Bumps, Backlash, and the XFL Collapse | Reading the Ring Ep.2

We’re back for week 2 of There’s Just One Problem by Brian Gewirtz, and if you thought last week was chaotic… buckle up.

This stretch (Chapters 5–9) covers everything from Brian taking a literal bump courtesy of Bubba Ray Dudley, to the culture shock of writing promos for The Rock and Vince McMahon at the same time. We get into the rise of SmackDown, the disaster of the original XFL (and what it was like watching that trainwreck from the inside), and a backstage power struggle with Paul Heyman that somehow ends in friendship…?

We also talk about:

-How to survive a writers’ room with Vince Russo (spoiler: don’t),
-The glory of Hollywood Rock and why he still lives rent-free in our heads,
-That one wild SmackDown watch party in Vegas that none of us will ever recover from,

And the moment Brian realizes just how high the stakes are when you're scripting real-life beef between wrestlers who actually want to kill each other.

Next week: Brian climbs the WWE ladder, Vince goes full Vince, and yes—we talk about that chapter. You’ve been warned.

🎧 Stream now and read along with us.
📘 Because wrestling is real, and books are too

The New To Wrestling Podcast follows two friends who enjoy wrestling but are in different stages of their fandom. Xavier Cruz serves as your guide through generations of professional wrestling while Kelsey Silva experiences these matches for the first time. Climb into the ring weekly to relive the famous matches beginning with the Attitude Era!

