He had that great Scottish axe. I prayed to Gold I would do it, and I did. And what I see happening, there's no way Drew McIntyre's winning the Royal Rumble not to see them Punk's in it, and I won't bet agains see them Punk ever again. Now you're mad? Even introducing Nosts are Wrestling Win Freddy, Jeff Died and Freddy Friends Junior. What's up? Everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Wrestling with Friends, originally known as Wrestling
with Freddy. Back when I was lonely and had no friends, no wrestling friends, and I had to do this podcast all by myself. But now and forever I get to have my podcast partner, mister Jeff did. How are you, sir? It's good to see you feeling good. How you feeling, Freddy? I'm good man. All the anxiety that I had last week is finally like subsiding and going away, and it looks like my house is gonna make it. So I'm happy to that. My kids and they've had a good week.
You know. We've been down here in southern southern California, like halfway between San Diego and Los Angeles and I've been taking my son k one go kart racing. Shout out to k one you guys are awesome. My son set another track record there. He's a sick little race cards right, that's what he wants to do is race open wheels when he grows up. He makes me write this. Oh dude, he makes me watch this show on Netflix.
I don't remember what it's called, but like, there's this dude named Lewis Hamilton who's like an open wheels F one racer, and we watched this show that was like about him and some other drivers too. But my son is like, that's Lewis Hamilton and he has some of the quickest reaction time in the world that I'm like, Okay, dude's sick. Whatever, man, my.
Son's got good taste because Lewis Hamilton's not only an amazing race car driver, but he's a cool guy. And he dated Nicole Scherzinger, so respect.
I don't know who that is, but I know Louis Hamilton is and he's a lead pussycat doll. Small show.
Oh.
I think she was on my sitcom back in the day. My character had like a dirty and all the Pussycat dolls were in the dream and they came and did like a cameo for the show. Well right out, Lewis Hamilton, shout out to you, dude. But anyway, yeah, so we've been doing that. We did a miniature golf. My son hit two hole in ones. I got one, Haara got one, and my daughter Charlotte all got holding ones, but he
had the most. He kept reminding us, and those are like the first couple of days where they were laughing again and smiling and giving each other shit and just doing normal brother sister stuff instead of worrying, which is it sucks to watch your kids stress out and feel like there's not too much you can do about it. But go karting helps for all those people that need help.
If your kid's going through something, take that little shit go karting, and all of a sudden, all their fears go away, and all that anxiety goes away because they're going thirty miles an hour in an electric go garden, drifting around turns like a stud. We made the most of it. Are much more fortunate than other people who lost everything that we know. But I'm glad that this is finally coming to an end and people can start getting back on getting back on the road. You know
what doesn't stop, though, is motherfucking professional wrestling. Jeff's and you know I'm telling the truth when I cuss. If I'm not cussing, I'm probably telling you a FID. So we're gonna talk some pro wrestling today. We appreciate you guys tuning in. There's not going to be a Thursday show. I only have so much time that I can bust these out on, so I'll try to make this one as long as we can. Penta if that's okay with you, sir, because all Right's sick. So Chad Gable demanded a match
against a great luchador last week. He said, Adam Pierce, I want to match against a great luchador. That's what he said. And Adam Pierce said, Oh, I think I have someone for you that you may not know. We all knew. It was the as Michael Cole said, the worst kept secret in professional wrestling. I love that day. I like that. Yeah, it's cool that he kind of
breaks the wall a little bit. That he wasn't allowed to do that back in the day, and there were a lot of Latinos in the crowd, and a lot of wrestling fans in the crowd that knew about his work, And you sneaky little fuckers are watching aew because you knew his set on mean though, and everybody did it, So I don't want to see all that. Do't that, Hey, we hate you, we hate you, No, we hate you more. You guys like each other. You just don't want to
admit it. So anyway, pentomate his debut, and Chad Gable, who is a legit Olympic athlete is able to sell and make people look frigging fantastic, took the craziest move, or took the craziest sell off of They called it a Mexican Destroyer, and it looked like he bounced off his head like two feet in the air, which if you watch in slow motion, he's real safe with it and his head doesn't even touch, which is insane because it looked so brutal. But he bounced up in the
air off his head. He did a head bounce and landed and I literally went holy shit, and the crowd then started going holy shit. I didn't even I didn't even mean to do it. And then at the end of the match, Penta wins the match. Good guy won the match. He cut this very emotional promo and thanking the ww fans and his family and the people who supported him, and then he went full Shinsky Nakamura and I love this, and he just started speaking in his
native tongue in Spanish. There's tons of Latinos Spanish speakers that have Netflix, and he just spoke to them for like a minute straight, and I thought it was so cool they allowed him to do that. I think it's so cool they allow Shinseki to do that or shinsk. Sorry for adding the extra syllable, but I really like how global WWE is and how they're going to have a Dutch person on there one day speaking some crazy Dutch.
