Life Inside the WWE Jet

in you're new to it, go back. We've had a couple of guests and I tell a lot of stories about my time at the w w E. I was there post Get the f Out and uh, I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode because today is all about the w w E plane, gorgeous black with the red stripe. But we're gonna talk about stories on the plane today and I'll probably get sidetracked a little bit as well, and we'll talk about other random stuff. But without any

further delays, let's start the show now. Stumping up to the mic, the host for Wrestling with Freddy, Freddy jun, Yeah, aren't you guys. So to start this episode, we have to talk about Scooby Doo. I had to go to a press thing. The cast of Scoop, the whole cast had to go, and they flew us to Cancun, Mexico. And the international rules dictate that whatever state in America you crossed the border on on an international flight, you have to land at the nearest airport to go through customs.

So for a private jet, and this was I think Kevin Costner's jet and Kevin Costner's pilot, our closest from there was some small town in Texas, South Texas from Cancun. So we're coming in and it is turbulent is not the word. The winds are crazy. This plane is We felt like the Gilligan's Island ship, like the Chinese ship was that was us. So we're literally swerving back and forth like the Viking ship at the State Fair, and

you can't see anything out the window. Sarah's hand is on my hand and it's gripped tight like nails through skin. My left hand, I'm in the window seat on the left side, is gripped to the arm rest, my nails into its poor skin, and I'm looking out the window and all of a sudden I see the ground except not beneath me. I'm looking directly at the ground. The plane is about to land sideways on the left wing, and my face is about to go through the tarmatic.

And at the last second, I'm not exaggerating at I don't even I've never even told the story. At the last second, the plane corrects itself. This pilot was a jet corrects itself. And we were coming in hot. We came in, We came in hot, and we're sliding and slipping and the plane lands, no damage, no anything outside of you know, the six and a half years it took off my life from the scarring of my heart.

So we have to get off the plane. Everybody's freaked out, and now we have to get right back on the plane, take off through this weather, and and get back to l A. So I'm freaking out, like, yeah, I mean, I trust the pilot now more than any human, more than my wife. But still like we almost died. So we get back on the plane. We made it through customs, by the way, we were totally legit and totally legal, and we land in Los Angeles and I vow to never fly on a small plane again. It's just life

is too precious. So a few months later, I get this job at w W E. The very first plane that I have to get on isn't Vince's. I hadn't earned that that seat yet, right, But it's a tiny ass plane. I'm sitting on it and all I can see is the tarmac of I don't Laredo, Texas, whatever airport it was, and I see my death and I legit get up and there's other employees w W employees on this plane. I was like, yeah, I'm not taking this plane. I'm gonna take a train and I'm gonna

see you guys there. I'm out, and I d boarded the plane got off and they were like, yo, are you seriously? Like, I'm out. I'm not gonna be late the shows tomorrow. I'm not getting on this airplane. I don't tell anyone the story I just told you guys, because I'm not trying to be on this coffin with wings for another second. So I get off, take a train from Grand Central Terminal, not Grand Central Station, Grand

Central Terminal, and uh. I take the train to Virginia and we do our Monday night raw and everything's cool. The train ride goes so well that within three months of me doing this, there's an entire new plan in the writer's room where all East Coast trips, where the train right is four hours or less, the writers are gonna take a train. Uh that was me that pulled that off. I love trains, I always have, and all the writers did too, because you have way more room

to work when you're on the road. You're writing all the time, you're rewriting promos at two in the morning. You guys are writing in a laptop. They were not high tech back then. They were ghetto. I worked there, I think and oh oh nine oh seven something like that, so you get the idea of technology was not what it is now, and it's brutal. When you're on the train. You got a table. Forget that you have room and comfort, you have a table to work at. So all the

writers loved it and they stayed committed to it. And then my ask got promoted to the jet, which isn't promotion, but isn't because it's crazy on the jet too. So I got off the train and they said you're gonna fly on the jet and I'm sweating when they tell me, they go vince. Once you're on the jet, it's like, oh man, all right, okay, and just my my arm pits are sweating right now. And I ain't even afraid

of flying anymore thanks to Vince. Actually, you just kept making me do it till I wasn't scared of it anymore. So I get on the jet and the first thing Vin says to me when he gets on, he says, I heard you had a bit of a problem on the last plane, with a smirk like, yeah, man, I'm not I'm not big on planes. And this is who I tell this story too, and he goes, I don't worry. I got a better pilot than him anyway. So he uh, he's very much long before the pandemic, very anti germ.

