Finn Bálor

hello it's the american nightmare cody rhodes welcome to what do you want to talk about we are at the lovely wwe warehouse this what do you want to talk about is a wwe and fanatics original production incredibly excited about our guest today we have wanted him on the podcast for quite some time he is incredibly busy and there's been a lot of oh maybe hey it could be this and maybe maybe it's going to happen here and then I've been told he's coming and then no he didn't and finally we have him so we're not going to waste our time because this one's a very special one for a myriad of reasons and and I could go on with this introduction because I have often waxed poetic about what he has contributed to the overall wrestling economy and atmosphere not just WWE someone that of many of us owe a great debt to again we're talking about the inaugural wwe universal champion a former united states champion intercontinental champion a two-time nxt champion all these things the founding father the one don't give anybody any else any credit for the bullet club and currently judgment day staple member just the absolute dude the guy Please welcome to What Do You Want to Talk About, Finn Balor. Thank you for the lovely introduction, man. You're here. Yeah. Finally. I feel like you're going to be like, all right, thank you, and then leave. Can't get out of here. Well, I do have a hard out in about an hour. This is the third attempt we've tried to do this. That's what they say. Was it the third time's a charm, right? Yeah, third time's a charm. Look at the Irish. Look at that. The luck of the Irish. Speaking of, we'll ride to it. Yeah. Can you tell me? I don't know if any of this is usable information. OTT. Love it. In Ireland. Yes. Yes. Over the top wrestling. Yeah. For people who don't know, it's an independent company in Ireland who have a lot of the guys who I came up in the business now work there. Yeah. Continue. No, I'm just so curious. You mentioned the Luckily Irish, so I jumped right here. Am I allowed to make a bit of a confession? Go ahead. You know my OTT confession? I know. You don't have to apologize to me. I feel like I have to apologize to the entire country. I've told it on this podcast before because of the immense amount of guilt I have with it. I will tell it one more time. I came to OTT. I saw a giant poster. I was on an indie run where it's really all you did was see the poster. You didn't even know what you were doing half the time. You saw a graphic. You saw my stable mates. It was Madden Nick Jackson at the time. All this big giant photo of me. So I kind of thought, oh, maybe I'm the main gig here. Mistake. OTT had built up many of in-house stars and had a true program. They were doing business with the local and with people they'd homegrown. We were just a little sizzle on the plate. And that night, one of your contemporaries and peers and someone that you've been a mentor for and someone who you've kind of brought to the fold, that being J.D. McDonough, was set to have his big night. and I'll just say I went long. Was it against Walter, now Gunter? I don't think it was against Walter. No, okay. Because I feel like Walter might have been the one to tell me, hey, don't go 18 extra minutes or whatever it is. Having people at the time, I was having them kiss the ring because it was a ring thing. They'd get all into it. It was very like you'd tee it up and they'd do it. So it took an excessive amount of time. Whatever, public transportation runs differently in the United States than it does in Ireland. And I made the mistake of going incredibly over to where when he won the championship and had his big moment, a lot of people had left because they had to leave. Yeah, like, I think it was a Sunday night and, like, last bus is, like, 10.30. Yeah. And, like, people use public transport in Ireland. You know, they don't drive places. They don't. And I was still in the ring at, like, 10.15. So I didn't know until later. There's a whole online snafu. we're not going to cover it all here but uh uh that's my that's my brief apology to ott which i will consistently apologize but it's a great it's a great company it's a great company yeah and a great bunch of guys and they're doing great business and it's uh it i was super lucky to get the opportunity to work there yeah uh last december and they brought me and jd over to work against two of the guys out there and it was such a fun night one of the most memorable nights of my career How was the ring? Small. Small? Yeah. Yeah. But I didn't take any bumps, so it was fine. Oh, wow. What a vet. No bumps, huh? No, it was fine. What a vet. This drink you have, tell me about it. This drink I have, I've been told, is called Demon Blood. Demon Blood? Yes. Wow, okay. Which contains Wheatley's American Vodka. Dang, damn it. Damn right it does. I haven't tasted it yet, so. Get it? Yeah, cheers. This is a classic American mule, again, brought to us by our friends at Wheatley American Vodka. I hear that one's a little warm in the chest. That's not bad, actually. Yeah? I like that, yeah. Do we have the ingredients list on that? Probably at the bottom of the screen right now. No, it is not straight vodka with a dash of color. It's coming across the bottom of the screen right now. Was it warm in the chest as described? No, not at all. I'm married to a Mexican, so. Oh, my gosh. deal with some heat the heat hey yeah i want to talk about that okay i want to talk about that yeah uh where'd you guys meet uh we met actually we met in san jose yeah uh it was my first wrestlemania she was working for fox i was doing like one of those media mornings yeah and she interviewed me and we just kind of like crossed paths and that was it okay and then we kind of I kept in touch once every six months by DMs or whatever. Ha ha, nice to see you or whatever. And then about six years later, nah, it was a couple years later, maybe four or five years later, I said, you know what? There's something about this girl. I want to ask her out. So I asked her out. Well, I didn't ask her out. I asked for a number because we're DMing. So I asked her for a number. Yeah, you got to get it out of that DMs. Yeah, yeah. And she said no. Whoa. Yeah. In another story, guys. I said no. In a story. There it is. Oh, man. Oh, no. Okay. All right, well. Oh, wow. But we kept DMing, like, for, like, another month or two. Like, we were DMing, like, every day back and forth. And then I finally, like, said, hey, come on. Like, give me the number. Give me the digits. Yeah. We got to take this to the next level. And, yeah, we never looked back. That was it. Did you ever get an answer? Was there a gamesmanship in this saying? No, she just said, like, I live in Mexico. You live in America. You're a wrestler. I work in TV it's never gonna work oh she just gave up on it before before it even started yeah she was just dismissive yeah it was just too much of a stretch of an imagination oh my gosh and how long have you been together seven years does she does she love what you do or she she appreciates what I do she used to love it more when I when she wasn't with me now she sees the risks and the injuries and like the effect it has on me and she doesn't like it as much and but uh i think that's important too because like if you have someone at home who's like a super fan yeah then i'm always finn right and like yeah you start to like feed your own ego and then you'd like you just like lose the run yourself so i think it's super important to have