Welcome to Games with Names.

I'm Julian Gentleman.

They're Jack and Kyler, and we are on a mission to find the greatest game of all time.

Today's episode, we are covering Hell in a Cell from the twenty twenty two Cody Rhodes versus Seth Rawlins WWE match with legendary WWE champion die Hard Chicago Bears fan and the man who's married to Becky Lynch Seth freaking Rawlins, And we're talking what it's like to wrestle a guy with a torn peg.

The first time he falls down in the match, I believe is like he does like a He has this move called a Cody cutter where he jets off the second row.

That's the first thing, first time he fell down in the in the match, and I remember after him saying like it was the worst pain he'd ever felt.

And then they adrenaline, you know, got him through the rest of it.

But that first one he said was the awful, like awful, awful.

The best wrestling prop of all time.

I mean, it's not a free for al.

You have an idea of what you're gonna do, what weapons you're looking for.

You know what I'm saying, and some of it's you know, a lot of it's just wrestling.

You know, there's tables under the ring, there's a stick under the ring.

There's a toolbox if you need it, there's you know, the stairs are out there.

Obviously, the cage is a weapon in this to be used.

He is Mount rushmore of heels.

We think about him mostly as a babyface, but honestly, I think his heel stuff had the most impact on business long term, probably hul Koga.

And we talk about NFL food in this week's Chill Zone, presented by COR's Light.

You gotta stick around to the very end.

Let's go Games and Names, a production of iHeartRadio June bid, twenty twenty two, All State Arena, Rosemont, Illinois.

Two men, one cage, and plenty of bad blood.

Time to end this bitter feud once in for all.

This This is the torn Pack match.

Welcome to Games with Names.

Today we are looking at twenty twenty two Hell in a Cell Rhodes versus Rawlins with Seth freaking Rawlins Seth in one sentence, Oh gosh, why did you pick this match a one sentence?

I think there are so many stories that come from this one match.

Is this the greatest match of all time?

No sounds the greatest match of all time?

Not at all.

What is the greatest match of all time?

While wrestling is art, so it's very subjective.

So everybody's got a different favorite match of all time, you know what I mean.

So I don't know, I think I have Gosh, do I have favorite matches of all time?

Oh?

Man?

You know the ones that stick with you were interesting because they're not the greatest wrestling matches of all time.

You know, people talk about Macho Man Randy Savage got him on the shirt here against Riddy Steamboat WrestleMania three as one of the greatest matches of all time.

You know, Sean Michael's Undertaker from WrestleMania maybe one of the greatest matches of all time.

You know, this match was very highly rated, But as I watch it back, I'm not like, oh, this is the greatest hell in the cell match of all time.

So tough to say.

I love the like a you know, when I was a kid, all Ultimate Warrior Haul Cogan WrestleMania six in Toronto had a huge impact on me.

Brett Hart, Shawn Michaels, WrestleMania twelve main event Iron Man Match had a huge impact on me.

But then like randomly, you know, Samoa jo versus Kenza Kobashi from a Ring of Honor show in the Manhattan Center, and like, I don't even know, two thousand and four or something like that had a huge impact on me as well.

So it sort of just depends that it's hard.

That's the beautiful thing about out you know, our sports and our art form is that it impacts people in different ways across generations, and so there's no one perfect piece of art.

It's just you get to pick, you get whatever whatever makes you feel a certain thing.

I think that could be the best answer.

That was amazing.

I think that could be the best answer we ever had for that fucking we ask every.

Someone wants answer that question with football?

What's the greatest game of all time?

Football?

All right?

Sometimes simple as the.

Fact that a man, man, Well, we appreciate you coming here to the Nutthouse.

How are things going today?

What do you uh?

We're over here getting the rotator?

Yeah, you know, I Australia.

From Australia, per thought, that's right where I was wrestling Cody Roads again for the first time since this match, as a matter of fact.

So I did what we call a coast to coast headbutt.

So I jumped from one turnbuckle all the way across the rod to the other turnbuckle where Cody Rhodes was to hanging upside down, and I head butted him.

But in the landing, I didn't stick it.

I did not stick the landing.

I rotated a little bit to my left, landed hard on my left elbow, jolted it up into the shoulder, felt it go right away.

I was like, Oh, we got a lot left to do in this match.

We got a lot left to do.

How much can I do?

I was like, can I do it?

Should we go in a different direction with the finish?

What should we do here?

I was there was a lot going on in my head.

Luckily I didn't have to pick him up for anything, Cody that is, so fortunately I was able to get through everything.

I took his finisher off the top rope, which was pretty scary at that point because I knew I was gonna land harshly on my shoulder, so I kind of kept it real like tucked real tight, and you know, I don't know that I did any more damage than the rotator.

But yeah, two weeks out of surgery.

Now, you know it's about a six month recovery.

So we'll see how it goes.

Now.

Were you getting flashbacks like the rolls to turn from this match when he had a torn peck?

Yeah, back in twenty twenty two, like, did you guys have code word ering?

Eight bubbs?

Like yo?

Arms hanging on by a thread here?

Like what do we going?

What are we doing here?

Well?

I landed and I immediately felt it.

Go.

I pinned him, I covered him, he kicks out.

I think I'm talking to the ref and I go, oh, that wasn't smart.

So that that wasn't good.

Though you hurt?

I'm like, yeah, how bad?

I'm not sure and you need to change something.

Let me think about it.

Now we're good, all right, let's go got your turtle.

So it just was what it was, you know, at that point we were twenty minutes deep in the match, or more so, the adrenalines just yeah, I mean, but I could feel like it was hard for me to raise it.

I mean you can see if you watch that match back, you can see me kind of it's dangling at my side.

You know what I'm saying.

So I can't throw even my punches or my forearms correctly.

Like it was hard to do what I needed to get done.

It hurt when you probably weren't doing anything, and then you would like get muscles, steam up some power and then do something, yeah, anytime, and then like then the pulse would start to come when you're not moving probably.

Yeah, you know that's it.

Yeah, everything it would, it would, it would.

It was really tender, and it was starting to get worse as the match was going on, and it was it was a fucking warrior.

It's just you know what, is it stupidity or is it courageousness?

I don't know.

I mean, where's the line.

I think it's a perfect both where I think that's what I think.

That's that's what a professional is.

Hey, you have a job at hand, you signed up for it.

You're gonna even when ship hits the fan, You're still gonna go out there and you're gonna give the people what they fucking wanted.

And that's what a professional is.

That's what you did.

Yeah, I mean, that's my mindset is always to like finish.

Every time I've gotten an injury you know, you guys are banged up all the time.

You can't tell me.

All these people want to say it's just fake.

Go go, go fake.

Put your head into a fucking a staircase of a steel staircase, like ship happens.

You guys are getting fucked up out there.

I look at this out like that's crazy.

You got to go do it like the next night.

How do you recover?

It's still real to me, damn it.

Yeah, I mean there's a level of physicality to it, no doubt about it.

And obviously things happen that you know, you're gonna just accrue injuries from all the years of I mean I've been doing this for over twenty years now, so it's you know, two thousand plus matches, like there's no there's of course you're going to get ripped to shreds.

You know.

I've had a few surgeries on my knees, first one on my shoulder, had one on my neck, the whole nine so it's up, up and down.

But you know, it's just there's fakes, a weird word for it, because like no one's like we're not telling anybody that it's real, right, We're we're a physical actors is what we are.

So this is it's you know, it's it's predetermined, but like fake is kind of nonsense.

I think I think we're pasted it as performers, but I think our audience is kind of passed it as well.

I think they sort of just understand what it is.

You know, it's not the eighties, the seventies, even the early nineties when we're trying to like trick people, right, you know, we're not trying to trick you into thinking what we're doing is like, I mean, this is real, a real competition.

Now, there are there are elements of reality to it, but that's what makes it.

That's what makes it special to me, is that gray area where you kind of I don't know, I don't know if that was real or not, you know, Plus the excitement, the stories, you know, the pomp and circumstance and all that.

So it's it's a really cool art form.

Man, I love it.

How many surgeries have you had, Let's see, I've had one, two on my knee, one on my neck.

Those are spots.

So yeah, the big one on my knee ten years ago, I did like just a scope on this one to get rid of some of the mis because it was bugging me.

And then the shoulder, those are the big three.

Got broken my jaw, but I didn't need surgery on it.

I got next surgery to kind of alleviate some pressure that was going on on a nerve that I had there.

So I think those are the big ones, the four big ones right there, modern date glad me.

Hopefully I'm done.

I want to be done, to make hope.

I don't want to.

I don't want to do anymore.

They're not They're not fun, you know, no, not exciting, badge of honor.

But also let's just be done.

Well, let's talk about it, Okay, let's talk about your sports fandom.

Chicago Bears fanatic.

Bears baby.

Well, I'm from Iowa.

Iowa has no professional sports teams anywhere in sight, so we just get to pick and choose.

Really, that's kind of that's kind of normal.

The Iowa people go up to that Midwest, Yeah, Chicago.

A lot on Iowans or Chicago.

I mean, you get a lot of floaters, you know what I mean, You go who's good right now?

Right right now, we're probably filled with Kansas City Chiefs fans, whereas in you know, nineteen ninety three, there wasn't a Kansas City Chiefs fan in sight, right.

But at the end of the day, my grandpa was a Bears fan, My dad, aunts, uncles, everybody was a Bears fan.

So I grew up in Chicago Bear fandom.

Grew up a Bulls fan as well, oddly enough, not a Cubs fan.

Cardinals Cardinals fan.

My my grandpa like the Cardinals.

Here, we're the Cardinals.

Was there a Chicago's cardinalstall football?

Yeah?

The Arizona Cardios start in Chicago.

Yeah, but but yeah, so big Bears fan, big Bears fan, I had.

I had a little affair.

I won't lie.

In the mid nineties with the San Francisco forty nine ers, it was very difficult, you know.

I just the Bears were awful.

What am I gonna do?

You know what am I?

We're watching the Bear or the Bears stink every Sunday.

I don't get it.

My dad, my Grandpa's ripping up these you know, stuffed animals and throwing stuff at the TV, and I'm like, why are we why do we like this team?

I didn't understand loyalty.

I didn't get it, you know, so I was like, loo, look at this forty nine ers team.

They're gold and red.

They played in Candlestick.

They got Steve Young and Jerry Rice and Ricky Waters and oh dude, Brent Jones.

Then they had Ken Norton and Richard Dentz over there, and then Charles Haley Dion comes in.

Merton Hanks in the secondary with.

This, he was part of the finding people of the NFL, so he would find you.

But anytime you get fined for like, you know, violation of uniform or illegal hit, you always have a hearing.

Yeah, He'll Merton Hanks got you, got you, chick, I know, but I love them.

So then then I kind of like fell out of football a little bit and I kind of just left the way.

And then I came back and I came back and I said, of course, loyalty, I understand it.

Now.

I'm an adult, I'm a grown man.

I understand loyalty, I understand family, I understand that camaraderie.

And so I've been a Bears fan through and through for the last twenty five years or so.

Yes, you gotta be kind of excited right now with them.

I mean I am, Yeah, I'd like you know, every year you want it to be the year.

But I think the idea of we're looking at where they're at now, they're four and three.

Look at where Caleb's at.

But it's Ben Johnson's first year as a head coach, it's Caleb's first year in the system.

Last year was I mean just a shit show from a front office perspective.

A lot of perspective, yeah, a lot of perspective, but I mean that you know, it all filters down, so it's like they were really struggling.

I think if you keep this Bend Caleb relationship, you'll see a lot of progress in the next few years.

And I hope, I hope that we can start to compete with the Packers who've got their ship down, and the Vikings were very well coached.

You know, I'm not in or out on JJ McCarthy just yet.

But what about the Lions.

The Lions, dude, fucking stacked, bro stacked.

Dan Campbell again, got just got everybody locked in.

Put in Hutch.

They just signed my guy a big.

Deal, big deal.

Good for him, dude.

That's the signs of a good franchise.

Just when you draft, develop and pay your own guys love it.

You know, they're they've Saint Brown, yep, Penny Johnson, Gibbs, now hutch Yeah, bringing golf.

I mean, they're they're looking good and they're they're only getting better.

A little worried about those vikings.

I mean, I am too, Bro.

You I said it right when they let Darnald out the building.

Guy got your thirteen wins out of the building.

Now, dude, what a tough spot though, because you draft McCarthy.

Look, we don't know what he's gonna be, but you know, you know what I mean, And I know we're all confident in our ability to coach.

I know we all got ego.

Bro.

That's that's a crazy that's a crazy move.

Because Sam Darnold's looking great over in Seattle.

In Seattle, Yeah, yeah, not look, you know what I mean.

And and so that's the NFL.

It's been funny, it's been fun storylines this year.

Oh, it's been a great season.

Chiefs coming out of nowhere.

They're just I never looked I never looked down on I knew they were going to be what they're gonna be.

They're they're already better than last year.

Everybody's waiting for him to slip.

You know, I'm like, dude, Tom Holmes, like thirty years old, what are you talking about?

What do you what do you mean when the lights come on, He's going to be.

There there, come on.

It's fine.

And now they look like they're unbeatable.

I mean they look that.

Besides, I mean the Colts are looking amazing, which is a great story Patriots.

Drake May May, Dude, that's exciting.

Huh oh my god.

I mean it is a bear he could have been.

He could have been a bear he could have I mean that draft class is pretty sick.

I mean, JJ's the only one who's like the verdicts totally out on because he just has been hurt.

But I mean you look at those three guys.

Between William J.

Daniels, but they still need that.

They all need to take the next step.

The person who's developing the quickest, I think right now is Drake May Like James Daniels, he's taking a step because.

Of the injuries.

Yeah, he's had the sophomore The injuries have kind of hampered him.

And then once he comes back, everyone and J.

J.

McCarthy's in the same category.

When you come back and you haven't played six weeks.

These guys are in mid cheap mid season form.

Yeah, you haven't even practiced.

You're taking live bullets, you know what I mean.

You got to come in and you're you've only had nine quarters or something like that.

And then these guys, I mean, because that's what I remember when I've come back, I missed a couple of weeks from injury.

You come back and you're feeling like you got fresh legs.

But these guys are all seasoned.

They've had like a rep more on, like just subconscious ship that's gonna happen.

So you find it harder to reacclimate then into the offense.

When you come back from an.

Injury, you got to reacclimate fast.

You got for sure, or you know where I was, you wouldn't go back in.

But yeah, dude, it's it's it's gonna be a fun weekend this weekend and going forward.

I like to call this the the pasteurization period of the NFL season.

Oh what's that?

What do you mean by that?

We know, when you're milking a cow, all that fat in the cream it rises to the top, and right now we're in that part where it's starting to rise and cream season.

You get cream teams, right, you cream teams, But what's at the very top?

What do you take from the top?

What do you make at the top of it?

I don't know what butter?

So which ones are gonna be the butter teams?

Which ones are gonna be those butter teams?

Scrape off on that this analogy.

Really, you're a fucking guy on that.

Goddamn sure.

So, like years ago on TV, I wanted to do something to give a tip of the cap to Bacho man so the cream to the rises to the top, and.

I just did that.

You came up with this whole milking analogy, which is fantast.

This will end up with you doing a fox like Sunday like interstitial from like a farm someplace.

I just see it.

You're going to be under a cow with the others the whole for sure.

You know, do what you gotta do.

I understand it.

I get that, I get that.

There he is, who's your rises to the top.

Yeah, what a time, What a character, What a character.

I stole some of my current character from him.

He was a big inspiration for a lot of it.

Well, parts like just the over the top nature, just the like because when I was when I was developing the visionary character, it was like coming right out of COVID, and we did we did live programming during COVID, just as NFL played games with nobody there.

We did our TV shows with nobody there.

But it became you know, I mean from an NFL perspective, you guys had like the cardboard cutouts in the stands or whatever, and it was like it was, I mean, it was so you could it was boring, right, it was dead.

There's no energy.

That's how it was.

Where we did ours in the performance center and then later we did some residencies in the local arenas in Florida.

But one of the things that I noticed when I was watching the program, I have my baby in December and I have two months off or maybe a month off or so, and when I'm watching the program, I just notice how like everything was, and it was just like everything was toned way down.

All the promos, the backstage, everything was just muted.

It felt slow, and it felt like everybody was trying to follow this trend like Roman Reigns is really hot at the time.

He's doing this tribal chief thing where everything's you know just you know, mob bossy, very quiet and understated, and and so when I was watching the show, I was like, man, I didn't love this about wrestling.

I loved like larger than life, all right, colors over the top and macho man Randy Savage, bam, you know what I mean, the way he delivered his promos.

But he could still be taken serious when it was time to fight.

Rick Flair, Rick de Model, Martel, mister perfect ravishing, Rick Rude.

These were the guys, the villains that I looked at and hated but loved at the same time.

So I took some elements of those guys when I was thinking about what the visionary could be.

Awesome man, Yeah, Randy was probably one of the biggest, the biggest influences on the character.

I would say that I get in a wormhole at least three times a week of just footage macho man Randy Savage and Italy fucking scheme in his fucking thig or doing the I love.

He was just like you said, it makes it so over the top.

It puts you in a good mood.

Puts you in a great mood.

You can't you can't everybody can do macho man.

You know, everybody can do everybody tries to do a macho man.

But you remember the costumes, you remember the the you know his eyes, you remember the promo, all of it.

He's just he's a legend.

For if you were to ever, like look at our group chat, it's like ninety macho man mean back and forth.

We communicate in macho man clips pretty much.

Now, what's it take to be a good heel?

Man?

What's it take to be a good heel?

That's interesting because modern day heels are so different now than back in the day.

Right, what are the differences?

Uh, well, it used to be how much can I get the audience to hate me?

Which I think is still a primary mover.

Right, that's still one of the main goals is hot.

You have to be willing to understand what the audience hates and do that.

Right, what's going to get people angry?

Like, what's going to incite people?

Because your your main goal is a heel, Your main job is to get people to like the other guy, to like the babyface, Right, so you have to be able to kind of like find the things that are really gross or that really you know, they poke at people or whatever it is, and not be afraid to go there.

I think a lot of times what our heels do nowadays.

Back in the day, the old guys didn't care.

They all knew they were rotten sobs.

They didn't care.

Nowadays, I think everybody sees themselves in a way that they've got no flaws or that they've got they don't want to admit that they've got these types of tendencies inside of them.

You know, they're, Oh, I'm not I'm not that pery, I'm not a selfish person.

I'm not I don't want everything to be about me like I'm not.

I'm not mean like that.

I wouldn't do that, And it's hard for them to then become that character when it's time to when the red light's on, time to go.

I think it's just you have to take an honest look at who you are, understand that we've all got good and bad inside of us, and you have to be unafraid to find those rotten parts of you and figure out how to manifest them into a character live on screen.

You have to be willing to put yourself out there.

Now, I will say this, it's much easier in twenty twenty five.

To be a bad guy than it is to be a good guy.

Because everybody wants to hate everything.

That's what they all want to do everything.

No one wants to get online and talk about how much they love something because no one cares.

They just want to get online and bitch about anything, anything they can find.

They want to complain about anything.

So it's so easy to troll people, to mess with people.

It's so easy to just get people to hate you.

It's like, there's no wrong, you can do no wrong.

You can do no wrong.

There's a bad guy.

You can screw up left and right.

You can mess up your promos, you can screw up in the ring, doesn't matter.

They'll boo you for it and then your gold.

You know.

So I think I think it's just a different place.

The thing that's different, and I'll get into that, is that our audience nowadays is so intelligent that they know you're playing a character.

And if you do that too well, then they start to like you, and so you stop losing the ability to heal, to heal.

That's interesting.

You start, you start there's so I mean.

Too much, well we we I mean heels have always been cool, But there was a difference because we stop trying to hide what we do because we let everybody in on the secret.

You know.

Now everybody's sort of just playing along with the heel.

There's not a lot of truth to it.

They know that, you know, like they're going to see me, you know, or hear me or whatever on this podcast and it's not this guy, right And I can't be that guy on this podcast because that's not legitimate.

So the way that the culture is, the way the media is, and the way that everybody understands what pro wrestling is makes it more difficult to be a successful heel long term.

So I think you have to understand that.

Like my last babyface that I had kind of maybe two years ago, it was like sort of right off of this.

So I'm a monster heel.

Here in twenty twenty two, we're talking about this Hell in the Cell with Cody.

By the end of this year, I'm a massive babyface.

So this is in like July or something.

I don't even in June.

It was in June.

By the end of this year, we're in Madison Square Garden.

I'm doing a stomp to Matt Riddle's head in Mason Square Garden on steel Steps to people singing my song, and they had no choice but to flip me into a babyface the following year, and I ended up working with Logan Paul at the following year's WrestleMania as a babyface.

So within a year's time, I go from being the most hated guy in the world in this match to being one of the most beloved people on our roster.

And I would say it is simply because I was doing my job too well and the audience respected that, they appreciated it.

And now was that because the audience is so dialed into the craft, the whole picture of wrestling.

I think so oops that they appreciate you, like being so good at your crap that they just like you.

Even Yeah, I mean, I couldn't do it.

I couldn't be mean enough at that point, Like nothing I would do.

Like I said, I stomped the guy's head into steel Steps, who was a fairly beloved character, and it didn't matter.

Like I could Roman Reigns, who was very over the time, I control him and laugh in his face and people thought it was hilarious.

I could.

I went from being ridiculed for the silly outfits that I was wearing to it becoming like, Oh, what's Seth gonna wear this week?

You know?

So I was doing all the things, the same things that I had done to get Boot out of every building, and now it had just turned the other direction, and they were like, this is great.

And I do think it just has to do with the audience understanding what it is and appreciating the effort that I was putting into the character, into being a bad guy.

You can never go to heal, though, can you.

I mean, there are some lines you might not want to cross, but I mean, I'm I'm pretty I'm pretty open as far as that is concerned, you know what I mean.

There's some things you don't want to say that I find that will turn the audience off.

So you can't go to here.

You you can, yeah, yeah you can.

And and I think because our company is a publicly traded company, now you know you have shareholders, you have advertisers for TV, we had to ask yeah, so that so there are a lot of things that you can say that you know, if it affects the bottom line, then I've gone too far.

As logan Paul's as a wrestler.

As a wrestler, he's great.

Yeah, he's pre athletic.

He's extremely athletic.

I mean he's a young cat, he's extremely athletic.

One of the things that he excels in.

And I don't want to, you know, say too many nice things about the guys, but one of the things that he's great at is he knows he doesn't know anything coachable exactly coachable.

He knows he doesn't know.

He respects craft that of you guys.

Once he got in and he realized what it is we do, he was like, oh, dude, this is awesome.

I'm in love with this.

This is so much fun.

And like I remember working with him or like early on seeing him work and talk to him, and he like he was blown away by the level of intricacy, like the thoughts and the planning and the processing that goes on behind the scenes.

Like he didn't I don't think he fully understood what kind of scope there.

I mean I think he just thought, oh, that's a bunch of guys would just show up and they're underwear and oil up and go out there and do this fake fighting thing.

He didn't understand like the amount of brain power that it took to be good at this job.

Yeah, and so when.

He really he's got a lot of brain power.

So you like, yeah, you think about like this guy is like a master marketer.

Yes, like he's literally grown up in this shit.

Yeah, and he you know what I mean.

So and in a world full of people that want to be Logan Paul's now, I mean everybody you can ask kids these days, what do they want to be an influencer?

Everyone insane?

It's nuts.

Right to be successful in that field is very, very difficult when everybody's trying to do the same things.

So, yeah, he's got a lot of brain backer.

But that was the thing.

He's very coachable.

He knew what he didn't do, and he trusted the people me and whoever else he was working with that had the experience to tell him what to do.

And then he's a quick learner because he didn't have he had no notions about himself.

He's like, I can they tell me what to do?

I'm smart enough that I can soak this up like a sponge and just get better and better.

And you've seen that in his career For a guy that's had less than twenty matches, I think he's extremely He's gotten very good, very fast.

It almost doesn't have any bad habits to pull from.

Yeah, you don't have to, like, you know, unteach him things.

Yeah, he doesn't have anything that needs to unlearned.

Some coaches, you know, when you draft a guy or young football players, you know, they sometimes they're coached habits that don't fit into your system, you know.

So it's it's it's a big it's a big thing to try to coach that into a guy that's not coachable.

Yeah, you know, and when you have a coachable guy that doesn't have that much, it's almost like starting from zero, so you get to get you get to maneuver how he goes from there.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's basically how it is.

He's like a blue chip prospect.

