Exclusive interview with John Cena

54:50O'Shea:We've had people talk about selling. Is there something in the business that you think is missing? And what is something that you're glad is gone? Yeah. Okay. Those are, those are two good questions. Thank you. I always try. And the reason I retired is because physically the business is passing me by. It's changing in many aspects of where my institutional knowledge is obsolete and i'm recognizing that uh we're not a live event business anymore we're a media company and i talk with performers all the time they're like i wish there were more house shows live events and i tell them like but there's not yeah but house shows we were able to try and fail i've been watching house shows live events for 23 years watch every match open or close always and i don't watch those matches because it's tradition i watch those matches to analyze the audience to find out what works, what doesn't, what's been done before.

55:46So I don't repeat anything. Um, if a performer has some electricity and they don't necessarily know how to harness it and they come to me for guidance, I can give them real time advice. And I'm a better professional. Am I doing all I can? I can't do all the stuff. Shelton can. I don't look like Brock. Where's going to be my strength. I'm just going to nerd out on this shit. Much knowledge and wisdom as I possibly can. I don't care what you do as a performer. As long as you're good when you're out there. That's it. So for me to say I miss X, Y, and Z, and I'm glad X, Y, and Z, I'm glad the culture of fraternity is gone.

56:28Because the culture of fraternity almost cost me my job. I'm glad that it is way more welcoming. I'm glad that the money is way better, that people can make a vocation out of it. you know we're gonna read less and less about uh folks either doing indie wrestling if they can do whatever they want but like having to wrestle to keep the lights on the story of mickey rourke the fictional story is we're gonna get less and less of that you know um that's one thing i'm glad that's gone i'm glad that it like it worked we're out there globally big places believe in us thank you espn thank you netflix all that all that stuff like man we're we did it we're like we're like main mainstream i like the fact that we've graduated all the other stuff is just how i see the business you can you can stay in that sean michaels gave me some great advice you can evolve or be a dinosaur that's it right and i'm at that point where i i look fondly towards the future but i want a fan seat because i don't know if i can evolve with it because i'm hardwired to operate a certain way and when it's like but we don't do that anymore what do you mean and you see the smoke and the bolts and like what's what's going on it's it's it's interesting to learn i just did a sit down with unreal for season three i i led with i'm sorry because those motherfuckers tried to get me for season one and season two and i'm like i'm not spoiling any stories i'm gonna be curt and short with my answers you guys you guys are from football this is a business that's way more nuanced you don't know what you're doing you're taking a swing and the institutional knowledge that i have says we never do this so you're going against everything i believe in now they're on season three i have to admit i'm wrong they're right i have to yeah because it works people want to see it yeah so i have to sit down and still fight it yeah but if you don't fight if you want to fight it don't watch it yeah that's what like here's here's and and i um there's a there's some sentiment from the professional side which i get and respect of would you please just be a fan no he's vocal and critical as you want because you are the fuel that powers our business and and all of the voices are simply data points by the way you know wwe's going through a great renaissance like a golden an era and we're advertising that heavy is the head that wears a crown you are going to get critiqued so you got to be you got to have you got to be ready for that right it can't be all good news you got to be able to take you take the criticism and listen to the criticism maybe you can learn and get better and also take it as a data point we don't like unreal everybody watches that shit so like do you not like it or not i don't know something of like i don't want to go to events it's too much trouble just don't go just don't just don't go yeah but it's exciting and fun and like we're now on par with marketplaces that we compete with yeah i can understand every single choice that's made i can also understand the criticism for that choice it's always been done this way that's not a good answer that's a because i said so yeah we're doing this to take a swing it might not work but what we'd like to try to do with our relationship with netflix is provide more content in a different storytelling capacity and show a different dimension of wwe that is not because i said so i can still be apprehensive but then eventually i got to be like that's the business right when did you get so savvy in terms of you know what the house draws and merch and all these things that you've been telling us about it what what was the point where you're like i gotta know what's going on so when i say i'm a fan of the business i mean i'm a fan of all of it a lot of people who are fans are fans strictly of the creative and performative process some people are fans of creative storylines are garbage some people are fans of performance one star five stars some people are fans of both very few are fans of the whole gamble and as a student of the game i never i i'm not kidding you i never started to wrestle especially as an employee for titan sports i never started with the aspect of i want to be champion i looked at my check and i said i want to i want to make these guys proud i don't want to let them down.

1:01:05The way to do that is for every dollar they give you, give them back 10. So you have to learn how to do that. And it's also curiosity of what makes the world go around. I used to thank the TV truck before every broadcast. I fucking thanked the catering up to my last day. Stagehands, merchandise, social media, live events, international teams, especially when we were doing TV deals. It's like, Germany's up. We got to go get another TV deal there. Now with Netflix, it's fantastic. You want to see us? You're around the world. Netflix, easy, which brings crazy expansion in global live events because now we don't go from like prime time in Germany to on a 2 a.m.

1:01:48in Germany. No, we are live as it happens, Netflix, which means now we have a heat map of where we can go and we have a heat map of where we need to go. All this stuff is fantastic and like fascinating to me if we drew 2 ,500 how many people do we walk up what is the building hold what is the cost no and and before me this knowledge was used so i could get paid right yeah the house was a million bucks fuck you pay me i do deals on a handshake and loyalty is another core value of mine i never complained about what i was negotiated i was never the highest paid person on the card.

1:02:28O'Shea:Really? Ever. There were always people who negotiated a better fee, to which I cheerlead that like a son of a bitch. You're a better negotiator. But only in the dollar sense. I wanted security. Yeah. I walked into a man's office and said, what do you want? I said, I want you not to be able to fire me. I'd like to do a deal for as long as you have. I said, how about a decade? I said, can you do more? He said, that's about as long as I can do. I shook hands. He's like, what do you want me to pay you? Figure it out. Yeah. Just don't fire me. Wow. I can be a wrestler for 10 years. And in 10 years, I'll show you what I can do.

1:02:59And that's the same guy who was like, we need somebody to step up. First time I ever had a heart-to-heart with him, I went up and shook his hand and said, if you bet on me, I won't let you down. So that's when I started becoming really entrenched on, I'm not tracking t-shirt sales. And this is something I tell Cody a lot. It's just a data point. You're not tracking t-shirt sales to build a house. you're tracking t-shirt sales to see if they still care 2010 fuck right with the hunter in chicago the polarizing character of john cena's board instinct and audio tell you turn the data that's just one data point the arena's loud against you wasn't a seat left and then we go into merchandise you sold 42 i'm not being like I'm looking at it as like maybe it's not time.

1:03:56And then I can also use those analytics for if somebody gets a little bit too big for their britches and they're like, I'm over. Okay, how many people were here tonight? How many people do you think came to see you? This is what they bought. 2 % of the people came to see you. So if I do that as the whole house, what do you think we draw today? You still have some work to do. Where can we be better? where can we improve like the business fascinates me i i mean we've and we've gone through such an evolution we continue at such a rapid rate of for the first time outsourcing merchandise to fanatics going from pay-per-view to killing pay-per-view to go streaming to our own network to then outsource it to companies and then get networking deals and streaming deals and it's a combined thing and and live event relationships with certain locations that we were guaranteed to go there again with with great incentives for our talent and our company like it is going fast yeah it's growing and and i i know this is far more of a creative and performative talk so i'm going to give you guys more bonus minutes but when i tell you i love the business i love the business and i also understand that you're over one day and you're not like again those those numbers are not for braggadocio it's just what do i do next yeah is it working or not like oh you made a foam finger do we sell any not as much as a t-shirt cancel the finger yeah we're like man they they like the headband well make the fucking headband i like wearing the hat you think i like my image on a shirt i don't my favorite ones are like the mario ones and like the gi joe parody ones but people want your image on a shirt so the salute man was born like that's that's the jump man the salute man like and all of that comes from the trial and error of oh i'm i have 70s muscle cars i want to put like fancy 70s logo shit on there it doesn't sell what do they buy they buy your image and they buy your authenticity okay we're going there just just getting out of your own way it's all it's it's not because i said so it's real-time data and walk up what we did what did we do to get this walk up did we promote who did it i'll go and shake their hand you brought those people in here and i not me you went and did the radio stations because i man i've done my fair share of that you know like that's all important it's um to understand why a market secedes or fails sometimes there's an all-night gas station yeah that's that's this saying like the all-night gas station was open across the street sometimes there's just it just doesn't work out but a lot of times you can pinpoint why it failed and when you pinpoint why it failed and get out of your own ego in your own way you can get better the the we didn't want to see him against logan they fucking wasted him against brockett and squashed data point data point like i said they want to see it yeah paris wasn't empty and indy wasn't empty and we we went back to indy twice and i'm not saying that your opinion isn't right that you're right like could i have put together a better performative match with brock lesnar sure but it doesn't tell the story it doesn't creatively tell the story we got to reintroduce this guy he needs everybody knows to know he means business yeah how do you do that by taking the one entity that can lose not lose steam it's like a it is like an exhibition match it's it's frago creed yeah yeah you can you can take the hit yeah you and not move backwards yeah and piss off some fans and we can use it as a data point of like now we pay it out and boy did we get to pay it out and that's when like the retirement thing like that's when the people really were like oh fuck this is this is getting close yeah yeah and then the next the next guy i have to mess around is dom and that was super fun you know and i i actually think um sorry for going on here please cut me off but like in in the whole story arc of the thing i tried to plan it as a year of creative experiences right but i you also got to be able to pivot hey you got travis and rock you don't have rock you don't have travis yeah we're gonna do this we're gonna do this uh aj was supposed to be drew yeah pivoted but it pivoted but like we want to we want to give him a feel-good moment because we they were listening to the data points like they listen to you guys they do it's real yeah and and they just can't tell you because then you got too much power but that's but if we tell you then you'll say something else and it might not be authentic so you have the brock moment people are pissed off then you have the aj moment things are great and then you have this three appearance run with dom which is fun you know like which we brought up hometown boy wins in his hometown gets the the hits for the cycle like you can't write it better than that and then you go to san diego he gets his payback but live comes back we involve every fucking person we possibly can yeah like fun match and then the ring jam yeah like yeah yeah they admit you have so much fun and this thing is going to be awesome and man we're going to go no he ain't going on like this yeah fuck darth vader's board they were yeah furious furious dude that's the point yeah exactly here's what i want to say about that too the show doesn't stop when i'm done i'm the first character who's been killed off yeah that's what was hard like people were like what the fuck no i my character was killed off no one ever gets killed off because no one ever closes the door they're always hanging around the carnival

