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The Chick Foley Lounge: Q&A with Chris Van Vliet
3 Plays5 years ago
The Hot Take Kid sits down with AEW's Chris Van Vliet to discuss his love of pro wrestling, his all time favorite interviews, and much more!
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Transcript
Introduction to Special Episode
00:00:17
Speaker
What is up, everybody? This is a very special episode of the Chick Foley Show. This is the hot take kid Phil Gentile here in the Jimmy's Famous Seafood Studios. Welcome. This is going to be the first of many episodes where myself and maybe myself and Marco interview some of our favorite folks around the wrestling business while Sheena is out on her maternity leave, I guess you could say.
Interview Series with Chris Van Vliet
00:00:41
Speaker
And we're starting off with the bang here with AEW's own Chris Van Vliet. Chris, what's going on this evening, man?
00:00:47
Speaker
Thanks for having me on, Phil, and I appreciate you calling this a special episode, so thank you. Hey, man, you're a rising star in these parts, man. People now that AW is kind of taking over the airwaves on TNT, your face is all over the TV now. It's been on there a few times, at least. So yeah, no, this has been... Look, this is just as exciting for me as a fan, as someone who has a tiny little minuscule 0.0001% role in any of this.
00:01:17
Speaker
This is pretty awesome.
00:01:19
Speaker
You guys can follow Chris on Twitter. It's Chris Van. And then last name is V-L-I-E-T. And definitely search him on YouTube. Has a great YouTube channel. We'll get into all of that in a moment. But just give everybody a background. Obviously, we know you're involved with AEW. We'll get into that a little more detail as we go on here. But how did you become where you are today? Where did you start? I know you're Canadian born and bred. How did you get into the world of professional wrestling now? What was your story?
Early Wrestling Interests and Challenges
00:01:49
Speaker
I remember being drawn to it at a young age and it was always on at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I was not allowed to watch wrestling growing up.
00:01:57
Speaker
But it was on hit grandma and grandpa's house. So if my grandpa had it on we're talking like late late 80s here So, you know, I was just drawn in by those larger than life characters, you know Hogan and warrior macho man and even someone you know the the characters like sergeant slaughter and repo man Like I just thought it was just so cool seeing these like cartoon like characters these superhero characters on TV and but like I said grandpa's house grandma and grandpa's house the only place that it was on and
00:02:26
Speaker
And then as I got a little bit older, like in the high school, you know, the attitude era was starting to hit. We're talking, you know, 96, seven, eight at this point. And it was everywhere. Wrestling was everywhere. And I was on the high school wrestling team. So, you know, you were kind of told to not watch pro wrestling because that stuff was quote unquote fake. And what we were doing in the gym was real. But, you know, there was just something about it. I had a few friends that were into it and I was just completely
00:02:54
Speaker
Sucked in and by it was like the McMahon and Austin, you know feud that was going on and man I was I was just so into it. It was Monday night I would watch raw and I'd flip between nitro and then the next day raw played again and I watched it again and then it was Thunder and it was ECW and Fridays and I watched metal and heat and I
00:03:16
Speaker
Jack, that watched everything. You're a little bit younger than me. We're about the same age, but that was, I mean, it was hard to find anybody in school that didn't watch wrestling. I mean, that was kind of the water cooler talk on Tuesday mornings. Everybody who was anybody watched wrestling. And now we've gotten away from that a little bit. I don't know if it's just because of the dilution of wrestling or, you know, the, the birth of DVR and all that kind of stuff. But you know, back then it was just, you had to watch it on Monday nights. You were flipping back and forth.
00:03:42
Speaker
yeah absolutely and you know the internet was in its you know real infancy stage at that time so the only way you really found out if someone watched wrestling was they were wearing like an austin 316 shirt or a dx shirt like walking down the halls you'd be like hold on a second
00:03:57
Speaker
You like wrestling too? And it's like that scene from Step Brothers, like, did we just become best friends? Yeah. Yep. Very nice. And so that explains, you know, that's kind of the story for most folks is how they became
Path to AEW and YouTube Success
00:04:10
Speaker
a wrestling fan. How did you get into the wrestling business working for AEW? I mean, obviously you started as a communications degree with college and bounced around to some TV channels, but how did AEW get, you know, how did you become on their radar and all that stuff? Was it the YouTube channel or what?
