In the third installment Sam talks about why the WWE trusts him to interview their wrestlers, his multiple visits to WWE developmental, whether there is animosity between the developmental wrestlers and main roster wrestlers, what he likes and does not like about pro wrestling fans, being interviewed by Stone Cold Steve Austin, interviewing P. Diddy for the Sam Roberts Show and more.
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Below is the audio from the third installment as well as some transcribed quotes from it. You can find the audio from the first two installments at the bottom of the post:
On why WWE trusts him to interview their top name talents:
SR: I’ve been doing it for a long, long time. They trust me and know what I do and understand that at the end of the day I am a fan. I’m never going to make anybody look bad. Not that anybody else is but I just know that they know that I am specifically not. They know what my intentions are. I’m not saying that anybody else is I’m just saying that I am not a soundbite hunter or a gossip guy. I just like having conversations with wrestlers and recording them. I’ve been doing it for a long time, like I said. I end up getting access because I don’t just do the podcast I also have a pretty big show on Sirius XM. I was just down at the WWE Performance Center covering stuff for SportsIllustrated.com. Doing all kinds of stuff like that. The fact that if Sports Illustrated trusts me to cover something, or Sirius XM trusts me to cover something, then WWE could too. They’ve always been amazing to me and I’ve tried to be as good to them as possible.
On whether he thinks there is any animosity between WWE developmental talent and main roster talent over the different work schedules and pay scale:
SR: I think because people are growing so much that people are pretty stoked on it. It’s definitely a big undertaking. These guys are not down in Florida with a ton of free time. As much as they’re not on the road they are in class every day and they’re still doing live shows throughout Florida all of the time too. They are working all the time. They are busting ass like crazy. They aren’t complaining about it. There’s acknowledgement from all these guys that, “Yeah, this is…” When they say on the TV show, on Breaking Ground, the kind of corporate line is, “This is a lifestyle. Not a job.” From what I’ve seen that’s very true. These guys sit there and they just are working non-stop. Whether it’s training or some kind of promo class. Whether it’s a live event. Whether it’s media. Whether it’s whatever. Sometimes I feel bad like, “You guys just went to class. You have a live event tonight. Now you got to sit here and do an interview with me? Just go home.”
On what his biggest pet peeve is about pro wrestling fans:
SR: There’s just a lot of complaining. I think it’s ok to complain. I’ve just been complaining on this show about enough stuff. “I don’t think this is good,” or, “I don’t think that is good.” I don’t like when fans act like people who are doing this don’t know what they’re doing. When they say things like, “The people in charge don’t know what they are doing!” Or, “Vince has his thumb up his ass. He doesn’t know what he is doing.” Or, “Triple H is doing that because…” Nobody really knows what is going on. Most of the people who are saying, “Oh, Vince just thinks this is cool because of that…” You don’t really know what’s going on. I can’t have that conversation with people because if I don’t know what is going on and you don’t know what is going on let’s not criticize something that might not even be happening. We could sit there and say, “No, I don’t think Sheamus would be good as the champion because I don’t think he’s compelling.” You can’t sit there and go like, “No, these writers don’t know what they are doing and they’re giving Sheamus bad promos…” Who knows what is actually happening? That’s a pet peeve is when people have assumed knowledge about what is going on.
On what is one of his favorite things about pro wrestling fans:
SR: I like talking about wrestling. That’s why I do the podcast because I feel like I am talking to listeners. I don’t feel like I am talking to myself. I feel like I have a good relationship with the people who listen to my podcast. I love getting all the Tweets every Wednesday to the podcast. I like this idea of having a dialogue about what’s going on in wrestling. That’s my favorite thing about wrestling fans is that they all just want to talk about wrestling all the time. I love doing what I do and I meet people who have these jobs. People in bands or actors or whoever… that secretly are like these uber wrestling fans like me. We can just sit there and not even talk about what I do on the radio. Not talk about what they do in their band. We just sit there and talk about wrestling for hours.
On what it’s like to interview P Diddy:
SR: He’s so full of himself. It’s so funny. He was not mean but it was just like I would say things like, “Well you did this and it was awesome.” And he would be like, “Yeah, I know.” I’d go, “Oh, ok.” It wasn’t like he didn’t take a compliment and go, “Oh that’s so nice.” And I was like, “Thanks.” He’d be like, “Oh, true.” I’d be like, “You were incredible at this.” And he’d be like, “Yeah, I was.” I was like, “Oh, ok.” I couldn’t even get to my question. It was a blast. I loved it. He is 100% like that. I was like, “You know you went out of your comfort zone to do that movie Get Him To The Greek and you were incredible in that movie.” And he was like, “Yeah.” I was like, “Ok. You know you were incredible in that. Alright, so…”
WrestleZone Radio will be kicking off it’s week in pro wrestling audio with a brand new episode of WrestleZone Daily at Noon EST. You can listen to our full archives of WrestleZone Daily in the embedded audio player below:
