AEW's Chris Van Vliet discusses his new role, his dream interview and THAT interview with MJF (Exclusive)

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.

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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]

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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.

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NEXT: Chris speaks about his dream interview

COMING UP: Chris reveals who's next!