00:04:26
Speaker
Well, I think if we really back this up, like in high school, as I was, you know, really getting into wrestling, like it was my goal and my dream to be a pro wrestler. And I was in a backyard wrestling Federation when I was 16 and 17. And I had made this pact with one of my friends in the wrestling Federation that like, when we, when we were old enough and we had a car,
00:04:48
Speaker
We were going to go to wrestling school and I kept up my end of the bargain. He didn't, but when I was 20 years old, I took the summer between college classes and I started going to wrestling school. I wanted to train to be a wrestler, so I was training at the Squared Circle in Toronto, Ontario.
00:05:10
Speaker
I just quickly realized after a few months that it was one or the other. You could either go to wrestling school or you could go to actual school. And it was very, very difficult to balance both of them. So I think my parents were very happy that I chose to get my college degree, which, like you mentioned, was in communication studies. And then the new goal changed to be, I want to be a TV host. And I want to get into broadcasting. And that's where my career path took me.
00:05:38
Speaker
A bunch of different shows in Canada, including a show on MTV2 in Canada, and then I broke into the US. In 2010, I was in Cleveland as an entertainment reporter for the CBS station there. I was recently in Miami hosting a show there.
00:05:52
Speaker
How this all came together was being an entertainment reporter, you're covering all things entertainment. That's music, that's movies, and of course, that's wrestling. When there was anything to do with wrestling, like if Raw or SmackDown was coming to town or if a wrestler had a new movie coming out that they wanted to promote, I was doing everything I could to get that wrestler to come on our show.
00:06:15
Speaker
we'd have the wrestlers come on the show and usually you'd only air one little sound by 20, 30 seconds of an interview. But if you're gonna have a wrestler in the studio, I'm not just gonna ask him a few questions. I wanna ask the questions I actually cared about. So I'd have these 10, 15 minute interviews and I was like, well, other wrestling fans I think are gonna appreciate these questions, because I'm a fan. Other fans would appreciate this. So I just threw them on YouTube just so they would have a place to live.
00:06:45
Speaker
And very you know very slowly this was like 2011 when I started my YouTube channel very slowly like other people started to find these interviews and you know they get a few hundred views two thousand views and In the last couple of years. I was just like you know what I'm having so much fun doing these wrestling interviews I think that if I really started to go out of my way to make these interviews happen I think I could get a lot more of them and you know even get some better content and and
00:07:12
Speaker
You know, I say it all the time, vague goals, get vague results. And, uh, last year I was like, I want to do 40 wrestling interviews. And which would have been like probably more than double the wrestling interviews I had done, but I went out, I think I did like 41 of them this year. I said, I wanted to do 50 wrestling interviews, which would be about one a week. And I've done something like 90 videos this year. And it's just, that was kind of what got, uh, on AEW's radar, I think, you know, after Jericho signed, I did an interview with him.
00:07:40
Speaker
which led to me doing an interview with Tony Khan, which led to me doing a second interview with Cody. I'd done an interview when he worked for Ring of Honor, which then led to an interview with The Box, and I'd done all these interviews with AEW, and then they reached out to me and said, hey, would you be interested in doing some stuff with us when TV starts in October? And that's kind of how it all came together.
00:08:02
Speaker
Awesome story, man. Yeah, I mean, it's just shows hard work pays off. I've become a pretty big AEW fan. There's some things about it I nitpick about, but same with WWE. But one of my problems with AEW is I was never, I mean, I've been, since WCW closed, I've been a WWE guy. I haven't really watched, you know, I have a four year old, I have a job, and I wish I could watch more wrestling, but I really never was able to. I didn't get into New Japan and any of this stuff.
