Transcript
Speaker: live laugh how's it going everybody we are joined by omg james ryan um question for you what does the omg stand for originality manifested from greatness okay oh i i laughed because i thought it was just gonna be like oh my god it's james ryan but but that's great yeah
Speaker: See that, Drewhood?
Speaker: You can get it done in three letters, not five.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: You can.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Well, thanks for joining us tonight.
Speaker: Before we get started, where can everybody find you?
Speaker: Do you have anything you'd like to plug?
Speaker: You can find me every Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 8 p.m.
Speaker: to whenever I get the fuck off on Twitch forward slash OhMyGames.
Speaker: That is O with three H's.
Speaker: On Twitter, you can find me at OMG underscore James Ryan.
Speaker: And then on Facebook, you can find me at OMGJamesRyan.com.
Speaker: Then on Instagram, I think that's the only one that's different.
Speaker: I think that's James Ryan Pro.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Sorry, I'm shitty with my own social media account.
Speaker: You're good.
Speaker: I don't even pretend to remember ours.
Speaker: I always rely on him for that, so I get it.
Speaker: Yeah, awesome.
Speaker: So what kind of stuff are you streaming?
Speaker: I stream a lot of first person shooters.
Speaker: I grew up playing a lot of Call of Duty with my brothers.
Speaker: I'm the oldest out of five.
Speaker: So we all my parents couldn't afford to get everybody a system, but we at least had one for the brothers or one for the kids, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So do Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops 1, Black Ops 2, Black Ops 3, 4, etc.
Speaker: all the way down.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's a lot of Warzone.
Speaker: Rocket League, Fortnite, stuff like that.
Speaker: Just really whatever I'm vibing and feeling with.
Speaker: Hell, the past couple days we've been streaming some golf, so it's whatever I'm vibing with that day.
Speaker: Modern Warfare 2, my childhood and the best game.
Speaker: So I get it.
Speaker: Black Ops 2 and 3, brother, hold Modern Warfare 2 pretty close.
Speaker: Don't get me wrong.
Speaker: We had Rust and everything like that.
Speaker: The P90 and the Peacekeepers are still top two best guns Modern Warfare ever created.
Speaker: But, dude, Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 3, especially in Black Ops 3 when they got to like...
Speaker: um i guess you would call like an exoskeleton or exosuit where you jump double shoot with like a jet pack on and still shoot in the air that man i wish warzone now would get to that like less of the real real life of like what combat and everything really is in war and go more towards of like hey this is a video game that simulates war you know what i'm saying yeah we can add crazy stupid things to it and still be fun yeah of course you were a big halo guy it sounds like you might have been a playstation
Speaker: Oh, no, dude.
Speaker: All due respect, fuck Microsoft.
Speaker: I'm a Sony guy through and through.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: Always will be.
Speaker: That's the answer.
Speaker: The first thing I ever picked up was a Nintendo 64.
Speaker: Right after that was that PlayStation 1.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I've been hook, line, and sinker ever since.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: There's nothing wrong about that.
Speaker: PS2, probably one of the most important systems ever.
Speaker: I'd say so.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: It gave me SmackDown vs. Raw 1, brother.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: It gave me the bread and butter.
Speaker: SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 is actually how I was introduced to wrestling.
Speaker: That's how I learned it.
Speaker: That was my starting point.
Speaker: So The Undertaker was crazy to me.
Speaker: Like crazy as in what?
Speaker: Like the idea that only thing I know about him was from commentary.
Speaker: So like, I'm like, is he really dead?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Like, I didn't know this was like, like I didn't know anything.
Speaker: So, which is probably a good segue that this is sometimes a wrestling podcast.
Speaker: And I guess the question is, what's your earliest memory of wrestling?
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So two things come to mind.
Speaker: I used to live across the street from my childhood friend.
Speaker: We're still friends today.
Speaker: We met in this fall of 01, I believe.
Speaker: And the first thing that he gave me was a best of raw volume one.
Speaker: And in that best of raw, like it was, it had, of course it had Austin Taker and Kane, but it had Foley coming off of the cell.
Speaker: Then it had the head bangers on the cover of it.
Speaker: I'm trying to remember like the VHS thing itself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But my earliest, earliest memory was when getting introduced to it.
Speaker: Once again, this is The Undertaker.
Speaker: We had we're watching it and it's when Kane and Undertaker are doing their their rivalry leading up to Mania.
Speaker: And Kane's walking towards The Undertaker while Taker's in the ring and then Taker shoots his arms up.
Speaker: And when he shoot, pause, reverse that.
Speaker: It's Kane in the middle of the ring.
Speaker: And then it's Undertaker walking through or walking towards him down the ramp.
Speaker: And I remember Kane shot his hands up and the fireballs went off.
Speaker: And the fireballs went off and you hear Paul Bearer, the, oh, yeah, it's in the background.
Speaker: And Undertaker said one of the most damnedest lines to me.
Speaker: He said, Cain, I will walk through the burning fires of hell to get to you.
Speaker: And as a kid, dude, I'm like six years old, bro.
Speaker: I got to cut the light on.
Speaker: I got to open doors.
Speaker: I got to call some people in the room.
Speaker: Like, dude, I was so scared and actually like frightened because once again, I'm like, dude, is this guy really dead?
Speaker: And did Cain really kill all of his brothers in that fire?
Speaker: Like, is that really what happened?
Speaker: So, yeah, man, that one.
Speaker: And then my second one was the two, the three stages of hell between rock.
Speaker: And I mean, not rock, Austin and Triple H, where they do the sledgehammer and the two by four meet in the middle.
Speaker: And then I believe it's Triple H covers Austin.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a great place to start.
Speaker: I was also afraid of The Undertaker.
Speaker: I think anybody that starts watching wrestling when The Undertaker is around, like I had, this is probably the eighth time I've said it, but I had dreams that The Undertaker, that I would have to wrestle him as a kid.
Speaker: They were nightmares and I was just fleeing the country as a middle schooler, running away from The Undertaker.
Speaker: So I definitely get that.
Speaker: The Undertaker is... You're like fucking eight years old trying to get the flight to end the future.
Speaker: Yeah, like... You're just like, get me the fuck out of here.
Speaker: I remember at one point I was like hanging from the scoreboard, like trying to like climb my way out of the building.
Speaker: Like...
Speaker: It was legit terrifying.
Speaker: Not the fact that he was dead, but the fact that I was going to have to wrestle him.
Speaker: Oh, brother, if Teddy Long came out and told you that, you had a choice.
Speaker: I'm sure Teddy Long was in the dream for sure.
Speaker: That was the prime time for me.
Speaker: I think everybody has a different Undertaker.
Speaker: Everybody has the Undertaker moment, whether it's back in the day when he was wearing his...
Speaker: suit or like badass taker although a lot less of those we've found but yeah undertaker i think is like a one constant like almost throughout all of wrestling
Speaker: And also his stuff with Randy Orton, I was really young and like fresh in the fresh get like really just getting hooked into what storyline was and then taking me on that ride.
Speaker: So dude, like when Orton on SmackDown is standing in the bathroom and he's washing his face off and he's trying to just get his composure together.
Speaker: Right, dude, I'm getting fucking chills right now.
Speaker: Think about it.
Speaker: And he's trying to get his composure and he looks up and it's Taker in the back left corner of his head, right?
Speaker: In the mirror, he turns around, there's nobody there.
Speaker: Opens up the casket, it's Bob Wharton laying there type stuff, dude.
Speaker: Undertaker to me was like one of the best.
Speaker: Just because like as a kid, you get so fascinated and hooked into what the character was and how crazy and outlandish he is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: He's the GOAT.
Speaker: Yeah, pretty.
Speaker: sure uh longest entrance maybe kind of moxley might be trying to take that from him but it's always worth it um so you're the undertaker you latched on to who were some other like wrestlers at that time that you kind of like attract you were attracted to
Speaker: Uh, AJ Styles is my favorite of all time.
Speaker: He is my absolute favorite because back in the day I was, I'm like, you can hear it now.
Speaker: I'm from the South, like deep South from Julian, North Carolina.
Speaker: I guarantee you've never heard of it.
Speaker: And, um, back then, like I was a small scrawny ass kid, still scrawny now, but you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: I'm six, six,
Speaker: But back then, I don't know why I just related to him so much, but he would hit the, he would do the leapfrog into the drop down into the drop kick with a big, big fire up.
Speaker: And I remember just looking at my friend, Matt, who pretty much introduced me to all this.
Speaker: And I was like, yo, he's the damn man.
Speaker: Like, don't get me wrong.
Speaker: He's out here wrestling Jerry Lynn on a Wednesday.
Speaker: And I just mowed four yards of grass to pay the 10 99, whatever it was to pay my parents to buy it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: He was, I don't want to say a nobody at the time, but he was growing.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: He wasn't the top guy in NWA TNA at the time.
Speaker: But, man, AJ, without a doubt, you're the GOAT.
Speaker: If you ever listen to this, AJ, you're the GOAT.
Speaker: There's 1A, 1B, 1C.
Speaker: You're 1A.
Speaker: Flair's 1B.
Speaker: Michaels is 1C.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was the...
