show watching it. So like, all right, we passed on this knowledge and we can do things like that now, you know?

• 35:02Bill Simmons?

  All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down, ready to watch the game, only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV. It shows your live games from your favorite teams all in one place, right on the home screen. No more searching. Just sit down and turn on Fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun, sometimes earlier than expected? Sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead, but what if you went to Cancun? With Expedia, save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness, though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun, 1-2-3 Cancun.

• 35:46Bill Simmons?

  Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save, savings vary. There's two ways wrestling's gotten better since the heyday of your dad, one of the great wrestlers of all time. I don't know where he ranks them. See, if we had like first take for wrestling, we would just constantly argue about, is this guy better than Dusty Rhodes? Where does he rank between Hogan and?

• 36:07Speaker 01

  I feel like I want to poll every time media.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  A lot of the really great media moments that you'll go on and talking to really excellent people always ask the question, what's your Mount Rushmore? And I don't like, I don't like it. I say, I don't think people realize, I, I basically say a different one each time. I'm waiting for someone to be like, oh, this guy's full of shit.

• 36:30Bill Simmons?

  So you just do different lists? That's a good one. I like that.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Because, because how? How can you do that? There's so many eras of wrestling, so many different, and when hardcore fans start breaking in on technical stills, on promos, I guess that's better than just saying, here's the four. And then you get into the situation where it's, you just have to be really generic and be like, well, pro wrestling is about drawing money. So, okay, here they are. We've heard those four before, you know, like it's.

• 36:57Bill Simmons?

  You know what it's like? It's like actors are like this. Cause in basketball, it's easier. Cause you actually can come up with a list that's gonna look mostly like somebody else's list, right? LeBron and Jordan and Russell. And there's like certain guys at the top. I think when I think about wrestling lists or actor lists or comedian lists, it's almost more like who, if you start talking about it, who has to be, at least in the conversation as you're talking about it. And it doesn't have to be like seven, four, 10, but like Hogan clearly has to be on it, right? Stone Cold, your dad.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  So it's so funny.

• 37:31Bill Simmons?

  It's like a short list, but you kind of know who's on the list. And everybody's list can be different, but everybody's gonna have the same five people.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  I just did, uh, there, I don't, there's a documentary on Hogan that was coming out and I did the interview a month ago. And I actually kept saying, I'm like, well, from the business standpoint, your one and twos of, of that time period up until recently, the one and twos were very clearly Hulk, Steve Austin. So that you could interchange them. And up until recently, cause we've been blessed that. We're breaking all these records. So we'll see how.

• 38:05Bill Simmons?

  If you're talking about one guy just selling out arenas.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:08Bill Simmons?

  Everywhere who has a dramatic impact and it didn't matter whether they have the title or not. See, Andre has to be on that, too, because Andre didn't even need the title.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  So you're probably definitely right with Andre. The only issue with Andre, it's a similar issue I find with my father, is the data isn't there succinctly. You know, Meltzer certainly tries to do a good job putting data together. Shoemaker, a lot of people can look at it, but so much of it is lore and so much of it is fantasy. Oh, there were 60,000 people. There probably was. But now we're really, I mean, the fire marshal is going to tell you how many tickets we actually sold. It's way easier to track now these days. And so I feel like a lot of it gets lost to the lore. And part of me, if you've ever seen the movie Big Fish, where if Big Fish is, that's like my childhood.

• 38:58Bill Simmons?

  Trying to think who's in that. It sounds familiar.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Big Fish is Ewan McGregor, right?

• 39:03Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Did I get that right?

• 39:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Is it Ewan McGregor? I'm sitting here saying it's one of my favorite movies. Yeah. But the end is, that's the moral, is all these tales he heard growing up that he thought, oh, they're just tales. And then if, you know, not to spoil it for anybody, but at the funeral, you find out, oh, oh, my gosh. Such, so many of these things were real. So I like to think, like Andre, you're probably very right. And Andre, certainly I've got books in my basement, booking journals from late 70s, early 80s. Yeah, great stuff. And if you flip them open, there's the card, there's how much money they made, there's how much they made the last time. And then typically on some of these, it will say Andre coming in, Battle Royal.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  And then you'll flip to where next year, Andre and Always Up, Always Up. He truly was, you had to come and see him. You know, Gorgeous George was the first ever to do that.

• 39:58Bill Simmons?

  And Sam Arantino was like that in the 70s.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, Bruno.

• 40:02Bill Simmons?

  There's some people that had really nice short runs, though. Like, I still feel like Sergeant Slaughter and Iron Sheik was one of the great feuds of the entire last 50 years of WWE. And it was only like three, four months, but it really mattered. And the crowds went absolutely fucking bonkers with the USA versus Iran stuff.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Sergeant Slaughter is.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  I feel really underrated.

• 40:25Bill Simmons?

  Hundred percent.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Um, he's got a street fight with Pat Patterson in the garden.

• 40:30Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's that. It was like match of the year.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty. And you have, if I told my students about that today, they'd no clue. Even the people I'm talking about, they wouldn't know Pat. I don't think they'd know Sarge. But I do have a selfish little Sarge moment that I, I, you would be the first person I've shared it with, but it was, I mean, it gave me goosebumps. Unbelievable. Made me feel so good. And also made me feel like, oh, man. I hope he's right, but we're standing there for the Tin Bell salute for the Hulkster.

• 41:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  And I'm standing next to Sarge.

• 41:02Bill Simmons?

  I saw him out there. I was excited to see him.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  And he's standing next to me and, uh, I afterwards, they're playing the video package and, you know, we're just out there and I, I shook his hand, shook Hunter's hand, and he said something to me. I didn't really hear it. And I think I just said like, oh, yeah, yeah. Just kind of like, and then he, I heard him and he goes, no, no, carry the ball. And I thought, ah.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  I mean, it made me feel like 10 feet tall.

• 41:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  It may, I had a promo later that night and I'm thinking, I gotta go, I, yeah, Sarge, Sarge just told me, carry the ball. I better, I better not let him down. I was so, uh, I was so excited. There's a, I got to hang out with the legends a little bit that day. And I know the circumstances were somber, but to just be around Jimmy Hart.

• 41:47Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. To be around Sarge, uh, Hacksaw, who I, God bless, love Hacksaw, Jim Duggan, uh, just, that was really nice to be around.

• 41:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I was saying, I, we got sidetracked. I sidetracked myself. I was talking about the two ways wrestling's different.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, yeah, sorry.

• 42:02Bill Simmons?

  No, it's, it's one is the, the moves and the athleticism, which we talked about.

• 42:08Bill Simmons?

  And then the other is the entrances are all, the entrances are all great now. When you go back and you watch the old ones, because I was thinking about that with Hogan when he had I had a tiger and it was one of the first great entrances.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:18Bill Simmons?

  The Free Birds had, uh, what'd they have, Lynyrd Skynyrd?

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Well, they were the first to have music.

• 42:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so it was very early on, only a couple. Um, Macho Man had the big. The big grand.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Palm and Serpents.

• 42:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. But now it's like everybody and a lot of them are designed for the crowd to be able to sing along at some point in the song, which you have.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. They didn't sing along. I had that song forever.

• 42:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  And now they do.

• 42:42Bill Simmons?

  Now they get it.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:43Bill Simmons?

  But that's how, I think those are the two ways wrestling's better in HD.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  So it's, so the songs, Randy was talking about this the other day, Randy Orton, because he was, they sing his song like word for word now.

• 42:54Bill Simmons?

  It's hilarious.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  It's new to him.

• 42:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  And he was talking with me about it. And one of the things though about it is it's really old school, actually, even though there wasn't music then.

• 43:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  The whole point of what we're doing, the whole point, and I don't know if Unreal points this out, and I bet you it does, is we're trying to connect with them. It's not completely sport. It's not completely entertainment. None of it functions though, without them caring. That's the whole thing. You know, John Cena's rule, if they start making noise, he's coming up. He's gonna fight back. To see your guy, see your girl, and then you do a thing. So usually it was something that affected the matches. We'll cheer for such and such in the matches. We'll cheer against such and such in the match. Now it's, we come, we sing the song. We say whoa. We do the yeet. We, that is as old school as it gets, actually. It's just done in a very new package because the entrances are so highly produced and part

• 43:48Speaker 01

  of it now, but.

• 43:49Bill Simmons?

  I remember Road Dogg, Jesse James.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:52Bill Simmons?

  And Billy Gunn.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:53Bill Simmons?

  When, uh, when wrestling made its big comeback for WWE after WCW was kicking its ass, but those guys would come in and do the entrance and sing the song. And the crowd lost their mind.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Oh, you didn't know? I mean, literally.

• 44:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Oh, you didn't know?

• 44:06Bill Simmons?

  It was like, they didn't even need to wrestle. It was so good. It was like, I'm just here to do this and sing with you guys.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  So if you were wrestling me tonight and I came out and the crowd was really receptive to Kingdom, the song.

• 44:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  And they were wowing like crazy. And then they started the soccer chants, the Cody, Cody Rhodes chants. I'd probably tell you, just kick me in the gut. I don't need to do, they seem good with me.

• 44:27Bill Simmons?

  I'm good.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  They seem good with me. Kick me in the gut and let them boo you and we'll just see how long it goes, you know, just because it becomes part of your match now.

• 44:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, when Punk came back finally to WWE after 72 years of sitting out.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Long.

• 44:41Bill Simmons?

  But that first time when he walked in and the crowd was just going nuts and singing his song and, uh, he almost didn't know what to do. You could just see he was like delirious. Like it almost seems like he'd pass out.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:52Bill Simmons?

  Must be a pretty cool feeling.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  It's a pretty cool feeling and Punk's had more experience with this feeling than I have, but I feel like, and this is something I was just talking about. One of my favorite wrestlers told me as things started to take off for me.

• 45:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  He said, and this is right around WrestleMania 3940, right there in the spot. And he told me that you're on the treadmill now. The reactions are going to be through the roof. The, it's always going to, don't take it for granted.

• 45:24Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Remember the first time that they went nuts and treat every time like it's the first time that they went nuts. And it shocks me how right he was as far as when you, when you find this, whatever this elusive thing is, that they like about you, it's the most beautiful thing ever because then all the flips and the dangerous stuff you're talking about.

• 45:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  When you do it, it matters so much more. Like, that's why this discussion about moves over moments, no, and that's not the discussion. If you have that connection and you do that really cool thing they like to see, that's box office and that's real. It's just, it's just, that's the whole, that's the whole thing. And, and all, cause you mentioned unreal and now I really, I want to see this episode. I think one of the.

• 46:13Bill Simmons?

  Taunting you that I saw.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  I know, right? You've seen it, you've seen all five.

• 46:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I saw them.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  I think one of the things that presents itself for wrestlers that hardcore fans may not be thinking, but the really smart, smart, smart, super geniuses, as I call them, you know, your Michael Hayes's and your Mr. Haymans. There's work that can happen within the work.

• 46:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  If you say, hey, this is all real, this is, look at this.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Then it starts to become hard to figure out, wait, how, wait, no, that part's real. And that's where you can do work within the work. So you can still, again, the word that no one can ever tell me what it means. You can still do kayfabe. You really can, it's just different. And that's the fun experiment we get to take as we lift this veil, but we cover this thing up. I don't know, you know, I just, I think it presents options that wrestlers and maybe the hardcore fans were a little worried about, oh no, they're going to expose it all. Yeah, maybe we expose this part, but maybe there's a whole nother part you didn't see.

• 47:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but think about like, what was that documentary they did about? Bret Hart.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Wrestling with Shadows?

• 47:21Bill Simmons?

  One of the greats.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:22Bill Simmons?

  Which we cribbed some of that for the Vince McMahon doc, but the, the behind the scenes stuff.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, wrestling with shadows.

• 47:28Bill Simmons?

