Hunter Smallback: From the Flats to the Wrestling Ring

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 822: Wrestling Superstar and Outdoorsman, with Hunter Smallback.

Introduction

Tom Rowland: What's going on, everybody? We've got an awesome show for you today. At iCast this year, I met a gentleman by the name of Hunter Smallback, and Hunter is a rising star in the WWE. Beyond that, he grew up in Florida and has fished for pretty much everything and loves hunting and fishing so much. We had him on Saltwater Experience this year, and it's been really great to get to know him better. Today we're gonna learn all about his journey to the WWE that has a lot to do with hunting and fishing. Very interesting story. Now, stand by for an awesome podcast with Hunter Smallback, WWE rising superstar.

Tom Rowland: I got my black rifle coffee going. First podcast of the day. Hunter, what are you up to? How are you doing?

Hunter Smallback: Good morning. I'm well. I'm just over here in Orlando. Just woke up not too long ago. Bit of a sleep-in day, and then I get to go wrestle here in a few hours.

Tom Rowland: Wrestle? So tell me about where you are in your wrestling career.

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, so I am over in Orlando at the WWE Performance Center with NXT. I started about seven months ago, and I've been training every single day at the Performance Center. Just absolutely loving where I'm at. The people are so cool, the coaches are great, and we're learning from the best coaches in the world. Shawn Michaels is my boss.

Tom Rowland: Is that pretty cool?

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, pretty cool. The Heartbreak Kid.

Tom Rowland: That's super cool. And then you're also training with another super up-and-coming wrestler. You were telling me about Gable Stevenson. That guy is amazing. I know him from his amateur wrestling career, and man, what an athlete he is.

Hunter Smallback: Oh, truly. Just watching this guy move in the ring is crazy. He's so fluid and so smooth, which is what I really aspire to be like. Some people are a little stiff, but I think the guys that can flow like water are the best.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, that's awesome. So NXT, explain to people that may not be a professional wrestling fan where that lies. Is that like a feeder program for the WWE, a place where you can get started? Is that correct?

Hunter Smallback: Precisely. NXT is still owned by WWE, but it's like the minor league team of a major league MLB team. We're a direct feeder to both Raw and SmackDown, and our top guys, our champs, they'll go up and do shows and events on Raw and SmackDown occasionally, but they're really just grooming us until we're fully ready for the big stage. We still have a lot of followers that love NXT, which is awesome, and they give us such great support week in and week out. I think our average viewership is 800,000 each Tuesday watching NXT.

Tom Rowland: Wow. And where is that on? What network?

Hunter Smallback: You can watch it on A&E on your regular cable provider, or if you have Peacock, you can get everything wrestling ever.

Tom Rowland: Oh wow, okay. So 800,000 people are watching every week. Those are incredible numbers. Just knowing a little bit about TV numbers, those are really big numbers.

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, it is.

Tom Rowland: That's crazy. Well, I want to find out, the way that Hunter and I met, we met at iCast. And the reason there's a professional wrestler on the podcast today is because Hunter is not just a professional wrestler. He's a very avid fisherman and hunter, and we're gonna learn all about that here in just a little bit. But I want to start out with the hot seat questions. Are you familiar with the hot seat?

Hunter Smallback: I am. Let's hear it.

The Hot Seat

Tom Rowland: Alright, so just off the top of your head, whichever one you'd prefer or your experience is. You ready? Spinning rod or conventional?

Hunter Smallback: Spinning rod.

Tom Rowland: Inshore or offshore?

Hunter Smallback: Inshore, only because it's so accessible to me.

Tom Rowland: River or lake?

Hunter Smallback: River.

Tom Rowland: Would you ever have a reptile as a pet?

Hunter Smallback: I've always wanted one of those chameleons, actually, the ones with the long tongues that eat crickets or mealworms. I think that'd be cool. So yes, that's the only exception.

Tom Rowland: Coffee, tea, or energy drink?

Hunter Smallback: Unsweet tea.

Tom Rowland: Mountains or beaches?

Hunter Smallback: Beaches, 100%.

Tom Rowland: Winter Olympics or summer Olympics?

Hunter Smallback: I don't know. Beach volleyball is my love, so I like watching the guys and girls play beach volleyball. Summer.

Tom Rowland: Favorite wrestler of all time?

Hunter Smallback: Oh man, this is a great one. I think Eddie Guerrero, dude. He's just so good, and he's so violent and has so much passion, he throws everything he's got into it. Eddie Guerrero, for sure.

Tom Rowland: Best catch in your career?

Hunter Smallback: This is kind of a string of questions in one. I caught a permit, my first tarpon, and my first bonefish all on the fly rod that I made and a fly that I tied.

Tom Rowland: Wow, there you go, awesome. How old were you when you started tying flies?

Hunter Smallback: I was in like seventh grade. I'd be staying up all night long, till two in the morning, just tying flies, and I'd be sleeping in class. My parents would be pissed because my teachers would be emailing them saying Hunter can't stay awake in class, what's he doing at home?

