Hello everybody. It is Pollock and Thurston here with you on Wednesday. May the 10th. We have a very special guest joining us. You know, you've got John Pollock here of Toronto and Brandon Thurston of Buffalo and our literal Venn diagram is here in Richard Ditch from the athletic and the host of the sports media podcast Richard is a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much for making some time to chat with us today.

First of all, I certainly appreciate the work you guys do. The I mean the graphic elements you guys have put my I mean very very small now in my mind podcast a shame. I mean this is.

This is a good look for you guys I respected things look very professional and it's correct this is we are we are a Venn diagram of maple leaf stume basically.

Yes, we're counting down to the elimination of the Toronto Maple Leafs who should be out of the playoffs in just a couple of hours from now is there down three nothing to the office.

Richard, you are getting the full Toronto Maple Leafs experience now that they they give you the slight hope and then the bottom falls as this is this is true Toronto Maple Leaf DNA that you are.

Yeah, I know it's been I moved from New York to Toronto in 2018 and it's been an education and you lived in Buffalo right in the sports and I would I yeah I went to school in Buffalo.

So I have you go to you be I did go to you be me too fun. Oh awesome fondness about city. Yeah John when things when things go poorly for the sports teams that's when I look at my health card and remember

up universal health care is pretty good. So you got that conference that's it. So the the elusive Stanley Cup continues for the Toronto Maple Leafs but we will not we will not be boring everyone to death with with NHL chat unless it comes up here.

But you are someone Richard that I have been listening to for years. So someone that has also made it very much a part of his beat is following professional wrestling in various incarnations having a lot of interesting guests talking about it from the broadcast in media right side.

And this is something that over the years Richard we have seen more and more WWE and AEW enter into that sports space and where from your perspective has that changed where WWE for a long time was sort of like the side show circus.

And now it's being discussed in these million dollar television deals and I think the perception has grown significantly over this last decade.

Yeah it's very exciting for me because now I can make wrestling references that relate to politics and people get it now. So it's like it's a beautiful world now that people understand these obscure references once upon a time.

Well I mean the way that the WWE looks at things and the way WWE looks at things is they look at themselves as competing with everyone else for for eyeballs and for viewership and that's the way to look at it.

You know look at yourself as a content property against the NBA on a certain night against scripted television on a certain night.

And where once upon a time I think both you guys are right that you know wrestling sort of as a conceit was considered.

I don't say back room but you know it was almost like you were sort of a the connotation for being a wrestling fan was like a pejorative or a negative for a long long time.

That may change in the 80s with the rock and jock sort of combination and Hogan becoming big I mean Hogan was on the cover of my old employers sports illustrate it was pretty significant moment in the 80s.

But today I think you are and especially for what you guys do you're just doing yourself a disservice not to look at the programming that the WWE puts out and the programming that AEW puts out.

In any kind of different light then you would evaluating the NFL or the NBA or NASCAR or pickle ball or whatever it's a it's a it's a very valuable piece of content that very very big and powerful media companies are interested in it.

So as a sort of a business kind of play you have to think of it in serious terms or else you're just sort of being ignorant.

How would you not look at a business that was just right valued whether you believe in the valuation or not at nine billion plus dollars as anything but a monster business.

Do you think there's a moment like some people talk about maybe like Randy savages death in 2011 when sports media and other media outlets that are mainstream outlets started to become more receptive to covering wrestling stories.

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