You're listening to the Major Pod Network, the only place where your favorite toy store,
bar, arcade, and arena are all on the same block.
Scratch that major itch.
Welcome to the Major Rewind the Only Podcast.
That takes some of the best Ultimate Classic and Defining Moments from the Major Wrestling
Figure Podcast's rich history and I put it together in a neat little package for new
and old major marks to enjoy.
Hey, what's going on everybody?
It's your boy Jay George, here the host of the Major Rewind.
I wanted to do something special, a bit of a bonus episode if you will, usually the Major
Rewind comes out every two weeks, every other week, however you want to, I guess it's kind
of the same.
But I'm coming up, I believe I've either passed it or this is probably it.
The right around this episode would be the one year anniversary of the Major Rewind.
I've been kind of reflecting on it the past year how this show came about, the chances
that I took on it, the chances that the Major Pod took on me to host this thing and the
fact that it's been a year now, it's wild, it's wild to think.
It feels like almost a lifetime ago that I came up with this concept for the Major Pod.
You know, truth be told, this wasn't a hard idea for me to come up with, it was something
that I had already been listening through other podcasts.
And it's like Broskio always says, you can never have enough content.
And a lot of the podcasts that I've been listening to, I noticed, they would either straight
up release older episodes or do something similar to the Rewind or do a deal where they
put out their best bits.
And I thought to myself, well, Major Pod's kind of perfect for this.
They have all these inside jokes and they already were building up a back catalog of,
I think, I believe it was like four years at the time.
My math's always off of this, things always like a whirlwind.
But the podcast started in 2018 and I had came to the idea with him at 2022.
So that's at least four years of back, you know, of back content that newer listeners
may not have had listened to yet, right?
Obviously there's all these jokes on the show, the inside jokes.
And I'll never forget, I was on vacation visiting my parents in Puerto Rico.
And I remember I was on, I was in the airplane when I had this, this idea and then I immediately
started figuring it out, the logistics of it, how I would format it.
I remember writing out the pitch, downloading the clips.
And as soon as I got to my room at my parents' place there, I recorded it like the, I kind
of put together the pilot episode.
And it wasn't the pilot episode that would end up going up on the main feed.
It was, because I was on vacation, I had to like record it on a crappy headset.
And I just wanted to do it and get it out there.
And when I pitched it to Broskit, I wanted to have the actual, you know, proof of concept
in hand.
Like here's what it's going to sound like, you know, I remember that was the first thing
in him and Mark said, oh, you got to have a better microphone.
And I was like, no, you don't understand.
Like I had just recorded this.
Obviously I'm going to rerecord this.
But my thing is a hard lesson I've learned in life throughout the years.
If you, if you have something that you think is a good idea, if you think it's a great idea,
guess what?
If it's a really good idea, chances are someone is eventually going to come up with that same
idea.
So when you got that great idea, don't just let it be an idea that stays in your head.
You have to execute and I, and I had this like fear that like eventually either someone
was else was going to come up to Matt with it or Matt was going to come up with himself
or, or, or Mark was going to suggest it.
And I knew this was too good of a concept to fail.
And like I said, I already knew it worked based on other podcasts that I'd been listening
to.
I put my plan to action.
I executed it.
And here we are, year later, the major rewind does apparently good numbers.
I don't know the exact numbers.
I just know that it does well enough that it's still on, it's still on the air.
It's still in the feed.
And that's a big thing.
So all the major marks.
And as a thank you and also more as a wafer, I think you guys to get to know me a little
bit better beyond the, the vlogs and what you see on F.W.F. or when I appear on Booze
in or here, there elsewhere.
I kind of wanted to bring all you guys in more into who I am and how I got involved
with the major pod before the rewind was even a thought.
Clearly as the basis of what the major pod is all about, wrestling figures have always
been a big part of my life.
I remember the, one of the first ever toys that I had in my collection was the San Francisco
Toymaker, Galloube, Vader, that thick rubbery.
And I didn't even know what wrestling really was at the time.
I wasn't like watching wrestling.
And I mean, that's a whole other story there too was the way wrestling was kind of treated
in my household and my fascination with it.
