Latest / The Major Wrestling Figure Podcast / MWFP Rewind 76 - The Rock is on the mic? The Major GCW Takeover! Jeremy Padawer is here!

Transcript

MWFP Rewind 76 - The Rock is on the mic? The Major GCW Takeover! Jeremy Padawer is here! · The Major Wrestling Figure Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You're listening to the Major Pod Network, the only place
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: where your favorite toy store, bar, arcade, and arena are
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: all on the same block. Scratch that major itch.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another edition of The Major Rewind.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I am your host, as always, Jay George, I usually
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: have my nickname. But what is the Major Rewind, you
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: may ask? The Major Rewind is a show where we
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: take some of the best classic, ultimate Major moments from
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: the Major Pods, rich rich history, and I put it
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: together for new and old Major Marks to enjoy. And
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: this week we got a great episode. It's the anniversary.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: You know, my time in on this is usually very
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: what's the word, Well, it's not a coincidence when I
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: pick these clips. We have the boys talking about the
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: night they took over the night the Major Pod took
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: over the Hammerstein Ballroom at the first ever GCW show
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: I believe it was GCW versus the World at the
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Hammerstein Ballroom. And then we have a clip from the Vault,
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: if you will, our sister podcast. I guess in a
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: sense it's Jeremy Piedouur, And of course, you know, with
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: everything that's been going on, and you know, Jeremy's he's
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: someone who for me and a lot of people, he's
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: you know, he's like a hero of mine. Man, he's
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: someone you look up to. He's a great dude. And
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: you know, he did an interview with the Boys a
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: few years ago and it's a great insight into the man,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: the myth, the legend, the mastermind behind you know, one
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: of the greatest toy lines. And of course the way
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: he changed not just the wrestling figure industry, but the
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: wrestling industry as a whole, and how we look at
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: nostalgia content and all that. You know, the drill. So
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: sit back for and enjoy the show.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Hey, Major Marx, this is Justin Walsh aka the Major
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Mark aka the Aretha Franklin of FWF Live, aka the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: guy who found a brit Baker and Darby Allen Chase
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: in the wild while wearing my smart Mark sex sox
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: on Saturday. I'm coming to you from my house in
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: freezing cold Philadelphia, ten minutes from the home of some
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: very extreme conversations, the ECW Arena. But I'm packing my
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: bags to head to Sonny Orlando, Florida next week for
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Live eleven, and I can't wait to see you while there.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I may have spent the last six months hiding in
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: my home office working on page after page of the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: official Guide to Major Pod March, which will be hitting
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: mailboxes very soon. But no one will need to hold
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: the plane next week as I make my way to
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: tin roof. If it's anything like our time in Vegas,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: you're in for a treat anyways, Like you always do
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: week after week, you're listening to the Major Wrestling Figure podcast.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Enjoy the episode and scratch that major itch.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: Tuning in for it.
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, uh man, I had this idea a couple of
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: months ago. This this this major plan. I was treating
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: this at like Game Changer Mania. I know it was
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: called the World on GCW. I was treating it as
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: Game Changer Mania. I knew I needed a little help
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: for my blood, you know. The Major Pod crew and
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: the plan it all. It did work, but the celebration
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: got ruined. We were supposed to have a big PBR bash
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: in the ring. Everyone was supposed to come out the
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: big click hug in the middle.
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: And the fans are happy to see me. They were
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: throwing PBRs at me.
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: Right But but but x poc Sean Wallman that pieces
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: she had to come down, but no seriousness.
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: What is all I saw? This is all I saw?
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: It was.
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: It was wild, wild night. I had this planned, every
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: little detail, at least for my participation in the event
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: for months.
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: I think at least three months.
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the the the music downstate, thank you
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: very much. You couldn't hear quite right with the shitty audio.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: I think you could hear it in the venue, but
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: not on pay per view and Fight TV where it
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: didn't come out to Enter Sandman. I came out to
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: a Enter Sandman.
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: The first riff is very innertanment.
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, then it gets into my song, right yeah,
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: but so that songs that's on SoundCloud check that out.
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: But the gear that Mikey whipbreak gear that I was
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: originally supposed to wear at the twenty sixteen Royal Rumble,
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: I'm not gonna.
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: I think it's fourteen, but okay.
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna bore you guys. There
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: was all the stories of the time I was supposed
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: to wear it, but it all worked out that I
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: woren't at Hammerstein Ballroom. The only other time I was
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: at Harsign Ballroom is when Mikey Whipwreck brought me to
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: One Night's Stand two thousand and five, so I was
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: paying homage to mikey uh the uh if Cardona wins
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: we Riot shirt and then of course there just happens
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: to be that side, which made it so much fucking
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: cooler to me, Like, I fucking love that. The the
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: fucking McK foley.
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: Oh man, I did Matt get that sign up there?
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: I said, you had nothing to do with that.
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And apparently the building kept telling them that they
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: weren't allowed to have it up, and they kept like
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: sneaking it really wow, Yeah, because they were the building
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: told them that it was obstructing the view of the
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: people below, and these guys were so smart and they
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: like measured it exactly, so it did it black anyone's view,
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: But the buildings give it a hard time. But hey,
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: it was out there for my match. I have some
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: great photos with it. My parents were there. It was
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: just a while and the time you guys involved, I
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: know my reaction to it, you know, I want to
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: hear like your perspective for me, I was it felt
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: like a WrestleMania day for me. I was nervous all
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: fucking day, hectic, day. Wanted to make sure everything went
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: by uh so smoothly and you know, as I imagined it,
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: but it never goes exactly how you wanted to go.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: Well, I'll tell you this. One thing that I've noticed
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: is that a lot of people's reaction to the show
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: is that the the it's they said the sound the
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: crowd sounded low, but like I can tell you being there,
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: it was insane, right, Like, I just feel like the
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: crowd always didn't transfer on the pay per view correctly.
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: I think not only the crowd, but the the the
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: entrance music too, But I think that they're they're they're
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: missing something to pick up the real arena mute sound. Yes,
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, there's some sort of audio issue that that did
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: not transfer over to the pay per view people, because
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: people are like, this crowd is dead, and I'm like,
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: I was there, that building was I don't know what
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: you're talking about. And when I came out to do
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: my little talk, I couldn't hear myself talk and I
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: don't know if that's ever happened to me. I'm yelling
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: on the microphone and I'm like, can they hear me?
• 7:14
  Speaker 5: I can't hear, and then he went to Virgil for advice. Right, yeah, so.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: Bro ban list Virgil. We had Virgil in our plan
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: here forced on us.
• 7:27
  Speaker 6: Do not ever come to a major pod show live
• 7:30
  Speaker 6: and think you're gonna see Virgil's surprise, because.
• 7:32
  Speaker 5: I promise you he will never happen.
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: PBR was following us around all day. There's I Bede
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: Jordan for BBR must have some crazy footage of Virgil
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: just talking about Euph. I'm trying to like pump up
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: for this match, and I'm clearly not interested. And I
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: keep looking at George like, get this fucking guy away
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: from me.
• 7:51
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: He wouldn't stop talking, and I was explaining to him
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: the plan and I'm telling him he's come out, You're
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: gonna be doing the Vincent man thing all day. He
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: said he's going to do the Vince McMann walk. Then
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: he comes out and he doesn't do the vincmc manwalk.
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: I know, what the fuck? Yeah, So then he came
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: out way too early before the.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: Early I said, don't come out until I get you.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: I turn around to go get him. He's already halfway out,
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: and then he says he can't take the mask off.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: So I have to take the mask off. I also
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: tell him in the back, I say, hey, I'm going
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: to hand you a one dollar bill so I pay
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: you off. He says, you got to It's got to
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: be one hundred because they're going to zoom in on
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: it and they're gonna see And he said, he said,
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: I'll give it back to you in the back, but
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: it's got to be a hundred. You got to give
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: me a hundred. Then he wouldn't stop talking about me
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: giving him one hundred dollars bill, and I'm like, this
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: is a Virgil being Virgil.
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there's absolutely no way, man.
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: I just want to thank Adam Gibbons from our Facebook
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: Patriot group. I was looking for this vinsic man mask
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: with a plan and he had it and he said
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: it to me. Uh And then I think Virgil stole
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: the mask. Yeah, because I wanted to sell it. I
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: spent a hundred bucks on that mask.
• 9:02
  Speaker 6: No one ever founded them, no, no, god he uh man,
• 9:09
  Speaker 6: he just sucks. I think the real problem is is
• 9:11
  Speaker 6: those dudes run his social media and it's all like
• 9:14
  Speaker 6: entertaining and stuff. But the real Virgil is not like that,
• 9:16
  Speaker 6: like whatsoever, you know. So there's a big disconnection. Yeah,
• 9:20
  Speaker 6: I mean, oh god, that's not enough. Barring Virgil Saggle.
• 9:24
  Speaker 6: We can do the whole pot of Virgil.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: The crowd was awesome, Swaggle was there, the Figure four
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: was there in full effect. Chelsea was awesome.
• 9:30
  Speaker 6: We took the coolest Chelsea. What a pro Chelsea is, man?
• 9:34
  Speaker 6: She she uh, she's right in the thick of it
• 9:36
  Speaker 6: doing some crazy ship.
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: Man.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you heard this, Broski, but I
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: so we'll talk about this on the YouTube thing. But
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: last Friday I put up a vlog from GCW whatever
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: you last week's GCW trip, And so I'm editing this
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: thing and there's that long promo that Chelsea does in
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: the middle of the ring, and I told her to
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: her face, I said, that was a really great promo
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: and there's not a lot of people that can just
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: stand there so calmly and cut this nasty promo on
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: these people, like she did such a great job. So
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: really kind of blown away with Chelsea and professional wrestling
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: pretty wild.
• 10:13
  Speaker 6: Even before I met Chelsea, I remember watching her hot
• 10:17
  Speaker 6: mess character on Impacted being impressed with how like committed
• 10:19
  Speaker 6: she was to the character before you even met her.
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I met Chelsea where the zach Ryder e CW
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: one legged tights. Yeah, she wasn't really necessarily a fan
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: of that, but that was not fun to wear.
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: She said. Yeah.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: Uh, anyways, dream come true. I mean bucket list thing
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: for me to work at the Hammerstein Ballroom. So can
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: I come and make sure that your lawyer, uh you know,
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: make sure that there was no shenanigans and help you
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: out in case you need it. Of course I will,
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: of course I will it. I was excited to do it.
