Chris Van Bleet.

Yeah.

Ben Bleet.

Yeah.

It's inside with Chris Van Fleet.

Great to see you.

Thank you for coming in. Thanks for having me. Oh man like listening to your voice is like listening to a part of my childhood here. Really? Yeah. A lot of people come up to say that to me. Like, I grew up watching you and I'm like, bro, you're 40. Yes. I'm 49, okay? How can you have grown up listening to me? But that's the way it goes. How did that job with WWE even come about? Well, I was working in Tucson, Arizona as like a local sportscaster. You used to do similar stuff. Yeah. So for the CBS affiliate and I was covering like the Arizona Wildcats and the Diamondbacks. I was there for game seven when the Diamondbacks beat the Yankees after 9-11. Crazy.

Great experiences.

And this guy that, that I know said, hey, WW's hiring, you should send an audition tape in.

Because at the time, we would do this Friday night high school football show.

I mean, this guy named Scott Kilber.

And we do these outlandish, like skits where we do funny things, dress up like the Matrix or cheerleaders and old crazy stuff. And I was like, I'll send a tape in, send a VHS tape in. That's what you to do, record it and send it in. And I forgot all about it. And like six months later, out of the blue, I get this phone call.

And it was, I believe, like a Thursday afternoon. Hi, this is, her name was Sue. This is Sue from WWE. We like to bring in for an audition. I'm like, cool, we'll win. And she goes Monday. I go like in four days, she goes, yeah. And at the time, I wasn't watching WWE. I grew up loving it, of course, but I was 27 at the time.

I'm like, wow, okay, well, sure.

So I'm just crash coursing. Like, I'm watching like reruns of Smackdown and Raw, and I'm buying the magazines at the grocery store. I printed out all the bios of every wrestler on the roster and made like a binder because I'm like I had to call matches on

this audition and do these things. Oh, you did your research. I did my research. Yeah. So they flew

me into New York City. This guy picks me up in a and a limo in New York City. I'm a small town

Alabama boy. So this is incredible. So I go to the audition and I remember there was like five other guys on the audition at the same time. I was like, well, this sucks. But they were all taken as like a joke. They were like, stupid. And one of the guys I remember worked in Anchorage, Alaska, as a sportscaster. And he was like, I'm not even going to take this job. I just did it for a free trip to New York. I'm like, bro, you can be on a worldwide TV show juggernaut like this, but you're working in Anchorage, Alaska, and 40 people are watching you. Yeah. And anyway, so they brought me in, and Haxall Jim Duggan was there. And he was the guy I was playing off of. They're like, interview Haxall Jim Dougan. Oh, wow. Do this with Hacksaw, Jim Duggan. So we did that, and then I called

matches, and I called it And he was the guy I was playing off of. They're like, interview Hacksaw, Jim Duggan. Oh, wow. Do this with Hacksaw, Jim Duggan.

So we did that.

And then I called matches, and I called it with Josh Matthews. And I remember the first match, they were like, it's Valvinus versus Stevie Richards. So hold on, hold on. So open my binder. I find the Stevie Richards page and I find the, you know, Valvenus page.

And they were blown away that I had done that much research.

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