And there's more hand sanitizer on this airplane than there are bottles of water. So everyone's sanitizing their hands and Vince finishes his and he holds out the sanitizer for me to sanitize my hands, and I go, oh, that's nice, and I put my hands out and he just starts squeezing the damn bottle and doesn't stop, and it's just it's just ounce after olence after ounce, and I'm looking at him and I'm not gonna move my hands, because I can't have him dump crap all over his plane

held get mad. So I just sit there and eyeball him. I don't even look in my hands. I just eyeball him the whole time until he finally goes uh and it's out. It's one of those small like pure l bottles. Right, It's finally out, and I have this huge glob of of sanitizer in my hand. So I walked back to the bathroom, slopping into the sink. I come back and he's chuckling, and he's just doing that to help me relax and uh, not worry so much about the flight.

I see him side on me a couple of times on the takeoff and landing and just kind of nod. It was really good to me. They were all really good to me. So we land and where I think it was probably Cleveland. This is during the Misses push. The stories I'm gonna tell you today are during the Misses push to his first w w E Championship at WrestleMania in Atlanta, where they did the giant white letters

all awesome for his for his entrance. He may have already been champ at WrestleMania or that was where he wanted. You'll you guys will remember, you have better You're better historians than I am. So we're flying to U. We're flying to Cleveland. I lived, thankfully. I'm here now talking to you, and I'm starting to relax a little bit. And the plane is no joke. It's it's work all

the time. I mean all the time. I remember once I opened my laptop and I had downloaded one of Richard Pryor's specials, Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip. This was after his accident. He had been humbled big time. And most comics when they record a special, they do it two nights in a row, and they'll edit between the two or just choose the best one. The first one Richard did side Quest. It bombed. He for whatever reason. My dad's manager was Richard's manager. So that's why I

know this story. I knew Richard very well, not very well, but I knew him. So it died and he was okay with it, but he was nervous. And they came out and did the second one, and it's the red suit that even jokes about. And he does the match, he lights the match, he goes, what's that Richard b running down the street that it's that special, and he just kills it the second night, and that was a way for me to just kind of like deal with the airplane because I didn't enjoy being on a coffin

with wings. So I open it up. I'm watching my ten minutes in and I feel this like firm thump on my shoulder and I turned around and Vince goes, what are you doing? What you mean I'm watching? Richard Perry goes, why we're watching WrestleMania. Yeah, from last year. Man, I saw it. He goes, yeah, well he's seeing that too. I go, yeah, this makes me laugh. He goes, come on, watch WrestleMania. So I legit have to turn off my laptop and watch WrestleMania from a year ago with with it.

Nobody else is watching it. He's making me watch it. So I turn it off and I watch it with him, and uh, we end up getting back and this is this, This is it every time, like he'll go over the Monday Night Raw script. Never never the smack Down. He wouldn't even I don't think he read it until the morning of SmackDown if he read it. But I will say this. I know a lot of actors who do, like TV actors who don't read their scripts. They just

read their dialogue memorize it. There's literally a saying in l A that goes, bullshit, bullshit, my line, my line, bullshit. I've heard it since the nineties. So not every It's not just Vince that does that. There's plenty of successful people that, God, I know what I'm doing, don't worry about it. We would always go over the raw promos everything he didn't like. And now you're rewriting on a

jet and it's not like it's a train. You don't have a table to work at, like everybody's bunched up together. They squeeze as many as you're legally allowed to get on the plane, and we all these massive laptops because it wasn't like it is now, and we're trying to, you know, rewrite promos. So I did not It's not the experience that you think it's gonna that you think

