Jelly Roll: WWE Debut, SummerSlam Match, 250lb Weight Loss, Randy Orton, Logan Paul, The Rock

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Jelly Roll (@JellyRoll615) is a Grammy-nominated singer. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Nashville, TN to discuss his success in the music world and how that led to a spot at WWE SummerSlam 2024, chokeslamming Austin Theory, teaming with Randy Orton at SummerSlam, taking a frog splash from Logan Paul on the announce table, giving Drew McIntyre a Black Hole Slam, how he lost 250 pounds, finally meeting The Rock after a decade of speaking with him, interactions with pro wrestling legends, if another match could happen, and more!

On early wrestling memories:

"So I'm 41, dude, my momma had a crush on Brutus The Barber Beefcake. Did your mom have a crush on him too? My mom thought he was the hottest thing. So awkward now when I look back at that, I have those memories of that kind of stuff. We went to fairground wrestling all through the early 90s too, even high school when Smoky Mountain Wrestling was first really getting going. We drive to East Tennessee, or they'd come here. It was just something we were into. The WWF house shows would come through the Municipal Auditorium, and then the WWF was one of the first things that ever came to the Bridgestone, when we opened the Bridgestone. I mean, we had ECW coming to the municipal back in the day, TNA. Wrestling and the south are so hand in hand. Wrestling in southern culture is a really big thing for us."

On his current favourites:

"I mean, obviously, Roman’s arc has been great. Seth’s in-ring, just like me and you were talking about this off camera. It's a great time to talk about it now. I think what makes the greatest heels is like to some degree, it's not easy to be a heel. People use that loosely, but you can position yourself to make people not like you easier than you can position yourself to make people like you. But the hard part is, what makes a great heel to me is, how great can you make the babyface look? When we were talking about guys like Austin Theory. How great at that he is. Seth Rollins, to me, he makes Cody Rhodes look like an absolute rock star. For as much of an asshole as Seth is on the microphone, in the ring, he's putting everybody over every time, all out, Shawn Michaels style. It's hard to take that from him. But these are the guys, I've loved everything that's happening. I think I said this a lot, to the point of exhaustion, but I think wrestling's as cool now as it's ever been. I've been looking for this too as a wrestling fan. When I got involved in a match, I was one excited that I was famous enough to finally get the celebrity, because somebody's gonna get it, don't be mad at me. Somebody was gonna get it, at least somebody who cared got it. But also, to be a part of a time where, do you remember what it was like? You would go to school in the late 90s, mid 90s-ish, and all of a sudden there was this thing kind of happening." 

You would see someone walking down the halls wearing an Austin 3:16 shirt or a DX shirt

"And it’s like, do we have something now talk about every single Tuesday morning, dude? And it was like, all of a sudden I wasn't a cool kid. I'll be the first one to say that I wasn't the coolest kid at school by a country mile, but some of the cool kids started getting into wrestling, and I was already into wrestling and knew about it. So I was watching that culture shift happen, and I'm watching it happen again, because I'm also watching balances be made that couldn't be made before. When I'm watching Cody Rhodes right now, this is kind of deep to talk about, but he is, to me, the epitome of a wrestler. The suit, how he carries himself, some of the greatest promos, ultimate babyface. But what he did that was different, think about Hulk in the late 80s. I liked Hulk in the late 80s because I was a baby in the early 90s, and it was a great thing for my parents to push on me, vitamins, prayers, you know, whatever. But my older brother couldn't necessarily feel it, right? My oldest brother, who was 12 years my senior, kind of probably looked at it like, yeah, it's kind of corny, right? Where 18-22-year-old kids can look at Cody like this dude's a gangster. But my nine-year-old son can also look at Cody like this dude's my hero. Roman Reigns has got that same depth where it's like grown men, gangster men acknowledge The Tribal Chief. It’s the coolest thing ever to see that happening again."

On how he feels before going onstage:

"I'm shaking, for sure. Visibly my hands are shaking every time, sweaty palms. Like I joke with my crew about it, you'll watch my palms. If you're one of the last people in my crew that shakes my hand before I go out, you wipe your hand." 

Do they go immediately when you go out there?

"Not immediately. It normally goes into the first song or two, and it depends, if it's live, they never calm. If I'm live to a crowd and a television show, I'm shaking the whole time, anyways. That's how I know I'm still here, because I love it, and it scares me. Nothing scares me any other way, man, for sure. Yeah, and I felt that at SummerSlam more than I have even in music."

