What Do You Wanna Talk About? - Tom Brady LIVE at Fanatics Fest

0:03Wrestling has more than one royal family.

0:23Adrenaline in my soul, every fight out of control. Do it all to get them off their feet Crowd is here, about to blow Waiting for me to start the show Out the curtain lights, go up, I'm home Whoa! My father said When I was younger Fanatics Fest, how we doing? Oh, no, you know what this is. You can do better than that. How we doing? All right, I got this thing in my ear. We're doing this live. Mic check, mic check. Everyone can hear me, right? Amazing. Well, this is an exciting one. We don't always do these live, and we don't always get this type of guest. Such a unique moment here at Fanatics Fest.

1:19Thank you all for being here day one. I'm gonna go ahead and get right to it. Right to it. This is a WWE and Fanatics original production. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you the seven-time Super Bowl champion, the five-time MVP, number 12, and the greatest to ever do it. Please welcome to What Do You Want To Talk About? Tom Brady!

2:05Now that's a good song to come out to right there. What was that? I can't hear. What was it? Again, Lil' Jay-Z, Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself, Public Service Announcement. I ran out to that song for like over 20 years. So every time it comes on, I get like this feeling that I'm about to run on the field. and it's nice that I have a crowd of people. I'm not throwing any passes, but I love being in front of people and I love being here with you, Cody. Amazing. So this is the song we've all watched throughout the seasons and please, full disclosure, I think you've been told, but I'll go ahead and tell you, massive, massive fan for many reasons.

2:38Drugged my wife while she was pregnant all the way to the COVID Super Bowl just to watch you throw one and after that, I literally left. I was fulfilled. I was so happy. A big hero of mine. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, and Tom Brady. Thanks, Cody. So the song, you're mentioning it now, Pro Wrestling, Sports Entertainment, WWE, the walkout song, the song, becomes a big thing. Yeah, always. Would that follow you to WWE if you ever did anything at WWE? I need to get an invite. I mean, I've been waiting for, like, Nick Khan to come up with some storyline for me to get in the mix. I feel like I'm retired from football, have an opportunity to go out there, still showcase I'm a little bit of an athlete.

3:21And, you know, my boy Gronk's done it. I've seen, obviously, Logan Paul do it. I think I could get in there for at least one match, right? Come on, Nick. Come on, make it happen. So I will go ahead and say this, and I don't think Nick will have a problem with me sliding us across the table. The invite is certainly open. But this, the way we do it is, let me just ask you. This wasn't where we were going to go, but you come in. Is Tom Brady a baby face, a good guy, or is Tom Brady a heel? Who is it going to be? It's such an easy choice. I'm a bad guy. I've always been a bad guy. I mean, I feel like when our teams did really well, I would always go into these stadiums, and I would feel that obviously at home it was great, but when you go on the road and you've had some success in the NFL, they don't like you and it's an incredible feeling when you work that entire day to basically try to send the crowd home early and it's a great feeling when you go on the road with your 53 players your coaches to a visiting stadium where there's 70 ,000 fans against you and with three minutes left of the game you look up in the stands and there's 20 ,000 people left and a lot of them are now rooting for you and you realize, okay, job well done today.

4:46So that was the motivation every time we took the field on the road. You describe something that often can happen in a wrestling space where you might be dealing with a crowd that's seen a lot. They might be tired. They might be exhausted. They may not like you. But one of the things that you'll hear the boys say to each other every now and then is if we can get them, you'll see a little whisper on TV every now and then that's just, hey, we got them. And that's the greatest gift. Obviously, I know about you earning the respect of those watching, whether they came there for you or they left there for you.

5:21I am from Atlanta, so I know what you can do. Sorry. I want to ask you, because we're at the center, the epicenter of all sports memorabilia, of all trading, and what Ruben has done here, it's amazing. New endeavor for you, this being Card Vault, something that you love? Absolutely. So we have a booth right down there in Card Vault. I'm one of the partners in Card Vault. It's a hobby shop. It's all about the fans. When I was an eight-year-old kid and I grew up in San Mateo, California, every time I did a chore in the house, my mom and dad, 25 cents. And over the course of the week, I got a paper route and I would save up money in my piggy bank.