And it always felt like it was kind of like taking away, I wasn't allowed to like it
or allowed to get sucked into it.
I wasn't always allowed to watch it.
I would have to sneak it or I'd have to stop watching it at a certain time to go to sleep,
obviously, you know, rock ending at 11.
It's pretty close to bedtime when you're a young kid.
And when I started kind of real discovering and watching wrestling, I had no real concept
of like a TV schedule of like, I didn't realize that like Monday night, Tro and Raw would
air every Monday at eight o'clock.
And my head, it was just like, oh, it just, you just turn the TV on and then whatever's
there is there.
I didn't realize that you could come back to it.
You have to come back to it out to certain schedule.
So once I got really into the swing of it, of like watching wrestling every week and like
really being a fan of it, you know, one Christmas, I'm not going to forget it kind of made it
easy for my mom to go shopping for me.
And I remember I got the nitro ring that I think it was the one that had like the stairs
molded onto it and I got like the maximum sweat, the Paul White, I think it was.
And I would start, you know, build slowly building my collection through, you know, the
bone crunchers.
But like I said, like it wasn't always like, I wasn't always like if I saw a figure at
the store and I said, Hey mom, dad, could you get me this?
A lot of times it was a no and I would have to get creative with how I acquired my wrestling
figures.
And a lot of that was through saving up my lunch money and scrounging up any bit of change
that I could get because it was never going to be guaranteed that if I asked, it would
be so rare that I would find a figure out a store and I'd be like, Oh, hey mom, dad,
can I get this?
And they would say yes.
So I would have to get creative and I remember the toy store in the town that I lived at
had like a layaway plan.
And at the time I was trying to buy the Jack's hardcore ring, the one that comes with the
little slit underneath that you could put all the accessories underneath.
And I remember I would go every week, I'd give a couple bucks here, a couple bucks here.
And eventually I didn't even get the full amount.
I was just like, ah, screw it, you paid enough here, you could just have it.
He just wanted to get rid of me.
And I remember also like I would have friends that would be more blessed in that sense,
their parents would just get them all the figures.
And eventually they like grew out of wrestling, they weren't as into it as I was.
So I would kind of get those figures handed down to me, which was, you know, very fortunate
for me because I was able to build a decent enough collection so that I could start having
my fig fed.
So obviously wrestling figures have always been a big part of my life.
And even going into, to high school, when I first got my first summer job, I remember
the first paycheck that I got because, you know, I'm in high school, I don't have any
bills, I don't have anything, anything I really need to buy.
I had my first paycheck and the first thing that I bought was the series one and two of
the, the TNA Marvel set.
I was so excited for those figures to come out.
It was a Jeff Hardy, AJ Styles, Raven, Jeff Jarrett, Shark Boy, Christopher Daniels.
I remember being so stoked and it was a, a point of pride for me because I was like,
these are now like, this is mine.
Like, I worked for this and I paid for it and they're mine and nobody could take it away
from me because that was a big part of like, whenever I would get in trouble, you know,
throughout my, my school career and I got in trouble a lot for a lot of dumb things,
that was like the easiest way to punish me was, you know, don't, don't just send me to
my room but take those wrestling figures away.
And I had to watch a lot of, a lot of my collection get destroyed because that was the way that
I would get reprimanded, so to say, for, for my actions.
So when I first, you know, when I was starting to make my own money and I was starting to
really get, that was a big thing of like, these are mine now.
There's, you know, you can't just like, destroy them.
This is something that belongs to me.
And then you fast forward through high school, into college.
That was the first time I tried to become a professional wrestler.
That was the, my first attempt.
And the problem was, I was very immature at the time.
I was not in the best physical shape.
I wasn't always, I was always involved in sports.
I was on the wrestling team since I was 10 years old.
But I was never the most athletically gifted, so to say.
And it was tough that first go around.
And I didn't even have a license at the time.
I had to take two buses to training.
And the school that I was going to at the time wasn't the greatest as far as the trainers.
And, yeah, it was, it was the time it just wasn't right.
