What Do You Wanna Talk About? - Finn Bálor

0:29Hello, it's the American Nightmare Cody Rhodes. going to happen here and then i've been told he's coming and then no he didn't and finally we have him so we're not going to waste our time because this one's a very special one for a myriad of reasons and and i could go on with this introduction because i have often waxed poetic about what he has contributed to the overall wrestling economy and atmosphere not just wwe someone that of many of us owe a great debt to. Again, we're talking about the inaugural WWE Universal Champion, a former United States Champion, Intercontinental Champion, a two-time NXT Champion, all these things.

1:06The founding father, the one, don't give anybody else any credit, for the Bullet Club and currently Judgment Day staple member, just the absolute dude, the guy. Please welcome to What Do You Want to Talk About, Finn Balor.

1:25thank you for the lovely introduction you're here I feel like you're going to be like alright thank you and then leave can't get out of here well I do have a hard out in about an hour this is the third attempt we've tried to do this that's what they say was it the third time's the charm right yeah third time's the charm look at the Irish look at that the luck of the Irish speaking of we'll write to it can you tell me I don't know if any of this is usable information okay ott love it in ireland yes yes over the top wrestling yeah for people who don't know it's a independent company in ireland who uh have a lot of the guys who i came up in the business now work there yeah i continue i know i'm just so curious because you mentioned luckily irish i jumped right here am i allowed to make a bit of a confession go ahead you know my ott confession i know you don't have to apologize to me you have to apologize to a lot of other people entire country um i i've told it on this podcast before uh because of the immense amount of guilt i have with it i will tell it one more time i came to ott i saw a giant poster i was on an indie run where it's really all you did was see the poster you didn't even know what you were doing half the time you saw a graphic you saw my stable mates it was mad nick jackson at the time all this big giant photo of me so i kind of thought oh i'm maybe i'm the main gig here mistake.

2:46OTT had built up many of in-house stars and had a true program. There was, they were doing business with the local and with people they'd homegrown. We were just a little sizzle on the plate. And, uh, that night, uh, one of your contemporaries and peers and someone that you've been a mentor for and someone who you've kind of brought to the fold, that being JD mcdonough was set to have his big night and i'll just say i went long was it against walter now gunter i don't think it was against walter no okay because i feel like walter might have been the one to tell me hey oh yeah don't go yeah 18 extra minutes or whatever it is having people at the time i was having them kiss the ring because it was a ring thing they'd get all into it it was very like you'd tee it up and they do it so it took an excessive amount of time whatever public transportation runs differently in the united states than it does in ireland uh and i made the mistake of going incredibly over to where when he won the championship and had his big moment a lot of people had left because they had to leave yeah like nor i think it was a sunday night and like last bus is like 10 30 yeah and like people use public transport in ireland you know they don't drive places they don't and i was still in the ring at like 10 15 so i didn't know until later there's a whole online snafu we're not going to cover it all here but uh uh that's my that's my brief apology to ott which i will consistently apologize but it's a great it's a great company it's a great company yeah a great bunch of guys and they're doing great business and it's uh it i was super lucky to get the opportunity to work there yeah uh last december and they brought me and jd over to work against uh two of the guys out there and it was such a fun night one of the most memorable nights of my career how was the ring small small yeah yeah but i didn't take any bumps so it was fine oh wow what a vet no bumps huh no it was fine what is that this uh this drink you have tell me about it this drink i have i've been told is called demon blood demon blood yes wow okay which contains wheatley's american vodka dang damn it damn right it does i haven't tasted it yet so get it yeah cheers this is a classic American mule again brought to us by our friends at Wheatley American vodka I hear that one's a little warm in the chest that's not bad actually yeah I like that yeah do we have the ingredients list on that probably a screen right now no it is not straight but it's coming across the bottom was it warm in the chest as described no not at all um i'm married to a mexican so i can i can deal with some heat the heat hey yeah i want to talk about that okay i want to talk about that yeah uh where'd you guys meet uh we met actually we met in san jose yeah uh it was my first wrestlemania she was working for fox i was doing like one of those media mornings yeah and she interviewed me and we just kind of like cross paths and that was it okay and then we kind of like kept in touch like like once every six months by dms or whatever haha nice to see you or whatever and then about six years later nah it was a couple years maybe four or five years later i said you know what there's something about this girl i want to ask her out so i asked her out well i didn't ask her out i asked for a number because we're DMing.