it's gonna be. So we uh we land and I started talking to to Roddy because I'm just when I as a kid, I just loved him so much, and we're chatting about life in the business, and he says, oh, your your dad was a stand up comedian. I oh yeah, he was Freddie Prinzi goes get the hell, and then he was oh, of course sorry, so oh yeah, yeah your name. And he starts talking to about my pops

and his love for stand up comedy. So he starts talking to me about how he compares doing a promo in the ring to stand up comedy, and he starts talking about Andy Kaufman, and he starts talking at which oh side quest check this out. My pops is the only dude to ever get Andy Kaufman to break character while he was in character. So this is the seventies. If you don't know who he is, looking up. Jim Carey made a movie about him called Man in the Moon.

There's probably some biographies that are more accurate. Jim Carrey is awesome though in the movie, if you want to check it out. But he did a lot of like risk ay comedy where he would just abuse people in the audience and be totally rude and disrespectful and say the most crass things and the people in the audience will get out. And this woman slapped him dead in

the face and he drops dead. On the floor and that's when the audience realizes the girl was a plant and she's in on the joke, and that's why he sold the slap so hard. And when unconscious and then he pops up and the crowd would just die laughing, and he owned them and he Andy had a great run with Jerry Lawler back in the early eighties I think it was, and they just crushed it. They drew huge numbers, huge money. People loved watching it because Andy

was They thought he was legit crazy. So the Melrose improv in Los Angeles, California. It's seventy four or five, I believe five, and Andy's on stage and he's tearing into this girl, I mean, just calling her every name in the book and just be rating her. And the crowd's getting hot. They're like, you know, getting mad at my dad, who was he had a father, but he was basically raised by by I don't want to disparage my grandfather, but basically a single woman, all right, So

he wasn't around very much. Shout out Carl brutal. But so my dad gets crazy angry. He looks in the in the room and he sees Andy just tearing the scroll apart, and he wasn't familiar with Andy's act, and my dad goes up on stage in the middle of his bit, grabs Andy and just shakes the shift out of him, and Andy starts screaming, Friday, Friday, Friday, It's just a bit. She's no, she's with me, She's with me,

and she's with me. And my dad like freaked out and he realized he just ruined a set and then literally goes to let go Andy, and Andy smashes himself into the fake brick wall and slides down onto the floor. My dad looks back and his buddy Tim Thomason tells me your dad's thought was, oh my god, I just killed Andy Kaufman. And then Andy popped up and got my pops and uh, which made my dad laugh but also pissed and uh, that was so anyway, that was

the side quest. Hey, you just leveled up. But Rowdy's telling in me how comedy is is a promo in the ring and Rowdy if you don't know who Rowdy Roddy Piper is. Hey, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Be you should seriously be ashamed of yourselves and see YouTube or just watch a cool John Carpenter freaky sci fi corporation Aliens take over the World kind of movie. It's called They Live. It's with him and get Here's

how small the World is. And the other actor in it is Keith David, this black dude who was the voice of Spawn on the HBO animated series. That was my dad's best friend. In high school. They went to that fake that Fame High school. I said fake because it's gonna have real classes. My wife went there the Fame High School Performing Arts whatever it's called in New York. They were doing, uh, you guys got two side quests. They were doing a performance of of Mice and Men.

Lenny and I was gonna say, Liney and Bruce. That's Lenny, Bruce, Lenny and whatever. George and my dad was talking about making I'm about to make it, man, I'm about to break big. Keith David's our David. Keith is telling me this story and he has that great low voice, and he says, one day, your father didn't show up for her for school, and then he didn't show up for rehearsal, and that's when we all knew your dad made it

and it was true. It was my dad got this gig in Chicago, and Richard Pryor saw my dad perform. Richard Prior discovered my father, by the way, and told his manager at the time, you know, you got to sign this kid, or you're an idiot. And so he signed him and the rest was history. So I tell you this story because Rowdy in like the next part of his life, or that final chapter of his life, I should say, because he's no longer with us rest and power. He became a stand up comedian and he

would do listen. He only had about five minutes of material that would that would get you. He would do ten sometimes well, so you know, he didn't get a lot of you know, comedy love from the clubs because it just wasn't at the level that you know, a

lot of the other people were doing it. But he would catch you with like two or three stories, and even if the crowd wasn't a wrestling fan, if if there could have been none in there, but he was such a beautiful storyteller that he would grab you and he would do these voices and he could own that crowd for a couple of minutes. And I went to see him one night with a buddy of mine. And it was actually at the Improv which my dad helped open back when when it first came out here in

