Paul Heyman

30:48And Taz was teaming with Eddie Guerrero. Because I was getting him into that grappler portion of our show. The girl Eddie and Dean Malanco and Chris Benwan, Tuckled Scorpio. And he braced for a power bomb and ended up in a spike pile driver and he broke his neck. So he was off. And the decision was made when he came back. He was going to be a UFC style fighter. And he was going to be the first wrestler that we weren't going for I quit. We were going for tap outs. Taz introduced the tap out. To pro wrestling. That character. And the key to this was he was going to have to talk on the mic. And we just found that that inner rage of his that that bitterness that he had about being five foot eight, 248 pounds in a big man's business.

31:49Well, if you're not over six three, if you don't, if you don't carry yourself like Barry Wyndham was carrying himself at the time, you're not even consideration. So you know Steve Austin, Brett Hart, Sean Michaels, these were smaller WWE champions at the time. The typical WWE champion was Sid Kevin Nash. These were the guys with the size. And Taz, who had tremendous talent and did have tremendous speaking ability, was so angry that a guy five eight would never be considered. So we use that to our advantage. He talked about being five eight. I'm only five eight, but I will choke you out. Brother, I got a little center of gravity.

32:38You're up, you're up, you're up there breathing oxygen. That's a lot thinner than the one I'm breathing. And I'm going to choke you out. It's going to be easy for me to do it. And you're going to look over and go, who choke me out? That five foot eight inch, two and a 48 pound dude from the from the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, New York, and people believed it. To the point where when Taz debuted in WWE, at the Royal Rumble in Madison Square Garden, which was the perfect setting for a debut. And the highlight of his entire WWE career, because it was all downhill from there. That Vince McMahon called me.

33:14I was actually in the studio, we were editing. I was doing a Sunday edit on it for ECW. And Vince McMahon called me and he says, do you mind if I ask what the fuck you're feeding these guys? And I said, what does that mean? I don't know. And he goes, what the fuck you're putting in your fucking heads? I've heard of your fucking cool aid before, but what the fuck? And I said, okay, what issue do we have here Vince? Aren't you supposed to be running the Rumble today? And he tells me the story that Kurt Angle. Now, this is not Kurt Angle after fighting all the self -admitted addictions. This is not Kurt Angle with the gazillion injuries that he suffered.

33:54Putting on amazing performances as a pro wrestler, sports entertainer, WWE superstar. This is Kurt Angle with the exception of the neck injury that he had going into the Olympics, in which is still for your time. I'm Kurt Angle. Oh man, healthy Kurt Angle. Health, legitimate milk drinking Kurt Angle at the time, you know? Yes. Kurt Angle, maybe there are only two people on the face of the planet that could hold their own with him in a shoot fight? Yeah. You know? Yeah. Maybe? Yeah. And Kurt Angle went up to Vince in the garden and said, Vince, what do I do with this guy shoots on me? And Vince at first thought it was a political question like, am I allowed to defend myself?

34:41Am I allowed to shoot back? Because I'm Kurt Angle and I'll tie him and his family and his friends and his neighborhood and all the Brooklyn up and knots all by myself while eating a sandwich and drinking a glass of milk. Because I'm Kurt Angle. And then Vince realized, no, he's really asking like, what happens if Tash shoots on me? Because I'll be in trouble. Because that's Taz. And Kurt says, yeah, have you seen this guy in ECW? Do you listen to him? That's unbelievable. Kurt was like, and he's going, yeah, don't worry about everything's fine. And Kurt was like legitimately concerned. What would happen if Taz would shoot on him?

35:19Like, hey, I'm going to have to fight for my life out there with this guy. This guy's capable. That's unbelievable. That was the presentation of Taz. We made him believe that he was that guy. Yes. When Taz cut those promos on Hulk Hogan and Rick Flair and Kurt Angle and Sid and the NWO and anybody else and he cut those promos, he believed it. Steve Austin will tell you that when he stood face to face with Mike Tyson in the ring during that infamous moment, which to this day was the turn around for me of the entire industry. And I mean, WWE already had the lead. But when that moment happened, there was never turning back.

36:00And Steve Austin will tell you that in his mind when he came down that aisle, if Mike Tyson lost the plot and decided to get antsy with them, Steve Austin will tell you, I don't whoop this ass. I don't whoop. I was standing there. You know, when he looked at me and he had to, he did that BDI's. I don't whoop. What? I don't whoop. I don't whoop Mike Tyson's ass. Now, I think Steve will look back on this now and did his day and realize, no, he went out of whoop Mike Tyson's ass. But in that moment, he believed he could. And I filled Taz as a method actor and at that time for me, a method director.

36:40I made him believe he could whip all their asses. And now when he said it on promos, he meant it when he said it. So full circle long story even longer, Taz brings Brock Lesnar to me. And Taz says they're going to screw this up. Here's what Tony Garea is telling him. Here's what this guy is telling him. And you're doing ECW at this time. You're not a WWE. No, I'm not a WWE. You're in W. Yeah, it is 2002. Okay. Yeah, ECW and I in the business January 2001, I came to WWE March 2001. We did the whole Alliance thing, ECW and WCW versus WWE. Took myself off of television after Survivor Series, which was the blowoff battle for that.

37:23Because when I came to, and here, of course, is one of those paradoxes in life, you know. I came to WWE and my first thing I said to Vince in coming in the door was, I don't want to be on television. I'm 35. I had my fun. I want to be behind the scenes only. And then the whole thing happened with the Fire Jerry Lawler's wife and Jerry Lawler quit. And I wasn't supposed to get in a WWE until WrestleMania. Because I was too busy dealing with the ridiculous amount of legalities of what was the pending ECW bankruptcy. So I'm going into a personal bankruptcy and a corporate bankruptcy. And we'll talk about the whole ECW story later too, because we have to talk about that.

38:15And I'm jumping into WWE. And I cut my deal to come in behind the scenes. And I get a call from Vince on a Tuesday. And he says, are you where the Jerry Lawler quit last night? And I said, yeah, I heard the whole story. I'm sorry to hear that. And he says, well, I'm going to need a little bit of a favor from you. And I said, well, I'm not really in a position to turn down a favor from you at this moment. My company's gone. I'm entering bankruptcy and you're offering me a lifeline in life. So the answer to the favor is, yes, now please tell me what I'm doing. And he says, need you to start on commentary next Monday night.

38:56And I'm like, oh my god, I'm back on television. It's exactly what I don't want to be. And then of course I realize, well, I get to play with Jim Ross a little bit. I always like being Jim Ross's color commentator. And if I'm going to have to do anything in the public eye anymore, replacing Jerry Lawler on Monday Night Raw is not a bad way to debut. That's a pretty iconic position. What today we will refer to as relevant.

39:30One of the most interesting things about pro wrestling compared to other sports is the idea of the heel announcer. And we'll get to that because it is for anyone who doesn't watch pro wrestling. They wouldn't even understand the idea that there's a bad guy announcer. Yeah, because otherwise, what they found, and well, the first bad guy announcer wasn't Jesse Ventura. He perfected it with Vince. And you could tell that Vince wanted him to be a star color commentator, because Vince would throw him lob balls. I mean, just, you know, there it is, you know, bang out of the park, bang out of the park.

40:14I mean, just he'd set himself up for Jesse. Didn't mind doing it. Vince back in those days, there was a, there was a weatherman in New York. His name was Lloyd Lindsay Young. And he was very famous because he would do shout outs to, to municipalities. Hello, sarcoccus! I mean, an ass out of himself as a weatherman. And Vince used to love to refer to him. To anybody that would listen, you know, ever see that Lloyd Lindsay Young, God damn, I like him. You know why? Not afraid to make an ass out of himself. And he's branded himself. And back then, you know, in New York, the weatherman were Frank Field and Storm Field, who to this day still do it in New York.

40:59We need these are iconic New York weathermen. People that New Yorkers have learned to trust with the weather, you know, to, and Lloyd Lindsay Young became the most popular because he had to stick. He had to gimmick. He didn't mind making him, you know, hello! Piscat away! And Vince would love it. So Vince would make an ass out of himself, setting himself up for Jesse's insults. But Jesse wasn't the first. Now, I'm sure there were others before this. But the one that showed us all it could be done was Roddy Piper in 1981 from the TBS studios in Atlanta with Gordon Sully. And Roddy Piper was a great heel commentator because he was so effective in the role.

41:50He added so much entertainment, so much of a fun perspective to it that the shill could never survive on their own again. It's a great action today, ladies and gentlemen, that you're watching and the wing with Mr. Babyface holding that headlock. And as you can see, the 15 members of our studio audience are enthralled with the majestic build that our babyface is displaying against this heated villain, the, the masked Russian assassin number seven. And oh, it's a shoving, oh, and it's a shoulder block. And there'll be shoulder blocks in Marietta, Georgia, tomorrow night, be there. You know, and okay, those days are over.

42:37Now, now you had Roddy Piper on there and Gordon Sully, we're in a beautiful, beautiful move into a, into a leg vine which puts the pressure on the calf muscle and a little bit on the quadriceps, you know, right? You know something on that one, this guy grabs the leg. Well, it's like, you know, you ever rip a chicken apart, you know, with your own bare hands, man. You know, and you're like, what the, what is he talking about? This guy is crazy. And I like him. And he's interesting. And he's making the broadcast for more flavorful. So I came in as the commentator and, you know, and which, and that was easy.

43:17Because number one, I'm an asshole. And I love being an asshole to Jim Ross. Because he's from Oklahoma. I'm, I'm just, you know, a Jew boy from the Bronx, you know, then, and I could sit there for, you know, for minutes comparing someone in the ring to me having, you know, a spiritual nirvana by going to a deli in New York City at two in the morning, eating a kinesh. And an oaky ain't going to know what a kinesh is. And he's going to ask you, put barbecue sauce on it. And I'm going to lecture him that, you know, you know, you know, as much about New York culinary experiences as you do about being played by playing announcer, you know.

43:57And it's just, so I, it was easy because Jerry Lawler got along so well with JR on air. They were a duo. They, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, there was a bromance going on. They liked each other, you know, and everything was so cute and funny with Jerry Law, you know, puppies, you know, everything. Oh boy, woohoo. You know, and I was coming in as just an asshole. I was going to give the show a completely different feel. And I was going to take JR to the test. Because that's JR at his best when he's pushed. He had become so comfortable with Jerry Lawler. He could, he could phone it in and still be 10 times better than anybody else in the, in the world.

44:32So I, I got out of that at Survivor Series when we wrapped up the, the Alliance storyline. And again, I was, okay, I'm behind the scenes. I don't want to be on camera anymore. But by now, now by Survivor Series, it's 2001. I'm 36. I'm like, I've had a good run as an on -air character. I'm just going to be behind the scenes now. Well, but a time where so many, it comes around. Vince has this idea of turning Chris Benoit heel. And I'd lost a ton of weight between Survivor Series and, and many a time. One of my many journeys of weight loss. And uh, stress related or uh, no, I'm an indulge here. I like to indulge in life.

45:16And I like to eat. And since we're sitting here barefoot on a couch, I mean, this is like therapy for me. I'm, I'm the son of a Holocaust survivor. My mother was in Auschwitz and, and Bergen Belson. So growing up, watching her son eat gave my mother joy. So um, indulging in food was encouraged because it was something my mother couldn't do as a child. So watching her child do it was revenge for her. She grew up, watched, watched 13 of her cousins starve to death in the Lodge ghetto. Watched two grandmothers die of starvation. And so, you know, and then of course in Auschwitz and Bergen Belson, all she witnessed was, you know, famine and famine and starvation.

46:15How did she make it out? By the grace of God. Yeah. Just, you know, when she was, uh, she was liberated in April 15th, 1945, by the, by the British army. And Bergen Belson ended up in, in the displaced persons hospital in Berlin, with a typhus and typhoid. Near death was, was told she may not make it. And made it, became a nurse there because there was no family to, you know, no family to find. And, you know, until an uncle, because the men had left. The, you know, the men left Poland. They escaped through Russia. And the reason why was because in World War One, the Germans were civil occupiers.

47:05They, they, they, they, there, there, there wasn't. What happened? They were civil. They, they occupied Poland and then that, that's it. So the men left because if the men stayed, they'd have to fight. And if they fight against that army, they were going to die. But if they left and the Germans occupied, oh, look, what happened? World War One left. When it's over, it's over. The thought that they would kill women and children was unfathomable. So there was an uncle, Zaelic, Zaelic Scharf, who at the time was living in Winnepeg, which had a big community of refugees from Eastern Europe. And every year, Zaelic would save up all of his money and go back to Poland and look for survivors of the family.

47:57And he couldn't find any. And after a couple of years, almost giving up hope, he had heard the tale of the march from Auschwitz to Bergenbelsen when the Russians were coming in and coming through Poland and turning back the Nazis. And on a guess, then maybe one of the family members was in this march from Auschwitz to Bergenbelsen and maybe one of these family members survived. And maybe one of them ended up in Bergenbelsen. He went to Berlin and he went to the Displace Persons Hospital and he's researching the family name. And they said, well, we have a Sula Mita Scharf here. Oh, my God, that's my niece.

48:49And he found her, unannable, and he brought her to Canada. And she went to Canada, you know, as a nurse there, went through the licensing and everything. And then through the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, immigrated to the United States and got a job as a nurse in the Bronx. Wishing that my father... And this is your mom, not your grandmother. Yeah, this is my mother. This is my mother. You know, I was born in 1965, the most significant event of my childhood raising happened 20 years before I was born. Or actually, 21, it was... It was actually... And to her, the moment that... I think the last thing my mother ever saw in her consciousness was the separation.

49:35That when they... When they liquidated the ghetto, the Ludge ghetto, Witch ghetto, you got on a train, the train took it out of Auschwitz. It came off the train in Auschwitz. Those who were deemed worthy of fit enough for slave labor went to one side and those who were deemed not fit enough for slave labor went to the other. They were going to the gas chamber. Children, my mother's sister was seven, my mother was 14. Children were not fit for slave labor. They went to the gas chambers. If you sent the child to the gas chamber, the mother went with them. Because once you kill the child, the mother is emotionally so finished that they're not good enough for slave labor.

50:22So you kill the mother with the child. When my mother got off the train and then the... The SS officer pulled her to one side and separates them, separates her from her mother with my mother's sister. The older Jews behind the fences are screaming to my mother. I can't even really call her my grandmother because that implies a personal connection for me to her. And it makes the gravity of the murder of my mother's mother less if I say my grandmother. Because I don't own the right to that personal connection. My mother owns the right to that crime committed against her. And the older Jews are screaming to my mother's mother, give the child to an older Jew.

51:15Because they're going to... The older ones are going to the gas chambers anyway. Give the child to an older Jew, save yourself. And she wouldn't. And so she went to the gas chamber with my mother's sister. And that was the moment in her life that my mother never forgot. And I think everything that my mother viewed for her entire life was through that lens of the separation. I firmly believe that if your life flashes before your eyes or I before you die, the last thing my mother ever saw was August 1944, the separation. So my weight is a factor of... Is a celebration of her life. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as a kid.

51:57Because I learned nothing about nutrition as a kid. I just didn't. I indulged. And I had a metabolism as a kid to burn it off. And then as my metabolism slowed down in my 20s, I wasn't prepared. And then it's been a lifelong journey of trying to understand nutrition that I never learned as a kid. So it's not my second nature. It's not my instinct. My instinct is to indulge. Yes. So I'd lost a bunch of weight going into WrestleMania 18, which was 2002. And I was going to end up managing Chris Benoit. And then the whole thing happened with Tas bringing Brock Lesnar to me. And when Tas said they're going to screw this up, and I realized, man, we screw this up.

52:40This is someone that he's a lifetime. And he's a lifeline for WWE. And when Vince brought me in and he asked me, he says, what do you think will be the greatest contribution you can offer our company? Because he never would call it my company. It's our company. And if you sat there in a room with Vince and you said, you know, but they got a great idea for your company. It's not my company. It's our company. That was his mindset. Or at least his cool aid. A little bit of both maybe, but definitely his cool aid. So he said, what's the greatest contribution you could make to us? And I said to him from the beginning, finding, grooming, developing the next big thing.

53:34You have lost in, you have the rock, do you have triplets, you have the undertaker, I mean, what, what a crew there was back in 2001. But boy, what we don't have is the next big thing. Who's that next one with lightning in a bottle? Who's the next one that's going to set the world on fire? Who's the next guy we can hang our head on? Who's the guide? It's going to be the poster boy for WWE. That when we put him up on a screen, people go, whoa! Yeah, that's that WWE guy, you know? So I went into Vince and I said, you know, Taz brought me Brock Lesnar. Oh, yeah, keep an eye on him. I don't know what you think of him.

54:14I'll tell you two things. Number one, I think he's the next big thing. And number two, we are screwing this up. How are we screwing this up? And I started telling him what the advice was. And he goes, oh god damn, Paul get involved in this right now. I want me to produce him. Yeah, you take over. He's yours. Okay, so I started lining up his matches and I started, and I know here's what I want you to do. And this is, you know, and here's how I want you to display it. And I put together a couple of matches of his. Just, it wasn't even, it was to that week and maybe, I think maybe to the next and the opponents were the same.

54:47Spike Dudley and Funaki. Because I knew they would, they would make him look like what he needed to look like. And the night before many of Vince comes to me and he says, I'm not going to put you with Benoit. I'm like, oh thank god, I'm not on television. That's, I didn't want to go back on TV. I was like, okay, that's great. Thank you. All right, I found, I found peace in my ability to pull out of the public eye. He says, I'm going to put you with Brock Lesnar. And I just said, bingo, okay, money. Oh my god, you just gave me a completely new life. Yeah. Because I knew, oh my god, you want me to talk for this guy?

55:27Okay, this is the easiest job in the world. Then there was a question of, do we debut on Mania? And the decision was made no. Start him the day after Mania and let his first Mania be in the main event. A year later, wow. And that was supposed to be for the title, but we fast -tracked that. We got the title on him by Summer Slam. I mean, it was just, we were just moving. And Dwayne Johnson was going off to Hollywood. So just the timing was perfect for us. And Steve Austin had left. So it was, wow, we were going to anoint the next big thing. So the first promo that I did with him, I called Brock the next big thing.

56:13And we're on the jet that night. And then it's turned to me and he goes, what'd you call him? I said, hey, I called him the next big thing Brock Lesnar. And that's terrible. Why would you call him that? Well, because it's the next big thing. It's a terrible name. Why would you stick that on him? Oh, God, people are going to vomit all over that. And thank God by the next week, there were signs in the crowd, the next big thing that like it had caught on. And people in the production, you know, saying, yeah, the next big thing, the next big thing. Brock Lesnar is the next big thing. And JR had written on his notes, you know, Brock Lesnar, the next big thing.

56:54And Vince started to realize, oh, you know what? Okay, maybe this is catcher than I thought it was. So he said, oh, I'm going to give you one more chance to get that thing over, you know. And don't screw this up, you know. Okay, I won't. I built the whole promo about Brock Lesnar being the next big thing. They let me continue on with that. In the meantime, I'm starting to get to know this beast. And he's a fascinating, fascinating human being. He's very much like Sam Walton. He's a farm boy. And he's a farm boy from Piss Poor, Webster South Dakota, that would offer to go and milk the neighbor's cows or pick their corn or whatever farm people do of which I am not well versed.

57:49Like, what's Brock? Call me up because I'm combining. I go, wow, you must be in your element. That's wonderful. And I'm sitting there going, what the fuck is combined? I don't know what the fuck. Combining it. No idea what it is. No idea. Like if I said to him, I'm dovening today. Oh, that's great. What's Paul doing? Some Jewish thing. I don't know. You know, I have no idea. So he used to go to the neighbor's farm and do chores for lunch. Didn't want money because the place to buy food is way too far away. But to be fed lunch, he would do chores. This was not a wealthy farm guy. It's broke his broke could be with a lot of brothers and a sister and a lot of mouths to feed in the eaters with appetites.

58:48So he didn't really excel as a student at the University of Minnesota. He was there because he was an athlete. But somehow, this farm boy, without much of a formal education, is not only one of the most brilliant choreographers that you'll ever meet. It's one of the savviest, most instinctual, most ruthless businessmen. And I've known a lot of people like that. And I put him up against any one of them. He's amazing. His timing of when to strike, of when to leverage, of when to renegotiate, of how to pit companies against each other. Is that of the best litigator, the most brilliant agents or managers I've ever been exposed to?

59:57Top notch. And I've seen him in a room, negotiating with Vince McMahon, who's not bad at it, I might add. And he matches. He's great. He's a brilliant human being. And he speaks. And my father was this way. My father was a fascinatingly eloquent man. And when he spoke to Jury's, he spoke so that every layman could understand everywhere he was saying, if you're a Harvard business grad, you'd understand him. If you're on the street, on a corner, and you're living in a box, you could understand him. My father could talk to a jury and every, every member would understand him. Brock Lesnar talks business.

1:00:50And it's so simple. He gets to the core of the issue. That in music terms, you understand the riff. You get, you get the message from him. And he doesn't have to articulate it in these big, long words. Do you think it's based on confidence in himself? Is that where it comes from? You know, it's funny. And all these years, I've never tried to understand word comes from. That's a very intriguing question. Yes. He has his self -confidence is obviously there. I mean, you know, all he should do is look in the mirror and realize. Makes sense. You know, we make sense. Yeah. It's also a very alpha male thing.

1:01:40And of the alpha male species on our planet, he's, you know, you know, the other thing he's super human, well, he's super alpha. So he's a wolf. He's just, he's just a different creature. So you get to talk to him and you realize, okay, I'm supposed to be the smart one here. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm the guy with all the labels that apply to intelligence or creativity or everything else. I got a lot to learn from this guy. And I still do to this day. I still learn from him every day that I talked to. So when we first got put together, I was fascinated by him. You know, and he's asking me great questions about positioning, how he holds himself, when to make eye contact with the audience.

1:02:34Different psychological questions about the presentation, larger than larger than larger than life personas that appeal to the masses yet make it personal to every individual and the crowd. Just real probing questions about the art of it all. And one would hope because even at 36, I was now a veteran, you know, I don't own my own company. I had made my reputation as a creative force. And you'd think that I'm the mentor, you know, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm the sensei. I'm the guide into our world, into our culture. And meanwhile, what nobody understood was I was learning more from him than he was learning from me.

1:03:15Just being around him just every day such a lesson. Those are the best collaborations. It really is collaborative. Everyone involved plays a role in it being what it can be. And we all can, we each contribute whatever it is that we have to contribute. You never know where it's going to come from. You never know. Right. Right. So we're on a plane to England. We're doing a, we're doing a British based pay -per -view. And we're sitting together. And okay, well, we got a, we got a long fight ahead of us. Let's get to know each other. And I asked him, what do you see yourself in five years? What do you see yourself in 10 years?

1:03:53And the answer from any young guy is always the same. Main eventing WrestleMania.

1:04:02Millionaire. And his answer was, don't know where I'll be. But I will have what my parents farm. And given them a much more comfortable life. And I'll figure out the rest from there. And it blindsided me. The appreciation that he had for his parents. My parents didn't need me to buy, buy them off of a property that was, you know, below poverty level. But they did fine on their own. But I always wanted to do something for them. I always wanted to do something special for them. I always wanted them to know how much I loved them. I always wanted them to know much I appreciated them. So to hear him say that, which was not the answer I was expecting at all.

1:04:53And then he reaches into his pocket. And he shows me a picture of a son of Graham. And he says, and I'm about to be a father. My girlfriend is, I think she was eight and a half months pregnant. Yeah, my girlfriend's, you know, we're a couple weeks away. I'm going to have a baby girl. Don't tell anybody. I don't want them knowing how they can hurt me. I'm not telling anybody yet. I'll let them know when it's time. And the funny thing was my girlfriend at the time was pregnant with my first child, who was my daughter, Azalea. And I didn't tell anybody. Because I didn't want them to know where they can hurt me.

1:05:43And I said, well, let me show you a picture. And there we both were months away from both being first time fathers. Incredible. Both having baby girls. Incredible. And both keeping it to ourselves. Because we understood, leverages leverage. And oh, well, he has to feed a child. We don't have to give him that much. He's dependent on us. Instead of, well, he's single. He has no children. He can walk. He can stay home and not care. Big, big, leverage difference. So we bonded over that. Immediately. Love and appreciation of our parents. And about to have our first child each. And he realized that as much as I'm a living breathing walking gimmick, you know, I'm the stick come to life.

1:06:37That I'm very rooted in family. And I'm very much about that. And I realized that this beast, this specimen, this super athlete that sits next to me, it's all about family. It's all about the legacy of his parents and providing for the future and passing it down. And I realized as different as we are and we couldn't be more different at the core. At the human level, you're the same. Our spirits were aligned. Yeah. That I understood him and that he understood me. And from that day forward, I think I'm the only person for years outside of his brothers or his father. I think I'm the only man that Brock Lesnar felt comfortable saying in front of other people, I love you.

1:07:45That's not an easy thing for Brock to say to anybody. And it's certainly not easy for him to say to a man. It's just it's not his nature. But Brock Lesnar would say it to me in front of other people. You know, and I'd say it back to him obviously because who would want to offend him. But so when did he go from the next big thing to the beast? Soon as you won the title. When he won the title, the concept was the next big thing has arrived. And that was within the first year you're saying. All within the first six months. Unbelievable. We debuted at the end of March, at the beginning of April. I don't remember the date.

1:08:26It was April because I started in March and we were five weeks away from Mania. So it was April. So out of the April, then there's May, June, July, August, four months, four months into his 10 year in WWE. He beats the rock, clean, in the middle of the Nassauk, I'll see him at summer time for the title. So the next big thing had arrived. And now he's the beast incarnate and displaying it and going into Hellenic Selle against the Undertaker. I mean, just the fast track on him was, wasn't, but the fast track on him was explosive because he was so explosive. And again, we had just lost Austin. Yes.

1:09:01It was the conditions. Everything was set for this to happen. Yeah. Perfect storm. Yeah. And then the rocks went off to Hollywood. We need a centerpiece. We need a star. We need the next big thing. And it was Brock Lesnar. And you know, since then, we were just bonded. It's just, you know, we've, even when we disagree, I understand his perspective. And even when he doesn't agree with mine, he sees where I'm coming from with it. I've never once just, you respect each other. Oh, I respect him. I love him. I admire him. I have such admiration for him. I mean, just again, his hyper intelligence, his instincts, his instincts, his business instincts, his life instincts.