And wrestling took a back seat as I, I went through my college career, kind of focused
on finishing college.
And then during that time is when Matt started doing, you know, he starts getting his run
as a Zack Ryder.
And he's doing the Z2 Long Island story.
And immediately I was, I jumped out, I was on board.
You know, something about it spoke to me.
It was really relatable.
And it definitely inspired me to keep putting out content.
Even though it was funny, even though I wasn't a wrestler or I wasn't training, I would always
like on my YouTube channel is putting out like promos or any sort of type of weird videos.
But that was definitely in a lot of ways like something that kind of like I said, it really
did speak to me.
And you know, I was a big fan of both Matt and Brian during that time because they were,
they were both like these underdogs that like, and you kind of knew a little bit that they
were like into figures and stuff.
So there was like that relatability, you know, they were like one of us.
And you know, it was always, I remember being on wrestling figs and those two guys like
that, they were our guys.
I remember watching superstars at the time just to see this awesome series of matches
Brian was having with Trent Borretta and be like, man, this guy should be on the main
roster.
He's so good.
And then Zach was killing it with his YouTube show.
I even went, I remember going to survivor series that year.
I had the, I had the take care of Spike your hair shirt.
I had the headband.
I was all in.
And then in 2012, I went to this new Japan show that they were doing like a tour in the
US.
They were doing, and it was, and this is before new Japan was as big as it is now where they
have new Japan strong and they have all this, they have a much bigger global impact now.
But at the time they were just doing these smaller tours and it was a show at the, at
the Raw Wave rec center.
And I remember being so excited because I was a hardcore fan.
I was like, oh man, I get to see all the new Japan guys.
And I remember sitting down in the front row and this guy sits, these two guys sit next
to me.
They introduced themselves.
They were really nice.
And we ended up becoming friends and then, you know, a couple months later I see this
kid who was sitting next to me at this show all of a sudden he's like in a wrestling ring.
And we had spoken about like wanting to become wrestlers and all this stuff because I still
had that itch.
It was still inside of me.
As much as it was pushed to the back burner, that flame just kept getting re-ignited.
And I remember seeing him in the wrestling ring and I was like, how did you do that?
How do you, what, like, what, what did this happen?
And you know, he told me where he was training and you know, I emailed the promotion and
I told him I was looking into training and maybe doing some video work for them.
And then it was like, well, you know, I was like, oh, you want to do video work or do
you want to be a wrestler?
We have a wrestling school.
And I just said, all right, I just started training.
I just started training.
And that began my, you know, my journey into becoming a professional wrestler.
And through those years starting out, I remember 2015, meeting a bunch of kids from this new
school called Create a Pro.
And a lot of these guys kind of had, they already had some sort of like buzz to them.
It was not buzz.
I don't know.
It was weird.
It was like, there's a notoriety to them because they were Create a Pro student.
And because it was, you know, Brian Myers was running the school, it kind of had, gave
them a little something to them because like, you know, a lot of schools in the New York,
New Jersey area, especially at that time, weren't like the most credible, you know, they weren't
even the most credible schools.
Like, unless you went to maybe, or the monster factory, which was 200 miles down south, you
know, people like, you know, you, you work with what you had available to you.
Like, you know, my trainers weren't people that made it, that were on TV for all these
years that were former tag team champions.
So if you were from Create a Pro, you had a little something to you.
There was a little extra, I don't know how to say, little, Genesee Qua, so to say.
But I remember getting along with all of them, especially Mark Sterling.
And throughout the years, you know, we had similar sense of humor.
We always cracked each other out, that shows.
We were, I think we met at Blitzkrieg Pro, a promotion out in upper Connecticut, Massachusetts
area.
And I remember getting along great with these guys.
And then I would wrestle MJF at these like, shindy shows in front of nobody.
And then I eventually meet Max Castor.
And so I had kind of a rapport with these guys from the, from the jump.
And it's one of those things too, where I think about like, imagine if I had been like, a
dick to the, like, if I had been a total asshole to Mark Sterling and we did not like
each other, like, you would not be hearing this right now, you know?
That's how much of a butterfly effect it is.
