A Deep Dive on Dolph Ziggler

Tune year, the amazing Dolf Ziggler. I was there when they rebranded him from Nikki to Dolf, and we're gonna get into all of that today and everything that he's accomplished. And I love the dude. So this is gonna be an ode to the Zigs. So I'm gonna take you back back, way back to the year two thousand and eight. I was a young man with far less gray hair. I had already been at w w E long enough that I had I had earned a couple of stripes, I had, I had made a couple of bones, so

to speak. And they were going to bring this guy up from f c W, who they once knew as Nikki, from the Spirit Squad. And the Spirit Squad was just a group that took a whole bunch of bumps for whoever the baby face was, and it would make the baby face look great because they just beat up like five guys and and he would take huge bumps like he would sell crazy and still does to this day, second to like Mr Perfect as far as his ability to to sell in that style. Bran Gwertz was gonna

was sitting in front of the entire production meeting. This is before a Monday night raw and so it's it's go Worts, It's Kevin Dunn off on the side, Vincent between them, and maybe Bruce Pritchard was there. I feel like there were four people up front and the rest of us are all in in the by the tables, all sitting in a group waiting for the meeting to be over because they were three or four hours long.

Right during during this time period, they talked about the debut of this new character and they want to give him a name. They haven't even come up with the name yet. There's been no discussion. It's the night he's gonna debut, and they're just throwing any old name, any old whatever they put on their their list in those moments are the names they're thrown out, so no thought,

zero zero thought has been put into this. This was the same thing they did to Jake Hagar and I think he was a character named Jack Swagger and they were like, well, Jimmy Swagger, that sounded cool, call him Jack Swagger. And I put my hand. I was like, that name sucks and we shouldn't do that. And I was not hurt, nor were my ideas appreciated or wanted. I'm sure they were worse. I don't remember what they were. So Brian, who I love, he throws out the name.

I think he almost wanted to start with Dolf Diggler, like Dirk Diggler, and it was Dolf Diggler, and my head almost hit the table. The way he would snap a pencil in frustration whenever Vince would make him rewrite a show the day of a show, because that's always a good idea to do that. That was my feeling. I finally experienced the pain that Brian was experiencing, only

it was now because of him. And sometimes the company would do this, they would rib themselves without even knowing they're ribbing themselves, and it was always something to me that that made him struggle with credibility at times, because it was I'm sitting there and I'm hearing this name, Dolf Diggler, and I remember saying this. I said, who's gonna take that seriously? Who's gonna take that seriously? And it wasn't. He wasn't gonna be a comedic style wrestler.

He was a serious athlete who could freaking move, and and he was gonna be billed as a as a heel. So I'm confused. I say, Yo, we can't do that. And I straight up say, we're basically rip ripping off Boogie Nights with Dirk Diggler, which was a movie Vince had never seen, and so he didn't even acknowledge that. But they, okay, we won't do that. And so I don't know if it was Brian, I don't know if it was Vince. I don't know who the finals say was.

You'll have to accost them digitally to find out. But someone says, well, what about Dolph Ziggler, And again, UM like that, No, that name sucks. You can't, you cannot do that. This name sucks. What are your ideas? I don't know. I'm probably throwing anything out there, John freaking Wayne, I mean anything, just don't Sean Wayne. How about Sean Wayne if you're gonna do Dolf Diggler. So it was

not a long argument. I lost quickly. I guess my punishment for fighting the good fight was I was assigned the segment to direct the or produced. They call it the first I'm we're ever gonna meet this wonderfully named wrestler superstar Dolph Ziggler. So I get the segment and Vince tells me what it's going to be, and he says, he's just gonna introduce himself. I said, what do you I'm laughing, I said, what do you What do you mean?

What what does he What do you mean? He's just gonna introduce himself Every every week, he's just gonna come up. He's gonna say, hey, Dolf Zickler. It's gonna shake his hand. I go, what what are you talking about. We're not gonna just do that. That's a really short segment. We won't even get uh you know it's not that's not worthy to get on television. He goes, honest, he'll always be interrupting people in conversation, like all right, so human

to have a couple backstage talent, having a conversation. He's gonna come up, interrupt them, introduce himself, and then walk away. And I pitch it like that, which is a pitch off his pitch, and he laughs as if this as if my idea was good. It was not good. He goes, yeah, yeah, that's that's right. So now I'm sitting here, this is an unsavable segment as far as what I'm capable of doing. There's nothing I can do to make the name work.

