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Episode 122: Derrick's Farewell Tour
57 Plays5 years ago
On this week's hangout we wish Derrick a farewell as he begins his Undertaker schedule!
Recommended
Transcript
Derek's Farewell Announcement
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody and welcome to a special episode of predetermined a pro wrestling hangout. I'm your host Garrett calendar I'm your other host Derek Halpin Possibly your your final time hearing me say that as your other host Because theoretically for all future episodes wouldn't I be a guest? Hey, you know that work. You'll always be a host in my heart
00:00:26
Speaker
Also, we're really assuming that everybody saw that tweet that we sent out. So, for somebody, they're like, what the fuck? They've been gone for two months and Derek just said this is the end? We're coming in hot. This is my last official episode as a co-host of Predetermined to Pro Wrestling Hangout. Why?
00:00:47
Speaker
I'm going I'm going to prison starting next week. I intentionally gave a lot of people COVID-19 and the new administration coming in and said that's enough Derek. You were part of the old administration so it makes sense that you're headed that way. I like Rudy Giuliani was sweating paint the other day.
00:01:10
Speaker
when I got the news that they were pulling the plug on my time as a pro wrestling podcast host. No, I am not going to prison. I didn't get kicked off the show. My contract did not expire. I am officially, for those who have not heard the news, I'm a papa now. I'm a dad. I am a dad to a six week old son at this point. I think five, six weeks. Yeah. And you named him after a pro wrestler.
00:01:40
Speaker
I did not name him after a pro wrestler. No I heard that you didn't think that. Who did you hear that from. I mean you hear things. You hear things but who did you hear them from. I don't know it was here here or there. A small wrestler from Georgia who thinks the earth is flat. Is that who told you that.
00:02:00
Speaker
No, I did not name my son after AJ Styles. No, my son is named AJ. We went back and forth for a little while, me and the mother, my girlfriend Megan.
00:02:15
Speaker
I am a fan of a lot of things besides pro wrestling, one of which being baseball and my favorite baseball player of all time is A.J. Pirsinski. So I threw out the name A.J. and she liked it. And then I had to come up with some actual I'd say I didn't want to chip the kid that they gave me the option on his birth certificate of just putting the letters A and J on there. And I felt like, well, that's mean.
00:02:37
Speaker
I'm giving him two letters and two pieces of punctuation and saying, that's your name, kid. Roll out there. No. I named my son Aaron James. Aaron James Halpin. And got a beautiful, healthy little baby boy. I'm a dad now, so things have changed. I officially got this in the mail from the US government the other day. This is a dad jokes book. They sent this to me, and I have to know it front to back by next week.
00:03:05
Speaker
I feel like carrot top because the audience isn't going to be able to see that. But Garrett really got it. I think Garrett was really blown away that I pulled an actual dad jokes book in the frame like a prop. Do you. So OK. Now that you're a dad. Do you have a lot more respect for Dan the dad.
00:03:24
Speaker
I mean, I've always had nothing but respect for Dan the dad. I mean, how do you not have respect for a man who, against other adults and possibly other fathers, has no problem taking off the belt and issuing discipline mid-match and getting upset when his beverage has been spilled? I mean, do you have a whole new respect for him? Like, is there? Yeah. Does he hit on a whole new level for you?
00:03:51
Speaker
I mean, by law, I think he has to become my new favorite wrestler. I think he does. Who's your second favorite dad wrestler? Arn Anderson. What? Why? Is being a dad Arn's gimmick? I mean, look at him. I can't think of a guy. Wasn't being a dad like Dusty's gimmick before he passed away? No, his gimmick was being a son.
00:04:21
Speaker
No, that's true of a plumber. Good call. Yeah, also. See, I feel bad. I should have. I haven't had time to pick up a claw in a while. Actually, for the time being, I have given up consuming alcoholic beverages and I have not had one in a couple of months. Man, we disappear for two months and I don't even know you anymore.
00:04:50
Speaker
That's such bullshit. You want to hear a dad joke? Yeah, go ahead and hit us with one. Why didn't the dog want to wrestle? He was a boxer. I thought it was going to be because he was in Roman Reigns' yard. What cats make good bowlers? Alley cats.
00:05:17
Speaker
Did you go out of your way to pick out ones that like tie back into wrestling? No, I literally threw a bookmark on a random page and decided to pull up from that. What do Michael Jordan and a turkey have in common? You've already nailed two wrestling ones with Alleycat and the dog wrestling thing. This better have an answer that I can tie back into wrestling somehow. They're both known for stuffing.
00:05:47
Speaker
gobbledygookers 30th anniversary. Yep. And Mick Foley will stuff a sock in your throat. That's the only wrestling tie I can come up with. Yeah. You know this is this has been a long time coming Garrett. So if this is my last episode as a as a regular co-host here can we can we do this intro right one more time.
00:06:11
Speaker
What do you want me to do? I want you to say the thing. You want me to say hit our goddamn music? I do.
00:06:54
Speaker
Actually, off the top of your head, can you hum our music?
00:07:22
Speaker
Once again, thank you to Josh Hendricks. The Hans Zimmer endorsed entrance music for us. I hope that he did play it for Hans. I hope that's what got him the job. Hans was going through the rest of his catalog of shit and was like, all this other stuff's okay. Well, okay, play me the last thing you got. And he played that and he was like, job's yours, man.
00:07:47
Speaker
That's good stuff. So are you going to, are you going to be sad that we're not doing this every week together now? I'm going to be sad not to necessarily be talking about wrestling with you every week. The, the sad, the saddest part, I don't know if a lot of people, I honestly, I don't even know if in the long history, the, what were we at two and a half, three years on this coming up on
Origin Story of the Podcast
00:08:14
Speaker
three years, I think. Yeah.
00:08:16
Speaker
Coming up on three years of doing the show, I don't think we've ever really discussed how this came about as an idea. But there was a time period a few years ago where you and I would stay in touch and, um, but we didn't really have like a routine. Well, then we started kind of getting into a routine where like once a week one of us would call the other.
00:08:37
Speaker
And we would talk for like an hour and a half, two hours, and we would catch up. But it seemed like what we were doing primarily is we would spend like an hour plus just catching up on WWE and talking about wrestling. And then I think it dawned on you is like, well, if we're already talking about it over the phone, we might as well record it and turn it into a podcast. And then I think, God, we started at the end of January 2018. Is that right? Yeah.
00:09:04
Speaker
God damn, man, we've done a lot. I don't know how much we've done. We've had a lot of conversations. We have done a lot. If you consider the number of hours of content that we have provided the masses primarily, it's just ourselves jerking ourselves off with a microphone on. Not literally, but figuratively. Literally, you have to go to our OnlyFans page.
00:09:34
Speaker
unless somebody wants to write one more fan fiction before I'm officially off the team. You still have time. We're going to get a flood of them after you leave.
00:09:46
Speaker
It didn't dawn on me until about 30 minutes before we started this recording session that there's a possibility that if iTunes hangs on to this for the long haul, there's a possibility that one day my son could grow up and see what I was doing. And the two years and three quarters before he was born, what I was doing as a hobby and how I helped get a wrestler to be known as a nickname for Seaman.