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: It was basically like an f w F match, Yes,
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: with all the run ins, a lot of the comments,
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: all the all the gaga. But that's my.
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but it wasn't just they should have had a
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: boat or something.
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: But like, yes, there was a lot of shenani games,
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: run ins, gaga, but there was also a lot of
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: violence too. I'm like busted open from my nose the
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: back of my head.
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: Hard chairs, hardware, hunting back.
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, like DVD's on ring aprins, Joey Janella does his
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: elbow drop off the top of the watch of my
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: face on the outside through a door, like steel chairs.
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: I'm protected to the back of my head like low
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: blow it was fucking wild. Yeah, it was wild.
• 11:35
  Speaker 6: Can I even Destroyers Marco Stunt gets involved? Sam Stackhouse
• 11:39
  Speaker 6: And now I'm thinking about it. Maybe it's something that
• 11:43
  Speaker 6: obviously GCW that probably doesn't have the production or whatever
• 11:45
  Speaker 6: to be prepared for. But that building is so amazing
• 11:49
  Speaker 6: and unique because it's like a cylinder and everyone's on
• 11:52
  Speaker 6: top of you. And maybe that's why the sound isn't
• 11:54
  Speaker 6: uh you know, coming through like on your TV screen
• 11:57
  Speaker 6: like the way it is in real life, because it's
• 11:59
  Speaker 6: not that's when you're there.
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Oh my god, I was out there.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: It felt so crazy to me.
• 12:05
  Speaker 6: I went to uh, you know, all those original ECW
• 12:08
  Speaker 6: shows there, and then I went right up to where
• 12:11
  Speaker 6: I remember I watched NASCAR in thirty fourth straight.
• 12:13
  Speaker 5: Like, I went up there and was hanging out in
• 12:15
  Speaker 5: the and I wish.
• 12:16
  Speaker 6: I also think might be where the heels are during
• 12:19
  Speaker 6: One Night's Stand and JBL is doing the bounce to
• 12:21
  Speaker 6: check stuff.
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: I think I think it's also where like the Sino
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: wins we Riot sign is.
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: No, that's like was closer to like where yours was?
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: Oh was it?
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure? Hmm? But man, unbelievable.
• 12:33
  Speaker 6: Just there's no other building in this world that I
• 12:37
  Speaker 6: cared to be in than that building, Like, you know,
• 12:40
  Speaker 6: I mean, I'm sure there's wonderful prog wrestling venues I've
• 12:42
  Speaker 6: never been to, but there's not one that I care
• 12:44
  Speaker 6: like I cared to be a part of that choice there.
• 12:46
  Speaker 6: So yeah, way, I can't thank you guys enough. And
• 12:50
  Speaker 6: then I mean that reaction, you know that the Edge
• 12:54
  Speaker 6: tribute and the reaction is something I'll be thinking about
• 12:57
  Speaker 6: the rest of my life, I'm pretty sure.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: So did you send it to your good friend out?
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: How about this phone? Twitter?
• 13:04
  Speaker 6: Everything is just Broski's concocted this, And I don't know
• 13:08
  Speaker 6: how long you and Dylan have known or everyone else involved,
• 13:10
  Speaker 6: but like I've known about this for I want to
• 13:11
  Speaker 6: stay close to three months and I literally have only
• 13:13
  Speaker 6: told my wife and I was just sitting on it,
• 13:16
  Speaker 6: and uh, you know, so, I mean I and I
• 13:19
  Speaker 6: can't favor a lot of my close friends about this,
• 13:20
  Speaker 6: you know. And then last night, you know, phone's been
• 13:23
  Speaker 6: going nuts the whole you know, after the whole thing
• 13:26
  Speaker 6: Twitter or whatever, everything's else, I finally put it down.
• 13:29
  Speaker 6: I see it like link one last time, and I
• 13:32
  Speaker 6: fucking check it and goes just landed. I saw and
• 13:35
  Speaker 6: it was like, awesome whatever it was from from from
• 13:37
  Speaker 6: uncle Adam, So.
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: That's good text me.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: I mean you you did the tribute to Mikey and
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: he had a nice tweet about that.
• 13:49
  Speaker 8: I saw today.
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: That's awesome.
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: Uh since you since you called out a famous wrestler friend,
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: I'll call a famous wrestler friend. So I, uh, my
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: good friend John Cena. I texted him the gift of
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: me doing the f U you know, and he said, well,
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: just like mine, it only worked for two.
• 14:11
  Speaker 8: Table chair.
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: But I was wondering, how did you like know when
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: to come out because there's.
• 14:21
  Speaker 6: No that's also faint picture here. There's no monitor period,
• 14:26
  Speaker 6: so there's no way to watch the show.
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: There's no like, there's no runner telling you when to go, right.
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: I found myself a runner, so I had to I
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: was the first person to come out. So I found
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: a runner and I positioned him like a mirror. I
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: was behind a wall and he was on the stage
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: watching and I told him when I needed to come out.
• 14:45
  Speaker 6: So I'm listening to all the bumps and the reactions,
• 14:49
  Speaker 6: which is also another It was crazy, like because I'm
• 14:51
  Speaker 6: I didn't even come from the Aisle. I came from
• 14:53
  Speaker 6: like behind this like side curtain thing, so I knew
• 14:58
  Speaker 6: that the double doors. So the boom boom of the
• 15:01
  Speaker 6: doors with the swaggling Marco bump and then Joey's smashing
• 15:04
  Speaker 6: your face, I knew that was like where I needed
• 15:06
  Speaker 6: to like be ready, ready, because like it was getting
• 15:08
  Speaker 6: closer to when I was going. And then I started
• 15:10
  Speaker 6: to getting nervous and I saw I believe his name
• 15:13
  Speaker 6: was KATB, and know I did it indie with him.
• 15:14
  Speaker 6: I think like the first time I was far and
• 15:16
  Speaker 6: I kind of like knew him. I was like, bro,
• 15:17
  Speaker 6: I need you to be my eyes. I was like,
• 15:19
  Speaker 6: when Chelsea's wearing Joey out with a kind of stick,
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: you got tell me whatever.
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: And he actually helped out a lot.
• 15:24
  Speaker 6: So shout out to him because I convinced call the
• 15:26
  Speaker 6: beast KATB. And then at the very last second, I
• 15:30
  Speaker 6: asked Mark, make sure my fucking ponytail's in the helmet
• 15:33
  Speaker 6: because I was very nervous about that too, because if
• 15:35
  Speaker 6: the hair is out of the helmet, that's not much surprise,
• 15:38
  Speaker 6: you know, So I had to make sure that, you know,
• 15:40
  Speaker 6: it was all tucked up. So and my only other
• 15:42
  Speaker 6: concern besides that was shockmastering myself on the bumpy, So
• 15:47
  Speaker 6: I I gave a joey like I call it a
• 15:50
  Speaker 6: shoot MJF fucking spear and just drove my head into
• 15:54
  Speaker 6: his chest because I didn't want it to like go
• 15:56
  Speaker 6: like impact and the projectile off. I know it was
• 15:58
  Speaker 6: up against his body, it would stay, so it's say yeah,
• 16:01
  Speaker 6: So that was my only concern. So once once I
• 16:03
  Speaker 6: got through that, I don't know, We're fine, you.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: Know, yeah, holy ship.
• 16:07
  Speaker 6: And then like and also the like during the day,
• 16:10
  Speaker 6: I see like, okay, I can take this lane to
• 16:13
  Speaker 6: get there.
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: That lane is people standing drinking beers.
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: That lane is gone, long time gone, gone gone.
• 16:20
  Speaker 6: So I'm shoot just slamming into the dude like clear security.
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: That's another.
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: I was like a shoot security trying to hit me
• 16:29
  Speaker 5: ship too. I was thinking like here.
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: I don't know, they know you're coming out.
• 16:34
  Speaker 5: That's what I'm saying.
• 16:35
  Speaker 6: All the last second and the matches going on, there's
• 16:38
  Speaker 6: nothing I can do. All these things are racing through
• 16:40
  Speaker 6: my head and ship. So I had to like shoot
• 16:42
  Speaker 6: like bulldoze fans and shipped to get to the ring.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: And one of them, the dude wwe this would be
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: all like set up. There would be someone telling you
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: when to go lane producer, Yeah, nobody ship. We just did.
• 16:56
  Speaker 6: The dude Evan from the Dark sid of the Ring
• 16:57
  Speaker 6: DM me last night. He goes, Bro, you fucking ailed
• 17:00
  Speaker 6: into me running through Like I was like, Bro, I'm
• 17:02
  Speaker 6: like literally just wearing a legit right, trying to get
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: through these people.
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: What about on my entrance, I'm so fucking fired up,
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: Like I'm on the top rope spitting that PBR. I
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: throw the can down. It's probably a quarter left in
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: it as hard as I get to the floor and
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: nails drove a PBR right in the dick as he's
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: filled with me, Like, right in the dick.
• 17:26
  Speaker 6: Can we tell that about the decisions to not bash
• 17:30
  Speaker 6: the can on your head or not?
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I couldn't do it. I was practicing like earlier,
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: but like against like the wall, Like if it's not
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: breaking against the wall, it's not gonna break up my
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: fucking hand.
• 17:40
  Speaker 6: Original idea was Bro's gonna smash a beer and then
• 17:43
  Speaker 6: smash it over his head. And I'm like, well, one,
• 17:46
  Speaker 6: you could hard wear yourself pretty fucking bad before the
• 17:48
  Speaker 6: match even starts.
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and then with the blood. That's another thing too,
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: New York.
• 17:53
  Speaker 6: The Athletic Commission stop it, like you're not gonna let
• 17:55
  Speaker 6: you do twenty minutes of blood with blood. Maybe I'm hard.
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: Weighted, like the blood is oozing out of my fucking knows.
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: Like if they stopped this fucking match, that's all I'm
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: thinking about. They're gonna stop this match, Like god, they
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: did not.
• 18:07
  Speaker 6: Chelsea's the thing when I got in, I had no
• 18:11
  Speaker 6: idea you were bleeding, and then I show should I look?
• 18:13
  Speaker 6: And then you're just everyone jesus, I know clue until
• 18:17
  Speaker 6: right then, you know.
