#286: Wrestling With Disappointment

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. Thanks for holding.
00:00:04
Speaker 2: Hello, Alex.
00:00:04
Speaker 3: I'm a first-time caller.
00:00:05
Speaker 4: I'm a huge fan.
00:00:06
Speaker 1: I love your work. I love you. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. I'm Dan. I'm not Jordan. No, you're Marty. I'm Marty. Hey, we're a couple guys who are sitting here, and we're going to drink some novelty beverages and not talk about Alex Jones today, necessarily. Dan? Dan? Dan? Dan? Welcome. It's good to be here. It's a treat to have you.
00:00:26
Speaker 2: Look, first of all, it's a treat to drink this Dasani Sparkling Pear Kiwi.
00:00:30
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
00:00:31
Speaker 2: First of all, if you're a drink maker and you're not doing those tall, thin cans.
00:00:34
Speaker 1: Like Red Bull. Love it.
00:00:36
Speaker 2: Diet Coke's like, hey, bud, we're getting on that, too. It fits in your hand real nice.
00:00:39
Speaker 1: It just looks good. It feels good. It feels expensive. It feels important. I should tell you that Marty DeRosa filling in for Jordan today is sponsored by Dasani. No, no, no.
00:00:50
Speaker 2: But when you handed me this one at first, I was afraid. And a lot of times with.
00:00:54
Speaker 1: Because of the pear kiwi.
00:00:56
Speaker 2: Novelty beverages. I was afraid it was going to taste like suntan lotion.
00:00:59
Speaker 1: Right. Which happens a lot. That's why I avoid anything that has a coconut. Yeah. Or a lot of tropical type stuff. I just kind of steer clear of. Any sparkling waters with. Yeah. Your kiwi. Sure. Coconut. Something. It's like. it's going to taste like suntan lotion. It has that risk for sure.
00:01:16
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:01:17
Speaker 1: I got screwed recently, uh, because I'm, I'm such a sucker for anything that seems like, Ooh, that's different. Yeah. Um, and so I bought a 12 pack of, uh, I don't remember what the brand was, but it was sparkling water, orange vanilla. And I was like, Oh, I've never had a vanilla sparkling water. This is going to be crazy. And it was kind of gross.
00:01:36
Speaker 2: So buys that are like this in the like red, I just call them red bull cans. Uh, They have a coconut one.
00:01:43
Speaker 1: Right. No, pineapple. Pineapple. That is out of this world. I mean, it's a great flavor. Out of this world. Well, I'm glad that we both are passionate about our seltzer waters. Oh, yeah. So Jordan is still in Mexico. He is on vacation. Or is he? That's what I've heard. Yeah. I have no evidence of it. He hasn't sent me any Instagram pics of him on the beach, but I trust him. And so he's on vacation. And so I could, you know, you and I, we discussed something that we wanted to do. Sure. Which was while Sami Zayn, pro wrestler extraordinaire, was injured, we talked about doing an episode of That's What They Want You To Think, our old conspiracy theory podcast, and holding on to it for once he comes off the injured reserve to celebrate his return. To the WWE. But we fucked up the timing. We did. And Sami Zayn is back from injury. And we have not recorded that episode. He beat us to the punch. He did. And he's back with a new attitude. He's a bad boy now, right? He's a real, even badder than he was before. Yeah. It's good to have him back. Sure. I like what he's doing. Do you like the mean streak? I do. In a guy who's supposedly so happy-go-lucky and skanking all over the place to ska music. I do. Bailey's next, I'm predicting. Bailey's next. You think that the hugger is going to go evil? Yes, very much so. Interesting predictions. And we were.
00:03:03
Speaker 2: Talking before we started recording about sort of, I don't know how you feel, but my relationship with, conspiracy theories is not what it once was.
00:03:13
Speaker 1: Well, this is one of the reasons why it's kind of difficult for us to get together to do an episode of That's What They Want You to Think anymore. Because, you know, that was a show where we ostensibly sat down and we talked about some sort of conspiracy theory or paranormal type thing. I would research it and you would be like, oh, what the hell? Sure. Because I would always... The reality would always be disappointing behind the sort of fictional versions we have in our head. Yeah. And you never get any.
00:03:41
Speaker 1: Like finality, any resolve. Never.
00:03:44
Speaker 2: Also, a lot of it is like, well, if you break it down, it's actually this happened and this happened and this happened. It takes kind of the sexiness away from it. But and also I feel like, yeah, I'm just it's like with all the new conspiracies and you just you're like, well, that's not true at all.
00:04:00
Speaker 1: But people believe. And then I'm like, did I believe stuff that wasn't true? It introduces a real discomfort. Yeah. And I just feel like they're not fun anymore. Yeah. The other thing, too, I think about the conspiracy theory stuff is that, like, we now know where a lot of it is gone. You know, like a lot of those conspiracy worlds have funneled into, like, really ugly online worlds. Yeah. And become stuff like QAnon and shit like that. Slenderman. Those girls almost killed a kid. You take the murder out of it and Slenderman is great. I tell you what. What do they call that? Spaghetti weird. What do they call that?
00:04:34
Speaker 4: What?
00:04:35
Speaker 1: Creepypasta. That's it. Creepypasta. Okay. I'm getting old, man.
00:04:39
Speaker 2: My girlfriend Sarah is always telling me, like, you're saying shit wrong. Like, I'm saying wrong shit all the time. I find myself in that same thing. I'm so out of touch.
00:04:46
Speaker 1: You hear me over here? Scary spaghetti. No, creepypasta. Creepypasta. It's scary spaghetti from now on for me, by the way. 100%.
00:04:53
Speaker 2: I'm now– I've traded most of my conspiracy theories for a more gentle side of YouTube.
00:04:59
Speaker 1: Abandoned malls. I'm in the Deadmau5 series. Oh, wow. Big into the dead mall series. I didn't know that was a thing. That sounds great. It's so fun. So it's just empty malls? Dead or dying malls.
00:05:08
Speaker 2: He'll go to some that just have maybe all the flagship stores but one are still open.
00:05:13
Speaker 1: Maybe there's an Auntie Anne's that's still left? Very much, yes.
00:05:17
Speaker 2: Or he'll be like, which happens with a lot of these malls now, is churches move in.
00:05:20
Speaker 1: Church is chicken or the church? No, no, no, no, no.
00:05:22
Speaker 3: Oh, okay.
00:05:23
Speaker 1: Church, church. Church is church, church. I guess that makes sense though. Low rent probably.
00:05:27
Speaker 2: That's what– what is that presidential candidate, that Yang Gang guy?
00:05:31
Speaker 1: The Andrew Yang? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 2: He's a big proponent of let's make these malls into more than– like more community centers and stuff like that.
00:05:40
Speaker 1: And I was just at a mall. Having no awareness of what that plan entails? Yeah. I'd listen to that pitch. That sounds like something you could do. Schools, teach people skills, things like that. Lifelong learning.
00:05:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I was just in a mall, like a fancy mall up north, in the North Shore here in Chicago.
00:05:59
Speaker 1: In Canada? No, North Shore, fancy. If you say up north, I just assume it's... The North.
00:06:03
Speaker 2: Shore here in Chicago, where all the athletes that play on the Bulls and the Cubs, they all live up there.
00:06:08
Speaker 1: And this mall.
00:06:09
Speaker 2: Um, was interesting because they, a lot of the stores that had left like big stores, like a lot of the department stores are closing and they have like a virtual reality place or.
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Speaker 1: Like one was like a store that was gone.
00:06:21
Speaker 2: They replaced it with like a dispensary, like a music store. No, not that a music place where like they had a concert stage. So like your kids can go there and like for birthdays and like karaoke and, and play, you know, rock stars on stage and stuff like that.
00:06:35
Speaker 1: Sounds fun. Experiences.
00:06:36
Speaker 2: I don't know that stuff I watch instead of, Who killed Alyssa Lamb.
00:06:41
Speaker 1: That's probably a better use of your time. It seems like uplifting to some extent as opposed to you hiding under your covers, freaked out by it. I used to get real high and think somebody was going to knock on my door.
00:06:51
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:06:52
Speaker 2: You expressed that a lot. Because I stumbled upon something.
00:06:54
Speaker 1: I know too much. I knew too much. Remember when my car blew up? I was like, I don't know, Dan. Yeah. You quit the show because of it. I quit the show. My car blew up. Thanks, Ford.
00:07:03
Speaker 2: My car blew up. And it caught on fire and it didn't blow up. It wasn't like a casino or anything.
00:07:09
Speaker 1: We were doing our conspiracy theory. That's what they want you to think. I think we were doing it once a week. And so I come to the Lincoln Lodge that you're on, I believe. I think you were doing the show that week. I show up and you tell me what?
00:07:23
Speaker 2: Dan, my car blew up. I got to quit the show.
00:07:27
Speaker 1: I can't do the show anymore. My car blew up. I didn't have the, like, sort of rudeness to tell you at the time that I thought that that was insane. Yeah, well, I wish you would have. I just respected your wishes. Look, when you're in it, you're in it. Sure.
00:07:39
Speaker 2: And a lot of these people are in it.
00:07:43
Speaker 1: It's easy to be sucked into those sorts of thoughts, too. There's a guy... I have my moments. There's another YouTube guy named Wang. W-H-A-N-G. The Wang Gang? Asian... No, different Wang. Asian, long hair, cool dude. And he does a lot of, like, these.
00:07:57
Speaker 2: Remember on 4chan years ago when this guy posted this and then he kind of talks about it and breaks it down and stuff like that.
00:08:04
Speaker 1: Oral history of 4chan? Yeah, pretty much.
00:08:07
Speaker 2: So I'm looking for more gentle stuff lately with all.
00:08:11
Speaker 1: The shit out there.
00:08:13
Speaker 2: It's so funny because I feel like the last time we did it, the world was such a different place.
00:08:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the last time we actually did an episode is we tried to restart things and do the Denver Airport. Oh, yeah. Maybe.
00:08:24
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:08:24
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely sure, but I think what we've been doing lately is much more fun. Yeah. And that is me disappointing you by talking about times that various wrestlers have been on InfoWars. Yeah. I have crushed your feelings about Rowdy Rowdy Piper. Oh, that hurt. Yeah. And then not so crushing talking about Kane, the wrestling mayor. Someone else. But you expect him to be on InfoWars. Sure.
00:08:47
Speaker 2: Someone told me recently, oh, man, I was just watching a Mean Gene Okerlund shoot interview. If you don't know what a shoot interview is, it's where they sit an old wrestler or wrestling personality down at a hotel room. It's just a tight shot on their face. And they take them through their career and ask them a million questions.
00:09:05
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a deposition.
00:09:07
Speaker 3: It is.
00:09:07
Speaker 1: It really is.
00:09:08
Speaker 2: Some are more fun at it than others.
00:09:10
Speaker 1: And the idea is that they're telling the truth. Secrets. Outside of character. Yeah.
00:09:16
Speaker 2: There was a window of these shoot interviews early to mid– like your 2000 to 2005. five to ten maybe, a lot of these wrestlers were fucked up in these. I think that was the big thing.
00:09:31
Speaker 1: Even on drugs. Give them drugs. Give them booze. Get them fucked up. Oh, no.
00:09:34
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
00:09:34
Speaker 1: You're luring them into.
00:09:35
Speaker 2: There's one where, like, the Sandman is asleep through half of it.
00:09:38
Speaker 1: Oh, Sandman. I mean, all the usual suspects just real fucked up during these. You want to know about Triple H? I'll fucking tell you about Triple H. Oh, God. But I was watching a.
00:09:47
Speaker 2: I mean, Gene Okerlund won, and he is so charming, so funny.
00:09:50
Speaker 1: He's not fucked up?
00:09:51
Speaker 2: No, he just had a gin and tonic by his side.
00:09:54
Speaker 1: All right. And, uh, classy. And then the guy goes, he goes, he, you, you, you didn't vote for Trump. Did you?
00:09:59
Speaker 2: And he goes, of course I did. And I was like, ah, Jean, not a big deal.
00:10:03
Speaker 1: Whatever. I'm going to let it slide. He is mean. Yeah.
00:10:05
Speaker 2: Trump's in the fucking old fellow hall of famer.
00:10:08
Speaker 1: True. The WWE.
00:10:10
Speaker 2: Uh, somebody, uh, my buddy, Jimmy Lee was, uh, he, he, he was like, Hey, I read this story about macho man.
00:10:18
Speaker 1: Oh no.
00:10:19
Speaker 2: And you're like bracing for, cause they just did a vice documentary about macho man and Elizabeth.
00:10:23
Speaker 1: I heard Hogan had some feelings about that.
00:10:25
Speaker 2: He goes, didn't have all the facts should have asked more than the people you did. And they go, yeah, we asked you and you didn't, you were, you didn't want to do the show. And then he blocked them. Also, you're an asshole.
00:10:34
Speaker 1: Also, you're a racist fuck.
00:10:35
Speaker 2: So, uh, the, in the research they had done, they were kind of goofing on him on this podcast. And then somebody wrote in and they go, uh, They were like– and that's the thing too. It's like sometimes they're like, he's got to be racist or whatever, and they're like– and this black guy messaged them, and he's like, yeah, actually, no. Macho came to our high school, and they were doing the Pledge of Allegiance. And there were certain parts of it he wasn't down for, and he's like, this country's done a disservice to African Americans, and they owe you a big apology.
00:11:02
Speaker 1: Oh, shout out to Macho Man. Macho! Woo! Bonesaw! Hell yeah. Killing it. There you go. That's great. This episode is not going to be about Macho Man showing up on InfoWars.
00:11:11
Speaker 4: No.
00:11:12
Speaker 1: So we're safe from that. Well, thank God. That'll never happen. It was really, really tough for me to find another wrestler who has been on InfoWars. Yeah. I mean, we could have gone with Jesse Ventura. Yeah. But I will tell you that he's been on too many times. Yeah. And it's just, you know, it's no good. Do you think there's shows that Jesse said no to? No. I don't think he's ever said no to a show. I bet we could get him. I bet you could. I bet we could get him. I bet.
00:11:36
Speaker 2: I bet you could spark a fun friendship with him.
00:11:38
Speaker 1: And let me tell you. And then he passes away and then you write a book.
00:11:42
Speaker 2: Like, you know, I really got to know Jesse in the late 2019.
00:11:46
Speaker 1: It was a wonderful friendship. Or I could say that he beat me up at a bar or something like that. Or I beat him up at a bar. That was the American Sniper thing. He won that lawsuit. Not entirely sure how that shook out. But so I was like, Jesse Ventura is no good. He's on too much. Yeah. So I'm like, I don't know. I can't really find another wrestler. So what I was thinking is like, what about Professor Griff when he was on? But then I realized we already kind of talked about that. You did. Like, ah, shit. That's no good. And I was like, wait, Billy Corgan. He's wrestling adjacent. Yes, he is. The owner of the National Wrestling Alliance. Exactly. I was like, we could do that. But then I realized we've already covered that as well. And so I was like, we are really up against a brick wall. Yeah. But thankfully, I found something that blew my fucking mind. Oh, no. And we'll get to that in just a second. But first. Yes, Dan. Got to give a shout out to a couple of people who have signed up and are supporting the show. And we really appreciate. So first of all, Mike Down. Thank you so much. You are now a policy wonk. I'm a policy wonk. Thank you, Mike Down. Mike Down.
00:12:46
Speaker 2: I'm always very impressed when... Names sound like they could be wrestlers.
00:12:50
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, sure.
00:12:50
Speaker 2: Not to make everything about wrestling. I'll do my best not to. But I do love a name that sounds like that's a wrestler right there. Because I always think it's funny. So when Razor Ramon and Diesel left the WWF at the time to go to WCW, they can't be Diesel and Razor.
00:13:06
Speaker 1: That's owned by the WWF. Yeah, they got those character trademarks.
00:13:10
Speaker 2: So they weren't sure what they were going to do. They originally were going to call.
00:13:13
Speaker 1: Him Axel and the Bad Guy. And then somebody was like, eh. And then that's not as bad as it could be.
00:13:19
Speaker 4: Right.
00:13:19
Speaker 2: And then finally someone just goes, well, what's their real names? And they go, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash. They go, yeah, just call him that. Those are really good names. But like, what if it was like, what are their names? Like Scott Hall and like Irv Dinkowitz.
00:13:33
Speaker 1: Like, ah, fuck. Okay. Well, we got half of it. Yeah. Well, there's that guy, Hugh Morris, right? That's a terrible fucking name. When Austin meets him for the first time and he's like, Hugh Morris, that's supposed to be funny. No.
00:13:46
Speaker 3: What?
00:13:47
Speaker 1: I hated that. I hate that name. Yeah. Drives me nuts. Well, you know his old name. No. When Vince Russo... Humongous? Close. Very close.
00:13:57
Speaker 2: Vince Russo, who was a writer, got brought over to WCW, and he's just an idiot.
00:14:04
Speaker 1: Right.
00:14:04
Speaker 2: And his idea with Hugh Morris was to think of a really... And Vince Russo, most of his stuff had to do with sex.
00:14:14
Speaker 1: Think of a name for... Hugh Morris. Hugh Jess. Hugh G. Rection.
00:14:23
Speaker 2: A man was paid so much money to come up with Hugh G.
00:14:27
Speaker 1: Rection. That just seems like, I mean, it's just coke. Yeah, and then they were.
00:14:31
Speaker 2: In a military group, and then they called him General Rection.
00:14:35
Speaker 1: Okay. And they had a lady with big boobs called Major Guns. Of course. Yeah. And thumbs down to all of that. But thumbs up to Rob. Thank you so much. You are now a policy wonk. I'm a policy wonk. That is not Robb Stark, because he died at the Red Wedding, if you recall. I don't know if you watch the new Game of Thrones. No, I don't watch. I wouldn't give any spoilers. Too intimidated to start it. All right, that's fine. But I'm watching Barry, and I love it. Okay. The bald guy on Barry? Wonderful.
00:15:02
Speaker 2: I have no idea what that even is. Well, someone at home does, and they go, you're right. He's the most delightful person on television.
00:15:08
Speaker 1: But the most delightful person that I can think of is Kayla. Thank you so much. You are now a policy wonk. I'm a policy wonk. Thank you so much, Kayla. Next, Wallacey Ponk. Thank you so much. You are now a policy wonk. I'm a policy wonk. Thank you, Wallacey Ponk. Two joke names on this so far already. I like it. I appreciate it. And then finally, I'd like to say thank you to somebody who donated on a little bit of an elevated level. We appreciate it very much. So Liz D., thank you so much. You are now a globalist. I'm a policy wonk.
00:15:38
Speaker 6: Four stars.
00:15:39
Speaker 3: Go home to your mother and tell.
00:15:40
Speaker 4: Her you're brilliant.
00:15:41
Speaker 1: Someone, someone, sodomite sent me a bucket of poop. Daddy shark. Thank you so much, Liz D. We appreciate it.
00:15:48
Speaker 2: Now, that just answered one of my, as a policy wonk myself.
00:15:52
Speaker 1: Right, right. And a longtime listener. I always wonder, is Jordan doing that live or is it recorded? Yelling over the drums. Yeah, yeah, because he always does the bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. Right, right. Black Caribbean accent. I always, and you told me, No. That's him saying it live. It's clean audio. He just says it over the recording every single episode. I love it. I love it. We're creatures of habit to a certain extent. Sure. With me saying we appreciate it oh so very much, those little verbal tics that we have. For a long time, I called everything reasonable. Those are things that people point out. Someone did a.
00:16:30
Speaker 2: Super cut of Joe Rogan going, yeah, my buddy– My buddy this, my buddy that, my buddy this, my buddy that.
00:16:36
Speaker 1: He's got a lot of friends. He's got a lot of friends. So, Marty. Yes. I told you. I found something. All right. Who am I going to lose faith in today, Dan? I don't actually know if you're going to lose faith in anybody, but it is crazy that this thing happened, and the surrounding circumstances are pretty wild. So this actually doesn't have any Alex in it. Oh, okay. This is taken from the InfoWars nightly news. Oh, where I get all my news. Of course. And this comes to you circa early 2013. Okay. And this is a report where we got the anchor of the InfoWars Nightly News, Darren McBreen. Ah, the voice of America. Indeed, yes. What is his name? The most trusted newsman. The most trusted name in bullshit news. The Edward R. Murrow of our times, Darren McBreen. Okay. He comes in and he sets the stage for what we're about to listen to.