So me and Mark first meet 2015 and, you know, like, we're up and down on the roads with each
other.
And in 2018, I never forget this day, because, especially for a lot of reasons, it was the
weekend, it was SummerSlam weekend of 2018.
And it was the first time that I would ever done extra work.
And of course, I'm in there and it's a bunch of the creative pro guys.
It's, it's Mark, Alex Reynolds, CPA's there.
The whole, you know, bunch of the, bunch of the fellas.
So it made me feel a little bit at ease because they had done this a bunch of times by this
point.
This was my first time ever doing this.
So it was, I wasn't an overwhelming experience, but it was definitely, you got to know how
to act and how to navigate yourself through this weird world, especially when you're backstage
at a WWE event and then you're just like an extra and it's like, you got to, you got
to act a certain way.
Otherwise, it's not going to be so good for you.
And I'll never forget it was the Monday of that loop because it was four days you were
at the Barclay Center.
Smack, I think it was, no, SmackDown was still being taped on Tuesday.
It was NXT Saturday, SummerSlam Sunday, Monday Night Raw, and then Tuesday they taped SmackDown.
So we were there for four days and on when they were doing Raw, I remember Brian and
Matt pulling Mark aside and me and Nick were just looking at him and they pulled him off
to the conversation, a little side, a little sidebar and Mark comes back.
He's like, oh, yeah.
Matt and Brian are going to, they're starting a podcast and they want me to produce it and
he looks over at Nick who he had a CPA, who he had a podcast with at the time off the
hop rope and he goes, and guess what?
They're going to let us play a commercial for off the hop rope on it.
That was like his big point of pride of it.
And who would have thought that from that conversation that all of this would end up
happening, right?
And I was, I'm just watching at this point.
I'm just a spectator to all of this because I'm not involved with anything at this point.
Matt and Brian don't know me from a hole in the wall.
And it's funny enough, there is a story where I did try to talk to Matt at catering and
it didn't, it didn't go so well.
He wasn't, he wasn't trying to have a conversation with some random extra that he just met.
Understandable.
So then that, I look back at that moment like it's wild.
Like I got to see the start of this like amazing podcast that grew on to be this huge and,
and I was there.
I was there for the very start of it, literally the very beginning of it.
I got to like witness it, you know, and that's, it's, it might be dumb to some people, but
to me, that's like a cool little moment in time that I got to like see because like I,
I look back at it now and it's just like, whoa, I was there for that.
And then as the podcast starts and things are going well for them, again, I'm just like
kind of spectating, of course I'm listening, you know, these two guys that I was a big fan
of all these years ago talking about wrestling figures, my favorite thing in the world, obviously
I was still collecting at that time.
So that was like cool like to, to listen.
And then all of a sudden, you know, their, their starts, you know, things start kind
of happening pretty fast.
That was the summer of 2018 and then the, at the start of 2019, I had my first like international,
well not my first, but I had my like first real big international excursion where I got
to go train in Germany at WXW, which was a school ran by Timothy Thatcher and Walter,
who's now known as Goomther on SmackDown.
And I pretty much spent most of that year abroad.
And then when I came back to the States, I was, I had trained in, in Germany and then
I went to, I wrestled in China for a little bit.
And when I came back to the States, I didn't really have anywhere to go as far as wrestling
training as far as going to wrestling school.
The place that I had originally started at in 2013, you know, things had ended there
and it was time to move on.
And I had made 2019 that year about expanding as far wide as possible, which is why I went
to Germany, why I went to China.
I wanted to get out there and learn as much as possible from as many different avenues
as, as I could get to.
And when I came back, I was kind of about a home.
And as the clock starts ticking, 2019 is turning into 2020.
I see the 2019 holiday toy drive and it looked like the coolest thing.
A lot of, I had a lot of FOMO watching that event and hearing about it being built up
on the podcast thinking, man, I really missed out on something special.
I really missed out on something cool.
And I started seeing people I knew had left other places they were at and going to create
a pro because it was the right move for them.
It was the right move for any professional wrestler.
And you start seeing the success of people coming from the school and then, you know,
I had a lot of friends at creative pro.
