By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Brian Myers
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
Now that you’re in your 40s, do you think about how long you want to do this? “More than ever. Yeah, it’s crazy how much it’s been [on my mind]. I’ll be 41 in a month. Ever since I turned 40, it just feels like, oh man. I always say Father Time is undefeated, and an injury could stop me. I just want to be the best version of myself, whatever that takes. We talked about Brock [Lesnar] earlier, just taking care of yourself and staying healthy. Just because doing this is such a privilege to me. Like I said, when I have my last match, I’m gonna cry like a baby, because I just love it so much. It’s been such a part of my life. I’ve been doing it more than not at this point. So I think about it constantly. But then there’s people who are real motivations to me, like Edge and Christian and Chris Jericho. I see them still doing it at a high level, and they’re much older than me. I’m like, okay, shit, they’re doing it. Even guys like Frankie Kazarian and Eric Young at work, they are in the best shape of their lives, still having incredible matches, and they’re a little bit older. I’m like, okay, like they keep me motivated to stay on the ball.”
How did you become the guy that The Rock trusted to train when he came back? “I think Hunter and Johnny hand-picked me and Joe Hennig for that.”
So this is before Rock came back for Rock Cena one, right? “He hosted the Mania, and he was around, but then he was gonna do that tag in The Garden, and they said he wanted to train. Johnny Ace called me on a Wednesday, and I’m like, ” Oh, I’m getting fired, this is it. Then they were like, ‘Please hold for Joe Hennig.’ I’m like wtf? It was the weirdest. I actually was on the train going with who would become my wife, like, one of our first dates. So I was all like, ” What is happening? And then Johnny is like, ‘Yeah, Rock wants to train, and we picked you guys.’ It was an unbelievable experience, because, obviously, Dwayne’s schedule is something else, and we were his personal little crash test dummies. You just never knew. A couple times, I flew to Miami in the morning, train with him in Miami, and then flew out of Miami, like my commute was Miami and back in a day.”
Were you training in his house? “No, they would set up a WWE ring wherever he was filming whatever, in all these different spots. We did New Orleans. We did Miami. One time he couldn’t make it, and me and Joe Hennig had a honeymoon on Bourbon Street, because they got us there. We’re supposed to be there for like, the weekend. Maybe TV was like a drive. So they were like, just stay. And they paid for this beautiful hotel on Bourbon Street, me and Joe, and we just went out every night. It was unbelievable, but he couldn’t have been cooler, man. He’s one of those people. I was around him, and you’re like this is why this guy’s so successful. You just see it. You just see it in him, the way he treats people, the way he carried himself, the things he cared about. I just saw it. It was really, really cool.”
Do you remember the first time you met MJF when he came to your wrestling school? “Yeah, I’ll never forget it. It was very early on, probably the first four months of Create A Pro. It’s kind of funny, because it’s a very similar mentality. He committed to something in college football, but he really had his heart set on wrestling. I think it kind of hit a wall with what he was doing, what his parents wanted him to do, and what he wanted to do. I was in a very similar situation, because when you tell people you want to be a wrestler, it’s not really that believable. His dad came in with him, and it almost felt like, here he’s your problem now, this is what he wants to do. I was like, let’s go. So pretty early on, we did a promo class where he just murdered this kid, and I was like, okay, there’s something about this guy.”
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