someone at home that like helps keep you grounded i'm like yeah when i go home i well home is home well Right, yeah. Like, home really now is like the airplane and the Marriott, because we're on the road so much. I live in Miami. Miami doesn't feel like home. Ireland now, when I go home, which is home, home, and all my family are there, I've kind of been gone so long, yeah. Don't really relate to the environment there anymore. And like, what I picture as home is like Ireland 20 years ago. oh ireland's like evolved so much and like changed in those years and they're like it'll always be home but i don't don't sometimes feel at home there but maybe it's just because i'm dipping in and out because you know i'm only in there for four or five days at a time it's not the greatest term but the carnival aspect of what we do kind of makes makes makes us a carny in a way where like Like everyone else has a home life. Yeah. And we don't often. Or sometimes we have seasons of it where we do. And then you get back into this and you get going full tilt. Yeah. I asked in the sense of if she likes it. Just as I've gotten older, I don't bring it back home anymore. Which is wild because I feel like everything career-wise, it's such a wonderful season for WWE. Everything's happening. but a lot of times I'm asked, oh, how was it? And it's like old man style. It was good. Like it's, there's so much behind the, it was good. Yeah. So much there, but I'd rather it not enter the space because then you never escape it. Yeah. You know, then you're always, and it's the same when it's, Liberty's four and we have stairs in our house and that's okay. That's like my biggest challenge is seeing those stairs. Because, I mean, anyone who has children knows that all they do is once you sit down, you have to get back up. There's a reason you have to get back up. And that's probably the most I'll ever need pre-workout in my life is when I'm in my home. Like, because you don't want to be that. Like, you want to be papa or dad who's on. None of the jobs, no big deal. I'm good, you know? But yeah, it's a wacky world we live in. And you've always loved it, right? I've always loved it, yeah. since i was a kid yeah pretty much like one of my earliest memories as a kid was watching world of sport wrestling with my dad and my grandfather yeah and uh my dad my grandfather was into the wrestling but my dad wasn't into the wrestling but at the time wrestling was more popular than football which we you call soccer yeah so they would show the wrestling on a saturday afternoon and at the bottom of the screen it would flash up like the football results the scores yeah so my dad was watching it for the football and my grandos was watching for the rest and like big daddy yeah yeah sorry uh giant haystacks big daddy kendo nagasaki all those guys so that was like early memories and then like kind of transition into wwe when sky tv came to ireland and then that was like ultimate warrior hogan coco beware was one of my favorites it's such a departure from big daddy i know you're talking big daddy and giant haystacks anyone who's not seen it it's very short but i know i'm not looking at the in-ring work as much as the crowd the crowd are going bananas they they they believed yeah uh regal always would talk to me about big daddy but i never saw it and one tour overseas i just decided to start watching the big daddy stuff and it blew me away it was so vastly different from crockett or wwe or w at the time but again i'm not watching for i'm not making fun of it at all because look at these people they are invested in this they were that's such a when when you think world of sports so i don't know if you know this i'm kind of a world of sport hater oh but i'll make my admission to why yep so wrestling schools all around the country i i have one now we're going with this and i wrestled folk style wrestling and freestyle whatever you call olympic style wrestling as a kid that's what i considered i suppose real wrestling but then when you go to a wrestling school chain wrestling is real wrestling and this is the whole like hip and you're doing you know like really great stuff like Davey Boy style I'm using Davey Boy's example or like dynamite and all the things you can really impressive stuff and I kind of always frown like that are you emulating grappling is are we emulating it but really internally my full admission is that I just wasn't able to pull it off so that's why I'm kind of a hater for the world of sports style of the whole, you know, not just the under the legs and some of the fun spots they did. They're very hard to pull off, these sequences. I think they're very hard to pull off convincingly. Yeah. I feel like a lot of it is emulated now, but really, really badly. Yeah. And that is where it looks bad. So I think, it's funny you say this, this is such a deep cut from a wrestler perspective, but you might agree. Chain wrestling done bad is awful. Terrible. I think chain wrestling and Mr. Perfect Bret Hart, the kicks on the back of the leg, are the two most I've seen tried to be redone spots in all of wrestling, never to the same effect. I know that's a very specific match, but I see it a lot with chain wrestling where it's like the hand up and the whole that moment, and it's not giving me what I used to see with it, if that makes any sense. Maybe it's because it's not, maybe because folks don't know what you're doing in terms of what are you simulating. Well, I feel like a lot of matches people see, they see like the pay-per-view match or the blow-off match. And there's been like a whole story arc up to that where they've done all these different sequences and edited them and like tweaked them and changed them. And it makes sense because of the story. yeah but people are emulating just the blow-off match right right so like they haven't told the backstory sure so it doesn't really make sense well it's a copy of a copy in a way you know copy of a copy of a copy of a copy because most people are probably copying someone yeah who copied it from someone in the 70s who copied it from someone in the 50s who who knows you uh grown-up favorite wrestler uh grown-up like super young would have been ultimate warrior transitioned into Shawn Michaels transitioned into Shawn Waltman oh yeah yeah I gotta go show him all but sorry so we just added this Ben Brown the archivist this is WrestleMania 7 the trench from warrior and what uh warrior and match and then Liz comes in the ring after also we were discussing why he puts the trench coat on after the match we don't know we our theory was that maybe he thought that they weren't going to get it back to him you know sometimes our stuff goes missing or like got auctioned off or whatever so he puts it on to run out auctioned yeah yeah you know like i don't know or in my case be with my demon costumes have got auctioned off yeah yeah that's you guys disappear you gotta keep eyes on that stuff otherwise it's gone you know some people have sent boots i remember to like for exhibits and only one boot came back there's a you know there's a trading world for it all yeah this message is sponsored by raycon now that the holidays are over it's the perfect time to upgrade your gear for the new year raycon's essential open earbuds are a game changer for workouts they don't block out everything like traditional earbuds so i can still hear what's going on around me while running lifting or walking outside the sound quality is just as good as the more expensive