00:17:23
Speaker 5: The WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment, has jumped on the bandwagon demonizing Tea Party Americans as racist. They created a new villain, Jack Swagger, who is a loudmouth constitutionalist and racist who receives fan mail from Alex Jones.
00:17:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, right. So we have set ourselves in, you know, you can tell what time period we're in now. Yes. This is when Zeb Coulter and Jack Swagger have become characters and are about to feud with Alberto Del Rio. Yes. For the title. For the world title. Yes. So, Marty, do you want to give people a little bit of this, the storyline of this as it happened in wrestling? Yeah.
00:18:09
Speaker 2: So, at the time, Jack Swagger... They liked him. He was a quote-unquote real athlete. They liked those college wrestlers.
00:18:17
Speaker 1: Big, tall. Beef. Big beef dude. Piles of beef.
00:18:20
Speaker 2: From Nebraska or something like that.
00:18:23
Speaker 1: Corn-fed beef.
00:18:24
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:18:24
Speaker 1: Corn-fed colossus. Was his character before just sort of like American? The all-American American. Right. Jack Sparrow, because he was an all-American. So that's what he came from before he made this pivot into the character that he would be in early 2013.
00:18:38
Speaker 2: Now, in this day and age, and even back in 2013, managers have been phased out.
00:18:44
Speaker 1: Your Bobby the Brain Heenan's, your Mr. Fuji's. The Honky Tonk Man. No, no. He was in Jimmy Hart. Jimmy Hart. The Mouth of the South, Jimmy Hart. Excuse me.
00:18:51
Speaker 2: They've all been phased out. So nobody really has managers anymore.
00:18:53
Speaker 1: Except. But Jack Swagger, while Jack.
00:18:56
Speaker 2: Swagger's unfortunate circumstance.
00:18:57
Speaker 1: Was Major Lisp. Uh-huh.
00:19:00
Speaker 2: And you just, in wrestling, it's just, it doesn't play.
00:19:04
Speaker 1: Like, unfortunately. I think it can play if you're a bad guy because then you're annoying the audience. But even that is kind of disrespectful. It just didn't.
00:19:13
Speaker 2: I could tell Vince McMahon was like, I can't have this guy on my show talking.
00:19:16
Speaker 1: That's the thing, too.
00:19:17
Speaker 2: When I say that, I'm saying it through the lens that I know Vince McMahon and his lunacy operates.
00:19:22
Speaker 1: As was my comment about him being a villain because that's annoying. That was through the lens of WWE creative.
00:19:27
Speaker 2: They've done the fake stuttering gimmicks and stuff like that. So they're thinking, wow, what can we do with Jack Swagger? So they grab Dutch Mantell, former... Wrestler, former booker, guy who kind of decides how things go. Great interviewer. The walrus of a mustache. Looks like a Tea Party member. Crazy mustache. They name him Zeb Coulter, obviously.
00:19:50
Speaker 1: Ann Coulter.
00:19:51
Speaker 2: You get the Zeb. He used to be Uncle Zebadiah.
00:19:54
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:19:54
Speaker 2: So you get the Zeb, his old name, Ann Coulter. Okay, she's a right-wing lunatic. Clearly, the WWE's not very subtle.
00:20:01
Speaker 1: No. They're not very subtle.
00:20:03
Speaker 2: So it's like if they're going to bring in I mean they had Mohamed Hassan as the Middle Eastern extremist instead of he was an Italian guy and all sorts of fun stuff like that. So they bring them in. They're cutting the promos basically.
00:20:18
Speaker 1: We don't want anyone taking our jobs and all this stuff. They have a– A real mirror of the rhetoric that comes out of the right-wing speakers.
00:20:28
Speaker 2: They have the Semper Fi flag in the background.
00:20:30
Speaker 1: The Gadsden flag. Yeah.
00:20:32
Speaker 2: They put their hand– I want everyone in the building to put your hand over your heart and repeat after me.
00:20:37
Speaker 1: We the people.
00:20:39
Speaker 2: Now, in wrestling, when you have a fun chant and you say it every week and drill it into people's heads, when they're at TV– What do you think they want to do, Dan?
00:20:49
Speaker 1: Chant? They want to chant it along with you. Yeah. So unfortunately– The road dog could get people eating out of his hands because everyone knew the fucking chant. Yes.
00:20:58
Speaker 2: So what happens is all of a sudden the bad guy who's cutting promos about this Mexican man taking our jobs and our titles and they shouldn't be over here. And now repeat after me and you have 13,000 people going, we the people. And they went, oh, so what they normally do when the when the heat gets a little too hot is they pivot and they start adding other people.
00:21:24
Speaker 1: Oh, well, that's Cesaro. He's a foreigner. Why? I don't know. And then eventually they went down with the real Americans. Yeah. No, no, no. They were. Oh, my God. I'm blanking. Yeah.
00:21:35
Speaker 2: What the heck were they called? You might have to look it up. I can't remember what they were called. But then they put Del Rio with them.
00:21:41
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
00:21:41
Speaker 2: Which is a thing that wrestling loves to do. It's like, well, if we're bad, why is he with them?
00:21:47
Speaker 1: They were. What were they called? So they added the former enemy. Yeah.
00:21:51
Speaker 2: Which happens in wrestling all the time. And it's kind of like, oh, how can we be bad if he's with them?
00:21:57
Speaker 1: It was the real Americans. Oh, the real Americans. Okay. Cesaro and Jack Swagger. The real Americans. How dare you doubt me? I'm often wrong about things. Hogan is the real American. That's true. You would think he'd have a trademark on that. Yeah. And at the time, I know it was getting... And Cesaro is Swiss, right? Yeah, the Swiss Superman. Yeah. So it was getting... Why is he the real American? He's Swiss.
00:22:15
Speaker 2: Well, you know, that's a thing with wrestling too, especially back in the 80s.
00:22:20
Speaker 1: There's no need for character consistency. No. People pledging their allegiance to other countries, be it for money or for.
00:22:26
Speaker 2: This country's wronged me.
00:22:29
Speaker 1: Ted DiBiase comes in and gets your sovereignty bought away. Yeah, yeah.
00:22:33
Speaker 2: I mean, you had Sergeant Slaughter, the Iraqi sympathizer.
00:22:36
Speaker 1: Sure, sure. I remember that.
00:22:37
Speaker 2: You had Don Carnotal with the Russians. You had a lot of people who would turn their back on countries.
00:22:43
Speaker 1: Or just free agents. I don't care who pays me the most money. See, I think what you're describing, though, in this storyline is like after the point we're at in this clip. I think we're still at the point where they are seen as bad guys. They're still– this is new. This is fresh. I think it's– yeah, it's fairly fresh.
00:23:02
Speaker 2: The other thing which really, really gets Vince McMahon's rocks off is when– Outside of the WWE, they're being talked about. Not like John Oliver, but like this being, you know, people on Fox News are like, oh, they're going too far. They're just like, oh, yeah, keep talking about us, baby.
00:23:18
Speaker 1: We love it. We love it. That business strategy might come up a little bit later. Oh, you think so? Yeah. Someone might point out that this is a cynical strategy that Vince McMahon uses. Now, it's so ironic that you bring this up because there's a wrestler in NXT who Oh, no. I heard about this. Donovan Dijak or Dijakovic. They keep changing his name. They change his name.
00:23:40
Speaker 2: He's cutting these kind of what can be construed as white nationalist promos.
00:23:45
Speaker 1: Right.
00:23:45
Speaker 2: Which is like, you know, they might have done a thing of like, let's just test this out at a non-televised event.
00:23:53
Speaker 1: See how it goes.
00:23:54
Speaker 2: See if we can get away with this. See if we can get away with it. Because they want to claim like we mirror society.
00:24:00
Speaker 1: Right. And they've done that before. They've also done it. They had like DX do blackface. That was right. That was timely. Yeah. The Nation of Domination. Sure.
00:24:11
Speaker 2: Which were black militants in 97-ish to 98, 99.
00:24:16
Speaker 1: I don't see it being so crazy for them to have a white nationalist character. I don't want them to, but at the same time, I was over at your place recently watching the NXT takeover in New York, this last one. Brooklyn. And Walter. Yes. The European wrestler. Austrian. He strikes me as a bit Nazi-ish. He definitely. And that is not an accident.
00:24:38
Speaker 2: My girlfriend, Sarah, who I do my wrestling podcast with, I was introducing her to Walter.
00:24:42
Speaker 1: And she was like, what is he doing? That was the exact same thing I asked you. Because, I mean, his group is Ring Kampf. Yes. I mean, Kampf means struggle, right? I mean, mine Kampf is my struggles. It definitely is a little like, hmm. Yeah.
00:24:59
Speaker 2: And I think that's the thing with wrestling is it's like subtle or they'll be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we never said Nazi.
00:25:04
Speaker 1: That's you projecting that on him. If he starts Zeke Hiling or something like that, then we're in trouble.
00:25:09
Speaker 2: Fox contributor JBL, he got in trouble for– goose stepping in Germany. Uh, I got in a little trouble for that guy's an asshole, but big time, but, uh, they love, yeah. Pushing the envelope like that and being like, well, going back to the Muhammad Hassan character, if you ever watch those opening like vignettes, they used to introduce wrestlers through these vignettes, little mini commercials for the wrestler. And they brought Muhammad Hassan and, uh, and Sean Daivari as his manager in again, uh, you know, uh, they brought them in after nine 11 and, Maybe a year or two after. And at first, it was kind of like, hey, man, we haven't changed who we are. You guys changed the way you look at us.
00:25:50
Speaker 1: And it was kind of interesting. It was a mildly progressive storyline. Yeah, it was real interesting.
00:25:54
Speaker 2: But then they brought him in, and it was just like, the music is exactly like the music in Team America.
00:25:59
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, oh, here comes the evil bad guy. And I mean, just.
00:26:05
Speaker 2: Everything about that is just cringeworthy if you look back at it now.
