Speaker 1: M h. What's up, everybody. Welcome back to another episode.
Speaker 1: Happy Wednesday to you all right here on Wrestling with
Speaker 1: Freddy and you get story time with Uncle FP. And
Speaker 1: today I'm dedicating the entire episode to one man, one
Speaker 1: fine man, one fine American wrestling man who has the
Speaker 1: worst name in the history of professional wrestling, now stumping
Speaker 1: up for the mic of wrestling with Freddie Freddie Prince
Speaker 1: Tune year, the amazing Dolf Ziggler. I was there when
Speaker 1: they rebranded him from Nikki to Dolf, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: get into all of that today and everything that he's accomplished.
Speaker 1: And I love the dude. So this is gonna be
Speaker 1: an ode to the Zigs. So I'm gonna take you
Speaker 1: back back, way back to the year two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: I was a young man with far less gray hair.
Speaker 1: I had already been at w w E long enough
Speaker 1: that I had I had earned a couple of stripes,
Speaker 1: I had, I had made a couple of bones, so
Speaker 1: to speak. And they were going to bring this guy
Speaker 1: up from f c W, who they once knew as Nikki,
Speaker 1: from the Spirit Squad. And the Spirit Squad was just
Speaker 1: a group that took a whole bunch of bumps for
Speaker 1: whoever the baby face was, and it would make the
Speaker 1: baby face look great because they just beat up like
Speaker 1: five guys and and he would take huge bumps like
Speaker 1: he would sell crazy and still does to this day,
Speaker 1: second to like Mr Perfect as far as his ability
Speaker 1: to to sell in that style. Bran Gwertz was gonna
Speaker 1: was sitting in front of the entire production meeting. This
Speaker 1: is before a Monday night raw and so it's it's
Speaker 1: go Worts, It's Kevin Dunn off on the side, Vincent
Speaker 1: between them, and maybe Bruce Pritchard was there. I feel
Speaker 1: like there were four people up front and the rest
Speaker 1: of us are all in in the by the tables,
Speaker 1: all sitting in a group waiting for the meeting to
Speaker 1: be over because they were three or four hours long.
Speaker 1: Right during during this time period, they talked about the
Speaker 1: debut of this new character and they want to give
Speaker 1: him a name. They haven't even come up with the
Speaker 1: name yet. There's been no discussion. It's the night he's
Speaker 1: gonna debut, and they're just throwing any old name, any
Speaker 1: old whatever they put on their their list in those
Speaker 1: moments are the names they're thrown out, so no thought,
Speaker 1: zero zero thought has been put into this. This was
Speaker 1: the same thing they did to Jake Hagar and I
Speaker 1: think he was a character named Jack Swagger and they
Speaker 1: were like, well, Jimmy Swagger, that sounded cool, call him
Speaker 1: Jack Swagger. And I put my hand. I was like,
Speaker 1: that name sucks and we shouldn't do that. And I
Speaker 1: was not hurt, nor were my ideas appreciated or wanted.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they were worse. I don't remember what they were.
Speaker 1: So Brian, who I love, he throws out the name.
Speaker 1: I think he almost wanted to start with Dolf Diggler,
Speaker 1: like Dirk Diggler, and it was Dolf Diggler, and my
Speaker 1: head almost hit the table. The way he would snap
Speaker 1: a pencil in frustration whenever Vince would make him rewrite
Speaker 1: a show the day of a show, because that's always
Speaker 1: a good idea to do that. That was my feeling.
Speaker 1: I finally experienced the pain that Brian was experiencing, only
Speaker 1: it was now because of him. And sometimes the company
Speaker 1: would do this, they would rib themselves without even knowing
Speaker 1: they're ribbing themselves, and it was always something to me
Speaker 1: that that made him struggle with credibility at times, because
Speaker 1: it was I'm sitting there and I'm hearing this name,
Speaker 1: Dolf Diggler, and I remember saying this. I said, who's
Speaker 1: gonna take that seriously? Who's gonna take that seriously? And
Speaker 1: it wasn't. He wasn't gonna be a comedic style wrestler.
Speaker 1: He was a serious athlete who could freaking move, and
Speaker 1: and he was gonna be billed as a as a heel.