1:09:52He's just a fascinating human being, you know, so when he left WWE, you know, why did he leave? Because he saw the cap. Because they came to him with a 10 -year deal at more money than they ever offered anyone in the history of the company with increases every year for 10 years. At the time, with the exception of the deal that they had offered, Brett Hart that they had a poll because they were losing the Monday Night War, as this was the longest deal that was being offered in WWE. And for by far the most money. And he's sitting there with a 10 -year contract in front of him. And all these financial planners are saying, and of course, we're going to invest in this.

1:10:47And it's going to be the market by six points. You're going to put this in treasury bonds. And in this country has bonds that are very secure. And they're insured. And they pay 20%. And at the end of this 10 years, you can retire. And your children will never have to work. And your grandchildren will never have to work. And this is how much you, if you lived in 92, you can spend this much money per week. And never touch the principle. And he understood exactly how much he couldn't make. He saw the cap. He saw the ceiling. And though for a poor farm boy, this was money that he never dreamed of in life.

1:11:32Once he's faced the reality of, I know exactly how much I'm going to make 10 years from now. And I'm envisioning more. But they're not going to give me more because this is more than they give anybody else. So this is all I can make here. Here isn't enough for me. And he decided I'm going to be worth a lot more to these people. If I leave, go out, become a bigger celebrity on the outside world. And come back as that celebrity. Then if I'm the homegrown product of Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory, you're only worth as much as the other guy will pay you. There were no other guys in this business. So he had to go outside the business.

1:12:27So the first move was football, even though he never played a down in his life. And of course, on his way to trying out for the Minnesota Vikings, having never played college ball, never played high school ball, probably never even touched a football. And you know, on the farm, that's just not what they did in rule Webster South Dakota. He decides to go to the Minnesota Vikings training camp and try out. Before this happens, he flips a motorcycle in Minneapolis. Craxx's pelvis, terraces groin, breaks his jaw. They want to wire his jaw shut, which means he can't eat, can't keep the nutrition going, can't keep the ball gone too.

1:13:16And shows up injured to the Minnesota Vikings training camp. They know he's injured, they know he has a broken pelvis and a torn groin. And God knows what else the injuries were at the time. We're displaced. Whatever the injury was, I'm sure Ivan Belishin over the years. He was fucked up. He was really fucked up. And he runs the quarter mile and the 100 yard dash in Olympic qualifying time. Not just best of the team, not just best for crude, they've ever seen. If he were to try out for the Olympics in track and field at 295 pounds, he is injured. He's running because he's so explosive. He's running these numbers in Olympic qualifying time.

1:14:09Like the 9 foot tall guy who's every stride is 25 feet. And that's why he's such a who's 9 feet tall and 112 pounds. And he's the Olympic gold medal track star. And those are the numbers that he's putting in at 632 95. And he's the last guy cut from the team. And they want him to go to European football. And he goes, nah, I'm not doing that. No, I'll fight. I'm a, you know, I was a wrestler when I was five. I won the NCAA Division I Heavyweight Championship. I'm pretty good at that. No, there's some disciplines I gotta learn. But I'll put together my own training camp and I'll make it about me.

1:14:52And I'll take my freakish super athleticism and I'll take on the best. And so he did. And in his, was his fourth fight? He did, he did the 1k1 fight. Then it was Frank Meir, Heath Haring, then Randy Couture. Third, U .S .C. fight, fourth professional MMA fight. He beats the greatest heavyweight of all time, Randy Couture. Standing up, knocked him out, knocked him out. It wasn't a grappling hold. Wasn't he took him down to the canvas and wrote him for three rounds where now it would be five. He knocked out Randy Couture to become the UFC Heavyweight Champion. And he always kept his jute close to him.

1:15:36We were doing digital. We were looking for projects. We wrote his book together. We were always close, you know. He, we're always there for each other. I was there from, you know, through all his battles with diverticulitis. Was there for me when my mother passed away, you know. We're just there. We're just very, very close. There was just an understanding between the two of us, just a bond. And a bond happened on that airplane. When we both realized the thing about each other, that was so close and dear to ourselves. Now let's talk about the streak, because that's a high point in the Brock Lesnar story.

1:16:18Tell me why the streak is such a big deal. Well, it's dictated by the audience, because the audience became fascinated by it, because the audience became obsessed with it. So, championships get won and lost, but the streak goes on. Oh, that was the Holy Grail victory. That was more important than any title. That was more important than any championship. Because I think the general consensus would have been, the undertaker was going to retire with the streak intact. I imagine everybody thought that. Yes. I think undertaker thought that. He was willing for it not to be. But I think there came a time where he started to believe, hey, why not?

1:17:05I'm going to be the exception that defines the rule. Those people forget who Vince McMahon is. He is going to want to return on that investment. It's just that simple. Vince will phrase it as it comes a time you have to give back. Okay, I buy that. I'm a subscriber to that theory. I also understand that Vince invested heavily into that streak. So, for 21 years, well, more than 21 years, 21 WrestleMania matches. Because there was 21 WrestleMania matches over 25 years. I see. So, in over 25 years, the undertaker did not lose a match at WrestleMania. The Super Bowl of the Year. Undefeated. Undefeated.

1:17:55And not only did he not lose, he always won. Yeah. And he took on all of the best. He took on every major player over those years. A murderers row of heavyweight Hall of Famers from Jake the Snake Roberts to Superfly Jimmy Snooka to Rick Flair to multiple matches with Triple H to two legendary matches with Sean Michaels. Unbelievable. Victory number 21, which was CM Punk, which was a tremendous match. I was in Punk's corner for that at MetLife Stadium, which to me was the setup for Brock. In hindsight. But yeah, it was what a murderer's row. What a roster of greats that he went through. And deservedly so.

1:18:54And considering the undertaker's place in the industry, the idea of him retiring with the streak intact is not an unrealistic idea. It actually seems like that's obviously what was going to happen. If this was anybody else's promotion, I would suggest undertaker himself and anybody else observing would have a right to feel betrayed by the notion after a while that you would stop this, that you would end this, that you would take this away, that you would end the streak, that the streak would not be retired with the undertaker intact. But the fact that it's Vince McMahon and the fact that it's Brock Lesnar.

1:19:48That's a big piece. See, to me, that's always the argument. If it wasn't Brock Lesnar, it couldn't have happened. No, correct. It had to be the right guy. I thought when we were going with punk versus undertaker. And we had done, and Paul Barer had just passed away. And we had done the way out of the box and way over the line story on television that we laid out the undertaker and then we poured the ashes of Paul Barer out of the undertakers earned onto the undertaker, which was just the heaviest thing we could think of doing. I was like, okay, if there's a guy that could be anointed as a top tier star, if there's someone that could become equal to Cena at this point in time, the Macho Man to Hogan, the Rock to Steve Austin, a clear one and one A that if we give punk dis Victory, we've established someone for the next 20 years as a star.

1:21:04And I thought the case could be made for that. CM Punk was ready to beat the undertaker. And Vince's mind and a lot of other people's minds. And most likely in takers mind, Phil Brooks. Was not going to get that victory. CM Punk, yes, Phil Brooks, no. That was their decision. That was their judgment. But Brock Lesnar going against the streak. The moment Vince came to us and said, hey, here's what I have in mind, Fomania. When he said Brock versus undertaker, first thing in my mind was, oh my god, we're getting the streak. I didn't see it any other way. I couldn't fathom it any other way. Did Vince see it that way?

1:21:51No. Absolutely not. No way. No. Why would he? You think up until the time that it was decided that Brock would take the streak in Vince's mind, the undertaker would retire with the streak? No. You don't think so? No. It's not Vince's nature. It's just not. I'm going to get something out of this. Yes, yes. I invested this much into it. Yes. And I want something out of it. Yes. He just never saw the time yet where he needed it. Yes. And that was something that was going to be pulled when he needed it. Would he have let the undertaker retire at a summer slam or a survivor series mid -year and right off into the sunset?

1:22:46Oh, yeah. Beautiful. We're going to keep you on retainer. We'll cut a merchandising deal with you. We'll keep you active in some way that you can make you can make a living and a handsome one at that. And we still have the benefit of the intellectual property and everything. But one of the reasons why Vince would do that is, oh, this is a great WrestleMania. If you do come out of retirement and defend the streak, and by the way, I found the person to beat you. I don't care if undertaker was 85 years old at the time. If he's alive, if the dead man is alive, so to speak, then the streak is exploitable.

1:23:24And if it's exploitable, the promoter in Vince McMahon wants to exploit it. That's what we do. When you're lying on the floor, listening for that magical moment in music, where it hits, and you don't need to be up at the board, you don't need to have the earphones on. Because you're lying on the floor like a kid who's listening at home for the first time that song, come on to radio and go, my God, I don't know what song that is or who doesn't, but I need to go buy that piece of music. When you find that sweet spot, you know that it's there. And that is in that moment, when you go, that's it, that's the moment.

1:24:09No more takes. Don't sing that song again. Wait till it comes out. You'll be happy. Because I'm happy. I heard it, it was there, and it will resonate with kids across the world or adults across, whomever, the audience will buy into it. You are at that moment exploiting the art of the performer in the studio that hit the note, hit that music, hit the line, hit the vibe, hit the verse that you were seeking. We're all exploiting each other's talents, we're exploiting each other's artistry, we're exploiting each other's gifts. And Vince will look to exploit that, and he would look to exploit the streak.

1:24:53So did I ever believe that streak was going to remain intact? No. This is very interesting here. You say this because we think of wrestling as a predetermined thing. And I guess you are talking about it being predetermined. Yes. But a different predetermination than the powers that be might assume is going to happen. My attitude with Brock Lesnar always was predetermined or unscripted. The finish of the match is always the same. The finish is what Brock is going to allow it to be. That a Brock decides he's going to win. There's not a being on the face of this planet that's going to stop him from that victory.

1:25:44And I'm not just limiting it to human beings. I don't care. So all of the normal rules of the game don't apply to Brock Lesnar. None of them. He's Brock Lesnar. He doesn't fit in. Yes. And he's not supposed to fit in. Yes. And that's why he's such a huge box office attraction. In anything that he does, this many decades into it because he's not like everybody else. This boy is special. What year was the streak? 2014. Okay. So and it's WrestleMania 30. Yes. And it's the first one on the WWE network. So there's every reason to do something truly historical. And here's the thing Brock Lesnar supposed to be the exception to every rule.

1:26:35When not supposed to be one of many. Was supposed to defy convention. So is Brock Lesnar the zero and 22 and zero? Or is Brock Lesnar the one and 21 and one? And subsequently, once you give him that, doesn't he become more important to beat any champion? Doesn't the victory over Lesnar become the Holy Grail? Isn't Lesnar defending the laurels? The quote unquote title of 21 and one. Because isn't the new chase to become the one that beat the one in 21 and one? So essentially Brock becomes the streak. Brock becomes the successor to the streak, becomes the Holy Grail, becomes the victory no man can attain and becomes the embodiment of the impossible mountain to climb.

1:27:57So that when someone climbs that mountain, when someone beats Brock Lesnar, they are instantly made in the same way that Brock Lesnar is instantly made the moment to referee's hand hits three at WrestleMania 30 signifying Brock had conquered the streak. And we had someone in mind to be the next big thing, the company's next big star, the guy that would pull the wagon, the successor to John Cena, the person to become the one who beat the one in 21 and one. We had someone in mind at that time. Even at that time, yes, that's unbelievable. Do you know who that person was? Who was that person? Roman Reigns.

1:28:52And it just so happens, that's what happened. Yes, well at WrestleMania 31, it was Brock versus Roman Reigns. When Brock had beaten John Cena in LA at what is now the crypto, then the staples and shocking fashion. Yeah, brutal fashion. I don't think Cena got in one offensive move. He got in one, he got his whole, he got his finishing hold on Brock and Brock broke it powered out of it and threw him around like a rag doll, 16 suplexes, suplex city. And I was at that and it was a shocking shocking. The room was no one could believe what we were seeing. A thrashing of the top star in the industry.

1:29:42The idea was to be a shocking as conquering the streak. It worked. Credit to Brock Lesnar and John Cena. Wow. So now Brock's the unbeatable champion. Walking into WrestleMania were just the year before he attained the impossible victory over the undertaker. He's the one in 21 and one, defending the title against the one guy who matches up against Brock Lesnar. Roman Reigns from the shield. And just when you think Roman Reigns is about to win his former partner from the shield, Seth Rollins, Cash's in, Money in the Bank, steals the match and the title from both Brock and Roman Reigns, which was also incredible.

1:30:30And I was there for that one. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. Unbelievable. Which creates a whole bunch of new matchups. So the impossible victory for Roman Reigns is delayed for another time with hopefully bigger box office and more proceeds and more of a boost to Roman when he finally can demonstrate his ability to conquer the conqueror. Let's talk about when Roman Reigns becomes a Paul Heyman guy. I've kind of always looked at it like Paul Heyman became Roman Reigns guy. Okay. It's, uh, we, we always flirted with it. Brock and I always flirted with it Roman and I always flirted with it.