6:22So I asked her for a number. Yeah, you got to get it out of that DM. Yeah, yeah. And she said no. Whoa. Yeah. In other story, guys. She said no. In other story. There it is. Oh, man. Oh, no. Okay. All right, well. Oh, wow. But we kept DMing, like, for, like, another month or two. Like, we were DMing, like, every day back and forth. And then I finally, like, said, hey, come on. Like, give me the number. Give me the digits. Yeah. We got to take this to the next level. And, yeah, we never looked back. That was it. Did you ever get an answer? Was there a gamesmanship in this saying? No, she just said, like, I live in Mexico, you live in America, you're a wrestler, I work in TV, it's never going to work.

7:00Oh, she just gave up on it before it even started. Yeah, she was just dismissive. It was just too much of a stretch of an imagination. Oh, my gosh. And how long have you been together? Seven years. Does she love what you do? Or is she... She appreciates what I do. She used to love it more when she wasn't with me. Now she sees the risks and the injuries and the effect it has on me, and she doesn't like it as much.

7:30But I think that's important too because if you have someone at home who's a super fan, then I'm always Finn, right? And you start to feed your own ego, and then you just lose the run of yourself. So I think it's super important to have someone at home that helps keep you grounded. and like yeah when i go home i well home is home well yeah like home really now is like the airplane and the marriott because like we're on the road so much like and yeah i live in miami miami doesn't feel like home ireland now when i go home which is home home and all my family are there i've kind of been gone so long yeah don't really relate to the environment there anymore and like what i picture as home is like ireland 20 years ago ireland's like evolved so much and like changed in those years and they're like it'll always be home but i don't don't sometimes feel at home there but maybe it's just because i'm dipping in and out because you know i'm only in there for four or five days at a time it's not the greatest term but the carnival aspect of what we do kind of makes us a carny in a way where like everyone else has a home life.

8:45And we don't often or sometimes we have seasons of it where we do and then you get back into this and you get going full tilt. I asked in the sense of if she likes it, just as I've gotten older, I don't bring to my home, I don't bring it back home anymore, which is wild because i feel like everything career-wise it's just it's such a wonderful season for wwe everything's happening but a lot of times i'm asked oh how was it and it's like old man style it was good like it's yeah there's so much behind the it was good yeah so much there but i'd rather it not enter the space then because then you never escape it yeah you know then you're always, and it's the same when it's, Liberty's four and we have stairs in our house and that's okay.

9:39That's like my biggest challenge is seeing those stairs. Cause I mean, anyone who has children knows that all they do is once you sit down, you have to get back up. There's a reason you have to get back up. And that's probably the most I'll ever need pre-workout in my life is when I'm in my home. Like, cause you know, you don't want to be that. like you you want to be papa or dad who's on none of the jobs no big deal i'm good you know but yeah it's a it's a wacky world we live in and you've always loved it right i've always loved it yeah since i was a kid yeah pretty much like one of my earliest memories as a kid was watching world of sport wrestling with my dad and my grandfather yeah and uh my dad my grandfather was into the wrestling but my dad wasn't into the wrestling but at the time wrestling was more popular than football which we you call soccer yeah so they would show the wrestling on a Saturday afternoon and at the bottom of the screen it would flash up like the football results the scores yeah so my dad was watching it for the football and my grandos was watching for the rest and like big daddy yeah sorry uh giant haystacks big daddy kendo nagasaki all those guys that was like early memories and then like kind of transition into WWE when Sky TV came to Ireland and then that was like ultimate warrior hogan coco beware was one of my favorites it's such a departure from big daddy i know you're talking big daddy and giant haystacks anyone who's not seen it it's very short but i know i'm not looking at the in-ring work as much as the crowd the crowd are going bananas they they they believed yeah uh regal always would talk to me about big daddy but i never saw it and And one tour overseas, I just decided to start watching the Big Daddy stuff.