Speaker 1: So I'm confused. I say, Yo, we can't do that.
Speaker 1: And I straight up say, we're basically rip ripping off
Speaker 1: Boogie Nights with Dirk Diggler, which was a movie Vince
Speaker 1: had never seen, and so he didn't even acknowledge that.
Speaker 1: But they, okay, we won't do that. And so I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was Brian, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was Vince. I don't know who the finals say was.
Speaker 1: You'll have to accost them digitally to find out. But
Speaker 1: someone says, well, what about Dolph Ziggler, And again, UM
Speaker 1: like that, No, that name sucks. You can't, you cannot
Speaker 1: do that. This name sucks. What are your ideas? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm probably throwing anything out there, John freaking Wayne,
Speaker 1: I mean anything, just don't Sean Wayne. How about Sean
Speaker 1: Wayne if you're gonna do Dolf Diggler. So it was
Speaker 1: not a long argument. I lost quickly. I guess my
Speaker 1: punishment for fighting the good fight was I was assigned
Speaker 1: the segment to direct the or produced. They call it
Speaker 1: the first I'm we're ever gonna meet this wonderfully named
Speaker 1: wrestler superstar Dolph Ziggler. So I get the segment and
Speaker 1: Vince tells me what it's going to be, and he says,
Speaker 1: he's just gonna introduce himself. I said, what do you
Speaker 1: I'm laughing, I said, what do you What do you mean?
Speaker 1: What what does he What do you mean? He's just
Speaker 1: gonna introduce himself Every every week, he's just gonna come up.
Speaker 1: He's gonna say, hey, Dolf Zickler. It's gonna shake his hand.
Speaker 1: I go, what what are you talking about. We're not
Speaker 1: gonna just do that. That's a really short segment. We
Speaker 1: won't even get uh you know it's not that's not
Speaker 1: worthy to get on television. He goes, honest, he'll always
Speaker 1: be interrupting people in conversation, like all right, so human
Speaker 1: to have a couple backstage talent, having a conversation. He's
Speaker 1: gonna come up, interrupt them, introduce himself, and then walk away.
Speaker 1: And I pitch it like that, which is a pitch
Speaker 1: off his pitch, and he laughs as if this as
Speaker 1: if my idea was good. It was not good. He goes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's right. So now I'm sitting here, this is
Speaker 1: an unsavable segment as far as what I'm capable of doing.
Speaker 1: There's nothing I can do to make the name work.
Speaker 1: There's nothing I can do to make the character work
Speaker 1: because I'm not giving any freedom with who this man is,
Speaker 1: where he came from, what motivates him, all the things
Speaker 1: that make you say, the stuff that's gonna make you
Speaker 1: a healer of baby face, all the words that you're
Speaker 1: going to use in a promo. Because I get the
Speaker 1: promo of Hey, Dolph Ziegler, I go up to Nick
Speaker 1: and I kind of lay it out there, and he's
Speaker 1: all for it. Man, He's game. He's down for whatever
Speaker 1: he's hyped to be on the main roster. He's glad
Speaker 1: to be it of the the Niki gimmick from the
Speaker 1: Spirit Squad. I'm sure he wasn't stoked on the name either.
Speaker 1: We spent as little time speaking about it as possible,
Speaker 1: because I knew I certainly wasn't comfortable with it, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to make him any less comfortable with it,
Speaker 1: So I said, look, you know, we gotta just sort
Speaker 1: of commit to this and and and and go all in.
Speaker 1: And it's one line, so at least you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about forgetting anything right. And he's like, and
Speaker 1: he's cool, man, he's game like. He started coming to
Speaker 1: that to the acting workshops right after that, which we'll
Speaker 1: get into after this. So the first one we do,
Speaker 1: they had a girl and she would come out and
Speaker 1: she would sing so poorly that the crowd would start
Speaker 1: booing and screaming, please, anyone just shut this woman up.