1:09:43O'Shea:workers always hanging around for that one let's pay out yeah but i was the first guy that got killed off people watch game of thrones they kill motherfuckers off all the time they get pissed don't fall in love with no one but they get yeah but but that's that's the allure but i'm on google it was a brave a brave choice to be like we're killing the character off what's what's the craziest way we can do it yeah you know smiling and and giving up yeah like that's how did that come about that was all that was my choice and again um if if you have a different opinion than my perspective my responsibility is to use my talent strengths and gifts to give you everything i have to try to keep you entertained i'm only i'm only just making the bets that i can make sometimes it works sometimes it don't yeah jbl is poopy sprayed that on a limousine sometimes sometimes you work sometimes you don't what a poet you know but this was i wanted to this last year i want my my inside baseball stuff there's so many easter eggs that people don't know about to the point of like even in the match against gunther i tried to grow my hair out like the prototype from upw like an ovw that all i could do i couldn't dye it because i was working in between stuff but i could grow fade it and grow it long so i can have like that comb back yeah even like nobody caught that but nobody's supposed to i was just doing it for like man if you get it you get it yeah i wanted the year to be like a cycle of life someone facing their mortality you know i'm old i'm coming to the end of it i'm just happy to be at the thing and then like almost winning the rumble like no no i'm you're only as as young as you feel like I still got it.

1:11:26I need this. This is going to keep me young and keep me alive. And then that obsessive chase for the championship to be like, at any cost, because nobody remembers it, they'll just remember that you won. Fuck it. Do whatever it takes. And then I won. I still don't feel validated. What do I do now? I ruin it. These people have been abusive to me, and I'm going to take the fun out of wrestling. So I go and have a shitty match at WrestleMania, like a fucking real methodical match. that's how i'm gonna ruin wrestling you guys want to see flying and spots and creativity fuck your stars i'm gonna burn it and whenever i'm out there i'm gonna do the heart punch chop from the top and like the most methodical basic i was brave enough to try didn't work yeah we got the data points we pivoted but i was like how can i how can i take the joy out of being a fan and the explanation i got was you're going to do that for long too long and people aren't going to show up that is not a because i said so that's a good explanation yeah but i wanted to take the joy out of being a fan so cody could be like i'm saving the business i'm not just winning the championship i'm going to save wrestling yeah because if this guy does go home he'll take the belt with him that's why we started doing the ticking clock and like you can start over i'm not ignorant you'll start another show but you won't have this and that's where like the last real champion was born and stuff works stuff doesn't you can't work like it's 1950 okay what would you like me to do i'd like you to have more competitive matches that way people long for the old john cena yeah and cody was originally supposed to turn me at summer slam like beat some sense to me but the crowd turned me before that yeah because they gave me randy they gave me punk i had the fun stuff with truth do that little bit with truth where like i was gonna hit him with the title and it was a moment of like dude don't beat me but do it with virtue yeah just sitting there in the audience like don't hit him i won't and then just kicked him in the nuts but like just those moments of like they're still good in you that hint there's still good in you and then he's not all the way we're listening to all the data points of like this is how they cheer against randy holy they actually cheered the pipe bomb against punk like i can't believe that crushed but that was amazing he came back and crushed too my god you want to talk about my drop that was but and then going out and have like good matches and these are my rivals we can we can do stuff we have a library of things we can draw from and then the audience starts to want to want it and the audience turned me yeah the many tvs before jersey but like in jersey you can't you want to fight the real john cena this is the day he's back yeah so the why is a short build but the why became you're gonna beat me at my best or you're not you know but that's all pivots you you got to be able to pivot a lot of performers get married to these ideas of like but it's a good idea we're not going that way i would have loved to ruin wrestling i would have loved to try honestly

1:14:38O'Shea:i think it would have been we thought you were going to i gotta tell you bro one of my greatest things I've ever gotten to do is take my little brother to that WrestleMania and like we were watching like you know this John's last mania when that three hit and you won my little brother was like I'm gonna need can I get my chair I want to take my chair like it was a moment it was like there's no way he got away with this and then I was having a great time with Hilsina in the beginning because it was just like remember they were in Europe so we'd have to start watching the show while we were filming while we're filming we've got a laptop oh you're going crazy you just mark these people and you know we're doing the show wow the show's going on but like good idea yeah the audience sentiment was like one i don't buy it because like he's kind of a good guy yeah and two i don't want to see it i don't want to see it flamed out pretty quick and pretty pretty quick is good because everybody everybody watching was like this is what's happening in real time and i could have been i could have been stubborn yeah and said no what we're going through it'll pay off in the end no i i'm not the smartest guy in the room i listen to the people around me okay let's change right now let's change today randy will be a better match more competitive and then we'll we'll ramp up and ramp up and ramp up and that caught us back on track and then you fast forward to the payout the cody's return for summer slam great man fantastic i'm i'm critics usually are pretty performative critics i would say yeah they don't like me i like y 'all i do i do and thank you for doing what you do but man they don't like me at all they really don't so uh to to to have them be like man these guys brought it yeah from the guy who's supposed to ruin wrestling yeah so that those are pretty good feelings.

1:16:30O'Shea:A quick pivot, because you know I got to get my list questions. Let's go where it goes. You're a car dude. Yeah. Alright, you love cars. The voice behind them. Nice, TJ. For over half a decade, by the way. I need your top five that you've gotten to drive. And also, is there a holy grail car that you would love to get behind the wheel of so good question i will start with the honda umbrella first um i can't i can't do without the type r the honda civic type r okay it is a four-door car that i can fit groceries in and a three-pedal car that i can wind out to like 6500 on every shift and because it's 330 horsepower in the way it's geared in third gear i'm still like relatively not driving to in danger okay so if you let's take like a 60 diablo or a martial lago uh stick shift you want to go through the shifter gate no problem but by the time you get to third gear you're at 110 miles an hour so that's that's pretty nasty i like driving i like driving a manual because i like being i like busy to be busy i like to be present in there um the holy grail of honda for me is the nsx type r and those used to be attainable just kind of like everything else but those have escaped us uh those those sell for like 800 000 now and that's uh if you see one just appreciate it as it drives by whoa um what is this say it again the honda nsx type r okay only made for the the japanese market and it is literally like um like a challenge stradali or like a scooter like a lightweight version of the nsx an already performative car goes even lighter and even faster and is even better um i would love someday to get my hands on a jdm like a right hand drive on the nsx okay but those are tough because bringing those over is tough uh i and i would also love like an s600 or like an s800 roadster okay s800 roadster is like a cool sleeper honda that you don't think is that beautiful uh i also have an order in for the honda zero which is supposed to be debuting this year it's like a minivan delorean and i can't wait to see it bro you see it when you see it and it's it's pretty dope with the delorean doors the concept had pretty wacky doors but i think a lot of sometimes concept to production is is different um so that's that's my honda hall of fame that's my honda wing that uh my civic type r is a daily driver now um yeah honda side let's go top five yeah uh again i like three pedals okay and um i like something that you have to fight so an older lamborghini they started making it less for small people and more for big people in the advent of diablo yeah i think um i think that pull-up game with the vertical doors and not like the like the true lambo scissor doors uh i think the the car screams poster and curb appeal it sounds crazy um good luck because they they you need to know a good mechanic oh but that's okay that's okay uh fun while she drives yeah uh i also think uh the jaguar e-type is one of the the series one e-types i think it's one of the most gorgeous cars ever created um those are real real fun to drive and i still think if you creatively get one and again don't you need to know a good mechanic as well but like there's still there's still a lot of value and it's still a really nice looking car um i'm trying to think of the stuff i i'm i'm fortunate enough to own uh a spiker i don't know if you know what oh yeah yeah so i have a spiker c8 uh not the lavoiolette not the convertible but the hard top um and it's everything i love about a car sounds good manual shift design tour de force it's it's love it or hate it styling it's a designed after old avionics a lot of toggle switches a lot of brushed steel yeah good cross-stitching leather it's like an old bomber cockpit yeah you know audi v8 so it runs pretty nice uh it's three