00:08:30
Speaker
But now that AEW is around, I've slowly got into it. I went to the Full Gear pay-per-view here in Baltimore. It was awesome. But I never watched the Being the Elite video, so your videos are awesome. If you guys search Chris on YouTube, there's some WWE guys in there too, but it's a lot of AEW superstars. And you have a great style of interviewing where you basically
00:08:50
Speaker
You know, it's not a shoot interview. It's not a, you know, you're picking on WWE or kind of trash talking. You're really just, you know, Scorpio Sky and Luchasaurus. And we're just getting to know these people a little bit. And I don't know any of these guys. I mean, I'm walking in to AW completely blind. So your videos have been great over the last couple of days. I've just been kind of binging on them.
00:09:07
Speaker
You did Marco Stunt. I mean, everybody up and down the roster you have on here. So you've done a great job of kind of like, I really hope AEW can kind of give you a bigger role with some of these interviews and just put them on their website or put them on their shows and stuff, because it just gives me an insight inside these characters that I see for three minutes a week, every other week or something. It's definitely some great extra content for me, and it's made me more invested in AEW. Well, I appreciate you saying that, Phil. Thanks a lot.
00:09:34
Speaker
I don't think that this style of interview could have really existed 10 plus years ago, because kayfabe was still very much protected. Sure, I'm interviewing someone like Marco Stunt, the wrestler, but I'm interviewing Marco Stunt, the human, and it's nice to hear his road to getting into wrestling, his road to getting into AEW, and with a lot of these guys, I want to find out what makes them tick, because
00:10:01
Speaker
I firmly believe that success leaves clues. Tony Robbins says that all the time. Success leaves clues and I think that if we can pull some of the clues out from some extremely successful people that are all doing very well in not just AEW but in all the different wrestling organizations, I think that it can help us all out. The only reason I've had a lot of AEW interviews and I think a lot of people
00:10:26
Speaker
I think that I was working for AEW long before I ever made an appearance on TV. That wasn't the case. It's just they made their people so much more accessible. So if they were making these interviews available, I was certainly not going to say no. But this year I've interviewed AEW, WWE. I've been to several impact events, Ring of Honor.
00:10:47
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not going to say no to anybody. And then that's, I think the cool thing is if someone's willing to speak with me and willing to take the time, I will go out of my way to travel to them and we'll throw on the camera and we'll have a conversation.
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I saw a Johnny Gargano interview in here, John Cena interview. Who are some of the folks that, I mean, I haven't even scrolled back to see the beginning of all these. You have so many of them here going all the way back for a couple years. Who's been your couple favorite people that stick out to you when you think about all the interviews you've done that like, man, that guy or that girl were awesome. Like, you know, they just seem like a genuine good person. I really am rooting for them. Who are some of those people for you?
Memorable Interviews with Wrestling Icons
00:11:26
Speaker
The Rock is a huge standout for me and becoming a super fan of the time when I did in the late 90s, The Rock was by far my favorite wrestler. So he was kind of on the bucket list for a long time, even in just my broadcasting career before I was really doing the YouTube interviews. I was like, I want to do an interview with The Rock. So I've now had the pleasure of doing several interviews with The Rock and he's everything you want him to be.
00:11:53
Speaker
He's funny, he's fun, he's charismatic, and he makes you feel like you're special. He's arguably the biggest celebrity in the world right now, and he goes out of his way to make you feel like you're special. The fact that he even remembers my name now is mind-blowing to me. That one's really special. I've done John Cena three, four times now, I think. But the interview I did with John Cena at WrestleMania this year was particularly special. He didn't do.
00:12:23
Speaker
Any interviews at all during WrestleMania, and a mutual friend of ours connected us, and that mutual friend was Tyler Perry, the mega director, producer, actor, and I had interviewed Tyler many times for a bunch of his movies, and he was like, hey, I know you have that YouTube channel. You ever wanted to interview John Cena? And I'm like, yes.
00:12:47
Speaker
So the fact that Tyler put in a good word for me and John took the time out of an insanely busy WrestleMania weekend to do this interview.