There's nothing I can do to make the character work because I'm not giving any freedom with who this man is, where he came from, what motivates him, all the things that make you say, the stuff that's gonna make you a healer of baby face, all the words that you're going to use in a promo. Because I get the promo of Hey, Dolph Ziegler, I go up to Nick and I kind of lay it out there, and he's all for it. Man, He's game. He's down for whatever

he's hyped to be on the main roster. He's glad to be it of the the Niki gimmick from the Spirit Squad. I'm sure he wasn't stoked on the name either. We spent as little time speaking about it as possible, because I knew I certainly wasn't comfortable with it, and I didn't want to make him any less comfortable with it, So I said, look, you know, we gotta just sort of commit to this and and and and go all in. And it's one line, so at least you don't have

to worry about forgetting anything right. And he's like, and he's cool, man, he's game like. He started coming to that to the acting workshops right after that, which we'll get into after this. So the first one we do, they had a girl and she would come out and she would sing so poorly that the crowd would start booing and screaming, please, anyone just shut this woman up.

And then the baby face wrestler would come out and slam her to the ground and shut her up, and the crowd will go, yeah, hell, you saved her hair drums right, very old school in real life. The girl can actually sing like she's got pipes, so she has to make herself sing crappy to to pull this gimmick off week after week after week for as long as she was there. And this gimmick worked for her for for quite some time, so I have her speaking to Jamie Noble. To know Jamie Noble for ten minutes is

to love this dude. He was a professional wrestler. He's an agent now, meaning he helps. He helps choreograph the matches, he helps place the story within the choreography so that they're actually they're telling you a story while fighting. And when I say that, I mean things like he's working

on the leg. He's he's hitting him with leg kicks when the wrestlers down, he's stomping on the leg, and he's his focus is there one because maybe the guy's got a knee brace on or to his submission hold is some sort of knee bar or figure four leg lock or ankle hook. He'll hook something like that where the knee is gonna give, so he's softening it up. And that's the story that they're telling in the rings.

So that's what Jamie would do, and he would try to sneakily implement little m M A things and successfully did so when he was there. Even though Vince hated that stuff. Jamie found like slick ways to get it in and it always looked great when when Jamie was involved. But at this point in time. He was a wrestler who wasn't gonna get another run, but always gave you a solid match and was like people respected him. All the wrestlers respected him, and I could see that instantly,

so he could talk on the mic a bit. If you knew him from the old days, he came off as this like crazy tough, like little Man's complex firecracker from West Virginia. And I had him talking to Jillian. I think he was like maybe throwing some game at her or something like that, and she was singing, and

all of a sudden, here comes Dolf. I have him basically like in a two shot that's off on the side, like from a Japanese horror film, basically so that we can pan off a little bit camera left, which would be what the actors would see as the right side, and that's gonna reveal Dolf. And then I'm gonna let Dolph's movement bring the camera back to Jamie and Jillian. Right. I'm doing like everything I can to make this have some like ounce of quality, Like what what can I do?

I can't write anything here anyway. Dolph leads back into the two shot, which now becomes a three and it's it's their cowboys, which means it's that they're at their waists. And he just comes up and interrupts him. He says, hey, Dolph Ziggler, shakes his hand and he walks away, and and Noble just goes looks at him. I think he says like, I know who you are or something like I don't remember. I've been trying to delete this. And

he storms off and we get the segment approved. I had to get up, I had to get I had to get approval for a segment that had two lines. I had to get approval for a segment that had to frigging lines. It's not embarrassing, it is infuriating. So it gets approved. And the like the backstage producer, the one who's in charge of wrangling your crew and uh and getting your tape to the truck. I'm not gonna throw him under the bus and and put his name out there, but I say, hey, you got it. You

got the segment. He goes, yeah, we got it. It never gets to the truck. And I found out later that it was on purpose. This guy was like trying to sand bag me a lot. But it never gets to the truck. The segment doesn't air, and I'm catching heat, and I'm told by one of the guys that works with this, one gentleman in particular, who tried to sand bag me, he said, no, it's the it's the writer's job to get the to get the tape to the truck. I go, that's ridiculous. That is the last responsibility. That

is the writer's job. That has nothing to do with the writer's job, and that's your job. What the hell? And then they kind of blew it off and there I go, well, it got lost, man, it just got lost, Like, oh yeah, that's a completely different story. So what the hell? Man, why am I getting lied to? I don't have time to just screaming everybody that needs to get screamed at because the show's over. Vince's yelling at me. I gotta get into damn limo and fly to the next city

with him. So I don't even like get my chance that the equal and opposite reaction. I only get the action, and it's all on me. It's like throwing a rubber ball into a wall and has to take all that energy from the wall that you know hurts the poor little ball, and instead of getting to reverse that energy as you just stuck in the wall, right, and the wall is Vince's jet and it's not big enough to get away from him. So I just have to hear you know, what the hell you ruin? This ruined that.