00:10:14
Speaker
What are some of your favorite memories over the last few years of doing this? I mean, I've been thinking about that all day. Well, you see, and it's weird to kind of put it in that contest because it makes it seem like I'm going away for good and that you'll never hear from me again on here, which is not true. I'm
Memorable Wrestling Moments
00:10:34
Speaker
getting that undertaker schedule, ironically, the day after he retires.
00:10:41
Speaker
I'm getting that Undertaker Brock Lesnar schedule you'll hear from me a couple times a year Maybe a little bit more of Saudi Arabia wants to pay for me to do this show So I was gonna say this is this is really just a wrestling retirement. It means nothing it you're just good you like I'm gonna be back
00:11:00
Speaker
This is not the last time you've heard from me. I can tell you that I'm sure that the next time you see something horrifying on the indie scene or through GCW, you're going to say, dude, we have to sit in for a session. Watch this. And I'll do it. I'm sure I'm going to be able to find an hour or two here or there to make appearances back here.
00:11:19
Speaker
As far as memories on things, man, that's tough. And I was thinking about it all day cuz I knew it was gonna come up. But in the almost three years that we've done this, one of the first major things we did is you started introducing me to other kinds of wrestling besides WWE.
00:11:40
Speaker
And I had a very limited knowledge of wrestling outside of WWE. I knew a little bit about Ring of Honor and I had heard you tell me a bunch of stories from PWG when you lived in Los Angeles. But I remember one of the major things we did is we went and met Tetsuya Naito at Pro Wrestling T's not too long after we started here. And me being enthusiastic about it and still kind of not knowing
00:12:06
Speaker
how he was a big deal in his own right until I saw the packed house at Logan Square Auditorium going absolutely fucking bonkers. I believe there was like a snow storm or something going on outside. Oh, I remember being cold as hell. It was a wintry mix and it was cold as hell. And that was sort of my introduction. I will always look back on this time period. It would be obvious to say fondly, but like,
00:12:36
Speaker
We started our podcast at this really nice story arc where we got to watch essentially the conception and the pregnancy and the birth of AEW.
00:12:51
Speaker
We also got to watch during that time period a couple people that we saw like MJF and Orange Cassidy and some of those guys, we got to watch them go from being indie darlings to becoming like prime time stars on TNT. Shoot, I mean, how many Wrestle manias did you attend while we were doing the show? Like was it one or two?
00:13:19
Speaker
while we were doing the show? Yeah. I'm trying to remember. I think we did the show. In my mind, I think that's the second one in New Orleans. Okay, was that the... Okay, yeah, that was the first one because I put myself through hell that weekend.
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah, you went through a million shows to get to that one. Yes. That ended with Brock Lesnar once again meeting Roman Reigns and everyone being like, what the fuck? It didn't happen.
00:13:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's weird. Right now I can look back. It feels like the quarantine COVID era has lasted fucking forever. Like, and I know everybody's saying that, but especially when it comes to wrestling, like we're coming back around. I mean, it's WrestleMania season.
00:14:15
Speaker
coming up here like we're getting close to that and remember how dramatically affected last year's WrestleMania was by all this well we're coming back around and things still haven't been figured out and likely won't be so are you telling me that my trip to California to WrestleMania isn't gonna happen that's probably not gonna happen buddy unless they can get a vaccine to you quicker than all the others unless you get the the Trump treatment or whatever
00:14:46
Speaker
Man, I don't know. I'll never forget the night before or was it the day of watching our first GCW clips on YouTube after you had already bought tickets for us and me looking at you like, what did you sign us up for? Was that the same GCW show? Was that the same weekend as getting the all out tickets or all in?
00:15:15
Speaker
Or was that a different weekend altogether? I think it was the same weekend. Cause I seem to remember metal Dave, a character from some of our, from some of our earlier episodes. He's not just a character. He's also a man. I don't even know if he's still listening to the podcast, but shout out to metal Dave. Haven't talked to you in a long time. He was over at my apartment.
00:15:39
Speaker
And I think it was wasn't it the day that we were recording the episode. Yeah. You're right. About the G.C.W. show our first our first deathmatch. That's 100 percent accurate. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. So we were we were all here using using my Internet to try to get all in tickets and we eventually we eventually did.
00:16:05
Speaker
Which, and the funny thing is, I remember it's hard to like contextualize things in hindsight sometimes, but we were just looking at it as naively or at the time as like, this is the biggest independent wrestling show of all time. Like in a, in a fucking box, like as its own thing, like, Oh my God, this indie shows happening in a big arena. And it never really setting in that like, like less than a year later, that it would just be a full blown promotion.
00:16:35
Speaker
I think that will, that's gonna be hard to beat as the best show I've ever been to. I just think back on that whole weekend, the star cast weekend, all the shit we did together then, basically just me, you and Queen of the Ring hanging out that whole weekend is probably gonna be one of my all time favorite memories of this show. Yeah, that's what I was getting ready to say is that I think
00:17:00
Speaker
There's all in as a show being fun with you and me over there in the corner near the stage and getting like we had a great view of everything in that arena and everything seemed so huge. And just the show itself was awesome. But that really that whole weekend was part of the same experience. And it was a lot of fun.
00:17:22
Speaker
What day did we roll into Starcast? Not the day that we were actually set up, because what day was all in on a Saturday? All in was on a Saturday, and we did the thing on a Friday. Friday. So we got to Starcast on Thursday night, and we went to a couple of things. We went to that Bochomania thing.
00:17:46
Speaker
We got our passes. You wouldn't let me go to the Insane Clown Posse show. Thank God I stand by that. Good job, Derek. Yeah, and I think looking back on how much fun it was that Friday.
00:18:05
Speaker
It was the only day, and I mean this in the best way possible, it was the only day in the long history of us doing this podcast for three years that felt like, all right, let's go to work. Because we woke up bright and early, had to pack up all of our gear, had to go, we were there so early that we basically had our pick of tables, if you recall that. Oh yeah, and we picked right near the door.
00:18:30
Speaker
right near the door one of the first tables you would come into and also there was a good spot to because
00:18:36
Speaker
If you picked one of the tables further down, you were basically so deep into where the lines were gonna be for meet and greets that nobody wanted anything to do with you, but we were almost in the lobby where we were, so. We felt more legitimate in the lobby. We did. But it was so much fun being there literally all day from like what, 6 a.m. to like 11, 11.30 at night. We were definitely the last ones out of there.
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah. It's like a country music song. We were the first there and the last to leave. Do you think at the end of this episode we should play Time of Your Life by Green Day? Like the end of Seinfeld? Couldn't you play that song? Didn't you play that at graduation? Holy shit, you're right.
00:19:32
Speaker
Do you have a guitar there? I don't know if I remember how to play it. That was embarrassing. I did have to play Time of Your Life by Green Day at our high school graduation. But I think the thing I remember most about that evening is that Great White, do you remember the band that killed all those people in the club fire? Yeah. Yeah, they played our bowling alley that night.