11:21And it blew me away. It was so vastly different from Crockett or WWE or WWE at the time. But again, I'm not watching for—I'm not making fun of it at all because look at these people. They are invested in this. They were—that's such a—when you think world of sports, so I don't know if you know this. I'm kind of a world of sport hater. But I'll make my admission to why. So wrestling schools all around the country. I have one now. I know where you're going with this. And I wrestled folk style wrestling and freestyle, whatever you call it, Olympic style wrestling as a kid. That's what I considered, I suppose, real wrestling.

11:58But then when you go to a wrestling school, chain wrestling is real wrestling. And this is the whole like, yep. And you're doing, you know, like really great stuff. Like Davey Boy style. I'm using Davey Boy as an example. Or like Dynamite and all the things you can, really impressive stuff. And I kind of always frown like that. are you emulating grappling? Are we emulating it? But really, internally, my full admission is that I just wasn't able to pull it off. So that's why I'm kind of a hater for the world of sports style of the whole, you know, not just the under the legs and some of the fun spots they did.

12:32They're very hard to pull off, these sequences. I think they're very hard to pull off convincingly. Yeah. I feel like a lot of it is emulated now but really really badly yeah and that is where it looks bad so i think it's funny you say this this is such a deep cut for a wrestler perspective but you might you might agree chain wrestling done bad is awful terrible i think chain wrestling and mr perfect bret hart the kicks on the back of the leg are the two most I've seen tried to be redone spots in all of wrestling, never to the same effect. I know that's a very specific match, but I see it a lot with chain wrestling where it's like the hand up and the whole that moment and it's not giving me what I used to see with it, if that makes any sense.

13:27Maybe it's because it's not, maybe because folks don't know what you're doing in terms of what are you simulating, right? Well, I feel like a lot of matches people see, they see the pay-per-view match or the blow-off match. And there's been a whole story arc up to that where they've done all these different sequences and edited them and tweaked them and changed them. And it makes sense because of the story. But people are emulating just the blow-off match. Right. So they haven't told the backstory. Sure. So it doesn't really make sense. well it's a copy of a copy in a way of a copy of a copy of a copy because most people are probably copying someone yeah who copied it from someone in the 70s who copied it from someone in the 50s who who knows you uh grown-up favorite wrestler uh grown-up it's like super young would have been ultimate warrior transitioned into sean michaels transitioned into Sean Waltman.

14:30Oh, yeah. I gotta go to Sean Waltman. So we just added this. Ben Brown, the archivist. This is WrestleMania 7, the trench from Warrior and Match, and then Liz comes in the ring after. Also, we were discussing why he puts the trench coat on after the match. We don't know. Our theory was that maybe he thought that they weren't going to get it back to him. You know, sometimes our stuff goes missing or like got auctioned off or whatever, so he puts it on to run out. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Or in my case, BeWit. All my demon costumes have got auctioned off. Yeah. Yeah. You got to keep eyes on that stuff.

15:07Otherwise, it's gone. You know, some people have sent boots. I remember to like for exhibits and only one boot came back. There's a, you know, there's a trading world for it all. Yeah. This message is sponsored by Raycon. Now that the holidays are over, it's the perfect time to upgrade your gear for the new year. Raycon's essential open earbuds are a game changer for workouts. They don't block out everything like traditional earbuds, so I can still hear what's going on around me while running, lifting, or walking outside. The sound quality is just as good as the more expensive brands, and they have eight hours of playtime and 36 hours of battery with the charging case.

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16:17Go to buyraycon.com slash roads open to get 20 % off site-wide. Thanks Raycon for sponsoring. And behind you over your shoulder is Diminito. Oh yeah. There he is, Diminito. That's a funny story. Tell me. So I got told I was working against Iguana in AAA. And like it was the first time I'd worked against someone who I wasn't familiar with in a long time. yeah and like obviously like when you're on the indies or you're in japan you kind of like research your opponents and you come up with some ideas beforehand yeah but wwe is pretty much like you see everyone all the time you kind of know all their stuff yeah so this is the first time that i hadn't like known someone that i was stepping in the ring with so i said oh i better do a little research like i used to so what a pro yeah so i went on youtube and it was 20 past four in the afternoon oh i got you yeah and i typed in iguana yeah or mr iguana and the first match that came up was mr iguana against santino oh my god cobra versus the iguana cobra versus iguana oh my gosh i said damn i need something like that yeah and then poof like a lightning bolt to hit me i need a demon puppet yeah yeah how are you gonna how do you top an iguana demon puppet demon puppet yeah i love that that's the match that came up i i i love that that during that time of the day i love that that's what came up also even if it wasn't that that's the right match to be watching because the psychology of that weapon slash exciting partner however you'd refer to your contemporary or puppet that moment santino was great about when the cobra came out or when the other cobra came out there was like a cobra then he had another one stuffed in there oh my gosh he used to do the spot you would have appreciated it was arn anderson's favorite spot of the night santino would do a master lock challenge and he'd get put in the master lock that was it he'd sit in the chair put in the master lock and he'd start shaking and he'd start going and the entire crowd at these live events would start rallying behind him.