You'd you know, number one draft pick right out and you'd be like, oh, this is a guy.

But he was so coachable and he wasn't stuck in his habits, and he wasn't like, no, this works for me, so let's just do that.

You know.

He was very much like, here's the things I can do.

Please help me make sense of it.

Please please help me take my athleticism and put it in the right spot.

That's cool to hear.

That's cool to hear.

Now, before we move on, you were a healing this, so we got to talk.

More heel bad stuff.

Yeah, bad guy.

Who's the Mount Rushmore of heels?

Oh wow, that's a great question.

I don't know that.

I've answered the Mount Rushmore question quite often in my life in general, but not the heel Mount Rushmore.

I think you probably start with Rick Flair.

Rick Flair, this was on the show.

He was just here.

Rick was on, He was just on.

He was wild man.

He is my guy.

He's he's ready to rock and roll, just flying.

He's a nut job, he's just stealing.

Job, having a hard time.

He's one of the best heels of all time.

Gosh, man, how much?

How far on the way back machine?

I used to hate the rock when he was kind of a heel to rock.

Yeah, I mean he.

Was then he got too popular.

See he did his job too well.

Because I was a stone cold kid me too, still am.

Yes, Oh gosh, you know, there's an argument to be made at Triple H was really good for a while, extremely hated for a variety of reasons during run strong heel These are two great heels.

Gosh, who else is in there?

That's just really the worst, you know what.

I'll say this, We think about him mostly as a babyface, but honestly, I think his heel stuff had the most impact on business long term.

Probably Hulk Hogan, Yes, Hollywood Hogan.

Yeah, because he because Hollywood.

The Hollywood Turn was one of them.

I was so fucking sad, dude.

One of the biggest, you know, one of the biggest moments, watershed moments in our industry when you took the biggest hero in the business.

And yeah, he had the black beard and everything, and he.

Was a very detestable character at that time, but it was almost kind of like rad or cool again.

I know, I hate him At first, though.

I was like, oh, I mean he broke he broke hearts, you know what I mean, He broke cards, He crushed all those kids who were halcomniacs growing up, you know, praying, praying, training, prayers, training, vitamins, all that red and yellow white.

Yeah, so that's one of them.

And then gosh, I think maybe if I had to go, I think I have to go further back.

Maybe King Harley Race Harley was nasty.

What years was he dude, what Harley was like?

Who?

I think Rick told the story about him pulling a gun out Hulk Cogan on our episode.

That seems right.

Yeah, yeah, Harley was like the seventies, sixties, seventies, those were his probably his big decades.

I would say, oh, man, but he was just he was rotten.

There was nothing about him likable, you know what I mean.

But he was also like there he is, I mean, look at that, Look at that scumbag.

The sweetest man you'll ever meet too.

Like he I mean, he's passed away now, but when he would come around, we would be into the Saint Louis area or Kansas City area.

He lived in Missouri, ran in wrestling school I think till his till his passing.

But he uh, he was the nicest guy I ever, one of the nicest guys back as you ever met, and not one of those old timing guys.

It was like, oh, today's kids don't know nothing like he was not like that.

He was very cool, very easy to talk to.

But man as a as a performer, just mean.

He was mean.

He was like the embodiment of a bully and he was mean.

But he would when the time was right.

The same with Rick.

He would always give it back to his babyface.

So he would always allow his babyface.

I mean he was great at bumping around like a maniac and selling for his babyface and stuff like that when the time was right.

So I mean those are those are four of them.

I mean you could there's probably some more in there.

But Beggy Lynch beg He's great.

She's an incredible heel.

I think people again think of her as oh the man, big babyface run twenty nineteen WrestleMania main event and all that.

She's an incredible heel.

Yeah, she is awesome.

She was awesome in her first kind of like he'll run his big time becks where you know, the main purpose of her being a heel was to help Bianca bell Air reach know superstardom at WrestleMania, which she did.

And now what she's doing with the Women's Intercinal Championship, I mean, her heel work is off the charts.

And I told her a million times, I'm like, you're gonna be a babyface out of this because you're too good at it and no one else is doing what you're doing.

So you guys have those talks at home, oh all the time.

Of course, that's awesome.

That's one of the things that you know makes it easy is that we're both in the same profession, so we understand each other and we can bounce off each other, and she can tell me when you know something I'm doing is working or vice versa.

So yeah, I mean, she's she's one of the best.

She's the best, in my opinion, female to ever lace them up.

Yeah, not just me saying, other people are saying it.

Sports Illustrated says it.

That's that's her bit right now.

Case she didn't know, so yeah, but she's I mean she is.

She's just one of the best to ever do it, regardless of gender, and she's a pioneer for the sport for women for sure.

But she's also not afraid to take risks and she's not afraid to help get other people over.

I mean, I can't say enough about her.

She's one of the best promos in the business again, gender aside, and one of the only in my opinion, women that you can put a microphone in their hand, send them out to the ring and just let them go for ten to fifteen minutes, like you you can't do that with a lot of other women in our industry, and she's she's a special She's definitely a unicorn in that regard.

Now, when you guys are parenting the kids, are we parenting them as heels or a little bit?

No, we're big baby faces where we're too too much.

We need to be more.

We need to be more heelish to the to the kid man, she spoiled the rotten.

That's hard.

You know that this is our first husband and wife on the show.

That's right.

We're making history today.

We're making it.

Really.

Yeah, that's true.

Hell no, no, Genie Bush.

And friends of ours, friends of ours, they're great, They're great.

I'm actually Jay's got a podcast.

I just did it.

Oh you did it nice, careful.

Yeah, I'm gonna ask all the hard hitting questions in the first two seconds.

Jesus Hernanda, is this that?

I'm like?

Oh god, he went straight forward?

Jam man up first, bro, jeez, Louise, Jay Mormer like, tell you enough, good Jesus sorry, maybe jay Less?

How about that got him?

Got him?

Look at us.

We're really We'll be right back after this quick break, Let's go back into time where the match took place.

And talk about some of the pop pop culture going around.

Wow this play.

This took place on June fifth, twenty twenty two.

Hop movie Hop, gun, mavere.

What a movie?

What's a what a movie?

It literally my my dad was just here for eight days.

I think he watched it four more times.

Oh Dad, I mean I get got me to give me the goose pimples, got me the tears in the opening credits.

You know what I mean when you just hear the song, Oh.

Did it save the movie industry?

I don't know.

A movie street still not doing hot.

God blessed a.

Couple more of those top guns.

Yeah yeah, yeah, w w taking the viewers dog.

You know, it's it's pretty crazy that that's exactly, isn't that what we just it just happened, the strikes in the run.

It was the literal same plot thing.

But that wasn't iron It wasn't that.

It was like China.

I don't know, look it up all right, number one song as it was by Harry Styles.

I don't know that song.

You know, it's not the same as it was.

I don't know that the Johnny depth Amber Herd case was going that swept the names that that was.

What it was, the resolution that they were both just jerks.

I think they're both.

I think he won, he did, which is slightly worse thin slightly.

Yeah, that was it.

Yeah, they were both.

They were both awful, terrible, toxic relationship.

She was slightly worse.

That's right.

That that sucks, man.

That is let's that's crazy.

Super Bowl Champions with l A.

Rams.

Aaron Rodgers was the m v P.

You know, Aaron Rodgers fan, the Bears guy bro.

He owned them, he owns them.

I know we have Pittsburgh on the schedule later this season.

I am terrified of that game because our secondary is absolutely trash right now.

Trash.

I mean, they don't have a ton of people to throw to.

I don't know what.

Was there a news on the firemth injury.

He looked like his pretty banged up.

The DK trade deadline is Tuesday, Tuesday.

I bet you there's gonna be some fireworks.

I think so too, fireworks.

I think so.

There's never fireworks in the NFL.

Always wants the NFL to be like the NBA and the NHL.

It just never is.

We'll see, we'll see.

We'll see.

I feel I feel like there's gonna be some moves too.

I think there's gonna be Tom Brady unretired after just forty days of retirement.

I mean, he he played till forty five, was savage.

That's crazy, that that's unprecedented to be that good until forty five.

He literally he took care of his body.

That's all he cared about.

That's amazing.

I mean, do you think it was do you think it was him taking care of his body as much as it was also the NFL starting to take care of quarterbacks more both.

Okay, the first eight years, first ten years of his career, he was getting I mean, it wasn't the seventies where they were eye gouging and shit, but yeah, yeah, you know he was getting hit.

Yeah, but I think the rule changes did help him, and he used to he would acknowledge that, Okay, yeah, I mean he'd be like, this game is easier now.

My receivers can't get killed over the middle.

You know I don't.

I can't get hit.

I love how I love his his like talk about that and how it makes people makes him lazy, right, it makes it because you're you don't have to account for those things anymore.

You essentially, like when a guy got knocked out, that that was the offense making a mistake and the defense winning the coverage battle.

Yeah.

You know, if a guy's running through his zone, the guy shouldn't be running through his zone.

There's a guy sitting there, you know what I mean.

Like those kind of things were all no nose on the offense.

Yeah, yeah, that the offense lost that play and you had to be better.

You had to take those into account.

You had to take those into account.

Now, you know, it's it's a fly zone across that middle.

It used to be.

Like Tom said, I remember going across getting hit by Ray Lewis knocked out for two weeks, you know what I mean.

It's just that's how it was.

Yeah, gosh, but you know, I'm a fan of the players not getting killed too.

It's a double edged sword.

Like you said, you didn't want to You don't want to be an old timer sitting there looking back on the game like the old.

Timers in the past.

I mean, the game's still blast.

It's still a blast, still the best sport to watch by by far in my opinion.

It's it's a fun sport.

I mean, it's just it's everyone.

The parody is so so good.

In reality, only like six teams can really win it.

But any given Sunday, everyone still can mustard up a performance because everyone's good.

Yeah, and all coaches, even if they're not the greatest coaches, these guys are putting hours into this.

You know what I mean?

So like any given Sunday, that's real.

Yeah, that's legit, that's real.

Now, uh, don't cold, don't cold.

He came back, he crashed and he crashed the ATV coming in or something.

Not that year.

That was a different No, this was that was last year.

That was last year.

Sorry, sorry, you can get my stone cold comebacks.

Yeah, yeah, that was last year.

Just made the appearance and ran ATV into somebody in Las Vegas.

So you're third, you're thirty eight, you're were you a stone cold guy?

Course?

Yeah?

Stone call was awesome.

He was who was your who was your wrestlers because that was probably when you were like ten eleven.

Yeah, I was born eighty six, So Austin got real hot.

Started in ninety seven and then like blew up ninety eight, ninety nine, two thousand, two thousand and one, I'd say, and then and then he got hurt and then he was, you know, off and on after that, but became the Rock.

Yeah, Rock had a small run, but Rock was also gone.

Rocks like main roster run was only six years he debuts or maybe yeah, six years, seven, five years, something like that.

He debuts like ninety six, ninety seven, and he's gone in twenty two, done, like in and out.

He was off the Hollywood by that point he was.

But yeah, I was an Austin guy.

I was Sean Michaels was my Michaels.

So I loved the first iteration of DX with Sean Hunter in China, like they I loved him.

So he was like when Austin was kind of coronated WrestleMania at fourteen, he beat Sean, who was real banged up at the time.

But like I was like, ah, you know, I kind of was reluctant to get on board the Austin wagon because I love Sean so much.

Yeah, but then Sean was gone for four years.

He got surgery on his back and got himself right, and uh yeah Austin, I was all on board.

He's great.

Let's do a little word association.

I'll throw a name.

What's the first thing that comes to your mind.

Great rock listener, asshole John Cena, goat macho man.

Yeah, Becky Lynch, I'm a lucky many see him punk.

The worst, Rick Flair, Woo the rock.

Ah, what a guy.

I'm friends with DJ now so he's he sent me when I got hurt after WrestleMania forty, he sent me like a giant.

I mean it was so much ice cream and chocolate.

You it's still we still have cheat Day.

We still have pints.

We still have pints in the backfridge because there's too much ice cream to go through.

He's a big cheat day guy.

I mean I've seen it on Instagram or well one of the ones.

He was that cheat did.

What a guy.

We gotta get this man an Oscar.

He was awesome in Smashing Machine.

He was very good.

Smashing Machine was very good.

Love Smashing Machine.

And but yeah, he's he's what a guy.

Last one Cody Rhodes, son of a son of a plumber.

There is a son of a plumber there is Should we get into Cody real quick?

