Written by Chris Siggia.

AEW UNRESTRICTED:  REF AUBREY EDWARDS 04/30/20

Aubrey Edwards talking about her approach to refereeing:  “It’s focused.  It’s assertive.  It’s confident.  I don’t watch a lot of MMA because I don’t actually like violence or fighting.  I like the fake stuff.  But, if you watch an MMA referee, they are ready to get in there the moment they have to.  So, every little step, even from the initial lockup, you have to be paying attention.  I built my persona around that idea of literally this match can be over at any minute so I need to treat it like it can be over at any minute, essentially treating it like it’s a shoot.”

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE BIG GUY RYBACK:  TYLER REKS 04/30/20

Tyler Reks talking about post WWE:  “I rode the Facebook wave.  We were the first to bring the Keto diet to the internet.  I was literally the first person to bring and advertise for it and that is when we took off…Every night to quiet my mind, I wrote an e-book which was our Genesis program.  That was the first program we ever did.  It came out in e-book form.  I PDF’d a word document.  It was that raw.  I put it up on a Facebook page, we came up with a name…I figured let’s find out what the Facebook followers want because we made some motivational videos for fun.  We were taking I-phones and we were clipping it with voice overs just for fun and one of them went viral.  It was insane, hundreds of thousands of views out of nowhere.  We did a preorder and sold 50 of them…Then it was 100, then 200, then 400, then 500 and then a thousand at a time.  At the end of the year, we made $6,000.  That was cool but I can’t live of $6,000.  So, I thought, what if we turned this into a program and we film instructional videos for everything, from start to finish.  I hired a programmer…I remember I started selling it and Facebook ads were brand new.  It was one of those things where you put $5 in and we send it to everybody.  There were no restrictions.  I started selling the program for $120 and I thought, let’s see what happens.  Nothing. I drop the price down to $100 after a week or two.  I sold one here and there and I thought, well that’s interesting.  We kept dropping the price.  I hit the $60 mark, $59.99 and I had the PayPal alert on my phone.  At $59.99, I was doing like $100 in Facebook ads every month.  One day, we were in the kitchen and I hear bing, bing, bing.  It took off.  From that day forward, it was crazy.  I thought that was off $100.  What if I spent $200?  I had a 20 to 1 return on investment, so if I spent $1, I made $20.  I was sending $5,000 a day at one point on Facebook.  I would net $10-15,000 a day…We made $1.3 million off an e-book. I have nothing to show for it right now.  I made so many bad decisions with that money living a flashy lifestyle.

THE PWI PODCAST:  RING OF HONOR COO JOE KOFF 04/30/20

Joe Koff on his decision to not run shows:  “The decisions that we made, and these go back to early March, we were probably one of the first major promotions that stopped the presses so to speak.  It actually happened the week of the Anniversary show, which was on, I think March 13th…I would not have been able to attend the event in Las Vegas because, I was not exposed, but I was in a hotel where somebody tested positively.  This was at the beginning of March.  Nobody really knew what it was or how to treat it.  Everyone was in somewhat of a panic mode.  The emergency room wouldn’t even let me come in because I really had no symptoms and had no reason to go in, thank goodness.  But, they said don’t travel and don’t go into work.  My guys were already in Vegas.  This was Wednesday, the show was Friday.  I’m beginning to feel a little uneasy with what I’m sensing and what I’m seeing.  One of my concerns was getting everybody home and safe and where they wanted to be.  We have a lot of international talent…I just needed to be sure in my mind as a responsible person and somebody who is in a community of human beings with empathy and compassion that we can get these people home…We acted pretty quickly but the main concern has always been and will always be the people, not only the fans who are very important to me.  I wouldn’t want to put anybody in any kind of compromised situation by coming to a Ring of Honor show if it wasn’t a healthy environment for them to watch it.  It wasn’t a hard decision to make.  It was the only decision to make and I’m glad we did it.”