00:19:56
Speaker
This was after they had already killed all those people and were playing the Pittsfield bowling alley. I played to more people that night than they did. That's so wild. That's a nice claim to fame.
00:20:12
Speaker
So I want to get back to the all-in star cast nostalgia in a minute, but I got to bring something up because this is a pretty normal theme on this show. A couple of weeks ago, I don't remember how many exactly, out of nowhere, I sent you a couple of pictures of you wearing your top hat with the heartogram on it. I texted those to you.
00:20:36
Speaker
Literally never got a response. And I can only assume that in your mind you were like, if I don't acknowledge it, I don't have to talk about it.
00:20:44
Speaker
Because in my mind, I was thinking, we could totally use these on a future episode. This is the stuff we've been talking about for a long time, is that young Garrett had a top hat with the Hymn Heartagram logo on it. And I finally found physical evidence of its existence. And I sent it to Garrett, and Garrett just ghosted. He refused. He ghosted. It didn't exist to him.
00:21:12
Speaker
I think we need to get that hat back and put the heart of grand patch back on it and let that become part of my regular wardrobe. Again, it's getting another run. I think it deserves another run. The classics come back. They do. New medals gonna be coming back any day now, I think. I see AJ Gray promoting limp biscuit all the time, so...
00:21:35
Speaker
Speaking of AJ Gray, for some reason, my Twitter is all fucked up and it only gives me notifications when AJ Gray tweets. Did you sign up for notifications just when he tweets? No, and then it'll, it's basically I get three notifications. I will get notifications when AJ Gray tweets, whatever.
00:22:00
Speaker
I'll sometimes get them when Ali Cat does it. And third, our podcast account will just send me all of these girls only fans accounts. You should say thank you. Well, I didn't ask for this feature.
00:22:22
Speaker
Is it one of those recommended tweet things where it's like, this person tweeted something. Have you checked their page out in a while? Yes, that is exactly what's happening. And if my phone got me to go to all these Only Fan accounts as often as it thinks I should, I would be very, very broke.
00:22:43
Speaker
OnlyFans really took off because of the pandemic, didn't it? As an extra way to make money? What's your OnlyFans account? We really did miss out on an OnlyFans account. I feel like we're too late. It's true.
00:22:57
Speaker
We could have released those photos of me at that hotel with the white claws. Oh my god, I completely forgot about that. Yes, there is a secret pictorial of Garrett's semi nude with a white claw box blocking the goods. It's very similar to the Shawn Michaels Playgirl photo spread. Just minus the abs, about the same amount of hair though.
00:23:26
Speaker
Are those deleted or are those still out there? I think I got rid of them. That was smart. Because if there was a hacking dump or something.
00:23:38
Speaker
I feel like to protect you, I'd have to be like, just for the record, I took those pictures because it was funny. And they were like, why was he naked in a hotel room with you? I've been your friend for 33 years. Of course you're going to be naked at some point in a hotel room with me. Doesn't mean anything happened. But it also doesn't mean anything. For the purpose of our OnlyFans, you'll have to pay to find out.
00:24:04
Speaker
My dad gets out a credit card, signs up for OnlyFans just to see what he wants to do. What is he doing? Stop sucking Derek's dick! We're trying to make some money on the side. The podcast itself isn't bringing in anything. Yeah, there's no joke coming in. We're pumping these out for free. This thing's got to pay for itself somehow. Have you seen the economy lately, Bruce?
00:24:35
Speaker
All in weekend was so much fun and I think it's a good opportunity to say that maybe my favorite part about doing this podcast and there's a lot of favorite parts but maybe my favorite part has been all the people we've had the opportunity to meet and kind of
00:24:52
Speaker
connect with and stay in touch with. That weekend, obviously we spent a lot of time with Queen of the Ring. But we also got to meet the curtain jerks out of New York. And that's a relationship that, as far as I'm concerned, may end up lasting a lifetime with those guys. Just talking wrestling and the episodes that we did with them not too long ago.
00:25:18
Speaker
Tweeting with them earlier today. Lowell, Lowell might. And we've got a couple, we've had a couple of loyal listeners since the beginning and Joey and Dalton have been there with us since the start. Shit. And I think it would be fair to say that we've had listeners that didn't have any real reason to listen other than to be supportive like our friend Brad.
00:25:44
Speaker
Bradley has been listening to us I think since day one and I don't know if he knows a damn thing about professional wrestling but he puts us on his white noise in the background to have some of my favorite podcasts I use as white noise for sure but yeah we've made a lot of friends and it's been cool you know especially the last couple years with all in and all out and revolution and
00:26:12
Speaker
the birth of AEW. It's been cool going back when you've been up here and you'll see some of the same faces at these shows or at these conventions and some of the same people around every time. And it's a cliche, but the pro wrestling community, when you're able to go to shows, mind you, it is a little bit of a little bit of a family.
00:26:33
Speaker
You got some people that you're not necessarily stoked about seeing, but they're there, across from you at the table. And some people that you're closer with. Queen of the Ring's been cool with us since day one. So. Met her at that WrestleMania in New Orleans. She sat behind me at the progress show.
00:26:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, she's always been awesome to us and I had so much fun with her every time she's been in Chicago. What are some other good things? Even the like the ROH shows that we've been to, we've been to two or three ROH shows that have been a lot of fun. We've had good seats for. Honestly, sitting front row at that ROH War of the World show is definitely a highlight.
00:27:27
Speaker
Because that was the night that, that was literally the night that we, the all-in tickets had sold out. And this kind of, it's just weird how so much of that stuff kind of lines up. Like they picked Chicago to do all in. Like, I don't, like, I don't know. It's just, it's been a wild ride.
Impact of COVID on Enthusiasm
00:27:47
Speaker
And, um,
00:27:51
Speaker
It's weird winding down this way, but at the same time, and you've heard me say this multiple times over the last few months, it's almost appropriate too because it's been so hard for me to have the same level of enthusiasm for wrestling that I normally do. COVID has really knocked the wind out of my sails in that regard. And I've gone through waves in the past like this with pro wrestling where
00:28:16
Speaker
I'm really into it and I follow it and I follow all the behind the scenes stuff and I keep watching the shows and then I get burned out and I dip out for a little bit and then I end up coming back because always keep one eye on what's going on.
00:28:29
Speaker
The funny thing is, there is stuff going on right now, even in WWE, as much as it's easy to fucking hate that show. Like, I love what they're doing with Roman Reigns right now. It's good fucking shit. Like, that stuff he had with Jey Uso, both of those pay-per-views, or both of their matches anyway, was good shit. And, I don't know.
00:28:55
Speaker
Can I disappoint you one, I keep wanting to say one last time, like you're not gonna be back in a few weeks, but I know you're gonna keep coming back, but I wanna disappoint you in this episode. You wanna disappoint me. Do you know how many times I've disappointed you over the course of these last three years?
00:29:19
Speaker
Not really, I think disappoints a very strong word. Okay, well, we'll see. Let me just, I think there've been a lot of times where you have lowered the bar, we'll say that. Well, in honor of your last co-hosting episode, I gave WWE 999 to watch Survivor Series last night.