Let's get into it all right.

We got Cody Rose build out of Georgia from Atlanta.

There as we said, there Dusty Rhodes is his pops.

Gold Dust is his brother.

For all you wrestling lineage heads out there, uh, you know, for.

The cross Road both this past, no no, who Remember he did a hanging thing and there was like a rumor when we were young.

Remember he did the he was hanging?

Was he hanging on something?

In a crazy man?

Something sounds familiar.

I used to.

I used to kind of funk with gold Dust, Steel weird and did all this weird ship a unique courage?

I like that.

Yeah, it was good.

Vibes made his main roster debut in O seven, two time WTY Champ, one time Universal champe twenty four Royal Rumble winner, Great Tag Team Guy, seven time champ there.

Uh.

He was also in the ae W for a bit, had a lot of success over there.

Was really the face of that brand, most notably in that run.

Had a beef with Shaq.

Did T and T baby?

We know drama?

What's up with chef?

Did Shack jump in that ring?

I know I've seen Shack in there.

Might have done something in the ring.

Did he do something?

Yeah, they had like a they had him do something.

Yeah, it was like a.

Little He was the show crossover kind of vibe.

Yeah, yeah, I don't know if that he wrestled the match or anything, like he gave like a I think he gave like a leg the seven foot Legs song.

I don't remember what he did.

He was around Superman.

So what was Cody Rhoades like in this era, during this period?

Yeah, during this period of time, well, at this point, Cody had only been back for a few months.

He comes back to WWE after a long hiatus, started a rival company, AW and had been making some headway over there, and then he comes back to WWE at WrestleMania this year as my mystery opponent, which legitimately was about his last minute as you can get for a WrestleMania match.

And that was a big deal for our industry to have someone who had He was like the first guy who had left, gone to AW and then had come back.

And I was tashed with you know, working with him right out of the gate, and you know, we were looking to make him a big star.

He had done his due diligence while he was gone to get himself to a position where when we brought him back, he was ready to be kind of one of the top acts in the company, which when he left, I don't remember what year he left, but when he did leave, he was not that guy, and todp Bras didn't see him as that guy.

So he was coming back in a position where hopefully they were hoping that they could groom him to be in the John Cena position, and so he was more than excited to get back in the ring with me.

He's someone who I've had a lot of history with his father who helped kind of He didn't train me, but he helped hone me and and build me.

When I was in developmental, I worked with him and his brother a lot.

When we meet in my group.

The Shield first came in WWE back in twenty twelve, and so there was a lot of history there and he was more than happy to step into the ring with me.

I'd been, you know, churning my wheels in WWE ever since, and we were really starting to feel the wind come underneath our wings.

We'd gone through a rough patch COVID and all that, and then we were coming out of that and things were going really well.

So this was what twenty two you said, Yeah, yeah, we were just about to hit the hit the rockets.

Now went over to go in to out space.

So he'd been gone for six years and talking with this.

When did I find out about this?

I do roar a rumble, I wrestle Roman reigns and roar a rumble.

After that, there was some conversations about matches.

I would say I didn't know about Cody for sure until the middle of March.

I want to say, geez, yeah for sure, yeah, for sure.

I would say WrestleMania is in April, and so we had like maybe a month of lead time knowing Cody was for sure coming, and even til like the like the two weeks before, I remember being like, do we have his signature on a piece of papers?

We know?

We know this is this is what we're gonna do.

Uh.

And it was very top secret.

There were very few people that knew about what was going on.

So what about is torn peck?

Well, the peck was later.

These are different matches, different matches, So this is WrestleMania.

We do WrestleMania a month later, we have a show called Backlash.

We do a rematch at Backlash.

Here we go, he beats me again.

Then we're gonna finish this story in Helena cell once and for all, gonna get it done.

So we booked this hell in a Cell match the pay per views called Helen a Cell.

You know, I'm gonna get my big win finally because he's beating me two times in a row and I'm ready to go.

The week before this, he's in the gym bench pressing pop Pop Gone.

Gone.

Immediately they've said the doctor, oh yeah, that peck is gone.

He knew it right away, Like that peck is gone.

They're like, well, do we get surgery right away?

Can you still wrestle?

Is what he wanted to know.

Can I still wrestle?

Like, I mean, the peck's gone, you're not going to do anything, Like you're not gonna hurt it any worse, but you can't do anything with it.

So I suppose, And like I didn't see.

This happened on like a Tuesday.

We had non televised events, so live events like on Saturday, I think Friday and Saturday that week.

I remember, and I remember he showed up to these non televised events.

One of them, I think it was Saturday in Rockford, Illinois, and he was there.

We were supposed to have a match on this this live event and obviously they didn't want it to take any chances, so he wasn't wrestling on that, but he showed up and he had you know, he showed me it and it looked like that right there you see in that picture.

I was like, what the are you talking about?

Dude?

What are you talking about?

You cannot wrestle like that.

He's like, eh, I'm like what, Like, how are we supposed to have a match?

You can't do anything, You're in a copious amounts of pain, Like what what?

What?

How are we We were supposed to do hell in a cell match, which is one of the most violent matches in our industry, and like, what how are we gonna have I'm like, oh, dude, this sucks.

This sucks so bad.

So that was kind of a lead up to it.

And you know, we were in Chicago for this, this match, which is one of the greatest wrestling crowds on the planet, hometown, and they h it's I mean, it's my second seating.

Yeah, it's my second.

I did a lot of independent shows when I was there.

Breaking in alse Arena is just one of our like flagship spots and it is always packed.

This was no exception, and we go out there and we have to have this Helena Soe match to main event this show.

We had to try to figure out how to do it and make it make it special.

Like that's not like people.

I don't know, people don't realize, like when you blow a peck, like you can't do anything, couldn't do anything, there's nothing connected.

So like I was watching this in paint, Yeah, and I think that's how the audience was watching.

I was like, oh my god, like cause he and he couldn't use it when you Yeah, and there's a couple of times where you pulled him up where you gave the arm back and the.

Stretch, the stretch and you were about to dropping him.

He was He's a trooper for going through that one.

And I remember, did you feel bad at all him when you were having to beat his ass?

Of course?

Of course.

Yeah.

I mean I tried to be you know, as gentle with him as I could, but you know, he volunteered to take some things that we're probably you know, he knew we're gonna hurt him.

I mean the first time he falls down in the match, I believe is like he does like a he has this move called the Cody Cutter where he just off the second row.

That was the first thing, first time he fell down in the in the match, and I remember after him saying like it was the worst pain he'd ever felt.

And then they adrenaline, you know, got him through the rest of it.

But that first one he said was the awful, like awful, awful.

And there's like some times where I have like a kendo stick and I'm like jamming it into the bruised part of it and like, yeah, I think I power bomb him through a table in this match, And when he took the jacket off, you could hear the crowd just all the wind because they don't know, they don't they they I don't think they fully under stood that it was a legitimate injury until they saw it.

And there's probably some people in that audience that didn't know that he was hurt.

You know, most of them saw it on the internet or had heard about it whatever, but they hadn't they didn't.

They may not have known, and then they you see it and it's obviously brutal Jesus and uh and it honestly, when I watched it back, I watched it back recently, I was thinking to myself, like, dude, like the crowd took so long to get invested into what was happening because they were so legitimately concerned that they shouldn't be watching what they were watching, Like are we are we seeing like some masochism here?

Like what are we seeing here?

You know?

It's like when you see something on Twitter that you're not supposed to watch.

It was not you, you know, like you you go and you see those fight scenes that you're like, what the oh, I feel bad for this guy?

What do we It's like that I had the feeling the whole time.

It's like they put to back in the game Jesus, Oh my gosh.

Yeah, he was so jarring in the visual like the is in the blue and the hues.

Oh my god, Jackie, we didn't break down seth freaking there.

I am really you mentioned that this was gonna this match was going to be one that you won, and then after like he got hurt.

That was the game lead up, like for the people right.

In my head, I you know, I was hoping to get it backstory wise, I don't know what the I don't know what the planned outcome of the match was before he hurt his Okay, I don't know if it was.

You know, we hadn't gotten that far.

Usually I just wait till the day of the understand what that's going to be, where we can pivot from there.

But I think when he hurt his peck, I think it seemed, at least to me, it felt obvious.

Yeah, I mean, that's that's the best story.

And he was even though he was going to be gone for nine months.

It was like, is it you know, what do we do here?

Like?

Do he do he?

You know, give Seth the win because Cody's going to be gone, and that's oftentimes how it works, so someone's going to be gone with just give them a rub.

But it just made sense from the story perspective.

And I was a heel.

It wasn't gonna hurt me.

I need to lose at that point, So I got you in the hospital, purchase.

Beat his ash and put him in the hospital.

I mean I did beat the Jesus out of him the following night.

Yeah, the following night, I I really put him out of action for good.

That was when the sledgeon came back.

I brought the sledge and I smashed him and the whole nine, you know.

Hold on, Sorry, I ended up looking at this.

I just pulled up that picture of stone Cold with the bed paint.

Oh my god, this is killing me.

My god, oh my god.

That's old timer.

We got to see it be beautiful.

Protocols.

Too much, man, that is too much we got to give.

We went through Cody Way to give.

Set this flowers here, I mean the fucking the goat in my book, I'm a fan man.

The uh six one two twenty five baby at a Davenport, Iowa.

The kings Layer of the Architect, the curb stomp Baby.

This is a one time Crown Jewel Champ.

Fresh Stomp, Fresh the stump.

I know.

Sorry, I'm using the old school terminology.

Two time w Heavyweight Champ, two time Universal Champ, two time w w E Champ, two time Iced Champ, one time Tag Jeam Champ, seven time No.

Five time Raw Tag Team Champ, Money in the Bang, briefcase winner.

He's like Caleb Williams out of here, number one overall pick in the w W draft.

Don't forget it back in twenty fourteen.

Uh the number one over Yeah it was twenty sixteen.

Sorry I missed up there, but uh yeah, I mean seth Rod's biggest guy going.

Yeah, the only thing I'm aerialist.

I don't know where that came from.

I haven't.

I've never been the aerial list.

That's yeah.

They go wild on some of these nicknames.

Yeah, I didn't throw all the Ak's in there, just in.

All the other ones.

Crossford Jesus, CrossFit Jesus.

You do gotta the CrossFit Jesus looks like that's cool one.

All right?

Yeah, I didn't.

I don't know where that came from, but I mean I like it.

It's good.

I think I made a shirt.

Now, where'd you get seth Rawlins from?

Dusty?

So Cody's dad came up with it, not came up with it, but put it together when we were getting hired at the time.

Twenty ten's when I got hired with WWE, I was Tyler Black.

That was my name on the independent wrestling circuit, which I got from two movie characters that I really liked, Tyler Durdin from Fight Club, Serious Black from Harry Potter put them together by him.

That was my name.

Then ww wants to own me, so I owned Tyler Black in perpetuity and they can't have it.

Even if I try to sell it to him, they cannot have it.

So if I leave, I could still be Tyler Black, and they didn't want nothing to do with that at the time.

So we come up with a new name.

So I just got lists of last names and first names that I liked.

I don't even actually know why Seth was on the first name list.

I think it was just because I was going through names that people didn't have on the main Rockster and Seth I don't know I put it on there.

I don't think I had any reason for it.

But Rollins was on there because I was a big Henry Rollins fan.

I thought Henry Rollins was a cool guy.

And uh, And I took this list of Dusty Rhodes American dream Baby, who was the head of creative and developmental at the time, and it was his job to suss out a name and figure out what he wanted, and he just really liked the name theth Ronan.

He couldn't do the S and I think that popped him.

And so he's death rolland a Mackie now baby that Rollins for WrestleMania.

That's it, And so that was it.

I wonder similar.

Yeah, Final Final, Yeah that's deth Rollins, Depth Rollins.

So yeah, I think, uh that that was it, and then I've been seth Rollins ever since.

Now, how did you come up with your your move?

The stomp?

Stole it straight upoint it.

I stole it from a guy named Alex Shelley who wrestles in w W now he's in a tag team called MotorCity Machine Guns with Chris Saban.

He stole it from a Japanese wrestler named Marifuji who Marifuji is like.

A god when it comes to innovating wrestling moves, and neither of them ever did it as a finishing move, though I think I was actually the first person to ever do it.

Is like I am finished.

I was on a live event back in twenty ten or eleven at the time, I was doing a different finisher, but I was using the stomp as a like a signature move, you know, a false finish.

