How "GaryVee" is Heavily Inspired by 'Macho Man Randy Savage'

0:00This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience.

0:30of professional wrestling. It's true. How are you doing today? Gary Vaynerchuk, aka Gary V. I'm doing very well. Thanks for having me on the show, brother. Thank you for coming on. I really want to do this. I always was fascinated with the fact that you were a wrestling fan. I know there's a lot of people out there that do know they might have seen your interviews with The Undertaker or Stephanie McMahon, or they watch your podcast and they see the figures in the background and stuff. So I always was like, man, I would love to talk to about professional wrestling and I would love for my audience to know that you are a big professional wrestling fan you're also part of this extended family that we have of professional wrestling fans so I want to start off with asking like what were your earliest and first memories of professional wrestling what made you a fan god this is so fun to think about because I really haven't thought about it um you know call it 84 I'm trying to think about I don't think I knew about wrestling you know don't forget i was born in the soviet union yeah so i come to the states i'm three years old in 78 by 82 is kind of like when i really start saying i became americanized because those first fucking four years we were poor like we barely had a tv like there was you know so now i'm seven 82 somewhere around eight or nine 83 84 i think hogan was already champ so i don't think I knew he beat the Iron Sheik in the Garden, but I definitely knew about wrestling prior to WrestleMania 1.

1:59So much like most people in their 40s, if they didn't have parents or older siblings that were into wrestling, they got hooked up in that incredible era of where Cyndi Lauper's involved, WrestleMania 1. It all popped off in 84, 85. Yeah, rock and wrestling era. That's right. I, so, you know, there's people my age that had the luxury. It was funny, there was an older guy in my neighborhood who used to tell me a lot of stories. This is all coming back to me now. So I got into it right then. And immediately there was a guy at the playground. I'm guessing the guy was 30, lived in the townhouse era.

2:38And he would tell me about, you know, Ivan Koloff beating Bruno San Martino with the knee off the top rope in the garden. he educated me on like Pedro don't forget no internet yeah it's a different era Pedro Morales early Don you know because I knew who Don the Rock Morocco was but young Don the Rock you know and so not only did I get into what was 84 85 86 wrestling right Wrestlemania 1 the action figures that I have on my shelf buying those watching every Saturday morning watching TNT when McMahon would interview people love that show but i also but i also would listen to stories on the bench parks of the 70s a lot of 70s stuff so i and and then i started buying wrestling magazines at crousers which is like a 7-11 so now i'm like learning like the missing link and like you know like the blade runners and like all these other like what's uwf and who are the von erics and then in 86, 87, 88, that stuff started showing up on ESPN, the Dingo Warrior.

3:42You know, so I was not only WWE, but I was like NWA. I was, you know, AWA. I was really a wrestling head and would like get super pumped when like Bad News Brown would come to the WVF. I'm like, wait a minute, that's Bad News Ballad. Like, you know, like I was really into it and it was a core part of my entertainment. I mean, my first sleepover party as an you know, cause if you're from an immigrant family, you don't have sleepovers that often. So my first sleepover party was SummerSlam, the first SummerSlam. It was a huge part of my childhood. We wrestled outside. I made wrestling figures by drawing and cutting.

4:21My V friends today, NFTs, a lot of my drawing came from drawing wrestling figures, cutting them out on paper and then putting them on cardboard and gluing them so I could actually wrestle with them. Like it was a very, from 85 to 90, it was 84 to 90, that five, six year period outside of Jets, football, Yankees, baseball, and video games. And just being a kid and doing, and then my entrepreneurial stuff, shoveling snow, selling lemonade. It was a top five thing in my life. A hundred percent. Yeah. A lot of that's really relatable. I can relate to a lot of that in a sense. And it's crazy how it's still with you till today.

5:00like I saw that video on YouTube recently um I know it's been out for a while but that one where you're unboxing all your LGN figures and you're asking your assistants and stuff like you know who the son they didn't really know what are and you were like a little bit devastated and so like how do you not know this person how do you not know that person um how does it feel for you when you got those figures was it sort of more of like like when it comes to collectibles like how do I mean you know so much of what I do now if you're listening right now go to YouTube and type in trash talk Gary Vee, there's a show I put out, I talk a lot about ways to advance your career and I started noticing a lot of people talking about, well, Gary, I don't have any money.