1:21:08the c2 or c1 vet like that's 63 split window design right up into 67 i think those are really beautiful cars how the door jam is still part of the roof yeah the exhaust if you don't get the side pipe car the exhaust goes to the back flip headlights split bumpers on either side i think the cockpit looks all like it is gm but it's all aeronautical like all the gauges and the double hump and then the steering wheel um and they made some great colors in those cars and my man can see it right i um i i gotta do i'll sneak six into there i do like the pontiac judge i literally made the 70 gto judge is like a holy grail car i don't have one i had one i got rid of it and it's i regret letting it go and another one i had that i regret letting go was a 70 superbird the joe dirt car with the nose oh yeah and like man they used to sell those so like but that man there are so many like they're the old astons are so fun to drive ferrari porsche my god that's what the the driver's car um for a while i had a bmw z3 clown shoe that i loved uh it doesn't need to break lap times i i also know yourself like this car is x fast who cares yeah there are a lot of people that might care i don't yeah i like when it pulls up and when i see little kids like circle the car parked like that's what i like about cars because that's what i was drawn to as a young man little kids playing that's my car an osmobile 442 it's like oh my god that's my car so it's anything from like an old mga um the the early jaguar xk 120 like you name it i think i think there's beauty in a lot of stuff yeah i'm trying to build a uh station wagon out of a brickland right now wow i've always wanted i think every every garage should have a shooting break which is a two-door wagon and the brickland has the back to the future doors okay and i want to make a wagon out of it and i don't know if it's gonna work hey you gotta try but every once in a while

1:23:15O'Shea:i got some frankenstein stuff going on too my older brother daryl he he was like oh man he has an sls something an sls that you had or he either saw you in but he was like that he's my my older brother daryl little brother johnson fan my older brother is a fan of your cars well what what happened was i have a i mean through through being obsessed with the car community you realize it's hard it's hard to find people that do great work i have failed with a lot of shops It's just like build a house or something like that. It's hard to find people who do good work. I found somebody who we connect with.

1:23:50He's an artist, but his craftsmanship is great. We took a SLK 55 AMG, ripped everything to shreds, and put the body of a 300 SL on there. Oh, okay. And we wide-bodied it, put the Lambo phone dial wheels on it, murdered it out. Again, love it or hate it. Turquoise interior with tartan plaid, white piping, the things that I love. lambo doors on it chopped hard top it's it's aggressive but it it drives easy automatic so like you're in there crunched because of the roof but like all you gotta do is put in drive and hit the pedal on the brake and you're good you know so it's uh i also love design like that i i can't drive that car more than 10 miles but the 10 miles i drive it i enjoy it yeah i'm having fun with it and your love of cars o'reilly auto parts can help take the guesswork out of your check engine abs or maintenance light with O 'Reilly Veriscan.

1:24:44The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE certified master technicians. O 'Reilly Veriscan can identify the most likely problem with just one scan. If you need help, O 'Reilly Auto Parts can recommend a shop for you. Don't ignore a check engine, ABS, or maintenance light. Ask for O 'Reilly Veriscan today. A free service exclusively at O 'Reilly Auto Parts. Shot clocks, big shots, upsets aces tgl playoffs are here first atlanta drive starts their repeat run against los angeles golf club then rory's boston common golf and tigers jupiter links face off in their playoff debuts who will advance keep up it's playoffs tune in tuesday march 17th at 6 30 p.m and 9 p.m only on espn and the espn app but you had nightmares as a chauffeur oh dude pre-gps you kidding oh my god i grew up in newberry i knew one highway route 95 that gets me from Boston to West Newberry and I'd never really been in Boston and now that I'm a traveler and like yo I'm supposed to do your podcast today somebody was kind enough for car service was like you just show up and the car's gonna be there you guys are counting on me to be here then Bridget's like I'm trying to make the town to wrestle I gotta fly out tonight I used to be like two hours late picking people up and I mean like at their house I didn't know how to get to their house and then I didn't know how to get to the fucking airport airport so like sorry i'm so late they would shut the door and just motherfuck me and then on the way to the airport they'd be like you know where the fuck you're going i'm like no not really i lasted i lasted a month too long and i think i lasted a month so you were a chauffeur yeah yeah i drove town cars and i was like doing like airport runs and at the time i was a competitive bodybuilder so i had like my tuna and the tupperware so the car smelling like oh dude it was fucking brutal i'm so sorry if you ever wrote with me because i know i sucked for that one or two months that i had the job my dad got me the job because it was a friend of his and then the guy was like dude if you don't know where you're going just call and i would call all the time because there's no mobiles so i'd have to pull over to find a fucking phone and be like i don't know where i'm going yeah where are you i don't even know you didn't have a thomas guy back in the day i had a i had a randall mcnally like the math yeah but like man i didn't look at it i don't know if being a good chauffeur was on a list of my priorities i didn't i didn't give that job all i had two hours late and it smelled like fish dude oh it was so bad so speaking of driving i've heard this but to the i'm sure a number of people who haven't tell me about the day that you decided you were going to traverse florida oh yeah so uh um man i love my wife and we we literally we we spend as many days we pretty much spend every day together and have for the past seven years i love her she's my teammate uh that's awesome goodness um she she makes me a better me but that's the goal right that absolutely absolutely there are some circumstances where like she'll go do something and i'll be left to my own devices just so happened where i wasn't working i had a day off for myself like not that a day off from her is it's not what i wanted but that's what the circumstances so i was like man i'm gonna take i'm gonna take my civic out for a drive and i started in tampa and i drove to an event in orlando and then i drove to see a buddy in miami and then i drove to see a friend in naples and then i drove to fort myers for a coffee and then drove to tampa i think it was 900 miles for the day and like I left the house at like 5 and I got home at 1030 and I would stop for like random coffees along the way because I also love a good coffee shop.

1:28:28Yeah. Love a good flat white. Yeah. Flat white. Dang it. Flat white.

1:28:32O'Shea:Yeah. Rich. God. You made this look stupid. It's really on Rich though. Oh man. I'll put it on anybody but me. Yeah we're putting the heat on him. Don Booey. You drove by the spot. You could have stopped. I had my brother in the car man. If given a day to myself every everyone always asks like what are you gonna do after you after the work's done i will find a way to be useful because i i stay curious like i'm excited by life take the car out and drive around the state never turn the radio on once no dude i never turn the radio on you're just sitting in the wind dude i just it it helps it's great and then you know you're on on an open road and florida's really flat and really wide road so you're like what can this thing do and it's amazing when i go back to talk to honda and i'm like oh i drove around florida and civic like what'd you think i'm like well surprisingly stable at 145 miles an hour you guys have the top speed pegged at 151 but i'm in sixth gear at like 5200 rpm and i look and i'm like i could probably push this thing to seven it was incredibly stable and you look at me like is it real i'm like yeah look it i got the road in front of me let's see what we let's see what we can do let's hit it and again yes against the law sorry but like i have six lanes to myself florida's flat the human vision is like 14 miles down the planar road i get this i got it i'm good we're safe nobody's there all right back down to whatever but i wanted to see what he can do yeah of course i mean you know a little bit the horse is a heck of a road trail let him run the horse out yeah but that that's a random day off that's wild that's my little brother he'll listen to no radio on the drive too and it was like it was like um so you get that thoughtfulness right and then you get that connected focus and then you get out to do like i went to the brickland event it was they had in orlando at a giant car museum so then i'm overwhelmed of like it's the biggest car museum in in florida and i think it's in north america and like all this sensory overload and then you get back in the car and it's just you and you get to process what just happened right and then it's like i'm halfway to miami i'll stop at a coffee shop why not talk to the barista how long you've been here what's the place i found this place i think it looks good can you make me a flat white yeah kind of how i judge a place yeah and they knew what it was and you just sit there and you you know i sat on like the edge looking out at this plaza and i'm just sitting there like people tripping out when you see you honestly man i think people realize that i think their process is like there's no way yeah there's just no way yeah you know uh and a lot of people like man you look just like john cena like yeah i get that a lot yeah can't help you know but i do because people come up and like you look just like john cena i get that a lot yeah because there's a lot of 250 pound balls of muscle yeah sitting around you know you know doppelganger folks out there you never know i always tell people i just run out of stuff to say when they're like you look just like your dad like you know it's science like i just now just tell them you know it's the lighting I don't really look like that.