Speaker: those are the three the top three for you that's a pretty good top three um definitely i would say we could kind of skip ahead but it like uh reflects on like your style on the ring now like kind of the way or at least with michaels i would say there's a little bit of like the showmanship yeah a lot with how i sell yeah for sure um but work rate wise truth be told is a lot of flair and a lot of dusty yeah um i don't watch anything new
Speaker: at all like i mean don't get me wrong i'll still catch up with like if i want to watch a promo or if i want to watch i know that's going to be like a good talking segment on a television show i'll watch it but for the most part like flair and dusty those old crockett days like 77 through 84 85 is what i try to study the most um sean definitely with like my entrance and uh
Speaker: the way that I sell and the way that I choose to sell, uh, Ric Flair on the way that I like the way that I work, the way that I like to talk to the crowd.
Speaker: Um, AJ is that Southern draw and that Southern fire.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just in us.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: We're from this part of the part of the world.
Speaker: It's never going to leave us.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: So at what point, um, in your kind of journey, did you decide that you wanted to be a wrestler?
Speaker: Is that kind of always in your mind?
Speaker: It wasn't in my it wasn't in my mind until the day that me and my brother, Matt, decided that we wanted to try to do it.
Speaker: How deep do you want to get as deep as you want?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Cause I'm pretty open about it and I don't really care.
Speaker: Um, well, I mean, I care, but I'm really open about it because like I'm past it and I'm never going to get to it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, so 2013, 2014, I started working at a hookah bar, hanging out in a lot of places that I wasn't supposed to be, et cetera.
Speaker: Um, got really hooked on fucking pills, like doing a lot of like just dumb shit.
Speaker: Um, tried to pull the plug a couple of times if you follow my drift.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: God kept me here for a couple for whatever reason.
Speaker: I don't I don't truthfully know yet, but now one day I haven't been able to tell him this shit either.
Speaker: But one day I was watching Dax Hardwood on NXT and
Speaker: I forgot who the fuck they were wrestling, but it was so simple and so stupid.
Speaker: But at the time, Ricochet and Will Ospreay and everybody's flying off the cuff.
Speaker: And you know what I mean?
Speaker: The high flying, no selling style, I like to call it is really starting to make its way into professional wrestling.
Speaker: And I remember just looking at Matt when we were watching the revival.
Speaker: And I was like, I really like these guys.
Speaker: Truthfully, this is the truth.
Speaker: And we were just so fucked up on pills.
Speaker: Like I was, at least he wasn't, but I was.
Speaker: And I was just so obliterated out of my mind.
Speaker: And I remember just telling him, I was like, dude, we can, if we really tried, we could fucking do this.
Speaker: Like if these Southern motherfuckers can do it, we can do it.
Speaker: Like just, just putting it out there like that.
Speaker: Like these ain't Vince's guys.
Speaker: Like, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: This is not something he wants that he's going to be pushing at the time.
Speaker: That's how I'm thinking.
Speaker: Cause we're so like utilized and used to that WWE style that they're not going to use the Southern talkers, the short chunkier guys anyway.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, it was Dax Harwood.
Speaker: They worked the leg.
Speaker: He came off to the top.
Speaker: He was in an Indian death locker, a figure four.
Speaker: And then Dax came off the top, dropped the knee.
Speaker: on someone's leg.
Speaker: I'm sorry if whoever I'm talking about, I'm, I don't remember who you are, but, um, yeah.
Speaker: And I just looked at him.
Speaker: I said, we could do it.
Speaker: And then we Googled North Carolina independent wrestling schools is what we Googled.
Speaker: And, uh, what we Googled, what came up was LeBron Cozone.
Speaker: Which side of my own, that one, which was Firestar.
Speaker: It wasn't even Firestar yet.
Speaker: It was just LeBron Cozone training school, and he was about a mile and a half away.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I hit him up on Twitter, which I still have the tweets, or I still have the DMs.
Speaker: Hit him up on Twitter, and then I started within a couple months later, like a month later, I think.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: I hit him up in July.
Speaker: I started in August, I think it was last week.
Speaker: So before that, there wasn't a part of you as a kid that just like, oh, I want to be a wrestler when I grow up.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: It was something that I really enjoyed.
Speaker: But I was a baseball kid and an amateur wrestler.
Speaker: So like my whole thought when I was growing up was like, don't get me wrong, Kurt Angle went and did this, Dan Severn went and did it.
Speaker: But it wasn't something that I was looking forward to doing at that time.
Speaker: To be honest, I was trying to get into fighting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I couldn't make those weight cuts whatsoever that they wanted me to make.
Speaker: And I couldn't build on the mass because of my metabolism to actually grow the size that I needed to.
Speaker: So, yeah, I was kind of stuck, truthfully.
Speaker: Like I didn't have anywhere to go.
Speaker: Like baseball kind of fallen by the wayside because UNCG dropped amateur wrestling and scholarships for that because of the Olympics at the time.
Speaker: They dropped it for rugby.
Speaker: That's a shoot.
Speaker: So, yeah, dude, like I was literally stuck in the middle working at a restaurant that I fucking hated.
Speaker: And yeah, awesome.
Speaker: What was that first day like for you?
Speaker: Like when you walk into the doors, hell, let me say it loud again.
Speaker: Hell, it was absolute hell.
Speaker: We were in the backyard of our buddy Petey bangs house.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And walking, we walk in the backyard.
Speaker: There's the ring.
Speaker: There's a bunch of guys in the rain.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And really didn't do much.
Speaker: We took a few bumps.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: But the first day that we used to do back in the day was called chop day.
Speaker: And I was to see if you really wanted to fucking be here, because if you can't take the chop from these gentlemen, they're going to be standing across from you.
Speaker: They call themselves your brothers.
Speaker: Then you're not going to be able to take something from a random jabron in Saskatchewan.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So my first day at 158 pounds was chop day and they,
Speaker: Busted my chest up like hamburger meat, man.
Speaker: And it hurts so fucking bad.
Speaker: And back then, Cozone, he was stiff.
Speaker: I just I love him.
Speaker: So I can say that he was really stiff and he beat the damn shit out of me.
Speaker: And it was hell.
Speaker: But I remember looking at Matt and Matt was like, I'm not going back.
Speaker: I was like, well, if you're not, I am.
Speaker: And he was like, all right, another week.
Speaker: And then another week went by and he stopped coming.
Speaker: But I, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: I kept coming back.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then we, and then we changed it and formed it to what it is today.
Speaker: What do you think made you come back?
Speaker: Cause it's like, this isn't a dream that you had.
Speaker: This is like kind of, I wouldn't say a web, but this is definitely something that just clicked in a moment.
Speaker: So why did you come back?
Speaker: I might have to like, just say my faith.
Speaker: and like my belief in God, because I prayed for all this.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: Like I prayed for a part.
Speaker: I didn't pray for what I like.
Speaker: I didn't know what I wanted.
Speaker: I didn't know what I needed.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: I was 19.
Speaker: I'm a kid, child, still living in my parents' house.
Speaker: So like I didn't know.
Speaker: I just prayed for a purpose and a reasoning for still being alive because I tried to pull the plug three times and it didn't work.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Really two.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: still like all that didn't work why am i still here what am i doing and something told me to go back and then keep going back yeah and then keep going back and now i sit back here almost a decade later like i've spent a quarter of my life inside this profession inside of this you know i'm saying inside of this school underneath this teaching dude i
Speaker: I still can't answer it truthfully.
Speaker: I don't know why I really don't, other than that I prayed for a purpose and a reasoning and something told me to go back.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: So after that first day, kind of talk us through training, like how much training are we doing before we're doing our first match and just kind of talk us through like all that if you can.
Speaker: Okay, so I caught on very quickly.
Speaker: very quickly um so i had my first match within two months against uh ripog scrapyard dog and um but dude after that it was every tuesday thursday and sunday and me and cozone literally spent every day of the week together until about three in the morning
Speaker: Like I said, like I was still living at home, so I didn't really have no responsibilities.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Except for like my phone bill and my car payment, but I can make that just doing side work and everything.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So yeah, it was me, Kozon, and another guy named Cam Carter.
Speaker: Cam Carter's the first guy.
Speaker: He's not around anymore.
Speaker: You said what you said, but he gave me my first bump, literally from my back elbow.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: So it was us three there, and it went from headlock takeovers to tackle drop-down leapfrog to Kozon wants to try this.
Speaker: at his match coming up this week.
Speaker: So take this superplex real quick.
Speaker: And, yeah.
Speaker: So, dude, it was just a barrage of everything.
Speaker: But what a lot of guys don't understand is, like, we're technically self-taught.
Speaker: Like, like that first, like me, Cozone and Cam Carter, like we were technically self-taught.
Speaker: We would go sit in sheets.
Speaker: And at the time I was really trying to gain a lot of weight.
Speaker: So I'm eating these like cheap sandwiches and just packing them full of carbs as much as I can.
Speaker: And we would sit in sheets and we would watch three and a half, four hours, Zack Sabre, Jr. Seminars.
