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PW Torch and Spreaker bring you the Wade Killer Pro Wrestling Podcast. It's time
for this week's Interview Classic, where Wade Killer interviews one of pro wrestling's newsmakers.
Ten years ago this month, I interviewed David Shoemaker from then ESPN's grant
Land website. He has become a commentator you might have seen in some documentaries
over the years, and he joined me for a discussion of the evolution of
mainstream coverage to pro wrestling. Also the Triple H interview in particular where he
called me out. Also thoughts on unionizing, racism, and rest writing his
book The Lack of a Comprehensive, Definitive Vincmentmann biography, thoughts on Chris Benwa
and much more. This originally dropped on November eighth, twenty thirteen, and
it is today's win Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast Interview Classic for Wednesday, November fifteenth,
twenty twenty three. Welcome to the p W Torch Live Cast. I
am Wade Keller, editor and publisher of the Pro Wrestling Torch weekly newsletter since
nineteen eighty seven, and also pwtorch dot Com the website since nineteen ninety nine.
The PW Torch apps on iPhone, Android, Amazon Kindlefire, Windows phones
and Samsung Smart TVs and Blu Ray Players free app downloadable this year with the
newest versions. And also host of the PW Torch Live Cast since late two
thousand and nine. And it is Friday, November eighth, twenty thirteen,
and Friday means it is Interview Friday. And I'm pleased to introduce today's guest
and author of a new book hot off the presses The Squared Circle, Life,
Death and Professional Wrestling, David Chumaker aka Themassmen at grant Land dot com.
David, Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Wade.
Awesome to have you on the show. Your new book is out, you're
starting to get feedback from it. It has to be exciting for you putting
in. How long do you work on the book? Probably about a year
and a half, Just like working on the book. Some of this stuff
started off as you know essays I had written on deadspend, but it was
a solid year and a half slog to get the book done. And you're
used to the instant gratification of oh I got something witty to say on Twitter.
Say if you get feedback, or you write an essay for grant Land
and you got some feedback. It's has to be a whole different world as
a writer to put a year and a half into something, give or take,
and then had the editors go through with the publishers go through it,
and you're anticipating the feedback, but it doesn't happen as instantaneously as we're kind
of used to in this era. No, it's a totally different thing.
I mean, listen, I've worked in the book publishing industry for ten years,
so you know, it's I would think that I would have been more
prepared for it, but it's totally just a shockingly different thing. I mean,
it's it's you know, and it's not even just instant gratification. It's
the instant like I want to hear the negative feedback immediately, you know,
like I want to know. I want to know when I write something bad
right away so I can just like go to the bar and forget about it.
But like and also just weird little things like corrections, you know.
It's it's so it's so reassuring to know that if I write them, you
know, if I write SummerSlam instead of Survivor series, just because I have
a brain fart, that my editor can change that, even if it's noted.
It's just better if it's you know, so you don't have to constantly
hear about it. In this case, any errors I make are there for
the life of the paper, I guess. So well, it's it's a
totally different world. Yeah, I mean, for thirteen and twenty nine weeks
of my life doing the Progressing Torture newsletter, there's not a morning I haven't
woken up after deadline knowing that while I was sleeping the newsletter was being published
with the thought entering my mind, Oh my god, what did I write
last night? Yeah, it's like the old the old. Uh, it's
like the Lewis Black Choke who he said that like every every time that every
every April fifteenth, every time every American like seals the envelope with their taxes
in it and puts it in the mail, they just think to themselves,
well, this might be the year I go to jail, you know.
But it's just so it's yeah, it's you can never. You're never comfortable.
You're never You're never comfortable. Man. Well, I want I want
to give a little biographical information for you, for listeners who don't know who
you are, don't know why you wrote a book, don't know what your
books about. I want to cover those bases, and then I want to
get in another heart of the book. And also because you follow wrestling today,
I want to talk about current storylines. I want to talk about WWE
and the storyline going on as big show in Triple Ah and get your thoughts
on that. I want to open up the full mindes and the emails.
If you are someone who's read this book already or a fan of David's work
on grantline dot com, we absolutely invite and welcome your phone calls. The
number to call is six four six seven two one nine eight two eight six
four six seven two one two. Wait. You can also email us your
question if you can't call PW Torch Live Cast at gmail dot com. Simple
enough, PW Torch Live Cast at gmail dot com. VPP members, of
course, can use a VIP express lane if they want to get ahead in
line. David, give us a little background about you as a wrestling fan.
And I know you get as tired of telling the stories I probably do
when people ask, but how did you get into writing about wrestling as an
occupation and now a book author? Well, I mean it was it was
serendipity, really, I mean I well, of course, I grew up
a wrestling fan. I mean my entire life. I've been a huge wrestling
fan, and I like I love I've moved to New York, I don't
know, eleven twelve years ago or something like that, and like I said,
was working and publishing and had a buddy who's kind of a friend of
a friend who was an editor at dead Spin, and I would send him
wrestling stories when I thought they merited sort of pop culture relevance, and they
would do a little posts on them and they started doing really well. I
mean and this is you know, I mean, like you've been doing God's
work for a long time, but you know, it's easy for people to
forget that. Like, you know, five years ago, even like blogs
were weird about covering wrestling, you know, I mean that TMZ as a
whole channel dedicated to it, but that's it's a pretty new thing. And
I would send them, and you know, I would send them all those
stories. And after they we did well a few times, the editor came
to me and said, just, you know, can you give me some
new content. We got to do something. The wrestling they're doing. These
people love this stuff, and so you know, we went back and forth
and started a calumn called or that became Dead Wrestler of the Week, which
was you know, obviously titled to irritate people and to get attention, but
you know, it started off in little short essays about about you know,
my my idols who had died too early, and pretty quickly evolved into just
really really long tributes and essays about their entire lives and careers and what they
represented to people like me who grew up wrestling fans. And after I had
done that for I don't know, a year and a half or something like
that. Two years I got really lucky and Grantlin contacted me and said to
see if I wanted to cover the current product, and I said, hell
yes, And that's you know, it was about the same time that I
signed up with Grantlin that the that the book deal came together. So so
yeah, it's been pretty much full time wrestling obsession for the past couple of
years. Are you a writer by trade through journalism degree or is it something
you picked up freelancing and kind of just over time, Like like probably a
lot of people, probably the vast majority of people who work in book publishing
in New York. I wanted to write fiction, and I got an MFA
and all that good stuff, and then, you know, quickly learned that
it's really hard to be an editor and a writer at the same time because
those things just occupied the same part of your brain. And it was actually
only after I got out of editing that I that I was able to able
to write full time and and and yeah, I mean just sort of sort
of learned taught myself how to how to write this sort of thing on the
fly. I mean, thankfully, I've been good friends with a lot of
established writers for for a long time, and I think I learned a lot
through osmosis, But but yeah, it was, it was it was just
sort of a love of writing in general, and then sort of, you
know, figured out my style as I went along. Were you more into
magazine style writing, fiction writing or journalism as as your college training and goal
more fiction writing and then But I always had I always had like a crazy
affection for old for old boxing writing. Yeah, I always always had.
I mean I'm standing in my room right now, and I can show you
that. I mean I'm looking right right at you know, W. C.
Hines and aj Leebling and all. I mean just like that kind of
stuff just was I mean, I read I read fiction from that era too,
you know. I mean that's just sort of like a time where I
really I really appreciate the style and uh and you know I think that I
think that, you know, there's obviously a strong connection between between I mean,
I like the old boxing writing way more than I ever liked boxing.
And I like boxing, but it's just not it's it's the way that they
just sort of turned all the turned every fight and every fighter into a demi
god and that's just sort of like, you know, that really informs what
I do when I when I was doing the Dead Wrestler Staff and what I
wrote in the book, because you know, all these guys were were larger
than life. You know, there were a real life superheroes. There are
are Greek gods and their mortality sort of you know, when you have to
consider their mortality, it really throws you for a loop. Yeah, it
comes across in the style of writing in your book The Squared Circle, Life,
Death and Professional Wrestling that it to my ears as I'm reading it.
It it doesn't feel and this is not a value judgment at all. It's
just kind of a style judgment or a style evaluation. It comes across exactly
if you described it, like now, I kind of get where your influence
has come from. Because even reading The Fall Guys and whatever happened to Gorgeous
George, which you had to do as research for the book if you had
in previously, there's that old style wrestling writing too, and there's the language
use in the way you approach it. It's kind of more long form magazine
essays than you know, kind of day to day newsletter deadline or newspaper writing
type deadline, you know, on deadline type stock. Yeah, no,
totally. I mean people will now and in the journalism world, will throw
around the adjective purple in a derogatory way, and I totally get it.
It's the purple prose, you know, it's just like overwrought and silly and
and a lot of people are very deserving of that, you know, from
time to time. But that book, Fall Guys, is like the purpliest
purple prose you've ever read. But it's beautiful. I mean, it's just
like such a great old book. And if any I'm sure, I'm sure
your readers mostly know about it, but if they don't, I think it's
available as an ebook now for basically no money, and you can go and
grab it. I mean, that thing is that that's a that's a book
well worth reading. And whatever happened to Gory George Actually yeah, I stumbled
upon that like really late in the process comparatively to a lot of the other
stuff, and was just my mind was blown by it. I mean,
that that book existed and that somehow Knowinge had told me about it. I
was just like I was, I was floored. It's most of those books
are great. Yeah. In the last twenty five years of doing the Torch,
we've had different ways of having readers ask us, you know, what
book should I read? And Fall Guys and what are Happened to God?
To George are the top two on our list always if you want to know
about what happened before you know, nineteen seventy. Yeah, and those are
they're not They're practically the only two, you know. And then you add
some people reflecting backwards, you know, Louces with Hooker writing about in the
first person way, you know, his experiences during that era. But those
are the two gems. And I mean when I got my cop I got
my hands on photocopies of them and then made photocopies for my staff and sent
them to them and said, read this. We need to know this,
you know, to write intelligence, you know, in an informed way about
wrestling history. So yeah, but yeah, yeah, style of writing it
it's in that line. Yeah, I mean, and you talk about be
says book too, which I enjoyed, but you know, it's it's it's
a weird world that wrestling's in that like, so that you know, ninety
percent of the books that have come out about it are like memoirs, you
know, and and it's you know, for a pretty precise audience, with
the exception of Foley and Hogan and and maybe Jericho. Uh, and you
know, it's it's a I mean, I love so many of those books,
but it's just a different you talk about styles like, that's not that's
just a totally different enterprise to be writing memoirs and and you know, so
like you know, reading those books we just talked about definitely informed what I
was trying to do with this book. Absolutely. Yeah. I just last
week we had on the authors of Mad Dog's mitcheson Screwjobs you untold story of
a Montreil shape the world of wrestling, and love that book. Yeah,
you know, and it's like those are the books where it's it's people who
are investigative reporters or journalists by or historians by trade, who dive in and
and write, you know, without that first person bias that you know,
autobiographical or memoir style writing can have that. I think ads you know,
Dave Melter's tributes you know with uh, you know, the biographies of the
of the wrestlers who died. So speaking of which, what was your mission
statement when writing this book? What was the germ of the idea? Uh?
And and and how did that change as you wrote the book? Well,
it started off pretty simply. Is just like it was going to be
a collection of the dead Wrestler of the Week pieces, or that was going
to be you know, uh, it's going to be you know, the
dead Wrestler of the Week pieces i'd written and then half new ones or something
like that. But when I started working with an agent and then the editors
that I was talking to at the beginning, you know, they all wanted
something bigger, you know. I mean there's just the New York mainstream publishing
is not, like, you know, super eager to publish wrestling books.