00:26:08
Speaker 1: The WWE has a tendency. You know how the universe tends towards entropy? The WWE universe? No, no. Oh, the actual universe. Oh, I'm sorry. The WWE universe, too. Yeah, yeah. The universe tends towards entropy, and the WWE universe tends towards minorities becoming villains. Sure. Without a lot of careful attention. Yeah. That story will end up being told if you're not careful. Yeah. Well, with– Do you see that? I mean, even with the Zeb Coulter and Swagger stuff.
00:26:36
Speaker 2: But the past WrestleMania, Kofi Kingston won the title. Kofi Kingston, an African-American wrestler. And a lot of people were talking about how years ago, Booker T was in a program with– a feud with Triple H leading into a WrestleMania match. And it was very– they were showing his mugshot. Jerry the King Lawler was saying all these jokes about he's a criminal, he's a jailbird.
00:27:01
Speaker 1: Right.
00:27:01
Speaker 2: And it was very much, you know, the thinly veiled racist stuff of like people like you don't beat people like me.
00:27:09
Speaker 1: And you were like, well, they let Booker win then. I'm like, nope, Triple H beat him. It was crazy. Yeah. I remember that being a very like, wow. Yeah. Really thought that should have gone the other way. I remember we all were just like, oh, that's gross.
00:27:24
Speaker 2: And WWE has a fun thing of going, just wait and see how everything plays out. That's their, like, I don't want to talk about it. Nothing's going to change.
00:27:31
Speaker 1: Just wait and see how... We haven't done everything. Just wait and see. The fact that that with Booker T and Triple H was so fucked up made me all but certain that Kofi was going to win. They literally had to let Kofi win. It would have been so fucked up. It would have been the craziest thing ever. Until that time, the only African-American WWE champion was The Rock. And, I mean.
00:27:57
Speaker 2: Uh, that he won the title how many years ago and he's Samoan and black, you know what I mean? So it's just like, and it was very important for, I was really blown away by how, uh, moved a lot of my African-American friends and African-American wrestlers were when Kofi won. It was like, I know it's wrestling and it's fake, but this is such a big deal.
00:28:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It's representation. It's visibility. It's important. And it's not real. This could have been done. This could have been done so long ago. That's the other part of it. Yeah, I have a buddy who used to write for WWE. This is storytelling. I have a buddy who used to write for the WWE, Brian Mann. And he tweeted out.
00:28:34
Speaker 2: He goes, you know you could have just made someone the champion a long time ago, right?
00:28:39
Speaker 1: It isn't like the Cubs finally won. That's what I always say why.
00:28:42
Speaker 2: I love wrestling is because we wouldn't have had to wait this long for the Cubs to win.
00:28:46
Speaker 1: And it would have been awesome. You know what I mean? But, you know. Yeah. So we've gone down a long road here. Sorry. Let's get back to the real American. So Zeb Coulter. Zeb also came out on a little scooter. Right. Not at first, though, right? No, no. Yeah.
00:29:02
Speaker 2: He was always scooting. Maybe not in those vignettes, but when he came out, he was always scooting.
00:29:07
Speaker 1: I like that hover around. Yeah. So I can see the world kind of thing.
00:29:11
Speaker 2: I wonder if– because, I mean, he might have been the right guy or it might have been a coincidence because– After this, he was let go and then went to Impact Wrestling, and their slogan at the time was, make Impact great again. And it's like, eh, I don't think this is the slogan you got. I remember at WrestleCon, I was interviewing their panel, and I was like, I don't know if this is the strategy we want.
00:29:30
Speaker 1: This might not be a winner. And it didn't last long. So they are introduced as these sort of xenophobic types. Yes. And they're bad guys. to begin with.
00:29:40
Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
00:29:42
Speaker 1: And then they start getting popular to the point where they do start getting a lot of people who are in that sort of right-wing world liking them. Yeah. And it gets so bad that the two of them have to release a video where they explain, we are characters. Yeah. We are doing this to create a response. That's when you know. Ideally for you to boo us. Yeah, that's when you know. Because this is fucked up stuff that we say. Then it's like. Oh, no, no, no, no. I'm Dan Friesen. Right.
00:30:09
Speaker 2: The mauler would say that, but not Dan Friesen. That's when you know. I've never seen anybody, especially in the modern times.
00:30:18
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Something like that still happens. Yeah.
00:30:20
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:30:20
Speaker 1: It still happens.
00:30:21
Speaker 2: They went over to Saudi Arabia, which is another fucking story.
00:30:25
Speaker 1: Very messed up.
00:30:25
Speaker 2: And Sean Daivari, who I mentioned earlier, who was with Muhammad.
00:30:27
Speaker 1: Oh, that's right.
00:30:28
Speaker 2: There was that him and his brother. came out and did a bit, and then they had to be like.
00:30:32
Speaker 1: Oh, we're sorry. Because they came out with, like, Iranian flags.
00:30:35
Speaker 2: They said they were Iranian and stuff, which they're not, and they were.
00:30:37
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, yeah. Those moments are real weird whenever wrestlers have to be like, hey, I don't want to be killed for this. It happens. Or I don't want to encourage something really dangerous. Yeah. We have crossed a line.
00:30:51
Speaker 2: There's a famous one in ECW back in the mid-' 90s. where they crucified the Sandman. Raven crucified the Sandman. I hate to hear that.
00:31:03
Speaker 1: I love the Sandman.
00:31:03
Speaker 2: And Kurt Angle, who was fresh out of the Olympics, who was Olympic gold medals for wrestling, was flirting with coming into pro wrestling, and they were like, hey, come to ECW.
00:31:13
Speaker 1: We'll show you the ropes.
00:31:14
Speaker 2: We'll get you in the business. And he saw that and was like, fuck this. I don't want anything to do with this. If you show me on this show, I'll sue you. And Paul Heyman had to send Raven out, and he's like, Hey, it's Scott Levy, the character. I play the character of Raven. I didn't mean to really crucify the guy. His heart was not in it at all.
00:31:32
Speaker 1: So funny. But that's when you know. I'm sure there's old wrestlers who are like, you never do that. You never do that. You take the heat. You take it, baby. I don't know what I would do. That's what we call heat. But the characters that they're complaining about or that Darren McBreen is complaining about, got so fucked up in terms of the response that they were getting that they had to do that. They saw that as an appropriate time to break character and try and help people understand this is storytelling. You're not supposed to like us. Yes. This is fucked up. So that's what's got to be in InfoWars bonnet. That's the story that they're covering. But it's not just Darren McBreen who's going to cover this. They've got a special interview. Oh, correspondent? Well, there's a correspondent who's going to interview somebody. And when I heard who this person was, it blew my mind. Okay.
00:32:26
Speaker 5: InfoWars reporter and former wrestler, bionic Dan Badondi, well, he got a chance to sit down and talk with another former wrestler, Val Venus, about this latest propaganda campaign that portrays Americans who oppose big government as domestic extremists and even terrorists. Here's Dan Badondi.
00:32:47
Speaker 1: So we got Val Venus. Hello, InfoWars. I love it. I can't believe that Val Venus appeared on InfoWars. Talk about male vitality. They missed that opportunity. It was right there on the table. If he was willing to go on, he was willing to cut an ad for them. Yeah, Val's another one of those guys you would always hear back in the day with Kane that were.
00:33:11
Speaker 2: Libertarians.
00:33:12
Speaker 1: Oh, is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:33:14
Speaker 2: He's big in the pot business. He's in the cannabis industry now.
00:33:17
Speaker 1: Probably a Bitcoin guy maybe? Yeah, all that stuff and more. So his right to censor character might have been more accurate than his male porn star character. I think there's still some of the porn star character.
00:33:28
Speaker 2: I saw him wrestle at a show this Mania weekend for Joey Ryan's penis party.
00:33:32
Speaker 4: Oh!
00:33:33
Speaker 1: And he had some interesting things to say. I'm sure he did. Yeah, he's kind of a lunatic. So those of you who don't know out there, back in the 90s. Yes, Attitude Era. Val Venus was a character who was a porn star. He would come out. Hello, ladies.
00:33:48
Speaker 2: And then he jazzy kind of like fake porn music.
00:33:51
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then he would come out and talk about the big Val Bosque.
00:33:54
Speaker 4: Yes.
00:33:54
Speaker 1: Which was his dick. Yes. And then wherever, whatever town they're in.
00:33:57
Speaker 2: You know, like in Chicago or They had the Sears Tower, but the Velbowskis got, you know, whatever.
00:34:04
Speaker 1: Deep Sears power. Sears power. Yeah, it was not very subtle. Right, let me put my Chicago hot dog in your deep dish. And there's no ketchup on this hot dog, ladies. I remember a storyline where he sexually terrorized Ken Shamrock by fucking his sister. Yeah, Ryan Shamrock. It was a gross character.
00:34:25
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:34:25
Speaker 1: But it was one I enjoyed back when I was younger because it seemed so titillating.
00:34:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, a Yakuza-type group almost chopped his penis off.
00:34:33
Speaker 1: They almost chopped the pee-pee off. Choppy chop your pee-pee off. Right.
00:34:36
Speaker 2: Because he had slept with one of the guys' wife. sisters or daughters.
00:34:40
Speaker 1: Also a very racist uh portrayal.
00:34:43
Speaker 2: Of japanese people mr haguchi-san yes um or yamaguchi-san uh he would come.
00:34:48
Speaker 1: Out in a towel strip it off uh his finishing move was the porn pretzel.
00:34:52
Speaker 2: The money shot well the big splash was the money shot right and.
00:34:55
Speaker 1: The submission move was the porn pretzel yeah um and then at some point he found god and joined the right to censor so Which was a group that believed that the WWE was becoming too ungodly and they needed to get rid of all obscenity.
00:35:11
Speaker 2: This ties in with kind of what we're talking about here with when shit gets hot, the WWE has to call an audible a lot of times. Be it them or the USA Network is like, hey, man, this is getting a little crazy. You might have to kind of pump the brakes on this a little bit.
00:35:23
Speaker 1: So you had Godfather, who was a pimp.
00:35:25
Speaker 5: Yes.