On his previous Raw appearance and Randy Orton interaction:

"It was the best rub ever, dude. I'm sure y'all know this about the Viper already, but none of that happened in rehearsal. In rehearsal, I was supposed to push Dom into him, and he was supposed to table him, you know, the Randy table drop. So I was gonna push him back, Randy's gonna be there, and I was gonna push him. Instead, it was like so when Randy does it, walks over to me. I was like, Oh, this is the coolest thing ever, dude. And it was cool because obviously I was getting stoned in the back, so that's what he's alluding to. I smelled like a big reefer, but he's just so awesome. And then I was in the back that night doing my interview, I think maybe with Jackie, and he stopped and crashed my interview and put his arm around me and was like, Man, I'm proud of you, man. A lot of the celebrities have come here, gave the big rub on camera right then too. And I would have never guessed that that was going to us being able to wrestle together."

On giving Austin Theory a chokeslam at SummerSlam:

"Which was all Austin Theory. But once again, the greatest heels make the babyfaces look incredible. That's all Austin. I mean, that dude's a seller and a half. But he was the dude I wanted to Undertaker style it, you know, because that's what I grew up watching. Throw the arm over, kind of like I did Logan in the actual match. Thank you Taker for giving me that nod. But when I went to it, Austin was like, 'One arm, it will get higher.' I was like, You sure? He was like, 'Trust me, bro.' This is like breaking all kayfabe, straight shoot. He looks at me and goes, 'My brother, I'm going to jump through the building. I got you dog.' Because I was so nervous. I made him make us work it out on a crash pad 30 times. They were so over it, him and The Miz, but they were so patient with me. They were like, it's this easy. And me and Ron Killings are homies. So he was just back there laughing. He's like, Jelly, I swear you're gonna be fine. I was like, okay."

On how the spot led to a match:

"Well, I'm walking up into Gorilla, and I'm obviously losing my mind. I'm definitely a very inflated version of myself, and I see Triple H, and I'm like, 'Triple H, I got to do this again. I got to take a match, bro. I'm gonna go lose 100 pounds and come back and take a match.' For the record, I had had a big disconnect between what 100 pounds was gonna feel like and how much I actually needed to lose. That's a whole different story. But I was in my mind, I'm all jacked up on Mountain Dew. I'm like, Dude, I'm coming back. We're gonna do this, man. And what I love about Triple H is he's very direct, he's serious, but he's sincere. There's a real sincerity in his face. You see the seriousness. But I think you got to look at his eyes are sincere. His face is serious. His eyes are sincere. And I seen them eyes, they really soften. He shook my hand. He said, 'Brother, you lose that weight, you got a home here.'"

Why was 100 pounds the number? 

"I guess in my mind, it was like a realistic shot, I should be able to lose 100 pounds in a year. I've already lost 50 or 60 pounds in this amount of time. I don't know what I was thinking, Chris, I was just doing screwball math. You know what I mean? I was just gassing myself into just shooting my shot."

Did you believe Triple H?

"For sure, I could see it in his face. Like I said, he's got a serious face, but it's also very sincere."

What was your heaviest?

"I was 540."

What are you now?

"285. I feel really, really good about it."

On how that led to the match:

"Before Wrestlemania in Las Vegas, I'd already got down like 60 or 70 pounds, and I started looking at it as a God thing, man. I travel like 300 days a year. I travel so hard that my management this year was very intentional about giving me more time off. So they had booked the entire month of July off for me, except for this one thing, where I was going to host Kimmel for a couple days, and I was going to have the whole month off, and I was going to stay here and write my album, because I hadn't wrote in a year. I've been just taking time off writing to just allow life to happen. I started calling management January, and was like, 'Hey, man, I think I'm going to be able to use July to wrestle at SummerSlam like I told Triple H I wanted to do.' And as you can imagine, management was so against it. Nobody on my team was cheering for this to be a reality. You know, that's another fun thing to talk about. But I talked to management, they're just like, 'Hey, man, you know, it's gonna cost you a lot of money. You got time to write. You're always complaining about not having time with your family. Have you ran this by your wife?' And I was like, 'Yeah, I prayed about it, I talked to my wife and kids. They'll come see me in Orlando.' I was like, I want to move down there and just move to the PC for the month. This is January, and I'm like, I want to rent two houses, and I want to put a studio in one house, and I'll write them up while I'm icing down every day, or see if my what my body can handle, because I didn't know what I was going to be able to handle or not. And they were like, look, you know, keep thinking about it. Then as we get close to WrestleMania, I was like, Hey, man, if I'm going to do this at SummerSlam, what's up? They were like, 'Can you do a ring check the night of WrestleMania?' I was like, no problem. I showed up, and I was like, what time is the ring check? They were like, 'Can you wait till midnight?' And I was like, 'Yep, no problem.' I stayed there and watched. I was going to watch the whole show anyways. And at midnight, I walked into that room with Bruce Pritchard and a couple of the producers, and I proved to him I could take a bump for about an hour and a half. I don't want to say it was a rib, but they were definitely there to see if I had any bitching in me." 