00:12:57
Speaker
After his workout at a gym, but before a signing of his children's book like he literally had 20 minutes Wow And if you watch the interview he gave me every single one of those 20 minutes like he walked up to me and said We got to make this quick man. I got 10 minutes. Let's get rolling So at the 10 minute mark I go to wrap him up and he goes hold on hold on hold on Digs his phone out of his pocket takes a look at the time he goes we still got more time nice and I'm like
00:13:21
Speaker
I can't believe this the interview on ended up going like almost exactly twenty minutes and you know it's stuff like that that's you know that makes someone like a john Cena or a rock that much more special because you know they create those moments for you.
00:13:39
Speaker
That's really cool to hear. And those are two guys that really don't need to be that cool with anybody. You know what I mean? When you get that famous, you can basically do whatever you want and be whoever you want. So that just shows that their true self is good people. So that's cool. Well, Rock always says, you know, it's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice. And I think that, you know, that's a true testament to the person that he is.
00:14:04
Speaker
Wow. That's a great quote. Yeah, for sure. Give us your typical week. You're
Balancing Interests Beyond Wrestling
00:14:09
Speaker
not at Dynamite every single week. Do you get called on, like, you know, on the day or two before? And if you're not there, are you doing YouTube stuff? What's your week typically like for Chris Van Vite Fleet? So it honestly depends on how much lead time I'm given to be on Dynamite. For the first episode, I knew, you know, a while out, like,
00:14:28
Speaker
But for the last one I was on, I knew maybe a week out. But yeah, the rest of the time is like, I'm scouring to find interviews that I can do. Like I said, I'm not afraid to travel to make an interview happen. I'm a really big fan of doing the interviews in person and getting that face-to-face connection and that interpersonal communication. So this past weekend, I was in New York City. I was at the big event, which is a convention there. I did an interview with
00:14:58
Speaker
Enzo, which is actually going to drop. Well, it's dropping soon. It'll probably we've already dropped when we air this interview, but Enzo Santino Morella and Flip Gordon. So I'm basically trying. Yeah, it's some really good stuff there. So I'm basically trying to find as many interviews as I can get. You know, I'm making those into the YouTube videos and I'm also turning that into my podcast, which is
00:15:22
Speaker
I've also been doing a lot of acting and auditions recently. You might see me in some movies, maybe in a very, very small role coming up soon. The thing about what I'm doing now is I was hosting this show in Miami for five years. It was called Deco Drive, an entertainment show which I absolutely loved. I got to travel the world interviewing the biggest stars in the world.
00:15:47
Speaker
Now I kind of get to work on my own terms and it's super exciting that outside of
00:15:52
Speaker
the commitments with dynamite on the shows that I'm booked on, you know, I'm very much like doing my own thing with the YouTube interviews and these acting auditions. And I also run a big bass fisherman. This one's coming out of left field. No, no, I saw this on the Wikipedia page. I was about to bring this up. This is wild though. I'm a big bass fisherman and my entire life I grew up bass fishing. So my bass fishing partner and I started a,
00:16:20
Speaker
tackle company a fishing tackle company called we we sell tungsten fishing weights so you know that actually takes a lot of my time as well so yeah but I mean you know it's all stuff that you know juices me and drives me and I you know honestly at the end of the day I had
00:16:42
Speaker
I had this epiphany in my final year of college. I woke up one day and you know, college is fun. Like you're hanging out with your friends and you're, you're having drinks and you're deciding whether you feel like going to class, you know, or you feel like sleeping in. And I had this epiphany one day I woke up and I was like, Oh my God, at the end of this year, like we're graduating. And after graduation, like we have to work for the next like 40 to 50 years. It just hit me like a ton of bricks. And I'm like, in that moment I decided like,
00:17:11
Speaker
I don't want to hate my job. And that was the bare minimum. I didn't want to hate what I did for a living. And that was something that really sparked a fire in me. I reached out in that next week to every TV station in town, every radio station in town, and I was like, look, I'm a communication studies major. I love broadcasting. I'm super passionate about it. Can I just come in and see how things are done in the real world? Can I just volunteer?
00:17:39
Speaker
You know, to make a long story short, like one thing led to another and I ended up getting a job at a radio station out of that just by showing that I was like hungry and wanted to get after it.