00:35:25
Speaker 1: You had Val Venus, who was a porn star. Yes. I can't remember who else. Ivory was in it, but she wasn't that bad before. No, not at all. Stephen Richards. Yes. And I can't remember who else. If there was anybody else. Bull Buchanan. He was a cop. He was a cop.
00:35:40
Speaker 2: Also named after a real racist cop in the past who was in charge of the shit in Alabama or something like that.
00:35:45
Speaker 1: Sweet. Anyway. Wrestling is so fun.
00:35:49
Speaker 2: There's so many racist things when you think about it.
00:35:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much all of it.
00:35:53
Speaker 2: So that mirrored, they were called the Right to Censor, the RTC. But at the time, there was the Parent Television Council, the PTC, who was giving them a lot of shit.
00:36:04
Speaker 1: Oh, so they were kind of making fun of people saying they should clean up their act.
00:36:08
Speaker 2: But also cleaning up their act at the same time.
00:36:10
Speaker 1: Cowards.
00:36:10
Speaker 2: And it was like, you don't want us to censor you guys, right? And it was like, Turning your favorites into these– they'd all wear white. They'd all dress like black pants, white dress shirts with short sleeves and black– yeah. And they were all like, don't do that. If Sable came out in a bikini, they would put a potato sack. Don't do– don't show your body. And basically trying to get you to want to not like people who want to censor people. And so it was like– You know, dual-purposed or whatever.
00:36:38
Speaker 1: It was very strange, yeah, dynamically. But Val Venus became a part of that, and then I kind of lost track of his career. But good to know he's still around at the Joey Ryan penis party. Yeah. That's great.
00:36:47
Speaker 2: Val's available for bookings. Hit up Joey Ryan.
00:36:50
Speaker 1: As evidenced by his 2013 appearance with Dan Badondi, he is not very picky about his appearances either. No, no, no. So Dan Badondi has popped up in the news recently. mostly because Alex Jones is currently being sued by Sandy Hook families for his defamation. Oh, you don't say. How's that going for Alex? It's not very good for him and his harassing coverage of that tragedy. In his deposition, Alex tried to play down Dan Badandi's involvement with InfoWars, even implying that he wasn't really an employee. Alex even said that he told Badandi that if he didn't stop claiming that he worked for InfoWars, Alex would have to come out and say that he was a, quote, bad person. I'm not entirely sure what that means. I don't know how that's... You're a bad person. I'm going to tell everybody you're a bad person. That's very childish. Sure. Like that sort of thing. It's like, if you don't stop claiming you work for me when you're doing fucked up things, I will tell everyone you're mean. Yeah. I'll show you. Yeah. You can easily find Dan Badandi's LinkedIn page if you want to by Googling it. And if you do, it appears that it hasn't been updated since 2016. His username, though, is InfoWarsDanBadandi. Oh, shit. And his job title is Reporter at InfoWars.
00:37:58
Speaker 2: It was going to be, I don't work at InfoWarsDanBadandi, but it was too many characters.
00:38:03
Speaker 1: Dan's Twitter account has been suspended, but a snapshot on the Wayback Machine shows that as late as January 15, 2017, Dan Badandi had InfoWarsReporter listed in his bio. His account's link, you know, the homepage link, is to InfoWars.com, and his header is just an InfoWars logo. Wow. Now he has a new Twitter handle, The Real Dan Badondi, where his bio says, quote, former InfoWars reporter, and he has 27 followers.
00:38:29
Speaker 5: Hey.
00:38:29
Speaker 1: In March 2014, Dan Badondi testified in front of a Rhode Island state house meeting about guns. He introduces himself by saying, quote, my name is Dan Badondi. I work for InfoWars.com. It's the number one alternative media in the world. He goes on to yell at the panel for, quote, exploiting the deaths of the children at Sandy Hook, at which point he's told to leave the building. Yeah.
00:38:51
Speaker 2: When you first started saying that, I thought it was going to be a rap. My name is Dan Badandi. And I'm here to say.
00:38:56
Speaker 1: I report the news in a different way. Bad way. Falsely. After the Boston bombing, Dan Badandi showed up and yelled at everyone around who had listened to him that it was a false flag and identified himself consistently as working for InfoWars.
00:39:10
Speaker 2: How'd that work in Boston? Because I know the other guy went to Sandy Hook and he was kind of like, this is fake.
00:39:15
Speaker 1: Well, that's the same guy. Oh, this is Dan Badandi. Yes.
00:39:17
Speaker 2: Big fan of his work. Big fan of his work. I wonder how that works, walking around Boston and being like, this didn't happen.
00:39:23
Speaker 1: It got some pushback. I found an article about a guy who yelled back at him about how people need. to protect the First Amendment, but people like you and Alex Jones are fucking assholes. Isn't that crazy that someone yells something like that and you're like, well, okay. In July 2015, he showed up at the Salty Brine State Beach in Rhode Island harassing beachgoers about an imagined bombing that took place on the shores. He had an InfoWars microphone in his hand in the video. That same year, in 2015, Dan Badondi made a submission video to be on the sixth season of WWE's Tough Enough. Hell yeah. He did not get selected for the show, although it's too bad he didn't, because if he had, we would have gotten a weird crossover between an InfoWars reporter and a pre-Velveteen dream Patrick Clark.
00:40:08
Speaker 4: Wow.
00:40:08
Speaker 1: Which would have been very interesting.
00:40:10
Speaker 2: And Hulk Hogan was the judge on that.
00:40:12
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah. Well, he was for a little bit, then he had to go away. That would be just a weird firestorm of strange things. Uh-huh. All this is to say... that Dan Badondi is very much an employee of InfoWars, and Alex was perfectly happy to employ him in whatever capacity he did for years. He let this idiot run around and bother people at y'all at state house meetings because it created controversy, attention, and content for InfoWars, because Alex never gave a shit about the consequences of his or other people's actions. And here we find him interviewing Val Venus, which I couldn't have imagined. He's clearly got to be a wrestling fan, right? You tried to be a wrestler. Okay, so he probably knows Val from.
00:40:50
Speaker 2: somewhere or reached out to him or something. This is when Twitter and wrestling were, you know, like wrestling Twitter was starting.
00:40:54
Speaker 1: To become pretty popular.
00:40:56
Speaker 2: So I assume, you know, Val was very accessible on there and I bet Val's an info.
00:41:00
Speaker 1: Warrior with or without Twitter. I bet Val's pretty accessible.
00:41:03
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure his, his DMS and his, uh, address is very open.
00:41:07
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's still surreal to me, though. Like, I never would have imagined. I mean, I don't know as much as you do about, like, this back, like, locker room stuff where, like, you're saying that him and Kane were two guys who were known as libertarians. Bradshaw, Kane, him, like, very much. Yeah. I just, you know, I never would have thought that of the big Valbowski. I never would have thought the day would come when I would see him as the other wrestler who I would be able to find. He's Canadian also. He's Canadian. Oh, good.
00:41:35
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:41:35
Speaker 1: Not that it matters. I just thought I'd throw that in there. So here we go. We're going to start this interview. And after you hear this interview beginning, I will lay the scene for you of what's going on.
00:41:48
Speaker 6: Hi, this is Dan Bedano reporting for InfoWars Nightly News. In recent news, the WWE created a brand new heel gimmick. Jack Swagger and his manager, Zeb Coulter... who preached the Bill of Rights, spoke to Madison Flagg, and talked about the illegal immigration problem going on in this country. And their opponent happens to be a Mexican wrestler who they're facing for the World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania, Alberto Del Rio. Two weeks ago on Monday Night Raw, During Swagger's match, commentators Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler joked about how Swagger receives bags of fan mail from Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Alex Jones, and then again highlighted Alex Jones. Could this be a demonization of the Liberty Movement? And today we're going to get our guest's take on this. He's a former WWE superstar, Val Venus.
00:42:35
Speaker 3: And Mr.
00:42:36
Speaker 1: Val Venus, how are you doing today, sir?
00:42:38
Speaker 4: I'm doing very well, yourself?
00:42:40
Speaker 1: Okay. So he sounded like a Val Venis doll. You pull the string. Yeah. Hello, ladies.
00:42:45
Speaker 4: Hello.
00:42:46
Speaker 1: So I need to lay the scene for you. First of all, what we get from that is that you're right. Dan Badandi watches fucking more wrestling than you.
00:42:54
Speaker 2: Dan Badandi sounds like 90% of the wrestling podcasts out there.
00:42:59
Speaker 1: This would be like Dan Badandi's. Welcome to Dan Badandi's wrestling world. I'm Dan Badandi. We're going to break down Raw, SmackDown and NXT. Here we go. Mm hmm. It would be a better use of his time than this year. Sure, sure. Than harassing victims and yelling about guns and shit. Yeah. So he has a laptop that he's sitting next to, and Val is on Skype on this laptop. Okay. So there's a video camera that is facing Dan Badondi sitting next to a laptop. Okay. And if you look closely, there's a microphone sitting next to the speaker on the laptop. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Lo-fi, baby. They don't even have a jack to hook the thing into some sort of audio recorder or anything. That's why Val Venus sounds terrible. Okay. Like a doll you pull the string of. Yeah. Because it's just a microphone next to a terrible speaker on a cheap laptop. Sure. Now, if you pay even closer attention, you notice that behind Dan Badandi, you notice that he's in a room that has glass windows. Okay. And if you look through those glass windows, you realize he's at a public library.
00:44:02
Speaker 2: I think you're going to see he has like wrestling posters on the wall or something. Val, when this is over, if we could just talk about wrestling a little bit, I'd really appreciate it.
00:44:10
Speaker 1: He is in a private room at a public library. Of course. With a microphone next to the speaker on a laptop. And if you pay even closer attention, you notice that right behind him is an old man Googling. Hand-pecking the keys. How does this work? It's too far away to actually see what's exactly going on, but it's an old man sitting at a computer. So I'm left with the... idea that maybe he doesn't have a camera, and the library has a camera that he can use, or he doesn't have the internet at home, and he's using the internet at the library in order to make this interview with uh val bosky happened i believe all of these i don't know what it is but whatever it is it's not good yeah it's sad it's not screaming professionalism or journalism or uh or anything like that no it's tough and then also the quality of it is not good yeah like dan badandi sitting there with a mic next to the computer like if i were alex i'd be like look i know that val venus is a huge star yeah this is a big get and i'm glad that you came through for the nightly news uh-huh The quality of this is no good. You know what? We got to get you Zoom. You're going to have to have that. I'll call myself. I'll call myself. Also, Mr.