00:29:46
Speaker
Did you really? I did. You ponied up? What made you do it? What was the, okay, I gotta buy that pay-per-view. This.
00:29:57
Speaker
Really? That was it. I just knew like, you know, if Derek's got to go out, he's got to go out talking about WWE one last time. What's funny is this is like one of those times where it's like, I really don't know too much about what happened last night. I know that there was a Paul Bearer hologram because I did see that gif.
00:30:19
Speaker
Dude, I just finished Survivor Series a little bit before we started recording. The last hour of that show was The Undertaker's Goodbye. A full hour? Well, you had to have all the entrances for his buddies.
00:30:37
Speaker
Everybody got an entrance. Then they showed a video package, came back, everybody was gone. Vince McMahon was in the ring. Gotta let him talk for a while. He said WWF, which was kinda crazy. Did he really? He did. What did he say? He said, he talked about the Undertaker being here from WWF up until WWE currently. Wow. Yeah. Vince is looking pretty old.
00:31:08
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I mean, he's old and he's not a very good person and he's old. Well, when they're wheeling out, when they're bringing out Vince McMahon, they're bringing out Ric Flair. I'm just like, you gotta put some of these guys away. We can't have all of them here in case a COVID outbreak happens.
00:31:26
Speaker
Who else was there for his retirement ceremony? I think I saw Kevin Nash was there. Nash, Godfather, Mick Foley, Shane. I know people are screaming at me right now. Why don't you remember this? You just watched it. But basically Undertaker had a very long entrance, came out, said it's time for the Undertaker to rest in peace.
00:31:52
Speaker
and then had like another seven minutes of outro and then it went away. Do you think to a certain extent, like the Undertaker stuff, at least the stuff that WWE has been putting out has been overkill? Just the Undertaker portion? Yeah. Well, I mean, like they did his
00:32:14
Speaker
They did the first half of that Broken Skull Sessions interview that he did with Stone Cold Steve Austin. Then they did that whole Last Ride documentary, which if you watched that start to finish, you'd get exhausted for his fucking retirement because it becomes clear on like episode one or two, like that he should have been done probably a couple of years ago. Maybe he doesn't want to hear that.
00:32:39
Speaker
I did enjoy the Boneyard match. So I guess in some respects I'm glad it got to that point. But then he has another Stone Cold Steve Austin broken skull thing that's coming out. I think there's another Undertaker documentary coming out on the network soon. And then they did this this special last night from a Survivor Series where it's just like fuck Vince is really having a hard time letting this one go.
00:33:11
Speaker
It's really hard to say goodbye, and that's how I feel right now. I know you'll be back, but I still don't want to say goodbye. Do you think that, because a lot of people say this objectively, seriously for a moment, is Undertaker Vince McMahon's greatest creation as a character? Did he create Bobby Lashley?
00:33:48
Speaker
I mean, you're not expecting me to answer. No, you don't have to answer that. Bobby Lashley is a man. Bobby Lashley is a fucking man. Is he still with Lana or not? That should be a shirt. I would wear that shirt. Bobby Lashley is a fucking man. And he's in the hurt business. He is a beefy dude.
00:34:14
Speaker
No, Survivor Series last night though. Did you get emotional? No. Just like, I wanna be clear, not at all. Not even a little bit, Derek. I want that to be, yeah. I cry a lot. It doesn't take much to make me cry. Undertaker's leaving. Yeah, he got me in Florida. When I was in Florida and he fought Roman Reigns and had his like 40-minute goodbye at the end, that one got me.
00:34:43
Speaker
We've had a couple of those since. Undertaker's farewell tour has been a lot like a kiss farewell tour. You know, he's, you know, it just, it kept coming back. It just keeps going. Would you be shocked if he did one more thing? No, yes and no. No, if it's in like Saudi Arabia, who's he gonna have to fight though?
00:35:12
Speaker
That hologram of Paul Bearer. He fights Randy Orton. Let Randy Orton just take the guy out. And we get one last legend. It's fun. You know, it's funny, though, like every like I was talking earlier about trying to keep things in context and do that in hindsight. I remember. And if you hear interviews with different wrestlers, there were a lot of guys who thought he was going to be done in the early 2000s.
00:35:40
Speaker
Like there's some people who thought he was going to be done like around his magic. His first WrestleMania match against wrestle against Triple H at WrestleMania 17. I think Triple H said that there were rumors at the time that he was going to be hanging him up soon back then and.
00:35:56
Speaker
I remember in like 2003, 2004, 2005, when I was really, really like dedicated to watching wrestling and all the behind the scenes stuff. Back then, when I was in high school, it felt like, man, Undertaker's old. Like he's like Ric Flair still wrestling old. And now that was 15 fucking years ago.
00:36:21
Speaker
So I got to watch the back 15 of his 30 year career with him being old. When you think of Sean Connery, do you think of old Sean Connery?
00:36:36
Speaker
Yes. Same here. I do. And I just watched The Rock the other day. That movie's still fucking rules, by the way. Like, really hard. Like, watch The Rock again. And he just died. But in my head, he probably looked the exact same as he did in The Rock, even though that's been 20 years now. Does he look like old Sean Connery in The Rock?
00:37:02
Speaker
He's old Sean Connery in The Rock. He's got the white hair and the white beard. And that's true. He's old Sean Connery in the fucking third Indiana Jones movie. And that was in like the fucking mid eighties, maybe late eighties. It's kind of like how Steve Martin has been an old man his entire life. That's true. I can't gauge that man's age. He's looked the same.
00:37:25
Speaker
I have owned exactly one Undertaker shirt in my life. Really? I did own one Undertaker shirt in like, oh, four, after he came back as the dead man at WrestleMania 20. Did you buy the shirt out? Which was weird. No, no.
00:37:47
Speaker
I just remember I did wear it to high school a couple times, which is weird because if you think about like his, it was, it was basically the undertaker symbol on fire. And I wore that to school and there were so many times like I can look back now and think like, well, how did the teachers let that happen? As far as they knew that was like a satanic cross and they didn't second guess that for a second.
00:38:10
Speaker
Yet, just a few years prior when we were in grade school, you couldn't wear an Austin 316 shirt because it was blasphemous. Public school in a rural community, man. It's wild. Have you gotten your kid any wrestling shirts yet?
00:38:27
Speaker
Not yet. I am so glad you asked this question because I have a lot of things I can tie into that. Number one, everyone who listens to this show who's a fan of pro wrestling will be happy to know that while I have not bought my kid any pro wrestling onesies yet, which will happen, it's going to happen.
00:38:46
Speaker
Not as many good ones as you would think too, by the way. You would like to think that WWE would just have the option of if there's an adult style of a shirt that you can just slap that thing on a fucking onesie and buy it for them, that's not true. It's like you can only do legends things. You can get like an Austin 316 or an NWO on a one tee, which I may end up doing. But,
00:39:10
Speaker
The listeners need to know that my son has definitely left little drool and spittle marks on this shoulder and this shoulder on pro wrestling t-shirts from when I have tried to burp him or rock him to sleep.