5:37Cool that you invested$25 ,000 into Tumblr and it turned into a million. I don't have 25 ,000. And I was like, fair point, I was in a different point in my life. When I was in my teenage and 20s, I would garage sale a lot. I made a lot of money on LJNs and Hasbro action figures. You know, I would buy 50 Hasbros at a garage sale for 10 bucks and then go list Dusty Rhodes or Andre for fucking 50 to 100 bucks by himself. Right. So. I literally just wrote an article for 1.37 p.m. about the 15 rarest in US figures for you guys. I love it. I got to read it. I just wrote that for you. Yeah. So when you brought up two of them that were on that list, that was the Andre and the Dusty Rhodes Hasbro and Andre LJN.

6:18And I bring it off the top of my head because like, I'm actually trying to see if I can find the article I'm talking to. You know, it's what I, you know, there it is. Love it. I'm gonna share it right now on my Twitter. Give you a little love. Thank you. You're welcome. You know, it was just such a, I say that off the top of my head because I really know, right? Like I know what black card LJNs are. Like I know my shit. Like I'm really in this. Like I watched most of the Saturday night's main events I watched the first 10 WrestleManias. Like this is a culture I really know and love. And so for me, the LJN thing was really fun.

7:02As a matter of fact, this is not a joke. Literally, watch this. If you're listening on podcasts, you won't be able to see this, but I'm gonna show you something that's gonna blow your mind of how big of a part of my life this is. So this is my eBay. I'm just showing you. And then obviously this is my eBay account. The last thing I looked up, I guess, was PSA. But watch this. I hope it's there.

7:22I don't know how they do it. Yeah, if you're on YouTube, guys, you can check this out right now. And yeah, go check out that article, guys. I wrote a handful of articles from 1.37 p.m. And that was the most recent one I just did. And it was about the most rare, expensive figures. As of today. Yeah, look at this. It's always changing. Look at the last thing I searched on my eBay account. Oh, there you go. L-G-N-W-W-F. There you go. L-G-N-W-W-F. The last thing you to search. So it's like just in me. Like it's a very big part of my culture. 80s and 90s wrestling was humongous for me and i actually have 11 year younger brother aj so what's funny about that is his age lands so his golden year so i got him into wrestling yeah but his golden era was in between hogan and the attitude era okay so aj like fucks with like tatanka and like duke the dunks or drozy and fucking like yeah that yokozuna bret hart era before we went into Stone Cold and The Rock, right?

8:18Yeah. So I was, you know, Ludwig Borga and fucking Luger and like that kind of that era. And so like, it's just always, because once I got out of it very quickly behind me, my brother is now like, I'm like, this is Steamboat and this is, you know, this is Tugboat, excuse me. And this is Earthquake and like that video game came out. And so like, it's kind of just been a constant heartbeat for me. and I can relate to that to my older brother's 10 years older than me and I don't think I'd been a wrestling fan he was born in 1981 so he lived through Hulkamania that was his thing I was born in 91 so I lived through that same Bret Hart Yoko attitude period so I can totally relate to that as well I being a fan of yours obviously I've watched your videos I follow you on Instagram for years and stuff read your books crushing it's the one that I was referring to earlier because doing what I did with the wrestling classic was a lot of reading that book on a plane going to WrestleMania 32 and being like, oh, just slide in the DMs.

9:12Don't worry about it. And I'm like, okay, I got this. And I started implementing that in my own stuff that I started doing. Once I realized that this whole wrestling classic thing could be something, I didn't know it at first. I was just doing it for fun. And then I went to Dallas and people were wearing my shirts that I printed for fun for Uber money. And I was like, oh, people actually are about this. And your book helped me a lot with that. But that being said. Hey, everybody. Hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast.

9:42It'll make my mom super happy. I love your reels. I love your TikToks. I love your quick motivational videos and stuff. And I always wondered, does any of your speaking ability come from your love from wrestling and cutting promos back in the day? You ever get in touch with your wrestling side and like, I'm going to cut a promo? Is that part of it? Not only is it a part of it. Yeah. I actually think it's, I think basically Gary Vee, the communicator, is a mix between Randy the Macho Man Savage promo and Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy. And I mean, the amount of Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock I listen to in combination to wrestling promo.