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: Soogo said, like right before I get like the DVD
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: on the apron, he just sees like the blood trickling
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: on the floor. It's like, what the fuck is going on?
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: Because he's under the rig. It just would not stop coming.
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: I think my nose is fine, but holy shit, uh,
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: Chelsea said, like the I guess the commission was like
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: taking notes the whole match, like walking around the ring
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: like like I guess, trying to see if it was
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: like if I gigged or something. Trust me, I did not.
• 18:42
  Speaker 6: I mean New York is so stupid with all the
• 18:45
  Speaker 6: rules and stuff. The worst, Yeah, they have us lumped
• 18:48
  Speaker 6: in with MMA, like, no one's trying to hurt people here,
• 18:51
  Speaker 6: Like it doesn't work like that.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: What we really need we need a documentary And I've
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: taught about this for years, a documentary or a dark
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: Sight of the Ring or some sort of cover uncover
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: special about athletic commissions and professional wrestling, because the biggest scam.
• 19:08
  Speaker 5: It's a scam man going, yeah.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: Why are you taking athletic commission money from professional It's
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: so ridiculous.
• 19:18
  Speaker 6: You need an ambulance, you need a doctor, you have
• 19:21
  Speaker 6: to pay for the license, which is two grand a year.
• 19:25
  Speaker 6: You've renew every time. It's just a complete money grab scam.
• 19:29
  Speaker 6: Every time the ambulance shows up to create.
• 19:30
  Speaker 5: Byther, they're like, oh word, They're like this is pro wrestling.
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: Oh my god. People are gonna get all fucked up.
• 19:34
  Speaker 6: And I'm like, this is basically a high school plager.
• 19:36
  Speaker 6: Just sit down and watch show, enjoy yourself, have a
• 19:37
  Speaker 6: fucking hot dog like this eas It's not your life,
• 19:40
  Speaker 6: you know, it's ridiculous.
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well so last night, you know, I promised my
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: mom because she you know, like a lot of people,
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: they think of GCW, they think of that death match
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: I had they think the blood, the guts, the barbed wire,
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: the light, tubes of glass, and I'm like, mom, I
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: promise it's not gonna be blood, and of course cover
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: it blood, cover so that she's like back she comes
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: backstage and like the doctors are checking on me, and
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: I'm telling him, like I don't want to go to
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: the hospital for his fucking nose. Like if it's broken,
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: it's broken. What am we gonna do? What are we
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: gonna do in the e R? Like why am I
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: gonna go? Like what do they do? I don't like whatever?
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: So like my mom was like all upset. I'm like, listen,
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: it's fine, it is.
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: What it is.
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: But not I had to convince to come to the
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: show because I knew it was gonna be a special night.
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, I probably occupated blood and of course
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: I'm bleeding for the front at the back. But I
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: loved the fans throwing the trash at us. Then fucking
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: Xbox coming out. I was not expecting that fucking aggression
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: rap album track to hit.
• 20:41
  Speaker 6: I don't know how it came up a conversation I
• 20:46
  Speaker 6: knew before it went out. That's what his that's his
• 20:48
  Speaker 6: personal favorite.
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: He doesn't look great.
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: I love it.
• 20:51
  Speaker 6: He doesn't like Xbox, so I was like, okay, obviously
• 20:56
  Speaker 6: that's that's his choice, you know.
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: I mean, how many fucking run ends were there there?
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: I mean, really, if you want to that one guy's name.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: In fact, I don't even know who that is. Stock House, Chelsea,
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: uh Swaggle, Marco Stutt, Smart, Mark, Virgil bridebars, x Pox.
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: That's eight.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: And no lights were out. How did we do it?
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 21:19
  Speaker 6: Yeah, man, no lights, no, no runners, no like producers.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: A lot of people asking if my neck brace was
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: to honor Joel Gertner.
• 21:29
  Speaker 8: It was not.
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: I was.
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: I saw that.
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: Actually I was brain busted on the floor.
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: I want to say, wow.
• 21:36
  Speaker 6: Broski with the Mikey whip Wreck tribute, Brian with the
• 21:38
  Speaker 6: Edge tribute, Mark with the Joel.
• 21:44
  Speaker 8: Look.
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: I love Joe Girdner. He's one of my favorite things
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: about E c W back in the day. Well, well, well.
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: I think, uh, you know, I'm proud of all of us.
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: A great night. I'm glad we had the picture before
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: and after.
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: It was who was it was a man?
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: Cool shots? Yeah, I thought it was really really cool,
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: and I'm interested to see what happens next with GCW,
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: because now you know they have all the momentum. All
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: eyes are on GCW. Now what I mean?
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: I guess it's interesting man. It's it's organized chaos man.
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: And it's just so wild that like, man, like my
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: I couldn't even get through my social media feet like
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: that's how I may be the same. That's how many
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: posts and like even today there's even like more professional
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: photos coming out and like I'm like, what the coverage is.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: It's like you cannot buy this publicity in this bus.
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: It's nuts. Yeah, And it was just our match that
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: we were just one match out of the whole tire show,
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: the crazy pre show. Uh Moxley returned, fucking Nick Gage returned,
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: Fie and Double J.
• 22:48
  Speaker 5: It's kind of I was bummed, no monitor, but I
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: was also.
• 22:52
  Speaker 6: Unbelievably shocked, like, you know whatever, it's been twenty something
• 22:56
  Speaker 6: years I've been dream about wrestling at this place, so
• 22:59
  Speaker 6: I you know you and what the backstage was. Never
• 23:02
  Speaker 6: in my wildness could I have a vision what it
• 23:04
  Speaker 6: was because I was not expecting at all. I was
• 23:05
  Speaker 6: expecting like one shitty like room like with nothing like
• 23:10
  Speaker 6: what it.
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: Was a bunch of small locker rooms, and we just
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: to get one with a bathroom that nobody else wanted
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: to go in. And then Blake Christian he left. He said,
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: oh this is the verified locker room. That's right, But
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: uh what and I what a crazy experience? And I
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: with the best part is, like I said, there's still photos,
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: professional photos coming out. Probably as we record this we'll
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: get even more cool shots and stuff. So uh and
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: Josh Sharnall, fuck you, Josh, So I gotta say from
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: fight now, I'm kidding.
• 23:42
  Speaker 6: Next time you interview us as a group, you better
• 23:43
  Speaker 6: have a stool for Swaggle Man.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you couldn't even see him.
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: That was rude.
• 23:47
  Speaker 7: Man, Brosk is.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: Like cutting this promo. We're all behind him and then
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: you just hear somebody talking and then just swaggled underneath.
• 23:54
  Speaker 6: Please, if you watch that fight provo, know that that
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: we were like on a ramp almost. I feel like
• 24:01
  Speaker 6: Dylan got so far up he took a step and
• 24:03
  Speaker 6: he does like this like compicol like teeth. That's just
• 24:06
  Speaker 6: I don't know why I'm watching a bunch I'm watched
• 24:08
  Speaker 6: a bunch of times that it's killed me.
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: Unbelievable.
• 24:12
  Speaker 7: All Right, I got my fig FED going on.
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: Sure you do. But speaking of fig FED, we got
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: a very special interview today. Uh introduce yourself.
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: So the guy that was the mastermind behind our fig feds.
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: That's true growing.
• 24:27
  Speaker 7: Up, the man who's I want too lick hor.
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: I'm glad there's some distance here. I'm in between the
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: two guys. And keep this, keep it casual here, you know,
• 24:36
  Speaker 5: keep it professional.
• 24:38
  Speaker 8: Jeremy pitt Ower aka middle aged Broski, Thank you, thank you.
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: Uh wrestling figure legend in our books. The Godfather's honored
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: to be here in your beautiful little starter home here.
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, could this place be any more like beautiful? I
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: almost wanted to jump off your your bedroom balcony headfirst
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: into the pool and miss on purpose.
• 25:00
  Speaker 6: We went to the Conradison Conrad Thompson's home last year.
• 25:05
  Speaker 6: It was very impressive, but I did not think we'd
• 25:07
  Speaker 6: be in another home as impressive as his home was.
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: So quickly, But here we are.
• 25:12
  Speaker 8: We are, We're here, right, baby, overnight success? What can
• 25:15
  Speaker 8: I say?
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah? All right, I got it. Let's let's take it
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: all the way back growing up. Yeah, pro wrestling for you?
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: What what was that to you? A fan? Oh? Yeah,
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: what was your interest.
• 25:25
  Speaker 8: Oh it was a big deal. So I grew up
• 25:27
  Speaker 8: all over the South.
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: I was.
• 25:30
  Speaker 8: I moved eight times by the time I was thirteen. Columbus, Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee, Greensboro,
• 25:36
  Speaker 8: North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia.
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: I always could tell.
• 25:40
  Speaker 8: Yeah, right, yeah, you can tell right now, it's not
• 25:42
  Speaker 8: even like that, Yeah, exactly. No, we moved all over
• 25:46
  Speaker 8: the place. And why did you do that? My dad
• 25:50
  Speaker 8: was like he really was trying to climb the corporate ladder,
• 25:53
  Speaker 8: and he would be the guy that would be willing
• 25:54
  Speaker 8: to take a transfer to you know, make a few bucks.
• 25:59
  Speaker 8: And for speaking, it was so normal to me. It
• 26:01
  Speaker 8: just seemed like that was that was okay, just middle
• 26:05
  Speaker 8: class trying to make a living, do what you can.
• 26:08
  Speaker 8: And and you know, luckily I was, you know, I
• 26:12
  Speaker 8: had a lot of interests and and wrestling was a
• 26:14
  Speaker 8: big one. So and being growing up in the South,
• 26:17
  Speaker 8: like in the eighties, like I'm forty six, so seventy
• 26:19
  Speaker 8: three I was born. So by the time, you know,
• 26:21
  Speaker 8: eighty eighty one, eighty two, eighty three, it was awesome.
• 26:24
  Speaker 8: Wrestling was fantastic and so us w a h. There
• 26:30
  Speaker 8: was wrestling associans out of Memphis, there were there was
• 26:33
  Speaker 8: Texas Wrestling with a w a like we would get
• 26:35
  Speaker 8: all of that stuff and my dad would take me
• 26:38
  Speaker 8: to wrestling matches Columbus, Mississippi. Literally go into the sit
• 26:45
  Speaker 8: in the auditorium. I'd be dressed up like a kid.