I'm like, how did? How did I The one person that can't possibly be the two people that can't possibly be responsible for this getting ruined is Dolf and me, Like what the hell are you talking about? So week goes by, they miraculously fine the tape and oh oh they found it the next week and now it's gonna go in. So they tried to even get me to reshoot. I was like, no, we have it, just air it,

and uh I was oh so mad. So they air it and it's the first time you see Dolph and he goes in and he does his Dolph zig look thing, and I remember sitting there going he's dead before his career even got started, Like that's that's crazy, like this, you can't do business like this. So flash forward now a couple of months. He's done the introduction thing over and over and over again. He's had a few matches,

and the dude is good, real good. He starts coming into like the acting workshop because he knew a lot of the young cats that were in there. He was he was within that that group, the Muses and all those guys and Cardonas and all that. He used to

pull some pretty great pranks on Cardona. But uh so he starts coming in there and he's doing scenes from bad Boys to soap Dish, to Clue all the way to Malice with Alec Baldwin and he does the speech, the monologue, the promo that was famous in that movie where Alec Baldwin is like, I am board certified in fifty seven of fifty states. When you see that mother praying to God? Who do you think she's praying to? And then he ends it with you think I have you?

I don't remember the line exactly, was like you asked me if I have a God complex? I am God? And it's so overdramatic, but it's Alec Baldwin. So when he commits to it, it works, right. Dahl says, I wanna, I want to try that that monologue, and he freaking kills it. He freaking kills it, So I don't know. Ten years later, I'm way out of the company and this fool pull that exact promo on Instagram in black

and white, and he's just, I mean, nails it. This dude's had it in his hit Sorry for ratting you out, but he's had it in his head for ten years, just rolling it around. How many different ways can you do it? In ten you I don't even know? And he just killed You could see it on his Instagram if you probably scroll way down and he just kills it.

And then I start watching the storyline they have for him with him and miss where he's gonna straight leave the business if MS can beat him, and the promos he's putting out are high level, and I'm sitting there like, dude, what this guy is killing it? And at this point he's become one of the more respected wrestlers in the in the world, Like wrestling magazines had him as like a top ten dude at one point, most improved, hottest wrestler coming up, Like all these magazines had love for him.

And I'm sitting there, you know, ten year is removed from the company, and there's people out there screaming Dolf Ziggler. There's people out there with Dolf Ziggler signs with DZ signs with all these girls out there with hearts and d Z, I love you, marry me, take me to the prom, take me, take me some, take me anywhere. Dolf. And he got so over with the worst name in wrestling that the name became special and you just naturally call the guy Dolf and it doesn't feel weird and

it doesn't sound weird. I put him as a character in my supermanga Baseball three baseball game, except I don't do gimmick infringement, so his name is Zolfdiggler, not Dolf Ziggler, because we don't rob people's creativity on my xbox. But anyway, I'm sitting there and I'm like, this man's work, and let me tell you something. If you don't watch wrestling, just YouTube Dolf ziggler greatest matches or Dolf Ziggler's best moments.

This dude's work is so clean, so clean, and he comes off like a new school Mr Perfect right, which I feel had to be a huge influence on it, because he sells, meaning when he takes damage from his opponent, he sells very much like I mean, almost identical to Mr Perfect. Kurt Handick. Rest in peace for those who don't know everybody listening knows. I know, you know, his promos caught up to his wrestling, But his wrestling was

so amazing, and I remember the moment. I remember the exact moment when he was gonna become World heavyweight champion because I was freaking in guerrilla when it happened. So check this out. We get to it was a it was a Friday Nights or SmackDown was on Thursdays then, but we all recognized it as as Friday Night SmackDown now and we shot it on Tuesdays. It wasn't a live show, so it was the show no one cared about. The the child that the parents neglect. The show was.

The scripts weren't even read till the day of the show. And it's not because the scripts were late. They were. They got in the same day as Ross. It just no one cared about it. It was this secondary licensed show that was like, well, we can just put it on this network, we can put it on that network. We can We'll never move Raw, but we can move this show anywhere. Whoever is going to give us the biggest check and they would just do one year licensing deals.

To to the best of my memory, I think that's what they would do. Maybe it was two years. Yeah, I think it was two years, and no one cared. It sucked. It was one of the reasons why when I think I said this in another episode when I came back the second time, Stephanie told me she was disappointed that I that I left the first time I left, and that she was getting they were getting ready to give me SmackDown to run the show. Whether this is true or not, this is what This is what she said.