  After, after the match.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:31Bill Simmons?

  That was like, holy shit. I can't believe somebody filmed this.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  So here's my question for you. Do you think that was a documentary or do you think that was part of it?

• 47:40Bill Simmons?

  So it sounds like you have a theory.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  I have had a, I, whenever I tell somebody high level confidential stuff, I use, Chris, who's in the corner, has probably heard me say this. I say Bret Shawn level. I have never heard from either that it wasn't as real as it possibly could get. And maybe it was. It certainly ended up being real. No doubt. However, I have questions. There was a documentary crew backstage at a company that never, ever allows anything like that. There's mics in the room.

• 48:14Bill Simmons?

  Hmm. This is amazing. Conspiracy, you've just activated conspiracy bill. This, he's about to take off his sweater.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  This to me is always the work within the work. And Shawn, Shawn Michaels was my favorite wrestler growing up. And I'm probably sitting here making him mad. He's still my favorite wrestler.

• 48:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  But then you get to him and Hogan when they wrestled at SummerSlam and they're like, oh, you can tell he's mad at Hogan.

• 48:35Bill Simmons?

  Oh, when he was overselling all the moves.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Right. But is he? Or is this just seem like the one real thing on the show where you knew everything else was fictional?

• 48:45Bill Simmons?

  Two things that would be countered. Conspiracy Bill loves this. Um, the loogie that Vince McMahon spat at, or Bret Hart spat at Vince.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:55Bill Simmons?

  Was disgusting and looked like a giant oyster. Nailed Vince. That's the worst bump Vince has ever taken if that was a bump. Second, Vince did get cold cocked and wobbled out and had a black eye.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:07Bill Simmons?

  I don't know how they would have. Would have, would have faked that one.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Well, it's pro wrestling. You, you wouldn't have faked it.

• 49:13Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Was talking like, again.

• 49:16Bill Simmons?

  So if the whole thing was a work from beginning to end.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:18Bill Simmons?

  Then part of it is he has to hit him.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  We're talking about, you saw Rhea and Bianca talking about, there's no way to pull that. It's coming. It's, it's coming. And I mean.

• 49:29Bill Simmons?

  This is great. You really blew my mind with this one. I wasn't prepared. I don't even want to do the podcast anymore. I just want to go on Reddit.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  So growing up around my dad, I always, when something would happen on TV that felt like a shoot, as we say.

• 49:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  I'd be sitting literally front of the TV as they say, like what crisscross applesauce, whatever, watching the TV. I have my Hasbro figures, even though I was way too old that figures at that point. I'm watching and he'd be behind me and I'd always look back like awesome. And he just always smile ear to ear. And I felt like in that smile, I could tell he knew they were doing some high level work. And the whole world was doing exactly what they needed to do. And I was like his litmus test. I was his test on, for, because we're talking about Shawn again, and I, I don't mean to, I, I love Shawn so much, but he didn't understand why I liked Shawn Michaels. Cause he, he was, he was past his run. He was just dad.

• 50:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  But he.

• 50:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's funny. He was like critiquing some of your choices.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  So he'd never take my joy away though. He'd always ask like, what do you like about him? Oh my, are you kidding? Look at him. He's smaller and leaner, but he's jacked and he's, he's able to wrestle these big guys. And are you kidding? All the chicks like him and like, yeah, the whole, and, and he never tell me otherwise. He just. And then I remember WrestleMania 12, Bret, Shawn, they go the hour. And I'm so disappointed. Like my guy didn't win again.

• 51:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Again. And then, oh, here comes, they're going to go 15 more minutes. And again, I looked at my dad, smile ear to ear. And I thought, yeah. This is, they got me. They got me and they just, I don't know. These could all be to conspiracy theory. They could all be true. They could all be total shoots. They really could. But the way I look at it is anything and everything that happens in the ring, I always look at it with a well, that feels like it was part of it.

• 51:27Bill Simmons?

  One of the best ones ever was CM Punk when he, when he sat down cross legged.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Oh, the pipe bomb.

• 51:33Bill Simmons?

  And did this, did the, went after Cena in a real way. And then people were mad and I, I still don't know how much of that was real and how much of it was, uh, talked about beforehand.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  I, I like with the pipe bomb, for example, um, I always, even though we're getting into it now, I actually, if it's so good, I almost don't want to know.

• 51:53Bill Simmons?

  Right?

• 51:53Speaker 01

  If it's so good, that, oh, hey, that, the rest of that show, oh, that seemed normal, but this is, this, they're going to a place I wasn't expecting, then I don't need to know. It's like, it's like the magic.

• 52:03Bill Simmons?

  What was your first one? Cause my first one was when Killer Khan broke Andre the Giant's leg. And then they got a whole thing about it. And then finding out way later and working the documentary that it was actually an accident, Killer Khan felt really bad. And it's like, oh man, why'd they ruin this for me? I thought it didn't intentionally.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  I don't know if I had a, I know, for example, Sting got his ribs broken by Vader in the strap match.

• 52:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  But after I saw him and he was good, normal, but he was also leaving for a while. And then I asked my dad in the car, like,

• 52:40Bill Simmons?

  Oh, the old, he had to leave for a while anyway. So the injury.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  I asked my dad for a while, well, what's happened? You know, what will he do? He's like, oh, he's just gonna drink milk and the bones will heal. It was just a terrible answer.

• 52:50Bill Simmons?

  They come back.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  So, yeah, uh, but I, again, so I'd get to the shows as a kid. Doug Dillinger, who was just on TV the other night, WCW's famous security guard, he used to knock on Goldberg's door.

• 53:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Doug was like my guy. He'd always print me this oversized laminated backstage pass. And I'd never want to be backstage. I wanted to go sit. I'd go find an empty seat. And I wanted to see, I just didn't care for the, the mystery of it. Cause I, I could tell there's something off. Like all these guys are shaking Dusty's hand. And they're, they're playing cards. Something's off, but I, I don't, I didn't want to know. Uh, the, it was, it's still magic to me.

• 53:28Bill Simmons?

  You know, it was a tough one in the mid eighties was when, uh, Hacksaw Jim Duggan. And I think it was the Iron Sheik got pulled over together. That was in high school and I was like, why were those guys together? Most of them, one of them must not have had a car and maybe the other guy was giving him a favor.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  You give yourself all the reasons.

• 53:45Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to justify it in my head. So you missed, I mean, obviously because you were too young, but you missed when Dusty's apex.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  So most of Dusty's prime is me watching it on VHS.

• 53:56Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  I didn't know.

• 53:57Bill Simmons?

  Cause I missed most of it too, because I was in the WWF part of the country.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Territory, yeah.

• 54:02Bill Simmons?

  And you'd see him sometimes and I, you know, but I just, the, the week to week stuff that made him so great. It was one of the best Mike guys ever.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  I didn't know how.

• 54:10Bill Simmons?

  I missed it.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Over Dusty was until we did a show, WCW did a show at the Omni in Atlanta.

• 54:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  And he was executive producer and I, I was eight. I mean, at that point I should have started to figure things out. But Sting went out the back door to go to his car. And as we went to step behind him, my dad kind of threw his hand in front of me. He was like, just give him a second. Don't, you know, give him a second. It was strange. And they reacted like crazy for staying. And I'm thinking like, that's so cool, man. Look at that. All the fans out there. What a cool job.

• 54:44Bill Simmons?

  Oh, cause he knew.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  And then my dad went out there.

• 54:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  And these people lost their minds.

• 54:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  And I, Dusty, Dusty. And I just like, I couldn't believe it. Like I get choked up about it thinking about it today. I couldn't believe like, what? Like, tell me more. Because we lived in this really snooty part of Georgia, East Cobb. It was like Laguna Beach without the beach. So the wrestlers, my dad, we were like the Addams Family. We, he'd mow the, he'd mow the lawn and his DR trunks with Ray Bans that his head was too big for that are like pulled into the side of his head and the bleached blonde hair. And Gabe Simpson, uh, you know, from the Braves was on the other side of the neighborhood and.

• 55:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  He was like the real sports guy. And then we were the goofy entertainment side of the other neighborhood, but he, I just didn't know. Cause parents would ask me about my dad and I had no clue. And then I started looking into our own VHSs and old school reels and all this stuff, seeing the Florida stuff, seeing all the Crockett stuff.

• 55:45Bill Simmons?

  Cause it's not like baseball or something where you just look up his stats on baseball reference and be like, oh, dad hit 400?

• 55:50Speaker 01

  It really was Atlanta, the city, you know, Omni.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  And I don't go there anymore, but Linux Mall, man, he'd walk into Linux Mall and I mean, a riot would start. Just, he was going to Atlanta, Hartsfield-Jackson, the airport, all the Delta redcoats rushing. I mean, no shots fired at Atlanta, but you could argue he's the best champion they've had in the last 50 years. The sports teams haven't done great, right? It's a tricky, it's a tricky. It's a little tricky. I'm a, I'm a dogs fan, so it's always good to cheer for the, the dogs. Always good. Listen, the Braves are gonna do okay. You have a weird, what's your pro football team? You have something weird. I'm a, I'm an Eagles guy. Yeah, I didn't get that part. So it's, it's real easy and you'll be like, I am, college football is my favorite thing.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Love college football. Was so pumped when Joe Test came to do commentary because I've listened to him 100 times, but pro football is, my sister cheered for the Cowboys, my oldest sister. Love the Cowboys because my family was all Texans, really minus me. So I'm like a fake Texan, kind of. But by the time I was older, the Cowboys weren't the Cowboys like that anymore. The Falcons. Are you fair weathered it? Oh, I continue to fair weather. This is how easy I am. The Falcons, as a kid, not great. Jamal Anderson doing the dirty bird. There you are. Place is losing their mind. I'm in. I'm in. I'm a Falcons fan. Doesn't go the way we think. Okay. Audition the new team? Yeah. So Michael Vick shows up. Michael Vick, season ticket sellout. I was, Michael

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Vick is number seven. Jerseys everywhere. It's Michael Vick. That goes really terribly, poorly. To say the least. And then really did lose like the franchise, lose a lot of the franchise. Then, okay, Matty Ice makes it to the Super Bowl. Okay. All right. Arthur Blank's on the field. Okay. It's, uh oh, uh oh. And it's at that point. Get the helmet behind you. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So Brady's, so you're gonna, you're gonna hate everything about what I'm gonna say. That's at that point where I just said, if Atlanta gets there, I'll be there. But I'm not. I'm not against them, but I'm really not going to get on the for them train. So Tom Brady becomes my favorite quarterback.

• 58:05Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Okay. So Tom, I go to the COVID Super Bowl just to see him throw the ball one time when he's with Tampa Bay, which is an amazing story. One season and they won a Super Bowl, whatever it may be, but this is how easy I am. I go to do media for WrestleMania 40 at TI, at the stadium for Philly. And this is a massive, massive sports franchise.

• 58:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  They rolled out the red carpet for me. They did. They let me have a room in the stadium. They had all this media coming in. They gave me all these jerseys and they gave me all this stuff for my daughter. An eagle, all this, that moment.

• 58:38Bill Simmons?

  Kids gifts.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Kids gifts.

• 58:40Bill Simmons?

  Kids gifts are a great way to steal somebody.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  And I knew I was going to be wrestling in the center of that field.

• 58:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  The next year, I, and I had a feeling, I was betting on myself, but praying too. I had a feeling I was going to be in the main event.

• 58:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  So forever, the city of Philadelphia, because Wells Fargo is actually my favorite arena, which is right in the sports complex there. That is, that's going to be, that's my wrestling other hometown is Philly.

• 59:08Bill Simmons?

  You know who I feel bad for? The seven NFL teams you didn't root for.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:11Bill Simmons?

  During the course of that journey.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  I, I really wanted, I wanted to root for a lot of people, but listen, it's like wrestling. You get behind somebody.