00:45:24
Speaker 2: Badandi was trying to make it seem like Alex was the top reference. They kept beat Glenn Beck.
00:45:30
Speaker 1: It was 100 percent. Glenn Beck was the king of the castle at the time. Glenn Beck was red hot.
00:45:36
Speaker 2: And this was when he was riding high, crying, writing on chalkboards and stuff like that.
00:45:42
Speaker 1: The Tea Party wave had been very favorable to him. Absolutely. He hadn't embarrassed himself yet. Well, I mean, he had, but he hadn't paid the price for it. Not yet. And then made that public apology to her after Trump got elected, and then become even worse than he used to be now.
00:45:56
Speaker 2: Yes, he just dropped a hot one on the streets with that Notre Dame.
00:45:59
Speaker 1: That guy is a fucking asshole. Yeah, but again, Alex, no, they weren't talking about you. This is classic InfoWars behavior, is turning Alex into the main story. Maybe Glenn Beck is far more popular than him. Yeah.
00:46:11
Speaker 2: I very much remember it was basically they wanted Fox News' attention.
00:46:17
Speaker 1: Totally. And Alex, I'm sorry, bud. You weren't one of them. And not to give it away too much, but Val Venus understands that. And he explains as much a little bit later. And it's why no one should be mad about this. You know what they're doing. You know the game. They're carnies. So in this next clip, Val Venus talks about how he's sick and tired. of this demonization of the Patriots.
00:46:39
Speaker 6: Now, I just want to get your take on this whole thing going on with demonizing the Liberty Movement and all that. As you've seen in the WWE, what's your take on that?
00:46:51
Speaker 4: You know, it's one of those things that's kind of, it's irritating.
00:46:54
Speaker 1: Oh, I also forgot to mention that the Skype video of Val Venis, he's in a car. Sure. He's driving somewhere while videotaping himself talking to Dan Badandi.
00:47:02
Speaker 2: Look, guys, if neither of you are going to take this serious, what are we doing here?
00:47:07
Speaker 4: I mean, you have so many hardworking people in the liberty movement right now at the grassroots. They're putting their time and their effort into really developing a meaningful movement. And it's an important movement. It's a very important movement, especially for America. And to see that there's a constant demonization over and over and over again.
00:47:28
Speaker 1: So he's not happy about that. But my response to that would be like, That's the equivalent of some liberal or someone on the left being mad about Daniel Bryan's eco-character. I don't think anyone would because they'd get, like, this is parody, this is storytelling, this isn't demonizing the environmentalist movement. It's just a character. These people are such snowflakes. For sure. It's so funny how it's like. Oh, my God. Look at that.
00:47:53
Speaker 2: They're trying to turn everyone against us with a wrestling character. It's so on brand with, like you said, they're the true snowflakes in a lot of these senses.
00:48:01
Speaker 1: It's so sad. Oh, you're so upset. Why are you mad, Val? Also, this patriot movement that is based on the United States Constitution is so important, especially for America.
00:48:13
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:48:13
Speaker 1: How would it be important for anyone else? Yeah. It's very much a localized– I don't know.
00:48:17
Speaker 2: I think Val might have been one of the wrestlers also who– Val, I think Edge, Christian, JBL, they all moved to the Bahamas so they didn't have.
00:48:26
Speaker 1: To pay taxes. That makes sense. Yeah. If he has that libertarian streak, that's certainly– Yeah, they all moved to the Bahamas so they didn't have to pay taxes. He does say something– I remember like Derby at one point was like, what the fuck? You all moved to the Bahamas? And they're like– Technically. Technically I live in the Bahamas. Yeah. Great. Thrilled. Thrilled that they're interested in engaging with the sort of social contract and taking care of each other. So Val Venus in this next clip gets into talking a little bit about the storyline that's going on with Swagger and Del Rio. And it turns out he likes it. Okay. But the way he expresses him liking the story is a little unsettling.
00:49:05
Speaker 4: I love the storyline. You know, the racist, you know, is going to take on the Mexican at WrestleMania. So I like that storyline.
00:49:14
Speaker 1: It's controversial. but Things like the Gadsden flag, for example, in the background.
00:49:20
Speaker 4: I mean, a swastika would have been a lot more appropriate in that storyline. But to actually take something that's been adopted by the liberty movement, by certain segments of the Tea Party, I mean, that flag is meant to be flown in the face of oppressive government. It's not meant to be flown at the border telling Mexicans, hey, don't tread on me. That's not what it was for. It was to tell government, don't tread on me. So to see that flag being used in the manner it's uh it's being used by wwe is disappointing to say the least.
00:49:52
Speaker 1: I have a couple pieces of very bad news for valvina hit him dan first is uh that flag does fly at the border when people are you know yelling at immigrants and stuff like that and various elements of the tea party using it for that purpose it's been co-opted yeah and also uh my further piece of bad news is There are segments of the Tea Party that have adopted the swastika.
00:50:12
Speaker 2: Don't worry. They'll zehile you and stuff like that. They're not afraid to do that.
00:50:17
Speaker 1: Don't worry, Val. They haven't let you down. He might be a little bit prescient there. You might have been seeing the future, Tiny.
00:50:21
Speaker 2: And also what you'll notice with a lot of wrestlers. So at this time, Val was probably, probably, I mean, I would say he might have still been. So in wrestling, they'll say he had one more run left in him. You'll hear oftentimes wrestlers who think they got one more good run left in him. They won't go hard on the WWE. They'll be very, you know, very political.
00:50:44
Speaker 1: Oh, because they want.
00:50:44
Speaker 2: Very like, oh, well, you know, they want to go back.
00:50:47
Speaker 1: They all want to go back. They all want that one last run.
00:50:50
Speaker 2: So a lot of times, if you watch shows, when something happens in wrestling, you know, like Nancy Grace, when Chris Benoit killed his family and then himself, they had wrestlers on. Some who are, you know, part of the company, of course, were pro-WB.
00:51:03
Speaker 1: This is a bad guy who did a bad thing. It's not our fault.
00:51:06
Speaker 2: But then you had other wrestlers on there who were like, WWE is the worst. They just– they know they're never going back. And then you have other wrestlers who are like former wrestlers and they're like, hey, you probably have some bad stuff to say about them.
00:51:16
Speaker 1: And they're like, nope, great company. Always done right with me. Can't– and it's like, oh, OK. And that's usually an indication that they want to keep that avenue open. Sure, they want to keep that door open. You never know. I mean, it makes some sense, especially in that period of time where the WWE was the biggest game in town. The only game in town, really, for making big money. The only game in town. So, I mean, just from that perspective, they're almost being held hostage by this corporate entity that is abusive and does, in some ways, contribute to the deaths of folks. Sure. Yeah, that is a bummer. Well. WWE kind of sucks. But you're hearing that from Val Venus? A little bit. He didn't go real hard on him. He praised some things.
00:51:59
Speaker 2: I like the storyline of a racist trying to Mexican. I mean, that's just Val being a little dumb.
00:52:04
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
00:52:04
Speaker 2: Because, I mean, he really didn't even have to say racist.
00:52:08
Speaker 1: Nope. That's true.
00:52:10
Speaker 2: You know, it's more xenophobic than racist if we're choosing.
00:52:15
Speaker 1: I'm not positive I remember the entire end goal. Yeah, yeah.
00:52:20
Speaker 2: And I mean– There's some gray areas between those two things.
00:52:23
Speaker 1: There's definitely gray areas.
00:52:24
Speaker 2: I'm sure there were definitely things that were like, ooh, that's a little racist.
00:52:26
Speaker 4: Right.
00:52:26
Speaker 2: And it's crazy to think that there's like writers in a meeting being like, did we get.
00:52:30
Speaker 1: Too racist on that one? Are we still– I wonder if they actually do have that conversation. Sure, I bet they do. I find that hard to believe.
00:52:38
Speaker 2: I bet they're arguing over verbiage all the time because they script the promos so heavily now.
00:52:44
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:52:44
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think there's probably a lot of stuff where it's like, yeah, can we say this? Hey, USA Network, can we say it now? Okay. I don't know. So I've been teasing or not teasing, but I've been telling you that Val gets what's going on in terms of like, why are you using Glenn Beck's name and that sort of thing? Because you know that you want Glenn Beck to talk about you. And so he explains exactly what Vince McMahon is doing vis-a-vis that. And there's an interesting irony that as he's explaining this phenomenon... and what Vince wants, Dan Badondi is doing exactly that. Oh, nice. And Darren McBreen is facilitating that by playing this interview that took place at a public library. Yeah, in a car. Yeah. In a parking lot. Right. Outside a gym. But they're giving Vince McMahon exactly what he wants by doing this and making a big deal out of it, making a story out of it.
00:53:35
Speaker 2: And make no mistake, too, for Val Venus, this is kind of like his audition, probably in his head of like, hey, if I knock this out of the park, I'll be on InfoWars all the time.
00:53:43
Speaker 1: I would beg to differ just because of how little he seems to give a shit.
00:53:47
Speaker 2: Well, maybe he doesn't know what this could turn into for him. Maybe he's kicking himself going, I would have done better on– I have no evidence that he ever actually made the big times. Look at Brodus Clay. He's a Fox News contributor. I almost did some of those videos. He's on Greg Gutfeld, the red eye. He tells people he's getting his own show because he's so popular. I mean, he's much better than a lot of other people on that show. He has a lot of charm. I watched a couple of his man-on-the-street bits that he did, and he actually had some pretty funny lines.
00:54:19
Speaker 1: I'll give him that. God bless him. So here is Val Venus explaining the marketing strategy that InfoWars has fallen for, hook, line, and sinker.
00:54:28
Speaker 6: During Jack Swagger's match on Monday Night Raw two weeks ago, commentators Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler, they said he gets tons of fan mail from Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, then they mentioned Alex Jones.
00:54:40
Speaker 1: Name twice.
