Block 1:

Taz opens today’s show speaking about Kevin Owens, and the ‘365’ special that aired on the WWE Network immediately following Survivor Series last Sunday.

He thought the documentary was cool, but he didn’t think it was a perfect piece of filmmaking by any means. He says he likes Owens a lot as a person and as a performer, but this documentary was just basically a recap of his last year on WWE programming. It was nice to see some of the backstage relationships he has with Finn Balor and Sami Zayn, but for the most part it was just a ‘year in review’.

One thing that he really enjoyed about the documentary was the amount of footage we saw of Vince McMahon in the Gorilla Position, interacting with Owens after his matches. Taz says that this type of footage is fairly rare, and we got a nice inside look at the company in those scenes.

Taz points out that McMahon is the last face you see before you go out to work, and the first face you see when you come back through the curtain. Nothing felt better than getting a thumbs up or a smile from McMahon when you walked back through the curtain, but on other nights McMahon would be unhappy with your work and he’d either ignore you altogether or hunt you down to tell you what you did wrong.

Block 2:

Taz says that after his WrestleMania match against Chris Jericho, Owens did the last thing that a performer in that situation should have done: he sought out McMahon to get his reaction on the match. He laughs as he explains that what you don’t know can’t hurt you, and if McMahon liked the match Owens would have already known it by the time he decided to approach McMahon. Taz says that nothing good could have came from Owens asking McMahon for his opinion on the match at that point.

Taz goes on to say that he can see a lot of himself in Owens, in the sense that Owens never appears to be satisfied with his position in the company or in the business as a whole. He adds that over the years his wife had to sit him down several times to tell him to enjoy himself more as he was in the midst of a great career, but Taz was never satisfied with his position.

In this documentary, Owens was very honest with the audience and Taz really respects him for that. He says that as a performer, you need to bust your ass for years in order to get to WWE. Complacency is the worst thing that can happy to anyone in their career, and it’s easy for Taz to see that Owens will never become complacent in WWE.

Taz liked that Michael Rapaport voiced over the film. He says that he worked with Rapaport at the Play.It podcasting Network for a while and they did some appearances together. Rapaport is a great guy and it was refreshing to hear his voice here.

Blocks 3 & 4:

In terms of the content of the documentary, Taz says that he would have preferred if we would have seen more exclusive footage featuring live events because these performers are on the road all year long and it’d be nice to see more about that. He also thinks that WWE needs to be careful in presenting all their big stars as fans who dreamed of becoming a professional wrestler because we’re seeing more and more of this now, first with Bayley and now Owens.

Taz points out that even if you did dream of becoming a wrestler, you don’t need to talk about it. You need to walk a fine line when you’re trying to become a big star who wants to draw money and make people pay to see you. If you come off as a happy-go-lucky fan who’s living your dream, it becomes harder to draw money. Nonetheless, Taz isn’t overly worried about Owens in this case because Owens comes off as a badass performer most of the time.

That sums up today’s episode of The Taz Show. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya tomorrow for another recap!