10:25Yeah, I mean, like, sometimes it's actually too ridiculous. Like I caught a video six or seven years ago for a conference I was keynoting. And they're like, Hey, like my team came in and like, Gary, you know, would you, uh, you know, they're just, the ticket sales aren't going that strong. Would you do a quick video to tell everybody about this social media conference? And literally this is what came out of my mouth. I'm like, Hey guys, it's Gary V civic center, March 19th. Like I was like, and then I stopped. I'm like, Oh my God, this is literally a fucking, I've heard something that I'm like, I'm like, this sounds like a wrestling promo to me.

10:56It's funny, a couple of wrestlers hit me up on DM who are fans and are like, dude, you cut promos. And I'm like, I do. I know, it took me, I didn't know it for five or six years of the Gary V shit. But then when somebody pointed it out and I really started getting into my feelings on it, I'm like, yeah, I think quite a bit. I think a lot of my content now is clips from my day-to-day life. So it's a little bit less. but my rants which were a big part of my 2014 to 16 content and i just did one the other day i feel that they're like flat out wrestlemania promo videos yeah because that's what i felt like too i'd watch him like i know he's meaning what he says but i know this is influence from wrestling i can tell it's subconscious right yeah like he has that promo skill um do you have a favorite promo like i know macho man's one of your favorites of all time he's gonna be cup of coffee the big time or something but yeah i mean i think my favorite is when he's outside by the pool oh mean gene and elizabeth that's right and he goes that mean gene there's a plane going by and i'm not on it like and i'm like i don't know what the cup realizes the top is all time but for some reason there's a plane going by and i'm not on it i don't know what it was that but i'll tell you what my favorite was okay my favorite was the macro concept of getting us into a frenzy before somebody was actually in the in the federation yeah by the time mr perfect and razor ramon were actually in the ring i was completely out of control into both of them yeah those vds were perfect and i think that was the brilliance of vince mcmahon and the wwf slash e like to me they they just did such a great job in storytelling that the you were just salivating to watch one of these guys beat the shit out of iron mike sharp or canine or barry horowitz you know back then wrestlers beat up nobodies on saturday morning it wasn't all these big matches yeah to build the star correct yeah they did the boxing thing right It took a bunch of easy fights.

13:17And I mean, that's Corporal Kirshner. Like even guys that most people don't know as well, like the hype was just so fun. But what really stood out was Razor and Perfect because they really had those guys in a frenzy before they even came in Saturday morning and beat somebody up. They were so creative and so good. Like the one where Razor pushes the guy into the fountain, he's like, don't have luck like him. and perfect just doing the bowling and the golf and it's crazy because obviously as you get older you realize it'd be like that whole football thing throwing it across the field and him running and catching you know it's cutting certain things but as a kid you're like whoa he actually did that that's crazy oh as a kid you're like king kong bundy broke hogan's ribs and you're like so upset and like yeah as a kid it's just fucking i think that's the biggest thing about professional wrestling though right it captures you as a kid because you have that imagination and you only grow to love it as you get older because you do you ever get that question how do you still like this like this UFC how do you still like this I'm always like because now I understand it as a form of like art like it's like well I I like it in the way that I like watching Queen's Gambit yeah the way that I watch you know a show to me it's storyline I mean I think wrestling is male soap operas it really is you know like character storyline that really fascinates me now as a creative entrepreneur and a marketer and a storyteller there might not be anything i'm more interested in wrestling as a matter of fact literally yesterday i said to somebody i can't wait to see who triggers the next monster wrestling era literally yesterday i said hogan stone cold and rock somebody it feels like wrestling's been doing its thing but it's very much now like like you know Brock Undertaker The Rock doing Wrestlemania we don't have must-see like I don't feel like I need to watch Raw yeah no 100 % but I feel like what I love about wrestling is at any moment there's some kid right now who's coming up the ranks who's gonna be the human being that completely captures the national attention.