Speaker: Or we would watch three hour Manny Fernandez seminars or Kevin Nash seminars or
Speaker: Think of a top worker that has a free seminar on YouTube, and we've probably watched it countless times, to the point that we would take it on slow motion so we could get each part of a movement, like a reverse wrist lock or a hammer lock.
Speaker: Some of the easiest, most basic things of pro wrestling, we were really breaking down and trying to study the proper way of doing it because nobody...
Speaker: was really teaching us and we couldn't afford to go to one of these big schools or we couldn't afford to go learn from George and Charlotte, you know what I mean?
Speaker: Just stuff like that.
Speaker: So yeah, we were self taught and we would watch these seminars over and over and over again and then go to the ring and try to do the same thing, learn it, go try it out in the matches later that next week.
Speaker: That's interesting because when you think of LeBron Cozo, you think of Master of All Trades, the guy that's constantly putting out everything, but then to go back and to see he has a story just like everybody else does where you guys are sitting in the sheets trying to figure this out.
Speaker: So everybody has to start somewhere.
Speaker: So that's really cool to see.
Speaker: At what point does that kind of turn into Firestar?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: at what point do you guys kind of where does it take the leap for you guys or is that a separate journey from you and cozone to where you kind of like start to solidify that i don't know if that makes sense i kind of just said a lot of things no it does i'm just trying to make sure that i word it correctly out of respect for my brother because i don't want to take credit that i'm undeserved of yeah um
Speaker: Man.
Speaker: So we went from Petey Bang's house.
Speaker: I have to take you like this because I'm very ADHD and my brain does not work normally.
Speaker: But we go from Petey Bang's house, which was, like I said, four miles from my mom's house.
Speaker: I ran there every day, by the way, to and from.
Speaker: Then we moved to Reidsville, North Carolina, which was out there in the damn sticks.
Speaker: And around that time, it was literally just me and him because it's 17 degrees outside.
Speaker: The mat is completely frozen and we're still trying to go out here and bump.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's just me and him like nobody else would would drive that far, show up, try to work, do any of that.
Speaker: So it was literally just me and him from that point.
Speaker: And then he finds this building, this warehouse building on Medley Street and green in downtown Greensboro.
Speaker: And we were technically not supposed to run shows, but we told them that it was just a housing facility for the ring.
Speaker: And so they agreed to sign us for our lease for that.
Speaker: And we started training from there.
Speaker: And it was in that point, it was in January, it was January 11th.
Speaker: I wish I remember the year.
Speaker: I just remember the day, but it was January 11th when me and him both went in there and looked at the first like inkling of what Medley Street was was about to become for a little bit.
Speaker: And his biggest thing, a lot of people don't know this, but his biggest thing was, is that when you Google Firestar Pro Wrestling, he wants an exact location to pop up because back in the day we had CWF Sportatorium and
Speaker: when you look and I'm pretty sure if you Google it now, it's probably still the same thing.
Speaker: But when you Googled CWF's auditorium, the exact location of that building popped up in your Google map.
Speaker: And he wanted that.
Speaker: And he felt that
Speaker: until we have like a solid spot that we can call home, we really can't build off of it because we're really traveling.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: We're pretty much couch hopping in backyards at the time.
Speaker: So January 11th of that year, whenever we finally got the okay for the building, that's when all that really started to grow into what it is today.
Speaker: But at that time, it was still only me, Cozona, Cam Carter.
Speaker: That was it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What point do you start to like add people into the equation where you're now taking what you've learned and kind of sharing that with them?
Speaker: Uh, that took me about a year and some change to get to that point.
Speaker: Now don't get me wrong when it was probably six to eight months later, we started to get, um,
Speaker: like Black as Jack came in the door around that time.
Speaker: Referee Ben Grayson came in at that time.
Speaker: That's when Marcus Cross and Griff Garrison had came in.
Speaker: um so yeah like the ball was really starting to kind of roll right there and cozone asked me to run training or to help but like i didn't know anything so i was really doing roles and then letting him do on the bumps but it was probably about a year and some change in when i finally asked george south was it okay if i share the knowledge that i have and he said yes that i started to um that i started to actually teach train and
Speaker: kind of form these guys from what they thought a pro wrestler was to what one actually is interesting so with george south is that kind of like the undertaker of the the north carolina scene where like you kind of almost need his blessing to kind of yeah i was trying to think of a bigger one than taker yeah that one just because taker's so confined to godfather almost like
Speaker: Yeah, that's a better one.
Speaker: The movie sense, not the wrestler sense.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, on commentary, I deemed him the name the godfather of violence.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's what I get.
Speaker: That's the title.
Speaker: But, yes, absolutely.
Speaker: When me and Kozum first started and we were going and we were traveling to shows together, we were yin and yang.
Speaker: If you've seen him, I'm right behind him or vice versa, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: everybody, and I mean everybody shit on us.
Speaker: Every fucking body.
Speaker: You self-taught, no good motherfuckers, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: You don't know shit.
Speaker: You're not going to get booked.
Speaker: You're not getting booked here ever again.
Speaker: You need to come to this school and learn from me because I know what I'm talking about.
Speaker: You guys have never been there.
Speaker: Yada, yada, yada.
Speaker: So, dude, like we, I've heard it all.
Speaker: We were,
Speaker: I can't really say blackball, but that's the best term I can think of.
Speaker: We were blackball from so many fucking places.
Speaker: And George was the only guy to come up and give us advice.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: I can tell you three people that came up to us, and it took the other two a little while.
Speaker: But three people that came up to us when we were getting shit on.
Speaker: George was first, Zane Dawson was second, and then C.W.
Speaker: Anderson was third.
Speaker: Those were the only three guys that gave a fuck about what I had going on and me trying to learn.
Speaker: Because that's all we wanted to do.
Speaker: We just wanted to learn, prove ourselves, and then try to make it in this shit.
Speaker: But everybody at the time sees fucking two young-ass kids that don't know nothing.
Speaker: We both broke as hell trying to make it, and they shit on us.
Speaker: George South, to me, greatest pro wrestler of all time.
Speaker: Greatest of all time.
Speaker: Yes, you have your Ricky Morton's.
Speaker: Yes, you have your Rick Flares.
Speaker: Yes, you have your Ricky Steamboats, everything like that.
Speaker: But the level of a run that he has sustained up until this time.
Speaker: Look at him now.
Speaker: He's in GCW.
Speaker: He's done revamped his fucking career again.
Speaker: He's on top of the world, hashtag highway run.
Speaker: If you don't have his blessing, in my opinion, don't do anything in the state of North Carolina because it's going to get back to him and he's going to tell you what the truth is, whether you like it or not.
Speaker: But yeah, dude, long story short, like I love that man to death.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Love you, George.
Speaker: I know you'll hear it.
Speaker: Love you.
Speaker: And if you don't want to share it, it's okay.
Speaker: What was that piece of initial piece of advice he gave you?
Speaker: I can't cuss because he wouldn't.
Speaker: But he said, don't listen.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: You have as good a right of training people and teaching people as I do.
Speaker: Who am I to tell you you can't do something?
Speaker: Who am I to tell another grown man he can't feed his family and teach people what he knows, whether if it's right or wrong?
Speaker: Because, hey, guys, I don't know if you fucking knew this or not, but there's no right or wrong answer to what a fan does and doesn't like.
Speaker: OK, shut the hell up.
Speaker: I can't tell you how to make money.
Speaker: I can't tell you how to feed yourself.
Speaker: And he said it just like this.
Speaker: If some goof wants to pay you to learn pro wrestling and you've never been anywhere, that's up to you.
Speaker: That's up to that person.
Speaker: I can't stop that.
Speaker: Go do what you want.
Speaker: He called him core zone back then.
Speaker: He said, go do what you want, core zone.
Speaker: He said, go have fun.
Speaker: Go make your money.
Speaker: And that's exactly what Cozy did.
Speaker: He took off.
Speaker: He took the ball with it.
Speaker: He took that blessing and he ran with it.
Speaker: And to this day, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: We still have George's blessing to the utmost respect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He texted me this morning, actually.
Speaker: Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker: Like, we knew of George South because, like, if you have, like, no wrestling in North Carolina, you know George South.
Speaker: But it wasn't until we started doing this podcast that we started to realize the impact that he's had.
Speaker: He comes up.
Speaker: We've done maybe 40 of these.
Speaker: I would say he's come up with, like, at least 30 of them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, you should get, like, he is, like, this podcast with him could last, like, three times as long.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: you know what i'm saying with him and just the story and he could talk about 77 yeah for three hours like he doesn't even have to skip to another year man yeah excellent talker excellent storyteller yeah like man please go i yeah we would love to i think uh zayn was gonna try to uh set it up he said we might have to have somebody come out there and like set it up for him but he'd love to do it so
Speaker: unless the library can unless you can set up a webcam and a microphone in the library yeah you ain't getting them on a split phone george south still has a flip phone yeah he's not getting rid of it yeah he's very hard to reach but that's what makes him that makes him you know i'm saying the legend can you confirm that uh he does most of his business at bojangles
Speaker: This is 100% with a scratch made Southern made biscuit that tickles its fancy every single time.
Speaker: And it has to be with a bow size sweet tea.
