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To simply call Chris Van Vliet a wrestling fan would be doing the interviewer extraordinaire a severe injustice, but that's just what he is.
The only difference between Van Vliet and every other wrestling fan on the planet is that the 36-year-old from Pickering, Ontario, has over a decade worth of incredible broadcasting experience under his belt and, well, he decided to combine his career and his passion to become arguably the greatest interviewer known to the world of professional wrestling..
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Van Vliet has interviewed everyone from Chris Jericho to John Cena and has been dipping his toes into WWE, AEW, and Impact Wrestling to bring world wrestling news in the form of a friendly chat on an incredibly consistent basis, before landing a role just recently on All Elite Wrestling.
But when you're an interviewer, you help tell other people's stories - so who is Chris Van Vliet?
Well, we caught up with the man himself on Episode 3 of Dropkick DiSKussions to turn the microphone on Chris.
We spoke about his love of wrestling, and just how he manages to turn friendly chats into incredible interviews.
I'm Gary Cassidy of Sportskeeda Wrestling and welcome to episode 3 of Dropkick DiSKussions, where today I'm joined today by one of AEW's latest signings, interviewer extraordinaire - Chris Van Vliet.
Hi, Chris, thanks for joining me. How are you doing today?
I'm doing great, Gary. Thank you for having me on!
No, thank you for coming on! Firstly, a huge congratulations to you for becoming one of the latest signings over at All Elite Wrestling. How did that come about?
First of all, thank you so much. I mean, it's crazy for me as a broadcaster by job, a wrestling fan by nature - kind of the marriage of coming together to be the backstage interviewer. The debut show, AEW on TNT. I didn't apply for the job, I think it was just through the series of interviews I had done with Chris Jericho that led to an interview with Tony Khan, which led to another interview with Cody, another with the Bucks - and, yeah, I think it just kind of came together through that and, man, I'm super excited about it.
And your role is as backstage interviewer. Which talent are you looking forward to working with most?
Yeah, I've been really fortunate to work with a lot of the talent or at least interview them, have them on my podcast, or on my YouTube channel. I'm very interested to see how another interview with MJF's going to go. He has famously branded me Chris Van Vleurgh, and not a single day goes by when someone doesn't tweet that to me or direct message me that on Instagram so it will be interesting to see what happens when I have an interview with him.
I have more on that interview coming up later, don't worry, but I promise not to refer to you by that name.
NEXT: Is Chris Van Vliet's AEW contract exclusive?
COMING UP: More on THAT interview with MJF
I know that, at this stage, you haven't even gotten into the first role yet, but might we ever hear Chris Van Vliet in another capacity, or even see you in the ring at all in AEW?
Oh, God, I have no idea. I think we should leave that to the professionals, you know? I did train briefly when I was... It was my goal, it was my dream to be a pro wrestler. I trained when I was 20, I trained in college but something had to give. I couldn't be all in on wrestling and all in on going to college so something had to give and for me, it was wrestling training. I figured that could wait till another time so I went in on the broadcasting and I've been really fortunate to have this great career - but I know how to take a bump. If you watch my interview with The Young Bucks, they Superkicked me, so I wouldn't be opposed to it but let's just say, let's leave that to the professionals.
Try and put it off as long as you can anyway.
And the question on everyone's lips since the announcement has been - how exclusive is your role? Will we still be seeing Chris Van Vliet interview everyone from across the world of wrestling, or will it be solely AEW talents now?
I honestly don't know. So, for now, I'm going to keep interviewing everybody that I can interview, nothing's changed for me. I just did interviews at an Impact Wrestling show at the weekend and it was great. I was welcomed there by everybody, so I'd like to continue doing things as I have. I've been doing wrestling interviews for 12 years. I've had a YouTube channel for eight and a half. I don't plan for that to change.
As well as being an interviewer extraordinaire, you're unashamedly a wrestling fan. So, putting your fan hat on, what are you looking forward to most about from AEW?
I just think it's the most exciting time to be a professional wrestling fan. Everyone's talked about how, now there's competition or now there's an alternative - and that's great - but it's just exciting that now we have... We can go online, this is why it is so exciting to be a wrestling fan right now, you can go online and watch any match that's ever happened in the history of wrestling!