18:34And they would do one side and he'd come up. They'd get to the other side. They're working all four sides. He'd finally get back to square one and it looks like he's about to break it. And he just passed right out. And that was their legit live event. And it was, I saw it every night and still thought like he's gonna get out. It's gonna happen tonight. And then he just slunk over in his chair and they'd ring the bell. Just, you know what's crazy about him? And I don't know if you have this experience. I bet you do, especially. isn't it funny sometimes the shootery types santino's this judo master oh yeah i was just gonna say but that comes with confidence right right yeah definitely and then they get here and his bit is all comedy yeah it's a it's a strange a strange thing there's gotta be someone else like that too right well i mean like if you look at doink the original doink there's all these guys who were just absolute like headhunters there was a guy in world of sport going back to world of sport uh les thatcher i'm pretty sure he was a shooter yeah yeah you had to kind of be yeah yeah do you consider yourself a shooter hooker any of these things you've got grappling experience you want to know a story oh yeah which i don't think i've told actually yeah go like about the bullet club and where the name came from yeah the get yes so i was a young boy in new japan yeah and before the shows we would all like warm up in the ring and the young boys would like be He may do squats and push-ups and stuff.

19:58Then we get in the ring with the senior wrestlers and we'd be stretched, which would be like shot on basically and beat up. We noticed Suzuki was in the ring with me. He was a legitimate grappler. I caught him with an arm bar. He goes, David, you're a real shooter. Then Tiger Hattori, who you know, heard that and every day said, hey, David, you're the real shooter. You're the real shooter. so this was going on in the locker room for about a year so hey debbie you're a shooter and he'd just do it like that shooter and uh when the time came about a year later the the office came to him and said hey we want to turn your heel want to like put you with uh foley we need to like get you guys a like a group so then they decided to put in uh carl anderson and tama oh yeah i was trying to I think like what ties us all together and at the time Follet was using like the hand grenade finish like similar to Solo yeah yeah and then and then there's the machine gun and I was the real shooter so it's like what like links us all together yeah and it was Bullet Club I mean you say it in the simplest of ways but it was Bullet Club changes the entire business like there's very few people who ever sit on this awesome show have these drinks well hopefully there's more but there's very few cheers who you can literally tell changed our entire industry with a thing that they contributed i feel like that's the greatest title of all sometimes is it i i know i always do this to you and i did it in the ring live in belfast and i'll continue to do it to you you done it actually when you first came back to wwe as well yeah because i went on your bus to welcome me back give you a hug and you spat it out straight away because and i was blown away because not many people are as honest as you yeah and not many people like tell how they really feel you know a lot of people like like shut down and kind of like try and put on this macho image yeah but you don't i mean how could i i benefited so much so that they call me back.

22:14That I benefited from a thing you created and I got to be part of, even though I'm not the most glamorous part of it, I got to be part of it for just a short moment in time. Look at the list of people who've been part of the Bullet Club. And then, of course, we were talking about it in here and not everyone knows, especially if we've been in the WWE bubble. I don't want to be the one, I know I jokingly say this all, but you're owed so much money by so many other wrestlers are you you legit and i know it's not paypal zelle yeah i know you're always like no no but i i mean if you were to today with all these wonderful people uh in the tko bubble who bring up these graphs of ratings relevancy and revenue and these really great metrics if you were to really backlog and go all the way to when the shirt started uh bringing back to sweet in a different way where it wasn't just a nostalgic way and becoming this entity it's so hard to get anything rolling outside of here and it's even harder to get things rolling outside of here consistently where it's must see have to see it i mean you've heard this hot topic story a thousand times right the head president of hot topic comes to wrestlemania sees the bullet club shirts everywhere and keeps asking hey when are the bullet club guys coming out and they had to explain no that's not it's a it's another company uh it was started by he's actually here now it's a whole thing but then he thought well i still want the shirt the only reason that shirt ever makes it to shelves is because you had you had built it with pretty much just not luck, full hard work and what you guys were doing, making the whole world.