Speaker: Not a large sweet tea, a bow size sweet tea.
Speaker: That distinction, very important.
Speaker: We've heard that several times.
Speaker: I mean, honestly, that should be y'all's fucking pitch right there.
Speaker: Hey, George, we got a bunch of Bojangles for you and some sweet tea.
Speaker: You want to come talk for about 30 minutes?
Speaker: You can eat while you do it.
Speaker: And he'd be like, oh, buddy, come on, buddy.
Speaker: That'd be so great.
Speaker: Yeah, but I don't think, and I'm sure you agree, but North Carolina wouldn't be what it is as far as a hotbed of wrestling if that man never shared the knowledge that he had.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Dude, he's created more superstars and more people that you watch on television, you know what I'm saying, that we can really count on.
Speaker: You got to think about Cedric Alexander, Tessa Blanchard, Darius Lockhart, Zane, Dave Dawson.
Speaker: The list goes completely on.
Speaker: Not even that.
Speaker: What's very cool to me is all these guys.
Speaker: I'm a 95 baby.
Speaker: When I got into wrestling, it was the Ruthless Aggression Era.
Speaker: I never got to live the glory years.
Speaker: But when somebody like Ric Flair sits there and tells you on multiple interviews or just tells you in person at WrestleCade or whatever, listen to George South.
Speaker: He knows what the hell he's talking about.
Speaker: That means something.
Speaker: This is a guy that literally everybody labels as the best to ever do it, who's made millions and millions and millions upon dollars and bought multiple houses doing this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Listen to him.
Speaker: All the greats say the same thing, every last one of them.
Speaker: And something that I think is so underrated is he's still doing it at such a high level.
Speaker: We saw him work Janela at AML, and I was just like, he's working.
Speaker: Like, it was so good.
Speaker: It was almost, it was this cool hybrid of an old school and, like, modern day match that just really, really worked.
Speaker: And I was just like, look at George.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: Like, I'm always amazed by it.
Speaker: Yes, and that's, like,
Speaker: I don't want to skip ahead of you guys if you guys was going to get there or not, but like that's because of his style.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's because of the way that he wrestles and I wrestle the exact same.
Speaker: I'm not taking no high level, high shoulder fucking bump on my neck for you to kill me.
Speaker: No, we're going to take a flat back.
Speaker: We're going to talk to these people.
Speaker: We're going to shake a lot of hands, kiss a lot of babies.
Speaker: punch the shit out of each other for a little bit and then we're going to go on home.
Speaker: Like you don't have to reinvent the wheel folks.
Speaker: It all still works the same.
Speaker: And he proves that day in day out.
Speaker: And that's why I'd love him even more for it.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Um, you mentioned like your style now is that way.
Speaker: Did that differ when you were first starting out?
Speaker: Like what, like, yes, you were training, but what was that initial like character?
Speaker: And what was that initial like goal when you got in the ring?
Speaker: And if you ever have them on, you can ask them and he'll tell you the exact same thing.
Speaker: The first question, that was the first question that Cozon asked me was, where do you see yourself in the business?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then I said in lights.
Speaker: So like my first.
Speaker: I said, I see my name in lights is where I do.
Speaker: And I see my face where it belongs.
Speaker: And at the time I was thinking of Soldier Field and having my face plastered across that billboard out front.
Speaker: But.
Speaker: Back then, dude, I was trying to do everything.
Speaker: I was like, I can still do all that, too.
Speaker: It's just I slipped one time during training trying to do a moonsault and I landed incorrectly.
Speaker: And then that was the one time where I was like, no, not doing that no more.
Speaker: But when I first started the care, I didn't have a character.
Speaker: I didn't.
Speaker: I was a kid that that amateur wrestled in North Carolina for a little while.
Speaker: That kid, that's a good talker.
Speaker: Or I thought back then I was a good talker and I could do everything Jeff Hardy could do.
Speaker: Literally, that was my thought process.
Speaker: Like, I could throw Ray in there.
Speaker: Like, I can do a tilt or I can do a tornado DDT, like, all this other stuff.
Speaker: But, like, being as skinny as I was back then, if I missed a swan ton off the top, it hurt for two weeks.
Speaker: That one spot in that 15 minute match hurt for two weeks.
Speaker: And it got to the point where I was like, fuck this.
Speaker: I will do this when there's a bunch of people there and it's like a prominent position in a card or or the match kind of, you know what I'm saying, necessitates it a little bit.
Speaker: But besides that, if I don't have to do that, I'm not going to.
Speaker: kind of learned that from just getting hurt and being in pain all the time.
Speaker: I hope I answered your question.
Speaker: Yeah, you definitely did.
Speaker: Your story is very unique in the fact that you guys were kind of against the world, whereas a lot of people have like a teacher and they kind of work those shows and stuff.
Speaker: So how are you guys getting booked and how are you guys...
Speaker: overcoming that adversity that you were fighting just to get ring time?
Speaker: You can't deny people that are good.
Speaker: And as much as some promoters want to deny me, I'm pretty fucking good.
Speaker: And we would go out there, and this is not a joke, they'd give us four minutes.
Speaker: Four minutes, we got to do the job to one guy.
Speaker: He's going to beat the shit out of both of you.
Speaker: All right, cool.
Speaker: Just look at each other and sell your ass off.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Go out there and I would fucking fly and I would flop and I would sell and I'll be right back to it.
Speaker: I'd still be showing fire.
Speaker: I'm not getting any offense.
Speaker: Like I'm literally jobbing out the entire time, just enhancing these guys.
Speaker: But we did, I did such a good job at getting our ass kicked and making the other guy look like a dime less than a penny.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Then,
Speaker: people started to take notice and God bless guys like Mark James, because he was one of those guys in that CWF locker room that was taking notice.
Speaker: And you know what I mean?
Speaker: These guys are pretty fucking good.
Speaker: You should use them more.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Maybe we're not over yet.
Speaker: Maybe we're not, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: The best in the room, but we go out here, we get the job done that you ask us to do.
Speaker: And we do it to the best of our ability.
Speaker: And majority of the time that was pretty well.
Speaker: So pure talent alone is how we started to overcome all that.
Speaker: Was there a moment where you felt like you finally got that match that you deserved?
Speaker: With me and him?
Speaker: Just like in general.
Speaker: Like, finally I'm on a card.
Speaker: I'm in a position to where I've proved what I could do.
Speaker: Like where you weren't facing the idea that people were treating y'all different.
Speaker: Like when it finally shifted to... Oh, yeah.
Speaker: When we finally got a character and a gimmick.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Y'all got me there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, yeah, when we finally...
Speaker: We were in the back, and I don't know if you guys know who this guy is.
Speaker: I'm pretty sure he's not in the damn business anymore, but his name was Ethan Alexander Sharp.
Speaker: And he was from CWF, and he was a guy there.
Speaker: But he looked at us, and he was like, ha, LeBron Tozone, James Ryan.
Speaker: You should be LeBron James.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: just like that i turn around after he says it mark james now this is big mark james i will kill you and eat you march okay so i just turn around and he said dude that's great and if y'all don't make a sign for it right now i'm kicking both of your asses yes sir james lebron
Speaker: So when we started doing that, it was literally a sign.
Speaker: And if you go back, if you guys want to look him up, John Moses, his stuff's on there from that time period.
Speaker: But it was literally just a sign that said, we are LeBron James.
Speaker: Because LeBron was taking his talents to South Beach at the time.
Speaker: He was making the big jump.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: They just lost in the finals.
Speaker: So he was a big, hot topic.
Speaker: And he was going that was the year that LeBron faced the Golden State Warriors the first time.
Speaker: And yeah, we took that gimmick and it for some reason, the people in the CWS Sportatorium, they loved it.
Speaker: They it was easily relatable.
Speaker: And, dude, from then on, man, kids was wearing any kind of basketball jersey that they had at home just to be with us.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: And just to kind of feel appreciated and feel like that they was a part of what we had going on.
Speaker: We didn't have a match or anything like that.
Speaker: It was literally in the locker room when Ethan Sharp said that.
Speaker: Sorry, I'm moving.
Speaker: I was shaking the camera.
Speaker: He was like, yeah, you guys should be LeBron James.
Speaker: Bingo.
Speaker: Got booked every fucking where.
Speaker: Everywhere.
Speaker: Literally.
Speaker: We got three sets of jerseys in my closet that we don't even use anymore.
Speaker: For some reason, it clicked, man.
Speaker: At the time I had and I still do to this day, I have that chip on my shoulder.
Speaker: That's why I'm wearing a Firestar shirt now.
Speaker: Like my whole goal at that point in time was to one, make sure people knew who Cozone was as a person and as a worker.
Speaker: And it also was to take all the slander and bullshit off of his name.
Speaker: I didn't want nobody trash talking us anymore.
Speaker: I didn't want nobody shitting on me because I was a Cozone kid.
Speaker: My whole goal was to go out there and I want you to watch me work fucking better than your kid does because my trainer is better than yours.
Speaker: I've never actually now that I say that I've never actually said that publicly, but that's that was my whole fucking purpose.
