During a recent appearance on the “2 Bears, 1 Cave” podcast, Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Cody Rhodes commented on the difficultly of hooking new fans in the modern era of professional wrestling. He said,
“From the pro wrestler’s standpoint, I always go out there with the idea that they’ve never seen me before. I need them to know right out of the gate, ‘Okay, this is who he is…our wise men who help put the show together, when they say something like, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of new eyeballs out there.’ This will be one of those situations where it really is. Really, truly is. And you have the chance to hook them.There’s such a carny element to how pro wrestling used to be, in terms of reeling in a mark for something to watch. Now the audience is so sophisticated…You can’t just hook them. You can’t be cheap. You have to actually see someone authentically that they like, and then hopefully they stay on board.”
During a recent appearance on the “Insight with Chris Van Vliet” podcast, Mustafa Ali revealed that his wife received some very bad news regarding her neck immediately after he was released from WWE.
Ali said, “I s**t you not, five minutes goes by [after getting the call about WWE release] and her phone rings. She picks it up. People don’t know this, months before all this happened, my wife was having really bad neck pain. We switch out the pillows, I tell her to go get a massage, and it would just get worse and worse and worse to the point where it was debilitating pain. I was like ‘What’s going on?’ We take her to the doctor, so her doctor calls and ‘Yeah, you have a broken neck and you need surgery.’ The day I got let go, like 10 minutes later, five minutes later, we find out that she’s got a [broken neck], my attention, all of my energy, my focus goes [to her].“
NOTE: If you have any news tips or podcast recaps that you’d like to send in for us to post (full credit will be given to you), please email me at [email protected].