I won two guy would kick out, and it just looked so nasty that the guy who was producing the show, his name was TJ.

Wilson, he who's still a producer for WWB now.

He was like, man, you should really think about using that as your finish finish.

So the next night had another non televised event, I did it as a finish, and then that was my finish from then on.

No, how do you do?

How do you describe your style?

I'm an ever, I can do it all.

I have no style.

I am.

I'm like, I can do everything you need.

I'm I'm in my opinion, I'm perfect wrestler.

Well, no, because I'm I'm not too big, I'm not too small.

I can fly around, but I can brawl, I can do I can be technical.

I can do any kind of match that you want me to do with no limitations.

I'm strong enough to pick up guys that weigh four hundred pounds, and I'm not so big that I can't sell for Ray Mysterio, So I can do anything.

I have.

No I have no weak points when it comes to what my style is.

If you need to have them, if you need a match, or you need a brawl, just a knockdown, drag out fight, you know, blood everywhere.

I can do that.

If you need a technicians like just boom boom boom, Rob Van Dam Jerry Lynn, I can do that.

So it's like anything you need, I got it.

I can position.

Would you be I have a quarterback, quarterback?

Quarterback?

I mean I'm thinking like I'm thinking athlete wise.

Athlete wise, I'll probably be a safety.

I think you're like a fast linebacker.

Oh interesting, I'd have to put on some size, but not how much you wait too, twenty five to seventeen.

That's then then you're like a cam Chancellor of safety.

I'm probably like to ten right now.

Okay, well, then you're probably like a like an inbox safety.

Then, yes, guy that can hits the play, the run, cover a tight end, dropping coverage blitz.

Yeah, that's like that athleticism fits you.

That's where I would see myself on this.

They're like big dudes, but they're also the most athletic dudes.

True.

You know, they're not like d Lineman, even though some of the d ns are like they're sick now, yeah, crazy athletes.

And you look bad ass with the hair flowing out of the back of the helmet.

Yeah, like I can pall mall without the curls.

Yeah yeah, yeah, but that's if I if from athletic standpoint, it's probably where i'd say, because you also kind of got to kind of be I like that.

You went quarterbacks like, no, no, I be the quarterback.

That's no, no doubt about it.

That's how my brain operates because I like to be in control.

I have I have a obsession with control a little bit.

Now, where did the sneaker head come from?

I'm not a sneaker head at all.

I'm not a sneakerhead.

I have a stylist, and that dude is sick and he gets me everything I need.

His name is Troy.

Find him on Instagram is King Troy with and King Troy has been my stylist.

When I started the visionary character he was doing.

We did actually did like a maternality shoot for my wife.

She wanted to do some pictures when she was in like you know, third trimester, and obviously she wanted to be involved in this, but I'm like, I'm not going to address myself for this.

She had a stylist, Troy, and I was like, just have Troy pick out my stuff.

And he had been looking to style a dude anyway.

He always styled women and stuff like that.

Still styles some of the girls for WWE as well, and but he was he was like, shit, I'll do it.

So he found me some suits and stuff for that and I turned out great, and I was like, hey, can I just like pay you to do this for me?

You know, I'll do it on TV.

Yeah.

I get because I'm I have no style.

I have no My style is like this, the maroll Man's shirt is mine.

But like he you know, I don't buy these jeans.

I don't buy these shoes, like, I don't know none of that stuff.

So normally I just wear like the most comfortable thing I can find.

I have sweatpants that I bought from Walmart from twenty.

Five sweat guy.

It's like where you live in l A.

Right, Yeah, you know what.

I'm a sweat guy when I was back East.

Yeah, of course too hot.

Yeah, I get that.

I understand that, but I like to free ball it in a sweat short, you know.

Always.

I understand this.

I am with this.

That's I mean.

That was like the uniform at work when we go just sweats sweats, and Fridays we dress like Friday would be like our free dress Friday.

Nice.

Yeah.

Yeah, So I I all credit to Troy dude.

Anything you see that looks cool, he probably gave it to me.

Check them out.

Troy Troy with Troy knows ball man, he's got I mean, you're down and down under wearing the Deon Sanders that was so fresh.

He got the Dion's for the geary, so that that those shoes, yes, those shoes.

The shoe idea came from my gear guy.

His name is Sarat.

He does all my gear.

So everything you see, like Troy, we're looking at these pictures here, Troy would have given me the jump suit on the top, but Sarat would have done the designs on the gear there at the bottom where me and Becky are taunting that idiot see and punk and then whatever shoes I was wearing, Sarat would have suggested those because he is a bit of a sneaker head.

So he'll get on and like be like, oh these will match the kick pads, and get these and so that you know, we had the black and gold kind of look for Perth, and so he got the Dion's And you know, I've done like the foam posits and some other stuff.

But days, baby, let's break.

He hit this lead up pretty well.

Seth gave it to us perfectly in the match.

I mean, this thing had it all we had ellen to sell.

Of course, first we got to lay out the rules here.

No dques had to be a pinfall or submission in ring.

We're here an Illinois baby pack crowd.

The pet comes out, Hush falls over that place.

I mean we were out back watching this thing.

We took our breath away, the whole thing.

This thing has starting it out going off the rope.

Seth gets Cody gets going earlier, gets that fall.

Then we go shopping, go shopping a little bit under there, a lot of shop, a lot of shopping.

You think we're the home depot.

Baby reaches under, says like, I don't want this toolbox, this hammer.

I thought you were going to box hammer.

Oh not yet.

I was just at that point he I think he has me in the figure four.

Yes, I'm in a deep pain.

I'm just reaching for something because there's no rope breaks.

You know, on a regular match.

If you submission and you get to the rope, and you know you tried it early, it didn't work early.

Get me, get me something, give me a thing, and I you know hammer, I wasn't gonna be able to reach him by a sticky.

What goes into the wey when you're you're playing this bad boy at you just going in there and it's like fucking the man.

It's not a free before all, you have an idea of what you're gonna get, what weapons you're looking for, you know what I'm saying.

And some of it's you know, a lot of it's just wrestling.

You know, there's tables under the ring, there's a stick under the ring, there's a toolbox if you need it, There's you know, the stairs are out there.

Obviously, the cage is a weapon in this to be used and then and then you know, there's some situations that we would get later in this match.

You see.

You know Cody had stashed his dad's bull rope.

I hadn't seen a bull rope like in years years.

Man, that was crazy.

I wanted to ask you about the bull rope.

Have you had much experience with that?

Never?

And he knew that and that's why he brought it in.

He obviously grew up around it.

He watched his dad have countless bull rope matches.

He understood the mechanics of the bull rope, and he knew that my ego would not allow me to say no.

I would have to tie myself to this man.

You got him with that thing?

You Yeah, but he he had he wore the tricks man.

He got it underneath me between my legs, flip me over, used the cowbell on my dome.

It was not good.

More cowbell was not good.

But yeah, I mean that's that was one of those things where he it played into you know, how can he he has one arm?

What can he do to create a disadvantage from me?

So he put me in a position that I wasn't familiar with.

He was able to even the odds a little bit.

I missed a big frog splash through a table here.

Say you look like a member of Bill's mafia out there.

Yeah, some some some un some calculated risks that didn't pay off, and and uh yeah we got it the smash pedigree.

Did I get him?

I don't know if I got him with a pedigree in this match.

I think his arm back and I was worried.

I think I tried and he he said hell no, And he got me with one.

But yeah, I mean I got I took I got him with everything, and he had crossroads.

I gave him a crossroad and I couldn't put him away to his testament.

He's a fighter, he was.

He was not going down easily.

So I ended up pulling out the hammer mentor triple eh for his dad.

The dots.

I was in a stage of trolling my opponents.

Yeah, it started starting started with Ray Mysterio where I wore one of Ray's so I wrestled his son Dominic and uh.

I wore one of Ray's old gears back at Summer Slam twenty twenty maybe, I want to say twenty twenty or twenty twenty one, and probably twenty twenty and and I kind of kept it there.

I mean I wrestled Roman.

I wore our old shield gear to kind of get inside his head.

I thought the dots would be a great one.

We even, you know, we did the kick pads just like Dusty's boots.

I had a vest that was yeah you see it up there.

Yeah, I was in full polka dot.

Dusty hated the dots, so that was that was That was not his idea.

If you will look back at his pre WW career, he never wore dots.

I was just gonna say it seemed very like the transposition is weird, like.

It was a WWE, like let's create the vinsic man.

Let's give some some personality type thing, and he hated the dots.

So that was my way of kind of taking a shot at Cody in the little troll action.

Also a little tribute action and and and yeah, you know, it ended up really kind of as you want your matches to be.

It really ramped up pretty strongly towards the end, and once people got over.

I think seeing how he was, he had a lot of like I said, you had a lot of interesting stories here, Cody's he's two and zero.

I'm trying to get this win.

You know, he can't take it easy because he's got the peck injury, so he's got to go ball to the wall.

He knows this is probably going to be his last match for a while, so he's sending it just through the roof, giving it everything he's got.

I'm trying to take advantage of the peck.

You know, you've got the cow bell from Dusty, You've got the triple H sledgehammer, You've got all these little elements of our mentors and kind of how our stories have come and gone, uh and intertwined with each other over the years.

And then you've got this just this spectacle that is this big red cage, this guy with this black and blue pack, two of the elite performers in our industry, and uh, you know what you have is a classic classic match.

I feel it was awesome.

I mean it was like you said, peppering in all the homages, but blending it with your guys it's feud.

It was just like the story you guys were telling was incredible.

Thank you.

It was awesome.

It was I thought it came off pretty well.

Now, how does WWE get away with the fire code of blocking you guys in an arena thirty three thousand people?

What do you mean not FD?

We got to get you guys on the phone.

Fire Marshall comes, you're locked into a cage.

It just comes up.

Thirty.

Just press the button.

It just oh, I saw the guy.

How much are you checking in with Cody with his like injury during this whole match?

Are you?

Or is it like, hey, you're here, we're going for it, or you're like keeping tabs on him?

If there was something that seemed off, I might have asked, you know, But honestly, it's one of those things where everything looked to me to be as safe as it possibly could be.

There was nothing.

Yeah, there was nothing where he like landed weirdly or you know, I wrenched it strange.

Everything was that I did with him was pretty slow, and so there was nothing that Obviously he knew where the pain was going to be, and if he felt like we've gone too far, something wasn't gonna work.

It was totally within his right to say, hey, let's not do that, or you stop that whatever you're doing.

He never did, and so I felt like we were on the same page as far as what where we were at.

And you know, I knew he was going to be in pain.

He knew he was going to be in pain, and it was just a matter of what can we put together that it's going to work and still create that feeling of ick as you put it, that's really going to take this thing, because I mean, you can't you have to lean into that if you if you have the ick factor, you don't have that.

You don't have that.

You can't manufacture this set of circumstances.

That's the beautiful thing about our business is like we can try to manufacture kind of great stories and sometimes it all works, but then there are things like this that you just you cannot plan for and you have to adapt.

But those real life adaptations, like you said, that gray area that you look for where you're like, I don't really know when you find that.

That's the magic.

And that's why this match is special because we have that.

It's very captive because of that, like you were drawn to it.

You can't look away, you can't.

I mean in case in point, the final sequence of those crossroads after crossroads.

Like crazy man, dizzy, you're equilibrium with these I think all the time, Like a couple of times I've got spun around it on a football field.

You get dinged up.

You don't know where you're at sometimes, Yeah, and that's like everything in this I think, ye know where you're at.

Yeah, I mean it is.

Ring positioning is quite important when I when I would land, I'm like, which where are my feet?

And then the cage got to make it more disorienting.

Like the red page especially is really orienting.

I found I prefer that.

I think we've now since gone back to the regular like steel cage.

The red cages was it was a terrible idea.

It's like hitting a baseball.

It's like you're to have the you know, the flat spot.

If they're doing aerials and ship you fucking see red.

No good, it's no fun, It's true.

And just to put a bow on this thing, Cody Roads got the wind and went three and oh in that trilogy back of the time.

But as we talked about, I know, raw, just a couple of nights later, Seth came back in there and brought that sledgehammer back out and groups.

But Cody, of course, miss would miss seven months after this pretty much with with the surgery.

I believe like that it's impressive that he's doing that move right there, stretching.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, like that's impressive into the match, you can't like crazy.

