Freddie Prinze Jr. provides an update on his wrestling promotion.
For years now, Prinze has been vocal about his plans to start a wrestling promotion. In October 2022, Prinze even revealed that he made an offer to Bray Wyatt to join the company.
Updates about the promotion have been scarce up until now, as Prinze shared a few updates on the most recent edition of his Wrestling With Freddie podcast. First, Prinze detailed his meeting with Warner Discovery, saying that it was the worst meeting that he had.
“So, bad news and good news. As doors close, other doors open. I went out to four or five places, I can’t even tell you some of the places that we went to. Warner Discovery, which was like the worst meeting that I had out of all of them, they basically just wanted me to do a reality show by the end of the pitch and knew nothing about wrestling and didn’t seem to care for wrestling at all. It was not a good meeting, I must have failed at some point in the pitch because they were not interested in what I was saying. I gave the same pitch to everyone else, it was the only place it didn’t work.”
Prinze then detailed his meeting with VICE TV, saying that the company couldn't afford the show.
“I also pitched to VICE TV and they wanted the show bad, but they were undergoing some business restructuring, trying to basically stay on the air and they couldn’t afford the show at the end of the day. That was a place I really wanted to go because they have Dark Side Of The Ring and I thought we could be a cool pairing with them. I was disappointed there.”
Prinze then shared some information about his pitch that he was giving, saying that he wanted to start his show in a documentary style.
“There were a couple of other places, I’m trying to remember the names, where the meetings went well but I feel like I wasn’t pitching to people high enough up on the totem pole to get the idea heard by the top dogs. That was the wall that I felt I was running into on the majority of the pitches. There was a weird meeting at this streaming place, I won’t say the name of it yet, but I’ll tell you guys as soon as I can. They asked my wife in a meeting, ‘Hey, is your husband still interested in wrestling? We want to be in the wrestling business.’ My wife said, ‘Yeah, he’s out with a show right now.’ They said, ‘Well, we want to sit and meet with him.’ Let me back up, the original pitch to get this show made was a documentary about trying to pull this off for the first six episodes and then episodes seven and eight would be a two hour special on what we actually accomplished, the actual promotion. I’m giving you guys more information that I’ve ever given anybody. It was six episodes of the process of me trying to recruit wrestlers, finding the space, trying to sell out the theater or the arena, whatever it was. I knew we weren’t going be able to do 10,000 or anything like that, so I was going to try and do something like 2,500 in a theater. I think it’s art, I think wrestling is art and could be presented in a theater, I wouldn’t be the first guy to have done this. So it was going to be that whole process and that’s why I was saying Warner Discovery was more interested in that than doing anything else, they only focused on that. I kept trying to redirect the conversation and they just weren’t having it. All of the other places were down and open to everything."
Prinze then shifted focus to the unnamed streaming company, explaining that they were open and honest about their finances and what they could afford as a company. Prinze also came to a realization about the state of media in general and how it's nearly impossible to get an original product made.