So they if they were going to do it, they wanted to be able
to say, you know, this is you know, this is the whole
history of wrestling or the thing. You know, if they wanted it to
be more than just a collection of essays. So you know, it was
just like I had the stuff that I wanted to write. I wanted to
pay tribute to, you know, like I said, my idols who had
passed. But but you know, I knew that I had to find a
middle ground between what they were asking for and then what I was doing.
So it just sort of evolved organically from there. I started doing the research
on the kind of way way back, and when I started, you know,
the first I covered the first probably fifty years of you know, I
mean like nineteen hundred and nineteen fifty in one big essay at the front.
And that took a long long time. Oh yeah. But once I got
through that, I kind of had found the voice of the book, and
then started rewriting all the dead some of the deadsmin pieces that I had done
in that vein. And then when I kind of had my had my rhythm,
I started going back and find it and really polishing up you know,
new chapter is. Yeah, I did, you know, wrote about gorgeous
George and the fabulous Mula and people and you know, the von Erics,
people from from you know, further back in time and uh and and you
know, basically just felt my way through it. I you know, there
was a point where I was about seventy five percent done and I sat down
with my editor and I was like, here's what I have, and here's
a list of all the people I could possibly add to it and and just
ideas I can add to it, and he helped me figure out what,
you know, what what was gonna what was going to be in there.
There are a lot of people that I wanted to write about that I thought,
you know, with every every every wrestler that I covered, I wanted
him to kind of represent something bigger than himself. So you know, I
would have loved to write about, uh, you know, the Grams down
Florida. But I cover a lot of that ground with the von Erics.
And you know, the book didn't have a jobber, so you know,
every card needs a job or so my book needed s. D. Jones.
So it was that kind of just decision making that went on at the
very end. Very good are you What kind of feedback are you getting so
far? And what's most surprising about that feedback? Good? Our bet the
feedback's been good so far. I mean, I don't know, I think
that separately from I mean we're talking about the difference between writing for online.
You know, it's probably a lot of more effort to just you know,
read a book that you don't like and to say negative things about it.
So maybe so maybe that'll work out in my favor, but I you know,
it's been the feedback's been great, you know, and I I've been
going around trying to promote it on on you know, the radio, and
actually the weirdest thing is that I've is that like just the conservative media has
really latched on to me, uh and they and it's been great they but
like Fox and Friends had me on and and I miss had me on and
this and it kind of keeps going. But I think that uh, I
don't think I quite I quite understood how how uh how vital a resource that
would be to mind. But it's, you know, it's it's good for
me, I guess, I think from reading the book. And I've had
to jump around a little bit because it just came out and I try to
read every page of book before interview somebody, and I haven't done that with
yours. But I read a good part of it. Uh. And I'm
not reading it sequentially because I actually don't think you have to given no,
no, not at all. And that's the way. That's the way I
read it. I mean, it's you can read it cover to cover and
you know, it goes in, it goes in a timeline. But uh,
you know, it's it's if you if people have told me they keep
it in their bathroom, and I take that as a compliment, you know,
it's totally yeah. And and the uh, the the content of the
book, it to me is something that you could pass to I'll just throw
the name because you brought him up, don Imus. Let's say don Imus
was a wrestling fan at some point, not really so much now, but
kind of keeps an eyeing it, but he's always found it fascinating and he's
never understood it, and he wants he has he knows he has some false
preconceptions and some false assumptions, and he wants to know the truth. And
he sort of like, this is a book that kind of gives you a
really nice overview from the beginning of professional wrestling at the turn of the century,
the last century through you know Chris Benwell, you know, for the
and a little beyond that. And and that's I think it's really I think
it would be really a book you'd want to had to somebody and say,
if you want to understand wrestling, but not necessarily get so deep into it
that you just feel lost in the details that don't interest you. And I
don't want this to be I think hardcore wrestling fans would enjoy too, But
I think this is a book that really accomplishes that in a way where perhaps
the Montreal History Book would not appeal to don Imus. Yeah, I mean,
that's that's definitely part of what I try to do. I mean,
people that have read my stuff on Grantland. I mean the one thing I
get criticized for the most for my my Grountland stuff from hardcore fans is that
they, you know, is that I repeat things that they know. You
know, I just will throw it in the side that explains who John Cena
is in every piece, just in case someone's reading it for the first time.
Even if it's like a three word description or something like that. People
are just like, why are you telling me this stuff. I'm just like,
well, you know, Grantland Grayland is a sort of broader audience,
and I just hope that some you know, I take it as part of
my mission to try to When people tell me like they're watching wrestling for the
first time in ten years because they read something I wrote, I think that's
the greatest compliment in the world, you know. So that's uh, that
David. People who say that probably have not read a book that has footnotes
in it. I had a college professor who was just like, my favorite
part of a book are the footnotes, because that's whate all the good stuff
is, because you know, the stuff that falls out of the flow of
the story you're telling. Yeah, it's the best nuggets. And yeah.
So, I mean somebody who complains that you're putting things in perspective for a
wide audience, I think is being a little self centered about Yeah. No,
I mean I think I think people people always want to complain, but
the h but I mean, we wrestling fans complain. I mean, I
do it myself. We all complain louder than most than most other people.
So it's part it's part of our part of our dialect. But but uh,
but yeah, that's definitely what I tried to do. And uh and
and I hope that, uh, I hope that some you know, people
who are just interested in find out what wrestling's about try to read it.
You know, we we wrestling fans are you know, it's the wrestling community
is really awesome, Like it's really great and being and you know kind of
really really getting to be a full part of it over the past few years
has been incredibly gratifying. But you know, we can it can be a
pretty insular community at times and U And one of the things I constantly have
to deal with is people kind of just like raising their eyebrows at me when
I talk about being a wrestling writer or as I have this book coming out,
people who aren't fans that is, and it's and it's, uh,
you know, I think it's just sad that, I mean, wrestling is
like people always say, like jazz is like the most American art form,
Like wrestling is the most American art form, you know. I mean it's
like it's there is so much about our culture that's built into this and vice
versa, and uh, and you know, it's sad that just because it's
you know, that it's been a put on for so long that people just
sort of dismiss it as if it's not as if it's not worth knowing anything
about. I mean, that's just like so weirdly closed minded. So anyway,
Yeah, that's definitely part of my mission with to like, you know,
write a book that that you know, regular people might be able to
read and get something out of and get some kind of perspective about what this
whole with the whole for wrestling world is about. Invite you to email the
show with feedback or questions or comments. That email address is Wade Keller Podcast
at petw torch dot com. That's Wadekeller Podcast at PW torch dot com.
Also welcome your feedback on Twitter. You can follow us on Twitter at PW
torch and follow me at the Wade Keller. That's at PW Torch and at
the Wade Keller. Yeah, and for people who kind of have pay attention
for a for leader wrestling or occasionally dive in, there's things that happen where
they're like, wow, this must be the first time this has ever happened.
And then you know it was, like you mentioned it in the book
where Vince Vincent K. McMahon, Vince McMahon Juniors as he's called father,
was talking openly about wrestling not being real and Washington DC newspapers. Yet people
think the focal or is, oh, he would have never stood for wrestling
being talked about as anything but a pure court Twitter rolled over in his grave.
They did, right, And part of that, what they say too
is is not speaking ill of the dead and saying, well, Vince would
not have been happy with Vince intruding on other promoters territories because they all had
agreements. But of course that's a little purer than the industry really was.
Also, yeah, but that might have been a part that maybe that a
little bit more than even exposing the real fake issue as part of the Vince
Senior folklore, which is it's Vince Junior intruding on other territories that would have
upset him. But that was not an isolated incident that happened because vincecuc Man
decided to do it. He did it because that was the way everything was
going. There used to be local children shows in the morning with puppets in
every market. Well, eventually because of national cable and national syndication, there
were national shows for kids, not local ones anymore. Same thing happened with
pro wrestling. So oh yeah, I mean and like and intivuate it and
consolidate and Crockett just because like, you know, they just because they were
just fighting Vince. I mean, the NWA was I mean, I don't
want to say falling apart, but it was, it was really coming apart
at the seams because you know, all of a sudden, everybody in the
world was watching Georgia Championship Wrestling and realizing that there were other wrestlers out there,
you know, I mean, it was it was a really it was
the whole world, like you said, though, the whole everything that's changing
and and and you know, Vince wasn't the only guy that tried to go
national. He was just the only guy that turned out to be good at
it, So you know it, you know, it's just it's it's hard
to hate the guy from making money in that sort of situation. But yeah,
it would have been It would have been interesting. There's so many parallel
universes that would be great to experience, you know. But one would be
what if Vince McMahon Sr. Didn't die when he did and live longer.
Would he have been an old Curmudgeons saying I'm not going to expand and that
would have opened the door for someone else to inevitably do it, Ted Turner
or whoever to lead the way, or would Vince Junior have talked his dad
into it and said, no, we have to do this, or was
what is that if enthusiastically had been as cutthroat as Vince Junior was about going
after other territories talent. We just that is really good. I'm actually working
on a like a giant what if piece or Grantland. I might have to
steal that one for it. I wouldn't, but I wonder if I mean,
yeah, I mean, I mean, obviously WWF was you know,
benefited from getting out in front of everybody else. But a lot of it's
aptitude too. I mean, Vince is just sort of a visionary in the
way that he went about everything. And like I said, there were you
know, there were other promoters that tried to start national companies that just sort
of fizzled. Because I'm not talking about the NWA that you know, that
history is well documented, but there were other guys that tried to go that
tried to go more national and it just didn't. It just didn't work.
So it's kind of kind of like Apple, where you know, people who
know better know that, you know, Android has been ahead on you know,
four out of five features, and Apple just perfects them before putting them
out exactly. Yeah, the AWA did pay per view in close circuit before
vincack Mann World Class did national syndication before Vince McMahon. I mean, there's
everything that Vincent Mann did was hulko Mania was born in my backyard and I
watched it play out before Hulkamania got hired by Vince McMahon and you know,
co opted as his discovery and his invention. Everything Vince did was actually looking
at somebody else doing it and then just doing it bigger because he was willing
to put it all on the line and he had the New York market in
his favor. But there's not really anything vincick Mann has done that somebody else
one of the other promoters didn't in a sort of half hearted way or a
smaller scale way. Try first. Yeah, No, you just got to
be the guy that puts it all together. I mean, you're right,
you got to be You got to I mean, he's you got to be
the Steve Jobs, the guy that just like packages it and really really smooth
white plastic to make everybody want it more, you know. And that's that's
sort of Vince's brilliance because I mean Star Kate was the first super show,
you know, years before Wrestlmania. Oh yeah, absolutely, I mean those
star Kates are so great too. Yes, I do want to interject a
quick plug off if this part of the discussion fascinated anybody who's new to the
show or miss some shows. Jerry Jarrett was on last month, or actually
I think September now, so a little more month ago and talked about a
fascinating time in wrestling, which was in the mid eighties when all these promoters
were talking about were reelinked from Vince wick Man's expansion and they all got together
and formed the Pro Wrestling USA group. Eddie Einhorn of the Chicago White Sox
fame was involved in that, and he just told a great story. Jerry
Jarrett was in on those meetings. He was instrumental in it, in it
forming, and you know, talking about all the reasons it's all apart.