So it started becoming more and more of a possibility that I think I'm going to have
to join the school.
And as 2019, 13 to 2020, I did it.
I bit the bullet.
I signed up and, you know, I had a lot of help in bridging that gap.
Thanks to guys like Mark and Maxcaster being there and kind of Mark was kind of the guy
once again, who kind of like confirmed that this was the right move and he was super supportive
and gave me, you know, everything I needed to know about getting in there and starting
off.
And it ended up being one of the best things that ever happened to me as far as my wrestling
career, just outside of being involved with the podcast.
And as far as the training went, you know, things were progressing throughout 2020.
I started finding myself as a performer and I'm still in the process of getting to know
Brian.
But of course, because of the circumstances we're in, you know, a lot of that was really
spread out throughout the year and it took time because of the circumstances we were
in with the pandemic.
It definitely took a while to get things going.
Live events weren't even a thought during that time, as you could imagine.
But then as we moved forward to 2021, the world is slowly opening back up and all of
a sudden their rumblings.
Fwf1 is in the works.
They start talking about it on the pod.
And I wasn't entirely sure of what the concept of Fwf1 was going to be exactly.
And then they start doing the angles, they start promoting the matches.
But everything as far as the production of it was really kept under wraps.
You knew it was happening.
You just didn't know when, at least from an outsider standpoint.
Obviously, if you were booked on it, you would have known.
And I was not booked on it.
And I didn't really know the timing of when to reach out.
And I also, again, didn't really know Brian well enough.
I obviously knew Mark well enough.
He knew I listened to the pod.
He had let me into the Facebook group.
But it wasn't again, I didn't reach out.
I just didn't know the timing of when to do it.
Then it happens, it airs, and it seemed like the biggest thing in the world.
Or the biggest thing in the wrestling figure world.
Or the biggest thing in the wrestling figure podcast world.
However you want to describe it.
It just seemed, again, like something really rad, something really cool.
And I missed out.
And I'm not going to lie, like it kind of sucked to watch it kind of go down while I
sat on the other side of it.
And especially seeing people and nothing against any of these guys because they're all great
people.
It did suck knowing that a lot of guys on there wouldn't be able to tell a basic from
an elite that were on this show on the F.W.F.
It's that same feeling the guys get when they see like Sam Roberts or someone who doesn't
know anything about figures on the elite squad.
It was that same feeling if I could like best encapsulate it and describe it.
And I knew at that point, like there was, I had to get involved some way.
I just knew creatively there was a lot of things that I could do with the major pod.
And there was a lot of cool things that could do at F.W.F.
And I at this point knew that it was something I had to make happen.
So the timeline gets a little, it becomes a bit of a whirlwind from here because there's
a lot of things that sort of happened at once.
And I kind of leave it all to three key events or let's call them major events that led me
into joining the major pod family.
One of them was the live show at Jimmy Seafood.
It was I think one of the first shows back from the lockdown.
And as I said, things were opening up in 2021.
And I remember I asked Mark if it was cool if I come and I film the show.
I just offered my services.
He said it was cool.
I had my equipment.
I hopped in a car with Max Castor and CPA.
We drove down to Maryland and I filmed the whole day.
I did the behind the scenes.
It was a wild day.
It was my first time being at a live show at all and seeing all the moving pieces that
went into it.
It was also during the height of the Mac Cardona Nick Gage feud.
There's soul something extra in the air that weekend.
It was a crazy day.
I remember I was filming the when Nick Gage invaded the live show.
It was definitely a good first step into getting involved with the major pod.
And then, Boozing with the toys happens.
Now, I believe I'd done at least one.
I had appeared on one of the Boozins before this.
I remember showing off my customs.
And at that time, Matt thought I was George Feace, which would end up becoming a bit of
a recurring joke throughout my tenure at the major pod.
But at that time, Matt still didn't really even know who I was.
I think Brian obviously knew I'd been training that cap.
And that's as far as it went.
So now we fast forward to my set.
What I think is my second appearance on Boozing.
I had already done the live show.
