Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Battleground Podcast, you play and exclusive interviews
with some of your favorite wrestlers.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Around podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Stop it, What's up you guys? Welcome back into iHeartRadio's
official wrestling podcast, The Battleground Podcast at his Battle from
one oh five to nine in the Rock and of course,
w W SmackDown is coming to Knoxville May thirtieth Thompson
Bowling Arena. Of course you could grab your tickets now
(00:38):
ticketmaster dot com. But today on the show, we're joined
by a very special guest. Everybody makes no noise, give
it up for the one and the only Alistair Black Jo.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
How are you doing, sir good? I have to, like,
you know, get some hjew on for this, you know,
tongue cutting interview that we're about to do.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
So absolutely, and before we jump into any questions, we
want to say, first, happy related birthday. I know we
saw all over social media you had a big party recently.
How was the birthday party?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Was it?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
It's like it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
You guys still be sorry. I don't know, Yes, it's okay.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
We thought it was like added to the effect, like
you go black when you answer questions or something.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I don't know. I don't know what happened there, but
it was really good. You know, I don't I don't.
I don't put too much value in in birthdays, if
that makes any sense, not of some sort of depressing
it's just like, you know, it's it's something that you know,
(01:39):
we all do, but it is very It was very
important to my wife, and therefore it's important to me.
He arranged a lot of this stuff. And you know,
forty is a is a strange age the way that
I think about it, especially because nowadays forty doesn't feel
like forty like it was twenty years ago. You know.
(02:00):
If I think about my dad turning forty, you know,
I was like, Wow, my dad's like forty years old.
He's like, you know, he's got this, he's got that,
he's got kids, you know what I mean. And like
I feel like I'm forty years old and I'm like,
I have still no idea what the hell I'm doing.
So it's but it is a pivotal age, and I
think this day and age, the forty is not what
(02:22):
the forty was. Like I said, even like from the
perspective of like being a professional athlete, I feel like
I look better now than I did when I first entered.
I feel like I physically am capable of more than
what I could when I was ten five, ten years younger.
There doesn't really seem to be like an athletic cap
(02:42):
at age forty like we used to think. I think, obviously,
with science, nutrition and training and everything and all that stuff,
obviously we progressed a lot. And it almost feels like
forty is the new thirty. And I'm sure that people
are going to say that he's just saying that because
he doesn't want to be old, and they and of
course not. But at the same time, like I only
feel I feel great. I feel good. I feel mentally
(03:05):
matured in a way that I didn't before. I feel
physically more capable now than I ever did. So it was,
it was. It was a very important birthday. It was
a fun birthday. It was a good birthday, a lot
of loved ones. And crazy to think that my fortieth
birthday was celebrated whilst being back in the WB.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, yeah, and uh, you know, we want to talk
about that. You're coming back to w W. Let's talk
about the return. What felt different this time? When you
walk through Gorilla and you got that entrance back, you
got your old theme music back. Yeah, you walked into
a w wring? What felt different this time?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Around me? I felt different? And obviously, you know, the
players are no longer the same players that were there,
you know, handling the business when I was there. Well,
I mean they were there, but they weren't hailing it
the way they were hailing now. And the atmosphere backstage
(04:07):
is so good. Man. When I first stepped in, obviously,
you know, there's a lot of like old emotions that
kind of come out for a little bit because it's
something that you unwillingly left behind, and you know, you're lucky,
very very lucky that you're one of the few people
that gets another shot at something. And it was a
(04:31):
very thoughtful day. But in a strange way, it felt
like I never left because everything was still the same
in the most positive sense of the word. And then
having the people that have always rallied behind me being
in charge of everything and given me the directions that
I need and taking the time to have the conversations
(04:53):
with me leading up to all of this felt like
anything short of having the red carpet rolled out for me,
you know what I mean? And it was a great feeling.
It was a great day. I was very nervous, but
then I took a second, I put some I put
my headphones on, and it just kind of stood just
like stood in it. You know, it's kind of like, Okay,
this is about to happen. How you feel? And at
(05:16):
that moment, there was nothing that I'd rather do than
be right there. It was really good.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
Does the size of the machine kind of scary now? Like,
you know, it's a much bigger conglomerate than it was
when you left, you know, the first time.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
No, it makes me excited. Man. Yeah, so many opportunities,
so many new things, so many new players in terms
of like in the locker room, so much talent, so
many cool things. And a lot of the people that
were on the verge of breaking through when I left
are now completely running the WD people that worked fast,
and like the beauty about it is that everybody is
(05:53):
still the same, right, but he's still the same great. Yeah,
I just I worked with great people, right, but fantastic people.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Well, I was gonna jump in real quick. So your
presentation has always been layered, you know, from the music
to the gear, just everything, what elements of your persona.
Do you think maybe weren't fully explored during your first
run that you maybe want to get into this one
to kind of incorporate into the presentation or move sets
(06:24):
or anything like that, and the kind of the version
two era.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Great question. So I definitely worked on a lot more realism,
martial arts, muy Thai kind of stuff, you know that sleep,
you know, stuff like that, just like little little things.