1:31:37O'Shea:I look like my mom, dude. So I'm petty. I don't know if you heard the beginning of the show, but I go by Petty Guerrero around. I appreciate the alter egos you guys have. Nothing says I'm a fan of wrestling like I have a persona. Especially when you work road dog into your persona the way I did. Yep. So we have to get into movies for a second because you know me and you share this this lifeline right here but this is a story i've never told anyone okay all right and it was a it was a lesson that i had to learn but oh oh in the beginning of my career about 10 years ago now maybe nine or so i i had this movie this big time director and it was it was an independent wasn't on a major and it was going to have me travel overseas and it was a this war film and this is probably the second audition i've ever done or like anything and so when they tell me yeah the directors wants you to come in and you guys are going to workshop in and like he's gonna you know you guys are gonna work on it work on the on the the role now previously i worked with gary gray for straight out of compton and And when I hear workshop, I'm thinking we're going to go there.

1:32:57O'Shea:We're going to read the script together. We're going to go over notes together. And we're going to workshop the whole thing. I'm not knowing that this man, who's used to working with Tom Cruise, is expecting me to have the script memorized already. There were things that I wasn't prepared. I wasn't prepared at all. And I ended up losing this role. And I was like, damn. It hurt me for a long time. and then I see that John Cena's in The Wall or the film you did The Wall and that film, it hurt me so bad TJ because I felt like I'm all about having good report cards I don't like people having something over me that I let them down right there or I didn't perform to the top of where I was supposed to be Do you watch films you don't get?

1:33:44Yeah

1:33:45O'Shea:Hell no I'm petty man That's probably bad but it it i look at it like i gotta just move forward gotta move past it because if i see something that i'm like i wish i could have been a part of it it'll kill me it'll kill me that i didn't get it i hear i hear that what i think is great about that story is as you share it even through your frustration you can say i wasn't prepared yeah so there's your takeaway way yeah turn a loss into a lesson correct in shooting the wall i can tell you that there's a reason that the director you would have bettered your position by having the script memorized because we would switch immediately we shot it on film uh we shot it in the mojave and there were wind storms wow and i always i always tell myself like from everything goes back to wrestling did you prepare as hard as you could yes did you give everything you could yes did you promote as hard as you could yes find the lesson in there because they just weren't ready for it it missed i fancy myself as somebody who's prepared i got to work alongside aaron taylor johnson and he spoke in a texas accent and a southern accent the whole picture i never knew he was british oh yeah and our director would be like page 76 halfway through and then he'd be like page 110 because the wind and the light's fucking us we need to go to page 47 he wouldn't even look he'd be like got it and would just in real time save our days by being obsessively prepared right and i'm like man i fancy myself as somebody who believes in elbow grease this fucking guy is legit yeah and it was it was inspirational yeah um so i understand from a person wanting to shoot the movie of like if we're gonna go soon i need somebody who knows yeah so you never know what what somebody else is looking for right you know what i'm saying i i knew the whole script but i knew the whole script because i'd already been run out of the movie business once and i didn't want to get run out again and i didn't you know i'm still i'm still kind of trying to find my way as an on-screen performer but the one thing i can do is i can be prepared and i can be coachable yeah and that is it's that part because where i where i run into i think where that part of me that i don't want anybody to have a negative thing to say about me is because because i am who i am uh the son of ice cube yeah there's a thing that you know sometimes my my dad doesn't even understand like my dad doesn't know what it's like to be his son and he'll never know and so in situations where people have this idea of what i'm going to be and and you know how i'm going to treat things so that i'm entitled i just always felt like i had that scar on me from not being prepared and it's helped me with everything else that i've done is that i'm never going to be i never want to be put in that situation again because i don't know what the people involved went on to think about me after that because i was there to work i just wasn't prepared like i didn't know to the level of extent that that film needed a lot of times you can't control that though yeah i just i can't let if i if i leave here today you guys oh that guy's an asshole i'm doing the best i can that's it yeah and that's where eddie's philosophy one fan at a time comes in granted you got a bigger hill to climb because of your origin story yet because your origin story you might indeed get more opportunity than someone moving from ohio to just take auditions and work in a diner yeah it it is what it is and it's all relative and again i'm blindly optimistic and this is widely open to criticism and i i respect that good work gets you another chance yeah period that is what i loved about the meritocracy of the wwe good work gets you another chance yes there is only one main event spot on wrestlemania now there's two but another chance is another chance that's why i don't care if i'm first last in the middle in the year of retirement very few times was i closing the show right i was all over the place yeah you know what i'm saying and it doesn't matter because just an opportunity to do good work if you're the marquee of a movie and you do good work it might get you an opportunity to be ninth on the depth chart but it's another opportunity to do good work it's just a matter of if you're going to build the obstacles in front of yourself to take it or not you know so many of the wrestling performers i want to bring it back to because no contest wrestling yeah they'll touch the sun so to speak and then when i had the u.s open challenge when i won the intercontinental title for retiring it's it's a joke and i know these people personally and i know they'll take i hopefully they'll take the joke but i would look and be like yeah just like austin would have done steve austin has not taken the united states title after he takes the world title because in his personality and what keeps him sharp and driven and motivated is that's a demotion and i understand that and i respect that and by the way one of the greatest to do it one of the top three yeah i think the dj would be the same way i'm not going in this direction we do this stuff this is top level stuff and i respect that too i don't have their talent strengths and gifts so give me anything right give me a paper belt i'll try to make it worse you know what i'm saying so it's like what op what are you chasing you know so many people say i want to be a wrestler you got any advice go out there and wrestle so many promotions couldn't be a better time but just do it because you want to do it or be honest with me i want to be in the wwe to make a ton of money okay well there's a bunch of avenues you can do that because there's corporate structure behind wrestling you can be part of referee part of the ring crew like there's a way to have a call rest to call wrestling your vocation shout out to stew my guy we i wanted to talk to you but you know what i'm saying like it's a lot of times we we won't we won't we won't ask ourselves to be honest with ourselves about our why yeah why do you want to be in the main event of wrestling a year after year after year to be validated that i'm good enough why don't you think you're good enough well i don't know that those are those are people's boxes to open yeah i just early on i i knew that when i got a second chance i didn't go straight to the top i started on velocity and i went out there going saturday night's my night word life like never wanting to get off of saturday night like give me this broadcast i will kill it and then i just jobbed out to everybody brock killed me undertaker i was the go-through guy yeah because i could kind of i could cut a promo say shit the people weren't wanting to hit oh he was the sick burn and then like yeah but the kid's timing's okay man he he was coachable and then inch by inch you you gain and then you lose i also took a a backseat and was able to stand in a position to see it all evolve i saw it evolve man like i saw performers it's the cycle of life you you we put energy into something to to make it special and then you have to just give it away and the giveaway is more gradual but like you leave with nothing you give it all the way and a lot of folks it's tough to conceptualize yeah it's difficult now um just to pivot again appreciate it you're uh from you know the the underground uh promotion with your brothers sleeping in the lincoln continental or doing all these things that go into it being uh the guy that you know gets people over to being wwe champion for the very first time we like to ask champions yeah what is it like All of that went into it.

1:42:18O'Shea:Laying your head on the pillow for the first time as I'm WWE champ. Yeah, that night. What is that feeling? By the way, my little brother Sharif was there too. I was in there. Nice. WrestleMania goes Hollywood. Yeah, bro. We were talking about the fact that we were there for your first world champ. Not together at that point. Several. We didn't know each other back then, but being there for that first one and then being there together for your last one was also full circle. Crazy. You got to understand, and again, I think everybody has their own moment. Like, there are moments in the journey that I remember and are emotional for me.

1:42:54That was probably, I probably had some drinks with my buddies, went to sleep, and got up to go to work the next day. Like, I probably had to do media the next day. I remember when Rock was kind enough to come back for Jersey and did business and gave me the title. we didn't get out of there I didn't get get to bed till 1am and I was up at 4 to do early morning press so like what's that what's the biggest night of your life like it was nothing I woke up exhausted yeah I didn't have a cool of the evening as we like to call it in the business it's those moments just go so fast I don't have any glaring memories of post-match what i loved beforehand was i don't know if you remember that match but they gave bradshaw this incredibly intricate entrance yo limousine money with his face on oh man i still got some you know i like to fancy myself as more of a showman and more of an unorthodox performer so we you know we go through his entrance and we talk we go up to gorilla and we all take a seat like right there and i'm like man what an entrance it was raining money and he's just looking at me i'm like where's my entrance and point blank he's like you're going over chill out first of all no but like what an impactful statement i need to make myself look as big as i possibly can because i know the end of the story yeah and like those little that's how those that's how the people who mentored me used to teach you're going over like don't be an idiot yeah if you have the entrance and you're winning it makes mine mean less if especially if yours is better and you beat somebody who was less yeah i'm trying to do this for you asshole yeah it's okay just just win just go out there and win but like that's what i remember from that day and and i remember it so clearly that the the message is stuck like it's all about creating the energy and how what's the end of the story and what's going to be what's going to be the most impactful you know one thing we we talk to guys about is you know before the individual tour buses and stuff yeah it's always the road stories and so many guys say that that is that's their favorite memory that they have just being on the road with the boys making town so are there any stories that you can share that you really stand out to like man we we made this town and this happened or so so i talked a lot about or i talked a little about like the fraternal culture of like how hard it is to crack into the fraternity that i'm glad it is gone but when you spend five days a week with someone in perpetuity no no no weeks off like um at my height at 220 230 matches a year you got to put a flight on each end of that side and promotion in there might have been home five days maybe so like i as much as i didn't agree with the fraternal aspect i loved the familial aspect and like the hours we used to work and the hours we used to celebrate i used to love to just get everybody together i learned very quickly um i had my first drink.