24:03I mean, wrestling is all about turning heads. How long can you turn someone's head? How long can you gravitate their attention? I remember my dad's not the greatest commentator, but I remember one time he said something about Hogan when Hogan was in the ring and I never forgot it because I could tell he was just talking from a completely internal perspective, but it worked for the commentary. He said, he's here at Russell Sting at Starrcade. he says no one has captured the imagination of the audience like that man for this long in the history of the business and i thought that's really what we do how long do we have them and a lot of times we think we still have them and nope we've it's over we can't right that's something you created that still is capturing their their imagination and it's it's your creation but i think that's the payment right because i was in nxt about like eight months and i get a call from new japan i was like hey david we got some money for you we got a tiger again hey david-chan we got royalty check for you man i'm like whoa we got a royalty check from new japan yes i said tiger thank you so much how much am i doing he goes ah like 118 dollars just like 118 dollars he goes yeah man we need your bank details i said tiger give it to charity good yeah so i feel like the the payoff with like bullet club was not for me at least was not financial yeah like i feel like it was way more valuable than any dollar amount that i could been given from like um just what it's given to the business yeah well i can't thank you enough i can't and i stand by the fact that you're at the same point i need to also thank carl anderson gallows yeah foley tama would you think gallows would you include gallows in there you got to right yeah 100 ever tell you yeah i i can't speak highly enough of gallows he's the he's so funny and i can't express how much the locker room misses him so we don't talk me gallows and i will like not talk for six months and then i'll see him he'll come back or something and it's right back oh yeah he's so funny and i didn't know carl that well and so like they just make such a good team yeah uh such a good unit anyway so gallows had an indy in georgia called bulletproof again he's still riding it was still bullet he's still on the bullet train right and uh i i kid you like that i kid you not i wrestled i forget who i wrestled we did the main event it was a small indie but we did pretty well for a georgia independent and then no joke gallows as we're setting down literally slapping hands and the show's over saying good night gallows pulled in this is gonna sound terrible but i think it's okay with a truck and he had in the back of it all of his ww action figures and he put them on the merch table and offered like a basically a half off hey get these it was this last little minute like the 50 50 rally this last little carnival like element and i mean people were eating it up it was i and i didn't think i'd see him i i just he was doing this and asked me to be part of it and it he's always got an angle always moving.

27:25I think people like him in the business, when they're not around, we will really miss them. You know, because as time goes on, it gets really corporate. And, you know, man, I need a guy telling somebody he's going to backdrop him while he's butt naked, making him uncomfortable. You know, I need like that moment. Yeah, he's a dying breed. Yeah. For sure. I'm trying to think. I'm like, who else is like that? Right? There's not many. No. And that's not just Japan, America, and internet. He's very specific to that style of wrestler. I mean. Yeah. I haven't been on the independent scene for like 10 years.

28:05So maybe there's guys out there, but I don't know. All right. This next question is part of a segment we call Game Plan, fueled by Game Day Men's Health. Because let's be honest, showing up at your best takes work. So let me ask you, let me ask you, what is your plan for staying sharp? Could be physical, could be mental, could be family stuff. Whatever it is, how do you stay in the zone and keep pushing even when life's stacked against you? I'm a routine guy, and I like to do the same things every day, no matter what day it is. So pretty much every day, same breakfast, same lunch, same dinner, same routine.

28:45And that's slightly different if I'm on the road or if I'm at home. but most importantly is eat whole foods so my just real foods eggs meat chicken nuts avocados yogurt berries that's it a little bit of caffeine in the morning and and try and spend some time in nature, be it in the mountains, in the woods, or in the ocean. That's exactly why Game Day is out here, helping guys optimize their energy, focus, and longevity. You don't have to slow down. You just need the right game plan. Check out gamedaymenshealth.com slash Cody to learn more. That's a great question in terms of from now all the international success, WWE doing international shows left and right, international is no longer a secret.

