Todd Grisham Explains "It's Christian", Yelled At By Vince McMahon, Ruthless Aggression Commentary

Todd Grisham (@Grishamfight) is a commentator best known for his time in WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss how he got the job with WWE, being hazed by members of the locker room during the start of his career, bizarre advice from Kevin Dunn, why he made Vince McMahon furious, his infamous announcement of Christian’s return, getting slapped by Mickie James, his thoughts on Logan Paul and Jake Paul, and more!

On how he got the job in WWE:

“I was working in Tucson, Arizona as a local sportscaster, used to do similar stuff for the CBS affiliate, and I was covering the Arizona Wildcats and the Diamondbacks. I was there for game seven when the Diamondbacks beat the Yankees after 9/11. Crazy, great experiences. This guy that I know, said, ‘Hey, WWE is hiring. You should send an audition tape in.’ Because at the time we would do this Friday night high school football show me and this guy named Scott Killbear, and we do these outlandish skits where we do funny things, dress up like The Matrix or cheerleaders, crazy stuff. I was like, I’ll send a tape in. Sent a VHS tape in, and I forgot all about it. Six months later, out of the blue, I get this phone call on I believe a Thursday afternoon, ‘Hi. This is Sue from WWE. We like to bring you in for an audition.’ I’m like, Whoa, cool. When? And she goes, ‘Monday.’ I go, ‘Like, in four days?’ She goes, yeah. And at the time, I wasn’t watching WWE. I grew up loving it, of course, but I was 27 at the time. I’m like, wow. Okay, well, sure. So I’m just crash-coursing and I’m watching reruns of SmackDown and Raw, and I’m buying the magazines at the grocery store, and I printed out all the bios of every wrestler on the roster, made a binder, because I had to call matches on this audition and do these things. I did my research. So they flew me into New York City. This guy picks me up in a limo in New York City. I’m a small-town Alabama boy, so this is incredible. So I go to the audition, and I remember there was like five other guys on the audition at the same time. I was like, this sucks. But they were all taking it as a joke. They’re like ‘This is stupid.’ One of the guys I remember worked in Anchorage Alaska as a sportscaster, and he was like, ‘I’m not even gonna take this job. I just did it for a free trip to New York. ‘I’m like, bro, you could be on a worldwide TV show juggernaut like this, but you’re working in Anchorage Alaska, and 40 people are watching you? Anyway, so they brought me in and Hacksaw Jim Duggan was there, and he was the guy I was playing off of. They’re like, ‘Interview, Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Do this with Hacksaw Jim Duggan.’ So we did that. And then I called matches, and I called it with Josh Matthews. I remember the first match. They were like, it’s Val Venis versus Stevie Richards. So hold on. So open my binder. I find the Stevie Richards page, and I find the Val Venis page, and they were blown away that I had done that much research, and I felt like I nailed the audition. Michael Cole called me the next day and said, ‘You killed it. I’ll get back to you, but I’m just letting you know we work at a snail’s pace sometimes. It may be a while.’ It was like four or five months, I didn’t hear anything. And then he called me and said, ‘Bro, the fact that you haven’t called and checked up on it is a good thing that you’re not driving us crazy. Just stay patient.’ And then a month later, they called and offered me the job.”

On working play by play:

“Well, Vince would always say, ‘Don’t tell me what I can see.’ If you go clothesline. He’s like, ‘I could tell it’s a clothesline, damn it! Tell me, “Look at the impact and look at the force of that shot, and that might have decapitated him!'” So you’re almost like, just kind of giving a feel of what it’s like to be in there. You’re not necessarily saying first and 10 wide receivers open 10-yard pass. You’re not doing play-by-play.”

On “advice” from Kevin Dunn:

“This is a funny story. Kevin Dunn said, ‘Listen, you’re really good, but your voice is too high-pitched. You got to get it lower.’ And I go, ‘Well, what do I do?’ He goes, ‘Maybe you should start smoking cigarettes.’ I said, really? And everyone laughed. And he’s like, ‘I’m serious, you should start smoking cigarettes.’ Because JR was chain-smoking all day long. And I was like, should I start smoking cigarettes? But thank God I didn’t do it.”