00:39:29
Speaker
I get little white splotches on Stunno and Stun shirts or my Undisputed Era shirt. So my son is frequently cuddling up with some kind of pro wrestling t-shirt when he spends time with dad. Chris actually had a question for you. Chris from the Curtain Jerks.
00:39:49
Speaker
Sure. He asked if like when you've been up late at night with with your son, have you watched any wrestling yet?
Fatherhood and Wrestling Dreams
00:39:57
Speaker
And if so, what have you been watching? So the answer to that is no. To this point, I have not had the chance to be up with him late and do any sort of viewing that that day may be coming. I actually get my one month paternity leave from work here in a couple of weeks. Started December.
00:40:18
Speaker
So that may come up at some point. Thankfully to this point, he's been very, very good at night. He likes to sleep in like, you know, two and a half, three hour intervals. And he basically just wakes up once to feed and then goes right back to sleep. So I haven't had any issues with just needing to hang out with him and watch anything yet, but I'm sure that that day is coming.
00:40:40
Speaker
and he's too young right now, so obviously he hasn't watched anything with me, but I do look forward to the day when I can take him to... Whatever. I do look forward to the day when I can take him to his first show, because that will be a thing. Can I come? Yes, Garrett, you can come.
00:41:02
Speaker
And no, we're not taking him to a GCW show or whatever that, whatever guy's blood sport, where there's not actually a ring. Josh Barnett's blood sport, he's not allowed there. Yeah, no, no. Those are off limits until he's a few years older. Speaking of blood sport, we have had so much wrestling happen since the last time you and I recorded. I doubt it. Well, the collective happened. Everybody got COVID.
00:41:33
Speaker
How do you feel about that? Wasn't there a whole bunch of people being like, they shouldn't do this. There'll be a COVID outbreak. And then they did it. And there was a COVID outbreak. And you were supposed to be there. Yeah. I was too scared to go. And I don't regret it. So your fears.
00:41:56
Speaker
I watched all of it from home, all of it. There were like 12 shows. So that weekend, me, Tagems, and Dalton just watched all that shit and were texting the whole time. Oh, you didn't do it like in a Zoom? No, no, no. Didn't do it in a Zoom. What did you think of, since last, what did you think of full gear?
00:42:22
Speaker
Shit, I thought you were going back further. I do remember Full Gear. Full Gear was great. Was it? It really was. Have you not watched it yet? I haven't. You're like, dude, I gotta have a fucking kid. My schedule is very different now than it was a month ago. What was the last wrestling you got to watch? I think I watched an episode of Dynamite a few weeks ago.
00:42:52
Speaker
It's been a while. It's still been good. I will say it's not fair because if you do follow any wrestling on social media, you can get enough clips to kind of know what's going on essentially without actually watching the show. Uh, so I do keep up with things, but I haven't watched like full matches in weeks and weeks, man. Um,
00:43:20
Speaker
Yeah, I was gonna ask you something in relation to AEW. Oh, was it weird seeing the, whatever, the preview or the commercial advertising AEW revolution pop-up? Was there like a weird thing that triggered in you? Like, holy shit. Wait, is that really the next pay-per-view? Yeah, oh my God.
00:43:47
Speaker
That, no, that happened at full gear. I did get to see that when that, when that went live was them being like, get ready for AWW revolution and me being like, fuck. That was back when things were still kind of normal. That was like the last fun thing we did. Yes, it really was. So how many white claws in are you officially? Uh, this is, I mean, I usually only do two, but this is today feels special. So this is three. You're three claws in for this episode.
00:44:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a sad day. It's a sad day. I walked around outside today with my headphones in, just listening to old episodes of the show. Not like multiple. What episode did you listen to today to prepare for this? I actually listened to one where you had just watched three hours of Bill Goldberg matches without anyone telling you to.
00:44:40
Speaker
I volunteered for that, didn't I? You didn't tell me you were going to do it. You just showed up and you said, I just watched three hours of Goldberg matches today. And that wasn't included entrances. So you, you said it was like three hours of just in-ring Goldberg shit. Yeah. Yeah. I saw the same seven moves a whole bunch of times, which that's being generous. It may only be like four or five. Um,
00:45:09
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, if this is my last official time as a co-host of here, of this show, I will say part of my job, like in the pro wrestling industry, part of my job on the way out is to put this show over and I'm gonna fucking do it. I feel like we were underappreciated in my time here. Not because of me,
00:45:38
Speaker
But I feel like you and I set out when we started this podcast, we wanted to do something that was a little bit different. And I know that there's a few people that have confirmed this with us. We have a few regular listeners who have said this. When we started this, we tried to keep the show primarily positive. That was one of our main objectives when we started. And I feel like for the most part, we did that. Even if we were being negative or ripping on something, we always tried to make it less bitchy and more funny.
00:46:08
Speaker
And I think for the most part we've accomplished that goal. I think.
00:46:13
Speaker
If you're a fan of pro wrestling, when it comes to pro wrestling podcasts, they're a dime a dozen. And I think we knew that from day one when we started this. I think what we offered that was different is this, every pro wrestling fan can go start a podcast and they can review a pay-per-view or they can review a match and just talk about, rah, five stars, negative two stars. This is what Meltzer said. That's easy to do.
00:46:43
Speaker
And I think the thing that we really brought to the table that was different was we really kind of focused on that idea of we wanted to make it seem like you were sitting on the sofa with your friends, bullshitting about something that you only kind of half understood.
00:46:59
Speaker
And I think from day one, no matter how much we love pro wrestling or not, no matter how much we think we understand about it, we were always open about the fact that we were really just a couple of fans. Mark said you didn't know shit marks. We were the objective for a while was to bring it back, but I don't know if it ever actually happened or to make it ours. And, uh,
00:47:23
Speaker
I think the thing that was underappreciated about my time here or our time doing this together regularly was that I would like to think we were offering something a little bit different. Yeah, we could talk about whatever WWE pay-per-view was the night before, but it never once was out of the realm of possibility that we would take a half hour detour.
00:47:48
Speaker
to talk about something that had absolutely nothing to do with the pay-per-view, or absolutely nothing to do with pro wrestling, or if it did, it was in the most marginal tiny microscopic way ever that we would finally tie that back in to the original topic.
00:48:04
Speaker
And it was always meant to make people laugh or to be fun And like I said, there's so many there's so many podcasts that it will just review a pay-per-view for you or give you their thoughts But if everybody's giving you their thoughts on the show and nothing else, there's no flavor
00:48:22
Speaker
And I thought this show has had a lot of flavor since since the day we started it. And it's funny because when I was thinking about coming and recording this episode today, one of the things we talk about frequently is, man, do you remember those early episodes like the first five to 10 episodes before we had really hit our stride and figured out what we wanted to do when it felt so awkward? Like, how do we start an episode? Did that sound OK? And a lot of it was just us being like,
00:48:50
Speaker
I think it went OK. We'll get better. We'll get better at it. Like it was OK. But also immediately behind that you have to chase it with. Yeah it probably sounded horrible but of course it did. If you record it they will come. And they did. I hope we made a lot of people come. We did. I would have been nice if you could have compiled a list of all of the countries that at least had one download of our
00:49:21
Speaker
fucking podcast to know all the nations across this globe that we have reached. I'm always shocked when we get any downloads. So the fact that like throughout quarantine and even just this entire time we've been getting downloads. It's fucking crazy to me that you guys tune in to listen to this.
