In the latest episode of his podcast (via Fightful), Freddie Prinze Jr. opened up about his recent meetings with Warner Bros. Discovery and VICE regarding his plans for a new wrestling promotion. Despite his hopes, he revealed that neither meeting went as well as he had anticipated. Below are some highlights from his conversation:
Freddie Prinze Jr on meeting with WBD:
“So, bad news and good news. As doors close, other doors open. I went out to four or five places, I can’t even tell you some of the places that we went to. Warner Discovery, which was like the worst meeting that I had out of all of them, they basically just wanted me to do a reality show by the end of the pitch and knew nothing about wrestling and didn’t seem to care for wrestling at all. It was not a good meeting, I must have failed at some point in the pitch because they were not interested in what I was saying. I gave the same pitch to everyone else, it was the only place it didn’t work.”
Freddie Prinze Jr on meeting with VICE:
“I also pitched to VICE TV and they wanted the show bad, but they were undergoing some business restructuring, trying to basically stay on the air and they couldn’t afford the show at the end of the day. That was a place I really wanted to go because they have Dark Side Of The Ring and I thought we could be a cool pairing with them. I was disappointed there.”
Freddie Prinze Jr on his pitch for his show:
“There were a couple of other places, I’m trying to remember the names, where the meetings went well but I feel like I wasn’t pitching to people high enough up on the totem pole to get the idea heard by the top dogs. That was the wall that I felt I was running into on the majority of the pitches. There was a weird meeting at this streaming place, I won’t say the name of it yet, but I’ll tell you guys as soon as I can. They asked my wife in a meeting, ‘Hey, is your husband still interested in wrestling? We want to be in the wrestling business.’ My wife said, ‘Yeah, he’s out with a show right now.’ They said, ‘Well, we want to sit and meet with him.’ Let me back up, the original pitch to get this show made was a documentary about trying to pull this off for the first six episodes and then episodes seven and eight would be a two hour special on what we actually accomplished, the actual promotion. I’m giving you guys more information that I’ve ever given anybody. It was six episodes of the process of me trying to recruit wrestlers, finding the space, trying to sell out the theater or the arena, whatever it was. I knew we weren’t going be able to do 10,000 or anything like that, so I was going to try and do something like 2,500 in a theater. I think it’s art, I think wrestling is art and could be presented in a theater, I wouldn’t be the first guy to have done this. So it was going to be that whole process and that’s why I was saying Warner Discovery was more interested in that than doing anything else, they only focused on that. I kept trying to redirect the conversation and they just weren’t having it. All of the other places were down and open to everything.”
Freddie Prinze Jr on meeting with a streaming company:
“This pro wrestler that I know texts me and goes, ‘Yo man, so and so just texted me to check you out.’ I was like, ‘Oh my god, I hope he said nice things.’ He’s like, ‘Don’t worry man, I got your back, you’re a good guy, I told him you’re one of the good dudes.’ Then my guy from the streaming company called me and said, ‘Hey, we had a really good meeting and I think things are moving forward.’ These are baby steps in the process still. That doesn’t mean it’s a done deal. Lawyers are gonna get involved, people still have certain things to think about, people are gonna want to protect their brand as much as possible, they’re gonna find that I’m agreeable with that. It’s still a long road and I have a lot to do and there’s a lot of work that I don’t even get to be involved in, which drives me crazy. I am doing my damnest to make this work, I am doing my damnest to make my dreams come true, I have not accepted a close door as much as they hurt.”