1:31:17First of all, I have an enormous history with his family. The very first time Brock and I confronted Roman Reigns on television was the day after the blizzard in the Northeast that Monday night Raw was snowed out and we had to do it from the studios in Stanford because the rumble had been in Hartford and Roman had won the rumble. He was going to go against Brock for WrestleMania 31. And I went up to Roman with Brock at my side and I shook his hand and I said, I'm sure you know, I've known your family longer than you've known your own family because I've known his family since before he was born.

1:32:00When I was 15 years old, I would ride at times to Allentown and Hamburg, Pennsylvania to what was Vincent James McMahon's WWF television tapings for superstars of wrestling and all star wrestling and I would ride with Alpha and Seika. Seika being Roman's father, Alpha being Roman's uncle and at times they were breaking in Alpha's oldest son, Big Sam, Samu, Sam Anwayi and he was learning the business and I ride with all three of them. And this is when they were all living in Hamden, Connecticut, which was the center of the entire territory. Whether you're going to Maine, whether you're going up the Preskyle Maine, Portland Maine, Bangor Maine, New Hampshire, Boston, all the way down to Capitol Center, Washington DC, that was the breadth of the of the territory, Vincent James McMahon's territory, the WWF, then WWF.

1:33:00And this is Vincent's Vince McMahon's dad. Yes, yes, Vince Sr. Then known as Vince Sr. His Vince doesn't like juniors. Hey, it's like Floyd May, wait, the other one we call junior, Vince doesn't want me to call junior. Well, my father was Vincent James McMahon. I'm Vincent Kennedy McMahon. I'm not a junior. My middle name is different. It's very, very, very mysterious. It was not a lot to be a very mysterious junior. It's very mysterious. He doesn't like juniors. It makes you less than you are. You are automatically second. Yeah, I don't like that. Yes. I go first. I promote firsts. So I'd ride with off in Seika and I'd learn the business from off in Seika.

1:33:43And I'd been endorsed by a lot of members of the locker room, a lot of a lot of the older guys liked me because I had such respect for the business because if they would if they would test me if they'd ask me a question, you know, about what I saw, my answer would always be, well, I can't do that. And even if I had the physical ability to do it, I don't know if I'd have the balls to do it every night, a hundred times, a night in the ring. I had such respect for what they did and the tolls that must take on their body. And I always I always articulated on that even at 15 years old. A lot of the a lot of the old time is respected.

1:34:19And this was a time when we were very difficult to break into the inner circles of the business, let alone at 15 years old. You know, the old stories of Hulk Hogan tried to try out for the business in here, Matsuda Brook is leg. You know, let's see if the kid comes back and see how bad he wants it. This is what they did. They would beat people up who wanted to get inside the business to see if you had the desire, the passion to come back. Say, okay, thank you, sir. Let's do that again. Maybe this time let's not break my arm, my leg, rip out my eyeball, bite my nose, whatever, whatever the do you had to pay was.

1:34:54And I had been endorsed by, you know, like a couple of the old time was, you know, Randy Orton's dad, Bob Orton, liked me and Greg Valentine and Don Morocco. And of course, Louis Loughbano and Fred Blassie and the Grand Wizard and then walking, you know, coming to some dressing rooms, you know, off and see go, hey, this is his kid over here with the camera. He's all right. He's with us. Oh, shit, he's with off and see. And I know mess with the kid. He's with off and see. And not only not mess with the kid, but you know what, if off and see like this kid, he has to, he has to be offering something.

1:35:20He has to be respectful of the business. Hey, he's with off and see he's all right. So I had known Romans family for so many years. And one could tell that this was a natural matchup for Brock Lesnar. This, this was macho to Hogan. This was rock to Austin. This was just the rivalry, the feud, the, the two that would go down in history intertwined and together, which is new. They just matched up so well. So Roman and I had talked about it because Roman always much like Brock, understanding the cap of his money in 2004, Roman understood the cap of the big dog as a personality. Roman understood that the presentation of the big dog Roman reigns as much as he could make it his own was always going to be the corporate structure produced this talent, this superstar in their vision of the top guy in WWE.

1:36:36And the audience was well aware of that. Could smell it from a mile away. I'll even reference a piece of music that Rick Rubin didn't produce. George Michael Freedom 90. That's Roman ways. The whole thing about George Michael singing, they wanted my eyes this color. They wanted me to sing this way. This, this is how the labels wanted me to present me because that was the marketing, that was the exploitation of my intellectual property. But as an artist, I want the freedom to to to soar or sink on my own with my own merits, with my real colored eyes, with the way that I really look and dress and present myself and approach my art in music.

1:37:37Roman reigns always had a vision of something past the big dog. But he was still too young and he had not been. How many years was it between the shield breaking up and how long was the big dog post -shield up until the him and guy. Big dog single push came in 2014 was the streak 2015. And the tribal chief was born in August 2020. Five years. Five years. So five years of wars, five years of fights, five years of matches with the big show and and bronze droman and and all the others and WrestleMania main events against Brock Lesnar. But the perception was, I'll tell you as a fan, I really enjoyed this shield and post -shield, I was not into Roman during the big dog era.

1:38:42You could feel this in authenticity. I don't think Roman rangel would argue with you at all on it. That comes, I guarantee you he wouldn't. And the fact that it turned on a dime in one interview and has been full steam ahead ever since, it's a shocking thing to witness. Again, there's a common denominator with Roman reigns in Brock Lesnar. Roman reigns is a fascinating intelligent human being. Brilliant. I love the fact that even Rick Rubin who can look at a creative process in any genre and at least find something that you can say, okay, I understand this differently than the common person would understand this because you are who you are and the way that you're wired in the way that you analyze or assess a creative situation.

1:39:48But even Rick Rubin will say, Roman reigns the Paul Aiman guy. I'm the wise man and I am long false humility aside behind the scenes. I serve as wise man for Roman reigns, for that human being, 100%, but I learn as much from him and every day as he will ever learn from me. I've learned so much being with him, speak. Even when I teach him something, I learn from him. He's brilliant. He is forward thinking, I gotta keep up with him. I'm challenged every day to keep up with the progressive approach that he takes to our industry. He looked at pandemic WWE with a digital audience in a manner that no one else did.

1:40:42Everybody else with Bichon. Everybody, oh, we're limited. Oh, we don't have the crowd. Oh, we can't feel who's resonating. We can't feel these new baby faces. Are they over? I don't know. We don't know if the audience will click with them. We don't know what they make a connection with the audience. The audience is in there and all he saw was opportunity. Oh my god, look at the things we can do with this. We can do, we can do things in the ring without a microphone. And we can have the cameras in there with us because they're not blocking any of you. They're not on the hard camera view because we can, we can cut it and we can have the cameras right there in our faces.

1:41:21We can whisper. You can't whisper when there's 22 ,000 people even into the microphone. You have to whisper like this. Show that the audience at home can hear you. When there's no audience, you can whisper and you can start doing movie scenes. We can bring a sophistication to this product. We can upgrade the product. We can elevate the product. We can bring better acting to these to this product. We can do scenes instead of angles. We can play out storylines that in this soap opera of professional wrestling slash sports entertainment is so important. It's the story that's the hook. And we can literally draw an audience, attract a crowd to see the next chapter of the story play out and it doesn't even have to be a match anymore.

1:42:31We can completely tilt the axis of what is perceived to be sports entertainment and professional wrestling. Would this not have happened if not for the pandemic? No way. Something else would have happened. Yes, of course. Something else would be that always happens. Something would be that disrupting the calc. The specifics are because of this situation now we're performing without an audience, it changed the game and there's a way to change the game. We're ruins the game and there's a way to change the game where it's the greatest you've ever seen the game. CD changed vinyl, Napster changed CD, Apple changed the Napster generation, streaming became the way to go.

1:43:21There will be a new disruptor in the distribution of music that comes along either based on natural revolution and evolution or based on circumstances in this world, Elon Musk colonizes Mars. There's no streaming on Mars. Uh oh, what do we do? We go back to vinyl. We're something something. Whatever the optic wires and nerves, satellites can bring us. Someone will say, Oh, this is a distribution portal. Really? How do you see that? Oh, don't you see it? No, but the visionaries do. Roman Reigns saw it. He just saw it. What he didn't have was the character to give it because everything that was being pitched to him was the big dog.

1:44:14We'll bring back the big dog and this is your yard and you're going to bark and bite and you know, you know, and and and oh, of those the five years that that he was the big dog, how many years was he out? Because he was out one one year about, yeah, I don't know the exact amount of time. At the time that he left, did we know he was coming back? Oh, nobody knew. Nobody knew how sick he was. I mean, the thought was he has a handle on this. The thought was this is treatable. The thought was he'll be back, but you're talking about a very unpredictable affliction that can take a wrong turn real fast and next thing you know, the world is and his family is suffering without him.

1:44:57So I mean, nobody knew how much did that change him? I'm sure it gave him a greater appreciation of life. I'm sure it gave him a greater appreciation of one's own mortality. I'm sure it gave him a greater appreciation of the blessings that he has over and above what many other people have. We, we, we, John Cena to me is a real life hero. He's a superhero. When I become a grandparent one day, if I'm asked what my grandchildren should watch, it's not or read comic books or whatever. It will not be watch Superman or Batman or Spider -Man with incredible Hulk. Once you're a superhero, go look at what John Cena did with his life outside of the ring.

1:45:55Batman's a superhero. I don't have the words to convey the admiration I have for John Cena as as as a human being. There had to come a point in time where Vince had to sit down with John and say, you need to let me go public with these make -a -wish visits. You have to. You know, you're hurting make -a -wish by not allowing me to do that because if people understood how much of your time you give to make a wish and to these kids, they'll be inclined to contribute. They'll be inclined to get involved. You will help them if you allow this because Cena never wanted to exploit it. He never wanted publicity for it.

1:46:39He never wanted recognition for it. He wanted to just do it. That's a hero. People who go through life and say, I'm going to do this because God will smile on me and it's my ticket into heaven. Well, then your motivation isn't really pure, is it? Your motivation is I want something back for this. I want my VIP pass to heaven. I want God to like me because of this. That's not why John Cena did it. John Cena did it because it was the right thing to do. I run into people and they say, how are you doing to me? And my answer is pretty much always the same. Now, nowadays, I'm a blessed man. And I believe that.

1:47:17I believe I'm an extraordinarily blessed man. And what it boils down to is when I woke up this morning, I called both my kids. And guess what? They're healthy. I'm a blessed man. Everything else is relative. The finish didn't go well. Okay. There'll be other finishes. Hey, you got fired from your job. Okay, you know what? I'll find another job. Hey, the stock market crashed. You broke. Okay. I'll make more money. Hey, your house burned down. Your car blew up. Oh, you look through this. The house burning down. Your family's okay. It's just a house. Exactly. Family's okay. Your blessed man. I've looked into the eyes of the parents.

1:48:00These make -awish kids. Kids accept their fate. Bravest souls you can never meet. The parents hell on earth. Take me, not my kid. Please take me. Take me and hurt me along the way, but make this painless for my kid. Take me and torment me forever. Send me to hell, but let my kid have a life. They'll trade anything, anything. Did not have this existence inflicted upon their child. Their fate is worth worse than a life. You guys, those parents, and you walk away, and your kids are healthy. You're blessed. I'm a blessed man. Roman Reigns had an affliction. His children. Thank God. Thank God. As of now, don't share that affliction.

1:49:02His children are healthy. What a blessed man. His mom still alive. And what a character she is. He's a blessed man. His father still alive. And a legend. What a blessed man. He has suffered loss in his family. His older brother, Maddie, passed away. So he knows what that's like. So I think what he went through, having lived, and he was on the road to 250 days a year at the time, 200, 250 days a year, he was on a full schedule, working every show. And then it stopped. Boom. Now you're home. Boom. Complete shock to the system in every conceivable way. Wow. You know what? I'm not on TV. And the business went on without me.

1:49:48Hey, you know something. I'm not in St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit. Mill Waukey, Los Angeles, New York, Buffalo, Syracuse, Tampa, Miami, Oklahoma City, Saudi Arabia. I'm not in Saudi Arabia. This happened going into a Saudi show. His recurrence happened heading into a Saudi show. And it went on without him. The world goes on without me. And I'm still here. And I'm getting better every day. And my children are healthy. And my wife is with me and my dad's alive. My mom's alive. I'm alive. And I'm keeping people coming back. What a blessed man. I think he really felt that this time, you know. He gave him a chance to really appreciate life.

1:50:35Let's talk about the transition from you being the advocate for the beast to becoming the wise man. Well, the world changed. The zombie apocalypse hit I had become in 2019 the executive director of Monday Night Row. This is while I'm still on camera with Brock. And as we are headed towards that WrestleMania, the number I don't remember, though I should because it's a very unique one. It's the only one with no audience. The pandemic hits. Now Brock's an expensive meal ticket. He was right in 2004. Leave, become a much bigger store in the outside world. Come back, get paid outside world celebrity money.

1:51:26And schedule. And so without being able to run live events and without Saudi and that enormous deal coming in, budgeting for Brock Lesnar in an empty arena several times a year doesn't make business sense. So when Brock's contract came due and we're in the middle of the pandemic, it doesn't make any sense for WWE to do what they had done every year, which is, yeah, we know this was your final year. But if you'd consider we're going to throw more money at you, give us another year of this. And this was a year where that wasn't going to happen because there was no way to get a return on the investment.