On his first WWE assignment:

“Well, when you get hired, it’s kind of like they don’t hire you for a specific thing, and they just kind of bring you in almost like a scout team player. Come in, let’s see how you do against the starters, and maybe we’ll put you at wide receiver, who knows? So they just kind of bring you in. Mark Lloyd was doing WWE Bottom Line, and they were like, maybe you can start doing one of these shows one day. So I was there for like four or five weeks, and I started doing Bottom Line, which was a show that recapped the week’s events on Raw and SmackDown. So I started doing those kind of shows, and then they said, All right, we’ll put you on the road. I did backstage interviews. I remember the first one I ever did involved Booker T. No one gave me any direction. They said, ‘Alright, you interview Booker T.’ So I thought, usually when the wrestler kind of gets in your face, you know that you’re supposed to act scared. So that’s what I did. Booker T didn’t say anything to me. He’s like, ‘Real fool. I’m gonna go out there tonight and I’m gonna beat this guy down!’ And I’m scared to death. I totally overacted it, but no one said a word to me. Then I watched it back, this looks stupid. So I kind of worked on acting scared, but not scared to poop my pants scared, just like I’m worried here, but he’s not gonna put his hands on me, because I’m a professional. So that’s kind of a skill that I developed. But that’s it, they don’t really hire you for a specific job. They just throw you into the deep end and see what you can do and where you can go. Eventually, I just kind of get a bigger opportunity and more visibility and up and up and up. But I do remember the first time on the road that I had an in-ring experience. They give you this sheet at the end of the day after the production meeting and say, Here’s the rundown of the show. I was looking through there, you’re looking for your name. Am I doing an interview? And it said ‘Todd Grisham is hosting a debate between Edge and Shawn Michaels.’ And I’m like, Whoa. And I told Coach, look at this. He goes, ‘There you go kid, your first in the ring [segment].’ Then I look down at the bottom, and it goes, ‘Todd Grisham takes a super kick.’ I’m like, whoa. Wait a minute. I’m just worried about saying my lines, right? So I get in during the day, in the build-up, I’m all nervous and stuff. And finally, someone walks up to me, I think with Shelton Benjamin. He goes, ‘Hey, you ever taken a bump before?’ I’m like, no, no. He goes, ‘You just can’t flinch. Whatever you do, don’t flinch.’ I said, Okay. And right then he throws a fake Super Kick to me. I’m jumping back here. [He said] ‘Whoa, you can’t do that. Let’s try it again.’ I’m like, okay, so he does a fake Super Kick, kick again, and I don’t move. He goes, ‘There you go. That’s it.’ And then Shawn Michaels walked up to me and said, ‘All right, whatever you do tonight, don’t move.’ So the storyline was, I host this debate. It gets out of control. Shawn Michaels shoves Edge into the corner or something, and I’m kind of pushed back behind Edge. And then Shawn Michaels goes to Super Kick Edge, who gets out of the way, and Todd Grisham eats the shot, great. Okay. So the show happens. I do my lines, there’s the moment. Edge is right in front of me, and I’m thinking in my brain is, do not flinch and do not move, but as soon as it hits, you got to crash like you’ve been killed. Edge gets out of the way, and I’m against the ropes. And Shawn Michaels, he looks so far away from him, like he seemed to be able to kick me. Sure enough, he couldn’t kick me right, so his foot almost kind of comes into my chest, right? Well, I sell it like the JFK assassination, but it hit me in the chest. And even JR’s commentary goes, ‘Well he took it in the chest, it’s really got to hurt.’ And afterwards, I remember, of all people, Mike Chioda was so mad at me. He came out. He goes, ‘What the f are you doing kid? You got to feed into that you’re too far away. You’re making Shawn Michaels look stupid. What are you doing?’ I said, they told me don’t move. They said, do not move, and I did not move. He lights up a cigarette, ‘My God!’ I don’t get it. I was like, they’re gonna fire me. But thank God, they didn’t.”