I don't know if y'all have ever heard Dutch, but that's the freakiest language I've ever heard, and I bet they do that one day. But I thought it was so cool. And his look. I know Jeff loves his look, but his look is so unique and there's nobody out there that talks the way he talks or walks the way he walks. He's got that cool stretch that he does when he comes out, Like everything about it him is unique and it feels special, and I really hope and I believe that WW is gonna book him a
lot better than AEW did. But he's your favorite, Jeff, and I've taken up all the time, so please no.
I love his look. I think he's all the things I like. He's kind of got a Halloween horror vibe to him. He's a lucho, which I love, the flippy all that, I love all that, I love the mask.
He's literally everything I like about a wrestler.
This match really showed that Chad Gate how valuable Chad Gable is.
Oh my god.
It was a beautiful match, like absolutely like Chad Gable. I mean there was a little rust in moments, but Chad Gable sold everything. It was absolutely perfect. And I know you covered it already already, but when he gave that speech, it was in Spanish, but it was basically a beautiful homage to the American dream. You know, he's like, dude, it was a Mexican like just a Mexican boy who had dreams of doing this thing. And you could see
his family watching him, like and recording. His daughter had like a tear in her eye and they're like I think his whole family was there, but one of his daughters was like recording it on his phone and she's cheering.
I was just like, this is beautiful, Like he's arrived.
He made it like it's not the WB's any bigger than AEW, but this moment was huge.
I couldn't be happy. I think everything is great.
I just hope we keep pushing with it, we keep running with it, and we don't have to lose this. I think what could be the next Ray Masterial, the greatest luchador of all time.
It shows you that they're definitely looking for him, like with the opportunity they gave Dragon Lee, the opportunity they gave Santos. You know they blew that well. Yeah, that one didn't work so well. But they're definitely trying to find like because Ray can't wrestle forever, even though it looks like he can. But they gotta find him, and
I really hope they do. Man, the pentag just came off so freaking cool and smooth, and he was hey had style like I love his walk, man, where he puts like his and out and he has like one foot in front of the other and he's like striking. Yeah, it's so courish it. Yeah, I liked it a lot. So he was awesome. Now, most of you probably prefer cm punk to Penta, so we'll talk to some cmpunk too. He came out and he now has as well declared for the Royal Rumbles. So we got John Cena up
in there. We got we got cm punk up in there, and he came out. He was talking. He does he does real talk, probably better than anybody as far as like connective tissue between him and the audience. But seth Rawlins came out and interrupted him, and Sampunk sold big on that. He's like, ah, sign up a bitch. Why he probably didn't cuts, he's straight edge. Sampunk or seth Rollins came out and he had a legit black eye dude,
and he showed it off. He took the sunglasses off and it looked like a fighter at the end of a fight when they take their sunglasses off in the in the post fight interviews and things like that, and that shit makes it just gets me going because I'm like, yeah, look how tough he is, Look how badass that looks. And it wasn't like fake makeup. He legit had one, and then he announces himself for the Royal Rumble, and then Drew McIntyre comes out and says, screw both, you bitches.