1:52:18So Brock went back to Saskatchewan. And in his mind, that was the end. He's done. I'm still there as executive director. Roman Reigns has taken time off. With his condition, he's not exposing himself to this pandemic that we don't have a grasp on house of beer. It can be quite just yet. And at the same time, he's had enough of the creative. These things are running concurrently. The feud rivalry story with Baron Corbin over dog food and the infamous Suffering Suck a Tash promo had weighed on him enough to where he said, I've had enough. I've reached the cap. I can't go any further as the big dog.

1:53:15I've peaked. And as an athlete, I haven't peaked. As a performer, I've barely scratched the surface. I have so much more to offer. And since I'm taking time off, I'm not coming back as the same person. This is where I make my move. This is where I do for me what Lesnar did for himself when he conquered the streak. Something has to become my defining moment and then propel forward from there. The catalyst to something completely different. Four WrestleMania main events to his credit, a run on top since 2015. And one could even say always near the top from 2012 to 2015. But something has to be generational here.

1:54:08Something has to define him as Austin, Rock, Sam Martino, Hogan, a transformative personality that can then ultimately make the case, I Roman Reigns and the greatest of all time, which the big dog was not. No way. No, it's an authentic. It's a portrayal. And it's not real. So what happened next? So Vince removes me as executive director in June of 2020. And I thought I had a bunch, a bunch of months left on my contract and I was going to ride it out. And we'll see where we go from there. There were limited options in my agreement as to whom WWE could put me with. When I had the leverage, I wrote that in.

1:55:02Because we had reached a point with the cachet of being Brock Lesnar's advocate that anybody else you put me with could either make them instantly a star or you're watering me down and ultimately hurting the other person because they don't belong with me. They don't measure up to where you're used to seeing my character bring someone down to the ring, which is either the main event of WrestleMania or close to it. One of the few names on this list was Roman Reigns. Another was Brock Lesnar obviously. Another one of Rousey was having a baby. Brock Lesnar wasn't coming back with Saudi being down.

1:55:47Kind of left Roman Reigns in there. So Vince calls me in the middle of August and he says, I'm going to take it back into television. And I'm thinking, he's going to make me a commentator. And Jim Ross isn't here. Who am I going to work with? How is this going to go? What is a commentator in 2020? How can I be disruptive? How can I be evolutionary in the process? How can I redefine this role? Because I don't just want to settle in and do what's been done already. Even by me, I want to do this differently. I said, okay, what do you got in mind? And he says, I'm going to put you with somebody. And I'm thinking, oh, I see you read my contract.

1:56:35I said, well, you know, Vince, the options are kind of limited in that. And I just, and I'm trying to tip toe into a delicate situation here where I'm about to butt heads with him. And I'm thinking, Ron is pregnant. Brock's not coming back to him with Saudi down. Certainly, he's not putting me with Roman. And he goes, I'm envisioning Roman Reigns with Paul Heyman. And I'm thinking, oh my god, he's going to pull the trigger on this. He would never pull it with Cena. He would never have allowed Cena to become to come to the dark side. Yeah. Yeah. Cena was going to be Anakin Skywalker his entire life.

1:57:14Yeah, he was never going to be Darth Vader. A heel of villain and antagonist. Talk about the villain in pro wrestling in general. That's the archetype for for anyone who doesn't study this stuff. The job of a villain in pro wrestling is not to be the bad guy. The job of a villain in pro wrestling slash sports entertainment is to make the other person the hero. And if you happen to become marketable yourself in the process of defining why I should like the baby face, more power to you. But that's not your primary responsibility. The primary responsibility of the villain is to define what's so likeable about the hero.

1:58:09Present the antithesis. Prevent the hero from doing the things that make him a hero or her hero. And then be the victim of the avenging baby face who brings the comeuppance to you in front of a crowd that's willing to pay to see it. The heel is the villain is stereotypically the one you pay to see get beat beat up or both. And if they can keep some of that villainery attached to their aura after the avenging baby face gets his revenge, then they can still draw money and make yet another hero another baby face. That's the role of the villain. Okay. When Roman Reigns and I finally talked in August of 2020 in a continuation of conversations that we had had for five years for four years about oh if we ever got together.

1:59:20Oh yeah Brock Lesnar's advocate ever switched sides and got behind this guy and promoted this guy and articulated for this guy. We'd set the business on fire. And we knew he couldn't be the big talk. Now anyone who knows this man understands he has a star's presence. First of all he looks like Aquaman. I say this fully obsessed heterosexual man. He's the best -looking man. I don't remember which director it was. I think it was the director of the movie Troy. And he said he said he was directing the movie and Brian Cox is doing this scene and Peter O. told me what a cast in that movie and he said and Brad Pitt walks on the set and he says and I couldn't stop staring at him.

2:00:21Oh my god. How is it possible that someone's you know Roman Reigns is that striking of a presence you know of what an alpha male athlete is supposed to look like. Two he's incredibly gifted as an athlete. He's a D1 football player and was also coincidentally being picked up by the Minnesota Vikings when he got flagged with leukemia. That came out in his medical test as the Vikings wanted him. Waltines you know which is the same team Brock tried out for. 30 he is again his understanding of performance and his desire to be more and to do more and challenge himself to become more. His acting chops are there.

2:01:16They're really there. He's a natural. He can tap into emotions that train Shakespearean actors have a hard time finding and have to end up going method to find because they can't find it on command and he can. He's a magnificent actor. I always looked at him and thought not in these words but that's the tribal chief and it's not just a play on the Polynesian islands or the Samoan tribal chief. I know a lot of people suspected at first that was me paying homage to Peter Maivia you know the paramount high Samoan chief it's not the idea was the tribe is the WWE universe and he's the tribal chief of the entire WWE not of the Samoan islands.

2:02:14He's the tribal chief of the WWE universe and he operates out of the island of relevancy. It's funny because we almost didn't go with island of relevancy. We almost went with championship island and somehow we realized well that limits a decade's long progression of the character because if it's not about the championship then why are we on championship island. Yeah but island of relevancy is amazing. Yeah we looked into that. Interesting about things like the island of relevancy and the tribal chief and the head of the table and suplex city that sometimes it's something that you actively write and sometimes it's an off -handed comment that you realize somebody just said something like let's use that.

2:03:13Right well the tribal chief I came up with the tribal chief and Roman came up with special counsel for me and he tagged me the wise man. And that I remember when he said it the first time and it seemed like an off -handed comment. It didn't seem like at the time that I saw it didn't seem written. No there was no plan to it. In fact I actually thought he was giving me a nod to Freddie Blassie and the Grand Wizard and Louis Albano because for Vincent James McMahon they were known as the three wise men of the east. They had a lock on being managers in the San Martino Morales Bob Bakland Eras. There was no other managers in the WWF, WWF.

2:04:00In 1984 Roddy Piper was brought in as a manager. I didn't know that. Grand Wizard died in October 1983 and Roddy Piper came in originally as a manager. How did the Grand Wizard end up in wrestling considering Fred Blassie and Louis Albano were both wrestlers who became managers. Ernie Roth was a five foot four five foot five inch fragile small unethical Jewish man from Canton, Ohio that made his living on the radio as a televanjalist. Is that true? That's amazing. Are there any recordings of his televanjalism? I'm sure I would love to hear. I would love to hear them yourself. One would think he would be the closest thing to Dr.

2:05:03Eugene Scott. I love him, my hero. You and I, I love him. Oh my god. Eugene Scott used to come on TV in New York on Channel 68 which was out of Union, New Jersey. They had a void of the fluid and oogie and they would also have wrestling programming on. They had Bill Watts's TV on. They had a world class on. They had Crockets TV on. But Channel 68 for hours and hours a day, what are Dr. Eugene Scott? And you know, the whole Jimmy Swagger scandal had happened. And Eugene Scott was on there and he's smoking a cigar and he has the hats and he's having his band play the song Kill a Pissant for Jesus.

2:06:01And he says, and he starts talking about, you know, my sins aren't the same sins as Jimmy Swaggerts. But I have sinned in my lifetime and I plan on sinning again. And if you're watching me at home and you're trying to live a righteous lifestyle and you're not sinning, well, you're doing Jesus in injustice because Jesus died for your sins. And if you don't sin, there was no reason for the Son of God to have died. I remember when the Iraq war started. He said, Newcomin the name of Jesus. He was just so funny, so smart. Oh brilliant. I mean, and you know, he brought the church in LA that had Jesus saves on it.

2:06:46And then the government came after him for taxes. And he was all pissed off about it. And one day he's on there and he's just smoking a cigar and he's not saying a word. And he's going through the Bible like the old Evelyn Wood speed reading courses. And he's going through the Bible and he says he goes, well, I've been sitting here for about 30 minutes, just going through this book. And I'm pretty well educated on pretty well versed on the verses within this book. And I just want to say to the internal revenue service, there is no such word as audit in the Bible.

2:07:26Well, there's a defense for you. And I, oh, I was such a fan of Eugene's. And I would imagine that Ernie Roth, yeah, Erwin Jacob Roth from Canton, Ohio, was a lot like Eugene Scott. Wow. And the chic discovered him. Amazing. He had done some stuff in an around Ohio. He'd managed magnificent marise and handsome Johnny Baron and then Johnny Baron and beautiful Bob Harmon, who he ended up living with for many, many years. That was his partner for until Ernie's death and the chic discovered him and brought him to Detroit as Abdullah Farouk. So he went from being a small frail Jewish man playing a tell of angiolist, spreading the gospel of Jesus on the radio to make money, to becoming a wealthy Syrian business man who backed the shake.

2:08:29And he always found it funny that the chic would allow himself to be built as the chic when the name is actually chic. That chic is not actually appropriate in an Arabic culture. It's chic. And he goes, but that chic being as smart as he is would accept the terminology because it's easier to pronounce by the ticket to buying audience.

2:08:56So Ernie and Albano and Blassey were the three wise men of the East. So when Roman just offhandedly called me the wise man, I was just like, wow, he just threw me something man. He just bestowed upon me a sacred name in WWE, WWE, WWE, WWE, WWE culture. Wow, that, you know, in the way that his family and McMahon family dynasty, that's a sacred name. No. Bobby Heenan was not the wise man. Jimmy Hart was not the wise man. Slick was not the wise man. None of these people ever got bestowed upon them the title of wise man. So I just thought like, wow, he just made his special counsel of wise man. I will remember this promo for the rest of my life.

2:09:43And then everyone started coming up and going, a wise man, could I ask you something? It just stuck even Vince would say, wise man may have a moment when I'm like, well, he even Vince is calling me wise man. What have you done? He just granted me amazing. It's just Roman. He stumbles on to things. He acknowledged me was a stumble. That's the best. It's the best. We were trying to figure out, you know, what does he really, because his first storyline as champion was with his cousin Jay. Yes. And we were trying to figure out which was unbelievable. That story was unbelievable. Brutal story. Yes.

2:10:21Head of the table grew up with these two, not as cousins but as brothers. Yes. But always was the biggest one in the room. In a culture where size does matter because the biggest of the tribe goes out and slays the woolly mammoth to feed the nine children and cousins at the dinner table. The most capable feeds the family. And he was always the most capable. He was the big ooze. He was the big one of the family. He was the one of the next generation. Yeah. And the twins were twins, a team, a unit, a combination, a collaboration that could think and act as one but were two individuals that acted as a team.

2:11:12And altogether we the ones. So we were trying to figure out the rules. How did we the ones come to you remember? It was one of the usos that came up with it. And I think just said it. I don't think it was a out of the blue. Yeah. We heard it. We went up. That's it. That's it. That's our tag was we got this one. And and Roman had said, well, you know what I really want from Jay? I don't want his love. I have that. I don't want his admiration. I don't even want his obedience. I'll take that from him. You know what I need? I'm the head of the table. I am the tribal chief. I need him to acknowledge me.

2:11:56And the moment he said it, we all got chills because we knew this is bigger than this moment. Yeah. This is the declarative statement. This is the definition of the character. What does the character what does the tribal chief need? What does the head of the table seek? acknowledgement. And it's emotional. It's an emotional. If you think of all of the popular catch phrases, none of them are emotional. Can you smell what the rocket's cooking? That's not emotional. That's the bottom line because Stone Cold said so. Alpha male statement. You know, you know why that's the bottom line? Because motherfucker.

2:12:41I fucking said so. I fucking said so. I'm mother fucking said. That's the bottom line. That's the bottom line. And you will accept it because it comes from me. If you smell what the rocket's cooking, same thing. Very alpha male. Very declarative. Very boss. Very dominant. Dominant. You're all my submissive bitches. You will you you will be subservient to my vision because that's what the rock is cooking. If you smell, it's a rhetorical question. It's not hey, by the way, you kind of get what I'm saying. It's you get what I'm saying. Don't you? If you smell what the rock is cooking, it's imposing one's will on the other person.

2:13:31What you're when Hulk Mania runs wild on you. In other words, you're hopeless. You're helpless. There's nothing you can do. What you're gonna do. Nothing bitch. It's the prison scene. Hey, I really like your shoes. Oh yeah, thanks. You know what they're they ask you a brand they were. I told you I like your shoes. By this time, you should be taking them off and handing them to me. When I ask you what size your shoes are, your answer is your size, sir. That's the prison logic. These are prison declarative statements. You're in the yard. Rest in peace. That means you're dead. You're dead, motherfucker.