29:44it's no longer this thing we go over and oh my gosh these crowds are amazing but you really don't know now big ple's are being hosted any independent or young up-and-coming guys that you've seen who are coming from ireland from the united kingdom is there anyone that's that you think so on the level that that will make it over can't can't think of his name off the top of my head and i feel embarrassed because i worked him at ott uh he's a young kid bad stuff bad stuff i know his father columb nelligan that's all that we so this is a good story so so when i was running uh independent shows in ireland like back in like 2002 columb nelligan yeah this kid's father was like one of the guys who had helped me out like taking tickets or setting up the lights or whatever and his infant kid was like two years old and we would bring him to the shows yeah and there's a picture i think of me in the ring with jordan jd mcdonough sitting ringside and then behind him columbnailligan holding his son who i then wrestled at ott like a couple weeks ago yeah or months ago with jordan so it was wild most generational does he have the chops or was it more just seeing the love and i like he's somebody you know no he has the chops he was super young he was like 19 20 21 yeah and like listened like didn't get stressed when i didn't like call a bunch of stuff beforehand yeah like uh and uh yeah he was great oh man yeah but i feel like the level in ott is like is is really like raising yeah it's a word i feel like even with the the with my big snafu over there what i didn't realize is the the the level of quality product you know you sometimes the independence you got the mom and pops where It's really about, hey, we got the guests.

31:34You do the mom and pop stuff. Give them a little bit of what they had seen on TV previously. It's more of that. And then other times, you have something that's in-house. It's built. And you're really there to just kind of push it over the edge a little bit. And that's it. And OTT is also great production ahead of their time in terms of production. When NXT UK started, which was a huge thing at the time for British and European wrestling, I feel like it kind of took all the talent, and it starved all the indies, and it took a long time for them to rebuild. The refresh to happen. And for a lot of them, it hasn't even happened yet, because there's no one to learn from or look up to.

32:21The guys like Tyler and Pete and everyone else who came to WWE, now the younger kids don't have anyone to learn from. So I feel like there was probably a huge negative effect on the gulf of talent that WWE took out of that, I guess, territory. Right. But slowly it's starting to rebuild. I mean, we've seen that domestically in the States with everything that's popped up with other places to wrestle and things of that nature. It strips away. Yeah. And then there's a negative byproduct to it, but then the positive byproduct is these 19, 18, 19-year-old, all of a sudden they're 22, they've grown and they've had to do it very much on their own and they've got a set of skills.

33:13So it always kind of, I hope, refreshes itself and replenishes. Otherwise, we have nowhere to look when we need it the most. Big news. WWE and sports fans, the world's number one sports fan festival, Fanatics Fest, is making its return to New York City. Fanatics is bringing you closer to the leagues, teams, superstars, and athletes you love across four action-packed days in July. Meet your favorite WWE superstars, get your hands on exclusive merch, catch live podcasts, and interact with the biggest names in sports. Tickets are on sale now, and fans of the podcast can use code Cody10 at checkout for 10 % discount.

33:54Head to fanaticsfest.com to get your tickets today. I want to ask because we talked about the Bullet Club and I want to ask, we've already talked about Demonito, but we didn't really hit the demon. And I feel like that's another area that's just incredibly, there's you doing body paint in New Japan and what would Prince be doing? What would you be doing that people would, I want to see it. That's going to be cool. I want to see it. And then there's another layer where you, I don't want to use the word market, but you market it and it becomes in the character itself with the demon. These are also bullet club level, like this is just, my favorite thing about having a conversation with you today is to really, if you're able to layer the amount of stuff you've done.