I'm the freaking man and I'm gonna be in the Royal Rumble too. Now. The only reason I'm bringing the segment up, it wasn't like a world moving segment, was because of the story that they can now tell in the Royal Rumble. Because if you remember everybody last year, Drew McIntyre was the one that injured cmpunk in the Royal Rumble. He tore his tricep when he put him in that future shock DDT holder. Maybe it was a pedigree.
It's the setups the same way. But he jacked up cm punk and put him on the shelf, and he was glad that he did it. He had that great Scottish axe. I prayed to gold I would do it, and I did, And uh what I see happening. There's no way Drew McIntyre's winning the Royal Rumble, not if cm Punk's in it. And I won't bet against Sampunk
ever again. But now you get a cool story where I think cm punk might try to do the same move to Drew and that'll like get him in the future shock DDT or the Pedigrew whatever is gonna be and smash him and then throw him out of the ring. So keep your eyes open for the story that those two dudes will get to tell, because I think that'll be one of the coolest ones in the Rumble, which is still a long ways a way, I know, but I just get excited because Royal Rumble's my favorite pay
per view in the world. Is it yours favorite too? It's the best, Dude, I love a gimmick. It's the most gimmicky pay per view you can have. It's fun. They tell so many stories in that match, and they give so many people an opportunity to get over, and so many people do, like everyone from brock Lessner to Kofi Kingston where he just never touches the floor, Like every single time, it was always like, oh he landed on this guy's fucking head and he danced through the
audience and they crowdsurfed him back into the ring. Oh my god, he's still in the match, and then he gets thrown out by brock Lesendar later. But like, everybody gets a chance to shine, and I've always loved that show, so I'm super excited for it. Then we get a little yeet down because Gunther lays down his challenge and he demands respect for his world title. We all respect you, Gunther. I don't know why you're demanding it. Like you, everybody
loves you. Even the people that hate you respect you, so you don't have to demand it. You could just say, hey, thanks, thanks guys, thanks bros, thanks for the respect. And then here comes Jayu. So he's one of my favorites. I remember I was on that podcast that Bully Ray does and he was asking me who I thought like the biggest star war was going to be, and I even said jay Us. And this was back when he was, like I think, still in the Bloodline and everybody kind
of was like, oh wait, I wasn't expecting that. And look, this dude's promos and his entrances still are getting huge pops and huge results and everybody loves him. And now Jimmy we can get into SmackDown later, but Jimmy is now having that similar vibe now that he's healthy, and his promo from backstage I thought was even better than Jay's entrance because he got everybody so hyped up. But both those guys are doing great fucking work. Great crowd work.
That's a comedian term and means something different in wrestling, but they're great with the crowd. The interaction that he literally, here's how smart Jayus is and then I'll move on. He literally got rid of the what chant and just replaced it with yeat and he uses it and he works moment to moment and sentence to sentence, and instead of yelling what, they're into him and they're yelling yeat, and it gives the audience their opportunity to be a
part of the show, which they really want. And it doesn't in this case destroy the wrestler's ability to get over. In fact, it actually helped the wrestler get over, and I think that's the first time anyone's ever been able to do that. So I just want to put a little shine on him and show just how smart he is. Whether it was intentional or not. I think it was intentional because he waits for it now and they give it to him. But he's he's mastered the what and
he is now the What's owner. He's though he's the What's daddy, and the what has no power over him anymore. But I think that's the only wrestler besides Stone Cold that can claim that. Anyway, what else?
The yeat is good. You know what's not good? The no yeat that didn't work good.
No yeat did not play yet it was not. The second I heard it, I rolled my eyes. I was god damn it. But yeat works. We like yeat. Yat is good, we like the Yeah, you're right, No yeat was bad. That was Hey, look man, they're not all going to be golden eggs. So anyway, Gunther and j are going to fight. That'll be a good fight. Damian Priest and Finn Balor had a crazy ass street fight. The Judgment Day has fallen apart. Finn Baalor doesn't respect
Live Live, doesn't respect Dominic. Everybody's treating Dominic like a piece of shit. He even brought flowers for Live and She's like, no, I'm not mad. I did that girl thing that you know you girls do. No, I'm not mad. I'm just not going to communicate and get even angrier on the inside, and then I'm gonna get pissed at you for something dumb later on. But it has nothing to do with what we're actually pissed off about.