• 26:47
  Speaker 8: He'd be wearing a suit from work. Yeah, and there
• 26:50
  Speaker 8: and and the most belligerent, foul mouth, loudest, most horrifying
• 26:56
  Speaker 8: human beings are women over the age of ninety five.
• 27:00
  Speaker 8: These events, So yes, well listen, it was it was.
• 27:04
  Speaker 8: You know, it's still real to me. Damn it, you
• 27:06
  Speaker 8: know it it it It was real and I and
• 27:09
  Speaker 8: you know, to me, like these guys regionally were creating
• 27:12
  Speaker 8: their characters and growing up and and and they there,
• 27:15
  Speaker 8: they became their persona over the course of time. They
• 27:19
  Speaker 8: believed who they were so intimately nothing was everything was organic,
• 27:24
  Speaker 8: nothing was processed. It was unbelievable. And so as a kid,
• 27:27
  Speaker 8: it's easy to believe in something that seems so real
• 27:29
  Speaker 8: because it is so real. And you know, so I
• 27:34
  Speaker 8: liked it a lot. As a matter of fact, my
• 27:35
  Speaker 8: older brother Randy even created like a very simple basic
• 27:40
  Speaker 8: game for me on the computer, Like you remember the
• 27:42
  Speaker 8: old Doss a MS dos. What was the the programming
• 27:46
  Speaker 8: language Basic? You guys remember basicly This may be before
• 27:49
  Speaker 8: your time, but back in the day, it was like
• 27:52
  Speaker 8: like you could create basic programming. And he created a
• 27:56
  Speaker 8: wrestling game for me to play because there was no
• 27:58
  Speaker 8: real wrestling game at the time, and it was that's
• 28:01
  Speaker 8: I loved it. I really loved it, and it shaped
• 28:03
  Speaker 8: my life.
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: And lot, No, you said that you're the same age
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: as Edge, So I know he was an l j
• 28:08
  Speaker 5: N kid, did you, Yeah, those going on?
• 28:10
  Speaker 8: Oh, definitely, I was an LJN kid. Yeah, nineteen eighty three,
• 28:14
  Speaker 8: I believe eighty four.
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: When late late late eighty four.
• 28:17
  Speaker 8: Eighty four, okay, so eighty four through like eighty nine, yeah, yes,
• 28:21
  Speaker 8: And I so my mom would take me to Walmart
• 28:24
  Speaker 8: and uh, we'd grab you know, all of them Mintal
• 28:28
  Speaker 8: Minty fresh on shelf and and I had, you know,
• 28:32
  Speaker 8: I had the ring and I had pretty much all
• 28:34
  Speaker 8: of them, and so it was it was Oh, but
• 28:37
  Speaker 8: before that, I'm sorry to even go into this. So
• 28:39
  Speaker 8: before the lgns came out, I would use my g
• 28:42
  Speaker 8: I Joe figures as wrestlers. So I would assign a
• 28:46
  Speaker 8: wrestling name to each one of my g O Joe
• 28:48
  Speaker 8: figures that I would remember and I would keep winning
• 28:50
  Speaker 8: loss right, So it was yah, it was so much
• 28:55
  Speaker 8: fun with the imagination.
• 28:56
  Speaker 7: Yeah, what other toys did you play with growing up?
• 29:00
  Speaker 8: Hot wheels? I don't know, you know, I'd say wrestling
• 29:05
  Speaker 8: figs and fake wrestling figs.
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: And hot wheels, a lot with stuff.
• 29:09
  Speaker 7: Yeah, were you ever a Hot Wheels kid?
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: Not really? I never was only like cars as an adult,
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: So I didn't I feel like that.
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: The wrestling cards or cars, you know, like the w
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: CW cars. I mean really, so what what made you
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: tell us your backstory if everyone doesn't know, like what
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: got you into the toy industry?
• 29:28
  Speaker 6: So?
• 29:29
  Speaker 8: Yeah, so I let's see.
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: So I was.
• 29:35
  Speaker 8: In in undergrad. I was didn't really know what I
• 29:39
  Speaker 8: wanted to do with my life. I think, as most
• 29:41
  Speaker 8: people don't, you know, you kind of have a sense.
• 29:44
  Speaker 8: I knew that I was a kid, I used to
• 29:45
  Speaker 8: collect sports memorabilia and autographs and you know a lot
• 29:49
  Speaker 8: of things, and I thought that would be fun to
• 29:52
  Speaker 8: somehow turn that into a career. But there was no
• 29:55
  Speaker 8: clear career path that way. So I started lost. And
• 30:01
  Speaker 8: when I started law school, I was going to take
• 30:06
  Speaker 8: huge loans. I was gonna have like seventy five thousand
• 30:08
  Speaker 8: dollars in loans coming out. And one day I'm watching
• 30:13
  Speaker 8: a TV show and there's this lady on the show
• 30:15
  Speaker 8: basically talking about I'm making money, you know, creating websites
• 30:19
  Speaker 8: and selling advertising. I was like, that sounds easy, right,
• 30:23
  Speaker 8: anybody can do She's doing.
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: It mar type thing.
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 30:26
  Speaker 8: No, it wasn't even info Marshall. It was random. I
• 30:28
  Speaker 8: don't even remember. Like it was like news. I'm watching
• 30:31
  Speaker 8: the newscast at Knoxville, Tennessee ninety five right, and I'm like, okay,
• 30:37
  Speaker 8: you know what, I'll do it. And so I hated
• 30:40
  Speaker 8: law school. First class I took in law school, I
• 30:42
  Speaker 8: was like this horrible. I was like, this is gonna suck.
• 30:45
  Speaker 8: I was like, I'm going to suck it that I
• 30:46
  Speaker 8: was right, by the way, I'm bottom third of my class.
• 30:49
  Speaker 8: It was great. But I got into Vanderbilt for business
• 30:51
  Speaker 8: school because of my entrepreneurialism. And I'll tell you about
• 30:53
  Speaker 8: that in a second. So I'm sitting there watching this lady.
• 30:57
  Speaker 8: I'm like, So the next day I started teaching myself
• 31:02
  Speaker 8: how to code, like really basic source code, create a website,
• 31:06
  Speaker 8: and I created a series of websites specifically around collectibles,
• 31:13
  Speaker 8: so Beanie Babies, and another one was tie Beanie Babies
• 31:20
  Speaker 8: and Ferbie and various things, and I named it with
• 31:24
  Speaker 8: two a's, Absolute beanie Babies, Absolute Ferby, Absolute this, and
• 31:27
  Speaker 8: absolute that, and I listed them on Yahoo. And Yahoo
• 31:31
  Speaker 8: was only in its second year as a search engine,
• 31:33
  Speaker 8: and Yahoo, if you could follow, this was nothing more
• 31:36
  Speaker 8: than a phone book. So when you flip through a
• 31:38
  Speaker 8: phone book, what do you see? First? Two a's. So
• 31:41
  Speaker 8: every single website that I put up, I would end
• 31:43
  Speaker 8: that with two a's.
• 31:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 31:45
  Speaker 8: Yeah, And my website sucked. They were bad. But after
• 31:49
  Speaker 8: about after about i don't know, six months of getting
• 31:53
  Speaker 8: these things listed with two a's, I had like twenty
• 31:56
  Speaker 8: thousand people a day coming through looking for collectible information.
• 32:00
  Speaker 8: I was like, now I got something. And so I
• 32:02
  Speaker 8: ended up turning the websites into something a little bit
• 32:04
  Speaker 8: more legitimate, with like I would take price guides and
• 32:07
  Speaker 8: like take the four leading price guides and do like
• 32:10
  Speaker 8: an index of what things should be worth and showing
• 32:12
  Speaker 8: month to month whether things have gone up or down.
• 32:15
  Speaker 8: And as simple as that sounds, it actually got a
• 32:18
  Speaker 8: lot of viewership, and it got Newsweek, and like all
• 32:21
  Speaker 8: these other things became like it became a bit known,
• 32:24
  Speaker 8: and Disney advertised and on sale dot com, which was
• 32:27
  Speaker 8: like an eBay precursor, And so now I had a
• 32:30
  Speaker 8: little bit of money, and I was like, you know what,
• 32:33
  Speaker 8: I'm going to get more eyeballs by buying domain names.
• 32:36
  Speaker 8: So I bought like act dot com, and I bought
• 32:38
  Speaker 8: like uninsured dot com, all these great domain names that
• 32:40
  Speaker 8: I bought up, and with a pure idea that I
• 32:43
  Speaker 8: was going to take these eyeballs and add them to
• 32:45
  Speaker 8: the list of people who were naturally coming in to
• 32:47
  Speaker 8: these websites through search, and long story short ended up
• 32:53
  Speaker 8: being great. I ended up selling a lot of those
• 32:55
  Speaker 8: names and got me into business school. So honestly, no
• 32:59
  Speaker 8: one cared that I was can I can? I sorry? Okay,
• 33:04
  Speaker 8: good god, good, No one. No one cared. No one cares.
• 33:08
  Speaker 5: We want the natural conversation.
• 33:11
  Speaker 8: I know, no, no worries. Yeah exactly, you can't say no.
• 33:18
  Speaker 8: I don't think I should no. So, uh so what happened?
• 33:25
  Speaker 8: So so essentially they didn't care that I was a
• 33:29
  Speaker 8: bad law student. I finished. You know, I think what
• 33:33
  Speaker 8: they cared was I was kind of at the forefront
• 33:35
  Speaker 8: of something else, earning more money than the professors, and
• 33:39
  Speaker 8: showing a real inclination for business. And so I ended
• 33:43
  Speaker 8: up going to Vanderbilt, got a scholarship to go to
• 33:44
  Speaker 8: Vanderbilt for business school, right on the tail end of
• 33:47
  Speaker 8: being finishing up law school. And so while all my
• 33:49
  Speaker 8: other colleagues were going to be lawyers, I want to
• 33:52
  Speaker 8: be a day one business school student, but with a
• 33:54
  Speaker 8: but with a company. And uh. And so I knew
• 33:57
  Speaker 8: I was an entrepreneur, and I knew that that that,
• 34:00
  Speaker 8: you know, what was best for me was not necessarily
• 34:03
  Speaker 8: following some template. But I also knew that, you know,
• 34:07
  Speaker 8: going to school was a hedge. I was able to
• 34:11
  Speaker 8: hedge my bets and and doing the academic thing allowed
• 34:14
  Speaker 8: me to kind of say, like, you know, maybe there's
• 34:17
  Speaker 8: something to this as well. So I kind of had
• 34:19
  Speaker 8: kept one foot in both waters. And then Mattel, my
• 34:24
  Speaker 8: second year of business school, there's only two years in
• 34:26
  Speaker 8: business school, came and interviewed at Vanderbilt. Jeff Walker, who
• 34:31
  Speaker 8: was later became like the president of Mattel Brands, came
• 34:34
  Speaker 8: in and I interviewed with a bunch of other guys
• 34:37
  Speaker 8: and men and women. I should say and I didn't
• 34:40
  Speaker 8: get it. So mattel some irrejection letter, so I, yeah, yeah,
• 34:44
  Speaker 8: they sent me a rejected so I took that letter
• 34:46
  Speaker 8: and I ripped it up.
