Posted on 10/24/125 by Colin Vassallo
Jelly Roll sat down with Chris Van Vliet in Nashville,
Tennessee to discuss his success in the music world and how
that led to a spot at WWE SummerSlam 2024, chokeslamming
Austin Theory, teaming with Randy Orton at SummerSlam,
taking a frog splash from Logan Paul on the announce table,
giving Drew McIntyre a Black Hole Slam, how he lost 250
pounds, finally meeting The Rock after a decade of speaking
with him, interactions with pro wrestling legends, if
another match could happen, and more!
On giving Austin Theory a chokeslam at SummerSlam:
“Which was all Austin Theory. But once again, the greatest
heels make the babyfaces look incredible. That’s all Austin.
I mean, that dude’s a seller and a half. But he was the dude
I wanted to Undertaker style it, you know, because that’s
what I grew up watching. Throw the arm over, kind of like I
did Logan in the actual match. Thank you Taker for giving me
that nod. But when I went to it, Austin was like, ‘One arm,
it will get higher.’ I was like, You sure? He was like,
‘Trust me, bro.’ This is like breaking all kayfabe, straight
shoot. He looks at me and goes, ‘My brother, I’m going to
jump through the building. I got you dog.’ Because I was so
nervous. I made him make us work it out on a crash pad 30
times. They were so over it, him and The Miz, but they were
so patient with me. They were like, ‘It’s this easy.’ And me
and Ron Killings are homies. So he was just back there
laughing. He’s like, ‘Jelly, I swear you’re gonna be fine’.
I was like, okay.”
On how the spot led to a match:
“Well, I’m walking up into Gorilla, and I’m obviously losing
my mind. I’m definitely a very inflated version of myself,
and I see Triple H, and I’m like, ‘Triple H, I got to do
this again. I got to take a match, bro. I’m gonna go lose
100 pounds and come back and take a match.’ For the record,
I had had a big disconnect between what 100 pounds was gonna
feel like and how much I actually needed to lose. That’s a
whole different story. But I was in my mind, I’m all jacked
up on Mountain Dew. I’m like, Dude, I’m coming back. We’re
gonna do this, man. And what I love about Triple H is he’s
very direct, he’s serious, but he’s sincere. There’s a real
sincerity in his face. You see the seriousness. But I think
you got to look at his eyes are sincere. His face is
serious. His eyes are sincere. And I seen them eyes, they
really soften. He shook my hand. He said, ‘Brother, you lose
that weight, you got a home here.'”
On not wanting to win the match:
“I fought that immediately. It’s one of the first things I
fought was like, Yo, man, I don’t want to go out [on top].”
Was that the original plan?
“It was originally, babyfaces up. So the day of, I’d been
dropping it in on Shane [Helms] the whole time. Shane, I
want to lose this match. And he was like, ‘Brother, you got
to take that up with them.’ I was like, Cool. So I came down
and me and Triple H talked about it right there at the ring
that day. I said, ‘You know what I’m coming to talk about?’
He said, ‘I want to hear it.’ And I gave it to him. And he
was like, All right, all right.”
What was the pitch?
“It was an easy pitch. I was just like, it took three
things. One, it’s the right thing to do, let’s just start at
core values here. No celebrity has any business coming in
and pinning a wrestler on their first run without some
extreme circumstance. If Randy comes out and double RKOs
everybody while I’m out and puts me on top of somebody. But
two, I can always come back, I don’t think any other
celebrity ever really cared enough to think full angle
through. If I lose this, I love Logan. That’s my friend in
real life. But every time he’s in that ring, now he’s got to
wonder if at some point he’s going to hear, ‘You know I got
it, so come and get it’ [Who’s Your Daddy? By Toby Keith].
He’s got to wonder about that a little bit. Drew too. If I
really owe one of them, it’s Drew. So that was part two of
it. I was also smart enough to be like, Yo, I want to angle
in. And I was like, I don’t want to be remembered as a
celebrity who did the thing, and then Triple H stopped me.
This will probably be on Unreal because it was so gangster.
He said, ‘I will tell you this though.’ He said Floyd wanted
to lose to The Big Show. I don’t know if I should be sharing
that, but he told me that, and I thought that was cool.”
On the Logan Paul frog splash:
“Thank you for bringing that up. I practiced everything, but
that. It’s the scariest part of the night. It’s also the
moment you know that’s going to go, because me and Logan had
extensively been like, Look, man. If there was ever a time
for you to jump, and I know you jump as crazy as you can
every time, but if there was ever a time like this, this
should make every headline in the world. We knew we had that
kind of a moment if we did it right. I do remember the
hardest part was, I don’t know if I should get this inside,
but I got onto the table wrong, which everybody talked
about, because I had to slip back, and did the worst job
selling my slip back. But equally, I was scared because of
where my back was sitting at that moment. I’d never been
through it, and I didn’t know where this thing was going to
break. So like I had just a genuine self-preservation, like,
f*ck what everybody thinks, this is scary as f*ck. But then
I looked up, and when Logan took the two bottles, I just
remember thinking, I’ll talk about this on my deathbed. I’ll
tell this story of what’s happening right here in this
moment till I die. I don’t know how many other things in my
life I’ll think are cool enough to talk about until it’s all
over, but I will, for sure sit right here and think about
this moment, dude. He comes, and he hits me, and all I hear
is the clear sound of every bit of his air coming out of
him, like a [wheezes], And I’m like, oh sh*t. So as soon as
I land, I shoot over immediately towards Logan, real fast
and cover my mouth. And I’m just like, ‘You okay, bro?’ I
was worried I hurt him, he ate. I don’t think he hit the
table, Chris. I think he hit all Jelly Roll. I think he’s
been used to jumping on people that are like half my width.
So I don’t think he fully [knew], because he couldn’t
practice for it neither. You can’t put a Jelly Roll size
doll up, you’re just having to kind of guess. Then I rolled
back over, and I’m laying there, and I’m hurt, of course, I
mean, because if you don’t hit that spot, not hurt a little
bit, you hurt a lot the next day, but even in the moment,
and I just remember looking up and seeing Fat Joe, and
that’s my friend, and Druski was standing up behind him, and
their faces were concerned. And right then, I was like, we
got it. I was like, I just got to sell it. And dude, no lie,
I spent the next two minutes selling to just Fat Joe, nobody
else. I don’t know how much of it was on camera, but I was
just selling because I was like, if I can get Fat Joe to
believe this, I am good. It’s getting there.”