You.
Girls shouldn't do that back in the day, dude, guys remember, like girls would always I guess girls still do it. Girls fight emotionally and dudes would just fight physically. And then you would see, like a year later, the girls would never be friends with someone they talked about, but the dudes who fought would be like best bros. Like girls got to just punch each other in the face. It's way easier. We got to get back to those days, Jeff simp much simpler. All right, let's move on WWE
Friday Night Smack Sound. Here we go Raymisterio in San Diego and the crowd goes frigging bananas. Ray goes out there, cuts his promo. He gets an extra two points on the promo because he's in his hometown. He's more comfortable, more confident. The crowd loves everything he says. And Kevin Owens comes out. Kevin Owens, who basically has like the best line in wrestling every single week, no matter what, like and it's never anything that was written for him.
It's always something that he just comes up with. But he came out and he's so He's so good at being a justified heel. He always has what he feels is a legitimate reason to feel the way he feels, and those feelings are dictating his actions, and those actions are just because of the feelings behind him. And he goes out there and he says, Ray, I respect you, and the crowd's like, wait, we're supposed to hate you, Kevin, and he's like, just hold on, let me finish. You'll
hate me, don't worry, and they don't hate him. They like what he's saying. They're agreeing with him. I respect you, and I would love to have a match with you as the WWE champion with my beautiful winged Eagle belt that everybody loves. Hard to get mad at the guy when everybody agrees with that belt being the coolest belt.
Kevin comes out and the crowd's even starting to get behind him, and then he starts going on his delusional tangent about he's the champion and one day it would be an honor for him to have his dream match against Raymistereo's the champion, Ray Ray F's up, you guys, and he goes, my man, I don't know if you know this, but I'm not trying to hurt feelings here. He even says, all due respect, you're you're not the champ.
Cody's Cody's the champ. And the energy in this segment is kind of low right here, and you're wondering how this is gonna work, and it's all on Kevin to kind of bring the energy back in this and he's like, wait, what did you say? What is and he just like goes crazy and loses it and he just floods the segment with energy and the whole crowd gets behind it, and then they're gonna have some beef and he's gonna
hit him with the belt. He misses Ray Ray gets him in the position for the six one nine, one of Jeff's favorite finishers, and Kevin rolls out, he grabs his belt and he cuts what the best line in wrestling of the week. You have to watch it. I won't say it, and he backs out of there, and then Ray and him get a match for later that night, which is going to be the main event, and Kevin gets his dream match against raymys stereo. I love Kevin Owens.
I don't know if he gets as much love on other shows as he does on this, but I'm sure he has. Like he's you, I don't pay attention to the internet as much as you do, and our producer does. But correct me if I'm wrong. Kevin Owens is universally loved, yes, yeah, but underrated in my opinion. Okay, so it's it's not just me.
Real wrestling fans give him all his flowers, but I feel like this like the second layer, like whatever that second layer or third layer or fourth layer of wrestling fans. They all just want to see the big shiny starle Cody Rhodes this, see him punk that. I feel like Kevin is almost forgot a lot of times. Oh, I see, that's how I feel about it. I feel like he's underrated.
Nah, he's the man, dude. If people aren't hip to Kevin, you got to start watching his promos on YouTube or whatever whatever format you do it because there's such next level. Even before he was in WWE, they were pretty damn good. He's much more refined now because he has a lot more experience. Yeah, well, and he asked you, but your your performances on stage are much more refined than when you started. My acting's more refined the way I started.