34:49And you're not done. My gosh, you're not close to done. Some are slow learners. And some are a rocket to the moon, and that's it. This is really a body of work. That was something that the person who trained me was always about, hey, when my body of work is put up against his body of work, look at all these points. As far as the demon is considered, do you have a favorite moment with WWE and the demon? um demon's a touchy subject for me um let's go back to the concept we can yeah right so i'd recently turned heel in new japan and i was like really fighting an uphill battle because i'd been babyface for so long squeaky clean yeah white meat babyface and i'd recently turned heel um and i was now against like the you know shining lights ibushi you know the up and coming like white meat baby face handsome abushi right and he's like wears white gear and we're in the tokyo dome whatever 45 000 people or something like that and i'm thinking like how can i make this like look different and i want to take everything away from the fans that they physically recognize me for okay right so the first idea was oh what if i wear like a bodysuit but i thought like oh no liger wears a bodysuit no saying like i'm kind of thinking about like the tokyo dome and how small the ring is in that giant arena and i'm thinking about like the people in the back what are they gonna see i thought like wouldn't it be cool if it was like ibushi wrestling against a shadow right and that was like my original concept was like i was just going to be head to toe black completely black yeah and so for the people in the back it would look like he was wrestling against a shadow and that kind of slowly developed into the demon like in the weeks leading up to the the uh the dome show where we'd done it first and side note carl anderson who was in new japan with me at the time i told him the idea and he goes everyone's gonna laugh at you bro you gotta look stupid i said i'll try it who cares but yeah and i trusted him right but you know i said i'll just try it anyway it's worth a shot and uh i done it took off and it was cool uh but going back to the the question the favorite moment i'm not sure if i have a favorite moment because once i came to wwe it kind of got muddled up a little bit and there had to be like a reason for why the demon appeared and it all had to be storyline based and advertised and in my mind it was always just a cool entrance and it was something that like that like changed me into like you know braveheart puts on the battle paint and he goes to war and that's the way it was for me but in wwe it had to be well what made him turn into the demon he had to get beat up and beat down and pushed to the limit to then turn into this monster yeah so so then it became the point where finn wasn't good enough only the demon could win so then like finn was lesser than the demon where they're supposed to be the same right so that was one issue i had with it the other issue i had with it was it was always advertised which i like it to be a surprise like oh shit the demon's like you know and it just comes out and kicks ass uh but a favorite moment would probably be takeover uk okay uh but the hat the hat and and yeah yeah so it was like the jack the ripper inspired like london and not necessarily for the paint and the design but the way the uh the truck shot that entrance.

38:53The way I go from my silhouette with the London background on the screens into the lighting where then it reveals the demon with the hat. And then the fact that my family and friends were all there because of the shows in London, that was a special night. And it was returning to London. I thought I'd left that scene. And going back there with NXT, I think I was the champion defending the title. So it was pretty cool. That was a cool night. Are you ready to hold WWE history in the palm of your hand? Topps is bringing you closer to the action than ever before with WWE Topps Now, highlighting the biggest matches and milestones from WWE shows and PLEs throughout the year.

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40:16Be sure to subscribe to the WWE Topps Now mailing list on Topps.com and follow Topps on all social media platforms so you never miss a single moment. I feel like, you know, there's always this booker sayings and these older wrestlers, whether they're the booker, producer, president, they always sometimes will say something. And I feel like there's an air of that here where did anyone ever tell you that, and this isn't an opinion as much as I'm curious if anyone told you, maybe it was something that you outgrew in terms of the demon character or just the general sense because old school wrestling 101, look at you.

41:05You don't cover that up. You're 10 out of 10, dog. Oh, you know, like, and you shred it to the gills. An old school wrestler perspective. Like, I think a lot about when I wear the mask. Jason Baker makes these masks. He's super talented. Hate when he makes other people mask and doesn't tell me. But hate it. Legit. But I always think about a lot of times, like, I think about my dad and I think about other old timers. Like, no, don't cover your face. like that and i don't necessarily just subscribe to the philosophy because sometimes it's like no it's cool yeah it's cool i'm doing this cool thing right but i i wonder if that's something because it feels like maybe the block is filled in terms of i totally get all those it being advertised it's supposed to be a surprise but i don't know i just was curious did anyone ever tell you you didn't need it i don't think i need it and that's probably why i was so resistant to doing it for a long time yeah because like the way it was kind of been booked and and presented by the company i felt it just wasn't effective right and uh or as effective as it could have been yeah and then i think there was some sort of confusion about like why is he the demon some nights and finn the other nights and then maybe some people are getting let down when i'm not the demon and stuff like that so uh i would love to go back to doing it yeah but i would love to have more creative control and i feel like i lost a lot of that uh when i especially when i came to the main roster i think it was done really effectively in nxt yeah i think when i came to the main roster wasn't done as well for multitude of reasons uh but in the future i would love to get back to doing it i'll give you a moment of vulnerability on my half that i thought i'm not I got to tell him this.