• 59:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  You gotta win. A, a winning season would work for me. You just gotta win. But yeah, Philly, they became my team.

• 59:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I'm trying to think what wrestler I've stayed loyal to the entire time. You do, you do usually bounce around.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Shane Gillis, the comedian, uh, he's a big Phillies guy. I mean, Eagles guy. He came backstage and he's all Eagles up and I, I think it's on record now that I'm, I'm on board with the Eagles. That's my team. I'm going, but it's not, I haven't been born and raised, you know, that way. So I was really hoping he didn't call me on any, uh, Eagle Nation stuff, you know, like.

• 59:55Bill Simmons?

  Right. You need to do like a little backstory.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I would need to, I need to, I need to look in real quick before we started talking football, but it was really cool to see because he's so into them and I, they, they did become my team. I mean, the fact that I got to wrestle right there on the 50 yard line and the biggest match of my life.

• 1:00:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  The, you know, WWE's biggest event ever and that, uh, you, I'm linked to that stadium and that franchise.

• 1:00:14Bill Simmons?

  I'll allow the seven favorite teams.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 1:00:17Bill Simmons?

  You know, it's funny. You're talking about Dusty having all this old stuff. There are all these pockets of wrestling happening in all these different ways in the seventies and eighties. And like even you think like Jerry Lawler is just huge in Memphis, right? And that specific area, he's a god. And your dad's a god and like basically the entire South.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:35Bill Simmons?

  But then when we did the, um, we did the Vince doc, one of the revelations, and I thought I knew most of the stuff at this point, but the revelation that Vince was choosing between Dusty and Hulk and, and wanted Dusty first and Dusty didn't want to go. And you were, you were interviewing the doc, you talked about it, but.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  Shocked me.

• 1:00:54Bill Simmons?

  It's, it's a pretty fascinating slide indoors.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:59Bill Simmons?

  Do you think Dusty, I talked about this with Shoemaker ironically after Hulk died on my podcast. And we're talking about the three things that basically needed to happen for WWE to blow up, which was cable TV, Vince getting aggressive, trying to beat everybody else, but then Hogan.

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Bill Simmons?

  Does it happen with Dusty, you think?

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  Gosh, I feel like.

• 1:01:20Bill Simmons?

  The only thing I could think against him is the accent.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  So one of the things that, that Vince actually told me, I didn't believe the story when my dad told me the story again.

• 1:01:30Bill Simmons?

  And then wrestling lore, you never know what to believe.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. My dad telling me he was slotted for the spot, walked out of the hotel room, never came back because Vince had booked recording studio time. They were going to make an album with Dusty.

• 1:01:44Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  All right. I thought this is complete dad nonsense. Years later, Vince tells me the exact story, tells me how mad he was. Dusty walked out of the hotel room on me and I'm thinking, what? This is a, he really was in line to do it. However, part of the story, he didn't say it in a mean spirited way. He said, but it worked out better that I got Hulk and that your dad got to go do Jim Crockett promotions, help build WCW up from the NWA, him and Rick and everyone, of course, involved and all the, the great talents, the people they'd had. I think it worked out better. I, I don't know the answer to that, but I think Hogan was.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  More of the now than maybe.

• 1:02:27Bill Simmons?

  He made more sense with the Stallone Schwarzenegger kind of.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  That era.

• 1:02:31Bill Simmons?

  Let's fight, let's have these superheroes that that basically fight the villains. He just made more sense.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  The phys, I, I think a lot of it, you could literally chalk it up to Dusty's subverting your expectations with his look.

• 1:02:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  Was one thing, but the look at the time and where it was going, especially if you look at the AWA, which most people don't realize Hulkamani and St. Paul at the AWA.

• 1:02:52Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  Was happening. So I, I think it was probably the right call. Dusty had a different delivery, a different way of talking people in and, and Hogan was Stallone, Arnold.

• 1:03:07Bill Simmons?

  And Dusty was a little at the tail end of his prime, right?

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  He was, he was, he had, he had beat himself up. He was moving through. Dusty's real prime is there's very, very little footage of his real, not prime, but his hottest stuff is Florida. Championship wrestling from Florida.

• 1:03:22Bill Simmons?

  Talking early, mid seventies?

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Gordon Soli and Pax Song and Harley coming in. And that was unbelievable. I mean, they were scalping tickets. This is, the Bucks are, you know, this is Tampa's main sport was, was really championship wrestling from Florida at this, this brief onset with the Armory and the Grams.

• 1:03:42Bill Simmons?

  Funny.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  It's crazy. And.

• 1:03:44Bill Simmons?

  The only way you would know it was even happening was the wrestling magazines, which of course I was always going through in the news.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:50Bill Simmons?

  And, and they would just have these little articles or photos and that was it. There was no video.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  I think, I, I also think too, dad was really proud of the three in the garden with Superstar. I think he wanted to walk off on the three. I did the three in a city I thought would eat me up. You know, chew me up and spit me out in New York and they loved me and they took me. I'm good. I'm not going to overstay my welcome. I think he, he was, when Florida would make those trades, Eddie Graham would make trades with Vince Senior.

• 1:04:22Bill Simmons?

  I love when they used to do that. They were just like, I'll send you, just make sure he doesn't get pinned.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Send touch and touch. Yeah. Do whatever you want. Just make sure he leaves with the title or whatever it may be. They had that trust, Vince Senior and Eddie Graham, and I, I just. Thought he probably looked at it because he was so proud of those three. I knew about those three matches before I knew about many things with him because that moment with him.

• 1:04:43Bill Simmons?

  Is there video of those or no?

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  MSG? Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think there is. I remember seeing at least one of them.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. The first one, and I think the bull rope is on there too. The ropes are loose as hell. Superstars flying all over the place.

• 1:04:54Bill Simmons?

  I can't believe how much video there is of the 70s and 80s now.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Bill Simmons?

  Like, my whole childhood is on there, basically, but stuff you just assume would just disappear and you've never even know about it again.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  Those garden ones are fun to watch.

• 1:05:09Bill Simmons?

  One of the things that was amazing with him was athletic he was, your dad. Like, he was like the most deceiving athlete. I wonder, like, what other, did he play sports in high school?

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  Played everything. And I remember I got really hot at, there's another wrestler who was, he did this interview and he'll never know this, because then, he did this interview years ago where he was like, you know, it's not like Dusty was some sort of athlete. And I wanted to explain to him, like, buddy, the whole point was he was an athlete. He didn't look like one, and he could do a standing dropkick. He was the best basketball player I'd ever seen in my life.

• 1:05:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he just seemed exceptionally coordinated.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  He was just, he didn't look it.

• 1:05:48Bill Simmons?

  Isn't there a video of him playing basketball?

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's-

• 1:05:50Bill Simmons?

  There's some charity game or something, right? And he looks like, he's like Charles Barkley, just flying by everybody.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Charlotte Police Department, and if you ask-

• 1:05:58Bill Simmons?

  It's amazing.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  You ask, like, Lex Luger or Sting, who are both in it, just running up and down the court.

• 1:06:03Bill Simmons?

  Just a lot of, like, post ups where he's just, like, ball hawking.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  If you ask him about it, he's said that Dusty had a meeting before where he said, if we lose to the police, you're all fired. And then they just, they just went for it. And all these just shots. This is, it was a real bummer that that video exists, and here's why. Fanatics, who, WWE and Fanatics have this great partnership, right? They had me do the Fanatics Fest physical events.

• 1:06:30Bill Simmons?

  Oh, no.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  On the same day, I'm doing a signing and photo ops and stuff like that. And to me, when you meet the fans, it's the coolest thing on earth. It's my favorite thing. I could do it all day long. If I complain about getting up early, by the end of it, I'm the happiest I've ever been.

• 1:06:43Bill Simmons?

  I already feel the excuse coming.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm just-

• 1:06:45Bill Simmons?

  It's the excuse. You just heard it.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  I go out on the one I was worried about was basketball because I'm thinking like, well, there's footage everywhere today. There's footage of everything in every corner. I'm in my suit and I'm thinking. Suit's a disaster. I'm not gonna not try though. The suit's tough. I can't say I didn't try. I kinda tried. I didn't not like just phone it. And I miss every single shot. That's where you blame the pictorial. I could. It's just not, I just don't have the same motion yet. I was legit like hot at WWE talent relations for a minute because. Right. I, guys, the wrestler out there who they already think is an athletic looks, you can't do that to me. And I didn't, I never said any of this because all of this is my fault.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  I made like one great like slap shot, hockey shot, which nobody got footage of. Did terrible in the football skills, golf skills bombed, but basketball where they're seeing all these clips of Dusty just float like a butterfly and these beautiful layups and this jumper he had. That's hilarious. And then I'm out there and it looks like my legs don't like, I, it's so bad. And the guy, the MC is going, all right, all right, okay. Let's get it. All right, let's get up for Cody. Let's get him one. Let's get him one. And it's so like, I couldn't make, I couldn't get in there. It was so bad. Yeah. But yeah, Dusty was a deceivingly good athlete. He did. Did he save a lot of his stuff? Cause you mentioned like you had the journals. Do you have like this? I have a. War chest of things from his.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  I have a team for the Charter Oak Buffaloes, the Patriots. He went to camp. Oh, you have even going back there? Yeah, he's got, so I've got a program from Patriots where he's listed on the team, actually. I've got a lot of his baseball stuff because baseball was his, his better sport. And my, my nephew now, Callan, is kind of following that baseball journey and he's got, he's got skills from his dad and, and pops as well. So yeah. What about the stuff from the seventies and eighties? In terms of wrestling stuff? Yeah. Ah. Cause nobody ever, people just threw that shit out back then. They didn't think to keep it. I have a lot of stuff. I'm trying to think if we got real good, from the seventies, I think the favorite thing I have is a photo album.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  The photo album was a personal photo album. So it's like him and Dick Murdoch on the boat. Oh, wow. From Victoria to, you know, Vancouver. And then there's Hogan just randomly in the background. As a young wrestler that you, it's these really fun, him, Ric Flair, when Ric Flair wanted to be rambling Ricky Rhodes, when he was just breaking in the business and he weighs, I don't know if you ever saw Flair in the seventies, pre the back and Oh, yeah, yeah. He doesn't even look like the nature boy at all. So those photos I have, we've got some reels, stuff like that. Anything that I find really valuable, I actually will send to Ben Brown at WWE, who's the archivist. Yeah. Cause I, it's sitting in my basement. It's better that you, I could always get it back. I just want, it's better that somebody takes care of it.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Cause if you go to the warehouse in Stanford, I mean, they've got. Oh, they have like a seven Hall of Fames in there. Right. And the things you don't know are valuable. You open up and it's, it's Pat Patterson's booking journals. This is the most valuable thing in here, guys. It's just, it's in the corner, you know, just there's some real special stuff. I remember when did the Andre thing, they brought us back and it was like, here's Andre's shorts from wrestling. And you're like, ah. I got a good Andre one. Okay. I can't confirm or deny that Dusty was ever the Midnight Rider. I should preface it with that. But if he was the Midnight Rider. Right. The Midnight Rider as a ruse to get people off his scent, other Midnight Riders would show up. Hey, I know it's you, Dusty. And then the next thing you know, there'd be Andre the Giant. Yeah. Or someone who looks like him wearing the Midnight Rider. Oh, it can't be Dusty. Right.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  This guy, this isn't, no, this isn't the guy who's been winning these matches. So when I was younger, I went downstairs and I put on a Midnight Rider mask in my basement. And it was the size of this, like this table. And I remember as a kid thinking, oh, that's what, my head will be that big when I grow up. Not realizing that that was an oversized giant's. Andre the Giant's. Andre the Giant's Midnight Rider mask, yeah. His size eight and three fourths. Unreal, unreal. Cause my sister has more memories with him than I do with Andre, cause him and Dusty were pretty close. But that's one that, I mean, when anyone describes him, the type of giant he was, he was. A real giant, that's for sure.