Had you trained at all?

"I knew nothing. I'd done some stuff whenever I was a kid, we had a wrestling ring from DOA, had a spot in Laverne that we'd go to when I was like 10-11, it was so sick, dude. I'd go jump off the top rope on crash pads. But I hadn't really properly trained at all. I knew nothing about it. I just understood it from being a fan, which is way disconnected from the physicality of it, by the way, we are all grossly underestimating how much all of that hurts. So I mean, I knew I'd be good with the mic, and I knew I could get the storytelling side, you know what I mean, but I wasn't sure if I could do the physical side. And that's what they were worried about."

On advice from Charlotte Flair:

"Charlotte Flair told me this. It was so cool when she came back from her injury. You got to remember, I'm at the PC suffering, so everybody's having to watch me just limp around. I'm clearly not able to hide the fact that I'm hurt. Charlotte gave me the best advice. She walked over. She said, 'Baby, I'm gonna tell you something. When I came back from my injury, it bruised my back. I've wrestled my whole life, you're fine.' And I was like, Thank you. Because you're starting to have moments as a man, I've never done nothing this physical. So I'm like, dude, am I way weaker than I thought I was this whole time? And I'm just like, mad soft. Then they're like, No, dude, and they started telling me about how many athletes drop out. Athletes that are getting paid good money to train there every day. So they kind of put me through that for like, an hour and a half. You're just holding the middle rope, swinging back. And they're showing you how to tuck your chin and not throw your head. You wake up the next day with a pulsating headache all the way down through your neck and spine and forehead. And they tell you exactly where the headache is going to be, and when I woke up the next morning, and they said, 'Tell us how you feel tomorrow and the day after, if this is what you want to do.' I text them two days later and said, 'I'm all in.' They were like, 'How sore?' I was like, 'Pretty sore, but not sore enough to detour me.' Well, that's step one." 

So then where to go from there? 

"We set up times to go to the PC. And they gave me the window and they gave me choices. This is so inside baseball. They were like, 'Hey man, we can send a ring to you and a couple of trainers a couple of days a week, or you can come down to the PC and train unlimitedly, but you'd have to live in Orlando.' And Matt Bloom kind of runs some of the coaching up there, Coach Matt Bloom. I went and did another ring test with them down there, because then I had to get approved by them. Shawn Michaels comes in, Matt Bloom, Coach Moss, Brookside, it's that moment, you know what I mean? It's a real moment, and you got to prove to them you can take the bumps too, or you can at least know something. I just fell in love with Coach Bloom, I fell in love with all of them that day, just the love in that room, the PC just overwhelmed me. So I was like, I want to go to the PC and do it. For sure." 

Did they tell you you needed to be there a certain amount of days? 

"Well, no, they were cool with whatever. The biggest thing was, if I did it at home, I didn't get Coach Bloom or Coach Moss, I would get maybe one every now and then, and I was like, No, I really want these guys pouring into me every day. So that's ultimately why I picked Orlando. I lived down there for probably 40 days, 45 days. I trained five, six days a week during that time. We did two-a-days, the last two weeks. I had bone bruises. I'm not looking for sympathy on your YouTube channel here, somebody's gonna make fun of me, maybe. But it was brutal. It taught me so much about me as a human." 

On his goal for the match:

"It was a three-part thing. It was very personal to me, like a lifelong dream. Selfishly, Chris, it's hard to admit it this honestly, but I'm an honest guy, it was a chance of a lifetime that I thought I had to do, and it was I had to do it. You grow up watching it like I did, and dreaming of it, and then add the component that I came from being so morbidly obese. There's a moment where I fall down when I chokeslam Austin Theory, and we do the five knuckle shuffle that I fall down, and I am struggling. I'm so fat, I'm struggling to get back up that The Miz and R-Truth come over and help me. I have The Miz on this arm, and I have R-Truth under my other arm, while that arm's holding a rope. I was so fat that the SummerSlam, before Logan Paul threw me on a table. I was so fat one year before that, it took two grown men and a steel cable rope to get me up from one move down, and one year later, I came back and took a suplex, two snap back bumps, chops. I mean, I took bumps, that is all a part of the story. For me, it was proving that I could do that, like that being a North Star. Two, wrestling is so cool right now. Why is it not being explored in pop culture? That was frustrating me a little bit. When it did make pop culture was always for the wrong headlines because the celebrity involved didn't commit, or whatever the case may have been. So I was like, Dude, there's a chance we could actually bleed this thing back into the streets like wrestling used to be, we might be able to blur the lines. We were having conversations early of how Drew's disgusted by me being there. How real that can feel or not feel, Logan and me really feeling tense. Also, can we take the storyline to Kimmel? Can we take it to ESPN? Can we take it to, like, pop culture? I thought I could bring that to the table a little bit. You know what I mean? Was like, a real big part of it too, was like, almost like, wanting to be one of the guys blowing the trumpet for like, Yo, y'all are missing one of the greatest shows in the world right now. Then I think the third part was, I wanted to see if it was something I could do, and if I could do it, and was able to do it, would I be able to do it again?"