Transcript

Xavier [0:00 - 36:38]: Hello everyone and welcome to the second episode of Reading the Ring where wrestling is real and books are too. If you are jumping in, this is week two so make sure you go back and catch week one. We are covering. There's just one problem. A true tales from the former one time seventh most powerful person in wwe, Brian Goertz. This week we cover chapters five through nine and oh, we're just gonna get into it. So if this one starts with chapter five, which is going to be the bump, a bump in wrestling. For those of you. I love this book because it is one of the few, I feel like books that in writing like puts down wrestling terms like as far as like a definition because really they're just kind of like floated around either in wrestling programs, around wrestling events, people and you don't always get the kind of connect the dots if you're not an avid watcher. So a bump is being basically on the receiving end of a wrestling move. Typically they mean like a, like a back bump, like flat on your back. But it, it's also one of those terms that's just kind of interchangeable with just generally taking a move. Up until Brian writers. No, no, no, no. We're not taking any bumps. This was. Would be seen even back then as kind of a no go. Obviously this was the late 90s, early 2000s. We're in a kind of vacuum of not having social media and cell phones as ubiquitously as we do. So certain things kind of you can get away with. So basically Shane McMahon kind of coerced some of the writers to do a. That they were going to take like a bump, that they were going to learn how to do it. Because Shane McMahon being the kind of pillar of this is great. He is kind of as far as non wrestlers taking bumps. He is your guy. He's the one you're gonna look at because that man has thrown himself off of damn near every conceivable set piece or match type that you can probably come up with in the wwe. So love course he's going to be the one like suggesting this. So this takes us to January 2000. At this point there's a four person writing team Sh. McMahon come barges in, says we're gonna take pump, take bumps. Every fan dreams of being in the ring and they all. We all have an idea of what it is and he gets into the ring and it is hard. It is not what you think. It is not what you. Not what it appears to be on television. It is just a very Very hard ring, obviously. We know it is, you know, wood slats covered by a thin mat and a canvas. So there's not a lot of wiggle room as far as it not hurting. It all hurts. Ask any wrestler. They'll tell you you just kind of get used to it. So they talked about running the ropes and taking a flat back, which is the. The back bump that I was initially talking about at the beginning of this. So all of this really kind of like culminated in a once in a lifetime blizzard that cancels smackdown, which literally, I think has only happened this one time. And we cut to, the Dudley boys are in the ring. They suplex one of the other writers. Shane calls Brian in the ring and he's like, well, it's your turn, let's go. So Bubba goes, let's do a power bomb. And then he proceeds to take a defenseless Brian up to the second rope to do a just an avalanche power bomb. Which is insane to do for somebody who just doesn't. That's not his wheelhouse. That's not his forte. This man has never taken a bump in his life. But at the last minute, he gets some sage advice from Shane to tuck his head. And he apparently after that doesn't remember much. She remembers, like, being congratulated in the hotel room after. And for like, you know, there's just a, like a sense of camaraderie because he mentions in the beginning of the chapter that there in the wrestling world, there are those who take bumps and there are those who don't. And unless you are in the former category, you never really will truly be like one of the boys. And he says that for this one day, he felt like he kind of got that respect and kind of got that kind of camaraderie, which is. Which is cool. This one's a short chapter. There wasn't really, like, too much to it. It's just kind of a. A definitely a. Just kind of a quick story that most wrestling fans either have a question about or want to experience themselves. So I thought it was a nice little, like a nice little kind of segue into his just kind of his tenure in the WWE and kind of just how crazy it really is. So next that takes us into. We're gonna flash forward a bit until 2011. And this is. This chapter is mainly talking about his working relationship with the Rock. So Brian at this point is working on, like the rocks promos. The Rock has. Is known for having ridiculously high standards. Brian says that working with the Rock on his promos was the best parts of his job. So much so that it was kind of like known or he was kind of known throughout the locker room as being the rocks writer. I mean obviously he had to write for everybody. But because they had such a good working relationship, it was kind of insinuated that he was kind of just working for the Rock which he does eventually do later on in life. But hey, some stars obviously don't need writers, don't like to use them. But he kind of goes into how a writer is useful in, in in the world of wrestling. So just it how a writer can help a wrestler. So just in terms of like what points they want to get across, what themes, lines they'd like to use. They'll go back and forth on like feedback. Brian goes into saying like having the writing, having the talent involved in the writing process is always going to yield a better outcome because one they're invested in. And it same works at any kind of job level. If you are a manager or an owner etc, you are far more likely to get buy in from your team if they are involved in the creating, in creating the processes that you would like them to do so that they feel like they have input and they feel like they kind of steer their own ship. You know that that is a, a great thing to have in any job. But he says that like sometimes the writers don't always or sometimes the wrestlers don't always have the bigger picture of the show which is where a writer can be like endlessly useful in that like maybe they want to say something but somebody else is is planning to say it in an earlier segment so they don't do the same thing or maybe just they have plans of like doing something in a certain theme that's already being used or a certain color. And it's just, it's just having somebody that has the kind of bigger picture allows you not to kind of step into kind of awkward situations as far as going through a, a show. So I thought he did a pretty good job like kind of arguing the case for writers in wwe because it is one of those things that is I know debated about a lot. Like yes, I mean to me it makes sense. It's a television show. Same way every other television show has writers. Whether you