And I remember in my head thinking like I would have quit even sooner, Like, no, who wants that job? You don't care about that show. It's like a developmental place for for people to get over and then you pluck him and put and put him on the live show. So it was that's what we were going through. And I had a lot more time to do my promo class on Tuesdays than on Mondays because again they just

didn't care. So I got a lot more time with the talent, and Ziggler would be in there all the time, and I'm telling you, man, like he was doing two person scenes, one person monologues. He was trying stuff that other people wouldn't try, and he would grow man. He was growing, but nobody would give him the big promo. They gave him a mouthpiece. They gave him Vicki Guerreiro, and Vicky is a staple and a foundational p for a lot of Latino fans and fans in general because

of the connection with Eddie, who everybody loved. No matter who you were, where you were, nobody ever goes minutti Guero wasn't that good? Like that sentence has never been uttered outside right now in pure jest. And if I ever hear anyone say that, I will ridicule them into oblivion. So she had a lot of credibility. Chavo then came with that, and they were sort of the mouthpieces for dolf in the in the early goings. Every once in a while he would get to speak a little bit,

maybe on the road and the house shows. He was getting more opportunities because there's no cameras there and that's a good place to experiment. But to my knowledge and while I was there, it just wasn't. He didn't get that much to say. So He's gonna wrestle Edge and I have the next segment after the match. It's like an in ring thing with with Santina Morella, and I think Coslaw, who is this big Russian dude who was

like a legit tough guy from Eastern year. I don't know if he was Russian, but like Eastern Europe where you would say things like hey man, hey Coslave, I bet you broke a lot of arms over there people owed money and he'd be like, no, come on, don't joke, don't joke, and you'd be like, oh, oh, oh, shitt he actually he's actually bussed arms, my man, bro Hey Coslve, I love you man. Watch this Richard prior tape with me. I loved Goslve. He was he was great, but he

lived in real life. So anyway, I had that bit and it was like a comedy bit because Santino was it it and he always killed. You didn't have to write for Santina. We did. But anything he wanted to change unless Vince said no, he would just change and crush it and it was always way better. I'm in there waiting to go and they're doing the big finish and they probably had a good eighteen minute match something like that. Edge gets the wind and he comes backstage.

Ziggles is still selling in the ring, you know, from the from the spears. Oh god, I got spared. And Edge comes back in and he looks at Vince and Vince goes well and Edge goes, yeah, man, that kid can work. He called him a kid. He goes, yeah, that kid can work, and Vince goes he's good and Edge goes, yeah, man, he's real good. And he walked out and I was like, holy crap, dude, Like that was that's a big that's a big, big deal for a top guy a to just say, yeah, I'll wrestle

his dude on TV. Even though he's gonna get the win, he's still gotta it's a let's see what you got. So he's gotta let Dolf get some get some action on him, right. So a lot of guys wouldn't do it, but Edge and and like movies and stuff, he's credited as I think Adam Copeland. Um is this humongous Canadian Viking dude. He's like six six, super handsome. He's got the beard, the Viking beard, the Viking hair. He's not

like a big fat wrestler. He'd be like, I don't know if Eric the Red was sexy, but if he was that's edge, right, So he's not in a position where he has to do this. He's just a good Canadian, awesome dude. Gives this match, then puts him over with the boss, goes backstage. Then I see Dolf and I think Vicky was with him. They come back and Vince gives him the thumbs up, which may not sound like much, but if you could have seen the look on Dolf's face,

it was you knew that was the world. That was like getting told a man you're gonna be the starting first baseman on the Yankees like he had. He had to know, he had to know, and Freebird probably smartened him up. Michael Hayes, Uh, he was a former wrestler and one of my bosses at w w E and I love the man and he was always so brutally honest with the talent and with me too. Man, But I love that kind of stuff because he just he

had no filter. But he had to have smartened Dolf up as well to say, hey, you're about to get a run, which he did. He became the World heavyweight champion.

And he's not the biggest dude. He's a legit wrestler, though, I mean, he went to college at Kent State and he had the most wins in the college's history I think until just recently, like in the last three years where they had some phenomen dude that was like a high level in the n C two A rest and I don't remember the guy's name, but I feel like Nick shouted him out, so he he was legit. But

I'm taller than Nick. He's way more swollen me. But as far as like bigness, his frame isn't that big, right, So they put the word the gold belt for those who don't. They have two belts. They have the raw one on Monday Night Raw that was like their big one, and then they had the gold belt with the red rubies that they were a little more. They gave a little more latitude with as far as who who could wear that belt, I don't know if I'm allowed to

say that, but we just did. It doesn't matter. So he gets this title, and they gave him the title twice. He was a two time world heavyweight champion. Check this out. He won the Intercontinental Championship I think maybe five six seven times. He won the United States Championship I think twice, maybe even three times if you want to count FCW stuff.