Tom Rowland: Yeah, if I told you, you wouldn't believe it. He's tying flies all night. Sunrise or sunset?

Hunter Smallback: Sunset.

Tom Rowland: A movie that makes you laugh?

Hunter Smallback: Surf's Up. That one's one of my favorite movies, with the little surfing penguins.

Tom Rowland: Text or calls?

Hunter Smallback: Phone calls. It's more personable.

Tom Rowland: Rock, country, or other?

Hunter Smallback: Country.

Tom Rowland: Instagram or Twitter?

Hunter Smallback: I don't even have a Twitter, so Instagram.

Tom Rowland: One thing you're afraid of?

Hunter Smallback: Regret. I fear regretting not doing something. If I do it and regret it, it's okay because I experienced it. But if I don't do something and then look back and regret it, it eats me up.

Tom Rowland: Wow, great answer. Love that. One piece of technology you rely on heavily?

Hunter Smallback: My cell phone.

Tom Rowland: Favorite fish?

Hunter Smallback: Tarpon.

Tom Rowland: Interesting. Android or iPhone?

Hunter Smallback: iPhone, for sure.

Tom Rowland: Chocolate or vanilla?

Hunter Smallback: Chocolate.

Tom Rowland: Okay, and the last one, would you rather be a heel or a babyface?

Hunter Smallback: I think a babyface, because it aligns more with my personality. I don't think I could tell a kid no for an autograph. It would break my heart to see their face.

Heel or Babyface, and Finding a Character

Tom Rowland: That's almost the extent of my wrestling knowledge, I do know what those two are called. The heel is the villain, the babyface is the good guy. Is that where you're going, do you think? You never know how a character you create is going to resonate with the audience. Knowing some of the wrestlers, even Sting or Hulk Hogan, he goes good, he goes bad, and occasionally one of those really resonates with the crowd and others just don't for whatever reason. So I would think you have to be a little flexible, or at least willing to be flexible, to find that character.

Hunter Smallback: Absolutely. A lot of the great ones can go heel, can go babyface, and what's even more fun is to watch the storyline unfold as they transition one way or another. It really gets people excited, gets some people pissed off, it's exciting. But definitely starting off babyface, and we'll see where the road goes.

Tom Rowland: It's interesting to see where the road has taken you up to now. So let's start back with how you got into fishing. You grew up in Florida. Give me the story of how you got into fishing and what that meant to you growing up.

Growing Up Fishing in Florida

Hunter Smallback: Both my grandfathers and my dad were all fishing guides at some point in their lives. My dad and my grandfather on his side were dive masters and had a dive shop before I was born and when I was very young, so the water is just everything my family loves and knows. When I was fishing, they put me in a pack-and-play, ratchet-strapped to the bow of the boat when I was like six months old in the Keys, so they could still fish and go to the sandbar and have me with them. I've been fishing for way longer than I can even remember, and I always had this seriously burning passion just to go see what's out there, to see what I could get on the end of my line, from the time my parents would let me take my bicycle to the pond down the road to now, where I'm trying to fly around the world to catch more fish. The passion has just grown. I'm no longer chasing bluegill and little largemouth bass in the back creek, I'm trying to catch bonefish and permit, and hopefully get to go to Mad Bay soon.

Tom Rowland: That's a great trip. So how do you transition from riding your bicycle to the pond down the street? Where did you grow up?

Hunter Smallback: There's a little town called Celebration, the Disney community, the most magical place ever. There's a lot of old ponds there, so I'd take my bicycle with a backpack full of jerkbaits and everything you could imagine to catch a bass, and me and my buddies would ride our bikes around all the little golf course ponds. We'd fish as long as we could until we got kicked out.

Tom Rowland: Was it legal to fish there, or frowned upon, or welcomed?

Hunter Smallback: A little bit of all the above, I think. If the golfers were there, they wouldn't care. The way we walked in was technically legal because it was public access, but being on the course probably wasn't. If the guy who worked there caught us, he'd always get so mad and turn to call the cops, but we're like, dude, we're just fishing.

Tom Rowland: Or a couple of 12, 13 year old kids just fishing. It's hard to kick kids out. It sounds like that was a pretty cool place to grow up. When you said Celebration the first time, I thought, that doesn't seem like a place you'd hunt and fish.

Hunter Smallback: For sure. They actually had a major canal called Reedy Creek. It runs through miles and miles of central Florida, almost all the way through Disney. There was an eight-foot brick wall that protected it, and me and my friends bought a little step stool and put it at the base so we could jump off, climb up to the top, and do a muscle-up to get over, just to fish the creek, because it was the best fishing we'd ever seen. We'd fish it every chance we got.

Tom Rowland: What'd you do with the step stool?

Hunter Smallback: Just left it in the bushes.

Tom Rowland: You had it hidden there for every time you wanted to go?

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, a lot of fun. We called that place Jurassic Park.

Tom Rowland: What kind of bass were you catching there? Like 10-pounders?