know, just because the format is not in, in a typical, you know, drama or comedy, those elements are all there. It's just kind of more of a like a sketch show or a variety show is probably more aptly titled. Then we get into. He goes into some of his Workings with the Rock that kind of really stood out. And we go into the early 2000s triple H promo leading into the six man hell in a Cell match between a bunch of the top stars. But the Rock does a promo where he is making fun of the way that Triple H delivers lines. And he's like, and I am the game. Yeah, that one, that promo, if we all remember, basically, Brian is the reason that that promo has come to us. Because he is the one that noticed that cadence and Triple H's speech. And he said after that initial promo that Triple H kind of omitted that, uh, kind of speech pattern. Uh, hey, listen, if it. If it makes someone better, maybe not in the way that they intended. I guess that's a silver lining. So. So good. He goes in to talk about, like, wrestlers being sensitive. And especially into that. The lead up of that match that people didn't really like being mocks. They felt like, even though they had kind of, like, gone along with it, they kind of felt like they. That the Rock and Brian kind of diminished the severity of the match. But, hey, such is life. Some. Some feelings are gonna get stepped on. And Brian says that him and the Rock were totally kosher with that. As long as the fans were entertained. They said, will the. Will the audience enjoy it and will it draw money? Which are really the only questions you really need to be asking as far as wrestling is concerned. Because those are your. It's your bread and butter. That's how you do it. That's how you get these people paid. Another backstage or another promo that Brian was involved in was the Rock and Kevin Nash. The Rock actually goes off script in this one and calls Kevin Nash just a big daddy, Which I don't remember really, this part. This promo in particular. But apparently, uh, Kevin took great offense to this. And also Kevin was kind of just generally upset about the way at the NWO was kind of booked in their return in that. I don't know to me what you were expecting. You left to an rival company and then try that company tried to put this current company out of business every day for, like, almost five years. So I. I don't know what reaction he was expecting to get upon their return, but he wasn't really fond of eating the sandwich. So that culminated in some hostility about this promo. So. And then that brings us into H. The Rock art. And then this brings us into Hollywood rock in 2003. Basically, the genesis of Hollywood Rock is the lukewarm reception he gets from the WrestleMania or not WrestleMania RAW 10, the anniversary show. And he kind of felt like the audience was ready for it. They. It was. He was kind of in and out doing movies at this point. Definitely drawing to the end of his like full time in ring career. And then kind of leans into just the classic trope for villains where it's like the best villains always tell the truth just a little bit like warped just through like a like a shitty lens. And that's kind of what the Rock like leaned into because all the things that he was, he was saying about like how the, the fans were not appreciative of this, that or the other about like all the stuff that he had done was, was true. But he's just so ridiculously entertaining and it's just wrestling is a business of what have you done for me lately. So if you haven't been around lately, the fans will, will let you know as. As they are known to do. It's what we're good at. So we let you know in real time whether we're feeling it or not. But that leads us into one of the just most random and like best on screen interactions. If you haven't seen any of their interactions from this time period, please go back and do that. They are both so fun. The the Rock interacting with Hurricane Shane Helms like unreal. No one expected it. No one thought that that chemistry would be as off the chart. That it was what was supposed to be just like a one off segment turned into like a month long thing which actually resulted in the Hurricane beating the Rock obviously with some help from, from Stone Cold Steve Austin. But still great stuff like to be able to take somebody who's kind of on the like the lower end of the mid card and put them in a program is with a top top star and kind of elevate them up in the process is great stuff that's. It's amazing. And then that takes us into like the rock concert and then and just, just kind of the general hilarity that is Hollywood Rock. I suggest everybody go back and watch Hollywood Rock because those, those rock concerts are hilarious. Brian compares them to kind of his version of being like Weird Al. So definitely definitely a just a master class in like Cheap Heat if you ever wanted to kind of learn more about how to do it, how to get it. So absolutely fantastic. The next chapter that we have is the xfl and that one is basically Brian's week long excursion into the failure that was 2001 XFL. For those of you who don't know. Vince McMahon had a business venture to try and make an alternative to the NFL by launching his own football league. This time like with a twist. And the twist was it being overtly sexual? I guess because Brian was brought on to do like these kind of like introduction vignettes to both players and the cheerleaders. And basically it was just kind of these scenarios where these like football players were just kind of like introducing themselves and like they're standing next to a cheerleader and they're like, I know something about a tight end and you're like, I'm gonna throw up in my mouth. Which is kind of generally the vibe that Brian was giving, that this was just kind of like gross and nobody was really about it. And this, the consequence of all of this is that it kind of forced the WWE to be planned even more last minute. We know that things are very like, things change quickly, things fall together quickly, things fall apart quickly in the wwe. But because the guy who wants to be involved in all of the decisions is splitting his focus now, obviously that means things are going to get delayed. And this is where we. I. These. This is the origins of the kind of Vince McMahon last minute change of shows and things. This is kind of like the, the birth of him really, really going about that with kind of some reckless abandon. Just kind of. He will change anything he wants when he wants. Again, he's in charge by all means. But I think the scatterbrainedness of being in the XFL kind of really expedited that process and something that would just kind of continue going forward even after the XFL's death, the first one, before they come back in 2020. Of course, Brian gets roped into doing all this nonsense that during this time also Michael P S Hayes and