And right before they were ready to go in the air, I had sent Mark this huge message
about why I wanted to be enough of UF and if there was anything he could do.
Because I knew deep down as weird as the time, I just knew that I belonged there.
And it was just a matter of getting in front of these guys and showing them my value and
showing them that I was worth being a part of this amazing crew.
So I get the invite to do Boozing too.
Mark sent me the link.
And I wasn't expecting this.
When I had sent Mark that message about, hey, can you get me to have stuff you have to see
if there's anything you could do?
I didn't think he was going to pretty much say that out loud on Boozing when I was on
there.
I forgot what I was even going to talk about.
It's probably showing off some more customs.
And Mark just blurked it out.
Hey, Jay George wants to be involved with FwF2.
All of a sudden I'm in the hot seat.
Matt goes, all right, well, give me a pitch.
Tell me, tell me why you want to be at it.
And I start doing the fade.
I start saying, I've been collecting figures my whole life and this and that.
And then Matt goes, I tell you what, this is what I want you to do.
I want you to make a video calling out Slade, right?
That was the big, the big bad at FwF, the bad ass Slade, the monster.
I don't know if he's a monster.
He's a maniac, a lunatic, but he wanted me to call out Slade.
Make a video, call on him out.
All right, fine, no problem that week.
I set out, I went to cap.
I had this whole thing planned out.
Me being a director and my whole presentation being very much a movie based.
I already knew I'm going to film a trailer and the concept is going to be that Slade destroyed
my entire figure collection.
So I grabbed a bin from my house.
I have these bins.
I have two bins filled with random custom father parts like legs, heads, arms, everything.
So I went to cap.
I went into the locker room area and I laid out this giant line of wrestling figure parts.
And then I shot it all myself and then I picked up the parts and they were falling through
my fingers and I was like, slide.
And there were shots of Slade with a hammer and an axe, like kind of destroying shit.
And I was like, you know, that was my call out.
I made a movie trailer essentially for F.W.F.2 J. George versus Slade.
And I edited it together.
I posted it in a group.
Matt saw it and I got the classic WOW OMG response from him.
And I was like, all right, well, that's good.
That's something, right?
And I think I don't talk to him until the next boozing where, oh, and in between that,
there was also like, it was like the first creative pro show with a live audience at
the school since the pandemic.
And I even made a point to like get some heat on Slade and attack them after his match
just to kind of keep it building and keep that thing going.
And I remember I set it, you know, I set all this out to Matt.
I went on boozing at the next boozing and I told him, I was like, yeah, I attack Slade
and I'm ready to go.
And I even made like another video to where I like did a fake interview with him just to
keep keep the I wanted to keep the interest as high as possible and show how much I was
willing to put in into promoting this and and what I was willing to all the different
things I was willing to do that other people on on the F W F weren't going to do.
And I remember saying that and Matt for so really, I guess he had other other plans in
mind.
He goes, I don't think we're going to do you versus Slade.
I think we're going to do the J George open challenge.
And just like that, I had punched my ticket to F W F and I was in, I was going to be involved
with F W F to the J George open challenge had been a, had been officially set up.
And that was a big, you know, point of pride for me because I did essentially what Matt
and Brian were doing all these years ago.
And I took a chance on myself and I put myself out there.
And it was starting to pay off.
And then right around this time, New York Comic Con is in town.
And that was the first time I got an official like, Hey, come do this and come film.
I'm pretty sure it was even Matt had reached out.
He said, Hey, can you do you want to do New York Comic Con?
Absolutely I do.
And that was like my first day really like on the job with the major pod crew.
Like I had done that live show, but that was, you know, completely on my own volition.
And that was just me putting myself out there and taking a chance on myself.
I wasn't like I said, I didn't have any expectations and nor did I get paid.
I didn't even get to, you know, get like the free dinner on the on broske's tab on the
major pod tab.
I was all there. I was all there completely on my own because I knew I had to show my
work and I had to show my value.
That's a lesson I've learned throughout my years in wrestling.
And you know, you apply it to anywhere you go in any form of business.
And New York Comic Con happens, which was a wild day.
That was, it was just absolutely, it was very tiring.