00:54:41
Speaker 6: What are your thoughts on that? I mean, is there something like they're trying to attack right-wing conservatives, radio talk shows?
00:54:48
Speaker 1: Gorilla Mark, let's see if we can.
00:54:50
Speaker 3: Do this on national TV, mention Glenn Beck, mention Rush Limbaugh.
00:55:02
Speaker 1: Which is great for the marketing.
00:55:03
Speaker 4: But again, it goes back to, okay, now we're going and pushing for profits over the real, serious, very real concerns here in America today. We're printing money out of thin air.
00:55:16
Speaker 1: That's got to stop.
00:55:17
Speaker 4: And it's going to.
00:55:17
Speaker 1: Stop one way or another. Absolutely. Uh-oh. He's against the Federal Reserve. Who would have thunk it? Yeah. So, I mean, that's just a clear, like, I know the game, of course. Dan Badondi, you're an aspiring pro wrestler. You should fucking get the business. You should understand what's going on here.
00:55:36
Speaker 2: I swear, when I hear Dan Badondi talk, all I hear are just, like, all these wrestling podcasts. Or, like, you're just like, well, what's this on YouTube or something? And they're just like, hey, it's Tony the Wrestling Guy.
00:55:47
Speaker 1: Like, man. You'd think if he was like– It's almost a parody of what this character would be like at Infowars. Yes. It's bizarre.
00:55:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got this wrestling guy, and he– I don't know what his deal is.
00:56:00
Speaker 1: And Dan Badandi, and we're going to talk about the Iron Sheik and what he did for the right-wing movement. So on Raw, Michael Cole said something that I disagree with. What's your take, Val Venus? It's a mess. I love that. He mentioned Alex twice. Yeah. The other people once. Alex twice. That means double. Yeah. Absolutely. That means they care about Alex twice as much. And they're trying to demonize him twice as hard. Twice as hard. Absolutely. Because he's twice as powerful. You can't reach any other conclusion than that. It's such love me daddy reporting. He is trying to impress Alex for sure.
00:56:34
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
00:56:34
Speaker 1: And you hear him repeating almost identical things that Alex says. Like talking points? Yeah. Kind of like that. That's wild. Almost like he gets all of his information from Alex. Wow. So in this– I'm going to skip this next clip. No, I'm not. Who cares? No, come on. Let's hear it. It's not as relevant to anything. It's just Val Venis talking about some of his political beliefs. Yeah. Because Dan Badondi asks him about what he thinks about guns. I thought he'd slip in. Like, who do you think is going to win at SummerSlam this weekend? No, come on. It's pre-WrestleMania. Oh, I see. We're at WrestleMania season. Yeah, yeah. We've got the big build. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, he wants to know about guns. Okay. And Val Venis, what do you know? Super opposed to anybody having any restrictions on their right to have a gun. Okay.
00:57:18
Speaker 6: Question. Your thoughts on gun control?
00:57:23
Speaker 4: I'm completely against any form of gun regulation whatsoever. I mean, we can sit there and make up a bill and say criminals are not allowed to have guns, period. The bottom line is they're going to have guns. They do not follow the rules. They do not follow the laws, and that's why they're criminals. Only people that those gun control laws are going to affect are law-abiding citizens. Criminals don't care about gun laws.
00:57:44
Speaker 1: This same logic could be used to say have no laws or whatever. You could attack any. Why just guns? Right. Yeah. Bombs. Yeah. You know, if you just outlaw bombs, only criminals will have bombs. It's not a good line of thinking.
00:57:58
Speaker 2: No, or that idea of like, well, if these wrestlers all got concussions, that's on them because they decided to wrestle.
00:58:05
Speaker 1: You shouldn't have any money from the WWE or anything like that. It's a dumb line of thinking. It's very consistent.
00:58:11
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:58:12
Speaker 2: Don't follow the laws why.
00:58:13
Speaker 4: Would they why would they care about a gun law you know if they're law-abiding citizens they would follow that law and give up their guns he's in the entire nation it's insanity you'll get a.
00:58:22
Speaker 3: Lot of these talking heads out there you know giving out these stats and those stats i mean we're talking about real life views here we're talking about chicago baltimore dc i mean it's real life compare that with kansas georgia that's real it's not studies that's.
00:58:38
Speaker 4: Real life Absolutely.
00:58:40
Speaker 6: And all the statistics show that, you know, states that have less gun control have little to no crime. And, you know, you have Chicago and New York who pride themselves on gun control, but have the worst murder rates and crime with guns. And, you know, look at Switzerland.
00:58:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead and look at Switzerland, Badandi. That's just an Alex Jones talking point that isn't true. There was a recent study that came out in uh, out of Stanford, uh, in 2017, there was a study that, uh, this guy did, I can't remember his name, but, uh, what he did is he looked at States that, uh, passed right to carry laws, um, for guns. And he found that States averaged a 13% increase in violent crime, uh, excluding, uh, other relevant variables and anything like that in the years after they posted or, uh, they, uh, uh, uh, passed right to carry laws. So these sorts of ideas about more people having more guns means less crime. It just doesn't stack up in terms of the real world.
00:59:35
Speaker 2: I think they mentioned Switzerland because that's why Cesaro joined the real Americans.
00:59:39
Speaker 1: Could be because he loves guns. He loves guns. I think you nailed it. You tried to take away our guns. It was not very fun of you. The argument that they always have about Switzerland is like, everyone has a gun there and there's no crime. Yeah. Whatever. Do you think there's another reason? There might be. I don't know. So we have one last clip of Val Venis here, and it's a short interview, I'll say. This is very short. Yeah. Badandi wants some of his final thoughts. I'm curious if Dan Badandi had to pay for this interview. Did he have to PayPal Val some money? Do you think it was a cameo situation? I think it was a cameo situation. It might have been. Yeah, I can do it, but you're going to have to PayPal me some money. That's why he couldn't afford the internet bill that month. I had to go do it at the library. I'm taking a bath on this interview, Val. They shut my internet down. I got to go to the library. Probably Alex promised to help just file an expense report. Send it to my dad. We need to get Val Venus on the show. Give my dad a receipt at HR. He'll take care of it. So it's important to remember that this is happening in early 2013, so it's only a couple months after Sandy Hook, which is really wild to me. First of all, that Dan Badondi absolutely is an employee of InfoWars at this period of time.
01:00:45
Speaker 2: I would love to hear that interview process where Alex goes.
01:00:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what?
01:00:50
Speaker 2: We could use a guy like you. I bet Alex refers to him as like, I got my pit bull Badondi. I'll send him down there. I'll take care of business.
01:00:56
Speaker 1: You got it. Yeah. Most people have to succeed in a reporter contest. Yeah.
01:01:01
Speaker 2: And Alex, funny enough, has a little bit of a relationship with pro wrestling where he hired Dan Badonkadonk or.
01:01:08
Speaker 1: Whatever his name is here.
01:01:09
Speaker 2: Remember the guy in Seattle who threw the coffee on him?
01:01:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. That guy was a wrestler. That was a work. He's a pro wrestler. Well, are you sure it was a stunt? I have wrestlers who have told me that's a stunt. Okay. I knew that he was like a wrestling promoter and maybe a clown of some sort. No, no. I wasn't sure that, I mean, that doesn't prove that it's fake, but if you've heard from the dirt sheets.
01:01:30
Speaker 2: I've heard from sources close to me that that was a work.
01:01:35
Speaker 1: Okay. I'm willing to believe that. I have no reason to believe it was real, but I mean, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. If you were going to do that, that's what you would do. Sure. You would use a wrestler guy. Sure. Maybe.
01:01:46
Speaker 4: Sure.
01:01:47
Speaker 1: So, uh. Badandi asks Val Venus what your final thoughts are. You got anything to close this out? This wonderful, groundbreaking interview. And it's interesting where Val's head goes.
01:01:58
Speaker 6: We're almost out of time. And you have final comments?
01:02:02
Speaker 4: Sandy Hook, to me, it wasn't a matter of, oh, there's too many guns in Sandy Hook. There wasn't enough guns in Sandy Hook. There wasn't one responsible adult, not one single responsible adult in Sandy Hook that had a firearm, a personal firearm. How many lives could have been saved? How many lives could have been saved if just one responsible adult had to have exercised their rights in the Second Amendment, in the Constitution, and just carried a firearm with.
01:02:33
Speaker 1: Them everywhere they went?
01:02:35
Speaker 4: I mean, it's much better, the old saying goes, it's much better to have a gun and never need it than to desperately need a gun.
01:02:44
Speaker 1: And not have it.
01:02:46
Speaker 6: Now, his former WWE superstar, Val Venis. And as you can see, folks, the Liberty Movement is under attack. It's very vital and very important that we all must take part in this Liberty Movement. And this is Dan Bedondi reporting for the InfoWars Nightly News.
01:03:00
Speaker 1: I think he clearly proved that the Liberty Movement is under attack by a character in a pro wrestling storyline. Boy, that really was not on point there. Yeah, that went all over the place. Oh, totally. I think that that last clip, though, is kind of like the best indication of what you were talking about, like Val trying to be like a little bit of a tryout. Yeah. Because that's pretty real. That's the kind of thing Alex loves to hear.
01:03:23
Speaker 4: Sure.
01:03:23
Speaker 1: The idea that someone who has some sort of vague celebrity being like, yeah, there should have been a gun at that school. Yeah. Because then they could have killed that kid who was shooting everybody. Maybe all the weeds chilled him out. I don't know. Yeah. I wonder. I haven't heard anything lately from the old Val Boski. I mean, that's... I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of these people– Willie Nelson smokes a lot of weed. He still talks to Alex.
01:03:46
Speaker 4: Sure.
01:03:46
Speaker 1: I'm sure Jesse Ventura smokes a bunch of– yeah, he talks about it. He smokes a lot of weed. Oh, yeah, of course he does. He still talks to Alex. Although, granted, those two are people who don't put up with all of Alex's bullshit. No, I think they don't co-sign on everything. Not everything. Hey, man, you're saying some weird shit. I think I'm going to get out of here, but you take it easy. Yeah. So we've come to the end of the Valbowski interview, and I don't know if you have any... Much like he had a closing thought that there should have been a gun at Sandy Hook. Yeah, if those kids had guns, it would have been fine. Or the teachers who were just trying to teach finger painting or maybe multiplication tables. If one of them had a goddamn Derringer in their boot, then.