On being hazed:

“They’re like, ‘Look, you’re the new person. People are going to haze you. They’re going to do dumb things. They’re going to test you, play practical jokes on you. That’s what the boys like to do. They’re bored all day waiting around, you’re the new guy, whatever. So just don’t sell anything. If someone says you said something, go, okay.’ The Brooklyn Brawler was the backstage guy that kind of helped run the interviews behind the scenes, and he started telling a rumor to everybody that I say wrestling is fake, the new kid’s here, and he says that wrestling is fake. So people were coming up to me, going, ‘Hey, man, you working? You really think wrestling’s fake?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I think wrestling’s fake.’ Because if you say no, they’re gonna say, ‘Are you calling this veteran of 20 years a liar?’ So I was just like, yeah, yeah. So then somebody, they’re doing the practice matches in the ring, and then somebody goes, ‘Hey, that’s the idiot that says wrestling’s fake, bring him into the ring.’ I’m like, oh god. So I get into the ring, and Jazz was in there. She’s like, ‘You really think that?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I think wrestling looks fake.’ So next thing you know, Batista is in the ring, and they’re like, ‘Give him a Power Bomb, Batista.’ And I’m like, Oh my god. So Batista sets me between his legs, grabs my underwear and freaking rips them straight up. Just like a saw going, and he keeps acting like he’s gonna do it right, and I’m scared to death, and thank God he didn’t Power Bomb me, but my freaking butt crack was bleeding afterwards, raw as hell. I remember Hardcore Holly getting in my face going, ‘You think this is fake? I’ll kill you in the parking lot right now.’ I never backed down saying wrestling was fake. I remember after I was in the ring, and finally Stone Cold walked out, and they go, ‘Stone Cold, what do you think about that? Him saying that?’ And Stone Cold, to his credit, was like, ‘God damn, get the hell out of my ring. Just get him out of the ring.’ Someone told Bubba Ray Dudley this, and Bubba Ray Dudley, I’m sure he won’t even mind me saying this, is the biggest asshole the WWE has ever seen. Everyone else was kind of in on the joke. He treated it like it was the real deal. He was like, ‘You got to go apologize to every single one of these people. You don’t belong here. You should never be hired.’ He was very serious. And I remember thinking, bro, come on, I’m 27 years old, I’m not saying anything, and he just berated me in front of people, like I thought he was gonna get physical with me.”

Did you enjoy Byte This?

“Yes and no. It was kind of the wild west of the internet. It was a call-in show. But very quickly we found out people would call in, and they would screen the calls. Hey, what do you want to talk about? What do you want to ask? And they’d be like, I want to talk about Batista’s world title match against Jeff Hardy, or whatever it would be. And then as soon as they’d get on the line with me, they’d say something stupid, or call me an idiot. At first I was doing the like, oh, well, obviously that’s not the kind of calls we want. I’d do that. And then eventually I just got to the point where I was like, calling people the R word, ‘You retard. Stop calling here.’ [They said] ‘TNA is great.’ I’m like, well, call their show, you idiot. It became that kind of show. Eventually they just took it off the air, because it was just basically me arguing with random 13-year-olds.”

On Matt Hardy calling the show:

“We had a pretty cool thing going with Matt Hardy and Edge with the Lita thing. That blew up on Byte This, they acted like it was a surprise call where we had Lita on and then Matt calls in, and that was at the time that we found out that she left Matt and was cheating on him with his best friend behind her back, which was Edge. So Matt Hardy called into the show, and they had their little back and forth. And I remember thinking at the time, I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. You’re like is Matt Hardy gonna kill Edge? What’s gonna happen? People still ask me about that. Did you know that Matt Hardy was gonna call into that show? Yeah, but I didn’t know what he’s gonna say.”