15:32And for another 24 to 39 months, everybody's going to know XYZ, the name, and it's going to make everybody watch Raw every Monday night. And I think, and to your point, they just kind of brought back John Cena for that reason because they haven't really built any stars right now that have catapulted the wrestling back in that thing. Yeah, it's funny. Me and my friends, when I'm going or kind of paying a little more attention, I take, I like guessing. I like saying, I see they're trying to push this guy. I don't think he's got it, right? And I like to test my ability of like having a sense of like charisma and the consumer.

16:12And yeah, I don't feel like they've pushed the right people recently. Have you given AEW a chance at all? A little, very little bit. Like my wrestling right now in the last three years, I'm just so underwater. and definitely with when COVID hit in the last, you know, 15, 16 months, I just had so many responsibilities to make sure I was on the offense business wise that, but, but it keeps going down to the same thing, which is like, you know, I follow it on social. Yeah. But I haven't been able to like really, really allocate, like the way I like to do it when I'm like, oh, let's do this. Like I need four weeks of like following the storylines to really get captivated by the charisma of the characters.

16:58And I just haven't been able to give anybody that right now. I, not to be another cheap plug, but if you ever need a catalog, I did also write an article on the 20 top AEW matches. That's such a good point. Like what I'm not as good of a reader. What I'll probably do is go watch the YouTube versions of that. because that's what I need to get interested. No, for sure. I just think it's a good catalog. What did you decide was the best one? For me, I think it was between Cody and Dustin, but that's also because once again, I'm also a character storyline guy. There's a really good story there between the two brothers and whatnot.

17:38If you watch that match, you feel like you're being told a story rather than just watching a match with a bunch of acrobatics and what's happening. Definitely check that out. Yeah, I'm way more, like way more story than I am performance. 100%. I love performance. No, no, I mean fucking Rey Mysterio Jr. and Eddie. Like some of this stuff is just outstanding. Performance stands out more if you're intrigued by the characters in the story. Yeah, and I, if I'm intrigued by the story, can overlook poor wrestling. 100%. Right, like Hogan Warrior WrestleMania is not iconic wrestling. But the story's fucking – And that build-up, the ultimate power.

18:21It was insane. Just to see those two eye-to-eye was like a moment. But on the flip side, performance, like when you watch Piper, Bret Hart, WrestleMania where Piper really puts Bret over, like it's a very underrated moment in wrestling history because it's like in that pocket of like in between – SummerSlam 90, I think, won, which was a transitional time in a sense. I just think that when you see stuff like that, because Piper was such a good wrestler too, and Bret, you know. There's still a story there because Bret was the up-and-comer and Piper was the champion, the Intercontinental champion.

18:59It was his time to get that singles in. So, like, the story always does kind of make things and elevate things more, and if the story's really good, you'll be invested in the match. And if they're just really good wrestlers, then the match is even more memorable because – that's right you know what i mean um i'm gonna ask you this a little bit more of a fun question since you're an old school fan and you grew up watching wrestling say you were a manager say you were bobby heenan okay you're gonna start your gary v family v friends you can call it yeah nft stuff who would be on that survivor series team of five who would be your five guys macho man randy savage yeah who's disproportionately my favorite wrestler of all time that's something i agree with fully um this episode is brought to you by google chrome You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome?

19:41That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal.

20:17So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months, $90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Okay, let's really, I really want to give you a real answer, so I'm going to really keep this through. uh y2j yeah i love chris jericho i've always loved jericho um i would say i'm i i usually to get fast answers but i really want to think this through because i don't want to give you bullshit uh i would probably put the british bulldogs on there davian dynamite yes because I'm thinking about like who did I really love?

21:08Like genuinely love? And I would say the British Bulldogs were the closest thing in my prime to Macho Man. Yeah. And then I'm probably gonna go, well, if I can blend leagues since the WWE now owns them all. Yeah. My favorite. This is your dream team. This is your stable. I would go with Nikita Kolov. The Russian sickle. Yeah. The Russian sickle is still one of my favorite finishing moves. He was just so fucking badass. And I still always had an underlining feeling towards Russia since I was from there. And so I would say Macho Man, the British Bulldogs, Jericho, and Nikita Kolov. That's a stacked team with different styles of wrestling, right?