00:49:42
Speaker
I think some of the stuff that we, when I look back on it, we did some wild things going back to, if you go back to what we were talking about earlier with like star cast weekend, like we got to interview Jeff Cobb.
00:49:52
Speaker
And we got to interview MJF and have him run us down. Like that's documented. Like we got to sit there with Blue Meanie, a man who got his ass beat by JBL because JBL is a fucking bully. We had Ron Funches on the show while we were awkwardly projecting our voices through the lobby of a hotel. It's true. I mean, we had Ron Funches on this show.
00:50:21
Speaker
Ron Funches was officially on an episode of Predetermined to Pro Wrestling Hangout. Maxwell Jacob Friedman was officially on an episode of Predetermined to Pro Wrestling Hangout. We had a room full of people excited to play video games, be mad at us because they wanted to focus on playing their video game. And we've got to run down insane clown posse on this show, which I never supported.
00:50:52
Speaker
What are you afraid of now? Are you going to ask one of them to co-host with you going forward and now you're afraid they're going to say no? That's a good question. I feel like Shaggy too dope would be like, he's like, now that Derek is gone, I'm finally here.
00:51:13
Speaker
Break out the Faygo, man. So there's a lot of things that we got to do. Just getting to the whole of Starcast experience was wild. And I can't stress this enough. I know I've said it before. That first Starcast was the Wild West. As far as I could tell, there were rules, but they were not being enforced.
00:51:38
Speaker
There were places you were not supposed to go that if you just walked in confidently with a lanyard hanging around your neck, you were in. God, I miss having a lanyard that had power. I can see the lanyard that has power from where I'm currently sitting. It's still hanging up in this room. So that was a lot of fun. But I also think going to the shows and reviewing things, and we always had that next show that we were looking forward to going to that was always three to six months away.
00:52:09
Speaker
more than anything it was it was always fun knowing that i was gonna see you a couple times a year and we were gonna watch some wrestling together that's that's been a great thing um i actually i agree with you like because one of the things that
00:52:25
Speaker
Throughout our relationship, since we were babies to now, there's definitely been pieces where we fall out of touch. But when we come back, it's like we haven't missed a beat. We're just always pick right up where we left off. And- I think that's what's weird is I've never really felt like we've fallen out of touch. We were just not in touch as much as we used to be. There's always one finger still touching.
00:52:56
Speaker
but especially in the last few years since we started this, which I've had such a blast doing this.
Nick Gage: Fear to Admiration
00:53:04
Speaker
What are some of your favorite memories? What are things that stand out to you that you didn't think would be a thing? Are you still convinced that Otis... Did Otis fucking listen to our podcast? These seem to focus too much on the jizz aspect of that, like his common.
00:53:27
Speaker
I think somebody told him. Like when you go to that, you get to Chris Jericho unblocking you. Obviously, right, something got to Chris Jericho that got him to do that. You know, just little things like that. But also, like you said, the friends that we've made along the way, I didn't know who Nick Gage was before this podcast. Now he's like my favorite wrestler.
00:53:54
Speaker
I wanted to bring that up specifically because that's a fun mini story within this whole big story which is that when we first were introduced to the character of Nick Gage it was basically we portrayed him as somebody's letting Charles Manson wrestle for some reason and by the end of this this chapter anyway um Nick Gage is a sweetheart who's doing cameos for our friends
00:54:22
Speaker
It's a real thing. He's had one of the greatest story arcs on this show. For sure.
00:54:30
Speaker
Nick Gage's story arc, Otis' story arc, MJF's story arc, Hangman Page's story arc was one of the first stories at the beginning of this podcast where you rejected an autograph from him because he just wasn't hot shit enough for you at that point. And then if you had known within a couple of years,
00:54:55
Speaker
And he understood too, that's the other thing that makes him the ultimate babyface. He's like, you don't want my autograph, I get it. But he did give me an eight by 10. He still gave me an autographed eight by 10 of him in the books. What a lovely man. He really is. The fact that I ever, there was a point in my life where I wasn't a huge hangman, Mark.
00:55:17
Speaker
Fuck me. Is that embarrassing? Is that embarrassing? And you know what, we're gonna get to that same point with shit. Who's the guy that's in Bullet Club now? Chase Owens. That's gonna be a day where Chase Owens is the shit. Where I'm just like, fuck it, why was I sleeping on Chase Owens this whole time?
00:55:38
Speaker
Who has been your favorite person during the last two, two and three quarters of years? Whose story and whose rise has been the most fun for you to follow? Fuck, there's so many, I mean.
00:55:52
Speaker
Going back to PWG really being the place that captured my imagination with pro wrestling and brought me back into it, it's, I mean, put it this way, like from where I saw the Young Bucks, the first time I saw them, I'm holding their book right now. You know, like how far the Young Bucks have come. I would say like guys like Ricochet, I mean, that's a guy that I loved so much that I saw at the beginning of this that just kinda didn't,
00:56:23
Speaker
Where is Ricochet? He's on Raw, I think. Missed that guy. I know he got selected in the draft.
00:56:33
Speaker
I don't know, it was just crazy seeing guys like Marco Stunt at Southern Underground Pro, and then now seeing him on my TV every week. Who else? Really? Would you have guessed that Orange Cassidy? I mean, like that, like just a couple years ago, you describing Orange Cassidy to me. I think he's somebody that I would have expected to eventually make it, but not to the extent.
00:57:04
Speaker
It's also been a wild year in terms of just negative things. Like if I... You mean 2020? Well, yeah, but I mean like if I had told you like the downfall of like, and I don't mean this in a, and I'm not downplaying it, but like Joey Ryan, Joey Ryan was like the hottest independent wrestler for years. And now just fucking that's not a thing anymore. Did you see this fucking story come out the other day about Cody? No.
00:57:33
Speaker
Some guy, Matthew from Botchamania, retweeted him. There's this guy who was a producer for AEW for this first year. I can't remember what he did, but he basically posted this really long testimonial story about how he was treated like shit at AEW primarily
00:57:53
Speaker
by one of his managers and specifically Cody. Cody hated him and treated him like shit. And I guess he recently got fired and he came out with this whole story about how they had to like separate him. They had to move him out of the room anytime Cody came. And it's like go back and read it. So.
00:58:12
Speaker
There's been a little bit of backlash on that. There's been backlash on fucking Jericho in the last couple months. Much of it deserved. I don't want to wind up back on his block list. Actually, you bringing up Cody made me think of this is a story I don't think we ever told on the show. When I went to San Francisco to that G1 special,
00:58:36
Speaker
right after the cow palace. Yeah, I was with a buddy of mine that I met at Wrestle Kingdom and I ran into him again and he was friends with Cody Rhodes like agent or manager. I don't know which the guy was and I will tell you he hated the name of our podcast. Really? Oh yeah, he told me it was a terrible name.