You know, he's just smarter with with how he does things. But yes, in the corporation, he has to exist under these sort of corporate rules, but he does it really well and he gets close to the lines sometimes sometimes he plays it super safe man, but he still is always gonna let you into the business a little bit.
And I think that's why the hardcore fans love him so much, because he'll do that shit Eddie Murphy used to do in movies where he kind of like look in the camera for one second and be like, is this happening right now? Yeah, Okay, I think it is. He's very similar with his vibe without looking into the camera.
MJF, Paul Hayman, Kevin Steen, all the best mic work guys like sorry, Kevin Owens. If you will go to YouTube watch some of his old promos.
God, they're hilarious. Yeah, and danger. He's more refined.
He's also more censored because he's on TV, he's on Netflix, he's on USA. But when you get to watch him, just beat, just go rogue because it's just some indie thing and he can like it's insane how funny he is.
And it's all improv and it's just it's just a free flowing state. It's like listening to a freestyle rapper, like just kind of hear a beat and go off. And it's not something they planned. They just kind of had a direction they wanted to go.
He's talking about sucking Dix and he goes and these boys don't do that because they're good boys. But I know, I'm a piece of shit, and I like him because he's a piece of shit. N Like, he's just like it's I knew.
You were going to bring up this promo at the moment I mentioned Kevin Owens. By the way, it's everybody a time, it's everybody's favorite Kevin Due. I sold sixty shirts tonight, but I should have sold a hundred. I mean, it's amazing. Blames the crowd for his lack of sales. That's crazy.
Also, and also he takes like a little moment he goes, I sold sixty shirts tonight. That's pretty good. It's pretty good. I mean, that's pretty good, but I should have sold one hundred. Like it's just as the greatest is so good.
How are you liking WWE on on Netflix? By the way, I was supposed to ask you that earlier, but I forgot I think it's great.
I don't know, I don't know how you could do better than the best, you know, so like sometimes it feels like you got Rass SmackDown, Ross smacked on Ross Bide.
And then this amazing pay per view.
Well, if they're pulling out all the stops for these raws and smackdowns, it's gonna be hard to like they're they're definitely elevating their game, but they're putting themselves in an interesting position because these raws feel like pay per view level of effort, and so I'm happy about it. All wrestling fans should be happy about. It's been really, really good. It'll be interesting to see how it sustains. Yeah,
that will be interesting. I think Royal Rumble will sustain just fine because it is such a gimmick driven pay per view and they don't do things like that on a weekly basis where you have this.
One epic match with forty well it used to be thirty, but with forty professional wrestlers all going for you know, one kind of thing. So that should hold up. But I wonder if that's if with the other ones that aren't like hell in a cell the ones that are, you know, heavily gimmicked. I wonder if that'll affect it, if it'll just feel like a Monday night raw. That's an interesting speculation, sir. Yeah, but it's good.
It's a good problem to have that they're just giving us such great wrestling that I'm worried if it's gonna that's a great We're in a good place.
I don't know what to say about a Dubs bro. I mean, the matches are really cool, but there's not a lot of stories going on right now outside of MJF and Jeff Jarrett.
Well, let's talk about that promo. You know, I don't know if that's called a promo with those two going back and forth promos, you.
Know, arguing what I think, it's really hard to hang with MJF if you're not ready to go with MJF. I think he's he's so good on the mic that even though he's selling your stuff, if you're not real sharp with it, it's just he's gonna look like he's going a million miles an hour, and you're gonna look like your car doesn't go that fast. So it was I thought it was tough. Jeff Jarrett had moments where he slung him with a couple but it like took it took longer for him to cut MJF than it
takes MJF to cut him. And so to me, and I don't know, maybe it was supposed to be like that, and maybe MJF was supposed to win that argument, but to me, it's just it's really hard to compete with him. Like cmpunk can do it, Adam Cole did it, you know, will Osprey did it. He's had guys that could go back and forth with him, but not everyone is at that, and that's okay, and not everyone has to be a
ten on the microphone. But it's just tough when he's cutting you to pieces and your cuts aren't as deep. So so that's what I would say about that without I don't want to like dump on it. What are the rules of wrestling?