brands and they have eight hours of playtime and 36 hours of battery with the charging case. I charge them maybe once a week. Right now Raycon is ringing in the new year with a sale so it's the perfect time to grab them and if you don't like them they have a 30-day guarantee. I've been using my Raycons pretty much every day since I got them whether I'm at the gym, running errands, hanging at home, or on the road. They're the ones I actually reach for over my other earbuds because I can still hear what's going on around me without sacrificing sound quality. Honestly, they've just become part of my daily routine. The essential open earbuds are here to help you crush your new year's goals. Go to buyraycon.com slash roads open to get 20% off site Thanks Raycon for sponsoring And behind you over your shoulder is uh D yeah There he is Diminito That a funny story Tell me So I got told I was working against Iguana in AAA. And it was the first time I'd worked against someone who I wasn't familiar with in a long time. And obviously, when you're in the indies or you're in Japan, you kind of research your opponents and you come up with some ideas beforehand. But WWE is pretty much like you see everyone all the time. You kind of know all their stuff. Yeah. So this is the first time that I hadn't like known someone that I was stepping in the ring with. So I said, oh, I better do a little research like I used to. What a pro. Yeah. So I went on YouTube and it was 20 past four in the afternoon. Oh, I got you. Yeah. And I typed in Iguana. Yeah. Or Mr. Iguana. and the first match that came up was Mr. Iguana against Santino. Oh, my God. Cobra versus the Iguana. Cobra versus Iguana. Oh, my gosh. And I said, damn, I need something like that. Yeah. And then poof, like a lightning bolt, it hit me. I need a demon puppet. Yeah. Yeah. How are you going to, how do you top an Iguana? Demon puppet. Demon puppet, yeah. I love that that's the match that came up. I love that that during that time of the day I love that that's what came up also even if it wasn't that time that's the right match to be watching because the psychology of that weapon slash exciting partner however you'd refer to your contemporary your puppet that moment Santino was great about when the Cobra came out or when the other Cobra came out there was like a Cobra then he had another one stuffed in there oh my gosh he used to do the spot you would have appreciated it. It was Arne Anderson's favorite spot of the night. Santino would do a Master Lock challenge and he'd get put in the Master Lock. That was it, he'd sit in the chair, put in the Master Lock and he'd start shaking and he'd start going and the entire crowd of these live events would start rallying behind him and they would do one side and he'd come up, they'd get to the other side, they're working all four sides. He'd finally get back to square one and it looks like he's about to break it and he just passed right out. And that was their legit live event. And it was, I saw it every night and still thought, like, he's going to get out. It's going to happen tonight. And then he just slunk over in his chair and they ring the bell. You know what's crazy about him? And I don't know if you have this experience. I bet you do, especially. Isn't it funny sometimes the shootery types, since he knows this judo master. Yeah, I was just going to say, but that comes with confidence, right? Right? Yeah, definitely. And then they get here and his bit is all comedy. Yeah. It's a strange thing. There's got to be someone else like that too, right? Well, I mean, like if you look at Doink, the original Doink, there's all these guys who were just absolute like headhunters. There was a guy in World of Sport, going back to World of Sport, Les Thatcher, I'm pretty sure he was a shooter. Yeah. You had to kind of be. Yeah. Yeah. Do you consider yourself a shooter, hooker, any of these things? You've got grappling experience. You want to know a story? Hell yeah. Which I don't think I've told actually. Yeah. going like about the bullet club and where the name came from yeah the kid yes so i was a young boy in new japan yeah and before the shows we would all like warm up in the ring and the young boys would like be made do squats and push-ups and stuff and then we'd get in the ring with the senior wrestlers and we'd be stretched which would be like shot on basically and beat up and uh we we noticed Suzuki was in the ring with me. He was a legitimate grappler. Yeah. And I caught him with an armbar. Oh. And he goes, oh, David, you're a real shooter. And then Tiger Hattori, who you know, kind of heard that. And every day, he said, hey, David, you're the real shooter. You're the real shooter. So this was going on in the locker room for about a year. Wow. He said, hey, David, you're a shooter. And he'd just do it like that shooter. and when the time came about a year later, the office came to me and said, hey, we want to turn your heel, we want to put you at Fale, we need to get you guys a group. So then they decided to put in Carl Anderson and Tama. I was trying to think what ties us all together and at the time Fale was using the hand grenade finish, similar to Solo and then there's the machine gun and I was the real shooter. So I was like, what links us all together? Yeah. And it was Bullet Club. I mean, you say it in the simplest of ways, but it was Bullet Club changes the entire business. Like, there's very few people who ever sit on this awesome show, have these drinks. Well, hopefully there's more, but there's very few Cheers who you can literally tell changed our entire industry with a thing that they contributed. I feel like that's the greatest title of all sometimes. I know I always do this to you, and I did it in the ring live in Belfast, and I'll continue to do it to you. You done it actually when you first came back to WWE as well. Because I went on your bus to welcome you back, give you a hug, and you spat it out straight away. And I was blown away. Because not many people are as honest as you. and not many people like tell how they really feel you know a lot of people like like shut down and kind of like try and put on this macho image yeah but you don't I mean how could I I benefited so much so that they call me back that I benefited from a thing you created and I got to be part of even though I'm not the most glamorous part of it I got to be part of it for just a short moment in time look at the list of people who've been part of the bullet club and then of course we were talking about it in here and not everyone knows especially if we've been in the wwe bubble i don't want to be the one i know i jokingly say this all but you're owed so much money by so many other wrestlers are you you legit and i know it's not paypal zelle yeah I know you're always like, no, no. But I mean, if you were to today with all these wonderful people in the TKO bubble who bring up these graphs of ratings, relevancy and revenue and these really great metrics. If you were to really backlog and go all the way to when the shirt started bringing back to Sweden in a different way where it wasn't just a nostalgic way and becoming this entity. it's so hard to get anything rolling outside of here and it's even harder to get things rolling outside of here consistently where it's must see have to see it i mean you've heard this hot topic story a thousand times right the head president of hot topic comes to wrestlemania sees the bullet club shirts everywhere and keeps asking hey one