• 1:11:00Bill Simmons?

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• 1:11:44Bill Simmons?

  Enter now for a chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary, open to U.S. residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2026, ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods, see official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. So you come in WWE, you're there for like, I don't know, nine, 10 years?

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, 2007.

• 1:12:11Bill Simmons?

  And then they trap you with the Stardust gimmick. Everybody knows all these stories at this point. But did you, did you start feeling like this, this ain't happening for me? Or were you thinking, this is going to happen for me? And I'm in the, I'm in the wrong spot and I need to fix and solve this?

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  Man, that's a kind of good-

• 1:12:31Bill Simmons?

  Cause I remember the Stardust part, I was like, oh man, I don't, I don't know if this one's gonna work.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  I think I took pride in the first like six months, year, which it should have only lasted six months, a year. I think I took pride in, hey, this is a, this is like the wrestler opportunity to make the most of something. The classic- Okay, you got chicken shit, you're gonna turn it into chicken salad. The classic, every wrestler who was ever good took the thing and ran with it. You know, Polka Dots is a great example on the old man. I think I took pride in the beginning and then it still felt like a thing that, oh no, I'm locked out.

• 1:13:11Bill Simmons?

  Do you start looking at the roster and going, alright, that guy, I'm not getting by him.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  I had a list, I had a list of all the roster of the show I was on. And like next to Dolph Ziggler's name, I remember I wrote abs. I had these, it was a list of things that I thought, all these guys are better than me.

• 1:13:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  And I didn't realize the worst thing I was doing was competing with those guys was not the answer. I was feeling sorry for myself, super pity party all the time. I was losing my relationship with people who I had worked years prior. I had wrestled Triple H at a SummerSlam as part of legacy. And now we can't even get two words between each other backstage. I was really just kind of developing into a bad apple and no doubt the booking was terrible.

• 1:13:55Bill Simmons?

  Oh, bad chemistry guy.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, but so everything was going bad and I was, and I think I even wrote it. I was starting to hate a place that I loved. And maybe the most mature thing I could do was, I'm gonna leave and hold on to the good stuff here. No doubt, there's plenty of, the booking is terrible, there's plenty of issues here, but also I'm not helping myself at all. I'm becoming the worst me. I, as I get older, I take more and more of it on me than I do put it on, you know, Vince or Hunter or whomever. I try to put more on me about it, but I think the thing that bummed me out the most was, I talked to my dad every day.

• 1:14:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  And I told you, he babied me and thought I was just so good. And I had a great, you know, athletic career growing up as an amateur wrestler. And I, he just saw things in me that I guess I didn't see. And that was the thing I was most ashamed of was that. That happened and then he died. So my dad didn't get to do any of the good stuff for his dad. Virgil senior, the plumber, you know, he passed away before the American dream had took over and really even got a good start. I think he'd had a couple of matches and getting beat up by Fritz in Texas and stuff like that. But he hadn't had his run yet, or even a first run, whatever it may be. That's the thing that bummed me out the most is I wanted to give my dad the WWE championship.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  There's nothing fake about that story and that quest. I, this was the thing you didn't get. I'm going to be the one to get it for you and we can have it. And I, to this day, I, I still feel like immense shame over, he just missed everything. Like I, I couldn't get out of that spot. I felt trapped. I was trapping myself. God bless Brandy for putting up with me during that period of time. And I needed to get out. I've heard Nick Khan say it before, I had to go away to, to come back and be seen as an adult. And I don't know if I, if I see it that way, but there's certainly some truth to that. And I was a kid when I started there. I was 20 years old when WWE hired me and I.

• 1:16:01Bill Simmons?

  Well, sometimes you have to think outside the box when you're on your own.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  Well, it was all.

• 1:16:06Bill Simmons?

  I felt that way, by the way, when I got my, I left this.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:09Bill Simmons?

  Where's the bust in here? They're over there. When I left that place, I had to figure out how to write a column.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:14Bill Simmons?

  And I'm just on my own. I just kind of had to fit, but it made me better. It made me ready for the next thing. You probably had some of that.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  Well, you bet on yourself.

• 1:16:22Bill Simmons?

  But you also had the, you, you have to start thinking like you're booking everything. You're figuring out everything. There's a strategy.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:30Bill Simmons?

  Piece that you probably hadn't really considered before.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  I used to strategize in my mind and the thing I'd always find myself saying, and I hate saying this, but this is during Stardust. I'd always find myself saying, I'm smarter than these people. I'm smarter than this. I, why can't I get out of this? All of these guys taught me stuff. I worked with them all.

• 1:16:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  On a peer level, they taught me stuff and I can't, somehow none of it's working. I can't, so I, when I left it, it became this kind of amalgamation of all the things I'd learned from Dusty, from, from John, from Randy, from Hunter, from Shawn, from Undertaker, all these guys who I wrestled and, and in the end, it's kind of like you're talking about figuring out, writing this column. In the end, I feel like I. It had to be me.

• 1:17:13Bill Simmons?

  It just clicked.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe it was all that help. Maybe it was all the feedback finally come to one, but, but in the end, it has to be my voice. It has to be what I want to do and.

• 1:17:22Bill Simmons?

  Well, you needed, you needed some momentum too. That wasn't just, this is the Rhodes kid and.

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 1:17:29Bill Simmons?

  You needed, you created your own thing.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:32Bill Simmons?

  It was really cool and different. You bet on yourself.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:35Bill Simmons?

  The promotion you had felt different than WWE and in like these little different ways. And then, you know, it just was a home run. Nobody had really challenged the WWE like that in, what, 20 years?

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  No, I mean, since, since the doors closing on WCW.

• 1:17:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but that was like, that was a, that was a walking corpse for three years.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  Exactly. Very short-lived in a sense. And for me, I was very almost volatile in how I came at it. I had love and reverence.

• 1:18:04Bill Simmons?

  This is my one chance. I'm not, there's no way I'm not doing this.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  Right. I had love and I had reverence for WWE. This is the house that built me. But man, I really wanted, I woke up every day thinking, I want them to know what I could have done. I want them to know what I could have done, which is why it's fun to talk about now because they came back and got me, uh, which wasn't on my, that was never part of the master plan. Sometimes when people look at me like, oh, he always was going back.

• 1:18:31Bill Simmons?

  And Nick Khan was always talking about it. He was telling, he would tell like the frigging gardener, getting Cody in a year.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I, I, I had, I kept making it appear that I had a plan. I had a plan, but really, I wanted to make as much noise and disrupt as much as I could. And I, I can't ever think of anything because I was talking about the two things and momentum and all that in the beginning. I found some of the best people around me.

• 1:18:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  Who were feeling the underground elements of that. And, and really, uh, like the three that I'd always cite and I'd feel uncomfortable if I didn't. Matt, Nick Jackson, the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega. That group and Kevin Owens, God bless him, he's probably gonna hear this pod. He's responsible for it because he linked us all together and that connection of my name and my equity and their skills and their moxie and the drive and just that anger that I had and what they had, all of that just set up a situation that couldn't fail, couldn't fail. And also at the time, Triple H doesn't realize he's a big part of this because at NXT, he's bringing in every good hot gun off the independents.

• 1:19:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  So it's not about legacies. It's not about tenure at WWE anymore. It's about who has the hot hand. So it was a matter of like, well, let's, I'm gonna be the hot hand and I don't know if I'm gonna come back with it. What are we gonna do? And, you know, we're off to the races with it at that point, but that was a really huge part of all the skills I had combined with really great people around me, really great timing, great timing.

• 1:20:00Bill Simmons?

  And you never really talked about leaving AEW.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Bill Simmons?

  But it felt like-

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  Locked behind a paywall.

• 1:20:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, apparently it is. But, uh, but did you feel like that had a shelf life or did, was there a moment during that run where you felt like this was home, you were gonna be one of the building blocks of this and that was gonna be the rest of your life?

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Gosh, it's hard to kind of put myself in that spot again, but I, I started to get a sense, you know, Michael Hayes is really famous for always leave the territory at your hottest. I started to get a sense that all wrestling needs change. Guys are gonna go from company to company. Oh, you gotta keep it fresh. Guys are gonna go down for a minute, then they're gonna come, whatever it may be. I just got the sense that it might be time for me to move into something else. And I didn't know what that was. I remember thinking, oh, that'd be crazy to be part of the Royal Rumble, to come home.

• 1:20:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  Cause you know, I've made another home. I got kids at this home, basically. I got a lot, you know, but to show everybody, because the first meeting I have with Vince and Bruce Prichard. I didn't think I was coming back.

• 1:21:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  I was excited to go to that meeting to say, and this is gonna sound crazy. I wanted to tell them both, thank you. I left on crazy, crazy bad terms. No one can ever leave like I left because of how I left. I didn't even sign my release papers. Like Chris probably could sue me over, you know, like I was, uh, I, I left in a terrible place. They let it happen because of probably more respect for my dad than anything. And then I went out and I fought so hard and filled with rage. I mean, I'm smashing the throne. I'm, I'm just, I'm bleeding. I'm setting myself on fire. I was just, I don't know, going through it and living it out for everyone who was watching. But I wanted to tell them both, thanks. You guys helped build me and train me.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  And I took all those skills and I took them everywhere I went. I took them to every company, to every independence, every, I, I got to reinvent myself on how I wanted to be here in WWE. I got to be that outside and, and that's all I thought it was gonna be, a sense of closure, a real sense of thank you so much. Uh, for lessons I never got to thank you for. And then it turned into be something else by the end of that meeting, but you know.

• 1:22:22Bill Simmons?

  Was the fear like 2022 at AEW is gonna, 2024 is basically gonna be the same thing and you're just running back years, but nothing. You're not elevating anymore. You're just kind of, you're kind of here and you can't go here.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  Gosh, I know that.

• 1:22:38Bill Simmons?

  That was my perception from afar, no, nothing.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, I feel like maybe that's, maybe that's a little bit of it. I think, I, I started thinking about writing a book the other day. I, I, I've never even really considered writing a book, but we've done some fun stuff.

• 1:22:53Bill Simmons?

  I think it would go well.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Right. And I think that's the, I was thinking of, what would I say? How, how would I put it? Cause there's clearly bad blood, but there's also clearly respect, um, and love. And in the end, the way I kind of see it is.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  If I felt disrespected ever at WWE, that's one thing. That's a company that was built. Look at this glass. You know, that's, that's a, that's, that's the Yankees. That's the flagship of it all. If I ever felt there, you know, I was, I was a number on a sheet, maybe, but feeling disrespected at something I built.

• 1:23:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  With, with my friends and with us, with, that we built, feeling disrespected there, I, I wouldn't stand for it. And, and, and I think Brandy and I both, I'm so blessed to have her. It was one of those where it was, fuck it. Like, I did way more here than you think. And you're gonna find out the moment I'm out the door. And I, I hate saying that with any sense of anger or rage, but I'm like the angriest person you're ever gonna meet. I'm always.

• 1:24:05Bill Simmons?

  I'd like to be in the top five.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:24:08Bill Simmons?

  When you said that, I was thinking about when I left ESPN. I was like, okay, guys, you're gonna say.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  Right, same thing. Like, it made me so ready for the next thing. To me, the greatest, I don't believe in like the cold-hearted, backstabby type of revenge. The greatest revenge on earth is success. And I felt like we were sitting on something wonderful, something great, a huge, potentially with what I was doing with the American Nightmare, as a bad guy, as a good guy, as something in between. We're sitting on something magic. And if I'm not gonna do it in the house that I literally with Matt, Nick and Kenny built, then buddy, I'm going elsewhere. And every day, I am so blessed that Bruce Richard, Nick and Triple H got me, Vince got me back, cuz I get to live it out now. I get.