1:46:24I was sober until the business. The business corrupted me. I had my first drink with The Undertaker. But he brought me over. You guys dropped the ball.

1:46:39What is Colby going to think of us? I text the man. He gave me your order. We don't have runners and stuff here. That's cool. Hey, you don't yet? Right on. Building an economy. That's what we're doing. the next time you come i promise runners everywhere coffee more coffee uh taker told me in having a drink with him he didn't tell me this but having a drink was like so i told him i don't drink he's like just take i told him i don't drink i drag and then immediately it was like turn towards and open up i was like oh my god you didn't talk okay great what do you have to say and then that night i learned never leave early which i left early when and never announce you're leaving which i announced to everybody i was leaving french checks and always take care of your crew because the pay was at a point where like top guys are doing well bottom guys are getting by especially after all the expenses and taxes and everything from that down open tab nobody ever paid for anything and that's taking care of your crew and i wanted to like hey get out of the arranged meal that the company has set for us and get over to the bar because then maybe we can talk that's how i learned the business open up yeah i just started hanging out with the guys and that's when like eddie would talk to me afterwards that's when kurt would talk to me afterwards that's when john we did like a two-year bar crawl town to town with john and man i got such nuggets you know like everybody in the business wants to teach i think it's the most rewarding feeling i know personally it's the most rewarding feeling the way things are taught is different i i miss a lot of that but then again i'm i'm pivoting i'm just giving away secrets now i will go to wherever the wrestling is and be like do you have any questions ask me anything i don't care yeah and hopefully i can give them a nugget that helps out where you used to have to learn that behind you know a foot and a half of mahogany through a bottle of old number seven you know what i'm saying so it's a pivot and just the way things are absorbed and the way people learn is different but i do i do miss that yeah it's the camaraderie yeah of like we went through troubles with each other like you you and you never you very rarely bring your personal life inside when you shut the door you're there for escape you're there for people to light in their backpack but afterwards if you need somebody to lean on it's the people you ride with it's people you confide in the people you can trust it's a tough business yeah or it used to be like you got in the it used to be if you got in the wrestling business for the money you're in the wrong business and those guys got weeded out quick because it's a grind it's different nowadays i think it's better in all aspects but like now you can get in the wrestling business for the money because you got 50 shows a year you maybe work 20 matches a year okay i can do that i can be a football player and come over and pick this thing up but who knows we might get the next star because of that i don't know it's it's me apologizing to the unreal guys again of like i thought this wouldn't work but it did i don't know there's there's a lot of the performers that want more live events i don't know if that's good or bad we've only been doing this a couple years and all the data points say what we're doing is great yeah and i asked the performers why they said we want time under tension great answer when i watch live events a lot of times you guys go into business for yourself fuck off you have fun but it's not fun that follows the narrative of the show yeah and it's a disconnect to the audience still so like you have to follow yeah so you want more freedom to be able to if the crowd is chanting 619 should i do one right now that's different than like i want to do a fun spot that i think is going to be fun with my partners it'll be a disconnect from the audience like i said i watched every event yeah and when a lot of the performers have fun they go in business for themselves that's it it's not cm punk is one of the smoothest who can inside baseball without ruining the narrative you never know his tricks yeah it's like that when he was like i miss you already like in in saudi he literally dropped the act for one second no one noticed it and he almost made me bust out crying yeah like it was so emotional but he never ruined the narrative he never went in business for himself so i don't know if more live events the answer because all they're all i've seen is people take advantage of that and make my job harder as somebody who closes the show they just mess around and have fun and talk about a lot like oh it's fun but they don't listen to the audience whether they bought or not and if they buy it do they buy it in the right way like i don't i don't know so i i don't know any of these answers.

1:51:14You spoke about it. One second. We got a guy up at the shop. How do you take the flat white? This is crazy. This late in the day? In this economy? I got to pass. At this point, I got to pass. You sure? I got to. Man, I already want a headbutt wall. If you guys give me a flat white now. No, I would never. I could never. You sure? You're a machine. you're the prototype I can't gotta time that caffeine spike it would have been great oh my god we got some bourbon over there when I walked in you guys were like hey you're a coffee guy we got something set up for you that would have been awesome leave them wanting more it's a reason for me to come back you guys have built up this coffee to be like epic you know what blame me I'll take the beat on this i like that that's cool no because i i i i made the text to seth i said what does he like he told me where to go but you know i'm doing a three-hour live tv radio show so it was hard for me i couldn't really i couldn't get out so so i i apologize that's on can i ask a few questions please have you had fun so far with you yeah yes you have 73 episodes in do you think this is going okay i think this is going wonderfully but but you are the the stand you're the one who we've got to ask because you've done 100 ,000 of these.

1:52:44Are we doing them? No, this is great. Okay. This is great. You guys got good questions. I see you checking the list, but you're not married to the list, which is great. That means you're listening and present. In my mind, a coffee doesn't make this any better. Okay. So let it go. All right. We're good. I'm still not. No, I'm still not. Man, isn't that the way? We score 99 and we always look at the one. Yeah. You know what's funny? It's funny you said that. But 99, that's great. It's great. But it's funny you say that. and he and I talked about this earlier, just human beings, right? Like I remember hearing Madonna say this once.

1:53:17She goes, I could be doing a concert and say there's 50 ,000 people there and 49 ,999 are having the greatest time of their lives. But if I look out and I see one person that looks like they're not enjoying themselves, she's like, I fixate on that. And it's so true. Like we get all types of comments. That is inside the mind of Steve Austin. Really? because we we get we get comments all the time and people say we love you guys blah blah blah but that one person will go you guys suck or someone else is better and instead of hyping up all the other people focus on i just embrace my heel yo steve had like supernatural hearing okay and would fixate on the one and not listen to the 12 000 really i don't think i have that because if you look at my trajectory it went immediately to polarizing like companies pushing this guy fuck him so every night it was mixed how did you deal with that half the crowd let's go cena but then you start to get the scene that sucks no you're a professional i'm sure you by the way this is this goes to the critics out there too the people that were all up in arms about like they didn't do john justice on the farewell tour you guys were the guys telling me i suck like up until up until like now and then you i mean your late arrivers will welcome everybody but i just want you to kind of remind yourself of history you know never you never forget that what's kind of when you were on your hill tour and you told these people that thing like yeah so that's that was the most authentic why that i could find why why would this virtuous guy do this because in a desperate hour he realizes he's been mistreated it's not his job to just take shit and like the taste it is not how you treat human beings it is not fair and you have stripped me of my human right like that that's a legitimate argument that's a legitimate angle and that's the best i could do because i think it was already a reach great moment but like how do we carry the moment beyond the moment there has to be an authentic why behind it and the why is i finally realized i say you guys are the best you're not you have been everything miserable in my life that's like gold dude but like that's authentic yeah and i i really wanted to got a point i wanted to cross the line without use of bad language and i like i'm the victim when you're wearing the championship saying you're the victim is despicable and then like i'm a i am the victim of an abusive relationship i can't tell you how much i fixated on those words workshop that sentence to be like it needs to sound like this because that's not true but every every bad guy has to have their perspective and that's some pretty crazy shit that i would like even bridge that gap or try that channel but like almost be like people can be like i can kind of see where he's coming from yeah that's all you did tell him like we sing his theme song to and say john cena sucks and like he's had to just smile and deal with it the whole time how did i deal with it the the creative direction was to do it virtuously that's it i it's not my choice my everything in my instinct would say this is when we flip the data showed a different story so i'm told by creative that like we're never doing this until something catastrophic happens right because everybody wanted it but but it was weird because they they wanted it right they wanted it but when they got it it was gross yeah it just didn't fit it's like you want it because okay they're pushing all right he's going nowhere my god would you get some depth a lot of times like the the best relationships in our lives and the the strongest bonds we form are the folks we're around every day and yes i've my character has evolved i went from trying to win the main event at wrestlemania against the rock to protect wwe to drinking beers in the front row and getting squashed by the undertaker yeah like i it doesn't you do go through dips i i and i like i tried again to telegraph it as much as i could i haven't won a match in 3 000 days you want to talk about roman's winning streak i don't have it anymore bro like yeah you know you're fine look at the data yeah i'm off and you guys aren't listening and like just trying to develop all of those little things to come up with your why but the reason i was able to handle that and the reason that any chance I get, I say thank you to the WWE audience.