of the bullet club guys coming out and they had to explain no that's not it's a it's another company uh it was started by he's actually here now it's a whole thing but then he thought well i still want the shirt the only reason that shirt ever makes it to shelves is because you had you had built it with pretty much just not luck full hard work and what you guys were doing making the whole world and wrestling is all about turning heads how long can you turn someone's head how long can you gravitate their attention i remember my dad's not the greatest like commentator but I remember one time he said something about Hogan when Hogan was in the ring and I never forgot it because I could tell he was just talking from a completely internal perspective but it worked for the commentary he said he's here at Russell Sting at Starrcade he says no one has captured the imagination of the audience like that man for this long in the history of the business and I thought that's really what we do how long do we have them and a lot of times we think we still have them and nope we've it's over we can't right that's something you created that still is capturing their their imagination and it's it's your creation but i think that's the payment right because i was in nxt about like eight months and i get a call from new japan i was like hey david we got some money for you we got a tiger Hey, David-chan, we got royalty check for you, man. I'm like, whoa, we got a royalty check for New Japan? Yes. I said, Tiger, thank you so much. How much am I doing? He goes, like $118. Yes. I'm like, $118? Oh, no. He goes, yeah, man, we need your bank details. I said, Tiger, give it to charity. I don't need it. I'm good. I'm good. Yeah. So I feel like the payoff with Bullet Club, for me at least, was not financial. I feel like it was way more valuable than any dollar amount that I could have been given from just what it's given to the business. Yeah. Well, I can't thank you enough. I can't. And I stand by the fact that you're owed a lot of money. At this point, I need to also thank Carl Anderson, Gallows, Fale, Tama. Would you include Gallows in there? You got to, right? Yeah, 100%. Ever tell you about it? I can't speak highly enough of Gallows. He's so funny. And I can't express how much the locker room misses him. So we don't talk. Gallows and I will not talk for six months, and then I'll see him. He'll come back or something, and it's right back. Oh, yeah. He's so funny, and I didn't know Carl that well. And so, like, they just make such a good team, such a good unit. Anyway, so Gallows had an indie in Georgia called Bulletproof. Again, he's still riding. It was still Bulletproof. He was still on the bullet train, right? And I kid you not. I like that. I kid you not. I wrestled. I forget who I wrestled. We did the main event. It was a small indie, but we did pretty well for a Georgia independent. and then no joke gallows as we're setting down literally slapping hands and the show's over saying good night gallows pulled in i was gonna sound terrible but i think it's okay with a truck and he had in the back of it all of his ww action figures and he put them on the merch table and offered like a basically a half off hey get these it was this last little minute like the 50 50 rally this last little carnival like element and i mean people were eating it up it was i and i didn't think i'd see him i i just he was doing this and asked me to be part of it and it he's always got an angle always moving i think people like him in the business when they're not around we will really miss them you know because as as time goes on it gets really corporate and you know man i need a guy telling somebody he's going to backdrop him while he's butt naked making him uncomfortable you know i need like that moment he's he's a dying breed yeah for sure i'm trying to think i'm like who else is like that right there's not many no and that's not just japan america and internet he's very specific to that style of wrestler and i don't i mean yeah i don't like i haven't been like on the independent scene for like 10 years so like i maybe there's guys out there but i don't All right. This next question is part of a segment we call Game Plan fueled by Game Day Men's Health. Because let's be honest, showing up at your best takes work. So let me ask you, let me ask you, what is your plan for staying sharp? Could be physical, could be mental, could be family stuff, whatever it is, how do you stay in the zone and keep pushing even when life's stacked against you? I'm a routine guy and I like to do the same things every day no matter what day it is. So pretty much every day, same breakfast, same lunch, same dinner, same routine. And that's slightly different if I'm on the road or if I'm at home. But most importantly is eat whole foods. Just real foods. Eggs, meat, chicken, nuts, avocados, yogurt, berries. That's it. A little bit of caffeine in the morning. And try and spend some time in nature, be it in the mountains, in the woods, or in the ocean. That's exactly why game day is out here. Helping guys optimize their energy, focus, and longevity. You don't have to slow down. you just need the right game plan check out gameday men's health.com slash cody to learn more that's a great question in terms of from now all the international success wwe doing international shows left and right at international it's no longer a secret it's no longer this thing we go over and oh my gosh these crowds are amazing but you really don't know now big ple's are being hosted any independent or young up-and-coming guys that you've seen who are coming from ireland from the united kingdom is there anyone that's that you think so on the level that that will make it over can't can't think of his name off the top of my head and i feel embarrassed because i worked him at ott uh he's a young kid bad stuff bad stuff i know his father call him naligan that's all that So this is a good story. We got the dad. So when I was running independent shows in Ireland, like back in like 2002, Colm Nelligan, this kid's father, was like one of the guys who had helped me out, like taking tickets or setting up the lights or whatever. And his infant kid was like two years old, and we would bring him to the shows. And there's a picture, I think, of me in the ring with Jordan J.D. McDonough sitting ringside. and then behind him column nelligan holden his son who i then wrestled at ott like a couple weeks ago yeah or months ago with jordan so it was wild most generational does he have the chops or was it more just seeing the love and i like he's somebody you know no he has the chops he has the chops he was super young he was like 1920 21 yeah and like listened like didn't get stressed when I didn't call a bunch of stuff beforehand. And yeah, he was great. Oh, man. But I feel like the level in OTT is really raising. It's a word. I feel like even with my big snafu over there, what I didn't realize is the level of quality product. Sometimes with Independence, you've got the mom and pops, where it's really about, hey, we've got the guests. You do the mom and pop stuff. Give them a little bit of what they had seen on TV previously. It's more of that. And then other times, you have something that's in-house, it's built, and you're really there to just kind of push it over the edge a little bit, and that's it. And OTT is also great production ahead of their time in terms of production. When NXT UK started, which was a huge thing at the time for British