Speaker 1: And then the baby face wrestler would come out and
Speaker 1: slam her to the ground and shut her up, and
Speaker 1: the crowd will go, yeah, hell, you saved her hair
Speaker 1: drums right, very old school in real life. The girl
Speaker 1: can actually sing like she's got pipes, so she has
Speaker 1: to make herself sing crappy to to pull this gimmick
Speaker 1: off week after week after week for as long as
Speaker 1: she was there. And this gimmick worked for her for
Speaker 1: for quite some time, so I have her speaking to
Speaker 1: Jamie Noble. To know Jamie Noble for ten minutes is
Speaker 1: to love this dude. He was a professional wrestler. He's
Speaker 1: an agent now, meaning he helps. He helps choreograph the matches,
Speaker 1: he helps place the story within the choreography so that
Speaker 1: they're actually they're telling you a story while fighting. And
Speaker 1: when I say that, I mean things like he's working
Speaker 1: on the leg. He's he's hitting him with leg kicks
Speaker 1: when the wrestlers down, he's stomping on the leg, and
Speaker 1: he's his focus is there one because maybe the guy's
Speaker 1: got a knee brace on or to his submission hold
Speaker 1: is some sort of knee bar or figure four leg
Speaker 1: lock or ankle hook. He'll hook something like that where
Speaker 1: the knee is gonna give, so he's softening it up.
Speaker 1: And that's the story that they're telling in the rings.
Speaker 1: So that's what Jamie would do, and he would try
Speaker 1: to sneakily implement little m M A things and successfully
Speaker 1: did so when he was there. Even though Vince hated
Speaker 1: that stuff. Jamie found like slick ways to get it
Speaker 1: in and it always looked great when when Jamie was involved.
Speaker 1: But at this point in time. He was a wrestler
Speaker 1: who wasn't gonna get another run, but always gave you
Speaker 1: a solid match and was like people respected him. All
Speaker 1: the wrestlers respected him, and I could see that instantly,
Speaker 1: so he could talk on the mic a bit. If
Speaker 1: you knew him from the old days, he came off
Speaker 1: as this like crazy tough, like little Man's complex firecracker
Speaker 1: from West Virginia. And I had him talking to Jillian.
Speaker 1: I think he was like maybe throwing some game at
Speaker 1: her or something like that, and she was singing, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, here comes Dolf. I have him
Speaker 1: basically like in a two shot that's off on the side,
Speaker 1: like from a Japanese horror film, basically so that we
Speaker 1: can pan off a little bit camera left, which would
Speaker 1: be what the actors would see as the right side,
Speaker 1: and that's gonna reveal Dolf. And then I'm gonna let
Speaker 1: Dolph's movement bring the camera back to Jamie and Jillian. Right.
Speaker 1: I'm doing like everything I can to make this have
Speaker 1: some like ounce of quality, Like what what can I do?
Speaker 1: I can't write anything here anyway. Dolph leads back into
Speaker 1: the two shot, which now becomes a three and it's
Speaker 1: it's their cowboys, which means it's that they're at their waists.
Speaker 1: And he just comes up and interrupts him. He says, hey,
Speaker 1: Dolph Ziggler, shakes his hand and he walks away, and
Speaker 1: and Noble just goes looks at him. I think he
Speaker 1: says like, I know who you are or something like
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I've been trying to delete this. And
Speaker 1: he storms off and we get the segment approved. I
Speaker 1: had to get up, I had to get I had
Speaker 1: to get approval for a segment that had two lines.
Speaker 1: I had to get approval for a segment that had
Speaker 1: to frigging lines. It's not embarrassing, it is infuriating. So
Speaker 1: it gets approved. And the like the backstage producer, the
Speaker 1: one who's in charge of wrangling your crew and uh
Speaker 1: and getting your tape to the truck. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: throw him under the bus and and put his name
Speaker 1: out there, but I say, hey, you got it. You
Speaker 1: got the segment. He goes, yeah, we got it. It
Speaker 1: never gets to the truck. And I found out later
Speaker 1: that it was on purpose. This guy was like trying
Speaker 1: to sand bag me a lot. But it never gets
Speaker 1: to the truck. The segment doesn't air, and I'm catching heat,
Speaker 1: and I'm told by one of the guys that works
Speaker 1: with this, one gentleman in particular, who tried to sand
Speaker 1: bag me, he said, no, it's the it's the writer's
Speaker 1: job to get the to get the tape to the truck.