• 34:47
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah yeah.
• 34:48
  Speaker 8: And I and I called the head of HR or
• 34:52
  Speaker 8: the head of HR that who I thought, it's probably
• 34:54
  Speaker 8: some director of HR. And I said, hey, as like,
• 34:56
  Speaker 8: I never never heard from you guys moving to LA.
• 35:00
  Speaker 8: My wife's a medical doctor and she's going out there
• 35:03
  Speaker 8: for her residency, and you know, I didn't hear from you,
• 35:06
  Speaker 8: So I'd like to to talk personally. Maybe maybe there's something.
• 35:10
  Speaker 8: Maybe I'd love to come in. And she's like super
• 35:13
  Speaker 8: perplexed because they knew that they dinged me. And they
• 35:15
  Speaker 8: were like, dude, not only did they ding me, they
• 35:17
  Speaker 8: were probably ding me with prejudice. They're like, there's no
• 35:19
  Speaker 8: way we were going to see that guy again. So anyway,
• 35:22
  Speaker 8: so I went up, uh called every two weeks and
• 35:25
  Speaker 8: finally said come on in and uh after you know,
• 35:28
  Speaker 8: I didn't get it the first interview, the second interview
• 35:31
  Speaker 8: I did. Yeah, the guy that interviewed me the second time,
• 35:36
  Speaker 8: he looks at me and he goes, you know what, you
• 35:37
  Speaker 8: don't have any toy experience but this isn't rocket scientry.
• 35:41
  Speaker 8: And I was like, I was like, rocket scientry isn't
• 35:43
  Speaker 8: a word. I was like, this is gonna be easy.
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: But I did.
• 35:47
  Speaker 8: But I did have the Internet, that's right. I was like, Phil, no,
• 35:51
  Speaker 8: but I had a But you know what though, it
• 35:53
  Speaker 8: just the thing is you you make your own destiny
• 35:56
  Speaker 8: to some extent, like you can, you can leave it
• 35:58
  Speaker 8: in the hands of others, but but you kind of
• 36:00
  Speaker 8: also have to just you know, follow your own lead
• 36:03
  Speaker 8: because no one's going to hand it to you. I mean,
• 36:06
  Speaker 8: especially if you don't come from a privileged situation. There's
• 36:09
  Speaker 8: nobody there waiting for you.
• 36:10
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't want to make this bet me. But
• 36:11
  Speaker 6: when I got fired, I had that mentality. I was like, yeah,
• 36:14
  Speaker 6: I could be sad about this and you know, you
• 36:16
  Speaker 6: probably never hear from me again, or you know, spin
• 36:18
  Speaker 6: it around and work my ass off is what I
• 36:21
  Speaker 6: attempted to do.
• 36:21
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 36:22
  Speaker 8: Yeah, well it's clearly totally get that.
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: I believe that well.
• 36:25
  Speaker 8: And that's why I feel such a kinship with both
• 36:27
  Speaker 8: of you guys, because you guys are so well rounded.
• 36:30
  Speaker 8: You're entrepreneurial, but you also got a foot in this,
• 36:33
  Speaker 8: you know, and I don't even want to underplay that
• 36:35
  Speaker 8: you're you are full on amazing athletes ww superstars.
• 36:40
  Speaker 7: But hell, that's true.
• 36:42
  Speaker 8: I mean yeah, by the way, it's you are looking
• 36:47
  Speaker 8: tan by the way.
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: No, but I feel I feel the same way. It's
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: all about you know, it's it sounds like, you know,
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: follow your dreams, but it's more than that. If you
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: want something to happen, the only one who's going to
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: make it happen is you right here, firm believer in
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: that as well as us, you know.
• 37:02
  Speaker 8: Yeah, And along the way, you collect people who believe
• 37:05
  Speaker 8: in you, and and because they believe in you, that
• 37:07
  Speaker 8: they're willing to do things that they wouldn't otherwise do,
• 37:11
  Speaker 8: like give you opportunities to be in certain spaces at
• 37:14
  Speaker 8: particular times. So, but wrestling and entrepreneurial sort of background,
• 37:21
  Speaker 8: I'll tell you it really played well in my favor
• 37:25
  Speaker 8: when I was at Mattel and later on at Jack's
• 37:28
  Speaker 8: as well, because I, you know, I with at Mattel,
• 37:33
  Speaker 8: I got involved with he Man, I got involved with
• 37:35
  Speaker 8: Hot Wheels.
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: What's your label now at this time.
• 37:38
  Speaker 8: Right now today? Oh, Mattel. Okay, So I came in
• 37:40
  Speaker 8: to Mittel associate brand manager.
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: Okay, see, I don't even think many people would even
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: know that that you worked for Mattel.
• 37:46
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 37:46
  Speaker 7: I think they just think of you, Jeremy Jack, Jeremy Jack, Yeah,
• 37:49
  Speaker 7: of course.
• 37:49
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I know.
• 37:49
  Speaker 8: I came in, Yeah, that's what we're doing. Came in Mittel,
• 37:53
  Speaker 8: and I did the same thing that I did at Jack's.
• 37:56
  Speaker 8: I essentially because I was because I had the Internet background.
• 38:00
  Speaker 8: I said, where are the fans, and we find out
• 38:02
  Speaker 8: where the fans are and where the most ardent community is.
• 38:06
  Speaker 8: Those are the people that I want to talk to
• 38:07
  Speaker 8: because they're the ones that have the most at stake,
• 38:12
  Speaker 8: They're the most interested, and they're gonna have the most
• 38:14
  Speaker 8: valuable feedback. So with he Man, he man dot org,
• 38:17
  Speaker 8: which is still around twenty years later. Not only is
• 38:20
  Speaker 8: it still around, but I made sure that guy ended
• 38:22
  Speaker 8: up getting the comic book license because he was a
• 38:25
  Speaker 8: very talented colorist. So we really made sure we got
• 38:29
  Speaker 8: behind people that were running like independent off the grid,
• 38:32
  Speaker 8: and we gave it to him over like you know,
• 38:34
  Speaker 8: really well known comic book companies. But the whole reason
• 38:37
  Speaker 8: for doing that is because the more in you are
• 38:40
  Speaker 8: with the people that really care, the more in you're
• 38:42
  Speaker 8: going to be with them, with the with I'd say
• 38:45
  Speaker 8: that casual. Yeah, it feels so real to them because
• 38:51
  Speaker 8: because it is, because you're in with the people that matter,
• 38:53
  Speaker 8: you know, you're in with the real fans. So yeah,
• 38:57
  Speaker 8: So I was there for about three.
• 38:58
  Speaker 5: Years and then that where we had to Jacks.
• 39:02
  Speaker 8: Yeah, we jumped ship jump ship so no io yeah man, no,
• 39:07
  Speaker 8: So so what happened was so.
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: In I want to know, did you go into Jack's
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: wearing a blue denim vestlet's.
• 39:13
  Speaker 7: It Bill Scott Hall, we're taking over.
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, He's like you you don't know a while I'm here.
• 39:25
  Speaker 8: No. I was twenty nine and I got a phone
• 39:28
  Speaker 8: call and they were like, you want to come in
• 39:29
  Speaker 8: and be the head of our boys business.
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: Were you familiar with Jacks at this point?
• 39:32
  Speaker 8: I was familiar.
• 39:33
  Speaker 5: They made they were.
• 39:34
  Speaker 6: On the rise of their Like, man, when they start
• 39:37
  Speaker 6: making bone crunches in ninety six, I.
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: Was like, and I'm like eleven, like, but what company
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: is this?
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 39:42
  Speaker 6: And then even that first set, and I was even
• 39:46
  Speaker 6: at eleven years old, I'm like, these are not well made, Like.
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: Like, no, I had to return them to us and
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: I quit. That's not doing recipes anymore and six.
• 39:54
  Speaker 7: So that's it. I mean, obviously I'm back.
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 39:57
  Speaker 6: I guess what I'm trying to say is there were
• 39:59
  Speaker 6: people there before that the wheel's motion knew what they
• 40:02
  Speaker 6: were doing because it rose, you know, and obviously the
• 40:04
  Speaker 6: wrestling industry did as well, so that helped. Yeah, and
• 40:07
  Speaker 6: all the popularity was there.
• 40:08
  Speaker 8: No, so so I'll give them credit like they I
• 40:12
  Speaker 8: think after Hasbro, so Hasbro at the time when they
• 40:15
  Speaker 8: were doing the Hasbro's, to me, they were all they
• 40:17
  Speaker 8: were lost on me because I think I was in
• 40:20
  Speaker 8: I was in college. It was like the mid nineties,
• 40:22
  Speaker 8: right early to mid nineties.
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: I was at the time working back to a big
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: bad That's right.
• 40:30
  Speaker 8: Yeah, let's you know.
• 40:32
  Speaker 7: That Big Borgan's open up.
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: Opened up some green cards to these baby.
• 40:38
  Speaker 8: So at the time at the time, I guess it
• 40:40
  Speaker 8: just sort of it went over my head. I didn't
• 40:42
  Speaker 8: I didn't even notice. I was more of an LGN kid.
• 40:44
  Speaker 8: And so when I had the opportunity to come in
• 40:49
  Speaker 8: at Jack's, what I noticed was that the figures that
• 40:51
  Speaker 8: evolved tremendously, I mean, like like the tech Titan Tron stuff,
• 40:55
  Speaker 8: it looked really good. Like I was impressed, like I.