and European wrestling, I feel like it kind of took all the talent. and it starved all the indies and it took a long time for them to rebuild. The refresh to happen. And for a lot of them it hasn't even happened yet because there's no one to learn from or look up to. The guys like Tyler and Pete and everyone else who came to WWE, now the younger kids don't have anyone to learn from. So I feel like there was probably a huge negative effect on the gulf of talent that WWE took out of that, I guess, territory. Right. But slowly it's starting to rebuild. I mean we seen that domestically in the States with everything that popped up with other places to wrestle and things of that nature It strips away Yeah and then there a negative byproduct to it but then the positive byproduct is these 19 18 19 all of a sudden they're 22, they've grown, and they've had to do it very much on their own, and they've got a set of skills. So it always kind of, I hope, refreshes itself and replenishes. Otherwise, we have nowhere to look when we need it the most. Big news, WWE and sports fans, the world's number one sports fan festival, Fanatics Fest, is making its return to New York City. Fanatics is bringing you closer to the leagues, teams, superstars, and athletes you love across four action-packed days in July. Meet your favorite WWE superstars, get your hands on exclusive merch, catch live podcasts, and interact with the biggest names in sports. Tickets are on sale now, and fans of the podcast can use code CODY10 at checkout for 10% discount. Head to fanaticsfest.com to get your tickets today. I want to ask because we talked about the Bullet Club, and we've already talked about Demonito, but we didn't really hit the demon. And I feel like that's another area that's just incredibly—there's you doing body paint. in new japan and what would prince be doing what would you be doing that people would i want to see it that's going to be cool i want to see it and then there's another layer where you you i don't want to use the word market but you market it and it becomes in the character itself with the demon these are also bullet club level country like this is just my favorite thing about having a conversation with you today is to really if you're able to layer the amount of stuff you've done. And you're not done. My gosh, you're not close to done. Some are slow learners and some are rocket to the moon and that's it. This is really a body of work. That's something that the person who trained me was always about, hey, when my body of work is put up against his body of work, look at all these points. As far as the demon is considered, do you have a favorite moment with wwe and the demon um demon's a touchy subject for me um let's go back to the concept we can yeah right so i'd recently turned heel in new japan and i was like really fighting an uphill battle because i'd been babyface for so long squeaky clean yeah white meat babyface i'd recently turned heel um and i was now against like the you know shining lights ibushi you know the up-and-coming like white meat baby face handsome ibushi right and he's like wears white gear and we're in the tokyo dome whatever 45 000 people or something like that and i'm thinking like how can i make this like look different and i want to take everything away from the fans that they physically recognize me for okay right so the first idea was oh what if i wear like a bodysuit but i thought i don't know liger wears a bodysuit yeah so i'm like i'm kind of thinking about like the tokyo dome and how small the ring is in that giant arena um so i'm thinking about like the people in the back what are they gonna see i thought like wouldn't it be cool if it was like ibushi wrestling against a shadow right and that was like my original concept was like i was just going to be head to toe black completely black yeah and so for the people in the back it would look like he was wrestling against a shadow and that kind of slowly developed into the demon like in the weeks leading up to the the uh the dome show where we'd done it first and side note carl anderson who was in new japan with me at the time i told him the idea and he goes everyone's gonna laugh at you bro you gotta look stupid i said i'll try it who cares and i trusted him right but you know i said i'll just try it anyway it's worth a shot and uh i done it took off and it was cool uh but going back to the the question the favorite moment i'm not sure if i have a favorite moment because once I came to WWE it kind of got muddled up a little bit and there had to be like a reason for why the demon appeared and it all had to be storyline based and advertised and in my mind it was always just a cool entrance and it was something that like changed me into like you know Braveheart puts on the battle paint and he goes to war and that's the way it was for me but in WWE it had to be well what made him turn into the demon he had to get beat up and beat down and pushed to the limit to then turn into this monster yeah so so then it became the point where finn wasn't good enough only the demon could win so then like finn was lesser than the demon where they're supposed to be the same right so that was one issue i had with it the other issue i had with it was always advertised, which I like it to be a surprise. Like, oh, shit, the demon's here. Like, you know, and it just comes out and kicks ass. But a favorite moment would probably be Takeover UK. OK. But the hat. The hat. And yeah, yeah. So it was like the Jack the Ripper inspired, like London. Yeah, yeah. Not necessarily for the paint and the design, But the way the truck shot that entrance, the way I go from my silhouette with the London background on the screens into the lighting where then it reveals the demon with the hat. And then the fact that my family and friends were all there because the show was in London, that was a special night. And it was returning to London. I thought I'd kind of left that scene. And going back there with NXT, I think I was the champion defending the title. So it was pretty cool. That was a cool night. Are you ready to hold WWE history in the palm of your hand? Topps is bringing you closer to the action than ever before with WWE Topps Now. Highlighting the biggest matches and milestones from WWE shows and PLEs throughout the year. Tops 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 Tops 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 so 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 feel like, you know, there's always these booker sayings and these older wrestlers, whether they're the booker, producer, president. They always sometimes will say something, and I feel like there's an air of that here where did anyone ever tell you that, and this isn't an opinion as much as I'm curious if anyone told you, maybe that maybe it was something that you outgrew in terms of the demon character or just the general sense because like old school wrestling 101 look at you like you don't cover that up like you're you're 10 out of 10 dog oh you know like and you're shredded to the gills an old school wrestler perspective like i think a lot about when i wear the mask jason baker makes these masks he's super talented hate when he makes other people mask and doesn't tell me uh but um hate it uh legit but i always think about a lot of times like i think about my dad and i think about other old timers like no don't cover your face like that and i don't necessarily just subscribe to the philosophy because