Speaker 1: I go, that's ridiculous. That is the last responsibility. That
Speaker 1: is the writer's job. That has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the writer's job, and that's your job. What the hell?
Speaker 1: And then they kind of blew it off and there
Speaker 1: I go, well, it got lost, man, it just got lost, Like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, that's a completely different story. So what the hell? Man,
Speaker 1: why am I getting lied to? I don't have time
Speaker 1: to just screaming everybody that needs to get screamed at
Speaker 1: because the show's over. Vince's yelling at me. I gotta
Speaker 1: get into damn limo and fly to the next city
Speaker 1: with him. So I don't even like get my chance
Speaker 1: that the equal and opposite reaction. I only get the action,
Speaker 1: and it's all on me. It's like throwing a rubber
Speaker 1: ball into a wall and has to take all that
Speaker 1: energy from the wall that you know hurts the poor
Speaker 1: little ball, and instead of getting to reverse that energy
Speaker 1: as you just stuck in the wall, right, and the
Speaker 1: wall is Vince's jet and it's not big enough to
Speaker 1: get away from him. So I just have to hear
Speaker 1: you know, what the hell you ruin? This ruined that.
Speaker 1: I'm like, how did? How did I The one person
Speaker 1: that can't possibly be the two people that can't possibly
Speaker 1: be responsible for this getting ruined is Dolf and me,
Speaker 1: Like what the hell are you talking about? So week
Speaker 1: goes by, they miraculously fine the tape and oh oh
Speaker 1: they found it the next week and now it's gonna
Speaker 1: go in. So they tried to even get me to reshoot.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, we have it, just air it,
Speaker 1: and uh I was oh so mad. So they air
Speaker 1: it and it's the first time you see Dolph and
Speaker 1: he goes in and he does his Dolph zig look thing,
Speaker 1: and I remember sitting there going he's dead before his
Speaker 1: career even got started, Like that's that's crazy, like this,
Speaker 1: you can't do business like this. So flash forward now
Speaker 1: a couple of months. He's done the introduction thing over
Speaker 1: and over and over again. He's had a few matches,
Speaker 1: and the dude is good, real good. He starts coming
Speaker 1: into like the acting workshop because he knew a lot
Speaker 1: of the young cats that were in there. He was
Speaker 1: he was within that that group, the Muses and all
Speaker 1: those guys and Cardonas and all that. He used to
Speaker 1: pull some pretty great pranks on Cardona. But uh so
Speaker 1: he starts coming in there and he's doing scenes from
Speaker 1: bad Boys to soap Dish, to Clue all the way
Speaker 1: to Malice with Alec Baldwin and he does the speech,
Speaker 1: the monologue, the promo that was famous in that movie
Speaker 1: where Alec Baldwin is like, I am board certified in
Speaker 1: fifty seven of fifty states. When you see that mother
Speaker 1: praying to God? Who do you think she's praying to?
Speaker 1: And then he ends it with you think I have you?
Speaker 1: I don't remember the line exactly, was like you asked
Speaker 1: me if I have a God complex? I am God?
Speaker 1: And it's so overdramatic, but it's Alec Baldwin. So when
Speaker 1: he commits to it, it works, right. Dahl says, I wanna,
Speaker 1: I want to try that that monologue, and he freaking
Speaker 1: kills it. He freaking kills it, So I don't know.
Speaker 1: Ten years later, I'm way out of the company and
Speaker 1: this fool pull that exact promo on Instagram in black
Speaker 1: and white, and he's just, I mean, nails it. This
Speaker 1: dude's had it in his hit Sorry for ratting you out,
Speaker 1: but he's had it in his head for ten years,
Speaker 1: just rolling it around. How many different ways can you
Speaker 1: do it? In ten you I don't even know? And
Speaker 1: he just killed You could see it on his Instagram
Speaker 1: if you probably scroll way down and he just kills it.
Speaker 1: And then I start watching the storyline they have for
Speaker 1: him with him and miss where he's gonna straight leave
Speaker 1: the business if MS can beat him, and the promos
Speaker 1: he's putting out are high level, and I'm sitting there like, dude,
Speaker 1: what this guy is killing it? And at this point
Speaker 1: he's become one of the more respected wrestlers in the
Speaker 1: in the world, Like wrestling magazines had him as like
Speaker 1: a top ten dude at one point, most improved, hottest
Speaker 1: wrestler coming up, Like all these magazines had love for him.