21:56They got a powerhouse. They got some flamboyants. They got the tag team. That's good stuff right there. It's a solid team. No, for sure. let's talk about the Macho Man really quickly um because he's my favorite of all time too once again that also goes back to I think I like my imagination being captured as a little kid this guy was on like WWF mania and whatnot just all colorful in his cowboy hats and whatnot um what made you a Macho Man fan what made you like because during the time of Hulkamania almost everybody was a Hulkamaniac I was always Hogan Hogan my brother was Hogan Hogan Hogan I I realized in my older something happened later in my life when like I didn't like Tiger Woods or Kobe Bryant and then when they were older, I loved them.

22:31And when that happened in my 30s, I was like, oh, and this is just a very recent realization. I feel like I'm an underdog. I love underdogs. To your point, everybody loved Hogan. I didn't want to be like that. And so I decided,

22:53I really want to be different. The other thing that happened was if you remember the storyline everybody was buying for macho man that whole manager thing with miss elizabeth i still think hogan was the heel that he had lost in his eyes for elizabeth i'm just i'm gonna say so when when when he goes and i thought it was gonna be slick i remember i was like like i was like slick's gonna get him oh when he when he was buying for a new manager yeah and when he said my manager is elizabeth and she comes down you know you gotta remember i'm like 10 11 yeah and like i'm not sure but i think that might have been the moment i became a man yeah so between so between between underdog and then he was such a great wrestler right like if like if you watch if you watch that tito santana match that he wins i mean and then obviously fucking the ricky the steamboat match i'm so pumped that that is like the greatest match of all time it means so much to me that storyline that was tough for me a little bit because you a steamboat fan i wasn't but i liked them yeah but it was so nasty like the throat it was like it just seemed so intense but um but i stuck with him through and through um i loved georgie animal steel because the jets were my favorite team and he had a green tongue and that was big for me um so yeah i think it was a combination of miss elizabeth at the age that i was being encounter different and just the charisma and like who he was.

24:29He was just a complete package. I know we're going to wrap this up soon. So I want to ask you this really quickly as well. The big question. You can take time to think about it. I feel like we've touched on it a bit here and there, but at the end of the day, like why is wrestling important to you? It's because outside of Walt Disney, I think Vince McMahon has been one of the most significant storytellers of characters in our society. and I think V Friends being one of the most important things in my life for the next 50 years is gonna make sense to why I always was associating to Transformers, wrestling, G.I.

25:04Joe, Disney. I'm a storytelling character-based human being and I think wrestling's unique because unlike wrestling, everything else is fictional. This is like real humans that play these characters but it's storytelling and I think it's been the most significant storytelling machine in our society and that I admire. I love that. I like to call it the greatest form of art and athleticism because it's the one that puts both of them together. I think Dana White has a lot of Don King meets Vince McMahon. I think why UFC is so incredible is it's slightly the reverse thing. It's real life. but they do such a great job getting you excited about the fighters and that matters that's what great promoting no matter how much people want to say UFC is real and it's not they hurt a lot from professional wrestling to get you hyped yeah and and and vice versa right yeah like like WWF WWE excuse me now is very much affected by and and obviously has done a lot with the angles and and Reznor's and Shamrock's and Bobby.

26:19They're good for each other, in my opinion. Yeah, they do. They work well. Look, if Brock didn't go to UFC and come back, being the Brock Lesnar, he was. 100%. You wouldn't have that Brock Lesnar kick. 100%. You couldn't bring Ronda around, being the way you brought Ronda around. No way. No way. And you were there at WrestleMania 35. I saw you, Conroe. I was. I was there as well. I was too nervous to say hi then, but I saw you. Well, next time. Next time. because I am a fan of yours and I've listened to your speeches and I've read your books and I follow you on social media you always say take advantage of all the opportunity again I've had the opportunity to sit here with you so I'm just gonna throw it out there there's anything you ever want to do in the future that is wrestling related I'm your guy it's known it's I mean email literally some email right now I want to save that read in the folder sure because I've the last seven years I've been running this page I've made a ton of relationships with wrestlers within the industry and people that work back to as well as a valued voice with the fans I've been crapping on John Cena all week, but they still love me.

27:11That's how close we are. You know what I mean? So I'm more than that. Send me that email right now. I'm open for sure. I got my articles at 1 37 PM too. So thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. Everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.