2:14:12You're against the undertaker. You're gonna die. Die at the hands of the dead man. You know, Romans catch phrases needy. The most confident performer, the best looking man, the guy that looks like a champion. The one guy that can handle Brock Lesnar. The D1 athlete, a second generation Samoan American wrestler. And he's needy. He's a tribal chief. He's the head of the table. He runs the family. He's the biggest star, but he's needy. He needs you to acknowledge him. He needs you to acknowledge him. Please acknowledge me. I'm not here for your love. I'm not here for your affirmation. I'm not here for you to chant my name.

2:15:00I just I need you. It's unbelievable. It puts the power in the audience to react. Any way they want. Any way that you want. Boom me. Boom me. acknowledge me. You want to cheer me. Cheer me. acknowledge me. Yeah. acknowledge me. It's not learned to love it. No. No. No. No. No. No. There's no command. No. It's a plea. It's a plea. It's a beg. It's a plea. From a man who doesn't beg. From a man who rules. From a man who commands the island of relevancy. Please acknowledge me. Please. Just acknowledge me. It's fine. I don't just want it. I need it from you. And when you do it, do it authentically.

2:15:49Going back to George Michael in Freedom 90, going back to the big dog being manufactured by the corporate structure and the branding and the marketing and the global push of the machine of WWE, we are encouraging the audience's reaction to be genuine. Do not respond to us as villains or heels or bad guys or antagonists. Don't respond to us as heroes or baby faces or good guys or fan favorites. You know what you do? Respond to us anyway you want, but respond to us. Acknowledge us. Please acknowledge us in any way that you want as long as you do. Yes. The most dominant force in WWE. And it's a plea.

2:16:41It's a beg. It's an it's so beautiful when he does it and the reactions are always incredible. Yeah. Because it empowers the audience to be real. It empowers the audience to be themselves. It empowers the audience to be their own tribal chief and say or do anything they want. And the most powerful performer in the industry in decades is asking you pleading with you, begging you, needing you as an audience member to do something. Please do this. It's amazing. Yeah. It's amazing. What a psychological twist that this dominant figure. Well, it makes him vulnerable. It makes him human. It makes him we want to see how it's going to go because he's not a machine.

2:17:38He's not Brock Lesnar. He's not a beast. He's an emotional human being. Yes. Vulnerable. Exposing his own vulnerabilities, which is why when he gets angry, which is why when he cries, which is why when he questions the loyalty of his own family members, you feel those emotions in him. You feel them coming out of them and you believe them. You buy into them. You need to live with him, not just vicariously through him. He's not limited by the label of a villain or a heel or a bad guy. He's so much more. He's a compelling, complex, sophisticated, layered character. This is what David Chase wanted to do with Tony soprano.

2:18:37Got a mob guy that kills people with his parents, orders the death of many men. And yet at home, his kids bitch Adam, one's flunking at a school, the other daughters coming, coming into the peak of puberty and discovering boys that Tony soprano doesn't want banging his daughter and all these different things. And he's on a psychiatrist couch and he has his having nervous breakdowns. And he has issues about his about his own father, the gangster. This was a layered character that you you you you love to hate or hate to love. And you feel all these different emotions about Walter White and breaking bad, better call Saul.

2:19:17You know, Mike, Mike and both shows, you know, these are compelling characters that are not black and white, much dash twirling, Salvador Dolly Simon Barcinister. I am the Eve. This is not 1980s Hulkomania enemies. These are sophisticated contemporary characters that I can buy into that I either love to hate or hate to love and sometimes both within a within a very same five seconds. Yeah. That I'm willing to pay to see the next chapter of that that these are situated as a villain, but not limited by the label. And that's the tribal chief. And he's able to play it and pull it off and find new dimensions and new layers and new emotions even.

2:20:11When just when I thought like, man, I've seen every emotion someone can play, but to display multiple emotions within the same scene at the same time, where you know what he's doing, but you know what he means. And you know so much about the character now that when he does something, you know the true meaning behind his actions and his words. He is the most transformative character in this industry in generations. When the Sammie's in character entered the story, did you have any idea what it would become? No, but I rode the wave because the audience born into it. I just did the audience because I've seen people come along that should have been as famous as wealthy, as important, as relevant as Steve Austin, the rock, the undertaker, Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, and never click with the audience.

2:21:11And I've seen people come along that had no business making a dollar in this business, let alone surviving a day in the business, let alone drawing any money or being on top and have long, healthy, wonderful careers. And I don't know how many years ago it was, I was literally just breaking in as a character as a performer. And I was asked the secret sauce of pro wrestling and my answer was a very simple. What works works, what doesn't, doesn't. And that saying has become tied to my theory of this industry when people ask, what's your theory of the industry? That's it. What works works, what doesn't, doesn't.

2:21:59There are things that should work that check every single solitary box. And it doesn't work. It doesn't work. You've experienced it. Absolutely. Here's the greatest part of our control. That's out of our control. All we can do is do our best in the moment, throw everything we have at something to be the best it could possibly be. But beyond that, it's out of our hands. And you can sleep well even when it doesn't work when you know I've done everything I can do. I know it's my best. It's fine. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's magic. It is magic. It's incredible that it ever works.

2:22:43That's how magical it is. And that's the thing. What works works, what doesn't, doesn't. The Sammy thing worked. Who am I to question the audience? Did I think it would work? I thought it'd be a nice short term thing. The example I gave was two weeks, three weeks. It's a guy to get to cameo that ends up doing such a magnificent performance that we invite him back the next week. The next thing you know he's starring in the show. The Sammy story was the story of acceptance. And I've given this before. I apologize. It's not unique. But the application of this of this explanation still applies. Anybody that's been past seventh or eighth grade can relate to this.

2:23:28You're in high school. You're sitting at a table. You look at another table and you say, I want to sit with those guys. The cool kids. The cool kids. And your friends will say, yeah, but they're assholes. Yeah, I know they're assholes, but I want to sit with them. Why they're assholes because everybody notices them because they're the center of attention. Because in this high school, now let's use the word island, they are relevant. They live on the island of relevancy. And that's where I want to reside. And somehow you get your way into that circle. You're in that click. You're in that elite group that no one else can get into.

2:24:16You're in a closed door society. You're relevant. And you look around and you say, wow, these guys are assholes. How do I get away from them? And how do I get my revenge for the way that they're treating me like the asshole that I'm not? I'm pissed off. It's dangling the carrot in front of the horse. And the horse finally gets the carrot and realizes the carrot is sour. From the day this story started, it was obvious where it was going to go. It was obvious. Sammy was going to get close. It was obvious. Sammy was going to get in. It was obvious. He was going to be sitting at our table living on the island of relevancy.

2:25:14And it was obvious. He was going to get bullied and battered and beaten and subjected to our asshole dumb to such a degree that at some point he's going to say, I don't want to be here anymore. I want out. This ain't for me. You're not who I thought you were. I don't like you guys anymore. And it was obvious that for that, he was going to pay a price. And yet people wanted to see it play out. They knew the story that was going to be told. And they wanted to see our take on that age old tale. And Sammy was magnificent. He's just so endearing. He does more with a hush puppy sad face than we could do playing to the people in the cheap seats.

2:26:07You know, the old expression in our business is you never look down. You'll look up. Number one, it's more cinematic. It's more operatic. But if you look down to people up top can't see you. If you look up with your pain, your expressions, then everyone can see you and it's more majestic and it's larger theater. And Sammy can do more just with that hush puppy face on a close up of him looking sad than any of us can do reaching out for the five, 10, 50, 100 ,000 people in a arena NBA arena club building or stadium that we play. He was just wonderful. And he couldn't look less like someone who belonged in the bloodline.

2:26:53Like it's so funny to see him with them. Couldn't fit worse. See, we're having a free form creative expression here. So I will tell you something that I always wanted to say to Sammy on television. Yeah. Because I will never be able to say it on television. Yeah. Because it's not one appropriate. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the scenes in the movie True Romance. Like a lot of people can't stand the entire movie just too long. But boy, you bring it down scene by scene when the greatest movies have ever made love Gary Oldman is Drexel in the movie. Christian Slater comes into Drexel's club and catches a beating from Drexel and Drexel turns to his bodyguard Marty and he goes, he must have thought it was white boy day.

2:27:42In a white boy day, is it? Marty was now a man in a white boy day. I always wanted to do this thing with Sammy with saying, you know, the problem is Sammy, you thought it was white boy day and taken from the one white boy on the island of relevancy on the island of relevancy in a never white boy day. And of course, there's no way to let me say that on television. And it's not about the racial overtones to it or, you know, the skin color of a Polynesian and it's, you know, pale white Sammy from Monterey Orkleback. It's about a mentality because Sammy is as Caucasian as a Caucasian can be. He does not fit in on the island of relevancy.

2:28:28He just doesn't. I do because I'm the wise man. I'm the exception. I'm Tom Hagen. I'm the non -corleone and the Corleone family. I'm the adopted one. I was taken in. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm you're still afraid. Of course. Of course. The one wrong step with the tribal chief and, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm kosher stew for dinner. It's one of the funniest things is that when you stand next to Brock Lesnar, an actual monster, you're the most confident, fearless person in the world. And when you stand next to Roman Reigns, the needy emotional tribal chief, you're terrified. It's amazing to watch.

2:29:15I'm the beast tamer. I, I'm the one that the lion loves. I can put my head in the lion's mouth with no problem. And by the way, just in case someone wants to fuck with me, it's my lion. And he loves me. And if you fuck with me, I'm going to look at my lion and go, sick him. And he's going to tear you apart. My client Brock Lesnar client, we are tied in that manner. He comes to me. He hires me. He respects me. He laughs at my jokes. He listens to my guidance. He pays me. First promo I did with Roman Reigns. I said, just when you, the audience thought I was out, he pulled me back in. Don't point your fingers at me and blame me for corrupting Roman Reigns.

2:30:21Point your fingers at Roman Reigns and blame him for corrupting me. He's not my client. He's my tribal chief. I answer to him. He can order my extermination on a whim because someone else pisses him off. And I didn't see it coming in advance. I better be the wise man. I better see all angles. I better see the future with more clear, clear voyancy than no stradamas because if I'm not five steps ahead in a business where the top is three steps ahead, then I'm two steps behind. And that's death on the Islander Relevancy. I'm Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now. I'm, yes, advocating to use the Brock Lesnar character, the character played for Brock Lesnar.

2:31:24I'm advocating his greatness, but I'm terrified in the process because he ain't my lion. I don't stick my head in that lion's mouth. He's the lion that killed the lion that looked at me and said, I don't play those pussy games. Holy shit. That's a pussy game to you. Yeah, I'm a tribal chief man. Look at my culture. Understand where I come from. The whole story of the love triangle between you, Roman and Brock was a fascinating, was far too short. It was a far too short story because it really, we never knew what was going to happen. It was such a great because of the history with Brock and the current excitement with Roman, it really could have gone either way every moment.

2:32:14And still can. Yeah. Well, we got a nod to that the other day when did you know Brock was going to be here. Yeah, well, we'll always reference it and it'll always be that suspicion and everybody can relate to it. Everyone has an ex that they have a soft spot for. Everyone has an ex that they're defined by. I don't care how many marriages Madonna has. You still think of Madonna and Sean Penn as being together. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. They're just people that you identify with as couples and they can all go their separate ways and they can all have wonderful lives with with other people and multiple children and truly find the love of their life with somebody else, but you but you remember them.

2:33:03Oh yeah, that's that's when it was the best, you know, and there's an interesting dynamic amongst the three of us. Always has been my guidance in playing it was a 1939 movie by a director named Michael Curtis. Great Hungarian Jew director far underappreciated by history as one of the greatest to me. I mean directed Casablanca. What's the film angels with 30 faces. James Cagney as Rocky Sullivan. And it's an easy it's an easy story to think about. James Cagney is Rocky Sullivan and he's a kid and his best friend is a kid named Jerry and they grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City and a cargo train.

2:33:53It's a cargo train. Whatever. A train with a lot of goods on it is there and and they're stealing from the train and some cop comes by and Rocky Sullivan. James Cagney and Patel Brian Jerry run towards the fence and Patel Brian clears the fence and James Cagney does not and he goes to Juve Hall and he starts a life in Juve Hall and jails and prisons and comes out as a world famous gangster in 1930s New York Rocky Sullivan. And he's the toughest most heartless, most ruthless, most uninhibited bloodthirsty gangster that they had ever portrayed on film at this time. Far more than any of Bogart's characters in the roaring 20s George Raff and Roger Robinson.

2:34:44This was the villain of all villains, the ultimate bad guy gangster. And also in the movie are bunch of Hunts Hall and Leo Gorsi, the Bowery boys at the time known as the Dead End Kids. And these are the kids that now Patel Brian who got over the fence and became a priest. And a lot of people it's funny because a lot of people, if you watch it today, will say, oh this is the story of the Giganti brothers in New York. Vincent the Chin Giganti, a godfather one of the heads of the five families and his brother, Louis Giganti, who was a priest in the South Bronx that ended up rebuilding Fort Apache in the 1970s to wear with Sebko housing in New York that became known that that area of New York Fort Apache became known as Little House on the Prairie because he built an actual neighborhood once Fort Apache burnt down.