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting there, you know, ten year is removed
Speaker 1: from the company, and there's people out there screaming Dolf Ziggler.
Speaker 1: There's people out there with Dolf Ziggler signs with DZ
Speaker 1: signs with all these girls out there with hearts and
Speaker 1: d Z, I love you, marry me, take me to
Speaker 1: the prom, take me, take me some, take me anywhere. Dolf.
Speaker 1: And he got so over with the worst name in
Speaker 1: wrestling that the name became special and you just naturally
Speaker 1: call the guy Dolf and it doesn't feel weird and
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound weird. I put him as a character
Speaker 1: in my supermanga Baseball three baseball game, except I don't
Speaker 1: do gimmick infringement, so his name is Zolfdiggler, not Dolf Ziggler,
Speaker 1: because we don't rob people's creativity on my xbox. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there and I'm like, this man's work, and
Speaker 1: let me tell you something. If you don't watch wrestling,
Speaker 1: just YouTube Dolf ziggler greatest matches or Dolf Ziggler's best moments.
Speaker 1: This dude's work is so clean, so clean, and he
Speaker 1: comes off like a new school Mr Perfect right, which
Speaker 1: I feel had to be a huge influence on it,
Speaker 1: because he sells, meaning when he takes damage from his opponent,
Speaker 1: he sells very much like I mean, almost identical to
Speaker 1: Mr Perfect. Kurt Handick. Rest in peace for those who
Speaker 1: don't know everybody listening knows. I know, you know, his
Speaker 1: promos caught up to his wrestling, But his wrestling was
Speaker 1: so amazing, and I remember the moment. I remember the
Speaker 1: exact moment when he was gonna become World heavyweight champion
Speaker 1: because I was freaking in guerrilla when it happened. So
Speaker 1: check this out. We get to it was a it
Speaker 1: was a Friday Nights or SmackDown was on Thursdays then,
Speaker 1: but we all recognized it as as Friday Night SmackDown
Speaker 1: now and we shot it on Tuesdays. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: live show, so it was the show no one cared about.
Speaker 1: The the child that the parents neglect. The show was.
Speaker 1: The scripts weren't even read till the day of the show.
Speaker 1: And it's not because the scripts were late. They were.
Speaker 1: They got in the same day as Ross. It just
Speaker 1: no one cared about it. It was this secondary licensed
Speaker 1: show that was like, well, we can just put it
Speaker 1: on this network, we can put it on that network.
Speaker 1: We can We'll never move Raw, but we can move
Speaker 1: this show anywhere. Whoever is going to give us the
Speaker 1: biggest check and they would just do one year licensing deals.
Speaker 1: To to the best of my memory, I think that's
Speaker 1: what they would do. Maybe it was two years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was two years, and no one cared.
Speaker 1: It sucked. It was one of the reasons why when
Speaker 1: I think I said this in another episode when I
Speaker 1: came back the second time, Stephanie told me she was
Speaker 1: disappointed that I that I left the first time I left,
Speaker 1: and that she was getting they were getting ready to
Speaker 1: give me SmackDown to run the show. Whether this is
Speaker 1: true or not, this is what This is what she said.
Speaker 1: And I remember in my head thinking like I would
Speaker 1: have quit even sooner, Like, no, who wants that job?
Speaker 1: You don't care about that show. It's like a developmental
Speaker 1: place for for people to get over and then you
Speaker 1: pluck him and put and put him on the live show.
Speaker 1: So it was that's what we were going through. And
Speaker 1: I had a lot more time to do my promo
Speaker 1: class on Tuesdays than on Mondays because again they just
Speaker 1: didn't care. So I got a lot more time with
Speaker 1: the talent, and Ziggler would be in there all the time,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling you, man, like he was doing two
Speaker 1: person scenes, one person monologues. He was trying stuff that
Speaker 1: other people wouldn't try, and he would grow man. He
Speaker 1: was growing, but nobody would give him the big promo.