01:04:20
Speaker 2: Maybe we know some teachers that we did comedy with. I'm sure I could see a lot of them with guns just taken out.
01:04:25
Speaker 1: My dad is a professor at UT Austin, and he's horrified by the idea of people being.
01:04:31
Speaker 5: Like, well.
01:04:31
Speaker 1: If you had a gun, you could stop a shooting on campus. Like, how dare you?
01:04:34
Speaker 2: Have you talked to some– we have a friend named Jeannie Dugan who's a teacher in Chicago.
01:04:39
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also a great comedian.
01:04:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, she has a bit about, like, I'm not going to– like, you don't pay me enough to be armed and try to take out somebody.
01:04:47
Speaker 1: Like, nah, not going to happen. Yeah, it seems insane. Yeah. The expectation that people have of, like– The ideal situation is if all teachers have guns, and the more likely thing is, I don't know, what about a stray shot? What about an accidental discharge of your gun, now you shoot some kid?
01:05:06
Speaker 2: I would like to say, hey, Val, how do you feel about if you were on the active roster?
01:05:13
Speaker 1: And these buildings were like, yeah, you can bring a gun, no problem. All fans should be on.
01:05:18
Speaker 2: How comfortable would you feel wrestling at Madison Square Garden or the Allstate Arena here nearby Chicago if everybody had a gun? Or even in Georgia. Why do you think Georgia referenced in there?
01:05:28
Speaker 1: I don't know. Very weird.
01:05:29
Speaker 2: You know, like, Maybe he has a farm down there or something. Yeah, like some weird little city or town in Georgia. It's the same thing we saw with Ted Nugent. He preaches about how everyone should have guns. They should be everywhere. Then he had that concert.
01:05:40
Speaker 1: But not in my concert. Exactly.
01:05:41
Speaker 2: He can't have guns in my concert. And I'm going to be armed. My security will be armed. But you guys can't. But you'll never hear that. All you'll hear from the Infowars side.
01:05:50
Speaker 1: Is, Well, Beyonce's got armed guards, but she's anti-gun. She wants to take your guns, but she has three armed guards.
01:05:55
Speaker 2: Well, they have guys like Dan Badonkadon who want to kill Beyonce.
01:06:00
Speaker 1: The argument about celebrities having guards and stuff like that, I don't see what the problem is with that. Those people are often cops. They're often like off-duty cops picking up an extra check. They're not social studies teachers. Or they're licensed.
01:06:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not social studies teachers and the lunch lady with guns.
01:06:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's nuts. Yeah, we just had a guy at the Hall of Fame last weekend at WrestleMania ran in the ring and tried to attack Bret Hart.
01:06:25
Speaker 2: Luckily, he didn't have any weapons on him. What if he had been armed?
01:06:28
Speaker 1: What if he had a knife? Right. What if he had a gun? Yeah. It's crazy. So is that your final thought on Val Venis? Yeah.
01:06:36
Speaker 2: I mean, pretty par for the course. Classic old wrestler. A little bit of an audition for a job.
01:06:43
Speaker 1: Maybe. Possibly.
01:06:44
Speaker 2: In wrestling, they call it getting your shit in. Like if you and I were wrestling, I'm going to make sure I do all my cool moves.
01:06:49
Speaker 1: Right.
01:06:50
Speaker 2: I get my catchphrase in, and then we can finish the match. You want to be sure that the showcase is about you.
01:06:54
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:06:55
Speaker 2: I want to make sure people see what I bring to the table.
01:06:58
Speaker 1: Short interview.
01:06:59
Speaker 2: Part of me thinks Val really didn't give a shit and wasn't very impressed.
01:07:02
Speaker 1: Well, he's got fucking this albatross named Dan Badondi around his neck. He can't shine. He might have thought, like, I'm going to talk to Alex. And then when Dan Badondi.
01:07:10
Speaker 2: Starts talking and Val is probably like, this is like every other wrestling dipshit.
01:07:14
Speaker 1: I've talked to all the time. Badondi, are you in a library? Yeah. Badondi, are you in a library? Yeah.
01:07:20
Speaker 2: This is just like Drop Kicks and DDT's, that podcast I just did an hour ago.
01:07:24
Speaker 1: I had a feeling when I listened to this of, like, At the beginning, I kind of was excited because I was like, wow, Venus, what's he going to say? And then at the end, I was like, why did I expect anything other than this? Yeah.
01:07:37
Speaker 2: And I think Val's in that wrestler mentality, too, of like, get your name out there. Don't say no to anything. You never know what could be the next big thing for your career.
01:07:46
Speaker 1: While simultaneously keeping good graces of WWE intact. He didn't say anything like, yeah, fuck them. They're the worst. That's what they do. Doing racist storytelling because they want to trigger you.
01:07:55
Speaker 2: Nah. Still available to come back. Marty, this has been fun. Yeah, I've had such a fun time. This has been a fun time. I hope I didn't bore people with all the wrestling.
01:08:05
Speaker 1: I think that there's a heavy crossover of, you know, some people who listen to our show don't like wrestling that much. But there's a number of wrestling fans. I always get, like, I get messages a lot of the time, talk more about wrestling. So this is an opportunity for those people to get satisfied.
01:08:19
Speaker 2: I feel like you can learn a lot from wrestling. Alex is just pro wrestling.
01:08:25
Speaker 1: To an extent, yeah. There's no doubt about it. I mean, in terms of that strategy of trying to get people to talk about him in order to get publicity, what Val Venus talked about is exactly what Alex does.
01:08:35
Speaker 2: Alex is like Bret Hart during the Stone Cold Steve Austin feud where Bret Hart was a bad guy in the United States, but he was a hero in Canada.
01:08:46
Speaker 1: Right. Alex is the same way.
01:08:47
Speaker 2: He's this bad guy to everybody outside of InfoWars bubble. You know, everyone else thinks, oh, they all think I'm this bad person. But you people, you all know.
01:08:57
Speaker 1: You good American patriots. That I'm fighting the good fight. For being attacked by Zeb Coulter. I'm doing the right thing. Alex is probably flattered. Oh, he was thrilled. I would assume that. Well, I mean, he had to think like this is a good way for me to also symbiotically get press. Sure. Because they've said my name. Yeah. That gives me the opening to attack them. And then they'll probably make fun of that. That'll get me even more attention.
01:09:23
Speaker 2: Or they'll have to send their wrestlers to my show and then they'll put it on their show. Like because they love being like, oh, this week John Cena was on the Good Morning America.
01:09:30
Speaker 1: I don't know if that ever happened.
01:09:32
Speaker 2: No, I'm going to assume it didn't happen.
01:09:35
Speaker 1: Because Val Venus is here, but he never comes on Alex's show.
01:09:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, because once they– again, going back to the Real American thing. Once they put out that video and stuff, that pretty much ends it. And their PR department is probably just like, hey, man, they made a statement, and that's all we're going to say about it.
01:09:50
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:09:51
Speaker 2: I have a feeling they were probably like, man, this probably isn't in our best interest.
01:09:54
Speaker 1: And what's super interesting to me. is that this is early 2013. Yeah. And that means that it's coming up pretty soon. We're covering the fallout of Sandy Hook on our show. We're at January 8th or so. No, January 5th, 2013 right now. But this is coming up soon. Zeb Coulter and Jack Swagg are doing this stuff. We're going to get to see how Alex responds. So that'll be coming up in the 2013 investigation episode. I'm excited to see how that plays out because Alex is going to be freaking out on air.
01:10:27
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
01:10:27
Speaker 1: He's going to be doing that, trying to make money out of this, trying to find the right angle. Yeah. It's going to be exciting. But, Marty, thanks for joining. Hey, thanks for having me. People can find your great podcast, Marty and Sarah Love Wrestling. Yep. All over the place. Marty and Sarah Love Wrestling dot com. Protect the dot biz. Yes. Rumble.
01:10:46
Speaker 2: Rumble boys dot biz.
01:10:50
Speaker 1: And then what else you got? You got a Twitter. Yeah. At Marty DeRosa. Yeah. Yeah. It was fun to be on. Yeah.
01:10:57
Speaker 2: I'm a huge fan of the podcast.
01:11:00
Speaker 1: Well, thank you.
01:11:00
Speaker 2: I'm bummed that I won't be able to listen to this episode.
01:11:04
Speaker 1: Why not? I don't want to listen to me and you talking. We did it. Yeah, you kind of experienced it. We already did it. But you can tune in and see what I cut out. I would be mortified if I got a name wrong.
01:11:11
Speaker 2: If I said, you know, Gino Hernandez instead of Chris Adams, I wouldn't be able to forgive myself.
01:11:16
Speaker 1: And then you text me like, Dan, you got to re-edit the episode. Yeah, right. No. It was great. It was great to sit down. Great to chat. Great to see you again. Even though I saw you like a week ago. Shout out to Raptor Princess Maria. Oh, absolutely.
01:11:29
Speaker 2: You got to give the Raptor Princess. You got to pay your tributes to the Raptor Princess.
01:11:35
Speaker 1: Indeed. So, Marty, we got to get out of here. But before we do, we got to choose who in this episode has not killed somebody. And I mean, Val Venus probably not killed anybody. Probably not. You know what?
01:11:51
Speaker 2: Cesaro definitely has not killed somebody.
01:11:53
Speaker 1: Even though he swings people around like crazy.
01:11:56
Speaker 2: I can go on the record here because I saw a couple names on there.
01:11:59
Speaker 1: I'm just like, I don't know. Touch Del Rio. Who knows what Dutch has done back in the day? You know what?
01:12:04
Speaker 2: I can say for a fact, Antonio Cesaro, a.k.a. Claudio Castagnoli, has not murdered anybody.
01:12:11
Speaker 1: But, Marty, you know what? Someone who technically probably has. Yeah. That guy is Alex Jones. Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. Thanks for holding.
01:12:21
Speaker 4: Hello, Alex.
01:12:21
Speaker 3: I'm a first-time caller.
01:12:22
Speaker 4: I'm a huge fan. I love your work.
01:12:24
Speaker 1: I love you.