Is a fascinating piece of wrestling history. I think that mid eighties was probably
as exciting and enthralling a part of wrestling history, with so many different stories
and personalities in such a pivotal time. And Jerry Jarrett was a great interview
for people who are interested in wrestling history. If you're listening to this,
you probably are, so I throwed that out there for people because it was
a great hour and a half two hours with Jerry. David Schumaker is my
guest of grant land dot com. He is writes under the moniker the mass
Man. Why do you get a moniker and nobody else does? It was
totally an accident, man, I mean the luckiest accident. I started.
When I started writing for dead Spend. There was an idea in the very
formative stages that a buddy and I were going to write it together under the
shared pseudonym, and then the buddy never ended up doing anything and it was
just me, but we kept it because the editors thought it was really funny.
But it was really it was really like it really helped my career because
from the very beginning, people in the comments section were trying to guess who
I was, as if I was like an established writer who was like slumming
it writing about wrestling, and little did they know that I was just like
some random dude. So it was that's that's why, and it just sort
of sticks with you, you know, it's hard to it's when I started
at Grantland, they said asked me if I wanted to use my real name
or the mask man, and I was just like you know, I don't
really care. I mean probably you know, all I have is my dad's
beIN background, so it'll probably help page you use if I just kind of
stick with the mask man for a while and then that's that's the way it's
been now where you are now, in the writing you're doing, You're doing
serious writing. You wrote a serious book. Does using a moniker, which
nobody else does, undercut what you're doing and put a winkie face on serious
writing. Yeah, I mean I think you can probably you can probably argue
that. But it's like, you know, I mean we're everything now.
I mean I'm not the only guy on on Grantland that's writing har monicer weirdly.
I mean there's always also like Carlas, I think there might be somebody
else, but there's a it's we're just in this weird like sort of post
ironic world now. Or I think you can kind of get away with it.
I mean, everybody that I do, everybody that I've been doing,
put like any radio shows that I've been on that are more that are mainstream
outlets, you know, I think they just kind of get a kick out
of it because you know, they're not going to take wrestling that seriously,
even if they're even if they you know, want to take the book seriously.
So on some level, I think it works because like it's clear that
I'm not being that I that you know, it's that this isn't that well
they think I'm not taking it too seriously too. You know, there's a
lot of things in wrestling that you're better off not taking too seriously. And
then there's a lot of things like you know, like all the wrestlers who
have died that you do take really seriously, but you know, you don't
watch I mean, you don't have to watch every episode of Raw and be
is like it'd be so earnest about it. And so I think that it's
you know, in some ways it kind of it does reflect the way that
I the way that I interact with the wrestling. Yeah, I worry with
a book covering unionization, and you know, great history on that talking about
why that, you know, and I just some great lines in there about
you know, the the nineteen ninety nine storyline with the we're WWF brought it
up and you're like a camp I mean we wrote at the time or like
I can't believe lewf is actually broaching the subject on the air. My god,
it's you know, it's so crazy. And I've had jesseven turned my
radio show in the early nineties with similar quotes to what he what you used
you know about the union and Hogan busting it and all the way through,
and I thought it was very poignant and accurate that, you know, the
main event wrestlers are the ones, as you wrote, who had like Brett
Hart, who could have done something about it, but they don't when they're
in power because they want the millions of dollars that come with just going along
with a program. But when they get out then all of a sudden,
you know, they're the heroes who say wrestling needs a union. I'm waiting
for that top star to sit and suk man down and go let's do this.
You know, let's do this. And I want to be the one
who changes the industry for the better. That's going to be my legacy more
than the millions of dollars in my bank account. In twenty twelve, NXT
transitioned into the developmental system and ultimately the brand you see today. On the
Torch VIP podcast, NXT eight years back we'll be taking a weekly look at
this page in NXT's early history. Joined Kelly Wells and me Tom Stout from
p WT talks NXT every Saturday as we go eight years back to the day
to track NXT's rising talents and why they did or didn't work out, exclusively
for PW Torch VIP members. Yeah, No, I mean, I think
I think you're exactly right. You know, it's hard. It's weird that
we're in a world now where unions aren't don't have the same sway that they
had, you know, fifty years ago. And I think a lot of
people of my generation don't take the issue all that seriously or think it's or
think in the instances where there should be a union, that unions just sort
of like happen, happened magically. But like, you know, like I
don't know, but people who were my age are a little bit older probably
remember playing Techmo Bowl in the old Nintendo game when like the five biggest quarterbacks
in the league didn't have their names in the game because they weren't in the
union, you know, I mean, like they they just didn't think it
was worth their time, and and that's that sort of thing really is like
is a problem. I mean, it's the biggest it's the biggest problem with
with with unionized and you know, I'll say over and over again that WWE
has has kind of surprisingly turned into you know, the best case scenario,
like like the poster child for the success of unchecked capitalism, sort of like
they've decided that it's in their interest to provide rehab and to take concussion seriously
and to do all that kind of stuff. And you know, it is
it does, it helps, it helps the on the pr front, and
they're good people for doing it. But you know, it looks let me
jump into because I think what's frustrating for those of us who have had our
boots on the ground day after day for two and a half decades covering the
story of WWE is people who ride in And I'm not saying that's you,
but people are ride in and pat WW in the back for being good people
for doing this when following this day to day, week to week, it
took a big pile of bodies. It took a federal indictment and a steroid
trial. You know, twenty years ago, it took a massive number of
broken bodies, broken families, broken lives, and a lot of embarrassment and
a lot of mainstream media coverage from hardworking mainstream journalists and people like me and
Day Meltzer and Bruce Mitchell who have been covering this day to day, who
have watched WWE get drags kicking and screaming only when there was a financial benefit
or when they felt they had to because of government, senate pressure or mainstream
media pressure to quote then do the right thing. And so to sit here
and have ww get patted on the back for doing something that they had to
do, should have done sooner, and we've been calling for them to do
years before they did it. Well, there were a lot of lives that
could have been saved. That does get under my skin a little bit because
as much as absolutely good things are happening from what WWE is doing today and
it's great that they're doing it, the idea that they volunteered to do it
out of the goodness of their heart instead of drag kicking and screaming, with
tons and tons and tons of dead bodies and broken lives and damage done in
the wake of their stubbornness and reluctance is part of history that I don't think
should be glossed over. No, no, no, I actually I agree
with you one hundred percent. And what I was getting at I was basically
just like, now that they're a public, public being traded company, there
is a financial stake it being at doing good things. Yeah, And and
I mean I don't I don't think they should be patted on the back necessarily,
I mean really at all. I just think that they that in some
sense, this is evidence that, like you know, success can come without
unionization if there's a financial stake in it for them. But that doesn't mean
that there's not that there. I mean, there's still many more things that
could have I mean, many more good things that could happen if there was
a if there was the wrestler's union. And I don't really know that anybody's
ever answered Darren Aronofski's question sufficiently as to why these guys aren't either in the
Screen Actors Guild or the or the the Stuntman's Union, you know. And
it's just like like literally that question. I don't think it's been answered.
I know we've been asking it for twenty five years, twenty six years in
the Torch, and I mean it's you know, Jessevnturo in the early nineties
on my radio show and I did a torch talk for my newspatter with them
and that was brought up. And it was really disappointing with Jesse David because
when Owen Hart died, and you have a chapter on that and covered that
well, Jesse spoke out on Larry King Live. He wrote in a book
that that you know, if wrestling had a union, one would be alive
today and was you know, that was his That was a big thing that
he was speaking out about. And then just a matter of months later,
reeling from all this public scrutiny about Owen Hart's death, WWFS decided, we
got summer sliming in Minneapolis. Let's get Governor Ventura to be a special referee
for our show. And Ventura, who had been speaking out against WWS lack
of a union, had a seven figure paycheck, give or take, dangled
in front of him, and suddenly it wasn't that big of an issue for
him anymore, and it's all in fun and what's done is done, and
he totally changed his stance. And I mean I asked him at the press
conference, you know what have you learned to change your perspective sitting at that
desk today and he you know, leered at me and or you know,
gave me an evil look and said, I don't answer questions from dirt sheeet
writers keller And he said, you know, it's up to wrestlers to do
that, and I'm not a wrestler anymore, and he just flew off the
question. It's like, that's the answer to your question. It's because when
money is dangled in front of earnest people who have earnest ideas they put they
put that aside because they want to pad their bank account. And it happens
time after time after time historically. Yeah. Well, I mean it's like,
man, it's like when Piper was was kind of on that tour talking
about the sickness you know that all these wrestlers get, and then he was
back in WWU no time, and it's kind of like the sickness was the
sickness was that they just can't quit. I mean, it's like I wish
I knew how to quit, you like that whole thing, Like they like
this. The sickness is they can't walk away from wrestling, no matter how
far afield they get I mean, we feel blessed the rock heats coming back.
But you know, it's an addiction for most of those guys, you
know, I mean, just getting that, getting that immediate crowd response and
and and like you said, the money, it's it's I don't. I
mean, it's I think it'd be hard for any of them to walk away
from it, no matter how much good they're trying to do. And you
can't, I mean, you can't have it both ways, exactly. I
want to get to our phone call, so I want to reset things if
you're just joining us. David Schumicher from grant land dot com author Oh the
Squared Circle is joining us. Book just came out last week, and I
do recommend it. I haven't read it cover to cover, so there might
be things I hate about it, David, that I haven't read yet.
I'm just warning it, so I'm glad for interviewing now. Then this is
good. But there might be things I love that I don't bring up because
I haven't read every page yet. But I read a lot of it and
I definitely think it is worth people taking a listen, are taking a listen,
giving it a read, or they're probably an audiobook version out there.
It will be, but we have already there is an audio, and there's
a kindle on all this stuff. So yeah, I was cool. I
didn't read the audio. Somebody with a better voice than me dead, So
well that's good. Yeah. I don't know if you'd want to read your
own book, that'd be kind of I know it would be a way to
proofread, and no, yeah, I would be changing everything as I went.
I don't think that would worry at all. All right, So our
phone over here six four six seven one nine A two weight. We're live
on the air, taking your phone calls and also email questions at PW torchlivecast
dot com. I have a lot more questions for David, but we've got
some people on hold. So let's get to the phone calls and let me
bring the switchboard up and let's go first to Eric code two to oh nine.
This is Eric, would be IP. Remember calling Eric. Appreciate if
you call it, Please state where you're from and what your question is for
David. Hey, when David, this is the Erica starts to California.
How you guys are doing? All right? Well, David, I read
one of the an excerpt from your book that was posted on grant Land about
racism and wrestling and the era that you were describing, you know, everything
from the old Junkyard Dog and Roddy Roddy Piper stuff to Harlem heat and everything
that was the era. I grew up on watching wrestling, so at the
time I really didn't see it. I didn't see what was happening. You
know, I was kind of lost in the euphoria, I guess is a
moment. But reading that and looking back on everything, I just found myself
pulling you know what, Yeah, that's right a lot when I read that,
So it really opened my eyes. I'm definitely going to pick up the
book to see what else you can open my eyes about maybe. And then
what I wanted to ask you, well, also what I want to say
is I remember Roddy Piper when he came to Stockton one time. He was
doing that whole anti Latino gimmicking, and I remember Jesse Ventura calling Pido Santana
Chico and the flying Jalapago and everything like that, and I remember thinking nothing
of it. But what I wanted to ask you was as far as nowadays
the racism I mean, do you think it's do you think it's chilled,
because I mean, we still have Mark Henry coming out to the hip hop
song, but you know, it's it's kind of died down for me.