On Logan Paul crashing his live performance:

"First of all, it's not cheap gear. For the record, that actually was some of our gear. There was definitely a couple of things that we intentionally, like, Yo, don't touch that speaker. And he still touched it. Well, at that point, he's just, you know, he's Loganing out it out. I'm like, yo, there's a thing happening there, if that motherf*cker touches that one amp to the left, gonna cost me $1,200."

On not wanting to win the match:

"I fought that immediately. It's one of the first things I fought was like, Yo, man, I don't want to go out [on top]."

Was that the original plan?

"It was originally, babyfaces up. So the day of, I'd been dropping it in on Shane [Helms] the whole time. Shane, I want to lose this match. And he was like, 'Brother, you got to take that up with them.' I was like, Cool. So I came down and me and Triple H talked about it right there at the ring that day. I said, 'You know what I'm coming to talk about?' He said, 'I want to hear it.' And I gave it to him. And he was like, All right, all right."

What was the pitch? 

"It was an easy pitch. I was just like, it took three things. One, it's the right thing to do, let's just start at core values here. No celebrity has any business coming in and pinning a wrestler on their first run without some extreme circumstance. If Randy comes out and double RKOs everybody while I'm out and puts me on top of somebody. But two, I can always come back, I don't think any other celebrity ever really cared enough to think full angle through. If I lose this, I love Logan. That's my friend in real life. But every time he's in that ring, now he's got to wonder if at some point he's going to hear, 'You know I got it, so come and get it' [Who's Your Daddy? By Toby Keith]. He's got to wonder about that a little bit. Drew too. If I really owe one of them, it's Drew. So that was part two of it. I was also smart enough to be like, Yo, I want to angle in. And I was like, I don't want to be remembered as a celebrity who did the thing, and then Triple H stopped me. This will probably be on Unreal because it was so gangster. He said, 'I will tell you this though.' He said Floyd wanted to lose to The Big Show. I don't know if I should be sharing that, but he told me that, and I thought that was cool."

On the Logan Paul frog splash:

"Thank you for bringing that up. I practiced everything, but that. It's the scariest part of the night. It's also the moment you know that's going to go, because me and Logan had extensively been like, Look, man. If there was ever a time for you to jump, and I know you jump as crazy as you can every time, but if there was ever a time like this, this should make every headline in the world tomorrow. We knew we had that kind of a moment if we did it right. I do remember the hardest part was, I don't know if I should get this inside, but I got onto the table wrong, which everybody talked about, because I had to slip back, and did the worst job selling my slip back. But equally, I was scared because of where my back was sitting at that moment. I'd never been through it, and I didn't know where this thing was going to break. So like I had just a genuine self-preservation, like, f*ck what everybody thinks. This is scary as f*ck. But then I looked up, and when Logan took the two bottles, I just remember thinking, I'll talk about this on my deathbed. I'll tell this story of what's happening right here in this moment till I die. I don't know how many other things in my life I'll think are cool enough to talk about until it's all over, but I will, for sure sit right here and think about this moment, dude. He comes, and he hits me, and all I hear is the clear sound of every bit of his air coming out of him, like a [wheezes], And I'm like, oh sh*t. So as soon as I land, I shoot over immediately towards Logan, real fast and cover my mouth. And I'm just like, 'You okay, bro?' I was worried I hurt him, he ate. I don't think he hit the table, Chris. I think he hit all Jelly Roll. I think he's been used to jumping on people that are like half my width. So I don't think he fully [knew], because he couldn't practice for it neither. You can't put a Jelly Roll size doll up, you're just having to kind of guess. Then I rolled back over, and I'm laying there, and I'm hurt, of course, I mean, because if you don't hit that spot, not hurt a little bit, you hurt a lot the next day, but even in the moment, and I just remember looking up and seeing Fat Joe, and that's my friend, and Druski was standing up behind him, and their faces were concerned. And right then, I was like, we got it. I was like, I just got to sell it. And dude, no lie, I spent the next two minutes selling to just Fat Joe, nobody else. I don't know how much of it was on camera, but I was just selling because I was like, if I can get Fat Joe to believe this, I am good. It's getting there."