Speaker 1: They gave him a mouthpiece. They gave him Vicki Guerreiro,
Speaker 1: and Vicky is a staple and a foundational p for
Speaker 1: a lot of Latino fans and fans in general because
Speaker 1: of the connection with Eddie, who everybody loved. No matter
Speaker 1: who you were, where you were, nobody ever goes minutti
Speaker 1: Guero wasn't that good? Like that sentence has never been
Speaker 1: uttered outside right now in pure jest. And if I
Speaker 1: ever hear anyone say that, I will ridicule them into oblivion.
Speaker 1: So she had a lot of credibility. Chavo then came
Speaker 1: with that, and they were sort of the mouthpieces for
Speaker 1: dolf in the in the early goings. Every once in
Speaker 1: a while he would get to speak a little bit,
Speaker 1: maybe on the road and the house shows. He was
Speaker 1: getting more opportunities because there's no cameras there and that's
Speaker 1: a good place to experiment. But to my knowledge and
Speaker 1: while I was there, it just wasn't. He didn't get
Speaker 1: that much to say. So He's gonna wrestle Edge and
Speaker 1: I have the next segment after the match. It's like
Speaker 1: an in ring thing with with Santina Morella, and I
Speaker 1: think Coslaw, who is this big Russian dude who was
Speaker 1: like a legit tough guy from Eastern year. I don't
Speaker 1: know if he was Russian, but like Eastern Europe where
Speaker 1: you would say things like hey man, hey Coslave, I
Speaker 1: bet you broke a lot of arms over there people
Speaker 1: owed money and he'd be like, no, come on, don't joke,
Speaker 1: don't joke, and you'd be like, oh, oh, oh, shitt
Speaker 1: he actually he's actually bussed arms, my man, bro Hey Coslve,
Speaker 1: I love you man. Watch this Richard prior tape with me.
Speaker 1: I loved Goslve. He was he was great, but he
Speaker 1: lived in real life. So anyway, I had that bit
Speaker 1: and it was like a comedy bit because Santino was
Speaker 1: it it and he always killed. You didn't have to
Speaker 1: write for Santina. We did. But anything he wanted to
Speaker 1: change unless Vince said no, he would just change and
Speaker 1: crush it and it was always way better. I'm in
Speaker 1: there waiting to go and they're doing the big finish
Speaker 1: and they probably had a good eighteen minute match something
Speaker 1: like that. Edge gets the wind and he comes backstage.
Speaker 1: Ziggles is still selling in the ring, you know, from
Speaker 1: the from the spears. Oh god, I got spared. And
Speaker 1: Edge comes back in and he looks at Vince and
Speaker 1: Vince goes well and Edge goes, yeah, man, that kid
Speaker 1: can work. He called him a kid. He goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that kid can work, and Vince goes he's good and
Speaker 1: Edge goes, yeah, man, he's real good. And he walked
Speaker 1: out and I was like, holy crap, dude, Like that
Speaker 1: was that's a big that's a big, big deal for
Speaker 1: a top guy a to just say, yeah, I'll wrestle
Speaker 1: his dude on TV. Even though he's gonna get the win,
Speaker 1: he's still gotta it's a let's see what you got.
Speaker 1: So he's gotta let Dolf get some get some action
Speaker 1: on him, right. So a lot of guys wouldn't do it,
Speaker 1: but Edge and and like movies and stuff, he's credited
Speaker 1: as I think Adam Copeland. Um is this humongous Canadian
Speaker 1: Viking dude. He's like six six, super handsome. He's got
Speaker 1: the beard, the Viking beard, the Viking hair. He's not
Speaker 1: like a big fat wrestler. He'd be like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if Eric the Red was sexy, but if he
Speaker 1: was that's edge, right, So he's not in a position
Speaker 1: where he has to do this. He's just a good Canadian,
Speaker 1: awesome dude. Gives this match, then puts him over with
Speaker 1: the boss, goes backstage. Then I see Dolf and I
Speaker 1: think Vicky was with him. They come back and Vince
Speaker 1: gives him the thumbs up, which may not sound like much,
Speaker 1: but if you could have seen the look on Dolf's face,
Speaker 1: it was you knew that was the world. That was
Speaker 1: like getting told a man you're gonna be the starting
Speaker 1: first baseman on the Yankees like he had. He had
Speaker 1: to know, he had to know, and Freebird probably smartened
Speaker 1: him up. Michael Hayes, Uh, he was a former wrestler
Speaker 1: and one of my bosses at w w E and
Speaker 1: I love the man and he was always so brutally
Speaker 1: honest with the talent and with me too. Man, But
Speaker 1: I love that kind of stuff because he just he
Speaker 1: had no filter. But he had to have smartened Dolf
Speaker 1: up as well to say, hey, you're about to get
Speaker 1: a run, which he did. He became the World heavyweight champion.