1:58:06I experienced humility with them. I experienced failure. I was never able to get too big for my own head because every single night I had crowds in massive proportions tell me I couldn't do the job that I could. You can't wrestle. Hurt every single chant. And I'm just trying to perform under the creative constructs that I have. So I can't wrestle. I suck. Fuck you, Cena. like you you name it they were chanting fuck you cena when i inducted refrigerator perry into the hall of fame at a memoriam for eddie guerrero that's wild yo wild is a understatement damn

1:58:45O'Shea:like what the fuck what the fuck it's so inappropriate but it but it is it's it's perfectly appropriate because of the venue you know that now that that reminds me of that night in ECW. That was quite possibly the most hostile crowd of all time. This is what I love. Like hostile or energetic. Those are the best crowds. Man, I had so much fun with Rob that night. You want to talk about giving back in any way you can. The finish was great, but Rob, this was your house. These are your folks. Let's go out there and have a good one. It was so great. It's the ones, this is the toughest crowd. Yeah. Yeah, right.

1:59:34So I never, I did really, I never took it personal. No? Because my job is to provide you an escape. You bring your life into the arena and everyone has problems. I don't care how life has awarded you. Your problems could be very first world. Your problems could be a lot different than that. but when you come into our house you let that shit loose yeah in any energy you want and that's what makes wwe unique and different it's not like a rock concert it's not like a sketch show it's

2:00:06O'Shea:not like a stand-up the audience is the act dude and i've i've i said it in my speech i know i wasn't seen a guy i've booed you a lot but but there was one last moment of fear that you gave me as a fan because i i've always kept my eye on wrestling i think with the bloodline and everything was the first time in a long time where i was like i'm emotionally invested here and then I you know I get online and I was I was quite mean John to a lot of people online because I was a heel in my own mind you want to he loves to go I love a good you know I love to just run people through the mud a little bit it's all I uh fun and games I don't choose that path but I got to respect that yeah as long as long as you're accountable for your actions so during uh during Roman's you know his the height I was just anybody's favorite I was just destroying online and then like I get a bunch I hate comments but boy when your music hit that day or was it SummerSlam that comeback I was like this motherfucker bro like of course how fucking poetic that is John to come and take this from Roman right now he's gonna get 17 like I ran it all through a fantasy book the entire close boy I was so you were close maybe a conversation you can have with Paul Heyman with Roman Reigns when you see him that night was supposed to go very different oh really you were supposed to get a fear sandwich what?

2:01:52yeah in the last moment we had a surprise guest booked and he came out after the match was over Brock brock they didn't they didn't secure brock until 5 p.m that day and you want to talk about pivoting right yeah a message to anybody out there listening thinking i'm talking from a high place or a glass house i was going to win 17 uh we were going to have someone come out and restart the match and roman was going to take it back i've never heard this this is this is creative and the way we put together the match was we were going to give him a hell of a match um everything out the door no rules no nothing like tons of finishers all this stuff because i was going to win and then roma was going to take it back so you have this battle this hard-fought battle and then through a nefarious set of rules matches restarted here we go then we secure brock and tr comes and said i need to see you we're switching the finish to what roaming over yep clean yep okay uh what do you want to do let me just talk to roman and paul i go in they're like you got the news i said i got the news what do we do i said one spear that's it whatever match you want to have that's fine you beat me with your finish once yeah and i love i love paul paul hayman has been a great mentor and we just he gets it and he recognizes somebody who sees that it's not about them it's about the story this is going to make roman better because they're they're having him win so we can go on to bigger and better things And it switched right there.

2:03:37Wow. An hour before, like we're on the West Coast. So it's like an hour before the thing. So it happens to everyone. It happens from the top of the card down to the bottom. They will switch. They will cut your time. They will give you different creative. It happens all the time. So I didn't flip out when - Pivot. Yeah. When Travis didn't want to do it anymore, when Rock chose to go another way. It happens. I saw Steve Austin leave. I saw him get fired. Like I was there when they fired him in Atlanta. like it it happens it happens all time but that's like i was supposed to win 17 that night pissing your cornflakes but uh i would have cursed your name until we served from the kitchen was it was a different you know it was a different menu oh just the thing by the way i don't i don't think anybody knows that story yeah this is an ncw exclusive this is and by and you weren't click bait like cena was supposed to win 17 way early summer of cena was supposed to be summer 17 and that's like I promise you as much, I know Roman has a personality you may not be able to get that out of him I know you'll be able to get it out of Paul and I know eventually you'll be able to get it out of Roman when he's Joe that's an NCW exclusive right there

2:04:49O'Shea:dude, you don't understand, that means that there's a parallel there's an alternate universe where I'm pissed oh yeah, there's an alternate universe where you're a heel, where you go online and you're means people, where you run people through the mud. That's what he does. That's what he does. Oh, thank God I live here. One thing I wanted to ask before, because you've been so gracious with your time and I don't want to keep you too much longer, because I DM'd him last night and I told him I'd ask, was Stu. Yeah. Talk to us. We love Stu. Stu's the man. Everybody loves Stu because of you. So why don't we all say that?

2:05:26because you started to talk to stew during your intro yeah so everyone got to know this cameraman named stew we wrestle palooza we go backstage right and he and i we want to talk to everybody in wrestling from the announcers to the to the wrestlers to everyone backstage and i go we go up to this guy and he's talking to us and he goes some other guy asked would you want to be on the the cameraman podcast i think it was a joke right we're like yeah and i go man we really want to talk to stew and he goes i'm stew i'm stew and i went wait you're stew we like flipped out i marked out like matt striker when booker t came back to the royal rumble that was my mark out moment to meet stew just because i'd never seen the man but i know you talked to him for years so we all feel like we knew still what why like what made you start dropping his name and talking to him so there's a lot there um the there's a lot of rules in in in what we do that no one knows about um i think the most common ones out there in the the ethos probably be like keep your hands up when you're getting punched oh yeah uh and that's just because um i i'm not an advocate for this because sometimes you can be out on your feet i've seen fighters just drop their lean with their head and like that's realistic but the reason that starts is so you're not just calling spots to a guy like i'm the loudest talker in the biz was but i talked during the noise so you can't really hear me or if you can it's like a bonus but i'm not like do this spot and then like you've seen we've all seen that if you watch enough matches you've seen the deer in headlights of over communication do you keep your hands up is essentially like y 'all are being lazy and just talking through your stuff and the the stuff in between the important glue that holds these spots together is being sacrificed and no one believes that's the that's what they're trying to say with keep your hands up oh yeah that's a lot don't break the fourth wall that's another one i don't agree with that okay because sports are shot and football players come up take their helmet off and like i'm on i know the audience is at home and we always It's weird.

2:07:40We say, don't break the fourth wall, but work the hard camera. I don't get that. I don't believe in either one. There's eight cameras, maybe more out there. They're going to catch it. Yes, a good wide shot of everything is good to broadcast. It's good to go to cutaways. But it's also a live event. And I've been in houses that are full and some houses where no people are this side and everyone is this side. Or some buildings like Dublin. We did TV in Dublin. No fans on the camera side just because the way the building's shaped. Everybody else is around. you cannot ignore the act the audience is the act so i don't ever work the hard camera and i always break the fourth wall but i couldn't how could i talking to the fucking cameraman so i talk over the corner of the mat box to stew and i know all those guys rico stew marty like and stew's always the first guy i see it's double fold i get two rewards out of this i get to thank the truck the production that makes us look way better than we actually are and they never ever get credit so when i thank the camera department or talk to the camera department or the camera department gets recognized production gets recognized yeah so that's a win there secondly i'm in your home i'm talking to you you guys know about stew and you're like stew's the man stew's the man it's because i've talked to you for years and you can sometimes see fatigue in my face but then it's just like let's go to work and then when you when you turn you take away that element like i didn't know how long i was going to be a bad guy but i knew like take away the energy take away the stew like the little nuances wear the belt backwards just the little things of like walk don't run take the energy out of the character talking to stew allowed me to talk to you guys at home and i didn't believe in the rule so i came up with a creative way to break it i never got a good explanation yeah because i said so but i thought it was a way to to get people at home excited to like if you're not there stew can you see all this you're missing you guys got to be here so maybe that i gotta go i gotta go yeah you know it was a it was a twofold way of and and i love stew we have such a great friendship and i don't know if anybody's gonna pick up the torch but it would also be weird for somebody to begin to talk to him i don't know yeah but man we had like a we had like a 20 year run yeah so that's okay yeah that's all right and and in uh petco his son was pulling cable for him yep and i was able to say like they're both baseball fans so at a ballpark yeah his son's there pulling cable his daughter was working production as well it was a family like it was a family day at the ballpark so like that was towards the end too so that was a really really special that's cool final with stew yeah so like i said i dm'd him last night and he he replied excellent you could not find a better man he hasn't met enough people he must just he must only follow you on it

2:10:44O'Shea:now you we've we've talked about pivoting talked about you know just not taking pretty much a lot of the world's problems we've talked about life uh because i said so not working just always knowing to think on your feet you've always been you've also been put into situations where the guy you're working with is going through it rock has now started talking about where he tore his abdomen 10 minutes into you guys's match miz uh in 27 he's getting concussed when you're we've talked to people before about you know taking care of a guy in a match doing it on main event of wrestlemania what's going through your mind it's the same as any other match yeah yep and and i have enough matches in the bank to prove this uh the things that you aren't seeing when mrs concussed yeah i'm talking to mike kiyota planning the match with me and the rock okay this is what mrs part was supposed to be if he is incapable of doing it and you guys deem him incapable let's get him safe and sound i will do exactly these things can you get that message message back to duane and in real time that's happening and when they say ms can go he remembers is what's going on is is that the we're going with that yes we're going with that okay that's fine uh rock tearing his abdomen it's like where are we keep in mind no one knows what we have planned yeah no one knows what the match is supposed to be can i make a story out of him tearing his abdomen 100 sammy zane's debut in montreal blows his shoulder to pieces oh my goodness you can see us sizing each other up in the beginning and i'm literally it's like i'm i'm the person with the clipboard at the the help do you have any previous conditions how bad do you think the injury is i'm literally going through the checklist of like what are you capable of what can you do we will fix this because they don't know what we have planned right the worst is trying to jumble fuck through a dance you can't step to that's when everyone knows it's a work yeah but if you're really hurt that's incredible like if you're really hurt and you can go yeah and if you're really hurt and you can't there is no wrong at all you just don't want to put anyone's health in jeopardy so my main concern is am i putting your health in jeopardy you have answered me honestly is that adrenaline or are you good yeah i tore my pec and i thought i tore my bicep yeah when seth put my Put my fucking nose on the side of my face.