On what happened next:

"I walked by my wife, and I remember looking at her, and I just said, I just wanted to finish. And then I watched her face change. I was like, Oh, she thinks I'm hurt too. I worked my wife, dude. I was like, straight up, dude, I worked Joe, I worked. Druski. I was working. I was like, I gotta sell this. Because I knew that my moment of if I really was gonna get over was gonna be when I turned around."

How have you lost the weight to this point? 

"Cardio and eating, very clean though. Cleaning it up is would be almost a grossly under way of expressing it. So what are we talking about? Plants and protein only. I don't eat processed foods at all. I cut processed foods out two years ago. Now, I'm not like a super weirdo about it, like Thanksgiving, I'll have dressing. You know what I mean? Like for sure, I'm gonna eat some dressing on Thanksgiving, I'll eat biscuits and gravy on Christmas morning. Cornbread on New Year's Day with Black Eyed Peas, because these are family traditions from the south. But other than that, it's like I said, That's my three days a year that I'll eat processed foods."

On meeting The Rock after 10 years:

"Dude, it was like I almost cried when I hugged him, just for all he's done for me, as a friend. I don't know if I've ever expressed this this way, but dude, when he first discovered my music he sent me a message. He was the biggest box office star in the world at the time, and I was an underground rapper from Antioch, Tennessee with 100,000 YouTube subscribers. This dude just immediately started pouring into me, sending voice notes, not even just messages on Instagram, voice notes, so you know it's him. It's like, 'Hey, brother, just want you to know I spent some time in Nashville, gave me his Nashville history, and he was like, I understand you, the world will understand you. Be patient with them. They might not get it now, but they'll get it. You're speaking for a group of people that's unspoken for.' This dude saying stuff to me like this a decade ago. I like the concept that I would go on to have the success I've had is like, so far-fetched in my mind at that time, but like, he just seen something in me that he thought he just needed to pour love into. I always say this openly, every big moment I had in my career for the longest time, one of the first two messages I would get would either be The Rock or Joe Rogan. Just like when I made my Grand Ole Opry debut, I think I'd posted a Grand Ole Opry invite video, and then eight minutes later, I had a DM from Dwayne. DJ was like, Yo the Grand Ole Opry, that's my dream. You're living my dream like he's joking with me. I'm like, Dude, you're the biggest star in the world, you've lived every one of my dreams. But he's gassing me up that I'm living his dream by singing it to just like, What a sweet soul. So to meet him was like, put all that together, man. Was just really, really sick." 

What did The Rock say after your Summer Slam match? 

"Just, all praises. Because I talked to him about it, then I was like, 'Man, I think I want to get involved in a match.' He's like, 'You can get healthy enough?' I was like, Yeah, man. He's like, 'Go shoot for it, brother.' DJ’s energy is, how can I help? Like, he's got that energy in life. Anytime you get around him, it's automatically processed. and then he's like how can I help? So he immediately, I'm like, I’m having a match, and he stops, we're walking, and he stops and looks at me and goes, 'How can I help?' I’m like no I got it, I'm talking to Triple H. Like, we're good. He's like, just let me know. You know what I mean. But like, that instant, like, that's his spirit in life."

On the moment that made him change his life after going to prison:

"Adulting, parenting, beautiful little girl. Yeah, she was born when I was in jail, and getting that kind of news in there just reminded me, it really put a spotlight on how horrible of a human I was to myself. It was the probably first time I saw myself the way the world seen me, and that changed everything for me. I was like, Man, I really am a really scummy human, and I don't deserve to be responsible for a whole other human. That was the first thing that changed my life. That was almost 18 years ago. I was in jail because that little girl had turned 18 in six months and graduated, on her way to college."

On whether Post Malone will wrestle:

"I don’t know if he will get in the ring, but I can tell you this, he took that personal. Post don't take much personal, but Post has text me 10 times, Yo, f*ck that Seth Rollins guy. Post is the nicest dude ever, by the way. Post is the nicest, never say nothing bad about anybody guy. Post kind of wants it, dude. When Seth was talking sh*t to him that night, Post was like, Dude, you're being mean to me. F*ck you. People are like, Jelly Roll, you're the nicest guy ever. I was like, you haven't met Post Malone. I'm kind of an asshole sometimes. Post Malone, always nice guy." 

What is Jelly Roll grateful for:

"My family and marriage, my faith, and that I made it to the other side."

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