00:17:51
Speaker
Yeah, I have too many people that I know that just hate their jobs. I'm not working in the field that I thought I was going to be doing, but I definitely enjoy my job. I think that makes a world of difference in just your overall demeanor in life. You spend so much time, sometimes I spend more time working than I do seeing family and friends. If you hate what you do, it's definitely not going to be a good week. Oh yeah, and I think it trickles down too.
00:18:15
Speaker
I think the point you make about spending more time working than you spend with your friends or family is 1,000% true. If you're not enjoying what you're doing the bulk of the time, which is commuting to work and being at work, how are you going to enjoy the other aspects of your life? If you hate the bulk of your awake time, how are you going to be able to enjoy the other time? That was a really big thing for me. I've just kind of followed that
00:18:44
Speaker
I followed that through basically ever since I graduated. It's just like I don't want to hate what I'm doing. I didn't think I would scroll through your Wikipedia page and see at the very bottom 2013 Bassmaster Bass Pro Shops Northern Open Amateur Division Big Fish of the Day as one of your awards, but it makes sense now. Is that something that just grown up in Canada? I'm sure the conditions up there make it ideal for some good fishing and stuff.
00:19:13
Speaker
Well, first of all, that was a very big smallmouth bass. I was happy to have that award. Yeah, six pounds, seven ounces. Yeah, thank you. I don't know. I think that sometimes we can't explain why we're drawn to the things we're drawn to, but I'm very driven by passions. I feel very fortunate to have
00:19:38
Speaker
identified my passions early on and then kind of followed after them. And, you know, wrestling being one of them, broadcasting being another one and fishing being another one. So it's four years old. Our neighbors had a, had like a lake house, um, about an hour and a half from where we lived. And I went up there and they stuck me on the end of the dock with like a little fishing rod and a worm. And I caught my first ever fish, a rock bass. It was tiny. It was like a six inch rock bass, but pardon the pun, I was hooked.
00:20:06
Speaker
And, uh, you know, it was just something I was so, so into. And I fished bass tournaments beginning from like age 14 until very recently. And it was just something that, I don't know, something about the competitive nature of it. And I don't know, it really, really drives me. And, um, now I'm, you know, I've gotten into a little bit more of the business side of fishing, which is takes up a lot, a lot, probably a lot more time than the actual fishing does. But.
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's something that I think is always gonna be with me. It's just that love of going out there and trying to defeat that finned nemesis under the water.
00:20:44
Speaker
You talk about passions one of the things on our pat on our podcast that we're really passionate about is collecting wrestling figures Basically half our show we talk about, you know current day at wrestling We do recaps of pay-per-views and and stuff like that And then we talk about wrestling figures when you were a kid. Did you collect any wrestling figures? I know you weren't allowed to watch it at home, but maybe snuck them over to grandma and grandpa's house I I had them as I got a little bit older like when I got into college and you know, I was having those dreams of being a pro wrestler that's when I I
00:21:14
Speaker
I had like a few of them. I was a big Triple H fan, big rock fan, and also big Kurt Angle fan. So I had those figures. I had a rock action figure given to me that was like a talking smack rock. You probably are familiar. You probably know what I'm talking about. Probably completely saying the name of it wrong. But it was like, no, you're rolling some money. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. That's cool.
00:21:41
Speaker
And when I say that my parents didn't let me watch wrestling, it wasn't like, hey, we don't want you watching it. It would be like, I would be in the basement Monday night, 9 o'clock, watching it, and my dad knew. And I would hear him coming down the stairs, and I would try to switch channels to like, we all know the trick, to click the last channel button. And my dad would literally stand in front of the TV and be like, I'm not leaving, and you're not watching this. Wow.
00:22:11
Speaker
But it's like, and I get it. I get when you're 16 years old, your dad doesn't want you watching a show where the guy is flipping off his boss and people are wearing painted on bikinis. Tell him people to suck it and stuff. I get it. Your dad obviously knows now that you basically make a living by interviewing wrestlers. So something he did triggered something in your brain to just make you want it even more. This is one of those things that if you can't watch it, then it just makes you want to watch it even more.
