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

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!

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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.

Chris says Vince McMahon would be his dream interview!

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NEXT: We ask Chris a very controversial question...