sometimes it's like no it's cool yeah it's cool i'm doing this cool thing right but i i wonder if that's something because it feels like maybe the block is filled in terms of i totally get all those it being advertised it's supposed to be a surprise but i don't know i just was curious did anyone ever tell you you didn't need it i don't think i need it and that's probably why i was so resistant to doing it for a long time yeah because like the way it was kind of been booked and and presented by the company i felt it just wasn't effective right and uh or as effective as it could have been yeah and then i think there was some sort of confusion about like why is he demon some nights and finn the other nights and then maybe some people are getting let down when i'm not the demon and stuff like that so uh i would love to go back to doing it yeah but i would love to have more creative control and i feel like i lost a lot of that uh when i especially when i came to the main roster i think it was done really effectively in nxt yeah i think when i came to the main roster wasn't done as well for multitude of reasons uh but in the future i would love to get like to do it i'll give you a moment of vulnerability on my half that i thought i'm not gonna tell him this he'll think this is but i'm gonna tell you all right i right before i left when i was doing stardust i wrote hunter like a four-page email which you know how that goes anytime it's more than a page it's probably already an issue that's a lot for someone to look at and sit down and give their time over i really wanted to wrestle the demon as stardust Because Stardust had no legitimacy. It was all comedy. But there was one match or one moment away from providing it some credibility, even in a losing effort. And I remember I wrote this whole email about it. And I don't know what happened. I wouldn't have read the email. Went into a spam, probably. Who knows? Who knows? He may never have seen it. But it speaks to not just the demon itself, but also NXT black and gold. And NXT, that entire NXT era is largely, actually, I was going to bring this person up. So much of it is your signing on and the name change, everything, all that first night, you coming in and committing to it. I was shocked. I was. I was genuinely shocked because he is such a prickly individual to find out that you and Kevin were tight. And he texted me while we were talking. So I wasn't going to look at my phone and be rude. I asked him, was there a question you asked? I think he asked a sincere question, which now I'm, you ready for a Kevin Owens question? Yeah, I hope I don't get emotional, though, because I do love Kevin. Oh, buddy, this is a, I wasn't ready. I thought he'd send a joke in. You know how he says some shit every now and then? So it's like, he'll say something that's like, you can feel his mood. This is from Kevin Owens, who is now the co-host of What Do You Want to Talk About? Just with this question alone. Ask him if he realizes just how much he has done for me since we met by being himself and how important he has been to me for the last 10 years and how much I value his friendship. It goes on. He is the epitome of I take a fatal bullet to the head for the guy any day of the week in my book. not just for him i do it for his whole family the greatest crew of people ever what a great question from kevin was that a question or it's just a statement meets a question how he his actual question was uh if you if you realize how much you've done for him i don't think kevin realizes how much he's done for me yeah right because then although like me and kevin have had very similar backgrounds and journeys to WWE, we actually only met each other once in passing at an indie show in London. Yeah. And it was about four months before we started in NXT. And that was the only reason why we even shook hands and said, oh, hey, man, nice to meet you. But we started in NXT together. Yeah. And we're two guys coming from similar career paths, but different places. Yeah. But we're now in a new company, in a new country, trying to learn a new style. Yeah. And kind of also been tested a little bit, right? Because the performance center, they test you. Because we went from him main event in ROH to me, main event in New Japan, to now being in a warehouse doing forward roles with rookies. Hip toss class, bro. Drop down, leapfrog. Drop down, leapfrog. Drop down, leapfrog. and like it's a test right and if you shut up and pass the test you'll be fine that's really good advice for some people who need to hear right now yeah yeah everything's a test in this business like you don't have to succeed you just have to try dude right you just have to give it everything and if you've go to failure that like the coaches will be happy right everything is a test though Yeah, so me and Kevin kind of bonded really strongly over the common obstacles that we were having to overcome together in this new life that we're having in NXT and WWE. And yeah, I know we're very probably different. I couldn't believe it. Like personally, in every way, the way we wrestle is different. Our lifestyles are different, but sometimes obstacles attract. and like me and Kevin, I can honestly say he's one of my favorite people and best friends in the whole world. This question I think has set off, I think I'm now going to have, I want Kevin to send in a question forever. I don't think he'll be near as sincere with you, but I said that just in, I wanted to make sure, I was like, I want to cover all my bases with him. And I asked him that and I thought, I wonder, he'll probably just send in a Kevin-like message now. That was quite special. I love the folks at Wheatley. We like to say we're the American Dream Team, so I often ask people, who's your American Dream Team? Survivor Series Team, Zombie Apocalypse, who you're taking with you, whatever, 70 people, 4 people, animals, whoever is with you, who's your ride or die, who is— Survivor Series is a good way to break it up into numbers, but who's coming with you? Who's on your team? J.D. McDonough. Love it. Kevin Owens. Of course. Co-host. sammy zane yeah chad gable no yes okay otis okay those two are my riding buddies okay gotta have them yeah adrian neville okay that's a solid crude no one is beating that team i'll put my pops in there there you go yeah no one's beating this team no how old's your pops uh like 74 75 in a fight like this he doesn't have to get up because i'll just keep money open yeah like he doesn't have to I'll handle it. Don't worry. But also Chad Gable, like, you know, the shooter. Yeah. You know, Chad, I said this the other day, and I hope Chad being a little shorter, even though he's Jack of the Gills, always suggests stuff that's like, hmm, I wonder if I'm like a bit too big for that. But because it's Chad, I'm like, nah, we'll do it. And going back to the shooter stuff. Yeah. Shorty G. Shorty G. completely opening to like showing his ass that guy's incredibly talented he's one of the best guys we got in and out of the ring I feel like there's something on the hill for him I hope he keeps he seems always gun for it and hungry for it just something because he special he may be one of my favorite matches I had since I came back here So matches like the live event matches which we had plenty those are always going to be the most fun But then the TV matches are, like, hard-hitting, short, sweet, who knows what they may be, but with a lot of content. And he was one that I got, like, an incredible, incredible