Speaker 1: And he's not the biggest dude. He's a legit wrestler, though,
Speaker 1: I mean, he went to college at Kent State and
Speaker 1: he had the most wins in the college's history I
Speaker 1: think until just recently, like in the last three years
Speaker 1: where they had some phenomen dude that was like a
Speaker 1: high level in the n C two A rest and
Speaker 1: I don't remember the guy's name, but I feel like
Speaker 1: Nick shouted him out, so he he was legit. But
Speaker 1: I'm taller than Nick. He's way more swollen me. But
Speaker 1: as far as like bigness, his frame isn't that big, right,
Speaker 1: So they put the word the gold belt for those
Speaker 1: who don't. They have two belts. They have the raw
Speaker 1: one on Monday Night Raw that was like their big one,
Speaker 1: and then they had the gold belt with the red
Speaker 1: rubies that they were a little more. They gave a
Speaker 1: little more latitude with as far as who who could
Speaker 1: wear that belt, I don't know if I'm allowed to
Speaker 1: say that, but we just did. It doesn't matter. So
Speaker 1: he gets this title, and they gave him the title twice.
Speaker 1: He was a two time world heavyweight champion. Check this out.
Speaker 1: He won the Intercontinental Championship I think maybe five six
Speaker 1: seven times. He won the United States Championship I think twice,
Speaker 1: maybe even three times if you want to count FCW stuff.
Speaker 1: He was a tag team champ there. But I'm just
Speaker 1: talking about the two main shows, and then just recently
Speaker 1: the n x T Champion, which is the w w
Speaker 1: e's Tuesday night show where they have a lot of
Speaker 1: more of their developmental talent, but every once in a
Speaker 1: while they'll bring a veteran guy or girl in to
Speaker 1: help them work and to help give them some veteran
Speaker 1: experience instead of just working with other young people who
Speaker 1: are still learning and developing their craft, and they sort
Speaker 1: of get more of that pedigree, sort of big time
Speaker 1: TV experience, which is necessary from the name Dolf Ziggler,
Speaker 1: which is just like, all right, you're about to run
Speaker 1: the Hunter meter dash, alright, cool, let me smash you
Speaker 1: in the knee with this Louisville slugger, real quick, whack
Speaker 1: and go. So he's off to a slow start, right
Speaker 1: because they hit him right in the knee and you
Speaker 1: have to run or or you never get to run
Speaker 1: track again. So everybody lanes one through seven or all
Speaker 1: way ahead of him in the first core her and
Speaker 1: here comes Dolf Ziggler. Limp it. He's not even limping,
Speaker 1: he's hopping the first quarter it's we'll say it's the
Speaker 1: four dred me. So the first hundred he's he's hopping,
Speaker 1: he can't even put weight on it. Second hundred he
Speaker 1: gets that limp like when your kids hurt but they
Speaker 1: still want to play. Third one, he's gaining on him,
Speaker 1: and in the fourth one, apparently he's the wolverine and
Speaker 1: feels no pain and not only beats all of them,
Speaker 1: but laps him and wins the World heavyweight championship two
Speaker 1: times with albatross is around his neck. Only the people
Speaker 1: who paid attention in high school literature will remember that reference,
Speaker 1: but literally, an albatross an anchor of a lead weight
Speaker 1: with a chain like bugs Bunny in the prison yard,
Speaker 1: and he became a two time world champion. I have
Speaker 1: so much respect for this dude for all his championships.