00:59:01
Speaker
And what would he have recommended in its place? Did you explain to him that there's not a lot of fucking options left? He didn't understand why I had to defend pro wrestling ever to begin with. Because I was like, well, predetermined is the word we use to defend pro wrestling. And he's like, why do you have to defend it? And I was like, what the fuck?
00:59:20
Speaker
Have you ever, are you a real wrestling fan? Have you ever been told, do you know this is real or this is fake? To me, when we came up with it, it was always the cliche of, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, it's not fake, it's predetermined. Like it was that, like had he really never heard of that fucking, I don't know, but while we ate In-N-Out burgers, this guy, I felt like was really running me down.
00:59:48
Speaker
And that is a lot of the pro wrestling community. And that's why we've tried to create a pro wrestling safe space of sorts here. I'm not going to say we're all inclusive. I have certainly done my part to make sure that members of ICP and Goldberg and Bill Goldberg.
01:00:04
Speaker
are not welcome here. I would certainly, when I leave this podcast behind me on a more regular basis, I'm still gonna be scared that New Jack possibly listened to an episode and might decide that I deserve to die for saying anything negative about him. Derek, holy shit, I'm sorry that I just interrupted you.
01:00:26
Speaker
What? I just thought of something that like during our two month hiatus that we've had, something happened. There was a night where there was a 15 minute block of time where legitimately it seemed like Nick Gage might sleep at my house.
01:00:43
Speaker
Yeah, you should tell this story. This may be a good note to go out on. Maybe as good as it gets. So there was one night that Leah and I were on the couch. It was pretty late at night. It was almost midnight, I want to say. And Nick Gage had on Instagram put out a video where he's like, I'm in Nashville. Somebody stole my wallet. Somebody stole all this shit. I'm stuck here. I don't have anywhere to go. I live close to the airport, Derek.
01:01:13
Speaker
Nick Gage was less than 10 minutes away from me. So what happened next here? So I sent him like basically he was asking for help and nobody had offered actual help yet. So I tweeted or I sent back to him. Hey, I live by the airport. Do you still need help? And the conversation that I had with my wife right before that where it was like, I know it's a pandemic, but can I let my hero come sleep in our bed?
01:01:38
Speaker
At midnight. At midnight. And she was very hesitant where she was like, it's a pandemic, but she's like, we can't just leave him at the airport. So yeah, message him. Somebody who may as well be a complete stranger to your wife, but because you know him from, from fake fight land. That would, uh, that could have easily been the greatest night of my life had happened. Or the worst, depending upon how it went.
01:02:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, he probably wasn't gonna be in a good mood to begin with, but there it is. My favorite thing on this podcast that we've done is when I got to go to Vegas and eat breakfast with Nick Gage. That was your favorite thing? That was, I mean, at that event. Was that surreal? That was really weird, and just getting to talk to him and him being nice, seeing him eat a plate of eggs. That was the same day that Joey Janela prank called Enzo Amore.
01:02:37
Speaker
Is it weird to think that this guy that you are a big fan of, the first time you saw him was the back of a Foreman Mills in a suburb outside of Chicago late at night, having a match where you were absolutely terrified and your seat did get blood on it, if I recall. Oh, I got his fucking blood all over my hands when I touched my seat again.
01:03:01
Speaker
And so that's that was your introduction to Nick Gage. You followed that man across the country to go have breakfast with him in Las Vegas. That's dedication and that's that's a fine story, Eric. If only I don't think we could ever get him on this show because I feel like this is just isn't his cup of tea.
01:03:23
Speaker
So if there, if there, if there was one thing that somebody asked me, like, do you have any regrets from doing the show? I will say that the one thing that I had fun with at star cast, I wish we had been able to do a little bit more interviews because I think in my mind at one time, I really wanted this to be a lot like not every episode, but I did want to have episodes that felt like space goes coast to coast.
01:03:48
Speaker
And I really wanted to have interviews that were like where they were in on the fact that we were a couple of fucking marks and that it was awkward and there were going to be a lot of lewd jokes that they had to sit through and questions that had nothing to do with pro wrestling.
Cultural Impact and Community
01:04:05
Speaker
But we just wanted to know how they felt like it would have been nice to interviewed Nick Gage and see how he felt about the new Spider-Man.
01:04:14
Speaker
I promise you he hasn't seen it, because they have done a couple episodes of Ask MDK on the Independent Wrestling Network, or independentwrestling.com, and he did say his current favorite TV show, or really his only favorite TV show, is Supermarket Sweep. Really? Yeah.
01:04:40
Speaker
Didn't somebody ask him about Animal Crossing if he liked it? He had never heard of it. No. But he did ask. Man, I don't know what to end on. I will say this, if I could, I want to say thank you to everyone I said thank you to earlier. Thank you to all of our friends that we've made over the last few years. Thank you to all of our listeners. You guys have always engaged us and
01:05:11
Speaker
The feedback has always been great. It's always been nice to hear that people have laughed and enjoyed the show. We've apparently helped some people through tough times. We've inspired people. We've created what I would call
01:05:26
Speaker
Small phenomenons, small cultural phenomenons. I do think that when you can get other people beyond your immediate circle of friends to refer to a wrestler as Jizz, people understand why. When you look at them, they go, yeah, I guess that makes sense. So we have trended a few things.
01:05:46
Speaker
What would you say? I guess I'll give my two bits on this because I have really no regrets on anything and I've had nothing but fun experiences. And this has been something I was looking forward to. I mean, it was always something to look forward to when it was time to record. Doing it with you has been a blast.
01:06:05
Speaker
I've had people reach out to me after listening to this podcast and they have said to me, you know, hey, listening to your show makes me want to go do a podcast. And to anyone who's thinking about that, I would say this, go for it.
01:06:22
Speaker
And I need to give you props here because a lot of people don't know this. I'm sure they suspect as much. You Garrett put in a lot of work and time and money into getting this thing off the ground. However far it's been off the ground since we started.
01:06:39
Speaker
But the idea was yours. And making a podcast be on Apple, iTunes and Spotify, that takes work and that takes time and money and effort. And you put all that in early on and made it happen. So it is it is there is work. And I would recommend if you if you really want to do a podcast,
01:07:08
Speaker
Be prepared for that stuff. Garrett would be the guy to ask because he had to buy gigabytes of space online to store all of our audio. And then to hook us up with the licensing to get our podcast distributed on the different servers.
01:07:27
Speaker
But if somebody wants to start a podcast, I would recommend doing it. And it doesn't matter. Don't listen to anybody else. Don't listen to anybody. Don't let anybody tell you how to do the show. Do it however you want to do it. It doesn't matter if you do it once a week, once a month, only a couple a year. If you want to go record a podcast, have fun with it.
01:07:49
Speaker
and go wild and look into it and how to do it and do the research. I'm sure you can reach out to one of us and we can give you some tips. There's some easy ways to go about doing it. But it's been a lot of fun and it's something I talked about doing for a long time before we started this one.
