X-Pac 1-2-360
Guest: WrestleZone’s Nick Hausman
Release Date: January 10th, 2018
Recap by: Sean McGraw
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Recap:
X-Pac is joined by Jimbo, Denise, Bill and TK. This week’s guest will be WrestleZone’s Nick Hausman.
X-Pac confirms that he will be on RAW25. He seems to have a small gripe for not being advertised by name with all of the DX members and Scott Hall. He said the response that he got back from them was he is still dealing with the consequences of the way that he lived his life over the past ten years or so.
Interview with WrestleZone’s Nick Hausman
X-Pac welcomes Nick and makes a joke about him applying for a job with the Wyatt Family because Nick is rocking an awesome beard. He also jokes that the panel can see Nick but he can’t see the panel so Nick shouldn’t relieve himself on camera like X-Pac did to him awhile back. Nick jokes that a lot of people have “seen” X-Pac though so it’s ok.
X-Pac wants Nick to talk a little about the Royal Rumble Party that is happening in Chicago. X-Pac is hosting it. It will be at Duffy’s Bar and Grill. Duffy’s pays for the PPV and has WWE’s blessing. WWE sends them a bunch of posters and promotional materials. The party has been happening for the last three years and Nick wanted to step it up a notch this year. He said they need a big name superstar and the first guy he thought of was X-Pac because Nick said X-Pac has a fun personality and would really interact with the fans well. They will be recording a live podcast before the event as well. X-Pac says the real fun part will be watching the show together and having a running commentary on what they’re thinking of the show.
Nick remembers one time that they were out in Joliet, Illinois. He was managing Jay Bradley and X-Pac went to do the Bronco Buster spot. Somebody didn’t wrap the bottom turnbuckle properly and Pac ripped his “area” open. Pac was screaming that he hurt himself which was alarming and told Nick to just start kicking him. They finished the match and they get to the back. Pac was face down on a table and Nick asked Pac if there was anything that he could do for Pac. Pac replied “Yeah man can you hold a towel between my butt cheeks right now?” Nick refused (This story was pretty amusing the way Nick told it). Pac says he ended up with thirteen stitches in his butt. A week later he wrestled Adam Pearce in a diaper.
X-Pac asks Nick about new stories breaking today. The big news today (as of the airing of this podcast) is Cody and The Young Bucks announced a date for their “All In” show. It will be on September 1st and the rumor is that it will be in Chicago. If Nick had to pick a venue it would be the UIC pavilion where Flair and Steamboat wrestled. Nick asks Pac if he thinks they can draw 10,000. Pac says yes, he thinks they can. He doesn’t know if they’ll get 10,000 paid but there will be 10,000 people in the arena. Nick agrees. Nick asks about the rumor that maybe CM Punk would be interested in wrestling at that show. X-Pac says that he thinks that he would, especially if it were a big deal. Nick seems surprised at this answer. Bill chimes in and says that he’s had a feeling now for a while that one of the only things that might get Punk to come back would be an ROH show vs. Samoa Joe or Daniel Bryan or a big deal indie show that isn’t necessarily a WWE thing.
The date of this show happens before Daniel Bryan’s contract with WWE is up. Nick asks X-Pac what he thinks of if this show is a big success and if they happen to get CM Punk, could they do a follow up show with Daniel Bryan headlining. X-Pac really thinks so. Denise brings up that Triple H said if WWE doctors won’t clear him then he won’t be in the ring. So if Bryan really wants to wrestle and WWE won’t clear him, then when his contract is up he may seek other options.
Nick asks X-Pac what the vibe is in WWE about all of these opportunities outside of WWE. Pac thinks that lately, and this is a mentality that HHH is trying to push, is to be more open about those types of things. He gives an example about his personal experience recently. A major company that is a “competitor” of WWE asked him to be a part of their promotion coming up. Pac asked HHH how he felt about it. HHH said Pac won’t have heat and just to be careful what he signs.
Another news item that happened was that Matt Hardy and Ed Nordholm buried the hatchet. Hardy put out a tweet about it. Pac had known about it because he had talked to Matt within the past couple of weeks. He says Matt didn’t want him to say anything so that’s why he didn’t. Nick says that he was taken aback by it because it wasn’t too long ago that Reby Hardy was still going after him and Anthem on Twitter. Nick says that when fans get more interested in what goes on behind the scenes it’s not necessarily good for the business/wrestling product.
Nick brings up HHH meeting with Ronda Rousey and asks Pac if HHH told him whether Rhonda was going to be in the Rumble or not. Pac confirms that HHH did tell him but he’s not going to tell. Then he laughs and says he’s lying (this was pretty amusing).
Jay White has joined the Australian New Japan tour. Nick is a big fan of Switchblade. He thought that he elevated his stock by turning on Kenny Omega and the Bullet Club. X-Pac compares it to DDP and The NWO. Nick says that Australia is an untapped market right now. Pac says it’s about to become totally saturated. It’ll be good for a few years and then it will be like when farmers have to rotate their crops because there are no nutrients left in the soil. But right now it’s amazing.
(As of the airing of this podcast) It’s the first night of six TV tapings for Impact. They went from a six-sided ring back to the traditional four. X-Pac thinks it’s a good call. They haven’t put out a press release, but one of the sides of the apron has a Twitch banner. Nick speculates that there could be some sort of Twitch deal for Impact and he also speculates Impact’s deal with POP TV would preclude them from doing anything with Twitch. X-Pac asks how things are working out for House of Hardcore and Twitch because they are doing some big numbers. Nick was the ring announcer for HOH in Milwaukee in December (I was at that show. Had no idea that was him) and they did 500 thousand views which is great. Nick doesn’t know the specifics of the deal though.
Nick asks X-Pac if Pac likes the Mixed Match Challenge. Pac says “Sure, why not?” The panelists discuss the male-on-female violence dynamics. X-Pac and Nick aren’t sure if the men would be fighting against the women (they sound hesitant on having violence against women though). TK thinks having men and women fight against one another would be good for equality’s sake – that you have a chance no matter who you are. X-Pac brings up that it’s getting a lot of attention and people seem to be excited. Nick loves the pairing vignettes. It feels like high school couplings before the big dance (a surprisingly accurate description).
Booker T runs the Reality of Wrestling promotion in Texas. Nick works with him and announces that every Thursday on the WrestleZone Facebook page they are live streaming from the training center to do Q and A’s and to show the fans how he trains his students. Both Nick and X-Pac are big Booker T fans. X-Pac calls Booker the future mayor of Houston because he truly believes that Booker will win when he runs. X-Pac says he really admires Booker as a father and human being in general. Nick and X-Pac think that Booker has one more, good run in him. It would probably only take him about a month to get back into shape. Nick would like to see it be some sort of blood feud from a younger guy that disrespects him, maybe Samoa Joe. X-Pac suggests maybe Elias since Elias is one of Booker’s students. Pac wasn’t a fan of the signing a song in the ring gimmick, but now he’s become a fan. He says that Elias has a little ways to go in the ring, but he’s getting there and he’s going to be good.
Are there any stories Nick has published that have gotten strong negative reactions from wrestlers? One time a former WWE producer had been released and had gotten Nick’s number. They were very angry and told him not to talk about it anymore. He didn’t break the story and was aggregating it from another source. He didn’t change the story but he did stop talking about it because he was put off by the way he was approached. He doesn’t want to name names but it happened around two years ago. X-Pac jokingly says they’ll find out.
Nick says that he has written headlines that he knew were going to upset people and he second guessed them. He tells a story about talking to Bret Hart on Bret’s podcast (Nick was a co-host). The new WWE video game had come out and he knew that Bret had been in video games so he asked Bret “What do you think about video games?” Bret talks about a 2k game party and he’s in the wrestler select screen. He sees that HHH is rated a 98 and Bret is only rated a 95. Bret said he grabbed one of the people that worked there and said “This guy can’t even lace my f***ing boots. Why is he rated higher than me?” Nick said that was the headline and he had to run that because that was all anybody was going to be talking about anyways. X-Pac says that he had actually asked HHH about that. He says that Hunter wasn’t really concerned one way or another. Hunter said he’s not really concerned with what Hart thinks of his work. Bill brings up that the headline combined with Bret talking on podcasts and calling Seth Rollins an unsafe worker right around the same time pretty much led to Bret’s retirement from podcasting.
Nick says that money played a big factor in Bret quitting podcasting. Nothing is really stopping Bret from speaking his mind, but the deal just wasn’t right to keep the podcast going. Nick says not to count Bret out in the future when it comes to podcasting. Bret’s been dealing with a medical issue with his wrist and he’s suing the doctor that performed the initial surgery so that’s kind of working against him at the moment. Nick says that Bret likes talking and likes people hearing his opinions so he hopes he does come back to podcasting. X-Pac says that when he sees Bret it’s always positive happy stories. Nick thinks that it’s a “Hart trait” to present yourself as stoic, but when Bret drops his guard he’s the goofiest dude you’ll ever meet. Bret’s appearance on The Simpsons is mentioned. Pac says that Bret was so happy when he got to be on The Simpsons and that it’s one of the highlights of his life.
X-Pac brings up that Bret Hart used to draw on the chalkboards in the locker rooms. There would be gossip in the locker room and Bret would draw a cartoon of whatever the latest gossip was. A lot of it ended up being pretty scandalous. They brought him in and he had to testify or had to do a deposition on it because he was drawing some pretty interesting stuff. Bret would say, “I don’t make the news, I just report it.”
They end the conversation by discussing the ins and outs of X-Pac’s appearance at Duffy’s Bar and Grill in Chicago for the Royal Rumble PPV and if this is a success possibly doing more in other locations.
Scott Norton is announced as next week’s guest. (As of the airing of the podcast – It’s actually Scott Hall for the next episode.)
Rating 8/10
This was a fun episode to listen to. There was a lot of news discussion. A lot of information was flying fast and furious and was all over the place. X-Pac and the other panelists did a real good job of keep the conversation on point and focused. I especially enjoyed hearing about Bret Hart and his drawing the cartoons on the chalkboards. I think that it would have been hilarious to see given both how crazy the industry is and how even more crazy some of the rumors get. It was also interesting to hear the discussion on the Mixed Match Challenge. I’ve heard a lot of people kind of disregard it. Personally, I like it just because it seems like all of the performers are genuinely having fun with it and it’s just something different for fans. A lot of times you can tell when the wrestlers are going out there and just trying to act something that’s been obviously written for them. You can tell that they might not necessarily be having fun. I think the Mixed Match Challenge is a nice change of pace and I liked hearing the discussion about the formatting and what people’s opinions on the subject are. Another good effort from X-Pac and the crew.
Time Stamps:
00:00 – 25:17 Intros
07:28 – 1:04:06 Interview with Nick Hausman
1:04:07 – 1:09:10 Show wrap up
About Sean:
Sean is a media professional from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Sean’s earliest memory of wrestling is seeing Kane on WWF television in 1998. Sean watched primarily WWF in the Attitude Era and dropped off just before the initial brand split. Seeing recap promos of the Undertaker building up to WrestleMania 20, he became hooked and has been an avid fan ever since. Sean’s wrestling preferences currently lean more towards NJPW/ROH/NXT but he remains a fan of it all. In his spare time Sean enjoys cooking, baking, and going to the gym. You can follow Sean via Twitter @stmcgraw and Instagram @stmcgraw09.
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