Total Engagement With Matt Koon – Debut Episode!
Release Date: 02/13/19
Running time: 1:07
Recap by: Joe Aguinaldo
DIRECT LINK TO LISTEN/DOWNLOAD
Off the heels of Why It Ended, Matt Koon has started a new podcast called Total Engagement. This was the debut episode. On today’s show, Matt interviews Joey Ryan but before that….
Ask A Legend
-Matt asks a legend what they think of wrestling today…something good and something bad. On this episode, Matt welcomes D-Lo Brown
-D-Lo keeps tabs on today’s product and watches a lot of WWE, Impact and some ROH
-He dislikes the lack of creativity and freedom the talent have to make mistakes. Today it seems the talent is reading from a script and it doesn’t come off as real.
-D-Lo likes the athleticism of today’s athletes and the way they are using women in meaningful positions. He also likes that wrestling is growing again and is encouraged by what he sees there.
-If you want to interact with D-Lo, you can find him on twitter @dlobrown75. He also has a wrestling school in Vegas called The Snake Pit. Check out Snake Pit Las Vegas on Facebook
Hateful Tweets Read By Kids
-Matt has twins on the show to read hateful tweets about Matt
-Matt says twins are creepy
-Tweets are based around Matt working with Vince Russo
Ask An Anonymous Talent
Matt asks a current talent from the WWE some tough questions. No One knows Matt has a relationship with this person.
Q: Has All Elite Wrestling and their emergence as a potential competitor had an impact in the working environment of the WWE? Can you Explain?
A: The boys feel more confident. The office wants us to think AEW has nothing to do with new contracts coming
Q: Was there a general negative, positive or ambivalent feeling about working Saudi Arabia in light of recent headlines?
A: Generally the Saudi show hasn’t been looked at as a massive deal. Just another show to most of the boys.
Yes Or No With Johnny Fairplay
Q: Is Johnny excited about the Wrestlemania show?
A: No.
Explain A Wrestling Angle
Matt shows one of his employees, who is not a wrestling fan, the angle with Joey Ryan from All-In and we get his employees thoughts.
Joey Ryan Interview
Matt welcomes Joey to the show and calls him one of the last independent wrestlers
‘This Is Wrestling’ Documentary
Joey has a documentary coming out called ‘This Is Wrestling’. The producers from the show ‘Bar Rescue’ are big wrestling fans and decided to do a documentary with Joey as the subject. They followed him around for a year and got some really cool stuff including a cage match with Cody and the angle with Mick Foley.
They didn’t plan much and the producers approached Joey cold and pitched the idea. They were WWE fans who discovered independent wrestling and thought it was really cool. It was eye opening to them to see how the indies worked and appreciated the effort and freedom in the indies.
The documentary was shot around the All-In event and shows the budding beginnings of the independent wrestling boom and now independents are thriving.
Joey Ryan In-Ring vs. Outside The Ring
Joey’s in-ring character is not who he is outside the ring which isn’t too common. Most of the time, wrestlers are playing themselves with the volume turned up but for Joey, he’s stepping out of himself to play a character.
Outside the ring, he’s shy and introverted. When he first started, he had a hard time trying to emote and show personality. He realized this wasn’t going to work unless he could figure out how to step out of his comfort zone.
He took acting classes which helped him develop his develop his character plus a lot of trial and error.
Joey has put a lot of thought into his character. People may think he may not takes things seriously but that’s a perception he wants people to have because that’s how the audience connects with him. The fact people think he doesn’t take this seriously is a testament to the work he has put into his character because he does take it very seriously.
Early Influences
Joey started watching wrestling at an early age and grew up watching 80s wrestling.
When he figured out wrestling was a blank canvas, he decided to become a wrestler that he grew up watching and picked things from the 80s he liked. It wasn’t one wrestler specifically but the era.
Intergender Wrestling
The documentary does focus on intergender wrestling because it follows Joey’s tag team with Candice LeRae.