Mark Henry and Our Truth are pretty much the only ones. But I mean,
they're honestly one of the only couple of the only black performers out there
right now, or at least even close to the main event level. So
I just wanted to get your opinion on how far the industry's come as far
as racism goes nowadays. Yeah, that's a really good question, and you
know it's I hear things like, I mean, I hear that question phrase
in various ways a lot that you put it really well. I think that,
you know, it's hard to know how quickly time is going to pass,
but I definitely think that inevitably those sort of racial stereotyping is going to
is going to diminish, because I mean, America is not becoming more homogenized
in a lot of ways, but it's definitely like you know, kind of
people talk about the browning of America. I mean, I certainly think that
race will will continue to be less of a going issue, and wrestling will
reflect the real world that way. But that doesn't mean wrestling is going to
stop working in really really broad strokes that are in retrospect often incredibly offensive.
That's kind of part of the form, you know. I mean, like
I've been saying, you know, when I talk to people about the book,
that the cool thing about wrestling is that you don't have to watch and
watched for ten years and you can get back into it and turn it on
and you know what's going on. You don't know all the storylines, but
you know what a good guy and a bad guy punching each other in a
ring is, you know, And that's sort of the beauty of wrestling,
that simplicity. But it has a dark side, which is that you have
to work in these kind of just broad stereotypes, not necessarily offensive, but
there's lots of I mean, seeampunk is a stereotype, you know, and
there and there's a that's kind of part of how the way I mean,
the way that characters are built in wrestling. So yeah, I mean when
I wrote that racism piece, uh, it wasn't. I mean, it's
in the book. It just has race and wrestling and then the racism thing
just sort of popped up in the online edition. But uh, it was
it was just sort of a catalog. It wasn't meant to be an indictment.
But for me too, I had I had a similar reaction to what
you had, which was that once everything's crammed into three pages, man,
that seems like a lot of that's just it seems like bad news, you
know, And uh, it's it's tough. It's tough, but it's but
but you know, it's Wrestling is a weird world because there are a bunch
of kind of documented racist, racist people that are that are behind the scenes,
that have worked behind the scenes over the decades. But I think for
the most part, everybody's hard and head are in the right place. They're
just or I guess their heart's in the right place. Their head's just somewhere
else. You know, give yourself a reason to look forward to going to
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dollars, or try us for an eight week trial subscription. PW torch dot
Com Slash paper Copy. Yeah, I think it's kind of I think it's
really disappointing that it seems like McMahon is always coming out with some sort of
racial stereotype, a gimmick around a racial stereotype. I mean, like you
said it was back, you know, a million Dollar Man and ted Dybati.
You know, when Harlem Heat first started out and the most grown inducing
one because my best friend happened to be Mexican and when we were watching wrestling
the Mexicals when they came out and they came out riding a Lawnmowre and honestly
he stopped watching wrestling after that because it was just it was too much for
him. But I can't say that blame. I kind of turned out by
it too. I stopped up shortly after that, but like you said,
I picked it up a few years later and I was right back into it
again. But you know, it just seems like it never stops. They
always will come out with a racially motivated gimmick of some kind of whether or
not they're trying to be racist about it or they're just trying to get a
reaction or what it just seems in their in they always seem to come up
with one. Yeah. Yeah, I mean the one defense that just sort
of always sort of bothers me is when they talk about how the guys came
up with the gimmicks themselves, you know, like the uh you know,
like that like Los Guerrero's came up to the line cheating seeing thing themselves and
they were really excited to do it. And you know, crime Time famously
came up with their gimmick themselves, which is good, which is like a
minor defense, but it's like, you know, someone else has created the
culture in which these guys think that that's a really great, great idea to
get themselves over, you know, And so it's not always it's it's you
know, it's it's not a good look for wrestling. Thankfully, it's not
like the predominant. I mean, it's not the preponderance of wrestling history and
and now you know, there's not there's really not that much of it.
I would sort of agree with our truth, although he's been around for a
while and I'm not a huge fan of Kofi Kingston's weird logo. But but
aside from that, you know, I think it's you know, I think
that that things are headed in the right direction, and like I said,
I think it's just sort of the way that the way that society is going.
I think it's inevitable. I mean, I also think Biggie Langson is
going to be champion inside of a year, so you know, that'll that
that might change the conversation entirely. So yeah, I agree with you,
David. The idea of that, well, he came up with this obscenely
racist and meaning gimmick. It means it's okay because he's Hispanic, so we
should be able to It's like, that's that's not really how it works.
You don't put dangle a job and a bunch of money in front of somebody
whose dream is to be a professional wrestler and then and then put all everything
on their shoulders that that well, they wanted to do it, so it
makes it okay. It's like, yeah, one, there were there were
black guys performed in blackface back in the day, you know, and they
were happy to make the money. But that doesn't mean that was okay.
So no, it has to be a judge otherwise, Eric, I appreciate
the call it very much. All right, thanks you guys. Cool.
Let's go next to Eric Code sixty five one, Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Please state your name and where you're from. Hey, Wade and David,
this is Michael from Woodbury. How are you doing. Guys doing good?
They do for me. Michael, Hey, two of my favorites. Glad
to have you guys doing a show together. And David books in the mail.
Can't wait to uh crack it open this weekend and read it great man.
Yeah, question. You had a really interesting interview with Triple H mats
Man right before SummerSlam that got a lot of attention, and it kind of
got weight involved as well, wondering what your thoughts of what he had to
say at the time and how certain things have played out over the last few
months. A lot has happened and things have changed, and uh where you
see Uh some of that that headed because I think that he wasn't putting on
putting on anything in his interview, But I also think that a couple of
things, especially how Daniel Bryant stuff has played out as a has been interesting.
So I want to know what your thoughts are how that interview turned out,
and what you think about the interview now a few few months removed,
and how the direction of the company's gone. Yeah, I mean the one
I was I was waiting for this to come up. I mean, this
is like when then when you know, me and Wadeter finally together, and
this is like when the megapowers collide. Now, so this is good,
but but yeah, I mean, I like, you know, I really
loved doing that interview, I mean just getting I mean it was crazy to
hear him, I mean, just for him to be in the room and
just kind of be seemingly talking off the cuff like that, and I've said
a million times that every time you talk to a wrestler, you're getting worked
somehow. You know, you're getting worked on some level. But among others,
yeah, definitely some more than others. You know. The nicest thing
that I read about about that interview with somebody I think that you know,
on Reddit or something like that, said, you know, you might hate
Triple H, but this is an interview that people are going to be coming
back to for years and years, because you know, it's sort of like
reading different ways in light of what you know what's going on. And I
think that that's totally true. You know. I think that I feel like
I got a lot of honesty out of Triple H, and I feel like
that honesty won't be fully understood. I mean, that's most of what he
said will continue to be interesting for you know, into the future. At
the time when I did the interview, I thought, you know, like
I was really I was really upbeat about WWE, and I'm not like dogging
it now, but it was a really kind of I thought a good moment
for WWE, and Triple H's honesty sort of uh, you know, rang
true and felt like and reflected on the positive feelings I had about WWE,
and now you know, you can go back and look at it and read
some things that are like, oh, yeah, this is why Daniel Brian's
getting buried now or that you know that kind of thing. So it's,
uh, it was, it was a weird thing. It was a weird
just experience talking to him and getting all that stuff out of him. But
but yeah, I mean, I I can't say that I'm like super excited
with the direction of WWE right now. And and I don't know, I'm
sure that you guys have talked about Wade. You can you can tell me
about the about Vince's laugh investor call where he basically just buried Daniel Bryan to
mean to like anybody that was on the phone. So you know, it's
it's a it's a weird it's a weird place that we're in right now,
but hopefully, hopefully it's you know, it'll turn itself back around soon.
Yeah. I think the Hunter there's a history repeating itself with Triple H,
you know, and in that whenever he's involved in a storyline, and people
who listen to me on the the EP keler houtliner on the show or read
my writing. No, you know there's history to this and I've writ about
it. You know, when Triple H is involved in something, there's a
tunnel vision and he loses sight of anything else, and everything he does is
so it's almost comical if it weren't so damaging for fans enjoyment of the product
and the wrestlers who deserve to not be collateral damage. Triple H just says,
well, this helped me. Yep, this will help me, and
he doesn't think about anything else, Like when he stands in the ring and
tells Daniel Brian six days before a pay per view match between Randy Orton and
Daniel Bryan, which is a headline match for the title, and he stands
there in the ring with Randy Orton and Daniel Bryan right there and says,
Daniel Brian, you're not worth me wrestling you because you're not a big enough
star. He's trying to sell Daniel Bryan as a top title consenter on the
pay per view, and Randy Orton is standing right next to him, going,
so he's a big enough sto for me to wrestle, but not you
like that's stuff doesn't cross Triple H's mind, and that just has happened over
and over and over again for the last two and a half months, where
I think people who didn't live through it or see it for what it was
the last six times has happened are kind of saying, Okay, yep,
this is Hunter's achilles heel. When he has some influence over storylines, which
he has considerable, obviously increasingly so, and he's on television, there's just
needless collateral damage left and right because he books in a very self centered way.
So I know what happened. I think everybody's seen that to the I
mean, and I also think it's just sort of the the never end.
I mean, like the stakes are always going up in the sort of like
workshoot era that we're in now where you were like when he was saying that,
it was obviously he was taking a huge dig at Ryan and you're right
by by extension Orton, but he was trying to do a sort of workshooting
thing, right, and so like there's this weird there's this weird uh,
there's weird motivation to like to get real in the most negative way possible,
and I don't think that necessarily works for you know, more than more than
once a year or something like that, maybe once every six years. But
even then you can try. It's it's hard to find one that worked beyond
getting a huge buzz from the fans who don't feel spoken to. You know
that there's a group of fans who follow wrestling and they don't understand that the
best way to enjoy wrestling is to have a consistent logical, you know,
with internal logic, characters following their constitutions just like any other TV drama.
You want to have an enjoyable show, and the idea that in the middle
of Breaking that I want I want, you know, the actors to wink
and out at the audience and say, well, you know, we're not
really who we are. And you read about that in the trade journal,
about that that salary dispute that we had, and how this actress is being
hounded on Yahoo for wanting too much money. I don't want to know that,
Stuf. When I'm watching Breaking Bad, don't wink and not at me
about that. Just tell me a good coherent story. And so the way
I do it, and I've come to do because it's so often that it
happens now is I judge a TV show. I judge raw based on zero
inside information because I don't think that is relevant to a very large part of
the audience. I think it's I agree, I agree, you're part of
that audience. It's your world. But if you kind of step back and
realize the vast majority of people they're trying to reach don't know what that is.
So I judge it on how does this How how would the average fan
react to this seeing it? Because to me, from opening the closing credits,
they're telling a story, they're not doing a documentary. Need an extra
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our ad free VIP mobile size see you in the paradise. You know,
I totally agree with you, Okay, yeah, for good. You know,
let's let me go back to Michael CPS and you follow up and then
I'll I'll do a followup to on that. Certainly, I mean, everything
you said is true, and you know it's a big follow of the bolts
to you. I can totally I shouldn't say that, sense I have been
following what you've had to stay on the topics through podcasts. You're writing something
like that, I just kind of fear that, you know, and I'm
glad you brought at McMahon kind of throwing under the bus that you know,
it was a couple of months ago that Sean Michaels had to say, you
know that he wasn't talking about Daniel Bryan when he was bringing him up somebody.