Los Angeles. I'm sitting there with this executive producer from the Conan O'Brien show who loved wrestling and love comedy just like me. So we've gotten to a lot of both types of shows together. And uh, We're sitting there and we're watching him, and I'm almost crying. And it's not because it was so funny or so bad. It was just to see him doing what he didn't think he could do, but respected so much to the point

that he compared it to what he did. That's just one more person that that Rowdy Piper whose life Rowdy Piper touched, and not just as a kid, but as an adult too. And that's what these wrestlers are there artists. For me, it's it's it's the literal I've said this before, the literal blood, sweat, and tears on a literal canvas. And that's a massive sacrifice. Man. Guys like Mankind, Cactus Jack,

you guys always McK foley probably. I mean, that type of sacrifice is wild and for some people they can't watch it right. Meryl Street hates the UFC. She doesn't understand it's mixed martial arts and there's an art and there's a beauty to a perfectly executed technique. You're just either hip to that form of art or you are not hip to that form of art. I like She Devil. I thought Meryl Streep was great in it. No one else did. Nobody saw that movie. So which one of

us is wrong? You know what I mean? Nobody? They're picassos that IM like. It's that doesn't really do anything for me? How dare you sorry? I like Modri anymore. So that was sort of the the impetus is that the right word for me to even do the podcast is? I really wanted to showcase what I learned about the wrestling business, and what I loved most about the wrestling business was that it's all art. It's not always it's

not always good. But I've seen episodes of Law in Order where I was like, I've seen movies where I was like, yeah, I wouldn't ever watch that again. I've walked out of movies. You have to so careful with your criticism, although a lot of it is valid. I'm just saying careful, So I'm riding on the airplane now, and give me a day off. By the way, I got raw off so that I could uh just kind of deal with my own crap. So I get back in the office and wait, can I even tek? Okay?

I can talk? So free Bird calls me into his office. Michael hayes, I can tell it, and he says, uh, Freddy, I gotta ask you a question, and he looks concerned. I go, what's up? Man? He goes, you didn't, uh, you didn't take a poop on Vincus plane, did you? I said, what are you talking about? He says, there's no poops on the plane. I said, of course I didn't. What are you talking about, man, I didn't even use the restroom. He goes, well, someone did, and I have

to find out who. And he's not laughing when he says that. Okay, he's piste off, Like what kind of job assignment is that? I gotta find out who took a ship on my boss's plane. Freaking the best agent in the company. I come up with the greatest finishes. At least when I was there, all the fans favorite finishes were either free Birds or belle ages and usually it was a combination of both, and it wasn't anyone else's. And he's having to find out who took a poop

on the plane. Now we'll say this. He never found out who it was. But I did I know exactly who it was because the dude ratted himself out in my hotel room where a group of writers were all hanging out and a couple of wrestlers, and literally as soon as he said it, two of the other writers were in there, and he jumped up and he goes, if you tell anyone, anyone, I swear to God. And we all had a good laugh. So remember there's no poops on the plate. I've been there, and uh, I'm writing.

And there was this other writer next to me who I didn't talk to about this episode, so I won't say his name. And he's talking about this show and I looked over at him and he goes, yeah, man, I love this show. I can't even say the name of the show. You'll know in a second. And I said, dude, I I wrote that. He said what. I go, yeah, man, I wrote that episode. He was no, you didn't. I probably swear to god I didn't I didn't write it under my name. It's called ghostwriting. And he goes, what

are you talking about? I go, where you make more money ghostwriting than selling your own damn scripts some of the time. I said, I literally the only reason I know this. I don't know the show. I've never seen it, but the episode you're describing is literally the episode that I wrote. He said, what the hell are you talking about? I said, I wrote under a ghost name. It is called William Ramirez. William Ramirez was my Papu's name in Puerto Rico, and he was I think I've told you