Joey sees wrestling more as theatre than sport and doesn’t feel gender has as much influence or impact on how you portray a story in the ring
If you watch a superhero movie or Star Wars, there are strong female characters fighting men and you don’t think twice about it which is how Joey looks at wrestling.
When Joey does intergender matches, he tries to be more of a villain because it’s a more compelling story and a stronger story. There’s no science to it or strict rules but the more he can give female wrestlers to overcome, the better the story.
There are some people who have issues with intergender wrestling but unless someone has an open mind, you can’t change their opinion. Joey would never want to tell a woman they can’t pretend to be equal in a make believe world.
Many women struggle finding equality in everyday life. In the make believe world of wrestling, he doesn’t want women to have that struggle as well.
Kayfabe
Joey is not a proponent of kayfabe in a traditional sense. He says it’s insulting to today’s fans. Many of the fans he knows are smart enough to separate reality from what they see on TV.
Joey lives a world where he doesn’t make an effort to be something he’s not when he’s not on screen. He doesn’t feel it’s important for what he does to keep the mystique up.
When he wrestles, he doesn’t blatantly say he’s pretending. His character would never treat the penis flip as a joke. To him it’s real and his character is very serious about hitting that move.
Inside the ring would never treat wrestling as if it’s made up but outside the ring, he’s OK with identifying it as made up.
When he teaches seminars, he doesn’t necessarily teach techniques and stresses knowing your character and why they do certain things is important.
Backlash
When Joey goes into the ring, he’s aware the penis is a sexual organ but he does not sexualize what he does. If he were to sexualize it, it would change the context.
Joey feels his biggest fan base is 12 to 17 year olds because they laugh the hardest at penis jokes but if he sexualizes it, it becomes taboo.
What Joey does in wrestling is more tame compared to South Park.
Joey likes pressing the audience’s buttons. But when it comes down to it, he tries not to offend anyone.
Joey overbooks himself on purpose. He had an injury and had to take some time off but he wasn’t able to enjoy the time off because he wasn’t making any money. Overbooking helps give him piece of mind.
Many wrestlers can out think themselves by trying to introduce too many new things whereas Joey feels if you’ve established something and are marketing it that’s what the audience wants to see.
His safer style and character stuff is what’s keeping him over which means he sacrifices the moves in the ring
When Candace and Joey started teaming, intergender tag teams weren’t a real thing. For marketing purposes, they started a youtube show so people would start identifying them as a team.
Joey is signed with Lucha Underground however it’s not exclusive. He wouldn’t rule out a contract with AEW but it’s not something he would think about unless an offer was on the table.
Joey uses the Pina Colada song as his entrance music. Joey does a show called Lucha VaVoom in 2007 and they picked the Pina Colada song for him. He had a lot of fun using that song. Later on in Japan, he was asked what music he wanted to use and picked the Pina Colada song which was different than what everyone else was using. He realized that was the song for him.
Joey is on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and is very active on all three. Also check out Pro Wrestling Tees for his merch.
Matt thanks Joey for being on the show and they sign off.
Review: Great first outing by Matt. I personally loved hateful tweets read by kids but the ask an anonymous wrestler segment was pretty interesting too. Matt kept this podcast fun, loose and entertaining. He covered a lot of ground but it wasn’t rushed. I really dug the Joey Ryan interview. He’s an interesting wrestler and I’m looking forward to his documentary. Overall, definitely give this podcast a listen. Definite recommend. Rating: 8/10
About Joe:
Joe is a long time wrestling fan from Toronto. He is a co-host on the Pull Apart Podcast with Jeff Rush and Caitlin Lavelle as well as a contributor to www.pwpodcasts.com. One of his life goals is to be a guest host on one of Wade Keller’s post-show podcasts. He doesn’t consider himself any sort of expert, he just likes wrestling. Check him out on Twitter and Instagram @ja113.
Be the first to comment