Speaker 1: Oh and one random side note. You probably see it
Speaker 1: on YouTube type in Dolph electrocutes Cardona Swerved. It was
Speaker 1: the name of a show they did on their w
Speaker 1: w E network when it first debuted from the Jackass producers,
Speaker 1: and it's I'm gonna spoil it, but it's no spoiler
Speaker 1: because it's hysterical. I've watched it a million times they
Speaker 1: did the electric stool bit and Dolph is pretending to
Speaker 1: host a WrestleMania bit the most electrifying moments in WrestleMania history.
Speaker 1: Now you have wrestlers who call themselves the most electrifying
Speaker 1: sports entertained. That was the rock. So it's a common phrase,
Speaker 1: not one that you would be suspicious of. And so
Speaker 1: as the host, Dolph has the clean seat, the one
Speaker 1: that's not going to fry your buns, and all the
Speaker 1: guests that he brings in that day to talk about
Speaker 1: their their favorite electrifying w w E moments, they're on
Speaker 1: the hot seat and they're all gonna get zapped. And
Speaker 1: he has different people in there, and it's always funny,
Speaker 1: and he's he's cracking up and his laugh is just
Speaker 1: it makes you laugh no matter what. And then incomes
Speaker 1: Mac Hardona, who was currently the independent wrestling Darling of Universe,
Speaker 1: and he's the nicest guy in the world and he
Speaker 1: fell for this, and I felt so bad that I
Speaker 1: vowed to help him get revenge on your golf. He
Speaker 1: sits Matt down and he talks about his most the
Speaker 1: most electrifying moment of wrestling, his zapping, and he looks
Speaker 1: at Dolph and he goes, what what and Dolph look,
Speaker 1: he goes what what? He goes, did you And Dolph's
Speaker 1: like what what are you okay? And he goes, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: that's oh that was crazy. And Dolph goes, there's probably
Speaker 1: someone in his ears saying try to do it again,
Speaker 1: try to do it again. And Dolph goes, all right,
Speaker 1: well are you okay? I wanna try this again? And yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and he puts his hand on the seat. Nothing happens.
Speaker 1: He sits down. Okay from the top, Yeah, from the top. Okay. Welcome,
Speaker 1: It's Dolph Szigler and we're talking about the most electrifying
Speaker 1: moments in WrestleMania here with Matt Cardona. Matt, what do
Speaker 1: you got for me? Well, bro, you know it's uh
Speaker 1: probably one of the most god and Dolf is dying.
Speaker 1: He's falling off the stool dying, and Matt's looking at
Speaker 1: the stool and he's looking at Dolf and because he
Speaker 1: got electrocuted, you know, the synapses in his brain are
Speaker 1: on fire, and right this is the second time. So
Speaker 1: we're you're in my heads go as the viewers like, dude,
Speaker 1: how do you not know? Remember the man's been electrocuted twice.
Speaker 1: He's in shock, he's suffered trauma. He sits down a
Speaker 1: third time. I will not spoil the third shock for you.
Speaker 1: I want you to witness it on YouTube or the
Speaker 1: w w E network on Peacock. They don't pay me
Speaker 1: to say that, or wherever you want to go view
Speaker 1: that video, but please watch it. Hit me up. We're
Speaker 1: also guys. We're gonna do an episode coming up that
Speaker 1: uh is asked Freddie and we'll have a hashtag out there,
Speaker 1: so follow me on social media. You'll see me blasted
Speaker 1: out there, and I'm gonna try to do a whole
Speaker 1: episode if we get enough good questions. So make sure
Speaker 1: you got some sweet ones and hit me up. There
Speaker 1: might be a time period that i've while I was
Speaker 1: there that I've forgotten. You might remind me. A cool
Speaker 1: story may come out. I will do my best remember
Speaker 1: everyone's name. My p user is gonna help me out
Speaker 1: with that. So so yeah, so get ready for that
Speaker 1: episode coming up to I hope you guys like today's
Speaker 1: episode catch up if you're just now getting with us,
Speaker 1: I have tons with awesome guests. I have tons of
Speaker 1: stories for my time there. I hope you guys had
Speaker 1: a good time listening. I will see you this Wednesday
Speaker 1: and every Wednesday right here on Wrestling with Freddy. See
Speaker 1: you next week. This has been a production of I
Speaker 1: Hearts Michael podcast Network for more podcasts for my Heart
Speaker 1: Radio hopevisit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H