2:13:17Like I've had so many injuries in there. Wrestling Brian with the, it's not a tumor. I've had so many of those of like, when Seth broke my nose, I remember like, okay, I need a second. And I go to the corner. I'm like, I just need a second. I can think, not concussed. My nose is on the side of my face. Good to go. When I tore my pec, it was on a hip toss. I was like, man, I feel okay. I just need a second. I just need a second. we went through that whole match yeah did the whole match but like something was off but i mechanically what we had no problem i'll do it and i've had matches where guys are like i can't this is all this is all i have no problem that's all you have let's let's just work with what we have instead of imagine something we don't so you get more yes keep calm it's when you you don't like you just don't want to get get in there trying to trying to do something you're not

2:14:13O'Shea:capable of doing we we asked aj styles who was somebody who were some names that when he sees them on the card you know it's you verse whoever he knows oh i'm gonna be all right they're gonna take care of me you were on his list okay yeah you were on his list and finn ballad wow wow two just two that's what he named i can remember yeah he said you and finn ballad he said he said you because even though you guys are so different it's crazy how you guys's styles clashed yeah yeah but he just said even with the different styles like he said getting in the ring with you he knew that he was getting out of there like yeah i'm gonna be okay is who comes to mind when i ask you that question never anybody that i felt unsafe with okay uh there are people that make you brock makes you earn it because his stuff is just so explosive but he's so safe he really is awesome like he i never once feel i i can't take 22 germans now but like he had that idea of like i think i just suplex you and beat you yeah yeah all right and everyone everyone's explosive that was shocking but everyone is safe yeah i do my research on guys like not only do i dive into their personality i watch the past matches i watched they're capable of with logan you don't have many matches to go on and a lot of stuff that he was doing was like viral moments i'm like i i need something more than that we never left the ring yeah my sister appreciates things like that i saw logan and i'm like man you you you look and work like cesaro so i called claudio i'm like hey can i borrow some stuff please he's like are you kidding me he's part of the coffee group yeah no problem he's like i can't i can't be there it'd be an honor so i'm like hey logan watch this guy these are things i think you can do and i would send him modified clips of like the super european the giant swing all things i thought cesaro did well that I think Logan could do well.

2:16:29And by the way, this might help you with your style. Like, get more stuff. Yeah. Because take it from Five Moves of Doom, there's going to come a time where you need more stuff. That's just the nature of the beast. You're going to need more stuff. So mess around with this. But I'll, like, go in on guys, see what they do. And the rest of the match, like, you guys are real. I just wing it. Like, I'm one of the last of the improvisational performers. Yeah. and i'm out now so i guess i'm out but that's a champion right yeah uh the way i was taught by the by the guys who mentored me booker t's of the world especially shakespeare booker t's like listen plan your finish from the comeback on and in the in the beginning section you're just trying to get the audience to a point where they want to see you come back where they want to see you without lack of a better term hulk up a lot of performers say all right we got five minutes you take one you take one we got a three-minute finish and you'll you'll see a lot of like this is way inside baseball but no contest wrestling so you'll see a lot of bumping feeds to no noise i'll bomb some nights so i'll be making the comeback to no noise but it ain't because of lack of trying what i do if we have a 35 minute match and i want to do a 15 minute finish I'll take that 20 minutes to just listen.

2:17:52And a lot of the times I'm calling the pace of the guys and it's by design, we'll start out quick and then go more methodical because if, if you know, the geography and everything's right, you'll see me, I never turned heel, but I worked with intent with some guys. Yeah. And that, those were all the real tweeners. AJ was one punk was another because they wanted the crowd, wanted to see those guys so how do i make them want to see them turn the energy down and then the people be like what did you just what did you just fucking do something yeah it makes them and then it then when you do something when you explode the audience like yeah things are gonna happen and then you start taking them on this ride of like what how can we swerve it more like is this a night where we just go straight through does john do his little comeback and then get stopped and then get at five to 11 times like there are those nights too but it's that's how i use my time performers are so surgical in what they do they they they segment every minute i can't plan i don't know who's out there i don't know what audience is out there all i can do is hedge yeah i'm right at the curtain when they come in what are they chanting what are they wearing and it's not be like i'm over it's like okay there's a few john cena t-shirts i know i'm it's not a hundred to nothing it's like it's like having a written that you you know i'm this is

2:19:15O'Shea:what i'm gonna rap and then when you hear the beat and your written don't fit the beat you still try to put it on it yes or it's like a stand-up routine you tell a joke and it bombs like there's a a great youtube of bill burghers lighting into a crowd in philadelphia because his stuff wasn't working and he just goes ape shit on the crowd and they fucking loved it it's great but it's that's a guy who can think on his feet and adapt you can't predict who is there but what i can do is use my time strengths and gifts and we all have the same fundamentals if you guys graduate from nxt i know you have the same fundamentals yeah and i'll ask beforehand what do you do but i've already i already know what you do because i've already researched you right so like okay if you do the swinging neck breaker if i say swinging neck breaker out there you know to hit me with that right okay great and i'll just use these things as bait to try to get the audience interested and sometimes they're interested from go so it's like hey we just need to not fuck this up and then sometimes they're apathetic and apathy is is the the that's so tough to get interested and i love those matches where it's like uh the midnight express versus the southern boys where it's just apathy but at the end the fucking southern boys are over but you have to really invest action into that you know what i'm saying and like i think that's our first southern boys reference on no contest market so uh i had great teachers in danny davis and jim cornet danny davis is a great fundamentalist jim cornet is a wrestling historian they each have their own personality i i care deeply for them both they they they helped me be a better performer jim would put a box of tapes in front of us and a box of books like read the books watch the tapes when you watch the tapes when you watch midnight versus southern boys only watch it as an example of how to get an unknown tag team over when you watch tiger mask and dynamite only watch it for body techniques and kinesthetic awareness and pace when you watch lawler dundee only watch it for the punches i was literally thinking that throw a punch like this so jim is all about it and and that's how i started looking at guys you know and that's how i started learning about like what are your strengths what are your weaknesses what do you need to improve on what can we do so when you ask me like who took care of me everybody because i got to work with like the last of the carny guys right and they they i was the new kid then so they don't want to stink the joint out and they took care of me too because they knew i wanted to learn i was eager like i I would, kid, your punches suck.

2:21:50Be to the building by noon. They know I'm going to get in the hotel at 6 a.m. Throw 1 ,000 punches. No problem. I'll be there at 1130. Yeah. I'll throw 2 ,000 if you will. Show up the next day. Yeah, sure. No problem. You're all right, kid. Yeah. All right. It's one of those things where it's like, I want to hate this son of a bitch. Yeah. It's my professional arc. Cena sucks. And then at the end, you guys are clapping. Yeah. Thank you, though. Thank you. Thank you. So I've never felt unsafe because I do my homework. Right. I know guys like Kevin Owens. We're going to push the line a little bit.

2:22:29But I will go through stuff with him. I'll practice stuff with him. Yeah. Because he does a lot of brain buster stuff. But he knows his stuff like the back of his hand. And he's like, man, with you, just post for me once. Oh, we will be fine. I know we will. I just want to feel what's going on. I've never felt unsafe. Because also, I only do stuff I can do 1 ,000%. Preparation. And only go out there with stuff you can bat 1 ,000. Yes, the springboard stunner might not have been 1 ,000. But I was at a weird point in my life. It was a resting midlife crisis. Sometimes you got to hit a springboard.

2:23:04Sometimes you got to use a horseshit springboard. Cody's got it way better than I do. But that's kind of like the only instance where I was like, man, I don't know how confident I am in doing this. I just won't do it. I just won't do it. Yeah. So when you, when you go out there with the confidence of like everything we're going to do is within the fundamental training and within your wheelhouse, kind of everybody takes care of you. Speaking of taking care of me. Yeah. Because we've had you here for a while. My goodness. What time is it? Oh my God. We, like I said, you've been so generous with your time.