01:08:08
Speaker
You had a lot of connections earlier on to kind of fill in some of the holes, like our logo, like the predetermined sofa sitting in the ring. That was an idea that you came up with, but you had one of your friends come up with that design and make it happen. Thank you, Anthony Knessis.
01:08:23
Speaker
And obviously we referenced earlier the theme music for our podcast. That was another friend. Josh Hendricks. Yeah. Now this has been a fucking blast, man.
01:08:40
Speaker
And it's not over. It's not over. I'm on that Brock Lesnar schedule. I know, but at the same time, it feels like the end of an era. As much fun as I'm gonna have continuing the show, it'll never be the same without you. Aww. Honestly, for the last three years, I've gotten to hang out with my best friend once a week, shoot the shit about wrestling, and for some reason, people listen.
01:09:09
Speaker
they did and it's been it's been fun doing it with you and it's we've there's gonna be things that we forget about and it's they're gonna come back to us at different times things that we've discussed like I said there's gonna be different things that we created culture around I guess I had never heard the term fuck finish before I started this podcast with you I got that from you so
01:09:39
Speaker
I mean fuck. Anytime I hear Brock Lesnar speak I'm going to think about your Irish Scottish Brock Lesnar accent. There's a lot of different little things that are going to come back that we've done. And here's the fun thing. It's not like it was a cheapie. We didn't just do this for six months. This has been coming up on three years of us pumping out episodes.
01:10:03
Speaker
So do you wanna kind of segue into what the show is gonna be once I get booted out of my office here? Oh, that sounds so sad to say. No, I hope that you'll pop back in when you have the time to watch wrestling. Like I hope that when you have some time to sit down and watch some shit that you'll never hesitate to reach out and be like, hey, this week is Derek time. Cause you're always,
01:10:30
Speaker
It's not like the show's ending, it's just this version of the show is going away. The key's still under the door, doormat, right? Yeah, we're not changing the locks, Derek. You're welcome back. This is still your show too. It's just this show has kept me sane. I need something creative to work on.
Mental Health and Future Plans
01:10:54
Speaker
And I'll be honest, these last few months have been pretty rough as far as just like just mentally from COVID and everything. Finally going to a therapist again. So feeling good there. Good for you. Yeah, it's good. I recommend if you think you need to go to a therapist, get the fuck out there and go to a therapist. I've needed to do that for a long time, but like taking a couple months off of this
01:11:18
Speaker
It's been hard. I miss doing this every week. So I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to try and bring in a rotating cast of friends. So to start off, I know my buddy Dustin, which at my wedding, there were two best men. There was Derek, who was dressed as Kevin Owens, and Dustin, who was dressed as Marty Skurl, who we can't dress as anymore.
01:11:50
Speaker
Uh, Dustin does not watch pro wrestling, Derek. So this is going to be fun getting to show him things. This is going to be like, he's my child and I'm going to start. Is it going to be a little bit like the scene in Clockwork Orange where they make Alex watch all the, uh,
01:12:07
Speaker
all of the disgusting World War II footage with his eyes peeled open. I think it will be. I've had, I've actually been having Dustin watch some death matches with me every once in a while. Dustin's one of the few people that I talk to every single day of my life and our, we are going to bicker like an old couple and I'm going to show him some people getting cut up and bleeding and maybe even some classics.
01:12:34
Speaker
I'm excited. The funny thing is I'm just as excited to watch, or not watch, but listen to episodes that don't involve me. I think that was one of my favorite things in the time doing the show is that when there were episodes where you did sit-ins with Leo or somebody else, I liked listening to those episodes maybe even more so because I liked to see the dynamic when it wasn't me in the chair with you, just to see how that was. And I think that idea is exciting.
01:13:02
Speaker
which means you're gonna be once again, you're gonna be the consistent heartbeat, the vein that flows through the show. So I will still be listening, I will be back. This isn't the last time you've heard from me, I'm sure I will be bitching about Goldberg and other things in the future. Can we make a promise that you'll be back for the big four? And by the big four, I mean AEW's four pay-per-views.
01:13:30
Speaker
that.
01:13:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think we can make that happen. I'm sure there will be things that pop up that I'm going to shoot a text your way and be like, hey, I'm going to have a day this week need to record because I could get some stuff off my chest. Especially when you get that month of paternity leave, I feel like you're going to be watching some stuff in there somewhere.
01:14:07
Speaker
I would like to think I will. It's wild to think I'm going to have them over four weeks away from work. And obviously, I'm going to be doing a lot of dad stuff in that time when Megan goes back to work. I'm going to have a lot of one-on-one time with my kid. But I'm looking forward to what the future holds for predetermined pro wrestling hangout. And I'm looking forward to seeing where you steer this ship.
01:14:33
Speaker
I think you and Chris from the Curtain Jerks should do an episode together about just being Wrestle Dads. Maybe that will be a... that absolutely would be a great fucking show. Give me the week off and then you guys do your thing.
01:14:50
Speaker
uh man well it is anything else to add no i think uh still follow derrick on social media he's at halloween helping on all the social medias we're at predetermined podcast on instagram we're at wrestle hangout on holy shit you do all the social media stuff so i no one's gonna touch that
01:15:13
Speaker
I've been waiting to say this for like a year. I don't know this because I haven't checked in a while. I'm pretty sure the last pinned tweet you have on your Twitter profile is a pinned tweet of you promoting the go home episode to the WrestleMania that Ronda Rousey was in the main event of.
01:15:40
Speaker
I think that might have been March or April of 2019. I'm a hard man to get a hold of. I don't do social media. As much as I promote our social media. If you want Garrett's phone number, it's 217.
01:15:56
Speaker
If you want to reach out to Garrett, he loves getting bombarded with texts and phone calls all at once from everybody. I'm trying to do better. I'm kind of honestly, I'm one of the hardest friends to probably keep in touch with because I don't really text much. I don't do social media much. I need to get better at it.
01:16:16
Speaker
If I could say, if I could tie this back into pro wrestling, you do have an inner circle of people that you do stay in touch with pretty regularly. It's hard to get into that rotation, and I get it. I understand. It always seems like a big task when you start messaging somebody. You're like, oh man, is this gonna be somebody I'm in touch with regularly again? Do I have time for that? I just had a kid. My schedule just changed entirely within the last month and a half, so.
01:16:46
Speaker
Plus, I'll be really good at more dad jokes by the next time I do an episode with you. Oh, god damn. And you said that December is the month you have off. Yes, beginning of December through the beginning of January. Well, we'll all look forward to having you check back in and give us an update on how everything's going. I'm sure things will be dramatically different. Not.
01:17:09
Speaker
And things over here are probably gonna be fucking weird with Dustin and whoever else I can get to come on weekly and just bullshit about pro wrestling with me.
01:17:19
Speaker
I'm looking forward to those episodes, man. Thank you to everyone who's ever listened to a single episode of the show. If you're still listening, thank you for all of the reviews, all of the comments, the tweets, the Facebook posts, the videos, the songs. We've had people do songs and erotic fan fiction. So thank you to all of our friends out there and look forward to more things to come for this podcast.
01:17:47
Speaker
There's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right. I hope you had our goddamn music, Garrett, please.