moment out of him that night. So, yeah, shout out to him. That team's pretty... No one's beating that team, though. There's no one on the team. you could get on the other team could be like brock roman seth you i'm gonna be honest i don't think logan paul cena oh lp i think you're probably gonna win sure lp was wearing a bulletproof vest in the ring last night and i just i i wasn't sure do you know what was it a bulletproof vest was the new york market scary to him or something what the well two things i wanted to flash back to because you said sean waltman you said xbox so you know how i did the jumping back kick i just wanted to tell you this because this was my experience uh you watch wrestling you see how someone does it this was something that happened to me uh during uh my brief time with new japan but it was a good lesson is the speed and fluency of things can be a little different and uh our friend kenny Omega does that same kick. He does it a little differently, though. And I thought it would be kind of Sean Waltman-style jump up and it, like, pops, and then you fall. Not, like, drives through. Yeah, he kind of goes more like that. Yeah, and I had, I was wrestling him and Kota Ibushi, and brother, it went through my head. And it's not his fault, it's my fault. But it's the first time I got, like, a boxer cut, and I'm just bleeding profusely, and I thought, this was like, every time you see sean waltman do it it's this yeah it's not that i don't know and i kept thinking you know hit me with that xbox hit me that xbox and now anytime somebody's like hey you know he's spinning back i don't know is it is it that or is it something else you know because like driving through was i had no clue it was coming like that but yeah that was my when you mentioned him because uh brian danielson is another person who talks about him all the time in terms of being one of the most underrated yeah insanely great this being sean waltman valuable wrestlers for someone to watch Yeah, for me, SummerSlam 95, Hakushi versus 123 Kid was one of the matches that I've watched on repeat the most of my childhood. And like Sean made me, like Sean Waltman made me, was the first person that kind of made me believe, oh, maybe I can do this. Because he was like the smaller guy and he's tall, but in that generation, like he's 6'2", I think. Yeah, right, yeah. Right? But like in that generation, they were all like 6'7", 6'8". so he like looked much smaller and i thought like oh maybe i can do it yeah he was the one who like made me like kind of have that belief that oh it's not impossible yeah you know and then he obviously beat razer and all that stuff and it's like oh yeah yeah he's he's i feel like anyone if you're just somebody who's there's all the library books are there now for you to go back and watch watch things like you're talking about he's psychologically yeah even it's hilarious he was a tall guy but he was small in that era because they're really you know i don't want to be crude but they're they're like dinosaurs the size of these men when i see my own brother or like billy gunn where who who are you like y'all y'all were living civilian life yeah oh my just just like what a stud and this was something we saw i saw at least in my time away on the indies being a big guys hard now because what do you do you're either champion yeah or you're you know like someone's heater so it is there's not that middle ground anymore i also think it's funny yeah how the big guys now are like 6'1 300 pounds yeah but like yeah like i i've always considered myself a light heavyweight i'm a big boy here now oh yeah i'm a big boy hey you know who's a super underrated big guy who not bloom oh my gosh like and he didn't even look like a big guy yeah in that at that time he's one that you know when you find yourself like you see a match somebody's like oh that was really good then three months later there's another match yeah he's somebody that is extremely underrated and i feel like with what him and sean are doing down there now i he definitely doesn't and he's a big part of your you know someone who was there for you when you came to florida and well therefore you in japan and carried it forward all the way he's another person contributions wise oh you know immense we were talking about last chapters and then i was doing you know what this is a thing when people ask me for a wrestling mount rushmore i tell a different one each time so that somebody finally is like this guy just makes this shit up he's not he's not committing to this but the last time i talked about it with somebody i said here's a last chapter about Rushmore. Here's four wrestlers who their last chapter was absurd. They gave something and you didn't even realize. Yeah. He's somebody that this was his life's work. Yeah. Like anytime you hear anybody that encounters him or has a moment, really, really special. I don't know if you want to speak to that, but that guy's a stud. Yeah, like going back like 24 years old, new boy, new young boy in New Japan, you know, sit at the front of the bus and like, I know like, what was his, he was doing the the first gimmick he'd done in the wwe was like uh prince albert yeah prince like all these tattoos and i was like oh my god that's a train in the back of the bus oh shit i better behave you know like all the japanese boys are behind me and he's right down the back of the bus i'm like sitting up at the front of the bus hey kid i'm like is he talking to me hey irish kid i'm like yes sir yeah come back here i'm like straight away like he's super welcoming oh yeah yeah like took me out for dinner like helped me get like acclimatized to uh working in japan living in japan how to deal with the office over there how to deal with the boys over there yeah uh and then like fast forward like eight years when i moved to nxt uh i had to find a a place to live because I'm not from America. So in the transition period of looking for a place to live, I actually lived with Matt Bloom and his family for three months. So to Matt and Farah, I would like to always say thank you because for me, they are like my American family. So Matt may be the one wrestler who doesn't owe you money. Well, there's other wrestlers. No, I owe him money. For the Bullet Club situation. I owe Matt Bloom a lot. Okay. Oh, my gosh. Well, shout outs. Yeah, cheers to Matt Bloom for sure. It's multiple times he's been mentioned. And it's important to note, too, that he's down there developing people now, developing individuals who are coming. Yeah. And actually, little known fact, I want to give him also another shout out because my second run in NXT, which I'm very proud of, which I consider probably some of my best in-ring work in my career. Okay. And the producer I worked with on every match was Matt Bloom. Yeah. and he's someone who really like understands how they work and for that I'm grateful for and I would love to have him on the main roster but I feel like he's much more valuable to the business at the performance center for sure and times change in a way that's really wild you know Ben is sitting there and I pointed him out several times Ben's never changing this warehouse is his yeah things come in here but all the other positions in here it's really wild if you look ww and you see like oh that guy's in charge of this now and that guy it's growing and then also the question of well who's next yeah right because it's such a different ww now who's interested in the metrics move on and