Brian Myers has found great success with the Major Pod Network, but didn't get to branch out a lot within WWE.
Formerly known as Curt Hawkins, he and tag partner (and sometimes enemy) Matt Cardona appeared on the WWE Youtube series "Figure It Out." However, unlike Xavier Woods' UpUpDownDown, it didn't end up getting absorbed, picked up and expanded by WWE. So why didn't it happen?
"There’s a lot to that question," Myers said. "One, Figure It Out was completely Matt and I and a guy that works with WWE.com. It was never financed by WWE. We never got a paycheck from it. We were legit spending our own money on all those episodes. Not reimbursed. Absolutely nothing. No hotels. We didn’t get a rental car. Nothing. Waking up early, shooting stuff on our own, he’s editing on his own and putting it up on the YouTube. We pushed that. We said, ‘Hey, this is great. Check it out.’ We got all the way to somebody—I couldn’t even remember his name—he was like the president of the Network at the time, we wrote him an e-mail and said, ‘Hey, we’ve been doing this. Take a look at it.’ They wrote back saying, ‘This is not up to Network standards. Blah, blah. It could never be added to the Network. Blah, blah, blah.’ Couple of weeks later it’s on the Network without anyone telling us or anything or saying a word to us. Lot of weird things like that. Nobody cared."
Cardona and Myers ended up with a successful formula, but now they don't have to share the spoils. Major Pod Network has been a big hit. Myers recalled to Fightful how that happened.
"We literally had the idea for the podcast, went to WWE and said, ‘This is the UpUpDownDown of figures and that makes this company so much money. It’s the same exact thing. Literally a lateral movement, if you will, to make more money for everybody.’ For whatever reason—and this is multiple times, this isn’t one talk, this is several times we tried this—it went on deaf ears again. To the point where someone said, ‘Don’t mention it again.’ So, we’re like, ‘Okay. We’ll do it on our own.’"
Myers was, however, under consideration for another spot -- the impending A&E show "WWE's Most Wanted Treasures." He thinks that it's probably a good thing that it didn't end up happening, all things considered.
"For whatever reason, they just didn’t… I don’t know. I don’t have the answers to any of this. I could also tell you this, I don’t know if I’ve ever said this publicly, one of the last things I did for WWE was shoot the sizzle reel for that. I went up to—which is actually just cool as hell for me as a fan boy—I went up to the warehouse and got to dig through all that cool shit. So, I have pictures of me holding the Smoking Skull belt or me wearing Jeff Jarrett’s light up cowboy hat on my phone and stuff. I spent the day there and shot the sizzle reel stuff, like, ‘Hey, what happens when WWE’s treasures are found,’ and that’s what came of it. They kinda knew what was going on, but I don’t know. It’s all, to me, a blessing in disguise because whatever went down with WWE, and I don’t know, I’m not there any more, that third party stuff and all that, something would have gave, and I don’t think in a good way. I think something bad would have happened where we would have been asked to sign it over or asked to give it up and none of that would have happened if we were there. I think we really avoided a ugly situation," Myers told us. "The money aside, which I understand the money can’t be ignored ‘cause some people make big money doing this, but how can they have control of people’s hobbies. That’s really weird to me, man. That’s crossing a line, I think."
You can see Brian Myers each week on IMPACT Wrestling, and see the replay of Major Pod's Figure Wrestling Federation LIVE event through April 15.