On possibly being lined up to replace JR:

“So eventually they said ‘All right, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to give you the keys to Raw. You’re going to be the face. You’re going to call Raw. JR, we’re retiring him.’ He had a retirement tour, or something similar to that, where he was going to retire after WrestleMania. He’s going to call the WrestleMania match, and that was it. But the receptions he was getting in all these buildings, and eventually they’re like we can’t take him off the air. He’s too big. Even though Vince tried to squash it. Vince hated Jim Ross for whatever reason. He fired him 10 times. One show, I don’t remember where it was. It was in Oklahoma, in front of his home crowd. So the show ended and they were gonna have Jim Ross speak to the crowd. Thank you very much. Blah, blah, blah. So Jim Ross is in the ring, and Vince tells me grab a mic and go down there, and he gave me some questions. I go down there. ‘Sorry to interrupt you, JR, in front of the crowd, but how does it feel to be getting released by WWE and fired by Vince because he just doesn’t think you’re that good…’ and all these antagonizing things. The number one rule, you probably know this when you’re an interviewer, is to never give up the mic. Boxing, UFC, they take the mic. You’re out of control. So you sit there no matter what. But at that point, Jim Ross looked at me and goes, ‘Could I please have the microphone?’ And I’m thinking, Vince is gonna kill me if I give him the mic. But I was like, I just handed him the mic. I was like, I’m not gonna do it, and I’ll take the abuse. And JR went and said, I know those weren’t your questions. Those were his. And so anyway, long story short, they don’t fire JR. Maybe that’s when they put me on. ECW, I don’t remember, but we’re gonna give you this show. Well, you’re the guy in waiting until Jim Ross is done.”

On his biggest WWE blunder:

“Vince McMahon went insane on me one time because I said that John Morrison, who was a heel at the time, loved poetry. Normally, I wouldn’t say that, but there was a new WWE magazine. They just transformed it from being like a results-based boring magazine, like last week, Eddie Guerrero beat JBL by pinfall, here’s the description, to more of a Maxim-style lifestyle magazine. Get to know the superstars better. So they’re like, anytime you can incorporate stuff from the magazine, do it. It helps sell the magazine. It helps tell their story. It syncs everything up, great. So they did a whole thing on John Morrison; his finisher was called Starship Pain. So he wrote a poem called Starship Pain. So he’s in the ring and I go, ‘John Morrison, Starship Pain, he’s a big fan of poetry, and wrote a poem about the finisher Starship Pain.’ Vince goes insane in my ear. ‘Did you just say that our number one heel is an effing poet, you stupid F! What the f*ck! Shut up. Just shut up. Don’t say anything else! Jim Ross, you call the rest of this fight. I don’t wanna hear another effing word out of you.’ So literally, the match starts and I don’t say a single word for like five minutes, and then the match ends, and we gotta do a promo going to the next fight, and he goes, ‘Okay, you can talk now.’ I’m like, ‘Coming up next Shelton Benjamin goes one-on-one with The Heartbreak Kid, Shawn Michaels.’ But he was so angry at me over that.”

What was the most upset Vince McMahon was with you?

“Well, it started at WWE headquarters. I’m in the gym, working out. I’d only been there for like three months, just been hired, and I’m walking out of the gym, Vince is walking in, and he goes, ‘Hey, Todd, how you doing?’ I’m like, Vince knows my name. This is cool, right? So that was on a Thursday or Friday. So then Monday, I’m backstage about to do an interview with Edge and Christian, I believe. So we’re standing there waiting to do the interview, and Vince is walking by and he goes, ‘Oh, hey, there’s my boy.’ I’m like, he’s talking to me? He says, ‘I’m your boy, right?’ He starts walking a little closer, and he’s like, ‘I saw you going into the weight room the other day.’ I said, Yes, sir. He goes, ‘You were lifting those weights, weren’t you?’ I said, Yeah. He goes, ‘You put the weights on the bar, right?’ I said, Yeah. He goes, ‘But you forgot to take them off.’ I said, Oh. He goes, ‘No, no, no, it’s okay. It’s okay. I did it for you, which [yells] makes me your f*cking boy!’ He’s like, this close to my face, screaming, I’ve only been there three months. Everyone’s like, backing up. I feel like I’m pissing my pants at this point, he’s turning beet red, and then he just stops and just walks away. And I look over and Edge looks at me, and he goes, ‘That’s pretty cool. Vince is your boy. ‘When I talk about micromanaging John Gaburick, they call him Big, he was one of the producers backstage. He would later tell me that he was in the gym. It wasn’t me, by the way, that left the weights on, there was someone else, but he just thought it was me. And he said that Vince thought about how to how to approach me about that all weekend. [Vince said] ‘I can’t call him the N word. I’m not his N word. What can I call him? I’ll call him boy, yeah, okay.’ He planned it. He looks psychotic. That’s the maddest he’s been. But to be fair, later that night, I did the show, walked backstage, and he gave me the nod, he’s on to the next subject. Almost I felt like, you know, every once in a while, the mafia boss himself has to kill somebody just to be like, Oh, he’s capable I was the guinea pig. Do not do anything to piss this man off.”