2:35:46Well this was way before the Giganti brothers and Patel Brian Jerry becomes a priest and the dead end kids are on his, you know, in his boxing league and his basketball, you know, midnight basketball games because he's trying to keep them off the streets. He doesn't want these kids to grow up to become a gangster like Rocky Sullivan, his childhood best friend. And of course Rocky Sullivan comes back to town after spending a stint in prison and there's Ann Sheridan, you know, as always playing the unattainable girlfriend who wants him to go straight and Rocky gets mixed up with a bunch of gangsters, one of them being home free Bogart, a crooked lawyer and of course he, Rocky, starts shooting people and now he's going to the electric chair and he's not afraid.

2:36:32In fact, he knows he's going to hell and as expression goes, he's looking forward to getting close to the flames. And Patel Brian comes to him in the jail cell and he says, I want you to do something for me and I'll never be able to repay you. See these kids are paying attention and you're going to walk to that electric chair and you're going to go in there on a freight and Kagme says, yeah, I'm going to, and I'm going to spit in their eye. When that guy comes from me, Jerry, I spit in his eye, I'm going to punch him in the face. I'm going to walk down, I'll walk down there like a man. That's what I got, that's all I got and I'm taking it with me.

2:37:10And Jerry says, I want you to have courage. He goes, I have courage. I'm not afraid at all. He goes, no, that's not the courage I mean. It's a different kind of courage. It's a godlike courage. I want you to turn yellow. I want you to beg and plead. I want you to be a coward. I want you to go kicking and screaming to that chair. I want you to be everything they don't want to be. I want them to despise your memory. I want them to be betrayed by you because I don't want these kids ending up in the electric chair like you. And Kagme looks at how many goes, can't do it. No way. And they go, it's time, Rocky.

2:37:53You know, and he they open the cell door and he goes, get away from me. Mugger off, split your eye again. And the cop gets too close and he punches the cop in the face and he spits in the eye of the other one. And they're walking down the get, you know, towards towards the electric chair. And you hear the other prisoners, you'll get him, Rocky. You show him, Rocky. Don't blink it out. Don't blink. Don't don't sweat. You get him. You go, you go to that chair like a man, Rocky. And Jerry's hearing this and you can see the panic that this is going to be the voices of Hunts Hall and Leo Gorsi and the dead and kids.

2:38:25They're all going to end up on death row. They're all going to go to the chair like their hero, Rocky Solomon, who went to the chair like a man. And he looks at him and he's holding the Bible and he looks at his best friend from childhood and he goes, Rocky, please. And Rocky looks at him with the coldest James Kagney eyes. Do you ever see any of us? No. And you see the resolution and Jerry's eyes. All I can do is pray for his soul. And you see him start to pray. And he's not looking at Kagney. And from that moment on, you see Kagney is walking there like a man, but there's something in his mind.

2:39:06And you don't know what it is. And then he gets to the chair and he turns to paddle Brian and he goes, you know, so long, kid, you know, and paddle Brian says, you know, it's so long, Rocky, may God have mercy on your soul. And you see Kagney mutter and you don't really pick up what he says, but it's something along the lines of, I don't need, I don't need God's mercy. And I don't have a soul, you know, and he walks into the camera like the close up they did of Daenerah and Cape Fear, which is where they stole it from. Just walked through the camera. And the next scene you see is the silhouette of Kagney.

2:39:45You never saw him play the scene. You only saw the shadow and he starts to beg and he's crying and he goes completely, oh man, I got chills. I'm covered in goosebumps right now thinking about it. And he, please don't do this. Please don't do no. Please don't do this to me. And you see the grab, I'm grab, I'm grab, I'm and it's over. And the camera's doing, it's not about, oh, Brian, and he is a tear going down his eye. And the next scene, you see the dead end kids and they have, they have the the newspaper and it says, you know, killer rocky turns yellow at the end. And Patel Brian comes down and the dead end kids say, don't they go, is it true?

2:40:33Did he turn yellow? Was he ever mad? Was he a coward at the end? Is that how he really was? So what's your brain going to say now? Yeah, yeah. My best friend did this holy thing and I got to talk shit about him. I got to talk him and get to piece of shit. Or is he going to say, that's right kids. So that he leaves these kids to a better life. He never answered him. He said, come on fellas, let's go say a prayer for a kid that couldn't run as fast as I could. And Kagney wrote a book called Kagney by Kagney, which by the way, ladies and gentlemen, is not nearly as good as Rick Rubin's book, which you should buy right now.

2:41:19And he saved it towards the end of the book and he says, you know, people asked me to this day. What was really going through Rocky's heart? How did you play that scene? In your mind, did Rocky do it for Jerry? What was he really a coward at the end? And Kagney says, here we are all these decades later and no one really knows the answer but me. So why would I stop the conversation and tell you now? I played every scene regarding Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns with that in mind. I never wanted you to know. I didn't want to know. I wanted to be able to look back on it and say, oh man, you know what?

2:41:58I'm leaning towards Roman and look back at that very same scene a year later, depending on what I'm going through in my life or what I'm seeing in my life or what the circumstances or situations are and say, oh no, no, no, I was leaning towards Brock at that moment. I wanted to make it so compelling that you could make the case for either at every moment, that even I looking back on it would change my mind as to how I was playing it. Amazing, ambiguous and beautiful. Remember you threw the belt in the ring at one point as a weapon and it was not clear who was cool was meant to grab it. It was unbelieveable.

2:42:35Right in the middle. Completely mean. And of course, you know, I'm not an athlete. So my aim and my accuracy will be off. Did I throw it to Roman and it was Aaron? Did I throw it to Brock and it was Aaron? Or did I throw it in the middle and say, whoever gets it, that's going to be the winner and I'm with him. What was the meaning behind that? It could go either way, both neither or either. All options, all conspiracy theories, all with merit. It's cag me going to the chair in angels with dirty faces. I can make the case for either one and one is more compelling than the other and the other is more compelling than the one.

2:43:18Would you say the most ideas for stories come from movies, television, something that came before or something that came before in the history of wrestling or none of the above? Most of our ideas come from basic human emotion. Sammy's story of acceptance. The Cody story of an impossible situation of a good person having non -pure emotions like jealousy and envy. The Cody story is about the fact that when you lose a parent, one of the hardest things to come to grips with is the fact that your bubble will ultimately be burst with the overwhelming influx of knowledge that your relationship with your parent was an exclusive because we all fool ourselves into that.

2:44:25I'm the closest thing to my dad. Anybody could ever be. I'm the closest thing to my mom. Anybody could ever be. And then, you know, soon after a parent's passing, you're at the grocery store or at a convenience store, a pumping gas or something. And somebody's up to him goes, hey, I'm Jim. Oh, hi, Jim. Hey, doing. I was friends with your old man. Oh, really? Yeah, you. I was on his bowling team on Friday. Oh, yeah, my father loved bowling on Friday night. Yeah. Hey, you know, he always talked about how when you were seven years old, you drew that picture and you wrote, I love you, daddy. And how we kept that in his wallet to the day that he died and he wanted to be buried with it.

2:45:04And you sit there. And instead of saying, wow, wow, that's wonderful that my father shared that about me with this person. You look at the person like they're your enemy and you feel betrayed and you say, my dad shared that with you. I thought that was my memory with my dad. And all of a sudden, you're faced with jealousy and envy, which are not, you know, heroic emotions to have. It's to your discredit allegedly to have them. And no matter how good of a human being, how great of a man you are, you're faced with it. And here's Cody, who not only had to grow up understanding, he had to share his father with the world, because his father was world famous.

2:45:47He had to share his father with people in the same industry that he was going into. Which makes it even harder. And he's lived in the shadow of his father, his entire life. That's the Jane Fonda line that I stole during that promo with Cody, the opening line and Jane Fonda's book is I grew up in the shadow of a national monument. Cody Rhodes grew up in the shadow of a national monument. And he had to share access to that monument with everybody. And even more personally, with people in his own industry, it's one thing if your spouse leaves you, it's another thing your spouse leaves you for someone in the same business that you're in.

2:46:27It's one thing for your father to have loved other people as if they were his own kids. It's another thing that it's these are your contemporaries, your peers in your own business. It's impossible to shake that emotional baggage. And here's what makes it worse. The parent isn't there for you to talk to about. Dusty isn't here. Cody can't talk to him about it. So we are laying this truthful emotional baggage on Cody that he can do nothing about. He can't escape. He's boxed in. That's where I came up with the line on television. The truth shall not set you free. It's going to imprison your soul.

2:47:07Wow. Great line. Thank you. Great line. Thank you. That's the story. Now that's just real life human emotion. Yeah. So that's what we think. Now because I am so obsessed with cinema and moments of great television series and especially gangster threads, once we choose the story that we're telling, I find scenes that have played out, not to redo the scenes lined by long. And just for inspiration, we're inspired by them. Yeah. The dynamic of the relationship, the relationship between the two people in the scene, the message that's being conveyed, the theme of what they're doing here. Michael Corleone sitting in the restaurant in Louis, at Louis restaurant in the Bronx having been told by Clemenza to drop to to come out of the bathroom blasting and he doesn't come out of the bathroom blasting.

2:48:21He sits back down and now Salatso is talking and he's talking in Italian. So to the audience who doesn't speak Italian, it's just noise. And you're sitting there going, oh my god, I don't know what he's saying, but whatever it is, it's heavy. And he's laying it on and he's talking faster and harsher and angrier. And now the train's coming in and you hear that noise and the camera shaking every so slightly and patino's eyes are going left and right because he's saying, so I pull the trigger, do I have to pull the trigger? But I don't pull the trigger. Is he going to kill me? If I pull the trigger, my whole life has changed.

2:48:57I'm a gangster. I'm no longer just a soldier. I'm not a hero. This is a war hero. He's a war hero this kid. And he didn't want to get mixed up in the family and his father doesn't want him in the family business. But if he doesn't pull the trigger right now, this guy across the table and the dirty cop to his left who broke his jaw are going to kill his father. He has no choice. He better pull the trigger. But can he pull the trigger? He's not a gangster. He's there in his some people. They're not threatening his very life at this very moment. What does he do? What does he do? And his eyes are and you and you read his emotions because he's not sure what to do.

2:49:34But he knows whatever he does, this is the defining moment of his life. And nothing will ever be the same after this because he's going to go kill his father or he's going to go kill them. And either way, nothing's going to be the same. And then he gets up and he shoots them both. But it's the moment before that matters. It's the emotions that are displayed. Now, we're not doing anything where we're sitting in a loose restaurant in the Bronx where there's a crooked cop in a Turkish heroine dealer sitting in front of us. But that conflict is a scene that I love and look for situations within our story.

2:50:10I'll refer back. That's let's look at this. And you can play out the tension. Where are the moments of tension? Where's the suspense? Where's the drama? And what are the possible releases? The scenario itself becomes a character in your play. And that's what I look for. And there's a great scene in the movie The Town by Ban Affleck. I do this actor a disservice and I apologize to his fans and family that maybe listening. As everyone should to the Rick Rubin podcast, by the way. And he played Kobayashi in the usual suspects. And he plays this gangster that owns a flower shop in Southy in Boston.

2:51:08And Ban Affleck is in debt to him and he comes to see him. And the gangster says, you're going to do this for me. And Ben Affleck says, I'm not doing this. I'm out. He says, now you're not out. I'm going to do to you what I did to your father. And it's a terrifying scene. Because in it, Ben Affleck says something long lines of, you don't like what I'm saying to you? I live that and I, this is not the address that he gave. I'm just going to make up the address. I live at one five five mo Berry Street. Come and find me anytime. At the end of the end of the speech by this gangster, the guy who played Kobayashi in the usual suspects, he says to Ben Affleck, he says, I hear you have a nice new pretty girlfriend.

2:51:50I don't want to send her funeral arrangements to your house. But I will if I have to. Now that I know where to find you, he took the hero's Ben Affleck is the hero in the movie. He took the hero's lines and he shoved it up his ass and he shoved it up his ass was uncomfortable and as hard and as mean a threat with his comma voice as you could possibly have. The audience felt threatened. The audience in the movie theater gasped when he said it. Because he said it so cold, so menacing and enressling, you know, menacing is Rick Rubin, I'm coming to your house. I'm going to beat up your wife. I'm going to kick your children.

2:52:36He's going to murder your dog and then you know, and then you get that Greg and all the then, then Rick Rubin is just you and me and you're going down that's wrestling and that's not where Roman Vains is. So that's not where when the bloodline and I get together and we start studying movie scenes or you know, that's one of the scenes that we study. Had he delivered a threat? So cold. Yet so menacing and keep the audience engaged so that when you say it, they gasped. They say, oh, I just we just had a thing Monday night with me and the Usos. And the original concept of it was we don't want Roman in a scene with the Usos right now because we don't want you to know yet.

2:53:24Roman's reaction to the Usos losing the tag team titles. We have that as a hook as we head towards the next pay -per -view premium live event that Roman reigns or main event. Why would we give that away right now? Make you wait for it and set it up so that we have consecutive weeks on television to play that story out. So we had to keep the Usos away from Roman and the idea was the Usos knock on Roman's door and I say, hey, the tribal chief says, take the night off, don't worry about everything's wonderful, you know. Okay, thanks. How does it progress the story? How does it give me a conspiracy theory?