people have to step in and eventually we'll have moved on and there'll be that's the crazy thing about wrestling i always tell people like don't really ever hate anybody don't don't hate anybody you you probably will but don't because you will work with them again you will you know like i have burned boats bridges everything and then known like oh you know ah i'm gonna have to deal with that person you know like i gotta figure out how that looks for me uh and after a while you start realizing like no just end it all professionally that's something that i feel like the old timers were maybe a little better than our generation or at least like emotional types like me is they were really good about all right we're done yeah see you again yeah later business is business right i feel like a lot of stuff right now is like way too personal yeah i mean i'm up yeah i need to hear that on a regular basis i'm i'm obsessed with this and it's like what you know just like it's sometimes it's just business yeah i think i used to be obsessed with it and like the older i've gotten like the more i've detached and i've separated like fergal from finn and like i can understand like if like i can sometimes i'm in the locker room and i i can like tell someone's like working me oh it's the worst you know or like you know trying to manipulate the situation bad salesman and i just i just doesn't bother me okay fine like because finn isn't a real person yeah and like fergal's gonna go home and it's not gonna affect like fergal tomorrow so i'd always try like zoom out and like oh you're not being booked right or you're not getting enough w's you're losing all the time i try and like zoom out and think of like 25 years not like yeah like a month you know do you know you probably paid me the best compliment i ever got as far as i think you already know this ever as a wrestler ever as just a wrestler and a person in business you were being way too generous with the statement but i stand by the fact that i still consider it my favorite compliment i ever received from one of my peers there's sheets at TV each week with all the shows that say no comps, like don't ask for comp tickets. And coming out of WrestleMania 39 through WrestleMania 40, it was a long sheet. It used to be like two or three, and it was a long sheet, and you thanked me for generally some of the uptick in business, and that was greater than anything you could probably experience experience in a character setting or in any setting because again the world does not revolve around one wrestler ever but sometimes we feel it does but still you do want to look back you don't want to be a wrestler who was so humble that you you never you never tipped your own hat you never you know but the best thing ever and hunter told me this years ago is nobody can put you over like somebody else and i thought oh man this guy who freaking changed our entire industry for him to say that once multiple times to me was incredibly kind and super well i mean it's day well i mean it and with the greatest respect to the people at the top before you when i came to the company like 10 years ago and was wrestling house shows they were like 30 capacity 40 capacity and that was a good night yeah oh yeah and now it's 100 capacity when that upswing happened was coincided with your arrival and i don't think that's a coincidence so i'm not gonna tip my hat oh my god my friends at wheatley they have uh this wonderful jingle uh we will have you watch and then I'll ask you to fill in one word. Vodka soda with Wheatley. Wheatley is so good, I drink it neatly. This song right here is for the red, white, and blue. You got good taste and you drink like a two. Wheatley is so good, I drink it neatly. Wheatley, American vodka. Wheatley, so good, I drink it neatly. If you could replace the word neatly, what would you say? Wheatley, so good, I drink it. Wheatley is so good, I drink it. infinitely okay okay nice nice yeah that's uh well done i think i'm glad i think jumping right in is the way to go on that we've had some people really get bogged down in that question i want to say one more thing i've kind of recently i don't say recently but maybe like in the last four years shied away from any kind of podcast or interview or just anything in public and tried to just focus on what I love doing, which is wrestling. And it's for a multitude of reasons, but I feel like the main reason is that there's just too much noise and too much content, and content for the sake of content, and it doesn't really mean anything. And I've stopped wanting to contribute to that. But I feel like this is something that means something, being able to speak to you. Oh, man. And I'm grateful for this opportunity to kind of dip my feet back into being in the public eye and kind of being open and being fertile. And I'm grateful for the opportunity. Thank you. Thanks for choosing us to, even though we chased you down. I thought that was part of the elusive. The first time I was like, I don't really want to do it. I'm busy. The second time I actually was busy. I'm glad. And if you do it and then you're like, no, because too much content is a thing. Too much noise is a thing. Content for the sake of content is a thing. But, you know, don't be afraid. There's other podcasts. stephanie's podcast is pretty good i've actually already spoken to hunter about i would love to do stephanie yeah that podcast like i like things that are real i don't like things that are fake i don't like going on the radio for five minute hit i don't like going on a sit down daily morning show for oh hey see us tonight yeah i want to do real things yeah i this is real you're you're dead on i oddly revel in the really quick hit i i think because sometimes they're so generic and so heartless that there's like it's some of it's fun for me in a way like you do a radio where a guy's reading your wikipedia you know and it's just like you know do you know how many times i've got asked uh oh son finn we know you love lego based off one little 15 minute snippet we done in nxt 11 years ago. I'm so glad I didn't ask about Lego. But I do still love Lego, right? But I'm also 44 years old. And I'm married, so I have other things I got to do. Guys, I'm into other things, you know? Yeah, no, the quick hits can be... Hey, is there any other things you're into outside of wrestling? Outside of wrestling? I mean, as a dad, it's all... And two girls, it's all pretty much just princess stuff. Like, you know, uh princess power on prime right now is a big deal you gotta sing the song do all that uh she's really big into harry potter but she's only seen the first movie so that that's gonna limit the conversations i can have with her so i'm trying to push get into it a little bit more but i mean that's it for me is the kids right i think the other things went not because they're that becomes such a priority thing in your life that they become you don't get them as much cigars is the thing i'm into other and that you want to you want to hear some old-timer shit yeah the guy who does my uh diet or training or whatever will ask for 50 minutes of cardio 50 50 and he'll say you can just walk at an incline for 50 walk at an incline okay i walk in my neighborhood it's roughly 45 to 50 minutes i've been i do it i now have just started smoking a cigar while doing it which i think is counterproductive to the cardio now however yeah however and just i i smoke weed while training that's that that i don't think it'd be a better ending