6:08The only thing I ever wanted to do was collect trading cards. So I'd go down to the local hobby shop in downtown San Mateo. This is in California in the San Francisco Bay Area. And there was a store called What's On Second Sports Cards. And I swear to God, every dollar that I made up until I left for college went to that card shop. And I kept all those cards over the years. In fact, my parents kept them in their house all the way through college. When I finally got to the pros, they're like, we don't want your cards anymore in our closet. You take all of it. So they shipped it out to me in New England.

6:39I had it in my house. I moved to Florida, and when I retired, I talked to a friend of mine who owns a grading company, PSA, and I said, Nat, I would love to send all my cards to see what they're worth at this point. I've been collecting for, you know, almost 40 years. And he's like, absolutely, send everything your way. And I said, well, I also want to send all these trading cards that I've had in mind that I've collected over the years, not knowing that it's pretty good to have a Tom Brady card. I say that tongue-in-cheek. but I had a lot of them just because over the years I would collect a lot of them that I would see.

7:14So I thought that all my baseball cards that I collected when I was a little kid were going to be super valuable and then Nat called me a few weeks later and he says, hey, I got good news and bad news. The bad news is all the cards you collected when you were a kid, those aren't worth much. You should probably give those to your kids, but all your cards, there's plenty of valuable sports cards in there. So I kept all of them. I'm probably the largest collector of my own trading cards. And it's been really fun to have that hobby. And I just think for me as a kid, I connected to the hobby because I connected to teams and the teams that I like.

7:46But I really like some of the values of the players in baseball and football. And I just thought I could really grow close to those players by collecting their cards and reading the back of the cards and seeing their stats. And then I would watch their games. And I just think it's so cool for kids to be involved in this hobby. It's become obviously a big business for a lot of people, but it's certainly for the true fan. It's a way you can connect with individual players. It's so fun to buy them, to sell them, to trade them with your friends. There was a lot of older kids on my block growing up that fleeced me of a lot of cards trying to get over on the young kid on the street.

8:24I certainly forgive them, but that was a great part of the hobby that I enjoyed. And I want all the young kids in the audience to get into the hobby as well. I love that. Do you have a personal grail amongst your cards? I've been collecting. So yes, my cards for sure. I just bought a very cool card about a week ago. I'm not going to tell you. Maybe I'll tell people tomorrow. But one that I just added to my collection, that's a big card. But again, appreciation for all the cards. I think what the hobby has really turned into is finding these really cool exclusive cards, autographed patches, cards that are numbered in a series.

9:01The artwork's amazing. The innovation and the hobby has just been awesome, and I think that it's such an exciting time to be involved in the hobby. 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, 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.

9:40Head to FanaticsFest.com to get your tickets today. So, there's so many people here. They're coming. We're talking about cards, and obviously this is something you're very passionate about. By the way, did you collect when you were a kid? So, I collected comic book cards. Awesome. Very, but I still have my book. It's still valuable. But this was, as I was listening to you and your passion over cards, I had this sudden discovery this past week that I am getting older. And this is how I knew. I have started collecting coins. No way. Like old coins, like silver pennies. And that, I was told, is a very old man hobby.

10:22But I'm in. It's part of it. They're not even making pennies anymore. so if you have a penny it's certainly a collector's item at this point. Well I heard myself talk and I was talking about precious materials, precious metals and I thought what an old thing to be saying. But I don't know, I'm into it. Totally. It's my new thing and maybe I went to a card store when we did Rip Night for Fanatics and I had no idea, particularly on the WWE side of it, how exciting it is. Also with what Topps does, every pack has something good. You having signed tons of cards, do you do personal inscriptions and make memories for people here with cards here?

11:00A lot of them. I love doing personal inscriptions for people and doing really fun, unique things that people. It's kind of cool. There's one part of my memory that's always been really good. There was a lot of things in football that I didn't think I was very good at. One of the things that I think I was really good at was I could recall things really well from previous games. Like I could think of a game from 2007 when we played at the Jets in week one. I remember where the sun was. I remember the feel of the air. I remember the color of the jerseys. I remember the way the guys looked in the huddle.