• 40:57
  Speaker 6: Knew the idea behind him was there in the Yeah,
• 41:00
  Speaker 6: I think the effort in the heart was into him,
• 41:01
  Speaker 6: but maybe not the execution.
• 41:03
  Speaker 8: But well, what what happened was when you got to
• 41:05
  Speaker 8: like ninety eight, ninety nine, two thousand, I mean, that
• 41:08
  Speaker 8: was that was some pretty serious. It was an amazing
• 41:12
  Speaker 8: time for wrestling in general, the best.
• 41:15
  Speaker 7: A thousand product.
• 41:18
  Speaker 8: Like, So, what happened was they were doing an enormous number.
• 41:21
  Speaker 8: I mean, uh, and they're a publicly traded companies, so
• 41:24
  Speaker 8: all of this is out there. But they were doing
• 41:25
  Speaker 8: a really serious number in WWE. But by the time
• 41:28
  Speaker 8: I got there in like two thousand and two, things
• 41:32
  Speaker 8: had really dropped way off, basically over. Yeah, the attitude
• 41:36
  Speaker 8: era was over, and really the product was being treated
• 41:40
  Speaker 8: more like kids product. It was like, you know, this
• 41:43
  Speaker 8: product is for kids. And by the way, this wasn't Jack's.
• 41:46
  Speaker 8: This was everyone but tell everybody was treating action figures
• 41:49
  Speaker 8: really for kids. Even though the people coming through the
• 41:52
  Speaker 8: aisle was there was a tremendous number of collectors.
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, if you were collector at that time, it was
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: like frowned upon you were a loser or nerve.
• 41:58
  Speaker 8: Yeah, fanboys, what they were like.
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: I would go I was in high school and I
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: would you know, go to Toys r US and ask
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: for a give seat because I was too embarrassed, right,
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: because it was just not a cool thing. Yeah you know,
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: of course, brother, your cousin is offered you, no I
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: need to give.
• 42:16
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: I don't think people, yes.
• 42:17
  Speaker 8: That's right.
• 42:18
  Speaker 6: I don't think people really appreciate how cool it is
• 42:19
  Speaker 6: now that like collecting is nothing to be ashamed of,
• 42:23
  Speaker 6: and like there's.
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: Some of people like are so open about it and
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: like you know, looking like a nerd or lose or whatever. No,
• 42:29
  Speaker 5: like yeah, like actually that's exactly what it is.
• 42:32
  Speaker 6: The way he's depicting forty forty year old versions is
• 42:34
  Speaker 6: what like a collector there.
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: Now they trying to make that movie like those guys awesome.
• 42:39
  Speaker 8: Yeah cool. Yeah, this guy's got a good ball money.
• 42:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah, like completely different perception, you know.
• 42:46
  Speaker 8: Yeah, he's got a diversified portfolio investments. Yeah, I mean
• 42:50
  Speaker 8: like so so yeah fan boys. I heard that so
• 42:53
  Speaker 8: many times fanboy, fan boy, fan boy and and and
• 42:56
  Speaker 8: nerds and it would. I didn't like it. I really
• 42:59
  Speaker 8: didn't like it because a you know, I felt like,
• 43:03
  Speaker 8: you know the people that I had met who collected
• 43:06
  Speaker 8: were like kind of cool, Like, in my opinion, they
• 43:09
  Speaker 8: were pretty cool. Like I like those people. I'd rather
• 43:11
  Speaker 8: hang out with those people than hang out with other
• 43:14
  Speaker 8: And I, you know, I'm not, okay, fine, I'm not
• 43:16
  Speaker 8: like the coolest guy in the world, but I'm but
• 43:19
  Speaker 8: I'm also like I socially apt, like I can have
• 43:22
  Speaker 8: a conversation. And I knew that most of the people
• 43:24
  Speaker 8: that collected that I knew were just like like some
• 43:27
  Speaker 8: of the greatest people to be around. So I didn't
• 43:30
  Speaker 8: like that. But what I did like was the fact
• 43:32
  Speaker 8: that other people were kind of not paying attention to it,
• 43:35
  Speaker 8: and that's where you can find the great opportunities. And
• 43:38
  Speaker 8: so first thing I did when I got there to
• 43:43
  Speaker 8: Jack's is I looked online. It's like, okay, well where
• 43:45
  Speaker 8: the biggest where the biggest communities around wrestling figures and
• 43:49
  Speaker 8: ringside collectibles? Wrestling figs was like, you know, number.
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: One to have discussion about figures. I couldn't think of anyone.
• 43:59
  Speaker 7: Else us like being fans of the time.
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: I remember you coming on board and being so vocal
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: and present, and before that, like maybe we knew some names,
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: but nobody was attached to the brand.
• 44:09
  Speaker 7: There was no face of the brand.
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: He had always with the interviews you post on there,
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: so everybody knew who Jeremy was. You know, they might
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: not like all your decisions all the time. They might
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: put all the blame on you, like when Chinese New
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: York comes around.
• 44:20
  Speaker 8: Yeah, like at least.
• 44:21
  Speaker 7: They knew Jeremy. He gave he gave a damn and
• 44:24
  Speaker 7: he was there and he was a man of the people.
• 44:25
  Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, And thank you for that, because
• 44:28
  Speaker 8: because I feel like that was that was the point
• 44:31
  Speaker 8: of difference for me, Like yeah, and like, and so
• 44:35
  Speaker 8: I reached out to Jonathan and I basically said, listen,
• 44:39
  Speaker 8: I was like, you got a nice business. I think
• 44:43
  Speaker 8: it can be even nicer, but are you ready to
• 44:47
  Speaker 8: basically become like my adopted source of all of this content.
• 44:52
  Speaker 8: He was entirely ready to do so, Like and he
• 44:55
  Speaker 8: was having to figure out what to do because he
• 44:57
  Speaker 8: was he was in college. He had to figure out
• 45:00
  Speaker 8: am I going to be a college student or am
• 45:01
  Speaker 8: I going to be a business person? I did I listen? Yeah, well,
• 45:08
  Speaker 8: because he was thirty years started and I did. I
• 45:11
  Speaker 8: heard it. I heard I heard the entire interview. Actually,
• 45:14
  Speaker 8: now that I think back on it, but no, he's
• 45:17
  Speaker 8: he was right. He had that moment, he had to
• 45:19
  Speaker 8: make that decision, and essentially I think he made the
• 45:22
  Speaker 8: right decision. And I will tell you the truth, even
• 45:23
  Speaker 8: from my perspective, I didn't know whether this was going
• 45:26
  Speaker 8: to be two or three years or I would have
• 45:28
  Speaker 8: never like if you just said, hey, Jeremy, bet on
• 45:30
  Speaker 8: the fact that Jonathan's going to make a beautiful career
• 45:33
  Speaker 8: out of this and and have an entire team of
• 45:35
  Speaker 8: great people with you know, Trevor and all those guys.
• 45:37
  Speaker 8: I don't mean like I don't know, but but my
• 45:40
  Speaker 8: responsibilit but my responsibility was to try to figure out
• 45:46
  Speaker 8: who it was that was cared about the most, focus
• 45:48
  Speaker 8: on them, and recognize that it's going to be our
• 45:51
  Speaker 8: outlet for the best information. And so the first thing
• 45:54
  Speaker 8: that we did it was two thousand and three. And
• 45:58
  Speaker 8: you know, again, my love of regional wrestling, my love
• 46:03
  Speaker 8: of old school wrestling, and the recognition that w W
• 46:07
  Speaker 8: at the time hadn't done a lot with their with
• 46:09
  Speaker 8: their with their alumni roster, a matter of fact, very
• 46:11
  Speaker 8: little at all, non existent, a matter of fact, out
• 46:15
  Speaker 8: a side, out of mind.
• 46:15
  Speaker 6: It was that was it Yeah, it was like you
• 46:18
  Speaker 6: were just gone and you were not to be spoken of,
• 46:20
  Speaker 6: much less have a shirt or in a video game
• 46:22
  Speaker 6: or have an action figure.
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I don't want to jump too far ahead,
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: but I honestly credit everything that goes on. Now you
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: buy a Chalko line jacket with like the Rock or
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: Austin because of what you start with the Classic Superstars.
• 46:31
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I'll tell you what. It didn't hurt, but here's
• 46:34
  Speaker 8: but here's the best part of it. So I had
• 46:36
  Speaker 8: to make my case to you know, Vince McMahon. I
• 46:40
  Speaker 8: had to make a case, and the case was that,
• 46:43
  Speaker 8: you know, it's going to be good for business if
• 46:46
  Speaker 8: we embrace the historical roster. But here's the way we
• 46:51
  Speaker 8: can do it. And essentially what we did was our
• 46:55
  Speaker 8: our offer essentially was let us go and sign up
• 46:59
  Speaker 8: any of the historical athletes and we'll give you the
• 47:04
  Speaker 8: whole list, and as we signed them, we'll give you,
• 47:09
  Speaker 8: you know, feedback on deal terms all of those things.
• 47:12
  Speaker 8: But if you ever signed them to a deal, our
• 47:16
  Speaker 8: deal is immediately null and void and all rights that
• 47:20
  Speaker 8: we have past you. So there's zero risk for WW zero.
• 47:24
  Speaker 8: In order to end to Vince's credit, he was. It
• 47:28
  Speaker 8: was like not even it was like barely even a thought.
• 47:30
  Speaker 5: He's like okay and such in that time. It's kind
• 47:32
  Speaker 5: of I'm surprised by that.
• 47:34
  Speaker 8: Well, think about who was in wag one Ultimate Warrior
• 47:37
  Speaker 8: bred hard who.
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the self destruction of Ultimate Warrior was.
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: The only nostyles at the time was DVDs.
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: Like that TV legit burying over two hours and what
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: year was that with it for something like that.