I was holding that camera up all day.
My hand was cramping, filming the whole day, but it was so cool.
You know, you get to be a part of this amazing thing, but then you're also like, you know,
there's a lot of little perks.
Like, hey, I got to go to Comic Con for free and we're sitting next to Jerry Lawler and
Jim Ross the whole day.
And you know, obviously though, it's, you're still working.
I'm still working.
It's a very, very much a professional mindset.
And it was still great.
And we got dinner afterwards.
We went to this cool like cheeseburger place down the street from the Jacob Javits Center.
But now I felt like I was finally starting to get in the fold.
Matt and Brian were starting to get to know me better.
We were all kind of getting more acquainted here.
And F.W.F. 2 is just looming away now.
It's in the weeds.
It's coming up.
And that happens.
I was also taped somewhere to F.W.F.1 and the J. George Open Challenge.
And this was like my chance now, like they got to see me like what I was willing to do
as a, you know, as a videographer, as someone who's, you know, willing to do that end of
things.
But now they were getting to see me like in action, you know what I mean?
They were getting to see me what I could bring to the table as a wrestler, as a performer.
And now that tape setting for F.W.F.2 and the way the Open Challenge was structured was
perfect to show that how I incorporate my filmmaking side into my wrestling.
And I remember we even, I had to do a take two and we kept, I even said it as I did my
promo.
I said take two and I did the Open Challenge.
It was CPA, Max Kaster, Steve Belive.
And it was, like I said, the perfect setting to show off, you know, who J. George the wrestler
is.
And that was kind of the big trifecta, the bruise and with the toys, that live show,
F.W.F.2.
Now I'm like starting, I'm in there.
I'm in the major pod family to some extent enough that I got asked to come film the holiday
toy drive, which again, going back to that first toy drive, I remember just, ah, man,
I'm missing out on something here, aren't I?
And now I got asked to do it.
And I got to go see ringside, which for me, like sort of like a dream come true, right?
It's like going into the chocolate factory and just being amazed by all of the, just
the, the mountain of boxes and figures everywhere and seeing everything that went into the toy
drive and filling up the trucks and the way they did it this time, this was, I think that
this was a 2021 toy drive.
We, we didn't do like a traditional show.
It was just like, again, because things were still kind of weird with, with obviously with
the pandemic and things were just still opening up even in December 2021.
And we did like a, it was like an autograph signing.
So they had all the stars there.
And I was there.
I filmed all of that.
And around that time, because I believe that toy drive was one of the first videos that
I filmed that I'm sorry, one of the first videos that I edited as well.
And I got to show that side of me on top of that.
I could be mistaken.
I forget exactly which one was the first one.
I believe it might have even been like a random like Gary Danraum or one of those like weird
shows where I was like, I got to edit and then kind of show again more of my personality.
And again, just how what I could do that might be different from the way other people do
things and the positives and that.
And that, at that point, now I'm really feeling more comfortable.
I'm able to reach out to Matt more.
I'm at cap a lot more.
I'm starting to get some good matches at Creator Pro and things are moving along pretty
well.
It's the toy drive is, you know, the end of 2021 and then we move into 2022.
And like I said, it goes now we're back full circle.
I'm in the fold.
Now I'm on a vacation.
I'm visiting my parents in Puerto Rico and that's the one I get the idea.
Broskio always says you can't have enough more.
You can't take a shot.
Broskio always says you can never have enough content, which is true.
And I took that to heart and I knew that this idea, this concept for the major rewind was
going to be a hit.
It just it was too good of an idea not to work for the major pot given the way their
shows are and all the inside jokes.
And again, this wasn't like some super original concept that I came up with on my own.
I had heard it before, but the key in all of this is that, you know, in life you have
to take risks.
You have to put yourself out there because you just never know.
You know, we hear it a hundred times about, you know, you miss all of the shots that you
don't take and that, you know, all that other, what else is there?
You miss all the shots that you don't take.
Never know unless you don't go, right?
That's the all star song, but it's true.
All of that is true.