11:29I remember plays. I remember the names of the plays, the types of throw that I had. So I have a pretty cool memory of those experiences. So that's always been fun for me. One interesting thing about collecting too, when I was a kid, did you ever collect$2 bills? Of course. Yeah, my dad did that and silver dollars. So my dad was big on those. Like that was such a huge gift and he used to add to it. he would give all his gifts to me in cigar boxes yeah which as i grew up later when go to friends birthday parties you'd give them a cigar box with whatever 20 bucks in it or whatever it was and i realized other people's parents weren't super into cigar culture so maybe not the best way to go you're talking about 2007 season i actually had a question for you in terms of this is me wanting to learn something and me in an experience i'm having currently with wwe because I try to make these parallels to the sports world.

12:26It's what I grew up liking and it helps me. But 2006 AFC Championship. But this is after you've won multiple rings. You've won the Super Bowl and then you don't win the Super Bowl that year. I feel I'm in a little bit of my 2006 season. I had made it to the mountaintop. The biggest goal my family ever had in WWE, which was the WWE Championship. I feel motivated. I feel like I want more. I feel like I'm still incredibly hungry. But what was it for you that drove you to keep going? I mean, again, we're talking about watching you for the bucks and just just that pass alone. What what did it for you?

13:03You know, I think there's and it's really important, certainly for a lot of the young athletes and aspiring young athletes out there that may be listening. But there's a lot of ways to find motivation within yourself to wake up every day, to have a purpose, to go out there to try to achieve something that you didn't think you were capable of achieving. And I always felt like the best motivation for me, and people can use this in business a lot because I think this is really important. I think the motivation that I always had was I never wanted to let my teammates down. So you have this, and for you, you never want to let your boss down, your co-worker down, you never want to let your family down.

13:46there's a lot of people counting on you in life they're counting on you to be consistent they're counting on you to be dependable your children they're counting on you as parents parents were counting you as children to take advantage of the opportunities that are presented in front of you so when i think about motivation a lot of people think in the nfl and you see this come across the so and so got a new contract well if that is your motivation and finally got a contract that you want or deserve, are you going to be less motivated because you achieved something that maybe you thought motivated you?

14:21And if that did, as soon as you get the contract you want, you may be less motivated. And you do see that in sports, or it could be winning a championship, or it could be, you know, buying your mom a house, which is amazing. And there's a lot of goals. Everybody gets to prioritize them a little bit differently. But for me personally, the best motivation I ever had was people are counting on me and people believed in me and then they gave me an opportunity and I didn't want to let them get let them down with the opportunity that was presented in front of me so I worked every day to be prepared and because I was had amazing parents and they blessed me with a great work ethic and the discipline to make decisions that were in the best interest of my long-term goals over time I got to achieve a lot of things in my sport that I set out for.

15:10But it, you know, we won one Super Bowl in 2001, and we won another one in 2003, and we won another one in 2004, and it was incredible. They're all amazing. And winning for those different teammates, because I had different teammates in 2001. Yeah, some of them were the same, but there's some were different 2003, 2004. I wanted to win for those guys too. People had just came onto the team. And I learned that a lot from the University of Michigan. When I was at the University of Michigan in 1996 as a freshman, we had an equipment manager by the name of John Falk. He was incredible at his job, and he was kind of a Michigan historian, a little older, and he had been a part of so many teams that won Big Ten championships, and when you win a Big Ten championship, they give you a ring, and he would always walk into the freshman locker room before we started the season, and he would say to all the incoming freshmen, men, I've got 25 Big Ten championship rings.

16:10You know which one's my favorite ring? The next one. The next one. And it just meant that whatever was in the past was in the past. The goals for our team was we were looking ahead. And I always kept that mindset up through college and then into my pro career that my biggest goals were still ahead of me. That, yeah, there's incredible accomplishments we have. And I'm sure a lot of us sitting in the audience have accomplished things in our life that we never thought were capable. But I think it's within all of our beliefs and all of our values to set new goals so you can continue to wake up each day of your life with the right purpose, the right attitude to try to go out there and achieve something special.