He was a tag team champ there. But I'm just talking about the two main shows, and then just recently the n x T Champion, which is the w w e's Tuesday night show where they have a lot of more of their developmental talent, but every once in a while they'll bring a veteran guy or girl in to help them work and to help give them some veteran experience instead of just working with other young people who are still learning and developing their craft, and they sort

of get more of that pedigree, sort of big time TV experience, which is necessary from the name Dolf Ziggler, which is just like, all right, you're about to run the Hunter meter dash, alright, cool, let me smash you in the knee with this Louisville slugger, real quick, whack and go. So he's off to a slow start, right because they hit him right in the knee and you have to run or or you never get to run

track again. So everybody lanes one through seven or all way ahead of him in the first core her and here comes Dolf Ziggler. Limp it. He's not even limping, he's hopping the first quarter it's we'll say it's the four dred me. So the first hundred he's he's hopping, he can't even put weight on it. Second hundred he gets that limp like when your kids hurt but they

still want to play. Third one, he's gaining on him, and in the fourth one, apparently he's the wolverine and feels no pain and not only beats all of them, but laps him and wins the World heavyweight championship two times with albatross is around his neck. Only the people who paid attention in high school literature will remember that reference, but literally, an albatross an anchor of a lead weight with a chain like bugs Bunny in the prison yard,

and he became a two time world champion. I have so much respect for this dude for all his championships. Oh and one random side note. You probably see it on YouTube type in Dolph electrocutes Cardona Swerved. It was the name of a show they did on their w w E network when it first debuted from the Jackass producers, and it's I'm gonna spoil it, but it's no spoiler

because it's hysterical. I've watched it a million times they did the electric stool bit and Dolph is pretending to host a WrestleMania bit the most electrifying moments in WrestleMania history. Now you have wrestlers who call themselves the most electrifying sports entertained. That was the rock. So it's a common phrase,

not one that you would be suspicious of. And so as the host, Dolph has the clean seat, the one that's not going to fry your buns, and all the guests that he brings in that day to talk about their their favorite electrifying w w E moments, they're on the hot seat and they're all gonna get zapped. And he has different people in there, and it's always funny, and he's he's cracking up and his laugh is just

it makes you laugh no matter what. And then incomes Mac Hardona, who was currently the independent wrestling Darling of Universe, and he's the nicest guy in the world and he fell for this, and I felt so bad that I vowed to help him get revenge on your golf. He sits Matt down and he talks about his most the most electrifying moment of wrestling, his zapping, and he looks at Dolph and he goes, what what and Dolph look, he goes what what? He goes, did you And Dolph's

like what what are you okay? And he goes, yeah, man, that's oh that was crazy. And Dolph goes, there's probably someone in his ears saying try to do it again, try to do it again. And Dolph goes, all right, well are you okay? I wanna try this again? And yeah, okay, and he puts his hand on the seat. Nothing happens. He sits down. Okay from the top, Yeah, from the top. Okay. Welcome, It's Dolph Szigler and we're talking about the most electrifying

moments in WrestleMania here with Matt Cardona. Matt, what do you got for me? Well, bro, you know it's uh probably one of the most god and Dolf is dying. He's falling off the stool dying, and Matt's looking at the stool and he's looking at Dolf and because he got electrocuted, you know, the synapses in his brain are on fire, and right this is the second time. So we're you're in my heads go as the viewers like, dude, how do you not know? Remember the man's been electrocuted twice.

He's in shock, he's suffered trauma. He sits down a third time. I will not spoil the third shock for you. I want you to witness it on YouTube or the w w E network on Peacock. They don't pay me to say that, or wherever you want to go view that video, but please watch it. Hit me up. We're also guys. We're gonna do an episode coming up that uh is asked Freddie and we'll have a hashtag out there, so follow me on social media. You'll see me blasted out there, and I'm gonna try to do a whole

episode if we get enough good questions. So make sure you got some sweet ones and hit me up. There might be a time period that i've while I was there that I've forgotten. You might remind me. A cool story may come out. I will do my best remember everyone's name. My p user is gonna help me out with that. So so yeah, so get ready for that episode coming up to I hope you guys like today's episode catch up if you're just now getting with us, I have tons with awesome guests. I have tons of

stories for my time there. I hope you guys had a good time listening. I will see you this Wednesday and every Wednesday right here on Wrestling with Freddy. See you next week. This has been a production of I Hearts Michael podcast Network for more podcasts for my Heart Radio hopevisit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H