Bruce Pritchard, WWE slash, just wrestling lifers. They joined the creative team and they're also involved in the creative aspect of the xfl. I thought this was very cool, a fun little fun fact that the moving jib was actually invented for the xfl, which is the, the giant crane camera that moves. That was actually adopted by the NFL. And I think that's pretty, pretty cool to have like an innovation like that. Maybe not the, the contribution to football that Vince McMahon thought he was going to be having. But hey, his forte is in the entertainment space. So I don't know where he thought just doing more football, football plus sex was going to be the thing. So Brian goes into just kind of the ridiculous schedule that they were keeping during that time. They were going to like XFL production meetings in the mornings and locking Themselves in like writing rooms to write Ron Smackdown or then to go and film the XFL vignettes at like the arena. Just absolute crazy. And he goes into this one story about how like it's their last night it like their last night in Vegas. And Brian reaches his like his breaking point. He they were like getting ready to go out out on the town, finally being able to like enjoy Vegas since they've been working the entire time. And he forgets that he had asked Stephanie McMahon if they could find a recording of that week's Smackdown because the hotel didn't have UPN. Smackdown was airing and on Thursdays at UPN at the time. And thus forces an evening instead of going out on the town in Vegas where they have to sit and watch smackdown and just ruins his evening at. During this kind of like instance, Brian being so disappointed is already in the mood. And of course the Freebird and Bruce Pritchard decide that now's the time to just play some pranks, just be silly little guys. And they tell Brian that they're going to call the Rock and Kurt Angle and tell him that that he's talking mad on their name, this, that and the other. And Brian at his wits end instead of just kind of letting it go, throws a chair at the wall where he is then told by Stephanie McMahon that he should probably just take the day off because clearly we can't just be throwing chairs at at people. He then takes the day he like goes enjoys Vegas, goes in. He's supposed to meet the Michael P.S. hayes and Bruce Prichard at the end of their day and they come back equally as defeated as he was the day before because they were in charge of hiring two sideline reporters who both were terrible apparently and both got pretty much immediately fired to be replaced by Stephanie New McMahon who is not a reporter. One and two the are the public audience only really knows her from WWE television where she is half of the kind of the McMahon Helmsley situation. So this is the height of everybody just calling her a. So as she's doing these like vignette or like these interviews, these like in, in the crowd like in the stands, people are chanting slut at her at top volume. And it's just like all on just recorded history forever. Just wild. Why did we do that to poor Stephanie? We really. They really put her through. I say we. I was in 2001, I was in first grade so it wasn't me. But I wasn't calling her a slide. I wasn't calling anybody a slut. I hope, but damn, they really put her through the ringer. The XFL debuted with really, really great ratings and then pretty much slowly took a dive once everybody realized what this was the craziest thing that nobody wanted. And we flash forward to later on in life when Brian is working for the Rock at seven Bucks production and they end up buying the xfl and it's just something that he can't just escape absolute insanity. I like the like little tryst, I guess, into the xfl. Not really. Not anything I'm super interested in. Don't really need to know more. But it was a kind of crazy phase in the history of the WWF just because it was like, what, what are we doing here, guys? And like, if I'm remembering correctly, I'm pretty sure like Jim Ross and Jerry the King Lawler were like the, the commentary team like for the football games, which is not what. What are we doing? So then we have Chapter eight, which is old school versus new School. And basically this is a kind of story going into the relationship of him and Paul Heyman. At this point we're going to go into 2002, we get into the brand split at WWE. That's when Ron Smackdown essentially officially became two separate shows. One was going to be headed by BR and one was going to be headed by Paul Heymon. Paul Heyman is un. Undoubtedly a old school guy. He has been in the business since he was a teenager and basically forced his way into the business and loves it with every fiber of his being. Brian only really been there for a little under two years. No, in 2008 he's been there, yeah, two and a half, three years and is definitely of the New School kind of variety. And this is where they have learned that they both love to argue, they both love to fight, and they would fight over everything. And I think part of that was probably the fun of it all, but it also is these clashing kind of mentalities as far as wrestling goes. So they would essentially have these like tit for tat, petty kind of fights. Paul was accused of kind of spying on Raw, writing meetings to then kind of do something better on smackdown. And it was just kind of like a whole, a whole thing. Heyman denies that during this time period and then later confirms that that was the thing he was doing. Wild. And then he goes into a funny story about Paul usually has some kind of protege in tow and how one of his proteges wanted to present an idea. And Paul like the room to order and was like, nobody, everybody take this seriously. And the suggestion from the writing assistant was just to have Tori Wilson in the middle of the ring topless or like nude with, like nude, like shorts on with no, like storyline reason for doing that. Brian, of course, being the dick that he is at self proclaimed is laughs. Laughs at the writing assistant because he goes into talking about how like you can't, you know, just show tit on screen on television just because you feel like it. He's like, no, we'll get like nip. We'll go nip covers. And I'm like, that's insane. So Brian laughs. Paul was pissed. They get into like an actual, like almost actual fight. They are both then suspended by Stephanie McMahon, who has become the head of creative at this point. It's just kind of wild. The, the jumping around in this book is definitely something I wish wasn't so prevalent. Just because we like started the last chapter in like 2011. We're back to 02 now. We're on 03. Back to O2. It's. For me personally, it's just kind of. I don't know, it's just. It's hard to follow because if you're not somebody who's super familiar with all of these kind of plot like points in time, I can imagine that as a reader, it's difficult to follow. I'd