Speaker: I want to make sure that people know that this dude right here trained me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's got to make you feel really good when you're seeing the heights that Firestar is reaching, like, fucking Leo Rush versus J Malachi, like, in a packed building, like, a final farewell as it's moving up.
Speaker: That's got to be so cool to see that, like...
Speaker: LeBron James is probably LeBron Cozo is probably the go-to name for training if you want to be trained right in the state of North Carolina.
Speaker: I'll go back further, though.
Speaker: I wrestled James Storm in Firestar.
Speaker: Had one of my best matches in my career in there.
Speaker: I wrestled Caprice Coleman.
Speaker: That's when that was the that was the and I'll get back to him later, too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But that was that was a match.
Speaker: People realize like, yo, OMG can fucking talk.
Speaker: And then Cam Carter versus Swerve Strickland when he was in Lucha Underground.
Speaker: Bobby Lashley versus.
Speaker: Marcellus King.
Speaker: Uh, shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Trevor Lee versus Cedric Alexander underneath there, bro.
Speaker: The list of matches back then were to, and even up to this day, they put on some bangers that a lot of people, I feel more people should know about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: One of my go-tos to kind of put out people is LeBron versus Jay Lethal.
Speaker: Dude.
Speaker: fucking chef's kiss of professional wrestling brother for sure and go ahead i don't even know what i was gonna say i'll let you go dude like i just don't get me wrong like we're me and him both um suck at social media like i'll admit that so a lot of people don't know it but dude i don't know how people feel about them or anything but
Speaker: Cozy's damn near the black, meanwhile, almost.
Speaker: Like, not even joking.
Speaker: You won't find me, except for Joe Black, except for Joe Black, you won't find me another more aggressive, more tenacity, more...
Speaker: Like every movement has a fucking purpose and you won't find a larger gas tank than Kozum.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This dude spends like seven days a week inside the ring wrestling two to four hours a day.
Speaker: He's probably in the greatest shape of his career right now.
Speaker: he's just i'm not trying to keep harping on him but i love the guy and more people need to know about him yeah but he's legit one of the greatest around and i was so happy for him that he got that spotlight and that showing with j lethal because i'm like dude like a lot of people in higher up positions need to know who the hell you are yes they need to see you as a prize commodity because you are you're a million dollar talent that hadn't been discovered yet yeah
Speaker: I think that's like recently with him, like with DPW, it's been so cool to see him having some of the matches he's having.
Speaker: Like Adam Brooks, like that match, they fucking tore the house down.
Speaker: Like they're giving him opportunities to fight people that are like, it's just, it's really awesome to see.
Speaker: It's also, you know what I'm saying, half of DPW's roster, the man trained.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You better give him the spot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think we could talk about George South, LeBron, Cozone all day.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: There's been some podcasts where it's gotten close to that.
Speaker: But at what point are you kind of venturing out on your own, like apart from Cozone to like OMG James Ryan, the character that we know today?
Speaker: I forgot what year.
Speaker: I think it was 2017, truth be told.
Speaker: I think it was 2017.
Speaker: White Mike is starting to come train with us.
Speaker: A lot of people don't know.
Speaker: He trained under Firestar.
Speaker: Later on, Chance Riser as well.
Speaker: Um, so really when those guys started to come into the picture, especially chance, that's my brother.
Speaker: But when chance started to come into the picture, um, that's when I started like, all right, we might need to venture out.
Speaker: But my first out of state booking was with Timmy Lou written at the time you were Timmy Lou written.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Tim.
Speaker: So don't get fucking mad at me.
Speaker: You know, I love you.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: It was me, Tim, Ronnie, Nicole, and Dave Dawson.
Speaker: And we went to PWF three and a half hours away.
Speaker: I don't know the damn city.
Speaker: I'm sorry, guys.
Speaker: I'm up there almost every month.
Speaker: I apologize.
Speaker: But we went to PWF.
Speaker: And then for PWF, we went to Georgia and then from Georgia, we went back to Raleigh.
Speaker: And I remember getting in that car.
Speaker: I was just like, cause I'm a nervous, like depressed kid and you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: And I'm, I ain't never been out of the state like ever, like the farthest I've ever been in North Carolina was New Bern and Snow Hill.
Speaker: And that's because my family up there, you know?
Speaker: And so after that, I was just like, dude,
Speaker: we need to go different places because there's different styles of wrestling in different areas and different places.
Speaker: And also like we need to, we need to spread our roots a little bit more.
Speaker: And Dave and Tim and them, they really, they really embedded that in my mind.
Speaker: Like, Hey man, get in the car, go learn from these different veterans, go learn and wrestle in front of different crowds.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: um just hone your crap the best way that you can but that's going to happen from reps and it's not always going to be in north carolina yeah so some of those first matches that you were having like on your own or any of them that kind of stick out to you is important i've been hitting ahead a lot guys so you gotta give me time to think
Speaker: Unfortunately, no.
Speaker: That's okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Unfortunately, no.
Speaker: I just remember like a lot early on was just a lot of battle royals, a lot of multi-man matches, a lot of the promoter coming up to you.
Speaker: Hey, brother, got your gas money and some food money.
Speaker: When you get done, come see me.
Speaker: And then they're nowhere to be fucking found.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I didn't make a dime.
Speaker: I didn't make a single dollar, not one cent for like two years.
Speaker: doing this and then like my first payout was in like yanceyville for like 20 bucks and i thought i was on top of the world but yeah no it wasn't until like me chance tim and mike white mike really started getting on the road where stuff really started i guess clicking and that was what 2018 2019 something like that okay
Speaker: So 2018, 2019, kind of right before COVID, you were kind of finding your groove.
Speaker: Oh, buddy.
Speaker: Was I?
Speaker: Sorry, keep going.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: We just had a podcast with everybody from Ace, like the Good Squad and Superjaw.
Speaker: We kind of talked about that early kind of Ace 2018 where you kind of...
Speaker: we're at the forefront of that.
Speaker: Walk us through like, what does your stride look like at that time?
Speaker: Then how do you adapt to like COVID hitting?
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: wow, yeah, I literally cut a bomb-ass promo at the last A-show talking about this too.
Speaker: But right there, I was, in my opinion, like right then, I was on top of the world to me.
Speaker: I was one of the hottest in the region, if not this side of everything going on.
Speaker: But I had three, you know what I'm saying, top, how can I say it?
Speaker: I don't want to say major level belts because we're still in the Indies, but
Speaker: I had three top championships in three different countries, three different companies spanning over across three different states.
Speaker: And I was about to have my fourth, fifth and sixth at this time.
Speaker: A lot of y'all shit on me backstage about how I don't do a whole lot, but let this tickle your fucking fancy.
Speaker: Thursday through Sunday, I was on the road.
Speaker: Mondays and Tuesdays, we was cutting promos for the week going up to the road.
Speaker: Wednesday was the only fucking day that we had to relax and be home.
Speaker: And I didn't have to see those three guys at all.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So we literally had Wednesday.
Speaker: But Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, Thursday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Speaker: It was.
Speaker: Let's see, we'd go to Dayton, Ohio Thursday, Jeffersonville, Indiana on Friday, back to Dayton on Saturday.
Speaker: And then Sunday we would probably be in like Beckley, West Virginia.
Speaker: And then we're coming home Sunday so I can go to work hopefully Monday morning.
Speaker: But we were as hard as we could go.
Speaker: That's what we were doing.
Speaker: And me and Chance at the time were starting to tag pretty heavy.
Speaker: And everywhere that I was going,
Speaker: It was clicking.
Speaker: I don't really know how to say it.
Speaker: I don't want to say I was over anything, but everything was clicking and it was working.
Speaker: People were liking what we were putting down.
Speaker: Ace comes up.
Speaker: I wasn't even supposed to be on the show.
Speaker: James Hunter put me over to Superjaw.
Speaker: He said, look, dude, you use this kid.
Speaker: He's going to be the face of your company in five years.
Speaker: Five years.
Speaker: I'm the face of the damn company.
Speaker: right then and there.
Speaker: Dude, I can't.
Speaker: It makes me so mad, bro, because I was in such a stride.
Speaker: I was on such just barn burners.
Speaker: Like I'm getting match after match after match after match.
Speaker: Like one weekend, it was like Mike, Timmy, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday was Pillman Jr. and Trey Miguel.
Speaker: Like so we were just getting barn burner after barn burner and I was just proving myself.
Speaker: And like I said, it was Thursday through Sunday of every single week.
Speaker: We were spending probably 16 to 20 hours in a car a day and just trying to do the best that we could to make it.
Speaker: And when COVID hit, I remember I'd set all the belts on the table, my three that I had.
Speaker: I sat them on the table and I just looked at my girl and I was like, Leah, you know,
Speaker: These are about to go.
Speaker: So my cocky ass is about to walk by them every day and just look at them and, you know what I'm saying, just be like, yep, you're still the champ.
Speaker: You're still the champ today.
Speaker: You ain't defended in a month and a half, but you're still the champ.
Speaker: And then one by one, that WrestleMania weekend, each belt had to go back to each damn state.
Speaker: It was $52 to send a belt from here to Dayton, Ohio.