• 1:24:57Bill Simmons?

  You know, it's funny the way you laid it out, cuz I watched the first couple of episodes of, Netflix has this big Cowboys documentary.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:05Bill Simmons?

  That's coming. And it's about the Jerry Jones era. So I made, I made, uh, made them send me a couple of episodes cuz I wanna watch it.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  You get all the stuff, huh?

• 1:25:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, I just badger people.

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  You get it all, man.

• 1:25:14Bill Simmons?

  Nah, I just badger people. And they, I break them down eventually. But the Jerry Jones, Jimmy Johnson thing, where Jimmy Johnson brings him in, he's building through the team, through the draft, he's coaching it, he's doing everything, and they have real success, they win. But at some point, there's a little bit of a schism. And the schism comes down to Jimmy Johnson be like, dude. You brought me here to do all this. Like this is, let me do my thing. And Jerry, as they had more and more success, started to think he was a little more involved with the success than maybe he was. And just coincidentally reminded me of your situation, maybe.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  I feel like.

• 1:25:50Bill Simmons?

  At AEW.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  Probably similar. And if it hurts even more when you're tasked to do something, when somebody sees it with their own eyes. But then I don't look at any of it. I said I was really angry and rage. I don't look at any of it with really any negativity. And here's why.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  I got to be part of WWE again.

• 1:26:12Bill Simmons?

  Great. It all worked out great.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  And I got to be part of WWE. We're, we're talking about Austin and we're talking about Hogan, two of the greatest ever to lace up their boots and draw people into the arenas. And every one of those records has been broken. And I got to be in the matches that broke those records. I got to stand across from Roman Reigns at 39. I got to do it again. I, I, I got the quarterback spot at a company where I was last, last in the combine and I, I am very grateful. That's why I have such trouble articulating. And that's why I want to write this book because.

• 1:26:48Bill Simmons?

  No, it makes sense.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  I'm very grateful for, hey, okay, this schism happened, but the outcome is I got to be with the biggest game in town. And not only did I get the spot, I got to show them I could do it. You know, because what are we in now? Three, three years or four?

• 1:27:04Bill Simmons?

  I'll say it more simply. It was a good career move.

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

  Good career move.

• 1:27:08Bill Simmons?

  It really was.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, good career.

• 1:27:09Bill Simmons?

  You join and all hell's breaking loose with Vince, which I'm not going to put you in the position to talk about here. And then.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  You don't want to put my media training to the test?

• 1:27:17Bill Simmons?

  Well, I just like, you're just, because some, because when you do interviews like this, then people are like, why don't you ask them about this? It's like, because you're going to give a shitty answer. Like, nobody, neither of us want to talk about it. That's what it is.

• 1:27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 1:27:28Bill Simmons?

  You can Google it.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  Well, some, sometimes you give a shitty answer and then somebody will ask a follow up. And the next answer is even worse.

• 1:27:36Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  Like, it just goes, it's just like, there's no answer here, you know?

• 1:27:39Bill Simmons?

  It's, yeah. Vince was there almost 50 years and now he's not. And we, we all know what happened.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:46Bill Simmons?

  Um, but you have that and then you have your, you get hurt. So you, it's like two things like, fuck, is this, you start to think like, is this, is this, is it, am I?

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:57Bill Simmons?

  My snake bit here? What's going on? And then everyone thinks you're gonna win WrestleMania. You don't.

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:02Bill Simmons?

  But I thought that was kind of really smart in retrospect that you did.

• 1:28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:06Bill Simmons?

  I think that was well played.

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  You'll be the second person, uh, but probably the first people ever hear this. I, I had Jelly Roll on my podcast recently. It's, it hasn't come out, but he, I asked him what his like most complete song was. I don't know why I thought that was a good question. I was like, you know, where you felt like you were checking every box, all your skills. And I told him my favorite match is WrestleMania 39, which is the one where it doesn't happen. And, uh,

• 1:28:31Bill Simmons?

  It was really smart.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  It, I, I probably would have been pumped to win. Certainly, I, gosh, to, to, but there's something about that night where things were happening in the arena that had, or the stadium that had never happened to me. He's got me in the guillotine choke.

• 1:28:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  And you hear these old timers and God bless them, I love them, talk about, you know, just stay right there and the people will react and they'll, cause that's when, when you've seen the amount of cool flips and awesome stuff, it, sometimes that's, that seems like, I don't know, maybe that's not real anymore. And then in that moment, I remember I'm just slowly wiggling my head out and I can hear an entire stadium where the sound goes up, start to move. And I thought, oh man, this, they're into this. How, how blessed am I? That they're into this. And it just, when it's that good, it feels completely real. Everything seems real. Roman is the greatest enemy of my life. And I'm trying to climb a mountain that's impossible to climb. And that just acoustic moment for me, I made it my favorite match of all time.

• 1:29:35Bill Simmons?

  That's cool.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  I couldn't tell anyone that though, cause it was the saddest ending and then like walking right back. But yeah, it's my favorite match.

• 1:29:41Bill Simmons?

  Roman's a good example of somebody who had to eat some shit and it made it better. Like that's, that's a great example, but I'm gonna show you guys. Oh, you think, you think I got handed this or this was too early? Fuck you.

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  How many years of Roman where he was, he was in the, the spot? That that he was getting booed. It was a couple, more than a couple. It was like three or four.

• 1:30:00Bill Simmons?

  He wasn't quite ready yet.

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  So, but all that's happening.

• 1:30:03Bill Simmons?

  But it helped him.

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  Right. And so this is when people today complain about Roman and oh, he's barely ever there. He's paid so much. Whatever. I, I always think, guys, do you see what he, the run he had?

• 1:30:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  Who he went through, what he went through. There was probably nobody on earth equipped with it and had the will and drive like a Roman. So if he's decided, hey, I'm coming a few times. I'm gonna look great. People are gonna lose their mind. Superman punch spear. That's a gift to us. It's a gift when he shows up. I feel, I think people forget that. That he, he basically earned the right to call whatever shots uh he wants. I, I think very highly of.

• 1:30:49Bill Simmons?

  He's great. He's great in the ring. He's great in person.

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:52Bill Simmons?

  And that, that is, I've been to a lot of these now over the years. Presence is a thing that, it's not a stat.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:59Bill Simmons?

  Somebody comes in and you can feel it.

• 1:31:01Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:31:03Bill Simmons?

  People either have it or they don't. He definitely has it.

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:05Bill Simmons?

  And he had it even when they were trying to, Vince saw it, I think, pretty early. Like, this guy has it and he just pushed him out. But I think ultimately, I think anybody who really makes it, you have to walk out to a 60 to 80,000 seat stadium and carry it somehow.

• 1:31:21Speaker 01

  He's another one.

• 1:31:22Bill Simmons?

  It's not just music.

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's, he's another one that reminds me of Dusty a little in a sense that his athleticism is also that he could do a whole lot.

• 1:31:32Bill Simmons?

  You're right. Undertaker is the all time example, though.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  Of athleticism?

• 1:31:35Bill Simmons?

  Undertaker was like fucking Dr. J. Like, when he would do the walking down the rope thing, how many people on the planet could do that?

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  And, and just the, the, well, even harder thing is hook the top rope, fall backwards over and land on his feet because he could never come off his feet.

• 1:31:48Bill Simmons?

  But that early 90s.

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 1:31:50Bill Simmons?

  Undertaker is out of control. One of the great athletes.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  How you know is he's positioned as this monster zombie killer, what we would assume a heel.

• 1:31:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  And then, oh no, people love Undertaker. But he's a, we're just put him with bad guys. We don't have to make him a baby. Just put bad guys. And the idea, and yeah, just, there's very few people who ever earned the respect that Undertaker has. And, and I, I came to a show at MSG, I think it was 14.

• 1:32:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  Goldust, Dustin was wrestling and he said, uh, when I got there, um, he says, are you coming backstage? I said, I'd love to. He goes, well, I need you to meet Undertaker before you do that. So that was the thing. I said hello and he's super nice. I'm 14.

• 1:32:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he was almost like the bouncer of the entire locker room.

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  Bouncer. I always used to, because he's such a cowboy. To me, he was like the sheriff.

• 1:32:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  He's legit like the sheriff. So when he shows up at WrestleMania 40 in my match for any like younger fan, that's like, what? Undertaker? To me, it made perfect sense. Sheriff's coming in to even the odds, help out a good guy in need. It was just, yeah, he's, he had more respect than most people I've ever seen in a locker room. I mean, to this day, he's, he's such a great locker room leader.

• 1:32:58Bill Simmons?

  More fun to be a bad guy or a good guy?

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Everyone's gonna tell you bad guy. But I think that's because they haven't experienced what good guy can really be. Bad guy is fun because you can fall on your face and make a spot out of it. Bad guy's fun. You can stumble on your words in a promo and make a moment out of it. Bad guy's fun because traditionally a bad guy leads the match. But a good guy or good girl that they are actually invested in, that they came, they're wearing your shirt. They've got signs. There's all this argument always about, oh, Cody turned heel. Will he turn? I don't think so. They can boo all they want if certain people decide like, yeah, Cody's the heel to me, but I don't think I'd ever turn.

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  Cause it's just too much of a connection with those who were on board with me.

• 1:33:50Bill Simmons?

  I think it's harder to be a good guy.

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  I, so that's the thing. I think it's harder, but once we got on.

• 1:33:55Bill Simmons?

  It's harder to pull it off, I guess I should say.

• 1:33:57Speaker 01

  And for a while they were extinct because they just wanted anti-heroes and social, like edgy.

• 1:34:02Bill Simmons?

  TV too.

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:03Bill Simmons?

  TV and wrestling always marry each other in some way.

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and edgy social kind, you know, yeah, all, everybody, every heel out there has got the best social media and the best one-liners that leave most babyface like. Dick in hand, what do I do? You know what I was like?

• 1:34:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  So you've got to be a really good babyface. You have to kind of rise above it and that's, that's, that's very hard. Jey Uso, I look at as probably a great example is most so, so popular. And it's not easy. It's, it's not easy to make that connection with them. And I feel like it's even harder to keep it. Cause babyfaces get beat up a lot on TV. Uh, and to me, it's just such, it's such a gift. I certainly.

• 1:34:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're selling the villains.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:46Bill Simmons?

  It's the, uh, the first, when, so Bob Backlund, when I got into wrestling.

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  Oh, man, Bob.

• 1:34:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He was champ for like five years.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  He was, yeah.

• 1:34:55Bill Simmons?

  And he was like the perfect guy for back then. Cause he was just the vessel to have all these awesome bad guys that they had there. Cause they had all, like they had great villains. And, uh, you know, he was all American guy and he had the crew cut.

• 1:35:09Bill Simmons?

  But it's hard to have runs like that. Seen it, did it forever. But even as it was happening, the crowd was like, he was polarizing in the moment.

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  It's, it's funny today. Cause like John, for so long was booed in certain markets, cheered in others.

• 1:35:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:21Speaker 01

  He really was so unique in the, you felt strongly about him. You weren't getting up and leaving. You were gonna boo, you were gonna cheer. Today, I feel like we're so, our attention spans are a little shorter. When they start booing a good guy, people think it's time for a no, no.

• 1:35:37Bill Simmons?

  You have to flip them. Yeah.

• 1:35:38Speaker 01

  To me, to me, I turned. Yeah. I just call it an away game. I always know too. I know when it's an away game. I'm, hey, we're going into their arena tonight. It's an away game. Wrestling John right now, heading into SummerSlam.

• 1:35:49Bill Simmons?

  That freaking traitor.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  Right, right. So.

• 1:35:52Bill Simmons?

  How dare he kick you in the balls?