You know, he might have been talking about cizarrow but or Wade Barrats,
but it was presumed that it was Daniel Brian. And here we are
months later, Sean Michaels is kicking Brian in the face in the hell in
a cell match like that. So I've just been kind of fascinated by how
far they've gone to bring Brian down a little bit. But I'm still I
love watching NXT every week. I think it's the best wrestling program there is
right now. So I'm still hopeful about the future, and I like what's
some of the things they do with the new performance center and Triple Ah had
a lot of cannon commentary about that I was really interested in. But You're
right, I think this is it was. It was a piece that five
ten years from now we could look back on and and really take them in
and bellieve we didn't learn a lot. And Michael what You're right, You're
right in saying that, because I mean Vincent Man rarely did interviews, you
know, in the in the eighties, and when he did. It was
like I had that a photocopy on my desk, you know, handy for
years, you know, because it was so rare and Triple H hasn't done
a lot of those. And David, that's what made that new. That
interview so newsworth. He asked a lot of good questions. Triple H was
in a move to talk That's absolutely part of it. But part of is
the scarcity of getting Triple H to talk business. Oh totally yeah, great
way, Yeah, so I totally recognize that that's true. Yeah, and
so I mean it was it was good that you were the guy doing it.
Oh. I've said before, I got really lucky. My grandmin office
is like fifty feet away from the hotel they were staying in, and I
was kind of pestering the the PR guy, and all of a sudden he
was just there. So it was it was I got lucky with it.
And well that's how you do it though, you know, Yeah, you
got to take those opportunities. I got brought up in the interview. I
don't like to be the center of the story. Let's talk about other stuff,
but it is worth mentioning in that interview, Triple H brought up a
story that he got just completely wrong, saying, you know, Dallas Page
called me one day and and my coverage switched from Dallas Pages as awful or
I think his quote was, I called him a waste of skin and then
as soon as he called Dallas Page called me and charmed me. Then all
of a sudden, I was, you know, really positive ont DDP that
quote ran, I heard about it emailed, you wrote a response on the
Torch you linked to it. Why this is the question that I've been asked,
and Bruce Mitchell and I have talked about it on bpidio. Bruce Field
really strongly about this too, my senior columnist for twenty three years. Why
wasn't a correction run when it can be documented all the back issues are online.
There's absolutely nothing to what he said. It was great. You guys
quickly ran a note saying it wasn't me they was talking about. It was
Bruce Mitchell who he was referring to. But it wasn't really a correction as
much as well, it was just a different writer Triple A just talking about
because it is the antithesis of what the Torch stands for. And I've talked
to you privately, David, and you've shared my view. You understand that
this is to a journalist, nothing's more damaging than I'm one charming phone call
away from completely changing my perspective on what I write about you. It's from
a kind of a journalistic standpoint in the editor's room. And and when this
story came up, and it's awkward because it's me, but when is a
decision made to actually do like go on record and say we grantline me David
Schumach Maker are saying this was not true and there's no evidence of it.
Now, you're right, I guess in the sense that we, I mean,
we didn't look at it much after the first couple of days when it
was online. And but most of that, I mean, I don't I
don't want to. I don't want to act like I don't have any volition
in this situation. It was I left it to my editors decide what to
do for the most part, because it's a you know, it's a grand
and institutional issue. You know, I mean, at the at the beginning,
it didn't I mean, to be totally honest, we we I ran
it. The way we did was that I didn't even it didn't even occur
to me to check it because it was just triple H saying it, you
know, and this fact and the fact remains that he said it. And
also to be totally honest, you see, I mean we weren't like I
didn't know you well before, and you're just like like like such an I
don't mean this is a way to like puff you up and try to get
out of it, like you were such an icon that like him mentioning your
name, like I hear your name like five times a week, you know,
and I don't think of it as a human being. I just think
of it as like this specter of wrestling journalism sort of, you know.
So it really didn't even cross my mind that it would that it mattered if
it was real right when he was saying it. It was just sort of
an example that he was giving. So yeah, I mean I tried.
I tried to fix it at the time, and then you know, I
think you're you're actually that's you're. It's a totally legitimate question as to why
it's not more like definitively fixed. Now I'll go back and look at that
on Monday morning. I mean, that's that's a totally legitimate question. Excellent,
appreciate that answer. And part of why in part of why bring it
up? One I get asked about it, and two Michael's question. Just
now this interview lives on and so no, it's totally it's totally true,
totally right. Yeah, you know what's on there. People are going to
refer to it and there it is the most one of the most awful things
you can say about somebody. Oh yeah, his opinions are for sale with
a charming phone call. It's just sitting there, you know, and and
all those back issues are there. It doesn't take much much research to say,
all right, this is when Triple H talked about it. Let's see
if there's any truth to us. So anyway, very good, let's uh,
let's move on. We had an email question before it went on the
air from somebody who just wanted to know in general is from Brad grant Land
is affiliated with ESPN. How do you feel pro wrestling has viewed these days
in the ESPN empire? Well, I mean, what's the old saying is
that they only cover wrestler when wrestlers die, right, I mean, I
don't think it's that much different than that. Although there are now what two
former ww announcers who are who are you know, employed over there, and
there's a there's a handful of other guys who are kind of openly wrestling fans.
Robert Floor is probably chief amongst them, you know. I mean,
I think it's I think it's always going to be the weird juxtaposition, especially
when as ESPN and grows and expands, it's great. Its biggest liability is
the conflation between sports and entertainment. The fact, I mean, did they
get called out on related subjects for that by you know, blogs like dead
Spin a couple of times in months. The fact that they're just like an
entertainment company that is now buying all the contracts in these sports and then trying
to cover it like journalists. It's so I think that just as with many
many other things, I mean many many other outlets, they're they're going to
be really reluctant to deal with wrestling in any kind of real way because,
you know, any they don't they can't, they can't risk any extra question
of legitimacy. So and I don't mean that as a knock on ESPN.
I just mean that, like people are just reluctant to get into the wrestling
game. I mean, listen, I wouldn't have been able to find a
place to write if it weren't for blogs like dead Spin and then websites like
Grantland, you know. I mean, there's there are wrestling websites where there's
very little stuff in the mainstream because people just don't know how to treat it.
And I think it's that confusion that on the one hand makes wrestling kind
of awesome and then on the other hand makes it makes us sort of like,
you know, isolated. So you know, it's a it's a weird
it's it's it's a weird it's a weird way that wrestling is treated, for
sure. But I mean I do feel like, you know, there's certainly
days where you know, I feel like the kind of like right headed stepchild
of the ESPN family. But I think every writer, every good writer,
feels like that from time to time that you kind of want more for yourself.
But you know, they've put my they've they've linked to my pieces on
the ESPN home page, which is which is definitely, as you know,
a step in the right direction. I would say, I don't know,
do you have any thoughts on a wad? Yeah, I thanks. I
mean that's where my nichees come from, you know. I mean I started
the torch in high school, as you know, as a hobby, as
a lot of people were doing at that point, And then went to college
for journalism, and interned at a major news station, and worked at Kfan
for a couple of years doing a pro wrestling radio show, and and did
some syndicated wrestling ratings and newspapers cross country. And in every one of those
steps I got all those same looks. You know, when you enter real
journalism and you talk about pro wrestling, there's this quizzical look of you know,
well it's fake, so what is there to write about? And that
even goes back to like, you know, the mass Man moniker. For
you, it's like, I feel like you're you're not doing sarcastic parody.
You know, what's the worst thing that happened in wrestling? Let's do a
list. You're doing You're tackling serious stuff in your columns and especially your book
Chris Benoa and wrestling unionization and racism and wrestling, which our first caller talked
about, and so like the chip on my shoulder is I wouldn't want I
want to project an image and frame what I do journalistically at risk of seeming
pretentious about it, but as if it is because it is, and frame
it as serious journalism, you know, I mean, we were just writing
about safety issues in wrestling pro wrestling. It's weird, but pro wrestling is
way ahead of the curve on steroids. Ahead of we were writing about how
this is going to be a big deal in baseball eventually, and in football,
we were writing about concussions years up before, you know about in wrestling,
years before it became an issue in the NFL and NHL. And now
it's this big deal and everybody is thinking, oh, no one was writing
about it, and it's like, go look at the Wrestling Observer, Go
look at the Wrestling Torch. We were writing full page editorials and doing major
interviews about this, you know, ten fifteen years before major sports. We
cover real stuff and we do real journalist and there's people who recognize that.
But I have, you know, long given up on personally looking for validation
from people who can't get pasted. Well, pro wrestling's fake and it's so
weird. So there's no real story to write, thankfully. Frank de Ford
gaved Meltzer a wrestling column in the National Sports Daily, and Frank the Ford
is on record calling Meltzer the greatest sports journalists of this generation and said that
that column is almost single handedly saved paper. Certainly was the most popular column.
And there's been a lot of wrestling radio shows over the years before the
Internet came around that covered it in a journalistic way. Mike Tiney, now
host to TNA, did the Wrestling Insider show that I was a guest on
a lot. He covered it in a journalistic way. John Arezi, who
shows from the early nineties that we run on the VIP website now as you
know flashback radio shows, he was doing that New York at that time.
So there's always been pockets of coverage of mean of wrestling in mainstream environments like
you now. There's example, there's wrestling columnists over the years in the Detroit
News and the Charlton Posting Courier and the I'm a Harold with Alex Marbez who's
an NFL writer. There's always pockets, but in wrestling fans have always like
sought them out and done it. But it's always taken an editor or a
station manager who who saw what we are doing as worthy of being given a
spot. But I also sympathize with the idea it's not a sport in most
people's definition. You know, it does fall in between the cracks, and
that's what that's where I have some sympathy for it, and that's why when
we do get an opportunity to be in the mainstream, it's important people who
listen to my shows on kafan, and all one hundred and some of them
are available for VIP members. We really took that opportunity, that pocket of
time to cover real serious issues, including all the steroid allegations and sexual impropriety
allegations that led to the federal indictment. We covered that stuff really seriously.
Jesse vent around the show talking about unions. We covered that seriously. I
felt like I was constantly kind of justifying that there's a there are real stories
inside the showmanship that deserve coverage that isn't being covered because there is no section
between variety and sports that grabs land latches onto wrestling. Thanks for downloading today's
show. Take it to the next level with a VIP membership, get shows
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Pw torch dot com slash go VIP. Yeah, No, I can
totally agree with you, And that ship on your shoulder is like, you
know, totally, I mean I sympathize with that. You know, I
think that, you know, we like doing. What I'm doing is sort
of I'm just doing a different you know, I mean, not not a
totally different thing. Obviously we're doing very similar things, but there's different tactics,
I guess, and you know, I'm just sort of the just sort
of taken the like you know, the sugar coated way in a lot of
ways, and hopefully I can sneak attack them with some stuff like the like
the topics he talked about. But what you're saying is totally right. I
mean, it's it's hard to find a platform for any writing about wrestling,
and you know, I mean, I got really lucky to end up at
a place at Grantlin, which is like a dedicated sports and pop culture website.