Speaker: And then it was like $82 from here to Beckley, West Virginia.
Speaker: And I was having to pay for the shit because the promoters at the time told me that they were and then they didn't.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But one by one, everything literally dropped off.
Speaker: And Ace at the time was drawing like four, 500 fucking people in Rayford.
Speaker: like in a big ass high school gym and everybody's singing, pour some sugar on me.
Speaker: Everything's going great.
Speaker: I'm like, yes, wrestling Dave Dawson, wrestling Zane Dawson.
Speaker: Now I'm about to beat their ass with King Shane Williams, who was on top of the world at AML at the time.
Speaker: And everything was just going in the right direction to make me a top level guy and to have the fans look at me in that way as well.
Speaker: And
Speaker: COVID hit and it just shot it all down the damn toilet.
Speaker: And then we just had to literally start from scratch.
Speaker: So how do you adjust?
Speaker: And I'm sure it's a lot of easy, like the point I'm going to answer for it, but how do you adjust from being on the road four days in a row that it just not being able to do anything?
Speaker: Um, well, unfortunately, like a lot of the times,
Speaker: with my job and with how shitty it was, sometimes it was stop and go.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: So it'd be three weeks on, one week off type thing.
Speaker: But it sucked.
Speaker: Like it sucked.
Speaker: Like I said, at the time I was living in my parents' house.
Speaker: So like here you are doing your dream at this point.
Speaker: This has become my dream.
Speaker: This is my reality now, right?
Speaker: This isn't something that I just thought of.
Speaker: Like I'm putting a lot of time, effort,
Speaker: and energy into making this passion and a dream my reality and you know i'm saying waking up finally and then it just stops and your body's kind of weird right like if you work nine to five and you work like a high level
Speaker: Like a high level physical job, like you're just maneuvering a lot, picking things up, picking it down.
Speaker: Like when you do that for so long and by seven o'clock, eight o'clock in the morning, your body's telling you, you got to go.
Speaker: Like there's something you're supposed to be doing right now.
Speaker: You're not supposed to be sitting down.
Speaker: And it was the same thing for me, but at midnight.
Speaker: Or at 10.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: When I'm trying to go to sleep, my body's like, hell no, wake up.
Speaker: Time to get up.
Speaker: We got to go wrestle.
Speaker: Your music's about to hit.
Speaker: Or I'd literally be sitting there taking a nap and I would spring up like thinking that my music's fucking playing because I'm having a dream that I'm wrestling.
Speaker: I look down, I'm naked.
Speaker: There ain't no boots on.
Speaker: There ain't no ring around.
Speaker: I'm sitting in my bedroom and I'm like, OK, it was just a dream.
Speaker: Let's let's calm it down.
Speaker: And after a while, I got used to it.
Speaker: Like at the time I was doing landscaping.
Speaker: Um, and when I was doing landscape and that's all I really think about throughout the day was wrestling, but it was kind of, it sucked, man.
Speaker: It makes you depressed.
Speaker: You can't create, you can't, your brain can't function the way that it's built to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: You have to train your mind and your brain to get into kind of this emotional realm and physical state that you have to be in when you're wrestling.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like that shits a lot on us emotionally.
Speaker: And I don't think people realize that.
Speaker: But to look across the ring and to suspend disbelief through facial expressions and anger, you really have to draw something deep from within you to be able to pull that off here.
Speaker: And when you're not doing that no more, your release is essentially gone.
Speaker: And you can go to the gym and lift as heavy as weights as you want to.
Speaker: You can go smoke whatever weed you want, drink however much.
Speaker: There's no drug.
Speaker: stronger than walking out that curtain and hearing the adulation from the fans.
Speaker: There's nothing that beats it.
Speaker: When you have hundreds of people screaming your name off of something you thought of and you manipulated, you created, there's no drug on earth that can give you that feeling.
Speaker: And to not have it, brother, I went into a damn depression.
Speaker: So bad.
Speaker: So bad.
Speaker: And it took me forever to get out of it.
Speaker: But we did.
Speaker: And like everything else, you just power through and you move on and you try to create in different avenues.
Speaker: That's when me and white Mike were shooting on each other via promos every week on Facebook, or I was cutting promos with students at the school because I'm like, Hey guys, we're not able to do this every weekend.
Speaker: So we need to keep this.
Speaker: We need to keep this tool or this knife sharp in our back pocket here.
Speaker: We need to, we need to practice this.
Speaker: So I used to throw up, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: Head and shoulders and,
Speaker: whatever other shampoo brand, tell me why it's better.
Speaker: And just try to just find different ways to create and just to get your mind rolling the best way that you can.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a very unique, cause a lot of people don't realize like wrestling was hit really hard.
Speaker: Like you look at like, you look at like the big companies, they were definitely hit hard, but like it hit harder.
Speaker: Like the local, the independence where guys like, like you were hitting your stride and now it's gone.
Speaker: yeah like i was i was legitimately at a point where i could kind of like hey work i don't need all these hours i don't need to work 65 hours for you anymore yeah i can really work like 27 and bust that out in like three days and then i can go make the rest of my rent and the rest of my bill money from wrestling and soon as i hit that stride it just it all cut and then now i'm you know what i'm saying back to the nine to five grind every fucking day yeah
Speaker: when does it start to open back up?
Speaker: How is it stepping back into the ring for the first time after such a long break?
Speaker: I cried.
Speaker: That's number one.
Speaker: When my music hit, I was already crying.
Speaker: When the 1, 2, 3 happened, I cried even harder.
Speaker: It was crazy.
Speaker: Don't get me wrong.
Speaker: Firestar was still doing Zone 1 stuff because...
Speaker: That really didn't necessarily need a crowd.
Speaker: We were doing that for YouTube and for another audience.
Speaker: But to actually get fans and everything back into the arenas and having them come back and hearing people make noise, it's so crazy.
Speaker: Guys, wrestling hurts.
Speaker: I don't know if you guys know that, but it hurts a lot.
Speaker: And it hurts even more with zero adrenaline.
Speaker: So like we feed off the energy of you guys.
Speaker: If you guys give it, we get that adrenaline or give it to us.
Speaker: We get that adrenaline spike.
Speaker: So when you don't have that and you're just going out there and your body's cold and the ring is cold and the building's cold and you're trying to wrestle like that shit hurt twice as much as it did before.
Speaker: And then finally, when fans got back, it kind of just put the pie together.
Speaker: And you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: Now, of course, we're back to normal.
Speaker: But even with five to 10 fans, it felt like 100.
Speaker: Do you feel like you have a greater appreciation for it?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I have a greater appreciation for things like what we're doing now.
Speaker: I have a greater appreciation for talking to people, for finding out who that person is.
Speaker: There's a lot of people in wrestling that we know
Speaker: but they only know OMG.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They don't know James Godet.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: They don't know me.
Speaker: They don't know the person.
Speaker: And it got, it gave us time to like, man, who the fuck are you?
Speaker: Who really, who are you?
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: What makes you tick?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It gave us a better appreciation for communication as a whole from one another because it got stripped away from us.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know if that people realize like,
Speaker: I guess we kind of do, like, I feel like COVID just kind of went away, but like, there's definitely like things that like, I worked from home for two years and I just recently started a job where I'm around people and like, just to be able to like talk to people, like I already know my coworkers of two months better than I did of my coworkers for two years.
Speaker: Like you kind of, it's, but yeah.
Speaker: So we're kind of in that zone for, let's say like 2021 to today.
Speaker: So what has it been like for you?
Speaker: What is your journey from that point to today?
Speaker: So there was a point in time where there, and I'm not going to bring him up, but there was a certain point in time that there was a certain jackass that was going around and he was shitting on my name.
Speaker: And at the time he had a really good name and it was hard.
Speaker: Nobody wanted to fuck with me.
Speaker: Nobody wanted to book me.
Speaker: And I pretty much,
Speaker: you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: Had to, like I said, start from scratch and rebuild and regain from that point.
Speaker: But man, I just went to the school and we just busted our ass and we trained and we trained and we trained.
Speaker: And then I had a kid.
Speaker: So then that happened.
Speaker: My beautiful blessing of Grayson.
Speaker: We were told for what, eight years that we weren't going to be able to have children or bear children, if you will.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: Then when we have a kid that changed everything completely and it gave me a whole new lease and a whole new purpose on life and what my career actually means.
Speaker: Because previously before that, if I fucked up a match or if I messed up a promo and it sounded stupid.
Speaker: Eh, we're good.
Speaker: We'll get them next time.
Speaker: Now that changes.
Speaker: Now I have a kid I got to feed.
Speaker: Now, if I really want to take time that I'm sacrificing from him to come do this, that's not paying me very well for one thing.
Speaker: And then number two, like I'm not on a major level, then we need to do this the best that we can.
Speaker: So, dude, soon as...
Speaker: As soon as we got the green light to start coming back till now, I have busted my ass twice as hard, if not three times as hard that I did previously before that.
Speaker: Working as many matches as I can, as many shows as I could.
Speaker: I'm in the best absolute best shape of my life.
Speaker: And I have to be because I got one of the best wrestlers in the world that I'm about to be facing here in a month and a half.