As a writer, as a guy who's been in the business. When MJF was delivering his insults and opinions and digs, which I love that he called him slap nuts made me so slap nuts. He didn't make a meal of it, he just popped it in there, which I thought was great. What are the rules because Double j just started laughing. He kept just laughing. Well, like MJFF was doing his thing kind of like this is stupid. It was very
dismissive kind of laughing. But is there some sort of rule for the babyface to how he's supposed to listen to the insults?
Well, I mean the heel is supposed to sell the insults and the baby face should let him bounce off. So in that regard, I think Jeff Jared's in the right, Like he's he's trying to allow these bullets to bounce off whatever armor he's built up over the years, which we would imagine would be pretty thick because he's been
in the game longer than just about anybody. And MJF you would see him sell big when Jeff Jared would talk about his mom and his dad and that's it, he's like, oh my god, could you So I thought in that regard, they they did their jobs. I just think it's tough, you know, like you'll see movies with like, you know, really special actors and oh, here's a better way to do it, like and I know you did.
Last summer, I had the least experience of all four of us, and so there were scenes that I watch in retrospect and like studying it and seeing where I could improve, where I'm like, man, you can tell they're all better than me. And I hated that. So I worked really hard at my craft so that I could catch up. And I think sometimes if you're not as strong as the other person on the mic, it doesn't always come off as a shine, you know what I mean, They just come off as that much better than you.
And that's a risk that you have to take as an artist. And sometimes it works out, and sometimes, you know, it looks a little like, okay, this, he's not as good as so, and so I don't want to like throw on the actors under the bus, so I'll just throw myself under the bus. But that's how I felt, and I know what you did. I was like, man, they've all been doing this since they were kids, and I've been doing this for three and a half weeks.
How am I going to pull this off? And there are scenes where I just didn't, and so I busted my ass to make sure that didn't happen again. And it's you know, it took a long It's been a lifetime work to improve and constantly try and get better.
It felt like that for me too, And I actually liked all the little insults, not just because they were funny, but I feel like they're pretty accurate. He's like, that's what, that's the last face you see before a wrestling company dies.
That was a great line, by the way, great line.
Like I said, he did the slab nuts thing, which I appreciated.
I love that he went after his wife. I thought that was all great.
And then the owen Hart moment felt like the big crescendo of like the insult of all insults, and then like it felt kind of real. I know it wasn't I know that he wouldn't have been able to do it without getting the approval of Double j.
I'm sure. And Joss is the best on the mic. Like it's just he's just really, really sick, and his brain is built to talk shit in professional wrestling. He was not meant to be a fucking finance manager. He wasn't built for construction, although he's a buff dude. He was built to be a professional wrestler. And he found his colleague and all of you need to find your calling too. All right, I'm done preaching I appreciate you guys for listening no Thursday show. As we said, I'm
very very sorry. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I hope that I'm back in my house, yes, podcasting and watching wrestling in a normal fashion, in a gentlemanly fashion instead of this ragamuffin fashion that I've been having to do it now. So I apologize for that, but I should be back home soon. They won't let us up up my street yet, and that's the National Guards, so I'm not gonna fuck with them. H and you
shouldn't either. On behalf, Oh, Jeff, tell the people where you're going to be this weekend before we say goodbye.
I will be in the Baltimore area in Timonium at a comedy club called Magoobi's, which is silly name, but it's a cool place. I'm very excited. Sacramento was great this weekend. Thank you for everyone to coming out. We sold out the shows and had show which was great, very very cool. Norcal's awesome. I've never spent much time in Sacramento was really really great.
Yes, so Magooby's.
Baltimore area, Tumonium, Maryland this weekend and Jeff dot Com for all all the other appearances. When I'm coming to your town.
That's Jeff I. I'm Freddie Prince Junior. Thanks for listening, See you jerks next week. This has been a production of Iheart'smichael Toura podcast Network. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.