00:22:40
Speaker
maybe i'm just i'm one of those people though that like when i set my mind to something like i am going to find a way to do it you know by hook or by crook like i'm gonna find a way to figure something out so whether my dad stood in front of the tv and said i can't watch it or whether he was sitting next to me going hey let's
00:22:58
Speaker
Let's see what naked Midian's up to this week. Remember how bad naked Midian was? I think I just had that mindset and still do that. I was going to set a goal and I was going to
00:23:12
Speaker
do everything I could to chase down that goal and accomplish it. Just a couple more questions, Chris, before we get out of here.
AEW's Aspirations and Future Stars
00:23:18
Speaker
I know you're a busy guy. Of course. Thank you for having me on, Phil. Of course. Of course. I want to know where you see AEW in five years and give us a couple of names of some folks there that, you know, the average watcher might not know that you think are going to be big time stars in the coming years for AEW. Well, it's funny. I asked that exact question to Tony Kahn during our interview and that was a
00:23:41
Speaker
a month before double or nothing. I said, what's the five year plan? You're a business guy. What's the five year plan? I also asked that same question of Matt and Nick, you know, the young bucks. And, uh, you know, they both said like, we want to be a viable like competitor in five years and we want to be a household name. We want people to think of pro wrestling and think of WWE and AEW. And I think, you know, we're only what eight episodes in. And, uh, I feel like that's already starting to become the case. So,
00:24:11
Speaker
I think from my personal opinion, I would love to see AEW continue on the track that they're on right now. I think it's super exciting. It's fan-first wrestling. We're seeing a lot of stuff that we haven't seen in, I guess, ever. The thing that I love that Tony Khan is always saying is
00:24:33
Speaker
He's not making the product for the consumer because he's trying to make a bunch of money. He's making the product for the consumer because he is the consumer. And I think that's really exciting seeing from that perspective. And I think some names that we're gonna be seeing really, look, AWS roster isn't that big. So I think that if you've watched it even a handful of times, you're aware of all the characters and you're aware of the storylines that are going on. But I think that if we were to look ahead
00:25:03
Speaker
a year-ish or so. I think that MJF is going to be a main event player for sure. I think that when Jake Hager starts having matches, he's the future champion. I think that that's going to be something that's going to happen. I think that Sammy Guevara is going to be someone that maybe a little bit after that, a year or two or three from now, I think that Sammy Guevara has so much potential.
00:25:27
Speaker
So much charisma as well, and he's just a good dude. And JR says it almost every single week that Sammy reminds him of Eddie Guerrero. And I mean, that's extremely high praise from someone who knows a thing or two about wrestling. If JR's saying that about you, that's an incredible compliment. But look, the future's so, so bright for all those stars. Not just in AEW, but the future's bright in general in wrestling.
00:25:55
Speaker
So many wrestlers that are coming up that are 22 to 26 years old that I think are cementing the future for the next.
00:26:04
Speaker
10, 15, 20 years, and man, it's just a super exciting time to be involved in the wrestling world as a fan or as a wrestler. For sure, yeah, I mean, there's so much content out there for folks. I mean, between AEW and WWE, Ring of Honor, now NWA on Tuesday nights. It's almost too much, but that's kind of a good thing. It's just with the network and going back and watching old stuff.
00:26:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely a great time. As a kid, you had two, three hours a week until WCW took over a little bit there. But yeah, it's definitely been fun. I've got one more final question for you, Chris. This is a question I ask all my guests whenever we have people on here. What would your last meal be if you were on death row, you could have one meal, eat whatever the hell you wanted? What would it be? I am such a sucker for chicken wings.
00:26:58
Speaker
I know that that wouldn't sound like a special or epic meal or anything, but if you got me breaded chicken wings, I'm a barbecue hot guy, I would just need 10 of those. That's it. 10 of those, because anything more than that, I'd probably be dying with indigestion. I might even die of indigestion. That's my meal. It's my kryptonite too. Chicken wings, if they're on the menu, I don't care.
00:27:26
Speaker
how fancy the restaurant is. If me and you were to go out to dinner tonight, Phil, and chicken wings were on the menu.