On the unenthusiastic Christian return:

“Christian was one of my better friends at WWE. We’d hang out in catering all the time and talk. He was the most, I mean, I think even most superstars or wrestlers will tell you that you got to be a little bit insane to be a wrestler. He was the most normal person backstage him, and like Shane Helms, The Hurricane and Edge, those were kind of the guys I would hang out with. And Christian we would play this game called Words with Friends, which is like an app back and forth. So he left WWE to go to TNA for a while. We’d still hang out and text and talk, and he was coming back. So I was excited all day long. Yeah, that’s great. Here’s the match, was talking to him about his match, and I’m thinking, I gotta nail this when he comes out. I had something to say. I’m standing in Gorilla about to walk out, and Vince had glasses on his nose, and he did one of these [come here gestures]. I’m like, Okay, I walk over. He’s just said to me, ‘When Christian walks out, I want you to just say “it’s Christian”, and that’s it. Understand?’ I’m like, Yes sir. And I’m thinking, Oh my god. So that’s how I did it. But I felt like, How do I do it? So I almost did it, like in my brain, like I couldn’t believe it. I was stunned silence, like, ‘It’s Christian. How can this possibly be?’ So that’s how I tried to do it. And, man, that’s probably the most criticism I get from fans. Like, ‘Why does Todd hate Christian? Why did he do that? He ruined it.’ But Vince just did not like Christian. I think he thought he liked big guys, and he thought Christian just didn’t look the part. But he was such a good in-ring performer. I mean, has he ever had a bad match?”

On getting slapped by Mickie James:

“If you were an announcer and you got physicality, they would give you hazard pay. So I remember one time Mickie James slapped me. That was the worst thing ever. I’ll take 20 AAs before a slap, because they don’t trust you to sell the slap, because you’re not a worker. So they slap you, and she hit me right here.”

She slapped you for real?

“As hard as she could. I get slapped, and I’m like [groans]. You got to sell for the camera for, I call it the TV novella shot, like your husband’s dead, you got to hold it for like, five seconds. So they go to commercial break, the camera is on my face, and people like, ‘Oh, you were you were selling pretty good.’ I was like, I was not selling. I felt like my face was gonna get ripped off. But, the hazard pay, so after she slapped me, they give you 500 bucks. Literally, they’d be like, and cut. Nice job, Todd. And someone walked over and goes, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, here you go. Cash. So I’m like, beat the hell out of me. You want me to go in the ring and let her slap me again? But Max Brettos, who I believe was the shortest tenured employee of all time. I talk about they hire you just to see where you fit in. He was there for a cup of coffee, but they asked him, did he want to do it? And he was like, No, I don’t really want to do that. I was like, I’ll do it, okay, that’s how it went. I was like, yeah, and you’re gonna pay me 500 bucks? But people remember you more for the physicality moments than anything else.”

On Logan Paul in WWE:

“Man, it’s incredible. You’d have more insight than I would. But I mean, he’s a freak of nature athletically, he’s willing to do moves that a lot of guys aren’t willing to do and nail them. He’s got, obviously, the charisma and the personality to carry it. If you didn’t know that he was a celebrity making the cross-over, I think you’d say he’s a lifer.”

What is Todd Grisham grateful for?

“My daughters, my wife and my mom.”

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