about him before. He was big, like a pro wrestler, was a butcher in San Juan, and nobody wanted to I was writing these scripts and I couldn't even get him read because of like the businesses perspective on Scooby Doo. Right, a lot of you saw Scooby Doo and you loved it kids, but the studios they looked at it much different. Right. It was the original script. I got in trouble for saying this a while ago, and then James and echoed it a few years later, and everyone was like, oh,

the courage. So the first script was very much PG. Thirteen for Scooby side quests and uh, and that's what got everybody excited about it. A lot of the innuendo and the hints that were there over the years, they James wrote them in in a very slick way, right. And then the studio wanted to make the movie g rated to allow or pig, to allow all kids to go without any like parents freaking out and stuff. And they were worried about drug references and and homosexual references

and things like that. So as a publicly traded company, I guess it's a legitimate concern that the w W has never feared it. But we all land in Australia and all of a sudden we have a different script, and I'm gonna say oho, A couple of the actors were like yo, Well one of them was me, I want to say. The other one was was like, yo, is in what I sawt en up for? And uh, we were good soldiers and and we did our we

did our thing. But because of that, after that movie, a lot of people were interested in my scripts before it, and then afterwards they were like, I just does kids movies now, we don't want to read it. So I legit used a fake name, William Ramirez, and I sold like three scripts in one year, and that I put my name by the way, one of the deals went away when they found out that it was me. All of a sudden, they had all these notes that they didn't have the week before because the guy from Scooby

wouldn't know how to write a script. So anyway, I'm sitting there and I'm writing this segment and its first SmackDown and he goes, what are you writing? And I said, I'm doing this thing for for Jeff Hardy And he said what is it? And I said, I was told not to say anything. So Freebird had come up to me a couple, uh, probably weeks prior, and he said, uh, DJ has an idea, wants to try to make Jeff Champ talking about Jeff Hardy and it's not gonna happen.

They have to understand Michael brought Matt and Jeff Hardy into the w W E. They're his boy, they're his babies. Okay. He has fought for them. I mean he fought for them every damn day that I was there, and from what I was told, he fought for them every damn day before and after. He loves those guys. He would kill for those guys. He would lie in court. Will he probably in court for any of us, but he would like in court for those guys. And a loyal

freebird is the baddest bird owner. Okay, so he's telling me, look, it's not gonna happen. But a lot of my promos had been getting over with the boss, and he thought maybe I would have the best shot at getting a Jeff Hardy Championship story to fruition. I tried to take the more understanding approach that I had on my father at the age I was then and apply it to Jeff so to get into that when I was young, I hated my dad like I would get so mad

at him for the choices he made. He did drugs, screwed around on my mom, messed up a lot in every aspect of life, and then on my mother's birthday, but a gun to his head and the courts ruled it an accidental shooting. A lot of people call it a suicide. Um. Some people have said that there was a note, even though there wasn't a note, But that's just how these stories kind of take on the life of their own um, and the courts ruled it what they ruled it. The point is I didn't want I

didn't want to understand my father at all. And then I met this woman who is still one of the most influential people I've ever met in my life as far as the effect she had on me. And her name is Pam Greer, and if you don't know who PAYM. Greer is, you need to google her. In the seventies, as far as the power of beauty went, she had more of it than any other woman on the planet.

Every man loved her. That wasn't racist, and even though probably did, and every woman respected her because she portrayed strength. If you've read her biography, If you haven't, you should. She talks about my father a lot, and it she talks about Richard Bryor and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the three loves of her life. I started to speak to her and I learned a lot more about who my father was.