love to know. So if you guys are feeling that and it's not just me, like, I am aware of these, these plot points and things that he's referring to. So for me it's kind of like, I don't love that he jumps around, but I can kind of follow it. But are you guys having a difficult time, like with. Frequently he kind of moves time periods. Let me know in the comments because I'm curious. But basically this just goes into building a healthy respect with Paul. Just kind of. They were. They worked in different kind of mentalities. They loved to fight, but they both were doing the thing. They both loved wrestling. They both, you know, it's just kind of a. We may come from different schools, but, you know, we will learn to respect each other, like over time. And then we get. The prodigal son returns, bro. Which is the story of Vince Russo coming back very, very shortly in O2. This takes us back and kind of sets a better table for 2002. It talks about just how crazy WWE was at this time because in 2002 we saw the return of Hulk Hogan as well as Shawn Michaels, but we also saw the debut of what is the next generation and the people that are Going to dominate WWE for the next 20 years. And that's Batista, John Cena, Randy or in And Brock Lesnar. Brock Lesnar. Obviously, we know. We know who he is. Orton's still there today. John Cena's on his retirement tour, and Batista is one of the best known actors in the world. So, hey, hey, we love to see it. So having all of this talent in one place at one time is kind of insane. So I like that he kind of goes into that. And then they talk about the brand split and how up until this point, all of the. The characters and story lines would just transfer from Raw into smackdown, back to Raw into smackdown, until you eventually made it to a pay per view. But kind of understanding the logic that, hey, like, not everybody can just commit four hours every week to just wrestling, they decided to kind of like, split it up. They also had huge, huge rosters at this point, as we've kind of alluded to. So Rob was gonna have kind of more of the, like, Paul Heyman guys, which would be like Taker, Stone Cold, Steve Austin, the NWO minus Hogan, the Dudley's, Bradshaw, rvd people who either, like, came WCW or not just WCW or ECW or had had kind of top ties to Paul, like previously on the smackdown side, it was going to be like, Brian described it as the entertainer. So it was the Rock angle, Edge, Hogan, Jericho, and the Hurricane. And Stephanie threw them for Stephanie and Vince, I guess threw them for a loop in that Brian, who would have much preferred to be running smackdown, would be running Raw. And Paul, who would much prefer to be running Raw with those guys, will be running smackdown. And it was just kind of a. I, I loved this as a. As a boss move, just being like, you know what? Actually, I'm gonna challenge you. And I like that. I thought it was good. And honestly, we know how it worked out because this is the time period where smackdown kind of ascended into becoming the number one show. So the ratings dropped after the split, the brand split, which we kind of knew was going to happen, because if you're used to seeing all of the stars every week and you're only getting half of them, it's gonna. It's gonna be an adjustment period. But during this time in June 2002, Vince Russo is brought back. And Brian goes in to say, like, he will always have respect for Vince Russo and Ed Ferreira, the writers who he replaced after they left wcw. But he says that Vince Russo's ego got the best of him at his time in WCW when he wrote himself as a on screen character and then making himself the world champion. And at one point Brian says, like, hey, might just be me, but I think if you're a writer and you're making yourself the world champion, that's probably insane. So absolutely insane. He said that he hesitated, kind of telling the story anyway. But because Vince Russo has talked about it at length, he felt like he needed to get kind of the. The writer side of this story straight. So basically, Vince Russo comes back and is trying to, I guess, create a storyline in which Eric Bischoff and Shane McMahon do like this kind of long story. But at this time in 2002, Eric Bischoff is not available to be used. So it's a weird kind of suggestion to try and do that with somebody who isn't even an option. And then he talked about doing the same thing that he did in wcw, which was stripping kind of the world champion and doing a tournament to determine a new one. Russo wanted RVD to be the champion because RVD is kind of like cool with the younger kind of audience, which we know is something he tried to do in WCW with Booker T and ran into problems with Hogan. So they wanted to strip the Undertaker of the title and just make a new. Make a new tournament. And then so they go, they go through all these ideas. They have a whole meeting. Vince prior to that meeting was like, hey, you gotta like, you know, give it a chance, be positive, blah, blah, blah. They go back and kind of recap the meeting for Vince and Vince hates it. So Russo, Vince. Vince Russo is under the impression that the writers go to Vince and kind of bury him behind his back when he's not there to kind of defend his ideas. Brian disagrees. Brian says that they were actually kind of stoked about some of the ideas and they wanted to just see what Vince wanted to get behind and they would do that. But Vince hated all of them. He didn't want any, any part to do with any of the ideas that they had. And he said that bra that at this point, Vince did one thing that he's only done once in his 16 years there, and that was apologize. He apologized for bringing Vince Russo back, saying that it wasn't gonna work. They tried to keep him on as a consultant, but he ends up going to TNA where he also writes himself as an on air character. So I think I, I love the story. I think Vince Russo is a very interesting character. One I, I love that he's just like a guy from New York. And maybe it's just because I grew up in that vicinity and I just kind of eat that up. But he just cracks me up because there's just like a a little bit of a Delulu that I there's like it's just something maybe it's like it's like Hogan, Vince, Russo, Bischoff and probably McMahon himself is probably like the four corners of delusion. I I don't think any of them, if you were to ask them about a story that they all had overlap on would tell you remotely close to the same version of events. They're just kind of like that. But again when you're dealing with larger than life characters I'm not super shocked that they would have larger than life tendencies both in their truths and their lies. So I am thoroughly enjoying this kind of like backstage peak guys. I hope you guys are too. Thank you for joining this kind of second the second episode of Reading the Ring and we will catch you on the next one.