42:48He'll think this is, but I'm going to tell you. All right. I, right before I left when I was doing Stardust, I wrote Hunter like a four-page email, which you know how that goes. Anytime it's more than a page, it's probably already an issue. That's a lot for someone to look at and sit down and give their time over. I really wanted to wrestle the demon as Stardust because Stardust had no legitimacy. It was all comedy. but there was one match or one moment away from providing it some credibility even in a losing effort and i i remember i wrote this whole email about it and it i i don't know what happened to the i wouldn't have read the email uh but it's into a spam probably i who knows who knows he may never may never have seen it um but it speaks to not just the demon itself but also nxt black and gold and nxt that entire nxt era is is is largely actually i was going to bring this person up some of so much of it is your your signing on and your you know the name change everything all that first night you you coming in and committing to it i was shocked i was i was genuinely shocked because he is such a prickly individual to find out that you and kevin were tight uh and he texted me while we were talking so this is the only i wasn't gonna look at my phone and be rude i asked him was there a question you asked oh i think he asked a sincere question which now i'm you ready for a kevin owens question yeah i hope i don't get emotional though because i do love kevin oh buddy this is a i wasn't ready i thought he'd send a joke in like you know you know how like he says some shit every now and then it's like he'll say something that's like yeah you can feel his mood yeah this is from kevin owens who is now the co-host of what do you want to talk about just with this question alone.

44:37Ask him if he realizes just how much he has done for me since we met by being himself and how important he has been to me for the last 10 years and how much I value his friendship. It goes on. He is the epitome of I take a fatal bullet to the head for the guy any day of the week in my book. Not just for him. I do it for his whole family, the greatest crew of people ever. What a great question from Kevin. Was that a question or a it's just a statement meets a question how he his actual question was uh if you if you realize how much you've done for him i don't think kevin realizes how much he's done for me yeah right because um although like me and kevin have had very similar backgrounds and like kind of like journeys to wwe we actually only met each other once in passing at an indie show in london yeah And it was about four months before we started in NXT.

45:34And that was the only reason why we even shook hands and said, oh, hey, man, nice to meet you. But we started in NXT together. And we're two guys coming from similar career paths, but different places. But we're now in a new company, in a new country, trying to learn a new style. and kind of also been tested a little bit, right? Because the performance center, they test you. Because we went from him main event in ROH to me main event in New Japan to now being in a warehouse doing forward rolls with rookies. Hip toss class, bro. Like drop down, leapfrog, drop down, leapfrog, drop down, leapfrog.

46:19And it's a test, right? And if you shut up and pass the test, you'll be fine. That's really good advice for some people who need to hear right now. Yeah. Everything's a test in this business. You don't have to succeed. You just have to try. Dude. You just have to give it everything. And if you go to failure, the coaches will be happy. Everything is a test, though. Yeah. So me and Kevin bonded really strongly over the common obstacles that we were having to overcome together. in this new life that we're having in NXT and WWE. And yeah, I know we're very probably different. I couldn't believe it.

47:02Like personally, in every way, the way we wrestle is different. Our lifestyles are different, but sometimes opposites attract. And me and Kevin, I can honestly say he's one of my favorite people and best friends in the whole world. This question I think has set off, I think I'm now going to have, I want Kevin to send in a question forever. I don't think he'll be near as sincere with you, but I said that just in, I wanted to make sure I was like, I want to cover all my bases with him. And I asked him that and I thought, I wonder, he'll probably just send in a Kevin-like message. No, that was quite special.

47:38I love the folks at Wheatley. We like to say we're the American Dream Team. So I often ask people, who's your American Dream Team? Survivor Series Team, Zombie Apocalypse, who you're taking with you whatever 70 people four people animals whoever is with you who's your ride or die who is survivor series is a good way to break it up into numbers but who's coming with you who's on your team jd mcdonough love it kevin owns of course co-host sammy zane yeah chad gable no yes okay otis okay those two are my riding buddies okay gotta have them yeah Adrian Neville okay that's a solid crew no one is beating that team I'll put my pops in there there you go yeah no one's beating this team no how old's your pops?