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  How dare? And then how dare he make a shirt for every city, featuring every sports team? And every, we have to celebrate the farewell. While he's in this nefarious state of mind. That's why on SmackDown this past week, uh,

• 1:36:09Bill Simmons?

  How dare he sell his legacy?

• 1:36:12Speaker 01

  Well, so we talk about like what's, what's real, what's not? I'll tell you something that says as real as it gets. Last week on SmackDown, give me carte blanche, what I want to say in my promo. What I said in my promo was very simple. Just be the real John Cena. They're already happy for you. They already love you. You spent years building equity with them. I could care less. Stop. If you gotta boo me, if you say, let's go Cody, Cody sucks. Fine. Well, I'll, I'll take it. I, I got raised in the industry to be able to take it. Yeah. Let's be you. If this is your last SummerSlam, come like it's your first. Be you and, and then I don't have to stare at a sea of, nothing's weirder than you're my favorite wrestler. Somebody telling me you're my favorite wrestler when they're wearing the entire CNN uniform.

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  The entire farewell. I'm like, all right, well. Yeah. Didn't help me tonight, bud, but. Yeah.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  So for me, it just, I want him to be John and, and I don't know. He's a, he's the most unique soul there is in the industry. So we'll see what we get. That was way too magnanimous because that guy's a jerk. He, he sneak attacked you. Right. Can't believe he let you down. He let down all the. Let Travis Scott slap me. That whole. Travis Scott kind of, he took some liberties, didn't he? No, no. No. Travis Scott, I feel like if you're a wrestler and you can't take getting slapped in the face, you're not that great a wrestler. Okay. However, the mark just looked really bad. So it was one of those where I could, in the next few days, everybody's like, what happened? Right. I don't, I don't know. I don't know. And there's a clear fan video of just, it just happens. It's just part of it.

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  Do you get mad that the Paul brother is actually good at wrestling? I think it's bad for wrestling. He just steps in and he's like immediately doing crazy moves and I don't know. If he had just stepped in and could immediately be as good as he was, I'd be furious. Could he put the work in? Uh, one of the hardest working people I've ever seen. Uh, and the other thing is really, if you consider him a heel, that's okay. Cause the guy is a complete, like you keep saying jerk. Logan is as prickly as it gets. Yeah. However, his story of doing the work is as accurate as it get. And his secret weapon is Shane Helms. Shane Helms is a producer at WWE. They, they're attached at the hip. They're talking wrestling, they're training wrestling. He took it as seriously as anybody ever. I have a feeling.

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  He's good. He's gonna end up being world champion or WWE champion at some point and the internet will explode and we'll all be fine. We'll be, we'll all, we're gonna be okay, but he is very special. As legitimate as a prick as you could meet though, in a sense like, oh, this is, this is. This guy needs a slap. Cheers to this, but I love having him on the team. He is as valuable. I mean, he is.

• 1:38:57Bill Simmons?

  He is a massive asset to WWE, gonna be a future champion for sure. This episode is brought to by Viori. When it comes to clothes that score high in both comfort and style, Viori is my MVP. Sunday performers joggers, oh yeah. They have the perfect, I could watch a game and then go out to dinner vibe. And the Meta pant, that's my number one, I need to look like I tried option. Get 20% off your first purchase at Viori.com/Simmons and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner,

• 1:39:38Bill Simmons?

  Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Minneh Sharon and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys. Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9. Only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now. What's the maddest you've ever been in the ring at somebody as you guys were going back and forth and it got actually, in a way where you're like, I'm gonna actually fight

• 1:40:20Bill Simmons?

  this guy after we're done. Maddest I've ever been? Have you had one? Cause they did this, they covered this on Unreal where it got a little, it got a little testy with Charlotte and, uh, what's her face? I'm blanking. Who, who did she wrestle? Tiffany. When they got, they, it kind of went back and forth and it got to a point where Triple H actually had to get mad at them on the show. Is that? That's in the show. Is it unreal or is it? That's an unreal. Kind of from a conspiracy level, what do you think? I don't know, conspiracy bill bought off. Total real? It seemed relatively real.

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  Brett, Sean, like, where do you, where do you put it? It was real, you're saying? It seemed mostly real. Okay, okay, uh, mine was- Like an eight out of 10 real. Eight out of 10 real, okay. Mine was not even in the ring. I did commentary, me and my brother did commentary on a tag match as the Rhodes Brothers. And they had told JBL, and I don't know who the "they" is, but they had told JBL to eat me up on commentary. And he did. And- It was like a roast? It was not even like a roast. I remember he said, he asked me a question, I said, I replied with, honestly? I'm about to make my answer, he goes, no, I want you to lie to me. And then he just kept going and I'm, again, nothing makes me feel weirder than when you're supposed to protect the good guy. Yeah.

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  But you, I, but then also, it's like, hey, if you're, if you don't know how to defend yourself, you're not going to be that good of a good guy. Or whatever it may be. I learned a lot. JBL is one of my favorite people ever, but I remember that night, that's the most I've ever thought, okay. You just wanted to hit him over the head with something? Well, I just wanted to explain, like, what, what's the point? Are you and I wrestling? Are you, are you, are we wrestling? Cause if we are, that was great. So he's just testing you? Yeah, and, and he tested me and I'm okay with that test and I failed that test. Now that I look back at it, I'm totally okay with that test. I'd probably want to test somebody too, but I failed that test, which again, as older I get, the more I start to put the impetus, I put it on me that this was, these were my screw ups. I said I was ready and I couldn't handle JBL on commentary. Maybe I wasn't ready.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  How do you do, you don't have to name a name, but how do you do a program and plan out stuff with somebody you don't like? Like if you're doing a match, like you're doing like, like a six week arc with somebody and you actually have to spend some behind the scenes time? You do it with more love and commitment than you do with somebody you do like? You, you- Interesting. Yes. So it's like fake friendship? You, I, I mean- Like, hey, man, how you doing? I think- But you like hate the guy? There's just a lot more of, when you're talking, a lot more of- This.

• 1:42:52Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:42:53Speaker 01

  So that you know I'm serious. He knows I'm so that because, okay, you if you come backstage at Raw or SmackDown, you'll see wrestlers shake hands to a level that's like, what? Why? Why? You've shaken?

• 1:43:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  We've shaken hands three times. Why are we shaking hands? My trainer, Al Snow, I remember him asking me, he said, uh, he said, you know, why we shake hands? Thought it was a simple answer. We respect each other. It's about respect. He goes, yeah, you know, that's one of it. He goes, the real reason though, is we need each other. You're supposed to pick me up, slam me, look like you hate my guts and want to murder me. I'm supposed to get up safely and we're supposed to do that the next night.

• 1:43:30Bill Simmons?

  Well, and you're putting your life in somebody else's hands.

• 1:43:32Speaker 01

  Putting your life in someone else's hands. And WWE, I think, is more of a team minded unit than I've ever seen before. There are plenty of people who dislike each other. There's plenty of people who I, oh, he's great. Love him. Uh, but never has it been more uniform in terms of Hunter is really good. Hunter and Nick are really good about, this is the direction. This is the direction. We're a team. We're all going. And that's not just wrestlers. That's the whole company. Everybody gets on board with the team. So it's really, uh, you just go at it with more love and commitment than you would if it was one of your buddies.

• 1:44:11Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  One of your buddies, you can almost like Jey Uso kicked my head off the other night on Raw. It's a replay of it. My whole face moves. It's like a, it's like a boxing punch. I loved it. Right?

• 1:44:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  But you, when you're working with someone that maybe there's not that trust and empathy and love with, then you go at it a little differently. But that makes great TV.

• 1:44:30Bill Simmons?

  Who do you think is next generation, generation below you? So I'm going to say in the 24 to 29 year old range.

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  To look out for?

• 1:44:38Bill Simmons?

  Who do you have your eye on? Anybody?

• 1:44:42Speaker 01

  There's so many guys.

• 1:44:43Bill Simmons?

  I, by the way, I think, I think Rhea Ripley is incredible.

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  Unreal, huh? And not to plug the.

• 1:44:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, no, but I mean, I really like in person.

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:52Bill Simmons?

  Probably the, the, the most presence of any female wrestler I've seen and also really talented.

• 1:44:59Speaker 01

  I don't know how old she is.

• 1:45:00Bill Simmons?

  I think Rhea, well, that's, that's good.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  She's probably in her prime though.

• 1:45:03Bill Simmons?

  That's good. She's in wrestler prime. I think Rhea's.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  But there's no, there's no younger one where you're like, whoa, oh my gosh, there's more women training to get in the business than there are men.

• 1:45:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:12Speaker 01

  So right now at the Nightmare Factory in my school, all my favorite students, I'm waiting for a guy to come along and finally have the skills, you know? I'm trying to think of a young up and comer at WWE because there, there are many.

• 1:45:25Bill Simmons?

  Cause there's probably some NXT stuff, right?

• 1:45:26Speaker 01

  Dominic Mysterio will end up becoming a massive, he already is, but Dom has a connection with the audience and the work is coming. It's, it's kind of reverse. The work is coming, but he's.

• 1:45:39Bill Simmons?

  He gets heat. I gotta say, you can feel it in the, in the crowd.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  He also works with people that are really, he can see some, his father's the greatest example.

• 1:45:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  When you are around people like that, you learn things that no one can teach you, right? And, and other than someone who is, I don't want to use the over word, but somebody who's extremely popular, someone who's over. So Dom is someone definitely to look out for in terms of specialness. My gosh. And then there's just a whole, I mean, if you look at NXT, Obah, uh, who's coming up, Obah's really special. They're Ricky Saints, Ethan Page, who's, he's another one that if you, you meet Ethan Page, you, he could be 50 or he could be 25. He's, he's, he's, he's got a really unbelievable, uh, skillset. That's what I like the most about the, the WWE currently is that if someone was to move to go, we've got people ready.

• 1:46:32Speaker 01

  We've got people ready. Now it's going to take time. We're talking about Roman, takes time and takes years. My dad used to say it takes two years for a guy to really connect with the audience. Seen him will tell you it takes five years for a guy to connect with the audience.

• 1:46:43Bill Simmons?

  That's sure.

• 1:46:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Right? So that, that, that bastard, uh, but, uh, you know, the, uh, I think we've got a lot of, Sean's really trained a lot of people really right, but there's a lot.

• 1:46:55Bill Simmons?

  So Sean was your guy? He was your favorite?

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  I said, I've talked about him way more on this pocket. He was my favorite growing up. Yeah.

• 1:47:01Bill Simmons?

  Cause I went to the Boston Garden WrestleMania when Tyson was the referee.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  He's sick.

• 1:47:05Bill Simmons?

  And Sean had like basically a broken back. And they did the match.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:11Bill Simmons?

  And he, he sells it. He does. I like, you, you wouldn't really know. You knew he wasn't a hundred percent, but you wouldn't really know. The match ended, it went dark.

• 1:47:18Speaker 01

  But did you know he was a hundred percent?

• 1:47:19Bill Simmons?

  Hunter to be carry him off.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Did you know he was a hundred percent? Or was that the story going around the building that day?

• 1:47:23Bill Simmons?

  Are you conspiracy billing me again?

• 1:47:25Speaker 01

  I think he's the best in the business at giving you something else. I just said, oh, he was sick. Because my dad on the couch behind me, I heard the kid's really sick. And he's pale and he's backstage and they showed him, I think it's him, Hunter in China. They're all walking. And then he goes out there and he looks super pissed off. He's also throwing his head into the steel steps with that weird, toxic grit we were talking about. He might've had a bad back. He did. I mean, he clearly, he had a broken back.

• 1:47:53Bill Simmons?

  He disappeared for like two years.

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  He might've had all those things. He might've had, I think it was bronchitis was the rumor going around in the, in my home. Or he might've just been Shawn Michaels and creating magic out of magic.