And that's all stuff I think I also subconsciously got from all my years of watching Matt and
Brian do that same thing of putting themselves out there, that story about them going into
Vince's office about, you know, WrestleMania, about the WrestleMania plans when they were
in New York and then how that part laid into them.
I mean the tag titles in their backyard, which I remember being in attendance for.
So yeah, I don't know what the point of all this was.
This was again, just to give you guys my backstory.
I ended up being a little lot longer than I thought, but there it is.
That is the origin of the major rewind and Jay George and the major pod family because
again, I've reflect back a year later from that time I was on vacation in Puerto Rico,
sending that text message to Matt to all of a sudden I'm in Orlando at the Airbnb with
the rest of the crew.
And I was one of the people that got to be part of this like exclusive Disney tour.
Unreal.
And it was all because again, I believed in myself enough to put myself out there and
I knew I had the confidence and I knew that this was, you know, it was meant to be.
It was the right fit.
It was the perfect fit.
And I got to tell you, Matt, Brian, Mark, those guys are the best bosses I've ever had
and working with them has been one of the most positive changes in my life in recent
years and has led me down to some interesting avenues.
Now I'm doing a podcast for another wrestler, the Blade, Slice of Cinema, which, you know,
where he talks about movies and I didn't get, I wouldn't have gotten that if it weren't
for Mark believing in me.
Mark always believed in me.
He always saw something in me and even when we were nothing, you know, and that's the
other thing too.
That was the other lesson I forgot because I always think to myself like, man, if I were
a dick to Mark all those years ago, this would not, you would not be hearing this right now.
And it just goes to show like that when people say that about like just being kind and being
nice, especially in these settings because you never know, you know, who's going to end
up doing what, you never know who you're going to see on the way down.
You never know why these connections are going to lead you.
And a lot of the stuff I have in wrestling now are because of connections I made very
early on into my career where I could have easily messed things up and lost all of that.
And I'm thankful that I've always, I've always tried, I always try to be good.
I always try to treat people the way I like to be treated.
And that goes a long way.
And I'm super thankful for all of you guys, all the major marks.
And that's another thing that like I never even thought would be a possibility that like
guys like Joe Dumas would be making head scopes of me.
And then I would be on some of this on the merch and on and some of these like real bad
ass drawings that these guys, you know, the art pieces these guys get made.
It's insane.
It's unreal.
And it keeps on going.
You know, things kept struggling along.
FWF2 worked out so well.
I got to be a part of FWF3 where I wrestled Nick Gage and then I got to wrestle Tyra Valkyrie.
Then I got to wrestle Fandango.
And that was because of that could have easily gone awry.
Like I could have easily shit the bed on FWF2 and that would have been it.
But thankfully I've been going to create a pro and training my ass off, you know.
And this is years of already being in wrestling.
And when I went to create a pro in 2020, I started all over and I had already been doing
this for a few years.
But I had to do that.
I had to start all over because that was like kind of the only option I had at that time,
you know, that was, and that was, that was a point of pride.
And again, I reflect back because I'm not the first wrestler to do that.
Brian did the same thing where, you know, he wasn't being used on TV for a while.
So he started all over and he went back to FCW and essentially put himself back in the,
you know, in the starting line because he knew that he had to take that chance on himself.
And that's in life, like sometimes you are going to get knocked down and start all over.
I thought I was going to be wrestling overseas for the rest of my career.
I thought I had kind of set a different path for me.
Things didn't work out that way.
And you know, thankfully they didn't because obviously we saw what would happen as we entered
2020.
I would have been screwed.
And it worked out and I attribute that again, having a good support system in guys like
Mark Sterling, Max Kaster, and that would not have been possible.
I had not been good to those guys when I first met them.
So maybe that's the takeaway you take from all this.
Be good to people.
Be kind to others because you just never know where we're headed in life.
Whether it's up or down.
And that's, that's it.
That's all I have.
I'm sorry.
I was, I don't know how many people are going to listen to this.
Have you guys listened to this far?
I just wanted to share my story of how I got into the major pod from very, very humbling,
humbled, very from humbling.
How I got involved with the major pod from very humbled beginnings.
Thank you.