Speaker: Just greener pastures, man.
Speaker: So many things have opened up for me now.
Speaker: I'm doing commentary for AML on the main roster.
Speaker: I'm their main play-by-play guy.
Speaker: As a young kid, they used to put the shows on mute so I could commentate Shawn Michaels versus Bret Hart for the 100th time at WrestleMania 12 to be doing it now.
Speaker: Dude, I'm so prideful about it, and I love it.
Speaker: The fact that I'm doing this that I love,
Speaker: that's breaking generational curses, meaning that my family can see different avenues of making money rather than struggling paycheck to paycheck, nine to five.
Speaker: I get to show my kid the same thing.
Speaker: Like, dude, you can shoot for your fucking dreams, whether people think that it's stupid or not.
Speaker: The sky's the limit for me from that point to now.
Speaker: Like I think the sky's, well, it's not even the sky's like we're sitting on top of the stars.
Speaker: So we got to find whatever galaxies next or after that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's all up from here, brother.
Speaker: Seriously.
Speaker: Seriously.
Speaker: If you can hear my dog, I'm sorry.
Speaker: My dog's been barking too.
Speaker: I don't know if you heard it.
Speaker: But you talked about that match.
Speaker: You have it a month and a half.
Speaker: Are you able to share who that's with?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So September 9th, 4421 North Cherry Street for Ace Wrestling, I will be facing Jay Malachi for the Ace Openweight Championship.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I'm very excited.
Speaker: This is a kid that I literally helped train to who he is today.
Speaker: And I've been helping him in his life this way since he was 13 years old.
Speaker: He was a baby when we met.
Speaker: And now he's done turned into a little overconceited jackass that hasn't had his ass whooped yet.
Speaker: So we're going to have to change that come September 9th.
Speaker: I don't want to get pissed off here, but I mean, yeah.
Speaker: If you want to, be a good clip.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, that's... Well, I mean... No, I don't know.
Speaker: But it's...
Speaker: It means so much.
Speaker: Number one, like I said, in my opinion, the young OGJ Malachi is top 20, if not top 30 in the world.
Speaker: And I will put every dollar that I've ever made on it.
Speaker: And the fact that I have the fact that I'm getting in the ring with him, I've known him since 13.
Speaker: We've never locked up once.
Speaker: We've never had a training match.
Speaker: We've never had a multi-man match.
Speaker: We've never been in a battle royal together.
Speaker: We have literally never physically touched except for a hug.
Speaker: And now that we're about to do this when he's 19, I'm 28, and we're both in the prime and at the top in the best shapes of our career, I'm so fucking excited just to whoop his ass for however long it takes me.
Speaker: It's going to be very, very enjoyable.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, that is crazy to think of that you guys have never even been in the same ring together.
Speaker: Never, dude.
Speaker: And we've tried to, and Cozone, you know this, we've tried to make that happen a bunch, and you said no.
Speaker: You said no.
Speaker: So now Ace gets the first shot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's literally the first time ever that we've ever touched it.
Speaker: that's awesome definitely something you want to check out um please and then i guess so we're caught up to where you are now uh you're you talked about your son and uh how that's changed things has that changed your perspective of what you want to do in this business perspective what i want to do is in what like how far do i want to go yeah like or like
Speaker: Obviously, it changes why you're doing it, but has it changed your goals overall?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It makes you look higher.
Speaker: It makes you look higher.
Speaker: And if it doesn't, then you need to look yourself in the mirror.
Speaker: This is no disrespect to anybody, and I'm going to try to do my best to look down the fucking barrel when I say this.
Speaker: But if you're not in this business to be the world champ or the top level of a company, get the fuck out so the other people that want to be can.
Speaker: Too many people I feel take spots for trying to be hometown fans and they want to do what they love, but they don't go anywhere with it.
Speaker: So they're untrained, they're untalented, and they take so many different spots from other people.
Speaker: It just makes me look higher.
Speaker: It makes me think smarter.
Speaker: It makes me realize that we, if, hmm.
Speaker: respectfully and the love for the business.
Speaker: It's hard for me to talk about it.
Speaker: You get what I'm saying?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What I'll, yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Um, Hmm.
Speaker: You got to think about more of what you do in there.
Speaker: If what you're doing, isn't paying the bills, then you need to fix it.
Speaker: You need to fix it.
Speaker: And if you're not going to fix it, then you're going to stay stagnant and you're just going to plateau the whole damn time.
Speaker: And you're just going to start rolling downhill.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: It makes me want to work harder to be the man in every company.
Speaker: I've always thought that I could be.
Speaker: I've just never gotten this opportunity.
Speaker: That's why I'm taking this spot with Ace the best that I can.
Speaker: Because if I come out as victorious on September 9th, then I'm going to make the championship.
Speaker: The championship is not going to make me.
Speaker: And I'm going to make it a draw.
Speaker: And that's my goal every single time is that when I walk through the door, I want people to know that I'm here to make money, but I'm also here to make the company money.
Speaker: Let's draw, let's put some asses in seats.
Speaker: That's what this is all about.
Speaker: Everybody I feel sits upon their contracts or they sit upon that rate that you, your rate that you get from the promoter and then they don't do anything with it.
Speaker: No, every second of every minute counts for me now that he's been born.
Speaker: Because I don't want him looking back at this and then seeing a lackluster, lazy daddy.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: He wasted his time and tights didn't fucking go nowhere.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I want him to see one of the best talkers and one of the best workers that North Carolina has ever seen that went on to be one of the greatest of all fucking time, if that's possible.
Speaker: So in perspective that it just it makes you work so much harder, man.
Speaker: It's not all about you anymore.
Speaker: It's not all about me anymore.
Speaker: It's about him.
Speaker: It's about what he has.
Speaker: It's about how is he going to eat?
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Like, how is he?
Speaker: He's not going to feed himself.
Speaker: And I didn't have my real pops.
Speaker: did what he did, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: And my stepdad came in when I was three, so he's been my father ever since.
Speaker: And I love my dad to death and he knows this, but I never want my kid looking at me the same way that I look at my real father at all.
Speaker: So it just burns and puts that into my damn brain and it puts a fire to my ass that nobody's gonna put out at all, at all.
Speaker: Y'all thought I was a good fucking talker.
Speaker: Y'all thought that OMG was good, but brother,
Speaker: Brother, a focused and a motivated OMG is a very, very dangerous one.
Speaker: You saw one going through the motions.
Speaker: Now you see one with motivation.
Speaker: Now you see one with optimism, with purpose, with joy in what he's doing.
Speaker: You're looking at Mufasa with his main back, fellas.
Speaker: Gives you... That's all off the top of my fucking head, too.
Speaker: That's a great line.
Speaker: But, dude, like, I can't...
Speaker: It just makes me think back sometimes too.
Speaker: And I don't want it to like harp on my kid this whole time.
Speaker: Cause I keep that really, really like to me personal, but it just makes me think like, wow, that fuck did you want to kill yourself a couple of years back?
Speaker: Life is so precious and love to live for.
Speaker: If you just live it the way you want to don't allow, don't go work 10, 12 hours at a job and not come home and do something for yourself.
Speaker: you're just, you're going to become an ant, a part of their, a part of their farm.
Speaker: And that's what they want.
Speaker: Don't do that.
Speaker: Create a different Avenue and a different way of life for yourself.
Speaker: And I promise you going to be able to enjoy life and love it way more, way, way more.
Speaker: Well said for sure.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I've enjoyed the fuck out of this, guys.
Speaker: This has been great.
Speaker: I was literally about to say the same thing.
Speaker: We kind of try to wrap things up looking at the future.
Speaker: So for you over the next year, who are some people that you want to be in the ring with?
Speaker: And then within five years, who would you like to have said that you've been in the ring with?
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Okay, so who do I want to be in the ring with in the future?
Speaker: And five years from now, who do I want to say that I was in the ring with?
Speaker: Yeah, so I guess like this year.
Speaker: AJ, AJ, listen to me.
Speaker: Listen to me.
Speaker: Phenomenal one, sir.
Speaker: Mr. Alan Jones, sir.
Speaker: I need three, five minutes.
Speaker: You can whoop my ass.
Speaker: Phenomenal forearm styles clash all you want to, brother.
Speaker: Look, five years from now, I want to be able to look at my kid and be like, daddy wrestled his favorite wrestler of all time.
Speaker: That's number one.
Speaker: I cannot tell you the love and adulation that I have for you, brother.
Speaker: Also, Dax Harwood.
Speaker: Dax, when we did the seminar, I couldn't help but like fight back and hold tears.
Speaker: Like when I was talking to him, see, I'm about to fucking do it now.
Speaker: Is that?
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: He doesn't know what he did for me in my life.
Speaker: He doesn't have a clue.
Speaker: I had a chance to tell him, but I didn't just because like I kind of look at him the same way I would like my uncle or like a higher, like proud figure of my family.
Speaker: Like he's a strong Southern man that carries those Southern values that I hold strong.
Speaker: So like my papa seeing me cry like this, he'd be like, dry that shit up.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: So I never wanted to do that.
Speaker: And at a seminar, I had the opportunity to, but I was fighting the tears back so bad.