What was your favorite part of this match?

Favorite part of the match moment, even though it didn't work out too well for me, Probably the bull rope.

Yeah, it was cool.

I think I'd never never had a bull rope match.

I've ever been strapped to one like that before.

And you know, as someone who's been a fan of Dusty and had a connection with him, uh, to be strapped to his son, you know, with the bull rope in this kind of main event moment in this if as I was putting the bull rope on and locking it in.

I felt I felt like it was a special thing that was happening.

You nostalgia, Yeah, yeah, there was nostalgia, but it was the newness.

It was.

I don't know, there's something that fell to the boys, that something that felt special in that moment.

So that's probably my favorite part of it.

Said, it worked in the story you guys were telling him in the match, and it just it fit perfectly.

Yeah, I think, you know, especially with my knee trolling, with rolling him with Dusty, he ended up getting it back on me with Dusty's own thing, and so that that was kind of a nice, little, nice little piece of it.

I felt.

Ye.

With the aftermath, what's what's the what's the legacy of this trilogy?

Well, honestly, the legacy of this trilogy, I think without it, you don't Cody Rose is not who he is.

And I'm fine.

I think at this point, I've been up, I never left WWE.

I've been here, I've been the flag bear.

I helped take the thing to the next level.

But I think there was a lot of uncertainty about, well, if Cody comes back, is he just going to be the same old Cody Roads.

Is he gonna be dashing Cody Rose.

Is he gonna be the guy that falls into the stardust trap?

Is he going to be what is the American nightmare?

Is it?

Is it this guy that can take the mantle from John Cena and run or is it just going to be another flash in the pan and he's done.

But I think these three matches and this performing especially really cemented him as the guy who could be the next guy.

And I think the audience immediately believed in him, uh from this moment and he was their guy, and you saw he was able to go on an incredible two year run.

After he comes back still running really but he he this catapulted him to the next level, and I think just solidified what I had already done and who I was for this company and for the industry.

What a team player, you know what I mean?

Quarterback?

And just like when you bring in what you said earlier that you know we're like performers, would you you said, uh, artistic or like acting performers?

Yeah, yeah, I mean we're which.

I've done a couple acting lessons and they always say the best acting is when there's like a relationship and you're listening and you're pulling from each other.

You know, you need that relationship because it is a performance.

Yeah, and the heel, like you said earlier, if you can make the baby face the babyface, I mean, after this trilogy, he goes on and becomes pretty much you know, wwe babyface.

That's a fucking team player.

Yeah, I mean, that's that's it.

You need a dance partner, you know, and everybody's got different chemistry with different dance partners.

And you and I have always had great chemistry.

You know.

We did it again just recently at Ground Jewel and it was as fantastic as ever, and so but yeah, I mean it's at the end of the day, you have to understand what's the objective.

What are we trying to get done here?

What does the best business?

How do we do that.

You can be selfish all you want, but at the end of the day, it is a team sport.

And you know, when you want to raise all the ships, not just your own, you know, and sometimes raising your own helps, but if you can raise everybody else's at the same time, that's the game.

That's what you want to do.

If the team wins we all win.

That's right.

That's what people don't realize.

That's my course.

Right, you win a super Bowl, everyone gets paid.

That's right.

Everybody gets paid, even even the guy that you know fifty three on that team, he getting paid getting paid.

Fact, let's code it.

Let's uh, let's let's name and grade this game.

Match.

But no we mentioned the Crown Jewel twenty twenty five, and then in twenty twenty four, you guys showed that chemistry off and teamed up together at WrestleMania forty great.

That's right, that was That was pretty darn cole Mane that lost got cheated, got cheated.

Yeah, this match was match of the year and this match ye.

Yeah, yeah yeah.

There's a lot of people who from a really strongly at twenty twenty two.

This was the one.

Like I said, wrestling super subjective, so you know, you can look at it, but this one probably stands to test the time more than anything.

I would say.

Amen, that was that was awesome.

Love love seeing you guys get back in the ring in Australia too.

Let's name let's name the match and score the match.

Is this the greatest match of all time?

Oh?

Decimals encouraged that we came up with these names, and if you have a name for it, you can call it in there.

We'll put it up in there.

But we came up with the hell in the cell okay, yeah, the final chapter, Yeah, third time is not the charm, all right?

The torn Peck mat Okay, see at the Crossroads match, see you cross at everybody?

That's not like that one?

That's the one.

I think all sl is too obvious.

We can get rid of that.

It wasn't the final chapter was kill that.

I think, you know, see at the Crossroads?

Yeah, I think you know what.

I think it's simple.

But I think I like the torn Peck match torn well, everyone knows it by the torn Peck.

Yeah, I think that's the one that's the most the biggest identifier.

And I don't know how many, uh, Like, I don't know how many torn Peck matches you're gonna get, you know what I mean, Like, I don't know how many outs.

A lot of helln so, yeah, a lot of hell in the cells.

The third time not the charm.

The others tore that bicep came back for the playoff.

I'm just saying, how the fuck do you do it?

How did he do it?

Was that that was that the Deer were a friend of the show.

It's deer antler p or.

I don't know what.

Stakes of this match zero to ten decimals encouraged seth.

Oh steaks steaks, I say ten ten ten.

I mean the stakes were at their highest here because we're talking life and death.

We're talking I mean, we're talking everything could go wrong here.

This is not a walk in the park.

This was not like a Ah, if we don't do well here, it's fine.

You know, you had everything was riding on this match.

This is I mean, if this goes poorly, I'm telling you, WrestleMania forty doesn't happen.

WrestleMania forty thirty nine doesn't happen.

None of it happens.

If this doesn't go just right and get us exactly where we need to be, the last three years of the business as a wash.

That butterfly is crazy, you know, after learning it has changed my score because I mean this is coming out of COVID.

COVID kind of screwed a lot of stuff up.

Then you guys had to springboarded back.

I'm gonna go with the eight point two at a seven point nine, a four point one, four point one.

There, I take it from a perspective of not in the CAFA world, from the outside world.

So just I can't score the stakes because it is, you know, crafted and written in something like what.

Yeah, so that's where that's where I'm at.

So so because so, because we have a plan for the performance, there's no steaks.

Well that's why you're telling you got four point one if it was no stakes to be zero.

Now it's the worst argument you've ever made in your life.

Oh no, I gave it a four.

But because you guys it out, that means there's no stakes.

The funny part is is Becky lit me up for this too, because I also had a low score in stakes.

So you're just because because this is you're just biased against postic bias against because my when we get forward, my star power is very high.

My game plays pretty high.

Like I respect the craft of it.

I think it's incredible, like what you guys do in that blend.

I'm offended by the fact that you think because we write, because the show is the predetermined, that there's no stakes involved or sorry, low stakes.

I'm pretty offended by that.

There's there's wild steaks at play and on what we do.

It's it's we're talking we're talking livelihoods of human beings.

It's not just me and Cody making money.

It's an entire roster and it's it's entire crew, and it's a business that we're we're feeding families, families.

There are children who are better fed because of this match.

Now, like not just like two like not Cody and my kids.

I'm talking about like Crewe.

I'm talking about wrestlers and their kids.

Everybody made more money because this was successful.

There's a lot of stakes riding on this.

I'm offended by the fact that you and that not just not just my match.

I'm talking about all matches that have that are at the upmost level.

There's a lot that goes into play to try to make sure that this business stays afloat and that there's money to be made all around.

So that's my rant.

Do we have a sledgehammer under the couch?

I won't be able to use it, though, So let's see if Kyler could boost his little score up on the next one star power zero to ten star power.

I'm gonna go with an like an eight and a half on this eight and a half, five, eight and a half on this.

Yeah, like you guys were at this time the two bigs of the league, so sort of, but we're on the come up a little bit.

We're like right below the tip tip top, you know what I'm saying, Like I'm there, but again I'm not.

I'm not going into WrestleMania.

In the main event this year, that was Roman Reigns of Rock Lesner, Right, so I'm not that guy.

I'm not the ten just yet.

Cody's coming back, He's we're building him for WrestleMania, we're building him at Backlash, and now we're here, and so I think we're almost there, but we're not quite at the like elite elite level of the superstar.

Boys there ascending.

I go eight eight seven for grounk nice Nice at a eight three.

We're all on the same we're the same boat.

There we go.

The gameplay or the match play, A lot of a lot of fucking tools, a lot of weapons, the gameplay of the match bull.

Rope rop what does that entail?

What is gameplay entail?

Did you watch the Super Bowl?

Get the Pages versus the Falcons?

Of course, that's a great gameplay, right, It's an entertaining product.

It's back and forth, it's you know, anything could happen kind of like, so it's like great play happening.

It's great to watch as a fan.

Like it's entertaining all the way through.

It comes down to the last second.

So it's like kind of like the actual product on the field or on the in the ring.

Okay, that makes sense.

I see that.

So from a gameplay standpoint, I'm gonna go with like a I say, like a nine on this one.

Yeah, we're on a nine gameplay for me.

I haven't seen the I haven't seen the bull rope since guys are having the loot late last of Boots, I gotta go with eight point nine nice And I was terrified as arenas man that's when they were doing the bull rope at a seven to one.

Little low for me, But.

I guess I'll stick with it.

Not a no, that's fine, that's fine, I understand it.

It's not for everybody.

It's just love.

It's a slow it's a slow paced match.

It's a slow paced match, so you're not gonna get a lot of the action, but you get like this element of drama and this fear that doesn't always exist in pro wrestling because of the predetermined nature of it, And so you get there.

There's an element of reality that exists throughout this match where you feel how he's feeling, more so than I think some of the stage combat matches.

So that's why I gave it a high score.

That drama kind of limits the actual action.

Still, the drama, it's more impressive that they're even doing anything with this guy.

Ye got nothing like I'm Winston the whole mass you'.

That's something that we don't generally score is the like drama leading up to it.

And maybe that's a place where my stakes score might be a little bit low because I'm coming from a sport like a two teams, no determined outcome kind of thing.

So I'm taking into drama in stakes.

But there is drama in your head right now.

Right now dog like I said, he's biased against professional head.

Lastly, we name or we grade the name of the game.

This is the torn Peck match.

Culturally, how will people remember this like that we're grading that.

They were grading just the name itself, the name cultural impact bod like like where it's.

Placed in the people will remember this.

So if you said the Torn Peck match, people remember this, people know this match.

Well, I think yeah, I think if you say, because if you're like the Revel and Seth the match you know the torn the one with the Torn Peck where you got the torn pack, immediately immediately go oh yeah, yeah, I know exactly where it is.

That's a good name, but but it's still like, it's not the sexiest name in the world, So I'm probably only gonna give it like a seven.

It's not quite Rumbleland Jungle, but yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it doesn't have that, and I can throw it on Manila, you know the same.

I think it's like an eight too.

Oh nice, you know, because I think you know exactly what Like you do you remember the immaculate reception?

Well, I went six seven.

I didn't even realize it.

Forty years ago.

Yeah, macular reception.

You're gonna know that.

You're gonna know this in twenty years because no matter what you say, you will always remember the fucking peck.

Yeah, you will always remember that he changed it, he modified it.

I did modify it.

Yeah, you went up, Yeah, I did all.

I went five to one.

It's hard to gauge the cultural impact because this match just happened a few years ago.

So maybe if we were to come back to this game in a decade or this match in a decade, that number probably goes up.

Because you have it's hard to tell when you're in like an art movement, when you're in it, you can't really appreciate it while it's happening.

I understand have to look back.

I can accept that.

What do we got on a score?

So the final score is seven point seven to one?

Or is it on the match?

That's going to put us?

Wow, that's going to put us It's tied for a new sixty second match game all time the tune of Bowls versus Patriots nineteen ninety seven.

That was a Bill versus.

And it's just below Super Bowl twenty one, Giants versus Broncos.

Super Bowl Yeah, and then just ahead of Super Bowl seventeen, Cowboys versus Bills.

Wow, what's number one on this list.

It's a little bit there's no bias.

It's a little biased bias.

No bias at the top of this list at all.

Zero.

To be sure, we are over exposed to Patriots coming on the show.

Those relationships and Jackson super Homer if you saw me.

Two belts seven?

Oh nice?

Nice?

Yeah, Becky two belts.

That's great.

That was an ald timer.

Good for her.

That's Sean and Brett up there wrestling at twelve.

That's cool.

What are some other matches we did?

We got the Iron Man match, Yeah, michaeldheart Rock versus Mankind.