I'm a big fan of, like small details. I would
I would change, you know, the way that I would
(06:48):
like apply a niche srike versus like you know, doing
what they would call a quote unquote bicycle meed. I
would now pivot it aside and and and move my
knee in sideways. I would, you know, pivot my body
shots different. I would I would hook my elbows difference. Uh,
just anything that I can do to like make my
(07:08):
style on a smaller scale dimensionally more more realistic. And
believe me, I have a whole bag of tricks that
I haven't even pulled out yet. I like to slowly,
like you know, mix mix things, and I want people
to get used to this one part of like a
move set before I add stuff to a move set
(07:29):
or I change stuff with a move set because I
want I want the audience to get accustomed to something
before I change it. So it's within the zeitgeist of
you know, the character. Personality wise. I'm a pretty thought
full person from a psychological standpoint, and I think one
of the things that I really like doing now and
(07:49):
I did it kind of slightly in that first uh
promo that aired that I'm going to start diving a
little bit more into psychological aspects as to how I
would call it, talk about the elephant in the room,
if that makes sense, where it becomes a little bit
more uh, not to you know, borrow from from the boss,
(08:10):
but more cerebral, right, and and maybe it is a
barrow from the boss. I don't know. I'll get a
text at some point.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
Yeah, it's uh, it's it's, it's it's it's a layer
of the character that I've always wanted to do prior
but never really got the opportunity to to do because
it was it was it.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Was managed very differently. And here the directions were, you know,
so and so, and you know my response was so
and so, and it came together and they were like, Okay,
this is perfect, this is definitely, something that has a
slow burn will manifest itself more and more. And the
beauty about it is that, in my opinion, you know,
(08:51):
talking about the elephant in the room can be both
good and bad because I think the best bad guys
in the industry speak the truth, because especially nowadays, we
don't like being told the truth, you know, we'd rather
have a pretty lie because it leads us emotionally versus
being cut down from the emotion with a reality that
we've had on that face, which makes people seem like
(09:13):
the bad guy. And I find that an interesting, an
interesting human trade, and I think quote unquote abusing that
in the in the context of this character will be
a very interesting thing.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah, absolutely sure, Yes, of course. As you know, ww
SmackDown coming to Knoxville May thirtieth, Thompson Bowling Arena. You
can still grab your tickets ticketmaster dot com. Now, the
one thing that a lot of you know, the IWC,
the Internet wrestling community, is very excited about. They've already
started fantasy booking out for Blacks return to WWE, a
(09:47):
name that continuously pops up in these conversations on social media. Obviously,
you and Cody Rhodes having unfinished business.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yes, yeah, do.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
You think that there's maybe some receipts on either side
and we would like to see.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
There is rustling, so there's always receives. Oh no matter what. Yeah,
maybe seventy years old with convention still thinking that we
can probably duke it out. But yeah, there you go. Yes, Like,
of course, the beauty about professional wrestling is that it
transcends a lot. And as you say, like you know,
the idea of you see, you know, they are an
(10:24):
ever conglomerate of like a mind that will continuously push
out narratives and ideas. And the beauty about is that
they can discuss it, they can agree disagree with it.
And I think for us it's an interesting and a
very useful mirror that bounds back off because if something
(10:45):
and here comes that word again, if something is in
that zeitgeist, it's something that we can utilize, especially if
it catches fire. Right, if there's something that is like
wildly popular, then we can we can, we can we
can hint at and see if it becomes if it
feeds the fire once we kind of like hint that stuff,
and from that we can immediately draw. Hey, let's pull
the trigger on this you know, do these things, but
(11:07):
Cody wrote. And it's funny because I had another interview
where I spoke about Cody, and I think Cody is
the ultimate professional speaking as you know, a human being.
I think Cody is a fantastic person as a competitor.
I think that Cody is the marque player at the moment.
(11:29):
I think having run my storylines with him has made
me so much more hungry for more of it because
I feel that there was a lot more that we
could have tapped into, and I sincerely hope we can
do that here because there was so much left in
the table, both verbally and stuff that was written down
(11:53):
that we never got to that hopefully now we can
kind of like it because the contrast between the two
characters so is so vast that it makes such an
interesting an interesting connection. And the fact that for those
brief months that him and me have our history, it
(12:14):
really sparks of that conversation. Like I said, you know,
that says a lot because if that's where fans go
to the second the opportunity arises again, or at least
you know, that door slowly opens itself and people immediately go, well, hey,
what about Alistair and Cody Rohase. You know that's that
says a lot, and that makes me think that the
work that we did previously was appreciated to the point
(12:35):
where people would like to see more of it, which
is again the best reflection that I can have as
to what is going on within the in the mindset.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Yeah, absolutely so. Do we have that Night one or
Night two of WrestleMania.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
You just throwing this out there.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
We're just going ahead and giving you know, triple h
the pencil right now. Night one or Night two will.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Let you pick that much game if you guys.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Think everybody would rejoice if we have either Night one
or Night two main event Alistair versus Cody. That's gonna
be incredible again. Alistair Black is on the show with
us right now. Ww SmackDown coming to Knoxville May thirtieth,
Thompson Bowling Arena. You can grab your tickets taketmaster dot
com before we let you go, because I know that
we're coming up towards the end of this interview, because
I know we have a short timeframe and we could
(13:20):
sit here and talk with you all day long. Because
we've enjoyed this conversation one thing we like to ask
our guests at the end of these shows because we
are a rock station. Oh boy, if we were to
go through Alistair Black's playlist currently and we're just kind
of scrolling through and we stumble across a song that
we're like, huh, they didn't think Alistair Black listens to
this song? What is that song on your playlist right now?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Ella Fitzgerald the nearness of you.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Woo El Fitzgerald.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
A million million cool points on that one excellent answer.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
That is solid. Jam Well, Alistair Again, we can sit
here and talk to you all day, and once again
we want to say i'd belated birthday to you before
we let you go. Anything you want to say to
people that are watching or listening to this interview right now.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, come see the show. What are you waiting for?
Don't hesitate? Just get those tickets you know you want to.
It's a fun time, it's a good time. WB is
bigger than it's ever been, and be part of it.
And I promise you you're gonna have a great time.
There is not a single shot of doubt in my
mind that if you're hesitant about getting these tickets, you're
(14:29):
gonna be bummed out and like damn, I should have
done it because it's gonna be a great show. It's
always gonna be a great show.