I love that AEW seems to be listening to the fans as well. I think that... Unfortunately some other organisations across the board, I think, have done what they've wanted to do and I think here, what I really appreciate is you're getting a match with this guy and this guy, and there doesn't need to be a ton of storyline there, it's just two great wrestlers working each other because you know it's going to be a great match and everybody benefits from that - the wrestlers benefit because they have a great match and the fans benefit because we get to take it in.
NEXT: Chris speaks about THAT interview with MJF
COMING UP: Chris discusses his dream interview!
I know you've worked as an announcer for several wrestling promotions in the past, before taking your immense career as a broadcaster and utilising it in the professional wrestling world - interviewing just about everyone worth mentioning! But what I want to know is what got you into wrestling from the start?
I remember being a kid and it was on at grandma and grandpa's house all the time when I was four or five years old. Not because my grandpa was a massive wrestling fan, just because it happened to be on. Saturday Night's Main Event or something, it was Hogan and Macho Man, and Ultimate Warrior that really drew me in - but also like the other big characters like Koko B Ware and Repo Man, IRS. I just thought it was so engrossing and I loved how it drew me in.
My parents, like a lot of parents, did not like wrestling. They did not want their son watching wrestling. When I got to the age where I was choosing what I was watching, 15 or 16 years old, that was the Attitude Era for me and I was so drawn in by Austin and McMahon, that was one of the big storylines of the time, I loved The Rock's charisma, whether it was in the ring or cutting a promo outside of it. My parents hated it. My dad, I remember, he would stand in front of the TV, like, "You're not watching this garbage."
I would have to do that trick that we all did well you are watching one station, one channel, then you'd have that button on remote where you could go back to the other channel. Most of the time people are doing that with, like, naughty films or something. For me, it was wrestling.
And from that, what made you go all in with it, pardon the pun, going all in with wrestling and speaking with major names almost on the daily?
Well, I mean, I am still a broadcaster. 20 minutes ago, I was on TV in South Florida where I live. But I think for me, I was already intermixing two of them. I'm an entertainment reporter so I was interviewing a lot of celebrities, I was reviewing movies and we would interview wrestlers as that was part of it.
I think, for me, we would have these wrestlers on the show and be doing these interviews, we would only air 20-30 seconds of, "Hey, RAW's in town and tickets are $20," but I would do a longer interview that wouldn't end up getting put on TV.
I just figured, "Well, I asked questions that I, as a fan, was interested in. There must be other fans in the world that are interested in the same thing," so I started putting them up on my YouTube channel, thinking, "Someone else must appreciate them." So, my YouTube channel, when I started, in 2011, I had four subscribers. One of whom was probably my mum. That was it. I was just putting them on there because I didn't want the interesting interviews that I enjoyed just going to waste, so I was putting them up there so that somebody else could appreciate them.
And you have a few more followers than four now, we'll say.
I think there's like six, yeah!
[Note: Chris Van Vliet has 197,723 subscribers at the time of writing]
One of my favourite interviews of yours, of course, was the MJF interview where he fed you omelettes. I assume that's up there, but what's the weirdest thing that's ever happened to you on an interview?
I don't know if anything can top the MJF interview. I'd seen some other interviews, I'd of course seen his promos and his matches but nothing can really prepare you for Maxwell Jacob Friedman. People ask me all the time, "Well, what is he like off-camera?" Well, the thing is, there is no quote-unquote "off-camera" for MJF. That's who he is. What you see is what you get. I mean, room service interrupted our interview, he fed me an omelette, he threw toast at my head. Yeah, it's like something I've never experienced before in my life.
NEXT: Chris speaks about his dream interview
COMING UP: Chris reveals who's next!
Now, what I think is most exciting about your work - in a world where EVERYONE is chasing an exclusive, you just sit down and chat to massive names, and every article is packed with headlines and snippets of stories. At the risk of seeming like I'm asking for tips here, what's your secret?
I think the biggest thing is I really come with a lot of respect for my guests in their profession, and just like you, Gary, we've been watching wrestling our whole lives.
We think we know everything about the business and I think the biggest misnomer here is we don't. Sure, I've stepped into the ring, I've taken some bumps and I can do a headlock and run the ropes but I am not a wrestler.
I think the fact that I can come in and go, "I have an understanding of your profession but I'm not one of you. I know a lot about it but I'm not you," I think that is very disarming and I think I just come with a great amount of respect for the person I'm speaking with and their career that they've had, and I just want to have a conversation.
