Posted on 5/02/126 by Colin Vassallo
Former WWE star Maven sats down with Chris Van Vliet at
INSIGHT Live in Las Vegas to discuss the success of his
YouTube channel, getting ribbed by Fit Finlay, if there are
any plans for a 1 million subscribers celebration, whether
he is still in the 2002 Royal Rumble, taking a bump on
thumbtacks, who was the worst guest on his YouTube channel,
possibly coming out of retirement to wrestle Chris Sharp,
answering questions from the audience, and more!
Can you put into words how much YouTube has changed your
life and your career?
“I promise, not more than you love you guys. Here’s why. I
get emotional about this. Years ago, five years ago, I was
getting up every morning at 6 am, rushing to take my dogs
out, getting on a 6:36 train, two hours to work, working all
day, two hours to get home, getting home at 7:30. I knew I
had something, but I just didn’t know how to get that
something out. When we started the YouTube channel, there
were no promises. Zach didn’t tell me, ‘Yeah, this is going
to be X amount and we’re going to make X amount of dollars,
or this is going to get this many views.’ He just said,
‘Let’s take a chance.’ And now man, I don’t do a damn thing
during the day I don’t want to do now, and that is because
of you guys. Thank you. I don’t know if I deserve it, but
I’ll damn take it.”
Do you feel like because of the way you came in? You’re the
guy on the MTV show. You win Tough Enough. Is it just ribs
for the first six months? Is it ribs for the first year? You
have to win over the boys?
“Here’s what I think it was. I think it was, we’re going to
see if we can run you out. We’re going to find out do you
love the business, do you respect the business, or are you
going to easily be ran out of the business? Because
wrestling is tough. It’s hard to be on the road, it’s hard
to be in pain, it’s hard to be away from your family, and if
you don’t have just something on the inside that makes you
be able to be okay with living uncomfortable, be okay with
pain, you’re not gonna last. It’s just the WWE’s way and
wrestlers’ way of just mixing out the people that think they
want to be there, as opposed to the people who truly want to
make a go of it. There were countless, muscled-up guys that
would come in, roided-out freaks, look phenomenal, that
thought they wanted to wrestle, and they would put them in
the ring. You find out really quickly, when someone’s in
there for six minutes, you’re making them just move, then
they’re gasping for air, you find out really quickly who
wants to wrestle and who doesn’t.”
So after winning Tough Enough, what’s the match where you
felt like, I finally feel like a wrestler.
“It was years. It wasn’t immediate. I did a couple of house
shows, a couple of weeks of house shows with Bob Holly. I
did three weeks, Orton did eight, and after every match with
Bob, he’s back behind the curtain waiting for me to bitch,
and every time I went back there, [I said] ‘Thank you. Is
there anything I can do better?’ That’s the way to get the
respect of the boys. Because I have no doubt in my mind,
they sent him out, ‘See what the kid’s got.’ And if you
complain, that’s not the job for you. If you can get through
Bob Holly, okay, that’s one rung of the ladder that you’ve
climbed. That’s one step of just not being the Tough Enough
kid. Okay, maybe that was when I saw okay, I belong.”
You taking the thumbtacks is your most viewed video. It has
almost 6 million views. I gotta ask you, you took the
thumbtack bump at the end of the video. Why’d you do it with
a shirt on?
“You want the honest answer? Because I’m about 15 years too
old to be going on a bunch of cycles to be taking my shirt
off for anybody anymore. But I knew, and when we were
talking about the thumbtacks, Zach said it kind of as a
joke. He was like, ‘Yeah, the video would just do better if
you took the thumbtack bump.’ I said, ‘Well, if you can find
a ring, I’ll do it.’ I’m thinking there’s no way he’s gonna
find a ring. 30 minutes later, text me, ‘I got a ring. I got
people that are gonna let us do it.’ And at that point, I’m
like, sh*t. But that’s another one that it wasn’t as bad as
I [thought]. I built it up into my head. I mean, it wasn’t
great, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was gonna be.”
How did the thumbtacks compare to the staple in the head?
You took a staple gun right to the forehead:
“The thumbtacks hurt worse in the shower later that night,
because I went back to our Airbnb, I took a thing of alcohol
in my shower, and I dumped it down my back, and I felt every
thumbtack. Whereas the staple was just [once]. So the
thumbtacks hurt worse later.”