• 47:53
  Speaker 8: Is oh so that was the same time. I mean,
• 47:56
  Speaker 8: think about the timing. It's unbelievable. So the thing, the
• 48:00
  Speaker 8: thing that I found, you know, fascinating, was that that,
• 48:04
  Speaker 8: despite you know, embracing you know, the historical roster in
• 48:08
  Speaker 8: the entertainment at the time, they were willing to do
• 48:10
  Speaker 8: it in consumer products. And and I feel like, you know,
• 48:14
  Speaker 8: I was twenty nine years old. It was it was,
• 48:16
  Speaker 8: it was you know, the only reason why I kind
• 48:18
  Speaker 8: of knew to go down that path was because I
• 48:21
  Speaker 8: had spent a lot of time you know, in regional
• 48:24
  Speaker 8: wrestling watching and becoming fans of and then also embracing
• 48:28
  Speaker 8: internet stuff. So it was a perfect combination of things
• 48:31
  Speaker 8: that led me down that path at being a kid
• 48:34
  Speaker 8: really twenty nine, right, and anyways, So the the initial
• 48:39
  Speaker 8: approaches to like Ultimate Wear were fascinating because you know,
• 48:44
  Speaker 8: we were calling each one of these athletes on the
• 48:46
  Speaker 8: phone and having a conversation with them and.
• 48:49
  Speaker 6: You're explaining to them that it's going to be a
• 48:51
  Speaker 6: WWE product, but not because you guys are.
• 48:53
  Speaker 8: The well it was a w W. So we were
• 48:55
  Speaker 8: explaining that this would be a w W.
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: I couldn't sell it calling it all time Wrestlings.
• 49:00
  Speaker 8: No, no, it was. It wasn't difficult. So essentially the
• 49:03
  Speaker 8: approach was, we are the we are the global partner
• 49:06
  Speaker 8: of WWE for twice. Okay, we are the license z
• 49:09
  Speaker 8: and we don't own anything. We're just the license Z.
• 49:11
  Speaker 8: We'd also like to have a separate license with you,
• 49:14
  Speaker 8: and WWE's allowing us to do that in order to
• 49:18
  Speaker 8: include you in the WWE assortment for Classic Superstars, which
• 49:23
  Speaker 8: we named Sure. And everyone was super psyched, like they
• 49:28
  Speaker 8: were really psyched, like rarely was rarely, and so Ultimate
• 49:35
  Speaker 8: Ware out of almost everybody that I dealt with, probably look,
• 49:39
  Speaker 8: and he's a fascinating character, and you know he he
• 49:42
  Speaker 8: had a lot of thoughts on a lot of things
• 49:44
  Speaker 8: outside of traditional business. But he was a really solid
• 49:48
  Speaker 8: business person because he saw the value in the collectible
• 49:53
  Speaker 8: before it was proven, and essentially from his perspective was listen,
• 49:57
  Speaker 8: you can give me a percentage and a to them guarantee,
• 50:01
  Speaker 8: but what I'm really also interested in is some limited
• 50:04
  Speaker 8: edition figures.
• 50:04
  Speaker 5: That was my boggle and he thought of that foresight, right, yeah,
• 50:07
  Speaker 5: it was. He did it all the way.
• 50:08
  Speaker 6: There is you know, unfortunate death of Matelli was doing
• 50:11
  Speaker 6: it all the way with this genius.
• 50:13
  Speaker 8: It was really really smart.
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: And say, Jeremy been worried for making those figures because
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: it costs me a lot of money.
• 50:20
  Speaker 7: There's only one Warrior America, so tug about guy.
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: I know you're out there to track those down. Like
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: at the time, it was like, how are you going
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: to do this because Ultimate Warrior Legit has these five
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: selling them.
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: You know, they didn't even feel real. It felt like
• 50:36
  Speaker 5: like a myth.
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: And they were so cool. They were like it was
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: just like stupid repaints. They were like incredible repaints of
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: figures you needed, like the UNA Warrior, the w CW Warrior, so.
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: Many cool and he shown that ever even came up.
• 50:50
  Speaker 8: Uh yeah, now that I'm thinking back.
• 50:52
  Speaker 5: It's a unique ask, but yeah, genius.
• 50:55
  Speaker 8: No, it was. I'm glad it was unique because it's
• 50:58
  Speaker 8: not an easy thing to execute against, you know, I
• 51:00
  Speaker 8: mean going to the factory and saying, hey, we need
• 51:02
  Speaker 8: you to do five of these paints. Yeah, it's not
• 51:05
  Speaker 8: it's not ideal, but you know, I'll tell you Like
• 51:08
  Speaker 8: that was one of the ways that we differentiated ourselves
• 51:10
  Speaker 8: is that we did one of one hundreds, We did
• 51:12
  Speaker 8: super limited edition. We made sure, we made sure that
• 51:15
  Speaker 8: the collector was really part of the story.
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: So yeah, so obviously these toys are for kids, right,
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: but you turned it into something You saw the vision
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: that they could be something so much more. There could
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: be collectors chasing these figures, the Toy Fair exclusives or
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: the Toy Fair Magazine exclusive or all these different variants.
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: The adult collector you know.
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, why so a kid going down you know, the
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: Toysbus aisle can buy it, but then there's also an
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: adult who wants it, like we made it for everybody.
• 51:40
  Speaker 8: Yeah, really cool. Well, the goal the goal was and
• 51:43
  Speaker 8: I love economics, okay, I mean, we'll say that's one
• 51:45
  Speaker 8: thing that I do have a good understanding of. But
• 51:47
  Speaker 8: economics is very simple. It's supply and demand. And the
• 51:50
  Speaker 8: higher your supply and the closer you already meeting the
• 51:54
  Speaker 8: demand curve, the more screwed you are in the end.
• 51:57
  Speaker 8: And so the more you can stay behind the demand curve,
• 52:01
  Speaker 8: the better. And so for me it was okay, I knew,
• 52:04
  Speaker 8: because I love collectibles that if there was a way
• 52:08
  Speaker 8: to stay like below demand and have a secondary market
• 52:14
  Speaker 8: value that was well north of you know, what we
• 52:17
  Speaker 8: were selling the product for that it would create people
• 52:21
  Speaker 8: who were not necessarily interested in wrestling, or not even
• 52:23
  Speaker 8: necessarily interested in action figures, to be interested in WWE
• 52:27
  Speaker 8: figures specifically, And by doing that, you know, we're able
• 52:32
  Speaker 8: to increase WWE sales by like seven hundred percent, and
• 52:36
  Speaker 8: during a time where there was really no change in
• 52:38
  Speaker 8: pay per view buys, no change in butts and seats,
• 52:41
  Speaker 8: no change in anything like none of the metrics would
• 52:45
  Speaker 8: support a seven hundred percent increase. It again, you know
• 52:49
  Speaker 8: at all there was never a blip. But but what
• 52:51
  Speaker 8: there was was there was a We managed the line well.
• 52:54
  Speaker 8: We managed it well, I mean, and look, we made
• 52:57
  Speaker 8: a lot of mistakes, Like honestly, Mattel's taking it to
• 53:00
  Speaker 8: a great level when it comes to the authenticity and
• 53:03
  Speaker 8: scale and all that stuff. But but we also did
• 53:06
  Speaker 8: it better than anybody had done it before us, and
• 53:09
  Speaker 8: to the extent that that's also part of the key.
• 53:12
  Speaker 8: I mean, doing it better than the than the people
• 53:14
  Speaker 8: who did it before you is the only markers that
• 53:17
  Speaker 8: you have at the time, And I think that's you know,
• 53:20
  Speaker 8: what's like.
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: Day to day this point.
• 53:21
  Speaker 6: Are you like all in on the classical line, are
• 53:22
  Speaker 6: you working on like the active roster at the time,
• 53:24
  Speaker 6: or just everything.
• 53:26
  Speaker 8: So in around that time, so it was we had
• 53:30
  Speaker 8: to move quickly. So the key was to by the
• 53:34
  Speaker 8: time we got to toy Fair, we wanted to make
• 53:35
  Speaker 8: sure that we had the classic line lined up because
• 53:39
  Speaker 8: we knew that we could get the buyers excited. And
• 53:41
  Speaker 8: the buyers were not excited with WW at the time
• 53:44
  Speaker 8: because coming off the Attitude era, they had gone from
• 53:47
  Speaker 8: such an enormous velocity and ready to sale.
• 53:49
  Speaker 5: Like yet exactly, it's a weird period.
• 53:53
  Speaker 8: No, John Cena was just getting in, like I saw
• 53:55
  Speaker 8: met him like right away, but it was very early
• 53:58
  Speaker 8: and he was just you know, he was a kid too,
• 54:00
  Speaker 8: so no it uh, yeah, rate of sales, you know,
• 54:04
  Speaker 8: linear productivity, all of the measures that they use at
• 54:07
  Speaker 8: retail to say this is good or not good. We're
• 54:09
  Speaker 8: pointing negatively. They were ready to walk away from WWE
• 54:14
  Speaker 8: at retail. It was it was challenging because in my mind,
• 54:18
  Speaker 8: I was like, oh my gosh, you know, I've inherited
• 54:20
  Speaker 8: something here where I think that we can turn this
• 54:22
  Speaker 8: into something, but we may never get there, and I'm
• 54:25
  Speaker 8: moving back to Nashville. I'm getting out of here. Yeah,
• 54:29
  Speaker 8: I love that. By the way, that would that have
• 54:30
  Speaker 8: been a fine outcome too. You know, I've still did
• 54:33
  Speaker 8: too more beef stew or something instead of collectibles.
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: But a merchandise warehouse. But I'll tell you this ship
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: and Jeffret guitars.
• 54:40
  Speaker 8: Exactly why not? Hey man? But but but the buyers
• 54:44
  Speaker 8: came in. They saw the Classic Superstars line, they saw
• 54:46
  Speaker 8: some of the characters that they knew from the eighties,
• 54:49
  Speaker 8: and they had a sense for it, and they were
• 54:50
  Speaker 8: like and.
• 54:51
  Speaker 6: Nostalgia, like even if you were a casual wrestling fan,
• 54:53
  Speaker 6: and there's something to them, tugs it like your heart strings.
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: Figures of guys who never had figures before. Yeah, you
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: made guys from the Elder has Bro era. But also
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: it was to scale with the John Cena the Randy Organ.
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: It was all one scale, so it was such a
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: great thing for kids playing like.
• 55:10
  Speaker 5: Literally one scale, everyone's the same.
• 55:11
  Speaker 8: hYP Yeah, yes that's true.
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: But whatever we were in college.
• 55:23
  Speaker 7: Playing with them.
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: You could play with Ultimate Warrior with your John Cena,
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: so like that was such a cool thing because that
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: was never done before.