Speaker: I would love to get in the ring with Dax.
Speaker: I really think we could do a lot of good business, promo-wise and inside the ring.
Speaker: Other than that, that's probably it.
Speaker: Because everybody else, and if anybody listens to this and you want to work OMG,
Speaker: You need to be able to talk.
Speaker: So if you want to talk and you want to cut promos, you want to promote the show, you want to draw asses into the seats, let's do business.
Speaker: But if not, I don't have no, I'm not going to waste my bump card on you because we're not going anywhere with it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Nobody looks good.
Speaker: Nobody gets over.
Speaker: No point in doing it.
Speaker: But Dax and AJ, man, for sure.
Speaker: God almighty.
Speaker: Like, because I think back, man, like Caprice Coleman, that's my rock.
Speaker: When everybody talks about their promo guy and they talk about Dwayne and everything, like to me, that's Caprice Coleman.
Speaker: He doesn't know that.
Speaker: But the reason I can come off the top of my head with I got the vocal vibrations that'll move the whole nations, make them rise up like I'm preaching to the congregation.
Speaker: Like I can come up with stuff like that because I watch Caprice.
Speaker: And when I first started, like that was my, like that's my guy.
Speaker: That's my man right there.
Speaker: And done that.
Speaker: AR Fox, that's my black RVD.
Speaker: And I told him that.
Speaker: That's my indie RVD.
Speaker: And I got to wrestle him.
Speaker: James Storm, he was a part of my favorite tag team of all time in Beer Money.
Speaker: Got to wrestle him.
Speaker: Got to be in the ring with Ricky Morton.
Speaker: I got to wrestle George South multiple times.
Speaker: dude, like my list is, it's, it's pretty stacked and it's deep and I've crossed almost all of them off except for the two that I just told you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Dax and AJ.
Speaker: So both of them, both is who I want to work in the future.
Speaker: And both five years from now, I want to be able to say that I did work.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: As very well put.
Speaker: Hey, you've had some pretty awesome message, pretty awesome matches.
Speaker: Um, I have one more question.
Speaker: Christian has a question.
Speaker: This is a question we asked everybody on, uh, every podcast, but who are some people out there wrestling anywhere?
Speaker: It doesn't have to be North Carolina that you think more people should know about.
Speaker: I would say Jay Malachi, but nephew you blowing up on Twitter right now.
Speaker: So I don't even need to say that.
Speaker: Um, LeBron cozone that's number one chance riser.
Speaker: Number two.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And Zane and Dave Dawson.
Speaker: That's my list.
Speaker: I know it's all Carolina boys, but Zane and Dave, they're the fucking best tag team on the planet besides FTR.
Speaker: Like, you can't find footwork from two bigger men that's crisper than that.
Speaker: Maybe big boss man back in the day.
Speaker: But that's probably it.
Speaker: Chance Riser is so fundamentally sound.
Speaker: in the ring, he doesn't waste movement.
Speaker: His basics and his fundamentals inside that ring are crisp and they're perfect.
Speaker: His facial expressions look great.
Speaker: What else can I say about my brother?
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: He looks good, too.
Speaker: Chance, when I met you, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: He was kind of chunky, fine-y yourself.
Speaker: Now you look good and you're a damn chiseled little god.
Speaker: Go ahead.
Speaker: Who else did I say?
Speaker: LeBron?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, from the dude that literally saved my life.
Speaker: He looked me in my eye my first, third, third, third.
Speaker: I don't know why I kept it.
Speaker: But on my third day of training, he looked me in my eye.
Speaker: He said, if I ever find that you're taking pills again, I'm going to whip your ass, and then you never can wrestle again, and I'll make sure that you can.
Speaker: And back then, I damn sure believed him.
Speaker: And he saved my life, and he, you know what I'm saying, he allowed me.
Speaker: I didn't pay a dime, guys.
Speaker: Not a dime.
Speaker: Kozo didn't ask me for no money.
Speaker: He was paying for my gym membership.
Speaker: He was buying my food.
Speaker: We were going to we were going to training and we were going to these shows and he was taking me everywhere that he could.
Speaker: And he didn't he didn't ask me for a dime.
Speaker: All he asked me for was hard work and good effort.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And to me, I think that dude deserves the world.
Speaker: Like, look at Griff Garrison and Marcus Cross right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: They're two of our guys that went on to sign huge contracts.
Speaker: He's proven it.
Speaker: Every kid that comes through that school is on fucking dark, elevation, collision, dynamite, whatever, SmackDown Raw.
Speaker: They're all over the damn place, whether it be female or male.
Speaker: Doesn't matter.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: he's one of the, in my opinion, one of the best workers in the world as well.
Speaker: And he needs to, he needs people to know that if you just get on social media a little bit more, Bob, they would, but,
Speaker: Even if he doesn't, just go to a show that he's booked at, and you're going to look at a really talented fucking wrestler that can cut a realistic promo.
Speaker: And when he's in the ring, you might not believe what we're doing is real, but he's going to make sure you believe that he is.
Speaker: And that's what the fuck that this is about.
Speaker: You can know whatever goes on.
Speaker: You can talk about how you read this on the dirt sheet, but if we still suspend your disbelief, we did our job correctly.
Speaker: And he does that every single time.
Speaker: Chance Reiser, LeBron Cozone, Zane, Dave Dawson.
Speaker: That's a pretty good butt rush board.
Speaker: And me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So what does that cheat meal look like?
Speaker: What does my cheat meal look like?
Speaker: Well, here's the beautiful part.
Speaker: Like right now, when I weighed in this morning, I was 198.9.
Speaker: So my metabolism is really high.
Speaker: I don't meal prep healthy at all.
Speaker: So if I meal prep, the healthiest thing on the plate is probably broccoli, and that's because I enjoy the taste of it.
Speaker: Dude, I'm making hot sauce barbecue chicken, which is literally like my barbecue grilled chicken that I got a nice little barbecue recipe, and I make that slathering in hot sauce with some rice, peppers, and onions with some broccoli.
Speaker: Eat like that.
Speaker: But if I want to be like really, and I'm talking about just really fat, like drunk, let's see, at 2 a.m.,
Speaker: uh texas bacon patty milk from waffle house yeah double double hash brown smothered and covered and chumped give me a large thing of bacon with a coffee orange juice and a water please so there you go that that that's like my happy like let's go home take a nap yeah that's awesome
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: I wish I could get fucking bigger, dude.
Speaker: I swear I wish I could.
Speaker: People shit on me about that.
Speaker: You're a strain bean.
Speaker: You're this, you're that.
Speaker: Dude, I'm 28 and my metabolism is still high.
Speaker: Anybody that's watching this, a doctor literally looked at me and said, naturally, it's not going to happen.
Speaker: You've got a doctor's name.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm not shooting.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: Fucking perfect.
Speaker: I'm fucking using that in the ring next time.
Speaker: I swear to you.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: That just made me cry.
Speaker: I got a doctor's note.
Speaker: I hope this could go down as the podcast that made you cry in two different ways.
Speaker: So not a lot of wrestling podcasts have that wide range of emotion.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not only will we make you cry.
Speaker: Like I said, I'm just depressed.
Speaker: And I have been for so long that this is the way that I cope with it.
Speaker: I talk a lot of shit.
Speaker: I cuss a lot.
Speaker: And I tell you exactly how I feel.
Speaker: Like I wear, which is my next tattoo, bless you, but it's my heart on my sleeve.
Speaker: I stopped hiding all that a long time ago.
Speaker: The more you hide that, the more you bottle it in, the more it hurts.
Speaker: let it out there's so many more people like us yeah 100 this has been great i feel like we could probably talk to you for a lot longer but i would love to do it again yeah we'd love to be back on absolutely of course when whenever uh i don't know why people requested me but whoever did thank you guys so much
Speaker: yeah um yeah and thank you guys for allowing me to voice myself on your platform man i really do appreciate it absolutely it's been really like it hit me halfway through that this felt like an interview that needed to happen like it's just one of those it's to me it's one of those stories that needs to be told and i mean so i really appreciate you taking the time to do it oh thank you guys so much um yeah
Speaker: uh, not a lot of, I don't talk a lot about the story.
Speaker: I hold a lot of that stuff really near, dear, close to my heart, but being able to, being able to speak about it and being able to tell my story and, and how it started and where we come from.
Speaker: Yeah, man, I really do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Appreciate the hell out of you guys.
Speaker: This is only my second or third podcast ever in eight years.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Well, I hope we're top two.
Speaker: At the moment, you'd be number one.
Speaker: Oh, that's what we like to hear.
Speaker: You have listened to Live, Laugh, Lariat.
Speaker: So we've had a pretty good week.
Speaker: Rob Kiljoy said that he would put us in his MySpace top eight on the last interview.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: We're running pretty high.
Speaker: God damn.
Speaker: That's so good.
Speaker: I'll put y'all in my MySpace top eight right next to Tom.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: That's maybe our new thing.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's a great bit.
Speaker: But thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.
Speaker: It's been real fun.
Speaker: No problem, man.
Speaker: Thank y'all.
Speaker: Thank y'all so much.