2:23:39You know what? Honestly though, reflecting on it, I could really use a coffee.

2:23:46O'Shea:you evil fucking asshole dude i knew it all these years he just turned and i just and i let him i let him in i was vulnerable let him know that i cared about it you know i i i've been fortunate enough i've got some resources in the bank i can do some stuff one thing i can't do is produce a coffee right now we gotta care we gotta ever seen me be in this weird position where I have nothing to battle with. If you guys didn't build it up, I wouldn't miss it. But now, I mean, what this interview could have been with a double espresso and four ounces of hot milk. What this interview could have been.

2:24:25There was a Starbucks, but instead we have left it on the table. We have left it. The interview's there. And this is where it is. I'm not going to feel good about this. I should feel good. I don't feel good.

2:24:34O'Shea:Okay, listen. I got a situation for you. You're in a coffee bar. I don't know, man. This is getting real coffee based around this month. But so I got a situation for you. Change your name to the No Coffee Wrestling Podcast. I hate that I saw the gears work. On this edition of the No Coffee Wrestling Podcast. We have the 17-time champion John Cena. And we don't caffeinate him. So if I'm in a coffee bar. You're at a bar. Enjoying whatever drink John Cena wants. Oh, there's a difference between a car. One, they serve uppers. The other is they serve downers. Downers. Okay. You're drinking an okra.

2:25:16Right on. Okay. Excellent. Right on.

2:25:18O'Shea:So you had a bar drinking an okra. There's 50 dudes at this bar, and they claim that they can see you all around. All right. They do not like John Cena. They're the ones that chanted Cena sucks. Yes. I need you to pick a team of you and four other superstars to make sure they've never seen is making it to the car. It's our number one question everybody likes to draft. The Honda's outside waiting. It's running. No, so man, like... Dude. Very real talk to a hypothetical question. Okay. Violence is not an answer. It is an absolute last resort. Of course. Diplomacy wins. Period. That's what Paul Heyman said.

2:26:05I literally will lead. So I want him. because he said i'll talk i want paul because he's a diplomat i'd want punk because he's a diplomat

2:26:13O'Shea:yes um cody oh cody's a and and i and i think maybe uh maybe colby oh yeah seth you know and and i wouldn't i wouldn't want any i wouldn't want brock i wouldn't want guys who i wouldn't want batista i wouldn't want joe i wouldn't want guys who give off even as as diplomatic as they could present themselves i wouldn't want guys who give off an initial reputation of like oh fuck it's gonna go down you get i've been in some places where it's backwards i try to keep myself from those places now because i think you can i can kind of see them you can do the math on a place and i should turn around and get out of here yeah for sure diplomacy wins and if you gotta if you gotta open the bar that night or if you gotta really lean in and and be vulnerable however you got to negotiate the situation if something happens in there something has gone wrong yeah and i'm a firm believer in that so i would want a cast of diplomats i think uh maybe bruce pritchard to slide in there for colby because he was brother love so he's a performer so like i need i need me some diplomats some people who can diffuse the situation and calm it down but what if the situation won't be diffused despite your best efforts so what i'm hearing what i'm hearing now It's going down.

2:27:34This hypothetical situation is if you were in a fight, a physical fight, whoever I choose on my team is fucked because I haven't hit anybody for real in 20 years. Oh, man. Don't tell us that. Oh, man. Like, they're fucked. You know? So, like, whoever I choose, I'm handicapping them by one dude. Because I'd be like, yo.

2:27:59I threw my best two punches at Fanatics Fest. I'm like, no, it's what? It's the best I can. You definitely didn't shoot your best jump shot. I did not. I did not. And I realized, by the way, indicators of it's time to go. Like I used to be able to dunk. Damn, that's crazy. And like a few years ago, I used to be able to dunk. When I did carpool karaoke with Shaq. I'm up there on the rim. And I'm not good at basketball, but I can jump. I used to be able to jump. Dude. Man, used to the rooster. I brick, airball, whatever. I'm like, oh, you know, I'll get the crowd back by going and hitting rim and just hanging off the rim.

2:28:37I couldn't even touch the fucking net. I said, bro, I couldn't even touch the net. And my buddy's over there laughing at me because he's like, I knew what you were trying to do. And I knew you wouldn't be able to make it. So, again, you don't avoid the data of like, I'm a step back. I'm not where I'm at. Your vertical jump goes down six to eight inches. It's a wrap. You got to give it to the young guys. You know what I'm saying?

2:28:59O'Shea:That fanatic fest was eye-opening for me. Dude, that fanatic fest was everything for us. I got to meet Triple H and Stephanie. He called the Undertaker Mark. What a weirdo. That's a choice. No, that's a courageous choice. What was the what happened? You're saying, why did I do that? No, no. you were i i okay so yeah sure okay so here's what happened we're meeting people right and i think it's because of his podcast right because he was kind of the last guy who kind of kept up that character at the time right sure kind of like the the last of the mohicans there and so because he had the podcast people start calling him mark yeah he's opened up a little bit bro i don't know why i got my buddy mike mcginnis works for fanatics best he goes this is the undertaker and i just turned like i knew this man right like one time i was well in your perspective you did you watched enough wrestling where he's no no i don't know mark i know i know the undertaker so it was like it was like one day i used to work in this uh i was a talent agent here in hollywood and drew barrymore's company was on the same floor as ours this is when she was filming charlie's angels for eight months never saw one day the elevator opens we're on sunset and oheney no one in the elevator but drew barrymore and i literally almost went hey drew like i knew her and i'm like i don't i don't know you though so the thing is there's undertaker and i go hey mark nice to meet you and he shook my hand and then five four three two i went oh my god yeah you're wild and i and i said bro i said i am so sorry i said i did not mean to call you by your government name i i think i just got you apologize right away yeah i did so how how was all that received he choked him he put me through a table he goes I'm a little bit more lenient nowadays but bro there was a second and he looked at me I went what did I just do bro you're boss I apologize I'm like look bro I'm sorry what a business right what a cool way to make make your way through life my dad's is Q Anybody call him O'Shea, he will cuss you the fuck out right then and there, dude.

2:31:20O'Shea:Who do you think you are? You don't know me. You're growing with me. I got lucky, I guess, with John Cena. Yeah. By the way, what's my government name? Ball over Shag Nasty. Ball over Shag Nasty. I can see why you changed it. I did. You know, you mentioned driving the cars with Shaq. Yeah. And there's one thing you did with Shaq. And before we let you go. Oh, dude, I was almost out of here. You were, but you can say no. I mean, there is no coffee. Oh, wow. But it's always been my thing because I've heard this song, I don't know, a couple thousand times. And I think I've committed it to memory.

2:32:03And I saw you and Shaq do it. And I'm wondering if Jason Feller back there plays your theme, could we just, the three of us, just form a cipher and just spit the time is now? I wouldn't have been. I don't know. No words. So I would normally reject this, right? What a beast. But there's three of us here. So if I mess up, you guys can hold me. And by the way, we probably can't put this on the pod anyway. Why not? Rights and royalties? I can't put it on Instagram. So, no, let's do it like this then. Don't play the track. What is Do It Acapella? Whoa, this is crazy. So in case you forgot or fell off, I'm still hot, knock your shell off.

2:32:45Money stack fat, but I can't turn the swell off. The franchise doing big business. I'm in this. It's automatic. I win this. So you hear those horns? You finish a soldier and I stay under you fighting. Plus, I'm storming on you chumps like I'm thunder and lightning. Ain't no way you break me, kid. I'm harder than nails. Plus, I keep it on lock like I'm part of the jail. Slaughter and stale competition. I got the whole block wishing they could run in my division, but they're gone fishing. With no bait, kid, your boy hold weight. I got my soul straight. I brush your mouth like Colgate. In any weather, I'm never better.

2:33:18Your boy's so hot. You never catch me in the next man's sweater. And if I hate, let him hate. I drop your whole clan. Lay that ass down for the three-second tan. Woo!

2:33:31the greatest of all time

2:33:33O'Shea:thank you so much bro I'll show myself out that was the best way we could end that on behalf of oh no wait TJ please tell people where they can find us oh right cause you're gonna wanna watch this alright so when you go online you go to Twitter X you're gonna see us at there's no contest you go to Instagram no contest wrestling podcast on TikTok it's no contest wrestling pod you'll find us on ESPN is we are the only wrestling podcast on ESPN. The only! Apple, Spotify, you go to the Rich Eyes and Show YouTube page, you're going to get to see this man, the greatest of all time, John Cena. Or you might not see him.

2:34:08You might not see him. Some people can't. But that's where you can find us. That's where we're going to do this. Thank you so much. And also, don't search No Coffee Wrestling Podcast. Yeah, it's not real. Oh, we're searching. You better get on that now. Until you release this to get on that. No coffee.

2:34:22O'Shea:Just know that'll never happen again. I'm having my podcast partner. I'm Oshea Jackson Jr. Make sure y 'all have a good day, but not too good. It's who the hell do you think you are, right? That's all I with.

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