16:55I want to piggyback off of this unbelievable answer. Yes. I feel like you defined, I was going to ask you, what makes QB1? It's a term really coined around you and now something you hear. And hilariously, for a man who never played football, I get this designation at WWE. I think more for how I deal backstage and amongst my team, how I deal with them and not wanting to let them down. An incredible answer in terms of the new teammates wanting to win for them as well. I just want to ask any John Cena fans here? Okay. So you mentioned the ring, the Big Ten Championships. You mentioned, if you ever asked John Cena what his favorite match was, the answer was always very annoyingly the next one.

17:47And he got out of a lot of bad media because he always got to say that, but that's what he meant. And that's a wonderful mindset. The only time you and I have ever spoke before, I was so excited to tell you. I never went to college. I kind of piggyback off UGA because I'm by Athens, and I used to go down there all the time and watch the dogs, but my wife, full academic scholarship, University of Michigan, that was the only thing I got to tell you, and I was so happy to tell you. I want to ask you, because we talked about sports entertainment, we talked about pro wrestling and the open invite that you have.

18:20Who are you? A heel, you're a baby face. You said something really great, too. You talked about how the crowd is. We now have fully, jokingly with my character on television, the producers backstage will tell me, hey, it's an away game. And I love the, I don't know, this Saturday, Saturday night's main event in the garden, I think it's a home game, but you never, yeah, it is. You never know, but we knew a lot of times going into Germany, going into different, hey, it's an away game, and I loved it. I absolutely thrived off it, and often I got to be there at the end and be the one to ask them, hey, did you have a good time tonight?

18:57and it was a different vibe. It was a different feeling. Again, going to wrestling, I think great rivals in sports entertainment, WWE, they make one another. Hulk Hogan, Macho Man, Randy Savage, Stone Cold Steve Austin, the final boss, The Rock, my own father, the American Dream, and the Nature Boy, Ric Flair, the rival. They are teammates, but you never know. Peyton Manning. Yeah. Peyton Manning, does Peyton Manning bring something out of you that you didn't know you had? Did you feel reliant on each other in terms of that competition? It's what an awesome question. And I think that you are so lucky when you get in to play sports professionally and when you get to be involved in what you're doing and have for so long.

19:45You always want to find things that take you to the next level. Because, like, to stay static, there's a great saying, When you're green, you grow. When you're ripe, you rot. And I think a lot of people get to a certain point in life and they go, yeah, I'm good. And if that happens as an athlete, well, there's a lot of young players that are on their way up ready to kick your ass. And I think for me, this continuous ability to want to learn how to be better. And you could be better physically. You could be better mentally with your brain, your tactics. or you could be better emotionally. I could be more competitive.

20:24I can have more optimism. I can be a better leader. So every day I was trying to find ways to improve physically, mentally, or emotionally. One way that I actually got better was I watched, because I thought Peyton Manning was, in my opinion, when I came into the league, he was the North Star for quarterbacks. He was the guy that I looked up to that I thought, Man, every year he's thrown for a lot of touchdowns, a lot of yards. His teams are competitive in every single game. At the end of every season, I watched every Indianapolis Colts offensive play to study Peyton Manning. I wanted to know how they were doing things.

21:06What did their route concepts look like? How did their line block certain things? So that I could pick up anything and put it incorporated into things that we were doing. So finally it got to be about 2011.

21:23And I called up Peyton because I've been in the league now for going, I think, 11 or 12 years. And I said, hey, I want to, I got an idea. I think I'm pretty much maxed out with a lot of the coaches that have been around. And, you know, look, we talk all the time with my coaches. But what about you and me getting together for a few days and talking football? and like things that I do, things you do, the way you train, the way you prepare, how you throw, how you study film, how you see the game, how you think about defenses. What if we do that? And he goes, man, I think that's a great idea. So I flew down to Tennessee.