• 1:48:06Bill Simmons?

  Wow, look at you. Unreal.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  I'm telling you.

• 1:48:08Bill Simmons?

  You're really giving us the unreal.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  That's why if any fan is worried about Unreal, the work within the work, I will never, I don't let, Chris Van Bleet, who's a wrestling podcast guy, he asked me one time, the scariest question anyone's ever asked me in a podcast. And I, I didn't know how to answer it. He said, you seem like you're always in character. You're always wrestling. You're always talking. There's no ever not. And in the moment I realized, oh.

• 1:48:32Bill Simmons?

  No, I think you're really like this.

• 1:48:34Speaker 01

  Right. I think I am too, but I might be too deep in. Andrew Schultz, I do his podcast and he's like, oh, he's just wrestler talking. He's just, and I'm thinking, am I? Am I? I don't know. I, I grew up in this. It's so hard for me in terms of determine like, what, where are we at with all this? So yeah, that was a scary question.

• 1:48:53Bill Simmons?

  That was the weird thing. I remember Hunter came in. He's so many names. What do we call him? Paul, Triple H, Hunter? Like, what do we go with?

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  I say, and I think it's the worst choice. I say Hunter.

• 1:49:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  But then I hear others say Paul. But I don't know him as a Paul. And then I see, I hear people like, hey, Trips. And I don't think I'm cool enough to hit him with a.

• 1:49:14Bill Simmons?

  Trips?

• 1:49:14Speaker 01

  Hey, Trips.

• 1:49:15Bill Simmons?

  Trips is.

• 1:49:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So, but yeah.

• 1:49:17Bill Simmons?

  That's like when Magic Johnson's teammates called him Buck.

• 1:49:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:20Bill Simmons?

  Like this extra nickname that it was like a special nightclub for the nickname.

• 1:49:23Speaker 01

  I just say Hunter.

• 1:49:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he came in to see us like when I was at ESPN, Grant, we did a pod.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:29Bill Simmons?

  And just being around and watching like different, the different version of him. I was like, oh, I think this is probably who he actually is. Like the low.

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:37Bill Simmons?

  Soft spoken, kinda intense guy.

• 1:49:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:40Bill Simmons?

  But then you see him in wrestling, he's a completely different human. You seem like you're around the same at all times.

• 1:49:47Speaker 01

  I, I mean, I'm a big, I'm a big fan of his. When I left, I was doing things to, I tried to steal a lot of his playbook. In terms of the EVP role, for example. I, I've modeled a lot of stuff after Hunter, but I find it. If I don't ever have the chance, this is a perfect chance to. He is probably one of the top three. He's one of the most important people in my professional life. And it's like, I didn't know he was until so recently.

• 1:50:19Bill Simmons?

  So the first time you left, wasn't he like, kinda shocked?

• 1:50:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:50:23Bill Simmons?

  It's like, really?

• 1:50:24Speaker 01

  He shocked and he was one of the first people to text me when I won a world title outside of WWE. Hey, good job. He had no reason to be watching that show. And maybe just the fact that he kept tabs on me. But all that kind of shame I had over not being able to do, have this run that I've been so blessed to have, that my dad never saw. I, I do take some solace in the fact that I get to be around Hunter.

• 1:50:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  Cause they were tight. So, you know, if my dad was to wake up and walk in the room and see Hunter and I. Holding my hand up at WrestleMania or at these press events or things of that nature, there's something special about that. I don't know if it was destiny or what, but Hunter's been extremely, I watch him at all times almost because I love how he operates at WWE. I love how he runs the team and you know, part of me inside wouldn't mind another shot at, I'd love to try behind the scenes stuff, right?

• 1:51:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, if you get behind the scenes again, I'm just, the two championship belts are too confusing.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  Two cha- so like a world title?

• 1:51:32Bill Simmons?

  The heavyweight championship and then the world, it's like just, we need to call one of them like the WCW belt, just like make it easier in my head. I'm, I'm.

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  You need one, you need one title, huh?

• 1:51:43Bill Simmons?

  I, I, I like the old days when it was the WWF title and the Intercontinental Title and we had the two titles.

• 1:51:48Speaker 01

  You're not wrong. Do you know the reason why two titles, it's not wrestlers and it's not the booking. You know why we have to have those?

• 1:51:54Bill Simmons?

  For the two different shows, right?

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  For the two different shows. It's them, it's their fault. It's the, well, we want the champion on our show. All right. Well, this is that champion and then so.

• 1:52:04Bill Simmons?

  But can you imagine if the NBA did this where it's like, Oklahoma City won the title, but the, what's the, what's the thing they do in Vegas?

• 1:52:12Speaker 01

  The.

• 1:52:13Bill Simmons?

  The commissioner cup?

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:52:15Bill Simmons?

  The commissioner cup was elevated. It was the same level. And it's like, there's the commissioner cup title, the Milwaukee Bucks.

• 1:52:21Speaker 01

  I'll say one thing about the two titles that helps us though, is the guy who's wearing the world title and the guy who's wearing the WWE title, always looking at each other of the thought like, I'm, I'm better than you or I want to be better than you. I want to, and when you get to a live event, like say you're just doing a non televised live event, well, who's on last, right? That's the, so there's a, again, the real competition that sits underneath.

• 1:52:44Bill Simmons?

  How does day one, day two? Cause SummerSlam's two days.

• 1:52:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:47Bill Simmons?

  So what's the better day? Cause like when I went to WrestleMania, I went to day one. Day two's the prestigious day, right? Or does it?

• 1:52:55Speaker 01

  They both, so they both are technically main events. So that's not a lie when we say, oh, WrestleMania main event, they're both.

• 1:53:01Bill Simmons?

  Which day would you rather be on?

• 1:53:02Speaker 01

  Uh, Sunday. Okay. Uh, and that's just again, back to old school wrestler toxic. I want to be the last thing they see before they go home. And, uh.

• 1:53:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, I like the two day thing. Cause I, I went to the famous with my son, the New York WrestleMania that was, I think I'm still there actually. I don't, I think I died. Yeah, the one that was like seven plus hours.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Is this MetLife?

• 1:53:26Bill Simmons?

  I actually think I'm there still right now.

• 1:53:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, those, well, that's why we have two nights.

• 1:53:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:53:30Bill Simmons?

  That was the longest day of my life. My son, of course, loved it, didn't pee once and was locked in.

• 1:53:35Speaker 01

  He was locked in?

• 1:53:35Bill Simmons?

  Locked in.

• 1:53:36Speaker 01

  Well, also, I love, he didn't pee one time. He was, he was in.

• 1:53:39Bill Simmons?

  Didn't pee, didn't want to miss one thing.

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  Night one, there is a, if a wrestler's told you on night one, often they might say one thing outwardly, but inwardly, night one is a huge opportunity because the crowd is prime.

• 1:53:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:56Speaker 01

  It's prime. And I feel like it makes it so that night two, if you're a night two guy, it's a lot harder now. Bar's been set. We just saw, how are you gonna, and then when a good night one guy ends up on night two, they're in the same position. So there's a beauty to night one as well. There really is. I, I like, so I've had four WrestleMania main events. My mom only would say it's three because she, she doesn't count night one. But she's not, I count night one. Yeah. Well, she, she's as tough as they get. She's, she's, she's, uh, I mean, she grew up around Andre the Giant and Dusty Rhodes. So very little I've ever done has impressed her. But when I can get her, it's, it's pretty solid. It's pretty solid.

• 1:54:38Bill Simmons?

  But you need the, you need the title back.

• 1:54:44Speaker 01

  It's funny when you're around someone who was around the business, my dad, and married to him, the majority of his professional career, and still says things like, I was sad you lost the title. I was sad. And then still ask you things like.

• 1:54:58Bill Simmons?

  Nice. You get carried around.

• 1:54:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, my God. It's great for moments like this. So.

• 1:55:02Bill Simmons?

  You could have brought it today.

• 1:55:03Speaker 01

  Bring it today. Everyone takes a picture with it. It's a whole thing. But it's, it's, it's sad though when she calls you then, hey, how you doing? Well, good. Yeah. It's just, she's still, uh, she's still, I guess, it's real to her, you know?

• 1:55:18Bill Simmons?

  That's hard. I think the worst part is losing the title, but then you have to figure out when's the right time to do the, the roll, the roll out of the ring.

• 1:55:27Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:55:28Bill Simmons?

  The walk of shame. It's like a roll of shame.

• 1:55:30Speaker 01

  I yelled at somebody on my walk of shame. Um, somebody was telling me to go side ramp, which is also lovingly called by production loser's lane. Um, and, uh,

• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  I will, I would, I would rather take a $25,000 fine than ever walk side ramp.

• 1:55:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you gotta go main ramp.

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  I will walk up the ramp with my sad face.

• 1:55:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:53Speaker 01

  And I will, cause I want to feel every bit of that.

• 1:55:54Bill Simmons?

  Do what? Do the look back?

• 1:55:56Speaker 01

  Um, depends.

• 1:55:58Bill Simmons?

  The sad look back, wondering what happened?

• 1:56:00Speaker 01

  I think sad look back, sometimes that might be their moment. And if sad, if sad look back takes away from their moment, I just want to know that I walked down this thing and I'm walking back up it. Now, win, lose or draw, that's, that's, that's part of it. So, so many poor, it's never their fault. I apologize to them in advance. If you tell me to go side ramp, you're gonna have to hold the show 30 seconds, cause I'm not going side ramp. It's, I, it's, as odd as that is, that is where I draw the line. I will not be going side ramp. But that's all, that moment is, it's, it's their moment. You roll out, you know, and.

• 1:56:34Bill Simmons?

  We have to go, cause I kept you too long, but I did want to ask you why, why managers, why we just don't have more of them? And why, it feels like the most unexplored terrain in wrestling. Like, why couldn't Shane Gillis do like a three month, he just starts managing somebody, getting involved, doing, doing stuff on the mic, like, what, how did we get away from this? Cyndi Lauper, way back when, when she got involved and did a little thing and it was really fun. I don't, I don't know why we're not messing around with this more.

• 1:57:04Speaker 01

  I think managers, it's a great question. It boils down to nobody wants to train to be a, they don't want to be a manager anymore. For example, Bobby Heenan and J.J. Dillon, two of the greatest managers ever. Jimmy Hart, another outstanding, they trained, they could also be wrestlers. They could take a bump. They probably were referees at some point. They were everything.

• 1:57:27Bill Simmons?

  Oh, so if you're a manager, you're gonna at some point take a couple bumps?

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. So today, people will be like, well, how do I train to be a manager? You, no, you train to be a wrestler. And then maybe wrestling determines that you are a manager and that you can help build somebody up or, or help get heat for somebody or be a, like Bobby Heenan was, be a mouthpiece for somebody.

• 1:57:44Bill Simmons?

  Don't forget about the smoking hot managers. I mean, Miss Elizabeth was. An iconic eighties person.

• 1:57:50Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:57:51Bill Simmons?

  For all teenage boys.

• 1:57:52Speaker 01

  I would love for there to be managers everywhere.

• 1:57:56Bill Simmons?

  Just bring them back, just experiment during the dead part of the WWE schedule. I just feel like they should start trotting them out.

• 1:58:03Speaker 01

  I'm really trying to think of an example of somebody who would be an outstanding manager. But, I mean, so here's another reason why, and this is, you're gonna hate this answer, but this is a true answer why maybe there's no managers anymore.

• 1:58:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:14Speaker 01

  It is hard to be a manager when Mr. Hayman, when Paul Hayman's on the show. Because.

• 1:58:19Bill Simmons?

  He just blows everyone away.

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  He is so much better than everyone.

• 1:58:22Bill Simmons?

  But that's, that, that tells me there should be more managers then.

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  Well, there should be someone trying. There should, you know, so when we had.

• 1:58:28Bill Simmons?