So it's like the only place I could possibly write before where no one
has to ask why it's there, you know. I mean, it's it's
sitting right there in the middle. It only gets complicated when I write stuff
for the blog and then it shows up on the sports blog and people immediately
start asking why it's there. But for the most part, it's you know,
it worked out really well. Another email question Terry from Charlotte listen to
your podcast with Bob Simmons earlier this week and send this quote. Wants me
to read it to you and get your response, especially in the context of
what we're talking about in wrestling reporting. Bill Simmons said, one of the
interesting things, and he's talking to you, David. You knew this,
but the listeners might not. One of the interesting things is you're writing about
wrestling in a really smart kind of of hybrow way, and before or big
picture hYP brow way, and before nobody was doing that. Why do you
think people didn't write about wrestling in a serious smart way until you? I
guess Melzer was the closest, at least he was trying to write about it
in a big picture way, but not how you're doing it, obviously,
And in defense of you, you immediately said you loved Dave Day's writing and
and kind of defended Dave. But does Bill Simmons just not know what we've
been doing for twenty five years? Yeah? I mean I have no idea
what Bill knows, but I mean I think that that's I mean, I
think that in some ways he's I mean that that wouldn't surprise me because you
know, I mean, you're most of the most of the you know,
wrestling media online is I mean, in newsletters and stuff, is targeting wrestling
fans, right, So, I mean, I think what he's talking about
is sort of looking for the bigger audience. And we talked right that before,
you know, I mean, I write really deliberately for people that might
not have watched wrestling in a while. It's weirdly, I'm not trying to
put you on the spot with it sounds like I'm putting you on the spot
with Bill, but and I don't. And I'm not trying to rip into
Bill either. Some genuinely curious Is he saying your style of writing kind of
what we talked about at the beginning the magazine essay, old school boxing,
all those influences. Is that kind of what he means? And people are
misinterpreting it because yeah, Twitter just blow up. But I certainly have some
people on Twitter going yeah, no, no, no, no. I
think that that is that is what he means. And I think that,
I mean, I think that it is just sort of a like a platform
thing too, you know, I mean I think that you got I mean,
you guys have obviously have long established yourself as just sort of the cream
of the crop for that for for online wrestling writing. But I think that
for a lot of people who don't pay really close attention, it's just too
easy to conflate with, you know, the like the web presence of of
you guys in some of the less reputable websites. I mean, you have
to you actually have to work for it. You know, and in some
ways it's a great thing because you because you actually earn you know, I
mean, you earned the information that you that you that you get from people
like you. But it's you know, it's it's just because wrestling, like
I said, isn't on ESPN and and has a hard time into mainstream media.
I would think that you're more casual fans guys like Bill, I mean,
who's been a real serious fan at times, but not like really continuously
over the years. You know, just there's he. There's not there's not
a he. You know, they have a harder time finding the resources I
think, you know, yeah, and Bill's just such a high profile personality.
And when he talks about wrestling, you know, it's what were those
old commercials when so and so speaks, everybody listens to the financial advisor guy.
Yeah yeah, But when Bill Simmons talks about wrestling, wrestling fans listen,
and the torch readers, people who know what the Observer has done and
de Melzer have done has done, they get defensive, and understandably so about
Hey, there's this guy Bruce Mitchell who's been doing high brow, big picture
writing that belongs in top level magazines for the Torch for twenty three years.
And so I guess what people wish Bill Simmons would do is maybe ask a
question instead of a sort of fact that some people are taking offense to,
which is, have there been other writers that you found while researching your book
that have approached wrestling the way that you have who you like like. I
guess that's what people and I would even appreciate that myself if Bill Simmons did
that instead of without knowledge making a broad generalization that nobody actually tried to tackle
the tough issues in a well written way and tell you and that's a compliment
to you, but also ignoring the history of those who came before you,
And man, I totally agree. Yeah, very good. I will put
you on the spot more than that, because I mean, I'm not you
know, it's not your job to, you know, call up Bill Simmonson
middle of an interviewer. No, it's the opposite of my job. But
yes, exactly. You wrote about the von Erks in the book. Well
I should talk about this because there's the topics you cover is a testament to
what we're talking about here and why my job is one of the best jobs
in the world in terms of a subject to cover and in fact, before
I get to Von Erics, because I don't want to forget to do this
before we go. You're the book publishing industry, you have a history of
that. Now you've written a book. I get asked this a lot,
and I really want to know your answer. Why has there not been a
major biographer with great resources who's written about one of the most fascinating pop culture
iconic businessmen of the last thirty years, Vincent j or Vince Vincent K.
McMahon. Why has that book not been written? That's a really good question.
I mean, there have been some profiles. I think that you know,
we kind of keep circling back to the same answer, which is that
the sort of institutional mainstream media is not that interested in in wrestling overall,
and so it's a tough pitch. But to get more specific than that,
I think it probably has a lot to do with, you know, with
Vince himself. He I would I would guess that he either has plans for
a memoir or has it ninety percent written by some you know, by some
secret ghostwriter somewhere. And I know that he's you know, there's ww is
just so proprietary with themselves and with their and with with with you know,
their holdings. You know. Uh. Bill Simmons, you know, does
the thirty for thirty documentaries at ESPN, and and he is from day one
has been trying to do an Under the Giant documentary and found that it's impossible
to do because you know, WWE owns everything. It owns enough that they
can't get they can't get everything that they need. And and you know,
it's a good question. I mean, I'm sure a lot of people will
be interested in in in a book about Vince and and but I you know,
Vince would kind of have to make himself available for that book to really
be the be All ind All book or Vince mcmahnon. And I don't say
this, Crassley would have to die and the people who know him very well
who don't dare speak would feel more open to speaking about him on the record.
I mean, we this this interview series we've done for over two years,
Interview Friday has been great because it's disciplined me to do an interview every
week, you know, I mean we do four or five long form interviews
a year in a good year, you know when they'd go five, six
seventy eight hours with Kevin Nash, Erk Bishoff or Steve Austin or whatever,
and they were great. But like every week interviewing people, it's it's forced,
it's disciplining me to do it. And along the way we've interviewed all
these ex writers and ex wrestlers who we have I think a documentary worth of
footage, you know, or audio on these people and you get them into
a into a studio to talk about you know, at the ex writers who
have worked with Vincic Mann in recent years and the rest with them in the
nineties, you get that. You sit them down and you don't need WW
footage, You just use photographs from photographers who own rights to their stuff.
I think you can put something together. It might not be FTSPN standards of
needing the most contemporary footage of John Cena and WrestleMania, but that stuff is
out there and those people are out there, and I just find Vincent Man
so fascinating. But I want to know more. But I think it will
take a major book publisher in an author, a biographer with credibility to be
able to use his techniques and his connections and his resources to make that happen.
And I'd love to see it, and I totally agree with Vince Wicmann
dies, Yeah, No, I mean it would definitely take it would definitely
take an author with with this way to make it happen, not just with
Vince, but with the on the publishing side too. I mean, the
one thing you always hear in editorial boardrooms in New York City when somebody when
a topic comes up, when a subject for a book comes up, that
the editors are even and remotely inclined to be dismissive of. They always say
that sounds like a magazine article, and that's the and that's that's I'm guessing
that's what happened if somebody was pitching, you know, four hundred pages on
vinceling Man. Every Sunday night, catch Wrestling Night in America on PW Torchdailycast
dot Com, hosted by me PW Torch calumnist Greg Parks. Each week,
I'll welcome a co host from the Torch family to discuss the big shows and
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Search PW torch and Apple Podcasts or your podcast app to subscribe Wrestling Night
in America every Sunday, PW torchdailycast dot com. Yeah, boy, and
I just I mean, you know too, I think you would agree.
I think they're wrong, and I think people are curious about it for all
the reason like you write this book and you're like, oh, I mussk
me on and I'm on this and that and all these people come out of
the woodwork. I think a book on Vincent Man, he's somebody who's so
many people now in power who are reading books but maybe haven't watched wrestling for
years, would be like, Oh, there's a book on Vincent Man.
I'm buying that. I want to know. I want to know more about
this guy that I watched in the eighties or in the nineties. And the
attitude. Yeah, the cartoon era. Yeah, I think there's an untapped
market. But anyway, my pitch is over. I'm not going to profit
from it. I just want to read it. Let me throw another quote
at you and then we'll do. You have a few more minutes to be
with us, David, Yeah, I have a few minutes. I got
to get out of here pretty soon though, so yeah, go ahead.
Very good, because I want to do a little VP after show for the
VIP members, So we'll wrap up on this question. You know what,
Let's let's not do that. I'm going to use this as a teaser.
If you want to go VIP PW Torch dot com, slash go VIP.
That's where you get in the door. You get twenty five plus years worth
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on and on PW Torch dot com slash go VP. As a sign up
page, you can hear the rest of my interview with David with a few
minutes we have left if you go VIP. Thanks to all the VIP members
for joining us. David. The book The Squared Circle, Life, Death
and Professional Wrestling available I know on Nook because that's how I bought it,
and also Amazon also bookstores. Anything else that you want to plug? Twitter
or grantline dot com. Yeah no, yeah, exactly right. I'm on
Grantland and aka the mask Man on Twitter and man, seriously, thanks for
having me on. This has been fun and I really appreciate it. And
you know, if you guys stick around for VIP, I will tell you
what I really think of Bill Simmons. Thanks very much, all right,
appreciate all the listeners. Thanks, by the way, for a record month
in October. I said it earlier this week. We broke our listenership record
in October and we continue to grow. I appreciate that we're the top sports
podcast dot blog talk radio dot com out of like fourteen thousand shows, and
one of the top sports and obviously prosing podcasts and iTunes. And we appreciate
everybody for your support. Keep spreading the word. Follow me on Twitter at
the Wade Keller and you can follow our brand at pw torch and of course
the main place to go is pwtorch dot com for the daily ASPW Torch feature,
all star panel and more. And download our free Pwtorch app in in
your app store on your smart device. And don't forget big months and really
big couple months to close up the year in the world of MMA. Our
sister brand, mmatorch dot com has you covered live coverage, pre show coverage,
postgame coverage at mmatorch dot com and you can also search MMA Torch in
an app store to get our MMA Torch app thanks to David. And on
the other side of the music, we've got some good stuff waiting for VIP
members. All right, David, this is a quote in your book to
start off the VIP the after show portions of the program that I have not
gotten emails on yet, but I know I'm going to when people start reading
the book. Okay, all right. This has to do with Internet fans
and in the Chris Penwa Eddie Garrow chapter. This is on page three oh
seven at least on my nook. I don't know if it matches up with
the hardcover or the hardcover the hard copy Internet understand the backstage working the average
fans built. They treasure history and reality as much as the storylines, and
they prize the qualities. At mainstream wrestling, decision makers frequently overlook charismo ver
size entering a bill the over physique, and of course they all consider themselves
smarter than vincick Mann and all the promoters who have come along to challenge him,
and sometimes they have a point. You also referred to those fans as
egghead commentariat. Did I say that, right? Commentariat? Right? And
meta fans and smart marks. And I don't say this defensively or in defense
of our readers, but I think people who read The Torch and listen to
the show are going to say, hey, he's talking about me. So
I want you to explain because from you being at you know, kind of
outside the pure wrestling wrestling only media but covering wrestling, talk about your perception
and the way you categorize fans, because I'm fascinated by how people look at
quote us and the generalizations that are made. You know, what's accurate,
what's not, and that kind of thing. So, and I'll frame it
in that. In the Chris Ben Whide to Grow chapter David. He wrote
about how they got a push because they were looked at by these smart fans
because of their work rate as underdogs who it was like you said, it
was almost a secret handshake to know that Chris ben wanted to grow were great
workers, and so kind of frame it in that context too. Yeah,
well, I mean, specifically to ben Wan Guerrero. I think you know,
the point I'm trying to make is that they were underdogs. They were
presented as underdogs both in there in the stories you know, on screen that
led up to it, but they were more But they were more metaphorically underdogs
because a huge majority of the fans knew that what they were fighting against wasn't
their opponent in the ring, but just the willingness of Vince and everybody else
in the power structure to let guys that look like them be be champions.