Yep, Dolsaker, Luke Harper, that was that's back there one o six awesome match.

Got Charlotte Flair is in there as well.

Yeah, Charlotte was great.

Yep.

Is there a match wrestler combination that you'd like to see us do?

Oh gosh, a match wrestler combination?

I mean, I think the most important match that we've had recently, with the most story and the most bill they could probably push this list strong is the WrestleMania forty nine two main event with Roman and Cody and they kind of the death of the bloodline and all the things that went into, uh, that whole story and then getting to that point where Roman finally loses the title.

I mean, that's that's a that's a watershed moment in our I'd say our industry.

I'm trying to think there's anything else.

What did what did Rick did?

What did Rick dock?

He did a steamboat?

He and Ricky steamboat Chicago, the Windy City Classic, Yeah, City Classic.

That it was his favorite match because of the technical of an about it.

That was.

From eighty nine.

Nice.

It was like an hour.

It was like an hour or something.

They weren't in there getting after it.

Man.

I always thought, that's one of those guys.

His name, real name, Ricky Blood, like Ricky.

That's so much cooler to ring.

I was a time when like Asian action figures were huge, Yeah, because like all the blood sports, you know, back in.

Back in the day.

Gosh, yeah I think that you remember, you know, but you know what I'm talking about of course.

Yeah, dude, that era, like the Van Damn era.

Yeah, they were all the big bad Asian heels, but they were all like they were all tompo and yeah, fucking kicking the Yeah.

Man, those guys were sick.

Those guys were dope.

Man.

That was And that's another guy that Rick talked about.

The incredible chemistry they had together and working together.

Yeah, and really and.

There was a lot of good build up to that.

He said, as individuals and pros were they connected with him.

He always loved steamboat, he said, really craft heavy match.

Yeah, you appreciate it, said, I don't.

I don't want to hold you any longer.

But like, how much are the legends like coming around when you guys are do you come in contact with him?

They're a round enough.

Yeah, I mean they're not like strangers or anything like that.

I'd say, like anytime we go to there's always somebody nearby that popped through, especially WrestleMania time when the Hall of Fame, you know it's going on there, we see, you know, legends are always coming through that week stuff like that.

A lot of them are on like the convention circuits and stuff like that, and so they're they're doing signings or appearances or they've got you know, we've got a lot of other kids or nephews or whatever nieces who are on the roster and stuff.

So they're all around and stuff.

So yeah, I mean they're around.

It's it's very cool to uh, to kind of be in that space.

It's you know, I'll be honest with you, I've gotten I've gotten spoiled.

I've just been around them for decades now that I'm just you know, it's like, oh, you know, like Sean Michael's just got both of his knees replaced the same week I was doing my shoulder surgery, so Sean was down there in the rehabit.

I'm just like, there's me next to Sean Michaels, you know what I mean.

But it's like he's my peer now.

So it's like it's just a weird thing where like I've become I've become like one of them, you know, like I work with Triple H every single week.

You know, like I've been on Stone Cold's podcasts and like had beers with Steve, but I've also just like called Steve for like advice.

So it's like, you know, I've got these guys who I grew up idolizing, they're now like colleagues and peers, and I'm just I'm really spoiled.

Honestly, I'm just spoiled that I get to live that part of my dream in a way that you know, some people don't that It's it's a crazy thing to realize sometimes, Yeah, I won't ever, I don't think.

I don't think you know, for me, you know, my wife is like you got to understand for kids growing up.

Now you we're talking to you and meeting you, it's like is when you were a kid if you could meet Sean Michaels.

You don't understand that, but that's what it's like.

And I'm like, you're right, I don't understand that.

I will never understand that.

That to me is like my brain.

I had one one person tell me, you know, I cash in my money in the bank contractor wrestle Mania in twenty fifteen to say like six years later something sometime and last five years somebody told me for them that was their Hogan slamming Andrea moment.

Wow, Like and I was like, that's crazy.

That will never make sense to me like that that I cannot feel like.

I still just feel like I'm a kid that grew up in a small town in Iowa.

And the crazy thing is feel bad.

It's probably gonna be even bigger than them because of the information era.

Now, Yeah, these kids and you guys are cut up on social so like people are like kids will see you from other countries that they'll see a fifteen second clip of you, and like it's I think that wrestling is just so much bigger now massively, you know what I mean.

So like even with like football, like people are so biased to like the the recent eras.

They and it's because the recent eras are fed to the machine in the system moregithm, the algorithms.

You know what I mean.

The old ones are barely even on.

Yeah.

So like this generation of stars is huge, It's going to continue to go and will be the lasting and generation.

That's fair.

That's you, bro, It's it's crazy to think it is wacky.

Dude said, do we miss anything from this match?

Gosh, I don't think so, man.

I think we covered it pretty good.

Covered.

Cody covered me, covered, Dusty, covered some of the little easter eggs in there, story lead up, I got a little macho man little vision and poke in there.

Yeah, we got I mean we covered a lot of it.

I think.

Is there anything else you guys wanted to know before we dip?

Yeah?

Last thing I want to ask?

Yeah, we always ask our guests.

What is wrestling to you?

Oh man?

Wrestling in my life, it's a it's given me everything the good that I have to be honest with you.

You know, I met my wife there, we have our daughter.

I mean all all The ability that I have to have a wrestling school stems from being a wrestling fan and being successful in the industry.

Most of my closest friends who have met in the last twenty years or through professional wrestling.

I've been able to travel the world and inspire people who don't speak my language, who don't look like me, you know, from Saudi Arabia to Kuala Lumpur to Santiago, Chile, to Anchorage, Alaska, every state in the country.

So I've been able to travel the world, see all these different things, experience all these different things.

I'm able to, you know, support my family, my extended relatives.

I'm able to, you know, drop something at the drop of a dime, to be if someone needs me somewhere because of wrestling.

So anything that I have that's good.

This business has given to me and so I owe it everything.

It owes me nothing, and I will do everything in my power as a as a grown man, to make sure that the next generation of the business has it better than I had it, and I had it pretty good.

So that's how I feel.

Long winded answer, but I loved I love the business.

It's done everything I have ever dreamed of.

It Moore Man.

Yeah, you're such a thoughtful dude.

Thanks, Like, just every answer you've had has been so just insanely inspiring.

And wrestling is lucky to have guys like you, and it's if wrestling gets guys like you, wrestling will always be wrestling.

Thank you for coming on, my dude, thanks for having me and everyone.

Everyone's got to go check out WrestleMania in Vegas April twenty twenty six.

We're back.

We're back two years in a row.

Hopefully I'll be available.

Oh, he'll be back.

We'll let's go, he'll be back.

Let's go.

Anything else to plug?

No, man, I mean, look, I got my wrestling school with that thing runs itself black and blave wrestling dot com if you want to check that out, or the Instagram.

Got coffee shops.

Got a couple of uh, big coffee guy, Big coffee guy.

I got a couple of Iowa three nine two cafe.

Me and my wife just recently invested in a coffee company out here in La called Daglo.

Oh one just moved to my neighborhood.

It's so good.

Uh no larchemint not yes, yes, the best best coffee in a Los Angeles, hands down, it's so goods down.

They got four of them around where getting the beans from Daeglo roast their own dude.

Yeah, they have their own from somewhere, don't we.

They get them all over the place, dude.

Yeah, the Columbia, any any of the coffee belt countries, I mean they do it all.

So.

Ethiopian has some really good coffee.

Is some of my favorite beans.

Always very fruity and bright in the coffee.

Yeah, Ethiopia, Honduras.

I mean your list goes on and on, because there's a whole coffee belt.

You can check it out.

But yeah, yeah, Daeglo rocks, So if you're into that, you can check it out.

I think it's Daglo Dot coffee or like, drink your Daeglo coffee on Instagram.

Not sure, but yeah, I think those are my big things.

Man.

Check out my wife.

She's still on the show every Monday on Netflix.

The Best to Ever do It, Becky Lynch and Cardinal Champion.

And I think that's it.

Well, thanks for coming on, my dude, cheers.

We'll be right back after this quick break.

Man, So cool, insightful, cat, very insightful, very very gratitude guy, I like that.

He's a fox old guy.

That's the guy you want you're living with.

You A team player, team player man.

He's just.

He's got like a good energy where like it's a healthy like I I'm confident in my life.

I like great, great dad, great husband, great worker.

No Peter Griffin, but he's a family guy.

I love that, Tyler.

I think we yeah, I'm sorry real quick before I might come back and beat you up.

You and all you would think you would appreciate the role of heal is that you You're the heel.

That is that what shaking in your boots is called healing?

All Right, your scores get influenced way mind, your scores are only ever point Tony Rhoads.

Who's Cody Roads?

Fucking the baby face?

Is the w W E right now?

Dude?

I mean we just talked about it and still he's still talking about bro Seth freak.

For a for wrestling it is.

It is artistic theater, right that's highly athletic and highly skilled.

However, the stakes, the outcome of the match, which we can only ever look at the outcome the match is predetermined.

I don't I love the craft of wrestling.

I think It's great how they can blend athleticism, but the stakes aren't high.

Which is brought to you by Cores Light.

Get Coors Light delivered straight to your door.

Visit cores Lights dot com, slash g w N and always celebrate responsibly.

Perfect for moments like this when you can just choose, choose chill, that's always the right show choose.

You need to choose chill, Kyler.

You need to chill, Kyler, you need to choose it.

What do we need to baby?

You choose chill?

Mm sorry, I was just slipping my cold man a little bit of that.

I'm in the rockies because right now today bro isn't an extra hard warm.

Nothing cools you down like a silver bullet.

Baby.

I didn't like it, Kyler, chools you now, I'm like.

Some Colorado coolie.

Cut that silver bullet.

Talk.

Come on now today, would you say you said something over there?

What?

Yeah, that ship didn't grin?

What do you talk about?

You gotta go crack a couple more than out back after this?

Oh height now, oh, today, we're gonna pull back the curtain a little bit.

We love pulling back the curtain on life inside the NFL, all the aspects of it, not just the on.

The field stuff duels.

Today, I want to go over nutrition and food in the NFL, particularly from your standpoint, I mean just as a as a whole.

First off, what is what's an average day in season look like from a grub perspective for you?

Why?

I can only speak with I can only speak on how it was at the Patriots yep.

And it evolved for sure.

You know, like when I first got there there there was Dietitian and then we got another one.

We got ted shout out ted who uh he took it pretty seriously.

We'd have food stations.

We had like fruit bars, and everything was labeled either it was gold or silver, gold, platinum, oh or bronze oh unlike the health benefits and so like if you go to like the fruit station, you'd have like, you know, the raspberries, blueberries, pineapple, and then you'd have the labels of what they were according to whatever study head was going through that, you know, or whatever it was.

Yeah, you know this is good for your your blood, you know, so we'd have that all categorized.

I don't know, it's like it's part of their like nutrition.

Yeah, it's actually awesome.

Yeah, So you'd always have the fruit station was always available.

You walk in on the left, Fruit station always available, Salad bar station which same thing, and then you know, three times a day morning you get there, they'd be breakfast, hot hot bar.

You'd have your your eggs, your protein, chicken, sausage, pork sausage, bacon, turkey bacon.

There'd be like a starch, a hash brown of some sort.

Then you had live action station like this, you know, so you know during lunch, that's that hot station would be a theme for the day.

And then what you know, if Chun was around, we'd have you know, Jamaican Week and we'd have the jerk chicken and and it'd always be a beef chicken fish.

It'd be two vegetables once again, everything having your grade system so on that that hot meat, say it was a beef, it would be like maybe you know, uh, for that day, it could have been like a silver or maybe a gold.

But then there's like the fish or something that's like a platinum that was real good.

Whatever the grading scale oil you need.

And then you'd have so then I think we have our gratings.

So you have fruit, vegetables, hot station.

Then you have live station.

Then you'd have like sometimes are the live station.

Favorite was the bison meat.

The bison meat, what is it uh, the crunch traps, crunt trap bison meat, crunch trap supremes.

They would make the crunch traps right there with with bison ground bison, so they get the little like tostata thing.

They put the bison in the being and like guys love that.

They would make them fresh off.

So you'd have like four or five things at the live station, and then you also had smoothie bar and snack station.

Snack station would be all like the healthy snacks, and so each year you so the food you had great food we had, we had, you know, I thought we had pretty good food.