22:01Peyton has this beautiful home at a golf course and we holed up together for about three days and all we did was talk football. I mean, obviously it's a great love of the game that I had and I had notes from everything we talked about. I took all those notes and I still have them today in fact they're sitting in my office I laminate them because I never want them to go away but it was look if we had a fly on the wall for that I think people were to really enjoyed it because I admired him as a competitor because he pushed me to new levels I realized that if our team wanted to get to where it wanted to go it had to go through a Peyton Manning led team and that was a gauntlet that was so hard because they were prepared.

22:42They were tough. They were well coached. They were going to execute in the big moments. And if we wanted to be champions, we had to beat another team that was at that championship level. So to get to spend time with Peyton those three days, that was a dream come true for me. I took so much out of it. In fact, I always joke with Gronk because there was one play that I took from them specifically that they used to have this really cool play. They called it Trap Pass. and it's a play-action pass where Peyton takes the ball from the center and they pull the guard. So the linebackers, when they see the guard pull to the right, the linebackers step up and they think it's a run play.

23:21Peyton flashes the ball to the running back in his belly, pulls it out of his belly, and then throws a little pop pass to his tight end behind the linebackers who stepped up in the line of scrimmage. So we incorporated that route concept into our offense and it evolved over time. but Rob Gronkowski who's gonna be in the NFL Hall of Fame next year he was the recipient of at least half of his passing yards on that play so I hope in his acceptance speech in the NFL Hall of Fame he thanks Peyton Manning for giving me that play that we brought to the Patriots offense that allowed him to have this incredible Hall of Fame career?

24:03I, yes. The Gronk. 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. Topps Now is enhancing the fan experience by connecting collectors to the superstars and spectacles that ignite their passion. Featuring stunning event-exclusive photography, each card is made for the moment. And for some lucky collectors, that moment could become the pull of a lifetime. Along with serial-numbered parallels, some Topps Now releases offer a chance at rare short prints, superstar autographs, and even pieces of the mat, gear, or other items used during the featured match.

24:52So, which moment will you collect? With each card only available for a limited time, you won't want to wait to begin your tops now journey be sure to subscribe wb tops now mailing list on tops.com and follow tops on all social media platforms so you never miss a single moment i uh i i wonder if he will thank you just because i know right before you came over here i'm pretty sure you dunked him did you see that that was so crazy yes did you guys see gronk get dunked in the Raising Cane's booth. He's covered in Raising Cane's sauce, correct? Go online tonight. Go to, I'm sure it's up there. My boy, Rob Gronkowski, I had to hit a target.

25:34He got dunked in Raising Cane's sauce, dripping in sauce. I told him he's never looked so juicy in his life. Nice. But it was amazing to watch. I'm thinking you're talking about holing up with Peyton Manning, which is such a honest way about doing it, especially when you're at that level of competition to honestly try to learn from one another, try to learn from those that you're going to beat. Try and learn from those you're going to play. Did you do that at all, Cody? Did you look at people and think, how do they do what they do and what can I learn from them and how do they make that particular move look so good?

26:09One of my favorite things, actually, because I complain about this podcast all the time, and one of my things that I know I actually love it is because I get to sit across from, for example, the legendary mouth of the south jimmy hart i got to sit across from him i've sat across from ddp i've sat across from my peers and the legends and no matter how i'm feeling on that day i hear something and what i hear is the thing that can propel me to the next next level believe it or not just you talking about your teammates has completely changed my attitude for today over all kinds of things that are happening just that's what i get the most out of this but my my thought is would you recommend, prime example, myself and Roman Reigns to rent out a place for three days and just, you know what?

27:00I'm about it. I don't know if he's there yet. Yeah. Because that is someone that there is something you can learn and there's this whole element of coming up together where it's real. I think that's the secret about pro wrestling that people don't always know is the moves and one thing that might be something that's been laid out but this competition to get to the top yeah it's very real oh yeah and i think there's parts too where you know there's always that line if you're the smartest person in the room you know that's probably not the best room for you and in football i always like collaboration on offense i wanted a lot of people to bring different ideas you know they said if two people always agree then one of them's not necessary I liked a lot of creative flow with what we were doing.