But you know, when I talk about the you know, the smart marks
and stuff, and even when I write about it on Grantline, a good
bit. You know when you go back in wrestling history, and I think
that one of the most I might have said this earlier, forgive me if
I'm repeating myself, but one of the most important. One of the coolest
things about wrestling is that different than any sport or their entertainment venue, the
crowd interaction is at the very cool of what wrestling is, right, Like
you have to be I mean, to be a good guy means you're getting
cheered, and to be a bad guy means you're getting booed. Like the
interaction with the crowd is really central. Or we've gotten to a really weird
world in the past five years or so where you know, fans are cheering
ironically at events, but you know, with the rise of the Internet and
going back much further than five years, there's a voice of the fans that
exists outside of the arena. And I think it's really interesting to look at
it. I don't think the jury's out on what actually and what it actually
means for the wrestling world, but I think it's you know, it's it's
important to me to keep to keep trying to evaluate it and uh and you
know, I think that it's totally I mean, I don't, I don't.
Maybe you can point to a specific, specific clause in that in that
that you read that you think will cause the most offense, but I think
that you know, most wrestling fans that I know will would would you know,
agree with it? Like everybody. I mean, listen to the one
thing, uh, you know, one thing that get that I that kind
of that kind of I take umbrage with, and not wrestling, not wrestling
fandom, but just online culture in general. Is that you'll go into a
chat room and a hundred people will complain about one hundred different things on the
same TV show, and then they'll all come away with it thinking we all
hated it for the same reason, you know. And uh, and I
think that there's some of that in the wrestling fan base, so to the
extent that like I said, well, yeah, you know, sometimes they're
not always wrong, or sometimes they're even right. I mean, I think
that's totally true. I think that wrestling fans you know or you know,
it's great that their voices are out there on the internet. Like I said
earlier, it's awesome that people can like, you know, talk crap about
me on the internet, because that's I think that's an awesome I think it's
a really cool thing, even for me as a writer. But but you
know, it's it's you got to you got I mean, talking talking crap
about something is not the same as like doing it better than what's being done,
and it's you know, just important to it's just important to know that
you know it. I think it's important to like not always be down about
everything, just in general in life. But yeah, I mean, I
guess I guess that's I guess that's the That's all I have to say about.
Yeah. No, I guess we're we're nobody speaks with the unified voice,
and I like we in the on powe torch dot com and the ask
pw Torch feature, we kind of go on a mini rant we did it
today again where somebody called up and said the IWC doesn't like TAA and isn't
it their responsibility as wrestling fans to support them because there should be another place
for wrestlers to work. And I'm like, no, no, no,
and no. First of all, THEWC doesn't speak with one voice. Internet
fans don't. You can go to a message board and maybe one you know,
a few people can influence a bunch of people to a consensus. But
I mean, I argue with Bruce Mitchell for two hours every week, and
we are pretty you know, we we agree on a lot but we don't
agree on a lot also, and so we always say the quote IWC doesn't
really exist as an entity that speaks with one voice. In those generalizations,
I think undercut the people who should get the attention, not the eggheads who
are just spouting off and just being negative to be negative. But there's more
out there. And it's like somebody saying, well, I don't take David
seriously because he writes quote on the Internet, and I think we're moving away
from that now because the magazines are going away. These peoples are going away
in terms of print there. You know, people are seeing there's a lot
of good journalism on quote the internet, but it's it's been generalized about so
much for so long, good work on the Internet or good wrestling reporting that
I think the Torch fans are going to go Wait a second. I choose
who I listen to and the message boards I go to, and I think
there's a case to be made that we don't all speak with one voice,
but that we speak intelligently and come to, you know, our own conclusions,
not because we all are eggheads and smart marks. So I think that
language was kind of the buzzwords that I'll get some people to go, hey,
wait a second, what's is he talking about me? And if so,
I think that's dismissing the type of thought that we put into the discussions
that we have. Oh no, I mean I wouldn't. I'm honest to
god, I wasn't thinking about you or anybody of your I mean even remotely
close to your cowbod. What I was saying that, I'm just mean,
like the just the general you know, just just I totally get the you
know, the internet wrestling community doesn't exist as such, but you know,
but positivity. But like positive things, there is a there is a you
know, a united front on things like how awesome ben Wan Guerrero were and
how awesome you know, Daniel Brian is. Now, I just think it's
it's not very fruitful when everybody just like groans that they're messing up with Daniel
Brian with when there's not when no one in a million years could get you
know, I mean trying to get trying to get people on a message board
to agree on what they should do instead is like you know, hurting cats.
So yeah, it's it's you know, it's it's tough. It's tough,
you know, it'd be. You know, in a lot of ways,
it was a much better world when the United cheers, you know,
when the entire crowd erupted when Hulk Hogan's music played, and Vince knew he
was doing the right thing. We're just in a different place now. You
don't have to wait for the Waight Keller for wrestling post show to find out
what I thought of Monday Night Raw SmackDown. Each week, you can check
out my report that are updated live throughout Raw and SmackDown at pwtorch dot com.
My written report will tell you what's happening in detail in case you missed
the show, and it will also analyze key segments and give my random thoughts
quips on what I am watching as it airs. So check it out every
Monday night and Tuesday night at pwtorch dot com. That also applies to WWE
pay perviews. I cover those live at pw torch dot com with a detailed
written report with star ratings, and of course you can find other TV reports
from other contributors to PW torch such as nxt roh, Impact Wrestling and more.
Check it out pwtorch dot com your first stop for TV and pay per
view written reports. It's interesting because back then when Hogan was around, the
people who would be booing Hogan, We're going to see Rick Flair. Yeah,
and now that doesn't exist, And that's partially T and A's faults for
the last you know, a dozen years not building that up and creating a
true alternative. But you know, there were anti Hogan fans. It's just
they weren't, you know, kind of they weren't. They had a choice,
and they didn't in order to see pro wrestling something that they loved.
They didn't have to endure a main event with a guy that they'd despised.
They just went bought a ticket for the NWA or WW, which they saw
is more cool and more athletic and less cartoonish. And that doesn't exist anymore.
And that's kind of where I think John Cena is not the first of
a kind, but the most, you know, the most extreme example of
somebody being pushed, where the fan base, who have no choice anymore,
just let out their frustrations after they pay money that goes in Johnsena's pocket,
which is the irony of it. Yeah, No, I mean, and
I wrote about this some time ago I mean, wrestling only exists, and
I mean, I mean, wrestling is always best when there's competition. And
then after WCW, you know, died out or disappeared who was bought by
Vents, they tried to recreate that with Raw and SmackDown. I mean,
obviously they weren't literally competing, but I think the only and it failed because
the only way you can you could actually functionally make that work would be to
you know, really formally separate the you know, separate the rosters and the
writing staff and everything else, and you know, to and when I wrote
the piece, the kind of like, you know, the gimmick of the
piece was that they were sort of doing that for a while with Punkinsino,
where like neither they didn't really exist in the same universe for a while,
Sina was just totally doing his own thing and not interacting and uh, and
they were I think they were deliberately trying to keep him apart so when they
came back together it would be more meaningful. But you know, it's just
impossible for someone to be your own competition, and it's really not as much
fun when it's just a monopoly, you know, because when there's when there's
no functional competition at all. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, it's it's
just part of part of the ever changing landscape of the industry, you know.
I mean, it's just there's wrestling is never what it was five or
ten years earlier. But people who became fans or loved wrestling the most during
a certain era wanted to go back to that way that it was. And
yeah, and you also remember it better than it was too. I mean,
like you know, I mean like people you always to hear people like
say that, like I want to make just let Dusty you know, right
raw, and it's like, man, Dusty Rose wrote like like two sentences
or an episode of the NWA shows that he was booking, you know,
I mean, it's like just a totally different worlds. I got a kick
out of it. And where you wrote about I think it might have been
the Big Boss Man chapter somebody was writing about early nineties and you said,
and the writers blank blank blank, And I'm like, it's so natural to
write that now because of why are wrestling has come? But there were writers
then, because there were bookers who, like you, set that down and
maybe wrote two lines and had a format sheet. But they weren't. Actually,
no, there was no term writers in wrestling until probably, you know,
nineteen ninety nine. Yeah, until they started hiring people who had previously
been writers, you know, I mean, until that was like the job
description they came with. Yeah, yeah, no, no, I mean
it was weird, not that far moved from the days when it was.
I talked to Trible h about this, and he was sort of perplexed by
the very question because it seemed like such a natural transition to him. But
we're not that far moved from it. It was, you know, Vincent
pat sitting down at a table a bar and figuring out what the TV was
for the next two months, something you know exactly, you know when it
is. I mean, you look at the numbers that came out last week
and the you know, television rights fees is just it's pulling ahead in the
race for the dominant source of revenue and house shows if you combine ticket sales
and in venue merchandise sales, house shows is now way ahead of pay per
view. But it's like it used to be, it's all about pay per
view. We've got we've got to earn money on pay per view, and
so a man called me in the right around the time that Nitro was really
taking off, and he's like, wait, this is awful. Ped Turner
spending money from other divisions to subsidize WSW because they're putting all their main events
on TV because they don't need to make money on pay per view. But
I do. That's my life blood. Without that, I go out of
business. This is awful. You need to write about this, and you
know, this is this is predatory practices, which was always funny when Vince's
predatory given the birth of the Survivor series and which was designed explicitly to be
out of it. That was what it was. Yeah, yeah, but
like it's it's funny because now I think they're trying to find a way to
get rid of pay per view. You know, they're like, I mean,
it's except for WrestleMania. It's like it's this burden that gets in the
way of their episodic TV shows. They see themselves now as this weekly TV
series. Unfortunately, they don't hold themselves for the standards of you know,
good writing. But yeah, well, I mean, I mean definitely,
when they renegotiate their TV contract, it's gonna that's gonna be the just such
like a c change is how they how there their revenue comes in. And
I wouldn't be at all surprised if we were. If you know, if
there was an actual WW network that was a subscription service in the next year
that was that eventually had you know, eight pay per views such as or
you know, that would absorbed of the pay per views and then maybe at
that point there would be you know, they would start eliminating them. It'll
be it'll be an interesting world. But you know, like the more that
you know, you mean, you talk about the business of WW all the
time, and it's just like the more that you deal with it, the
more you just kind of come back to the sad truth that they're just sort
of you know that they're that they're in hawk to their investors, into the
TV networks, uh and the cable companies and like, not in a bad
way. It's the way that everybody is. But it's but you know,
it's just hard to imagine the way out unless it's you know, unless it's
doing it themselves. So we'll see a couple of closing comment questions on the
book itself again researching it, writing it, what did you learn that you
did not know before that most fascinated or surprised you that you were excited to
write about in the book. Well, we talked about the Vince Senior stuff
before, I mean his stuff in the paper, and there was a lot
of that stuff that like I was aware of. You know, you'll see
reference to and you'll hear people talk about, but really like going back and
you know, finding a whole bunch of old articles and I mean like that
they talk about. There's a big part in the book about Jack Sephyer when
he came out of the New York Daily Mirror and decided just you know,
he kind of got kicked out of the power structure in the New York wrestling
world and so just sort of like out of the whole thing as a put
on. And that was one of the things that like I had heard about
a million times, a million times. It's because it's not that much out
there, but I had heard about it a handful of times, and just
sort of pieced together, you know, I'd never seen the newspapers or whatever,
so I kind of pieced together that it was like probably in like December
of you know, and the and I got the month and the and the
and and I went to the New York Public Library and just sort of got
a whole bunch of microfiche and spend and spend a whole day just paging through
newspapers and like, it's just fun to like find things like that. You
know. I finally saw a weird drawing of Jack Zeffer, and I was
just like, holy crap, here it is. This is the thing.