  Paul Hayman's been involved in some of the best wrestling moments of all time.

• 1:58:31Speaker 01

  Oh, and he's partly a mind behind some of these moments. But, you know, and then you had Cornet back in the day, who was such an outstanding manager for his guys and, and really helped. I just feel like more guys who get into wrestling schools and go to NXT or whatever, I, I don't be afraid to look into that. It doesn't mean it's the end. I mean, I was.

• 1:58:50Bill Simmons?

  When I was growing up, we had Blassey, we had Lou Albano.

• 1:58:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:53Bill Simmons?

  We had the Wizard, the Grand Wizard.

• 1:58:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:55Bill Simmons?

  That guy's name.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:57Bill Simmons?

  We had Jimmy Hart.

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:58:59Bill Simmons?

  Um, there were some bad ones, but then there was Missy Hyatt was popping up.

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  And you laid.

• 1:59:03Bill Simmons?

  Texas.

• 1:59:04Speaker 01

  All those managers you just laid out were there for Macho. Who's gonna be Macho's manager? And then instead of picking any of the greats, he picked Liz. I remember she walks in.

• 1:59:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:13Speaker 01

  And it's shocking. He didn't go with the ones he, he, he had.

• 1:59:17Bill Simmons?

  The great gimmick that's sitting there for somebody. You had, I liked when you did your, I'm so handsome, don't touch my face.

• 1:59:23Speaker 01

  Dashing Cody Rhodes?

• 1:59:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that, I like that one, but, um, I like the super rich. I think that's sitting there for somebody. The million dollar man in 2025, that gimmick is just sitting there for somebody.

• 1:59:36Speaker 01

  Here's, here's what it would also take to get a good manager. You need a young talent who wants to take care of his manager. Because often it looks like the manager takes care of the talent on screen.

• 1:59:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the, the relationships, the seesaw is off.

• 1:59:49Speaker 01

  You have to make sure your guy gets there. They're older at this point, you know?

• 1:59:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  Your guy gets there, your guy's okay. He's happy in his life. He's happy to be on the road. I don't know if. A lot of young guys are looking for that person that they could have.

• 2:00:02Bill Simmons?

  Like you're stuck. It's almost like getting a dog.

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  It's very much like fuck.

• 2:00:06Bill Simmons?

  There's a dog.

• 2:00:06Speaker 01

  I have a manager. I gotta go everywhere with this guy.

• 2:00:09Bill Simmons?

  But you, that's the thing. If it's gonna work, you've gotta go everywhere. It's like a tag team. You be, you and I become a tag team. Well, then we have to drive to the show together.

• 2:00:17Speaker 01

  People in the eighties thought they were like, fuck, I got Captain Luabano.

• 2:00:20Bill Simmons?

  A hundred percent.

• 2:00:21Speaker 01

  Gonna fly with this guy.

• 2:00:22Bill Simmons?

  This is showered in a week and a half.

• 2:00:23Speaker 01

  Hunter talks about all the managers that Vince suggested that he hated.

• 2:00:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:28Speaker 01

  And then ultimately they found China and that they were off and running. So it does have to be a good fit.

• 2:00:33Bill Simmons?

  I like the, the rich guy manager or rich guy wrestler thing sitting there for somebody.

• 2:00:38Speaker 01

  Logan Paul with a manager would be really good. Logan Paul would be really great with a manager.

• 2:00:42Bill Simmons?

  Like a former hedge fund crypto guy who cashed out and now he just really wants.

• 2:00:47Speaker 01

  Crypto amongst wrestling fans is we're booing. If, if I ever did a, if I ever did a manager, I would have them not, I wouldn't speak. I'd have them speak. I would no longer speak anymore.

• 2:00:59Bill Simmons?

  We've had a couple like Kane. There were a couple wrestlers that just relied on the manager to talk.

• 2:01:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the other thing. That's a big question that there's a whole room of people like, oh, we forgot about slick. That was another manager.

• 2:01:09Bill Simmons?

  That, that's, I think it's okay that you forgot about slick.

• 2:01:13Speaker 01

  No, no, slick was a great, he was a great manager.

• 2:01:15Bill Simmons?

  He had some good ones.

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  There's so many good managers.

• 2:01:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:18Speaker 01

  And they're.

• 2:01:18Bill Simmons?

  Come back.

• 2:01:19Speaker 01

  Managers.

• 2:01:19Bill Simmons?

  That's my big note.

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  It's a freebie in front of a live crowd. Oh, the manager gets tossed out. The ref gets to do this whole thing. It's a freebie. That's a free reaction.

• 2:01:28Bill Simmons?

  Guest manager is great too.

• 2:01:30Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 2:01:31Bill Simmons?

  The Shane Gillis just popping in for two months, doing one back and forth promo where he's just roasting somebody, but then just kind of being around.

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  I think if you get a manager today who's a bad guy manager, the audience needs to let up a little bit on the cancel. They need to be able to get, get a little buck with it, get a little wild. Cause if we're, if we're not.

• 2:01:50Bill Simmons?

  Let's do it.

• 2:01:50Speaker 01

  If we're not able to get heat, then none of this works. Then it's just, we're all friends. Just hey, good guys wrestling, you know?

• 2:01:57Bill Simmons?

  That shocked me. So I went to the Netflix LA in January.

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:02:01Bill Simmons?

  When Hogan came out and he got booed.

• 2:02:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:05Bill Simmons?

  And he didn't read where the room was and flip, which I thought was, was, I was like, oh, he's just too old now. Cause in the old days, he would have read the room.

• 2:02:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:15Bill Simmons?

  But like, oh, the room's going this way. I'm gonna zag and be like, how dare you guys, brother?

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  He powered, he powered through.

• 2:02:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Cause, cause The Rock's done that a couple of times where he's like, oh, the room's going there. All right. I'm just gonna zag, which is like, uh, it's like wrestler ESP almost.

• 2:02:31Speaker 01

  Right before he went out, um, I, Hogan and I, we had a conversation backstage and he had Real American Beer. He was talking about the beer. He had a duffel bag, like a custom Real American Beer duffel bag with a bunch of beers in it. And I wanted to try one of them. I thought, oh, I would want to try one of Hulk's beers. And I talked to him and then he decided he was gonna give me the whole duffel bag. So I had this whole refrigerated duffel bag and, uh, cause he was there with his son Nick and I, I'm so blessed that I got that moment because I thought the beer was good. Now that beer was good, but my bus driver, thankfully he's not driving, drinking these while driving, but that's his beer. And that bag is still on the bus. It wasn't like a thing that like

• 2:03:14Speaker 01

  some swag that didn't make it. That bag is his bag. That he's, he's about it. So it was a nice gift I got from him because I didn't, you know, I didn't know things were gonna go like they did. But, uh, yeah, I got the Real American Beer duffel bag.

• 2:03:25Bill Simmons?

  What was the number one most starstruck you've been by a wrestler?

• 2:03:28Speaker 01

  It might've been him when he came to WCW, uh, when I was a kid, cause seeing him, I'd only ever seen him really on TV. Um, gosh, but, but I didn't get it.

• 2:03:41Speaker 01

  It's a real weird answer. The most starstruck and more scared I ever was, oh, man.

• 2:03:49Bill Simmons?

  Dr. Aziz Gakka?

• 2:03:50Speaker 01

  That guy was, uh, no, close. Oh, I say close, but.

• 2:03:53Bill Simmons?

  Shockmaster?

• 2:03:53Speaker 01

  Harley Race.

• 2:03:54Bill Simmons?

  Harley Race?

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  Shockmaster was married to my Aunt Bobby, so I wasn't scared of Shockmaster at all.

• 2:03:59Bill Simmons?

  Is that true?

• 2:03:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, uh, and Berkeley, this is just some fun lore for you guys. Berkeley, his son is the, uh, beloved, we love Berkeley, uh, is the timekeeper at Ringside. He's been that for many years. Yeah. He's very good at his job.

• 2:04:12Bill Simmons?

  So Harley Race?

• 2:04:13Speaker 01

  Harley Race was the. The first, I felt like Harley Race, who was older and Vader's manager at the time, seven time NWA World Champion, I felt like he could still be NWA World Champion. He looked like.

• 2:04:23Bill Simmons?

  Harley Race, there's, there's a couple of guys where you just feel like these are the guys you want on your side of the bar at 1:30 in the morning. I think he's like number one, right? He always used to talk about how he could kick everybody's ass in real life.

• 2:04:36Speaker 01

  You know, yeah, him, Haku. I feel today like it's an easy choice if you're going into a bar fight. You hear all these creative answers, like, I'm just gonna take Chad Gable because he's a former Olympian alternate. And then any of the Samoans, we're winning the fight. We're gonna, you know, I don't have to even get up. Like, yeah, he got him. Oh, like one little fake kick at the end, like, yeah.

• 2:04:57Bill Simmons?

  I think Undertaker probably had a 15 year run there. On the 90s, 2000s, where it's like, that's your, that's your choice in the dark alley.

• 2:05:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you could get creative with it. There'd be some fun choices, but to me, I'm, some of these athletes I'm around, I'm like, ha, nah, just Chad Gable. Is everyone's getting twisted up and no, it's not gonna be violent. He's just gonna put him down in that uncomfortable, humbling type way, you know?

• 2:05:16Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:05:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:17Bill Simmons?

  That's smart.

• 2:05:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:19Bill Simmons?

  This was great.

• 2:05:20Speaker 01

  This was so much fun.

• 2:05:20Bill Simmons?

  Good luck, uh, good luck with that freaking turncoat jerk Cena.

• 2:05:24Speaker 01

  I love how, how upset you are with him.

• 2:05:27Bill Simmons?

  Um, he let down two generations of children.

• 2:05:30Speaker 01

  I'll, I'll be upset if he doesn't show up like the John we all know and love. I'll be upset if we just get this.

• 2:05:37Bill Simmons?

  Maybe he can come back to some sense of human normalcy versus shitting on his fanbase.

• 2:05:42Speaker 01

  John is a man of his word. The reality is 11 shows left. He might be that wrestler that like, oh yeah, it's gonna, oh no. And he's gone. So.

• 2:05:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, if we've learned anything in the history of professional wrestling, it's that nobody ever actually retires. So I, it's, I believe it when I see it.

• 2:05:59Speaker 01

  You, and I think that one you will see. He might be the one person who is more serious than ever about it's time. You guys are, you, you.

• 2:06:06Bill Simmons?

  Unless there's some like stone cold, like had a neck injury, like he had to stop, you know, like they, if there's some sort of physical thing where it's like, you can't do this anymore. But for the most part, hard to walk away.

• 2:06:16Speaker 01

  I don't even think we'll see John returning in cameo roles. I think he, this is it.

• 2:06:22Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 2:06:23Speaker 01

  Which is why at SummerSlam, I'm very excited because as much as.

• 2:06:27Bill Simmons?

  Well, maybe he should retire and think about some of the choices he made over the last year.

• 2:06:30Speaker 01

  Do you tell him? You, you tell him, you know?

• 2:06:33Bill Simmons?

  Letting down entire arenas of people.

• 2:06:35Speaker 01

  Kid's crying.

• 2:06:37Bill Simmons?

  Kids crying. Really terrible. Hit me with my watch, too. Great to spend time with you in person. Thank you so much. Better yourself, club. Yeah. We're in it. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Cody Rhodes, thanks to Eduardo and Gahow as well. I'm maybe coming back on Sunday. I will definitely have a podcast over the next seven days. Don't forget about rewatchables on Monday and I will see you in a couple of days.

• 2:07:16Bill Simmons?

  Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here, visit gambling helpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-8778-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. This episode is brought to you by Core Power Protein Shakes. You know how we always talk about the little things that separate great athletes? Post-workout recovery is a big factor.

• 2:08:00Bill Simmons?

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