00:27:33
Speaker
I'll tell you exactly what I'm ordering. Dude, I should get my wife down here. I literally do the same thing. I am a chicken wing aficionado. I hate when they give you chicken wings and they're con... I don't know if you feel the same way, but you order chicken wings at like a fancier place and they give you them like connected like the drum and the... Yes, nobody wants that. No, don't give me that. Just give me plain old wings, you know.
00:27:56
Speaker
We do Old Bay here in Baltimore, kind of a spice, but a little dry rub. But yeah, I'm a big time wing guy. I've got to have a cold beer with it, too. But yeah, that sounds pretty good, Chris. I agree with you there. Thank you for coming on.
Connect with Chris Van Vliet
00:28:11
Speaker
Tell the folks where they can find you on YouTube and in Twitter and all that kind of stuff.
00:28:16
Speaker
Well, first of all, thanks for having me on, Phil. And you guys are doing great work with your show and, you know, keep it up. I've, I've listened to the show many times before. So when you guys, yeah, when you guys reached out and said, you know, would you, would you be possible to accomplish a show? I'm like, hell yeah. That's awesome, man. So people can find me, it's just my name at Chris Van Vliet, V-A-N-V-L-I-E-T. That's YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and also my podcast.
00:28:42
Speaker
uh... the chris fan fleet show so wherever you're listening to this podcast you can also find my podcast as well awesome chris well uh... enjoy life in cincinnati uh... what's what's what's been the pros and cons of moving out of miami about my in laws have a place down there we go to a couple times a year so i can probably relate to some of them but uh... after living in miami for so long what do you miss what do you do not miss well let me say that i was in miami for five years before that i was in cleveland so this is you know kind of a homecoming
00:29:12
Speaker
But, you know, from Toronto, so, you know, I'm used to the used to the cold weather. So obviously the con is there is now cold weather again, whereas in Miami, it was, quote unquote, cold if the temperature dipped into the 60s. So that's obviously a con. The pro is there's really no traffic. And I mean, Miami traffic is brutal.
00:29:36
Speaker
So, and I think that one of the draws to moving somewhere in Florida is people are like, oh yeah, you'll go to the beach all the time. And the reality is you never go to the beach. Like I went to the beach only when my friends would come to visit. So yes, the beach is not there as an option, but in the five years of living in Miami, I think I went to the beach like five times. So that's a con that it won't be there anymore.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah, I hear you. The food down there is pretty good as well, I got to say. But yeah, the weather is like summertime. It's pretty unbearable down there, just the heat and humidity. But the scenery is good, both female-wise and otherwise. But yeah, it's a fun place to visit. I don't know. I mean, five years is probably, you're probably ready to get out of there and see something new. Well, there's something that feels very much like home about being here. Obviously, the fact that my girlfriend
00:30:31
Speaker
is from here and she has a great job on TV here in Cincinnati. That helps, but there's just something that feels like home about being in the Midwest. Even when I've just traveled around, just been in different parts of the Midwest for a night or two, there's just something that feels like home about it. So it's nice to be back in my American home.
00:30:56
Speaker
Adopted home state of ohio very nice very nice. Well chris. Thank you much much success in the future man You're great at what you do, and I hope the the youtube and your role in aw continue to get bigger and bigger You're a you're a great part of the wrestling community man. We appreciate you That's really kind of you to say phil thanks for taking the time to have me on this is great and keep up the great work awesome, man
00:31:21
Speaker
All right, that was AEW's Chris Van Vliet. You can follow him on Twitter, at Chris Van Vliet. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the show, we're gonna record these interviews with a bunch of our favorite folks from around the wrestling industry, from TV, podcasts, and other folks. These will be available to Patreon subscribers first, and then they will go out to all of our listeners on our normal iTunes feed. So be sure to listen for it. If you wanna subscribe to Patreon, it's patreon.com slash Chick Foley show.
00:31:50
Speaker
and be sure to keep listening, folks. We're gonna crank these out. Myself and Marco, if he can jump on, and Sheena before she pops out that baby. And just to bring you guys some more content. So stay classy, Marx, and we'll talk to you soon.