And it's not like it's not like the greatest like sea change moment as I
as I hoped it was going to be, but finding it still felt like
it. And uh and and you know, there's that kind of stuff.
All of that old history was what was really the most interesting to me.
It's it was interesting to find, you know, articles. It was interesting
that articles in the New Yorker and in Colliers and stuff about wrestling existed in
like the thirties and forties and fifties. Even more interesting that articles as far
back as the thirties were pretty openly talking about wrestling being fake. And you
know, they they still had doubt those or whether or not the fans around,
but you know, they would they would talk to they would talk to
fans about it. So you know that kind of stuff was cool. And
then you know what was really cool as a writer was just sort of like
piecing it all together and and you know, trying to make sense of it
in terms of like just like an intellectual timeline of I mean, what I
what I say in the book, when I when I decided to write when
I when I was trying to figure out how far back to go to start
the history of wrestling. You know, am I going to go to like
ancient Rome or like what am I going to do? And then I decided,
no, I'm going to start the book when wrestling is fake, when
wrestling turns fake. So the so the first you know, forty pages of
the book are just like me kind of grappling no pun intended with the history
of wrestling's fakery, and and that that part was was you know, like
I said, that probably took six months to write that that section, but
it was like really rewarding and one of the most fun parts about the whole
process. Longing for some nostalgia or maybe you want to learn some wrestling history,
don't miss the Nineties Pass cast every Friday on the PW Towards Daily Cast.
Alex and Patrick will transport you thirty years into the past by taking you
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reported it thirty years ago. That's the nineties pass cast every Friday on the
PW Torch Daily Cast feed. This is the book's clearly a result of a
lot of research, a lot of recall. I mean, they're just you
know, gentlemen from you know, recounting Big Boss Man storyline. It's not
I don't I guess it's research, but it's kind of out there information.
But it's that other stuff taking up that's real, that are the real gems.
And to put it all together in that package, it's great. Where
I didn't get the sense yet, did you do a lot of original interviews?
Did you call it? No? No, no, really not at
all. And you know my cop out is that it's is that. I
mean, I honest a god was trying to write it as like a fan's
history. But and you know, people who've read my stuff on Grantlin know
that I don't do a lot of interviews anyway. I mean, it's it's
kind of a trivile age thing is when you know it's a thing you can't
say no to. And I mean obviously tried really hard to do it,
but you know, like I said, you're always getting worked by wrestlers.
And I don't know that being a wrestling writer that I myself would be would
gain much from like you know, knowing Dolph Ziggler or something, you know,
like it's not I don't I don't think that that would really help my
help writing about him. It's like as if he's listening, I'd love to
have a beer sometime. But but no, I mean, but really it's
just that's not really my thing. I mean, the great thing about wrestling
and I and I've said this before, I'll say it over and over again,
is that there is so much information available on the internet. I mean,
uh, there's a lot of misinformation out there, but the volume of
information is really really incredible. I mean the amount of stuff that you amount
of matches you can watch on YouTube that you used to just like hear legend
about or you know you'd have to pay money to a tape whatever, it's
really incredible. But but just like the words are there too. You know,
if you spend enough time, if you go to like the you know,
the thirtiest page in your Google search, you can find a lot of
stuff that's really really crazy. The hardest part about it is just figuring out
what is true from like the five competing stories that you hear. Yeah,
but yeah, no, there's not less, David. That's what keeps us
in business, you know, I mean, I know, I know you
know we are you know, I mean everything you say is true people,
But well now you know, it used to be I went to the torch
and get results of the house show. I can get that anywhere. Now
it's like, yeah, but now that there's so much bad information out there,
you kind of want a group of people who you know have a reputation
and have followed it to maybe kind of sit through that stuff. So it
is like, even as you talk about that, it rings true with me,
Like that's that's the evolution of what we do, and that's the value
you bring in your book and trying to decipher all that. Yeah, No,
I totally I totally agree. You need you need like resources to actually
be well, you need you know, a match needs a referee unless and
you know, in wrestling, the referees are usually terrible, but you know,
when when it comes, when it's when when it's an important moment in
time, they usually get it right. So that's what you guys are invaluable
for. And that's it, you know. And I just, like I
said, tried to have I mean, just just try to do my best
to piece things together and hopefully may write it in a way that it's like,
you know, fun and easy to read, whether it's you know,
in a library or in your bathroom. Either way, I was, I
was, I appreciated, and I've only skimmed the bend watch after. But
what I did, what I did read, I was heartened to read that
you kind of drew that picture that it was this deadly cocktail of so many
things that that congregated to lead to what happened with Chris Benwa. You know
that it wasn't just steroids. And if you can discredit that he was on
serious, well then it's just he's a crazy person and it's not just one
thing that it was like you kind of covered all the bases and that's we
just hit that hit. We founded that horn over and over again in that
those months after the after the ben Wa family tragedy, that it really was
a confluence of all these things coming together. Years of concussions, the emotional
trauma of the death of Eddie that didn't recover from being a great athlete who
was starting to face limitations they did in never faced before, along with the
cumulative injuries leading to more pain pills, combined with his brain going wacko from
all the all the concussions, and it's just like it was this whole mix
of all these things. And I was glad that you saw that because so
many places I've seen right about Benoi have have tried to narrow it down to
that that one smoking gun and ben Wah, it wasn't well, yeah,
I know, that's exactly right. I mean, I think it's for me
at the very core. It's like, is you're as opposed to some of
the other deaths. Maybe you're because you know, a cocaine overdose is like
sort of tangible, you know whatever. But like with ben Wa, the
tragedy was so great that as as someone who loved him, I mean as
a fan, but like truly loved him so deeply, you feel helpless.
And I think that what that that that acknowledging that that you don't have the
answer sort of like validates the helplessness. But but it also like gets to
the most the only significant truth there is, which is that there's there was
nothing. I mean that we don't know, we will just never know.
And the most significant truth is the tragedy itself. Right, It doesn't matter
why he what happened to him. It matters that he did the most evil
thing he could have done, and that Nancy and Daniel are dead. Yeah,
exactly. And there is accountability. And that's kind of what I got
to earlier when we talked about, you know, WWB are doing the right
thing. Now there's accountability in the sense that when Ben Wack came back from
next surgery, and I've told the story a million times and written about it,
a top ww executive I was on the phone and said, you got
to get Ben what to stop doing the top rope Headbut Harley Racist said it
destroyed us neck. You just got back from next surgery. We have a
painful epidemic in wrestling. You're asking for trouble. And the guy said to
me, what are we supposed to do? Find him? And I was
like, yes, you are his boss. You can tell him don't do
it. And they didn't, and it buzzed me now that Daniel Bryan's doing
the top rope head butt, a guy who's most embodies Chris Benwall before everything
happened in terms of the fan appeal and the undersized underdog, and he's out
there doing ben Wah moves that can destroy his neck that of course he doesn't
care about. He doesn't think will happen to him, because that's what everybody
says until they turn thirty eight or forty. Yeah, I know every things
that they're invincible. I mean, at least Daniel Brian's not walking around with
just the silly physique. I mean, like I actually am. I'm not
like a you know, like a steroid a steroid denihilist or anything like that.
Like I think that they're that they are a serious problem and abuses definitely,
But it's really specifically in the small guys like well, like like like
a dynamite kid, where you see these guys that are walking around with with
muscles their bodies literally can't support and that ends up just being crippling, you
know, and and and you know, paintals are are obviously like the only
functional solution for a lot of guys. So but I think you're totally right
about Brian. You know who knows. I mean, I don't know the
answer as to whether you know whether he would say if you figured out a
safer way to do it, but if he hasn't, I'm totally on board
with what you're saying. And even this the symbolism of it. And it
was interesting you wrote about that and said that because on page three twenty three
you're talking about how they're kind of leaning in the bad Whan moves again to
kind of take away the ownership of you know, Ben want owning the moves,
maybe the cross face or the I don't know if you were yeah,
they didn't know. I mean I feel like it was like in the span
of like two weeks that always like Triple H did the cross face and and
Daniel Bryan was doing the off the top rope, and it was just like
it just seemed like really really obvious to me. But you know, I
write about it. I mean when I it's it's a it's a really bizarre
thing and it's really hard, you know, I mean people people will justifiably
give wwe a lot of crap for the way they handle some stuff, and
and the the the kind of omerta against mentioning ben WA's name is one that
gets a lot of attention. Now, you know, I don't know that
there is like a like a better way to do that. You know.
It's like when they you know, they'll take they'll they'll people will be mad,
you know, no matter how they treat a lot of these things.
But but it's just a really bizarre it's a really bizarre situation and it's it's
you know, like we said, the most important part is is you know,
the people who died and and and trying to find a way to make
sure that doesn't happen again. Yeah, David, thanks so much for your
time. Yeah, I'm glad to be getting in on a happy note.
That was again, Yeah exactly. Yeah. I could go on for a
long time with you and talk more about your book. Maybe we can have
again, you know, down the line and pitch the book again and talk
about more stuff that we didn't get into because you wrote about a lot and
uh, and maybe I'll read the whole book and email you and go we
got to get you on again. So if that were the man who,
maybe we'll throw that invite out there and see who can match up our schedules
again. All right, man, I will talk to you soon. Thank
you so much having me on, and I would love to come back.
Absolutely great to hear. Thanks David. David Humaker from Grantland dot com,
author of The Squared Circle, which was debut. You still there, Yeah,
yeah, I did a newsletter. I'll end on this little personal note.
I did a newsletter that I hand wrote, this before I owned a
typewriter, and I preceded the Torch by just a few months, and I
hand wrote like recaps of TV shows and wrote, you know, wrote end
results and did my own rankings, and I don't know, I probably did
four or five issues and it was called The Squared Circle. That's crazy,
and I mean I think the most people who ever saw one was twelve.
And then I you know, switched names and moved, you know, and
actually got a typewriter in nineteen eighty seven and went went, you know,
went got all modern. But yeah, it was just kind of funny when
I saw the title again. It's hardly the first time that term has been
used in any way, and I think There's been other newsletters called the Square
Circle and radio shows called the Square Circle, but I just I thought that
was kind of a fun trivia. Know that way. Keller's first newsletter is
the title of group book. Well good, The Squared Circle has come full
circle then, then Exactly Life Steff and Professional Wrestling on Amazon, on Barnes
and Noble. Check it out, Google it and read David's work on grant
Land and you're monitor on Twitter once again? Is that aka the Mask Man?
Excellent? Thanks David, We'll talk to you soon, all right,
Thanks man, excellent. Thanks for IP members for joining us. As always,
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