“So I sit and talk to this new company that wants to talk to me about wrestling and they’re not interested in the documentary at all. They want a professional wrestling promotion. They’re asking me, this is like a hour and a half meeting, they’re asking me all kinds of questions, how would you compete, how would you do this, do you want to compete, do you just want to exist, do you want to be the highest rated show, all kinds of questions. They were like, ‘Please, be honest, we want you to be real with us.’ They’re real up front on their finances and where they’re at and what they can afford, what they can pull off and how they can pull it off. It was unorthodox to me, but not to them. It was the first time I had ever heard of financing shows this way and doing things the way they were wanting to do it. I try to stay open minded right, I want to have a promotion, so I’m listening. Then I start asking them questions for about thirty minutes and they start explaining their philosophies more and more clearly. We continue to talk and have more conversations and then eventually, I come to the realization that to start something new in the corporate owned Hollywood — there’s only one independent studio really and that’s A24. They’re the only ones that don’t have a corporation that owns them and finances them that’s publicly traded and held hostage by the opinions of their stockholders. A24 doesn’t care, they make the movies that they want to make and that’s why their movies are usually pretty cool. They take big swings, sometimes they miss, sometimes they hit home runs, but they don’t answer to anyone but the people. To create something new in the corporate world without an IP attached is borderline impossible. Marketing departments make a lot of choices over presidents at a lot of these places now and if they don’t feel like they can market you, you’re not making that show work, let alone getting on a list. It’s very much that you have to be a made man or your show has to be a made show or a really popular comic or a show from England or a movie from Japan or something like that and then they go, ‘Yeah, we can sell that’ because they’ve already seen it. The lack of creativity of the marketing people that existed generations before them who couldn’t depend on that. Studios used to build stars. Who is this actor, I don’t know, we’re gonna tell the people who that actor is. We’re gonna tell the people who she is, we’re gonna make them fall in love, we’re gonna show them who these people are and showcase their skills. That happened in the music industry too, we’re gonna build these stars. Not anymore. If you don’t have a million followers on social media, a lot of these record labels won’t even meet with you. You have to provide everything. It is the least amount of work possible for the maximum amount of profit. So that’s the world we live in. Existing in that world, I come to the cold realization that I can’t start it from scratch.”
Prinze finished off by explaining that he changed his idea/pitch to fit the mold of a company that already exists within another company in a way similar to Ring Honor.
“I start weighing the pros and cons, I talk to my guys that are apart of my team and say, ‘Hey, these are the ones that I’m interested in, but what do you think?’ My main guy, my right hand happened to like the exact same one that I liked for all the same reasons that I liked it. I call back and I say, ‘Hey dude, we like one of them, do you think they would meet with us?’ He was like, ‘Trust me, they’re gonna meet. Let me set it up, they don’t know that it’s you, I’m gonna introduce you in the call, you’re gonna make your pitch to them, and if they say yes, we’ll let the lawyers get into it.’ So I sit down with these two gentlemen on a zoom call with my guys and I make my pitch. I’ll be real with you guys, I’m just grateful for the opportunity to earn their respect. You can’t earn their respect the first time you meet somebody, but you can get the opportunity to. You can earn that. I’m sitting there like, I respect what these men have accomplished and what they’ve done with their brand. Now, I’m coming in not to change it, I don’t want to change it, cause what they established I happen to love. So I start changing my idea and my pitch and start thinking of the best way to help get their talent over. I can’t say too much without giving it away, so forgive me for the pauses. I make my pitch and we discuss it in sort of a Ring Of Honor way where it’s the brand within the brand and help finding talent that either needs a fresh coat of paint, need a fresh start, or are young and need work. Veterans that may not have a story, that I could provide a story for. All around the board, we discussed all of it. I finish my pitch and the first thing the dude says was, ‘Man, I can really feel your passion.’ That’s good and bad, that can go either way. It’s, yeah I’m feeling you or that’s the only nice thing I can think of to say because I hate all of your ideas.”
A wrestler texted Prinze and said that he vouched for him when he was texted by an executive at the unnamed streaming company. Prinze was also optimistic about a future deal with this company, saying that he's doing his damnest to make his dreams come true.
“This pro wrestler that I know texts me and goes, ‘Yo man, so and so just texted me to check you out.’ I was like, ‘Oh my god, I hope he said nice things.’ He’s like, ‘Don’t worry man, I got your back, you’re a good guy, I told him you’re one of the good dudes.’ Then my guy from the streaming company called me and said, ‘Hey, we had a really good meeting and I think things are moving forward.’ These are baby steps in the process still. That doesn’t mean it’s a done deal. Lawyers are gonna get involved, people still have certain things to think about, people are gonna want to protect their brand as much as possible, they’re gonna find that I’m agreeable with that. It’s still a long road and I have a lot to do and there’s a lot of work that I don’t even get to be involved in, which drives me crazy. I am doing my damnest to make this work, I am doing my damnest to make my dreams come true, I have not accepted a close door as much as they hurt."
Fightful will continue to provide updates on Prinze's promotion as they are made available.
In the meantime, fans can keep up with the actor on Instagram by clicking here.
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