• 55:30
  Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, absolutely, and then.
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: To make guys who had never from the seventies, eighties, nineties,
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: who've never had figures before. And what I also loved
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: about the Classroom of Stars line is if you kept
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: them in the package, it was all uniform, but all
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: nice to get all the same packaging, minor color differences, yes,
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: that kind of stuff like packaging.
• 55:47
  Speaker 8: Absolutely no, look, we created the logos or created all
• 55:52
  Speaker 8: of the everything. I mean, we really did. There was
• 55:54
  Speaker 8: no real style guide for classics. So I remember when
• 55:58
  Speaker 8: we were choosing the the the actual type of packaging,
• 56:03
  Speaker 8: gold foil. We wanted to make sure there was gold foil.
• 56:05
  Speaker 6: We wanted to make sure, yeah, differ than any other
• 56:07
  Speaker 6: wrestling figure ever.
• 56:08
  Speaker 5: We wanted to top it like you know what's inside of it.
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: But yeah, it's just a look of it.
• 56:12
  Speaker 8: It just had it had to look different, It had
• 56:14
  Speaker 8: to look like it was not necessarily just for kids
• 56:17
  Speaker 8: and uh and and you know what, it was great.
• 56:20
  Speaker 8: I remember seeing it for the first time immediately loved it.
• 56:22
  Speaker 8: A guy named Jonathan Weissman was the one that actually,
• 56:25
  Speaker 8: uh designed it. I remember that he was on the team. Yeah,
• 56:30
  Speaker 8: and for the first time I saw it, like I
• 56:32
  Speaker 8: actually remember I drew it, actually have I think I
• 56:35
  Speaker 8: have the original drawing somewhere.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: But.
• 56:40
  Speaker 8: It might be the only thing I've ever drawn that
• 56:41
  Speaker 8: actually may be worth more than a dollar. But uh,
• 56:44
  Speaker 8: claim yeah, claim no. But it was. It was a
• 56:48
  Speaker 8: great time and I felt like we were on the
• 56:50
  Speaker 8: cusp with something, and especially once the buyers came in
• 56:52
  Speaker 8: and they were like, you know, they walked through and
• 56:54
  Speaker 8: they were like this is this is really cool? You know,
• 56:57
  Speaker 8: and then you know what, it proved itself out because
• 57:00
  Speaker 8: by the time we hit the you know, two thousand
• 57:04
  Speaker 8: and nine, I believe it was the last one year
• 57:06
  Speaker 8: we had it, and there were challenges towards the end.
• 57:08
  Speaker 8: We can get into all of that, but like we
• 57:10
  Speaker 8: we were bigger than the Attitude era. We we two
• 57:14
  Speaker 8: thousand and nine, we were selling more product than we
• 57:16
  Speaker 8: sold the Attitude Era.
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: I believe it.
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: Because so this past year I went back, I got
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: nostalgic for these class superstars and re bought the whole
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: the whole sex for that one USA Warrior, and I've
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: been slowly unboxing them because it's over five hundred figures.
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: Oh my god, it's insane.
• 57:29
  Speaker 8: I can't believe you. I can't believe. I mean, I've
• 57:31
  Speaker 8: seen I saw your your setup. It's incredible, and I
• 57:34
  Speaker 8: can't imagine how much time that must have taken. I
• 57:37
  Speaker 8: saw your setup too, it's intensely I know, it's intense long.
• 57:41
  Speaker 7: A psychopaths, so I needed them all, you know what
• 57:44
  Speaker 7: I'm saying.
• 57:45
  Speaker 5: He did this in like two months too.
• 57:47
  Speaker 8: I remember, I remember Frighten. It took you down some
• 57:51
  Speaker 8: interesting trails.
• 57:51
  Speaker 7: Oh it did gay shout out.
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: But now, yes, there was a couple of stingers and
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: they're like Paul Barris Tall Undertaker or something, you know
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: where the back decko is not there.
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: But I think the ringside task toweled debacle.
• 58:05
  Speaker 8: Yeah, oh man, that almost got me killed. Well, so for.
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: Those who don't know, Taz of course wears the towel
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: on his head, the black towel.
• 58:15
  Speaker 6: Which even that looking back on it would be a
• 58:17
  Speaker 6: huge mistake because if you open that figure now that
• 58:20
  Speaker 6: black Towe wil Be Oliver his face.
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: Well, I don't think, Yeah, what was the deal with that?
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: A lot of the soft guy, the plastics.
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 58:29
  Speaker 8: Anyway, No, I mean, I just think I think it's
• 58:32
  Speaker 8: I think that what you're saying is right. It's just
• 58:34
  Speaker 8: I think that the whatever the fabric was, over the
• 58:37
  Speaker 8: course of time.
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: And whatever leads it still happens today with Mattel though
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: it still happen.
• 58:42
  Speaker 7: It's still happening anyway.
• 58:44
  Speaker 6: So they got a storm Hogan yesterdays and he was
• 58:47
  Speaker 6: all excited and he opened it the whole Oh no,
• 58:50
  Speaker 6: oh no.
• 58:50
  Speaker 5: Underneath the shirt it's the same exact thing.
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: But with this Taz it was package. So it looks
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: like he's wearing you know, the.
• 58:56
  Speaker 7: Siglet top and the towels are on his waist.
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: So he's wearing a dress. It looks like he's wearing
• 59:01
  Speaker 5: Perry sat in his dress. Yeah.
• 59:02
  Speaker 8: So I don't think I I don't think I annoyed
• 59:06
  Speaker 8: anyone more than task in all during the course. So
• 59:11
  Speaker 8: there was yeah, there was two. So so of course
• 59:15
  Speaker 8: that was the first one, and he was not happy,
• 59:17
  Speaker 8: and I you know. I told him. I told him.
• 59:20
  Speaker 8: I was like, listen, this is never going to happen again.
• 59:23
  Speaker 5: Do something like that happen.
• 59:25
  Speaker 8: Story, Here's how it happened. It happens when you're trying
• 59:28
  Speaker 8: to do three hundred figures a year, freaking crazy number, right,
• 59:32
  Speaker 8: Like we were doing such an intense number of figures here.
• 59:35
  Speaker 8: I mean, there are figures that didn't even have the
• 59:37
  Speaker 8: opportunity to fully vet review because.
• 59:39
  Speaker 6: Just the glasses is four to oh nine, like I said,
• 59:41
  Speaker 6: he was over five.
• 59:44
  Speaker 8: Ye guys, right, that's just classics in the meantime, the
• 59:48
  Speaker 8: meantime aggression.
• 59:50
  Speaker 6: Yeah, oh my gosh, PA three packs, Treacherous, Trios.
• 59:55
  Speaker 8: Lux aggression like Deluxe Classic, like I have all those
• 59:58
  Speaker 8: two dude, we I don't know how many. We were
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 8: doing three hundred figures a year, four hundred, Like I
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 8: would say more, there's so many figures that we really
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 8: I will look, I mean quantity and quality, and there's
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 8: something to say for that. There's a happy medium too,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 8: like you can do too few and maybe we're doing
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 8: too many. But it was a lot of fun and
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 8: uh and yeah, I would say occasionally so task so
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 8: so the first time Taz was an appy and I
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 8: promised Taz, it's like, it's not gonna happen. And then
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 8: I get this phone call one day and I've never
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 8: talked to anyone who was more angry or ready to
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 8: kill me, like physically kill me.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: And it was over.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 8: It was over.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it's in the toy community, it's referred to
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 6: as the move.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: But it was supposed to be like in this set
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: of Bruthers figures, he's a Titan Tron.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 6: Gibbeh way oversize it doesn't really fit the figure Bede.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 8: But he also felt like his body wasn't the actual
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 8: shape that his real body like I think, you know Taz,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 8: of course, yeah, I mean, look, he's more of an
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 8: athlete than ever it was. But Taz may have seen
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 8: himself as being, you know, a physical specimen.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 5: I think all actually figures I always say are larger
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 5: than life.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 6: Yes, you know, every cur hawkets for everybody is probably
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 6: safe to say it's been more buffer than the real person.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: It's like all the zach Ryders are not quite so.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 6: I think when he sees that, you know, it's always
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 6: like a shining example of yourself.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: And then he's sees stuff like that, You're like Oh.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 8: Yeah, so is me, Mike Archer and Taz on the
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 8: phone together with Taz, basically Mike convincing Taz not to
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 8: actually kill me and me communicating Taz you will do
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 8: more Taz figures and please don't kill me, and.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: And uh, that about wraps it up for this edition
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: of The Major Rewind. If you want to listen to
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: the rest of the Jeremy interview, I'll be posting a
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: part two the next edition of The Rewind. But you
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: could always go back in the archives and just listen
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: to the whole thing for yourselves. That's the beauty of it.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: But you know that might be a lot of work
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: for you, and then you got to search for it.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: Then you got to find it, and then that's what
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: I'm here for. That's what the rewind is all about.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: It's about just bringing you these little nuggets and making
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: you say, oh yeah, I remember that, And a lot
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: of it is stuff that you know, it's not like
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: the Jeremy interview. We could just search it out. You know,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: we're picking stuff up from different episodes. So yeah, that's
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: what it's all about. So shout out to Jeremy once again.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: That man is an amazing person. He's going through a
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: tough time with everything, but he's taking it on the chint,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: just like our good friend of the show, Ali Catch
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: and you know we got the We got our major
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: Bendy coming out, So let's show her some support. Ali
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: is someone who's has become a good friend of mine
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: and someone I've worked with a lot the past couple
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: of years and been up and down on the roads with.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: And I could tell you, man, Ali, I've seen just
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: seen her growth and I truly think she's one of
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: the She gets it. That's all I could say. She
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: just knows the deal when it comes to professional wrestling.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: She's a hustler. She's a hard worker, student of the game,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: always willing to get in a car, and even at
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: her level, we'll do stuff that you know other people
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: will get too comfortable to do, but she's always She
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: truly loves this and I really it hurts my heart
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: to see her go down like that. But I know
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: she's not going to be down and out, and I
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: know she's not going to be down for long.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: So whatever we could do to.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: Help her, definitely help her out get the major Bendy
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: that's I think should be able for pre order and
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: just yeah, like set show her system to it.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 5: So I'm sure.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: Show her some support, show her some love. Ali catch
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: we all love you, we love we And with that,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: I will see you guys and next time,