My family, of course, would try to protect the child right and when you're a junior, you have to remember you basically exist as a statue to honor that which walked before you. It's very difficult any junior out there can relate. You usually are pushed or leaned somehow into your predecessor's profession. You're compared to the value of the name that came before you all the time. And I think Pam knew that. And instead of protecting me, she was very honest, and she told me about how much

she loved my father, why she loved my father. She talked about what a fool he was with money, the types of choices and mistakes he made. And in the seventies, a lot of people made those choices and mistakes, but a lot of them are just choices. The great M. V. P Will tell you that choice is not mistakes. First of all, just meeting Pam Greer, and I'm not trying

to be funny, but any man will understand this. I was like, yeah, I mean, it's so he's you know, so he so he fooled around, you know, it's Pam Greer. And I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, but there's just something amazing about her, you know, there's just something captivating about her. And they were also they had a relationship before he even knew my mother as well. So she starts breaking it down, and she breaks down the need for artists to medicate. You just have to

hope they find the right medicine. And your father never did. And that hit hard, so hard that I wanted to write it into a wrestling storyline, but I did, And it started off with a number between him and m v P, who's uh still a dear friend of mine to this day, and I hope to have mine as a guest. So I don't want to share too many MVP stories because I'd rather him tell him, because he's just he's a better storyteller than I am. You know, people think I made movies in the nineties and oh

how cool this and that. You know, I had two friends in high school too, okay, not three, not five, not two, and a bunch of acquaintances. Two friends. I was a dork. I didn't know who I was. I didn't have girlfriend. I didn't I broke up with a girl in the sixth grade because she kissed me on the cheek. That's how I called her. Name was Laura Eichelberger. Shout out, Laura, we love you girl, Um, sorry for breaking up with you. That was me, not you. But I was not I'm still not cool. I mean, I'm

just lucky that Sarah laughs in my stories. That's the only reason she keeps me around. But if you think about it, the two guests I've had so far both played Dungeons and Dragons. One of them is a psychopath about it, and one of them loves it more than anything on earth. So do I you can. I gonna have more guests you can find out played d D two and they're gigantic, beautiful, awesome professional wrestlers. But a

lot of artists are the outcasts. I think there was a line in a Robert Downey Jr. Movie that f Gary Gray directed, and I can't remember the name, but he said, it's like someone on the East Coast grabbed it by the edge, shook the ship out of it, and all the insecure, weak people ended up in Los Angeles. And that's true because it's a city of dreamers. So it's all the dreamers from these small towns that feel

that they need something bigger than that. It's all these dreamers from other places that go Hollywood's or New York Is where my dreams can come true and they have the guts and the courage to go after that. That's the wrestler's life. Now it's a little different with n x T. You're getting paid to learn how to wrestle.

Now that's a that's a privilege. Okay, I'm not getting paid to go on auditions to act, and a lot of wrestlers aren't getting paid to go, you know, on the road, drive eight hours to get somewhere to do a match. That won't pay for the gas that they used to get there. But they need the work, they need the experience that that takes courage. It takes courage to express yourself honestly or going personally. Now to express yourself honestly, um a lot personally, but to have the

courage to do that is really hard. I'm telling you. Earlier in my career I didn't. I still I look back on my career and I've only seen three things I've done because I don't like watching movies when I know the end and I've already read the script. But I wish I could change every single moment in it. Even if people love it. It still makes me mad because I became a better actor the older I got, the more of my baggage I let go. And it's the same thing in the wrestling business. That's what the

promo classes were all about. Fail here and wake up the next day, Okay, and know that I still love you and I'm still going to write for you. And I didn't send a video of your of your bad take to the boss. Everything's cool, and it allows you to fail less when the pressure is on. Like we said with with Xavier Woods, there's no such thing as luck. There's no such thing as luck. It's just about being

prepared when the opportunity presents itself. And the people that went out and party the night before and at ten a m. The next day they were still in bed. Well, that's how I booked a lot of my movies, was waiting for that actor to not show up and lie about my name. But yet that's me. Yes, I'm Ryan Philippie. They you very much. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. But you gotta take a shot. That's the more of

today's episode. You gotta take a shot. I hope you guys like listening, but I'll speak to you guys soon. H This was a very like heartwarming episode, not one of our funnier ones, but I hope it was still meaningful to you and I hope it connected to you in some way, and if it did, you're a wrestling fan because wrestling just connected with you. So thanks for listening to Wrestling with Freddie. This has been a production

of I Hearts Michael podcast Network. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H