I am genuinely interested in everything that they are saying. I think that unfortunately there's a lot of people, not just in wrestling interviews, but with interviews in general, to ask a question, they will go, "So, what's your favourite match of all time? BECAUSE MY favourite match of all time is..."
And it's like, you need to realise, nobody's clicking on this video to hear your opinion. I'm SO aware of that. Me having the self-awareness to go, sure, my channel's called Chris Van Vliet, sure I have "Chris Van Vliet" on my shirt here. Nobody's clicking on my videos to see me or at least a very, very small percentage, including my mum, are clicking to see my videos for me.
If I have a video with Chris Jericho, 99.9% of people are clicking to see what Chris Jericho has to say so I'm going to ask a question, I'm going to shut up, and I'm going to listen.
Well, I think maybe more than 1% are clicking for you now.
Yeah, 1.5% now maybe!
Now, this is me being a small fry preaching to the big name here - but I've interviewed a few names from the industry, obviously nowhere near as many as you, but I always think, "Wow, where can I go from here?" Then I like to think about the next 'dream interview' - who haven't you spoken to yet that you'd love to interview?
Oh, Vince McMahon. How great would an interview with Vince McMahon be? Just as a wrestling fan, we all owe him an immense amount of gratitude.
I'd love to just shake his hand and be like, "Thank you." You might not agree with everything that WWE does or has done but wrestling is what it is now because of Vince McMahon, so I'd love to start the conversation off there and then, if I had even just five minutes with him, I'd love to just dive into a whole bunch of different things.
So, Vince would be so interesting, Triple H would be a really interesting one, Steph would be a really interesting conversation - and I kind of kick myself because I had a chance, like seven years ago or six years ago when the WWE network was starting out, to interview Stephanie McMahon but I wasn't in town. She was in Cleveland where I was, I was in Los Angeles doing a different interview and I missed her by, like, 12 hours or something.
NEXT: We ask Chris a very controversial question...
Since I've asked for the epitome, I need to ask this - not to rip off Goldberg, but who's next?
So, I just uploaded my interview with Jimmy Jacobs yesterday. I was at the Impact Wrestling show in Hollywood, California at the weekend. I did four interviews there. Two have been uploaded, two you'll see soon. Brian Cage, I just uploaded Jimmy Jacobs - what a fascinating, in-depth, existential conversation that was.
I also have an interview with Ethan Page that I did, one half of the Impact Tag Team Champions, and then Melissa Santos, who is Brian Cage's wife/backstage interviewer in Impact Wrestling - but I just had an interview yesterday with Ken Shamrock's manager so I'm super excited. I was a huge Ken Shamrock fan both in UFC and then when he transitioned over to WWE, so I'm pumped about that. You can look for that one in the next month or so.
I'm really just taking them as they come. I'll line them up and I'll knock them down. I want to do as many wrestling interviews as I possibly can!
And I have one final question - I always like to end on something controversial, so you don't need to answer it if you don't want.
The Rock or Stone Cold Steve Austin?
Oh, THAT's a controversial question? The Rock, for sure. I mean, they're both great.
Look, you can't go wrong with either of them, there's no wrong answer to this question but I was such a huge Rock fan growing up. I was walking around my high school going, "It doesn't matter," at people all the time.
I dressed up as The Rock for Halloween, I was raising the People's Eyebrow in far too many photos when I was 15, 16, 17 years old. I've now had the honour of interviewing both of them. I've interviewed The Rock nine times and he's everything you want him to be - but who's counting? Who's counting? Nine times!
The Rock is everything you want him to be. He's funny, he's charismatic, and he goes out of his way to make you feel special, and that's a real interesting celebrity quality that not a lot of people have, so every time I have an interview with the rock, I look forward to it, because you know it's going to be gold.
My old question used to be about pineapple and pizza and that was inspired by The Rock because he said he loved it.
That IS controversial, that one's controversial.
Thank you so much for speaking with you. It's been a pleasure and I can't wait for everyone to see this.
No, Gary, thank you so much and, even though you didn't ask it, I will say that pineapple DOES NOT belong on pizza!
Thank you to Chris Van Vliet for chatting today, you can follow him on YouTube here and Twitter here.