2:54:05How does it become a topic of conversation? What about this makes me wonder where are they going to go with this? So we changed it with moments to spare because we went live with it to where I come out and Jimmy says to me, you know, hey, the city tribal chief, oh, he's not in the room and I'm blocking the door and by my body language you see, I'm not letting them come into the room. Oh yeah, he took solo out for a walk because you know, we have a big match tonight and I'm now promoting the main event, promoting Cody Rhodes and Brock Lesnar against Roman reigns and solo. So I'm promoting as I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm justifying my existence in this promo in in promoting the main event of the evening, keeping people hooked to the TV show.

2:54:50And but but the tribal chief, what a great weekend and of course, and a nod to them losing, I say, for all of us, not for all of us, but nothing we can't get over, but the tribal chief is so appreciative of your contributions over the weekend, which means they main event at night one, which means they had the interfered in the main event, trying to help him beat Cody Rhodes and ended up taking solo to do that, but they tried their contributions their efforts. Thank you for your efforts. You want you to go to the jet. We have seafood ready for you. We're gonna solo and Roman could take care of this light work of Cody Rhodes and Brock Lesnar promoting the main event again.

2:55:29We'll meet you on the jet. All's good. Thank you so much. Calofa, we the ones and they go, okay, thanks a lot. Yeah, yeah, two babies are in the way. I'm in the room. Yeah. All right, we'll see you in the jet. Yeah, see you in the jet. All right, wise man. Okay, thanks who says we love you greatest thank you of all time. And I'm smiling as they walk away and then you see me lose the smile when I open the door and I say I took care of it my tribal chief and the audience went, oh, he lied. The tribal chief was in there. He didn't want to see the usos. Is he mad? Is he busy? Is he just getting we don't know getting together with solo and planning a battle plan, which you're going to need against Cody Rhodes and Brock Lesnar is he meditating?

2:56:18Is he making other decisions and he can't deal with the usos at the moment? Or is he pissed at the usos? Oh no, there's a lot of variables going into that. I know Hayman lied. Did he lie to cover for the tribal chief? Or did he lie to delay this process as the tribal chief lines up one enemy at a time and he'll get to the usos at his own good time? You don't know. That little twist leaves us so many different ways to go. That's what we search for. And in that case, do you have a tentative plan of where you'll go that may change? Or is it just this leaves doors open and let's see which door feels right next time?

2:57:05All the above, it's a free form creative process. It's Rick Rubin laying on the floor, listening to music, trying to find that one moment where the singer hits a note or the strumming of the guitar is like nothing you've ever heard or the beat of the drum defines drumming for the next 10 years. It's a note by Johnny Kesh. It's a chorus by system of a down. It's in a long gated word by Tom Petty. It's rage against the machine doing their take on older songs. You're lying there and you know wow, this wasn't what I was expecting, but it's what I'm keeping. Past three weeks before WrestleMania, my biggest question was never what are we doing at WrestleMania?

2:58:01My big question has been, what are we doing at WrestleMania 40 next year? Great. So has there been an occasion where you see the next year playing out in a way that's really exciting and it's a great potential vision and then a week later something changes and it everything switches. All the time. That's why even if we came up with a game plan for WrestleMania 40 and indeed even WrestleMania 41, it could all change this week. Circumstances, catalysts in the real world, stumbling on to something that we didn't expect a moment in time that doesn't even have to be in our program, you know, that we see on WWE and we're like, oh my God, can we capitalize on this?

2:58:54Man, we can tie into that right now. The beautiful thing about open creativity. That seems like one of the things that's most exciting about professional wrestling versus anything else is that fluid, ongoing, the stories never over, it continues to change. We continue to be surprised by it and be prepared for the unexpected every time. It's a jam session and we're winging it with a plan. With a plan. But you also have to wing it considering there's how many hours of television is it every week? Oh my God, well every week. Okay, there's three hours to raw, there's two hours of NXT, there's two hours of Smackdown.

2:59:42There's a whole bunch of other things that live on the web. And then once a month you have a pay -per -view or at least once a month if not more. Yeah, so there's so much content always being generated and when we were young, a storyline would play out over several months. Now more seems to happen week to week than might have happened every six months when we were kids. Yes, so Roman has the theory of consistency, consistently great. Consistently consistent. If the narrative constantly and consistently progresses and moves forward, then wherever you take it, you're still progressing and moving forward.

3:00:32Here's something without giving away the secret sauce. We don't let the Roman Reigns character recap. He doesn't talk about what's happened. He brings the stories forward. He talks about what's going to happen. He talks about the emotions that are on the table at the moment. I recap. I say I told you so. I brag about the victories. This past Sunday night at WrestleMania, the tribal chief, your tribal chief Roman Reigns smashed Cody Rhodes. Last year at Summer Slam, your tribal chief Roman Reigns smashed Brock Lesnar. John Cena, Egent Daniel Bryan, Big E, Sammy Zane, Kevin Owens, whomever it is, I recap.

3:01:23I bring you up to date. Roman Reigns does not. There's no nostalgia in the tribal chief. There's no looking back when you're the tribal chief. He's a shark. He swims forward or he dies. Can he pivot left and right? Yes, but in pivoting, he's still going forward. He's not going backwards. The tribal chief goes forward. That's something we decided very early and we have never violated it and never will. And if we do, and it becomes the exception, the natural story in and of itself. And there'll be a reason. Oh, man, this he doesn't talk about things that happened. He doesn't refer back to last Thursday, last Wednesday.

3:02:14This is something's going on with the tribal chief. It'd be the same as if he came out on television and he'd say, he doesn't speak Spanish. There's a seismic shift happening here. Same thing. When he violates the code of the character, that's a story in and of itself. So it's a constantly shifting narrative because the world is constantly shifting or something happens that resonates, that changes the way people see it or see the business or see our presentation. And we have to address it. Or there's an emotion that's revealed in the audience that we can expose or tap into or go after or make people relate to, they can resonate with them.

3:03:11So we're always looking for that. Always trying to feel that out. Is there something out there that was, or is there something about to happen that we can be one step ahead of so that when that emotion becomes prevalent, we're already into it. Where do you think wrestling can go that it's never gone? Besides the first WrestleMania from the Elon Musk colonized Mars, I don't mean a place. No, that was just my smart ass answer. Buying myself time to figure out a proper answer. I um, the, the safe answer to sound pseudo intelligent is inclusive storylines, a, a transgender hero, a female that competes at the same level with the same marketing behind her as any of the male competitors that's not Ronda Rousey from the outside world coming in as a celebrity, but a homegrown, rear -ripply, or Bianca Belair, or Charlotte Flair, or Becky Lynch, or Bailey, or, or Nadi, or any, or any, any, any of these fantastic performers that we have on roster that get a platform as lucrative and as that carries as much opportunity on a global basis as any of their male counterparts.

3:04:57That's a very safe thing for me to say. And I wouldn't be wrong in saying that's a place we should go, could go, will go. The, the, the, the unsafe answer, the one that I will preface, I pitch things, I'm not all that sure about sometimes and I say, well, let me just reserve the right to be really stupid in one of the other answers. The other answer is an amplified aura of theater without theatrics. The transformative, the revolutionary, the evolutionary disruptor in this industry towards that theory is Roman Reigns. We do movie scenes in the locker room to further tell the story. Three, four, five minute movie scenes showing vulnerability of his character, angst of his character, worry of his character, sensitivities of his character, idiosyncrasies, nuances of his character.

3:06:20With his cousins, by his cousins, with the spotlight on his cousins at times, sometimes on me, sometimes in my sickle, fantic nature of appeasing the tribal chief while at the same time, also appeasing him based on the fear that he can behead me at any time. Couple of years ago, if I said to you, we're going to do these locker room scenes in our movie scenes. And this villain champion for a thousand days, unbeatable by anybody, is that a spoiler, a thousand days? I don't think we have another title defense before we had a thousand. Amazing. Congratulations. Well, I thank you and your tribal chief, thanks you as well.

3:07:10And he's going to cry or he's going to pivot because he's exposing his own fears. His jealousy, his envy, his rage. If I would have told you this, it's saying now that's not what do you do backstage. We stand there on a set, sometimes in a locker room to give just a different, ooh, they've peeled back the curtain, they're in a locker room now. You know, ladies and gentlemen, I'm standing here with the tribal chief Roman Reigns offense title this coming Sunday in the main event of WrestleMania against Cody Rhodes or this summer slam against Mr. X or, you know, in Saudi Arabia against Mr. Y and, and, you know, you know, the tribal chief, you know, some would say tribal chief, this is your greatest opponent to date.

3:07:51Well, let me tell you, he's bringing everything he can, but he's not really up to the measure of the tribal chief. That's a locker room interview. It's sometimes every now and then you, you, you, you, you bring that fourth wall into play and there's this one scene of these two people meeting in the hallway, you know, hey, how you doing? Hey, how you doing? Yeah, I didn't like you before. I don't like you now. Yeah, your mother was combat boots. All right, we're going to fight. But you've never seen just scenes play out like the way that we're doing it now. And ones that completely propel the storyline into into into its next chapter.

3:08:34That was the secret of the Sammy story is what we were doing backstage with Sammy. So that when we took these stories out to the ring and the story of his, his, his, his desire for acceptance and our refusal to give it to him. And Jay being the strongest minded in not giving it to him, which pissed off the tribal chief for Jay to make the decision and not for Roman to make the decision. So to spite Jay and to show Jay who was the boss that Roman would accept Sammy a little more every week, just to piss off Jay. The jealousy in the envy within one's own family. Spite. Well, don't with spite for people.

3:09:24And it's and it's not a pleasant personality trait. So the tribal chief is a villain will display spite. So these are all things that came to life in the ring based on the backstage drama that we were displaying. Not caring that the camera's right in front of us. Never pretending that it's not there. We're playing out scenes. Now, this is a moment in time where it's being done so well by Roman Reigns and the Usos and Sammy and all those around him that it's accepted and people get into the story the same way when I opened the door when the Usos left on Monday, I said, took care of it my tribal chief.

3:10:05They went, oh, gasped. If anybody else tried this, it would have bombed. Because Roman Reigns has an actor is better than anybody else in WWE and he pulled it off. So we tailored this to his strengths and now it's become an accepted part of the business. Do you think other people come along with the skill set to be able to do this? I think it's now part of the expectation of a top star to be able to act in that way. I think he's added a dimension to a top star that we didn't have before. Do you think we could ever get to the point where the ring becomes obsolete or maybe just at the pay -per -view, that the whole TV show is all the drama and the ring becomes less and less part of what happens?

3:10:58The main event on most television shows, I mean, Monday on Raw was the exception that defines the rule. We teased Roman Reigns in a match. But that was the setup for Brock Lesnar and Cody Rhodes and to get as many eyeballs on that as possible and to set that entire scenario up, you needed to get to Brock Lesnar and Cody Rhodes versus Roman Reigns and Solo. So that's the exception. But we don't advertise, we don't promote, we don't tease Roman Reigns in a match on television anymore. When Roman Reigns is on television, the main event segment of that TV show is something playing out in the ring at the end of the night.

3:11:41In the old days, the television show was a promotion for the live show. Now, the television business seems bigger than the live business. Is that correct? Yes, of course. The business model flipped when we got paid for programming. So is it possible that all of this is leading away from the wrestling of it? At the very same time, the answer is yes and at the very same time, the answer is no. Because ultimately, how do these stories get settled? How do they progress in the operatic theatrical presentation of professional wrestling slash sports entertainment? They progress within the story that is told in the physical conflict that plays out in front of your eyes that is labeled a professional wrestling slash sports entertainment match.

3:12:47Ultimately, it has to lead to something. If it leads to a car chase, then I'm not watching wrestling anymore. So a much larger part of the dynamic of the platform has become the play itself. But ultimately, it pays off with a story that is told not with oratory skills, but with physical skills in the ring. A spoken word concert may not be musical per se, but the designation of it is a story to be told by a person who's the storyteller and the stories that are presented within the context of the verbiage that he presents. Same thing. The stories will always conclude with a match. That's how we get you to pay to see it.

3:14:03But more stories are being told outside of the confines of a match, which ultimately make the matches meet more. It seems like it's getting the point where the play is meaning more than the match, though. Well, the match is now a major component of the story. Instead of being the end all be all, we don't just drive you to the match. Everything used to be an infomercial for the match itself. Now the match is just a major component of the story. Another wrinkle, another twist, another turn, another method by which we tell the story. Is that the biggest change in wrestling that you've seen over the course of your life?

3:14:53Creatively yes. The business itself is so different. The world wrestling entertainment is being valued at $9 .3 billion. When Vince first started, he was paying television stations to air his programming, giving the television station a percentage of the live gate when he came to that city. Now the merger through Endeavor with UFC is based on the fact of how many billions of dollars the programming is worth on the open market to be licensed. Vince is not paying to be on television anymore. He's being paid to be on television. That was the seismic shift. That was the game changer that made this a well -funded industry.

3:15:51Instead of just a mom and pop business that created a few millionaires in the old school promoters room. But creatively, yeah, that's the biggest difference. The manner in which we tell stories and the platforms that we use in order to tell the stories and what we, as the marketers and promoters and presenters, the content creators as the kids say today, what we expect the audience to pay for. That's the big change. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. I love hearing you wax poetic. Well, it's truly an honor to sit here with you. And again, I could do this for another 10 hours. So we'll do this another time if you're up for it because we barely scratch the surface.

3:16:51So nice to talk to you. Pleasure's all my inspiration.