It's anytime you'ren cafeteria, stuff gets repetitive, sure, but the quality of the food was really good.

We also had like cambucha station.

By the time I left Fort Health Gut Health nice, they had huge smoothie station, which I believe I'm a huge I feel like I was one of the pioneers of that smoothie time, making smoothies smoothie time, and then we got the station.

But I would always make my own smoothie they had.

They had smoothie makers are smoothie ladies.

But I always had to get back there and do my I was you know what kind of like what are you putting pro does for my smoothie?

I would go uh.

I would go with like a I like the the plant protein, and then I would use the collagen so you got still the but it's but that comes from cow.

I would go greens like uh, spinach because I'd take spinach from the spinach station.

I was big with a lot of blueberries, banana uh.

And then I would put in almond butter, almond milk, and then I would put in like the tomberic.

Uh.

And then they had a couple other couple other things conibs, maaca.

I was sipping on.

I was a big smelly I would.

You know, and I would I would immediately put a smoothie in my body when I first got to work, and then i'd go do like my I would get there like five thirty five point fifteen, so like the food stations get popping around six, so I'd hit that and then I go do my routine and then I would come back and I would I would nibble on some eggs.

I'd get like like two over over medium eggs or maybe an omelet nice, just to get some hot food because I wanted hot food, you know what I mean, hot food.

Like to nibble.

And then after that you got like hours of meetings and then you come back and you come back in the cafeteria and then it's the lunch section and you go through.

And I was always like I'd probably nibble on another smoothie and then nibble on some protein that they'd have, and then I would go practice and you come back and I'd have another smoothie and then nibble on what.

You know, I would nibble.

I wouldn't eat a lot of it because I'd go home and I had a chef that would cook according to you know, my blood type.

I was.

I was just gonna ask how that was it a lot of times, you know, And I think they even do that with the team now, where they would pull your blood and they'd send it in analyze it to see what your bodies and taper everyone's diet of different according to their blood.

Like I couldn't have mustard seed out that was like an inflammation factor my body.

But I don't I don't know whatever reason I was.

I ate alligator a bunch because it's got the omegas of and it tastes like chicken, a crocodile.

It is one of it's it's like a fish and chicken put together.

You get like there's more protein than fish.

But it has the omegas that fish have, So there's like a lot of like good benefits to it.

You were eating a lot.

It was even.

Yeah again, I didn't know that.

You know, my blood type is.

I don't know what my blood type is.

I I do, it's written down, but I don't.

I'm not one of the people that like, hey, I'm twenty two d's to fishient.

Oh yeah, no, I feel you mine's being negative.

That's a heck of appsicles.

Take jo right there, that's a heck of opsicles.

Actually negative universal donor be negatives?

Which is that stamp?

Oh my god, Oh my god?

That was good.

Did I just explain anything?

You know?

How did that evolve?

Like, I'm sure you weren't like personal chef when you started in the league.

No, but you know, because I got sick of taking the food home from the stadium.

So most guys taking food home you can because after night meetings are done, they'd have dinner, you know, because a lot of guys do that.

When I was young, I would eat all my meals at the stadium.

We're in Foxborough, so like there's there wasn't a lot of stuff and you weren't gonna cook.

So a lot of your food intake for a lot of the players is from that.

I mean, Gronk to the day left grocery shop there.

He stops by every now and then, still does.

He lives there.

Looks like.

Like when you go to his fridge, it looks like what the facility looks like.

You got your gatorade section, your protein section, your water section, your shot section.

There's like protein like the refrigerated protein section.

Protein bars.

Now outside of meals, like the catered meals that they have were they're like snacky, yes, go grab.

Jerkeys, any kind of plant protein bar, regular protein bar.

They had had a huge section of snackables, a lot of nuts, certain nuts.

We had nut stations, trail mixed stations.

You know.

Then it was the big I mean I thought it was.

I didn't come from anything great.

I went to Kent State and you know, so like I was fascinated with it now how much like Tom Brady's diet is well known in sound Yeah, but how much were they catering towards him or is he just doing his own thing?

He would make they would make him an individual meal, Like later on in my career, I'd have an individual meal if I was doing what Tom was doing pretty much, you know what I mean, like trying to eat healthy.

If Tom was doing it, I would try to do the same.

Wa like he just maybe want to put throw a little more meat in there.

Yeah, yeah, I like that.

What did uh?

We've mentioned it on the show before, but it feels apropos in this section.

You tell people about fat Friday.

Oh, fat Friday, Yeah, so far, Pizza Friday.

Every Friday, it's a shortened day.

There's no there's no night meetings, so it's not really short in the morning the same morning, right, but there's no after post meetings, and it is a little I don't think it is.

It's as long you get out of round two.

And they we'd always have get bets on when when it when we'd get out and stuff like, because it was we'd always go over, would never be at when we're supposed to get out.

And so.

Each week would be a different catered outsourced place.

Love that, you know.

So they'd bring in Chick fil A.

They bring in you know, Davio's everyone.

You know, the Patriot play stuff was huge Ruby Ruby Tuesday.

Guy Guy has a restaurant.

Patriots probably had Guy's thing.

They'd be in five guys.

There'd always be so there would always be a sushi like station.

We bring in the sushi I think from a fish bar or whatever it's up there.

And then there would be like we we used to have to go.

They used to have to send people like like New Hampshire before they had Chick fil A in the area, you know what I mean, Like we get chicken spots because you know, a lot of guys would have a lot of guys, like Chicken was putting people on the choke and there Pete.

Sometimes there'd be pizza.

I liked.

Honestly, I liked five five guys day.

It's because the five guys hot dog sawn the middle.

Yes, and they pay him.

Oh my god, bro like so like goaded are all these options available most Fridays or so like this is chick fil A, it'd be like Chick fil A and something there be.

There would be a couple things.

I'm pretty sure sushi was always brought in.

You get sushi.

What else were hits?

I remember when they bring Chick fil A and guys would just go crazy.

Guys love chick FLI everyone loves chicken.

Chick fil A is like a great after sport, like little Girls and stuff with Lily Chick.

You know what I mean?

It doesn't What else would I forget some of the good stuff because white, the white being chicken chili there used to slap everything.

I've heard tails.

What about?

Would you ever do a cheat day during the week in the season.

I wouldn't do it.

I wouldn't do a cheap day, but I would I would nibble on like if we had we had we'd have donuts on Saturdays.

We'd always get them from Canes Hanes Donuts out and or it's north of Boston, we just drove Sagas and I love Knes and there'd always be a little knife there and guys that were conscientious.

Would you just take a little slice of a donut and you taste it, just a little nibble, Do you a little nibble like that?

They're on gold gold belly I tried it, didn't didn't didn't work well?

Didn't it as well?

No, they came all jacked up.

I tried it.

I love knees donuts.

We gotta get one of coaching assistance.

They got a good glazed donut.

Love that.

Is there anyone on a team that was like I know, we've heard legend of Chadinkos.

Anyone that was like notoriously like terrible with food?

Nah?

But I remember when I was young, Greg Lewis used to come in.

He used to come in with the Duncan uh sausage egan cheese every day and like a dunkin a cup of coffee.

And it wouldn't be every day he'd have a sausage, egg and cheese croissant I think from Duncan.

It just cracked me up.

Greg Lewis down there in Baltimore right now with coach.

How many calories were you burning?

Like gay a lot, especially early on in my years because I was on like I was on scout team.

You're on special teams, very little rest time.

How much are you, like, how many calories a day do you think you were eating?

I don't know, I was.

It was all pretty calculated because you're you're naturally counting every time you're putting something in by the you know, when you start knowing, And then a lot of it is when you can eat.

Okay, you know it's the timing.

Like after like a practice, you're you're pretty swamped, your body's you know, pretty inflamed because you're you're going so hard.

You want to fuel it with the Then you know it's win.

It's not what more win than what?

Yeah, did you have any like pre game, either the day of or the night before, like routine of like oh, I always want to have more carbs, or I want to have this or that, you know, I used to just I used to get a lot.

Always.

We would always stay in a hotel and you'd always have a marin Era meat sauce, some sort of like chicken breast, pasta white brown rice.

There'd be steak.

There'd be like a pasta section where you could like, hey, can I get some chicken and some pesto and you know that in there shrimp in there, like I would hit I would hit that sometimes because you you can over up on load up on some carbs the night before a game.

But I always probably I was always born with it.

I would just get like a few scoops of brown rice and I put the I'd always judge the hotel by the meat sauce.

Put the meat sauce on chicken breast, a couple of you know, some broccoli or whatever carrots we had, or I'd hit that pasta station.

I love it, Like no matter the level of sport, post or pregame, hotel food is always the exact same.

It's always the same.

Damn Elon basketball manager.

We have the same exact thing.

I still every time we go on around Denver.

I don't know what hotel we stayed there, but they had really good food, really and sometimes you stay in other when you stay in other hotels in different areas, you get like the theme of that area.

Sometimes there would be like one dish of the theme of that if like there'd be like a Georgia, there'd be like some peach pie or cobbler, local flair dessert bar section or you know, you go to like Denver had like I think they had like some Southwest ship, but I remember their their meat sauce being really good.

And then uh, you know, like whenever you play in like a highly dense Italian area.

You'd always have really good Italian food because Tom would always see and then and then the night before games, Tom would always buy the linemen like the specialty restaurant of the area.

Oh, and I.

Would sneak in there and go grab some of that too, you know, like like if we were in there.

He'd always have some like really good Italian restaurants from in Miami.

He loved this one Italian restaurant in Miami, and the Lineman would always get it, and I'd go Browns, get some leftovers, leftover carbone with the boys.

I love that, Yeah.

Or New York, you know, there'd always be like some good stuff.

Or we had pizza and in Chicago because you'd always get like one of the trainers is from an area, and so there'd always be like one little area a room that had.

Like a specialty.

Go get a nibble on that's so fire.

Now, one more thing before we wrap up game day?

What's your game day?

Nutrition?

Looked like same is the night before pretty much, except they had they'd always have a chicken broccoli sauceless pasta with like penny yeah, and I would limit my sauce.

I don't know why I just I'd get a bunch of that.

And I'd have peb and jys because we'd always have p pre PB and J's made.

You'd have those which I saw.

I went back recently, they're making homemade uncrustables Wow, the healthy stuff wow.

Or they're cutting them and shipo.

They're making them at the facility instead of because they used to just give you little.

They make a peeb and jan and cut them and then saran wrap them.

U.

You can get half some each.

You can get half with almond butter, uh, strawberry on wheat.

Then there would be a section of peanut butter with grape jelly on white.

You know, there would always be a different sections.

You can mix it up.

There'd be a peanut butter banana.

There's always peanut butter banana, honey, that Elvis vibe, you know, if you didn't want a jelly like they look.

It's pro thinking.

They're thinking for.

Those report cards and stuff.

When some of these teams are getting it makes me wonder like, is it we're because some of our stuff was kind of bad and I was like, it's still pretty good.

Yeah.

The only one I remember is the Cardinals make guys pay to take home stuff, No, do they.

That's a couple years ago.

I think that's reports you ever eating during a game, like during half time or anything.

I remember sances with a hot dog.

No, I when we save Miami in Septembers, you burn a lot of calories.

Yeah, it'd be hot, so I remember I would yell at Ted, I need calories and bring me some kind of bar or something.

I mean, we'd be no huddle and ship running.

It gets hot and you're not in like mid season form.

So I remember eating at halftimes.

There'd always be at halftime.

There'd always be pickles, peeb and J's in the in the half.

Oranges oranges too, yeah, with someone's mom hand them out.

Yeah.

And then when it was cold, there'd be chicken broth and hot cocoa coco.

There'd be some hot cocoa in there too.

I ain't mad at that.

Oh yeah, that's awesome.

I love learning.

I love any time we're talking grub.

I'm down.

But there'd always be pickles.

I always just not on a pickle.

A little salt, had a little girkin, Give me that gerkin.

Yeah.

Well, if we missed any questions about nutrition and food.

Dropping in the comments said sound off, and.

That was the chill zone.

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What a match.

Thanks again to Seth Freaking Rawlins or Kobe Lopezz either one.

Tyler wouldn't have asked what you wanted to home.

I told you early before the said dud.

Don't be shaking your boots.

I'll be shaking your boots over there.

And that's got another episode of Games with Names.

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Calm in a game you want us to do, remember rate and review leave us I know I can't hit the high notes lately.

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Some of my my chest or something.

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