Hunter Smallback: Oh yeah, my buddy caught a twelve-and-a-half pounder on a digital scale. The biggest bass I ever caught was like nine-eight, so I'd call it 10 pounds. You tell any other random person it was 10 pounds and they'd believe you.

Tom Rowland: Wow, and that's just sitting right in the middle of Celebration.

Hunter Smallback: Oh yeah, remarkable. We'd have many days where we'd go out and catch like 30 fish a person. It was just crazy.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. There are ponds in Disney, and I know you can get fishing guides in the park at Disney, and people catch huge bass there too.

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, absolutely, never done that though.

Tom Rowland: How do you transition over to saltwater? As a kid you're surfing and diving and doing everything with your parents and your uncles and your dad, is that right?

Hunter Smallback: Absolutely. We'd go to the Keys every single year since I was born for the first week of lobster season, and we'd usually only lobster one or two days because we liked to fish more. My dad's ate up with offshore, I'm ate up with anything. When I was early teens to mid-teens, a little before I could drive, my dad and I would always go surf together, and then we'd go super early and fish the causeways, the little flats on either side, and we'd catch trout and redfish and occasionally a snook. I'd get so much more excited for a snook or a redfish or anything in the ocean, it's bigger, it pulls harder, the snook jump, which I love. Anything that jumps, I go crazy for. Once I started getting my own car, I could go to these places, and I had a little John boat, so I was trailering it to Mosquito Lagoon or one of the causeways or inlets where I could drift the bunkers for big snook. Once I could do that, I seriously didn't look back, there was no reason for me to fish freshwater again. It was all tarpon, snook, redfish, trout, whatever.

Tom Rowland: And you're able to do that all on foot, or did you have a boat of some kind?

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, I was able to take my little John boat out.

Tom Rowland: That's cool. Did you have a trailer, or did you just put it in the back of a truck?

Hunter Smallback: I had a trailer. It was actually a fiberglass John boat that someone had handmade, and I got it off Facebook Marketplace for $500. I had a big F-250, and after the hurricanes I'd go knock on people's doors with my chainsaw and say, hey, do you want that giant tree out of your yard, give me $200, and they'd say done. So I'd cut up all these trees and haul them to the dump for people, and I was able to buy a little old outboard, this little fiberglass John boat, and a piece of crap trailer that came with it, and I pieced together a little Frankenstein boat.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. What did you know about cutting down trees?

Hunter Smallback: Nothing. I knew how a chainsaw worked because I'd used them a few times just to cut up stuff as a kid, and then I quickly learned how chainsaws worked and how often they broke.

Tom Rowland: Did you ever fell a tree in a bad place, like accidentally on somebody's house?

Hunter Smallback: No, luckily I wasn't felling any trees. If they were too gnarly, I had a good family friend who was a real landscaper come fell them. But if it was already on the ground in people's yards or on their fence, I'd cut those up. I couldn't have that much liability.

Tom Rowland: I know a little bit about chainsaws too, but sometimes trees, if they're under tension, I don't know how to deal with that, it kind of scares me not to know how to do it. I watch my friend who's an arborist, and he loves climbing these trees. He brings three or four or five guys with him, and they've all got radios, and they start at the top and cut the tree down piece by piece with a crane lowering it, so they can take down a huge tree in a tight space without felling it anywhere. Watching them work, that's an art, they look at the hillside and the way the tree's growing and say, if we cut it here, it's gonna fall right over there.

Hunter Smallback: That could be a costly mistake if they're wrong.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, there's a million videos on YouTube of it not falling where they hoped.

From Bass Ponds to Bow Hunting

Tom Rowland: So you're fishing as a kid, getting into saltwater fishing. How does that connect to the wrestling? You're living in Celebration, sounds like you're more interested in hunting and fishing and surfing than school. Do you keep hunting and fishing after you got a car? For a lot of people, like me, getting a car or a driver's license was the end of my golf career, that was my outlet. But some people get more into hunting and fishing because now you have the freedom to go wherever you want and learn new places to fish. So what did you do in high school, did you keep fishing?

Hunter Smallback: Oh yeah, everything exploded in high school. No one in my family really hunted except my grandpa, and unfortunately he passed when I was still pretty young. He was like my best friend, and he taught me how to deer hunt. In high school I'd drive out to public land, and if we got out of school early I'd walk and walk in the woods and see so many deer rubs on the trees and scrapes on the ground, so I figured there's gotta be deer here, and I started bow hunting a lot in high school. I still fished as much as I could, but when hunting season came around I was really locked in. I fell in love with it and taught myself how to duck hunt, taught myself how to hunt turkeys, and I asked as many people as I could, hey, what about this, I tried this, this didn't work, what happened? They'd explain it to me, and I'd watch YouTube videos. My father and I grew up watching your TV show, that was one of the avenues that taught me more and more about saltwater fishing, the different knots, needing a fluorocarbon or mono leader, the different tides to use, the different rods for different scenarios. All of this was foreign to me, I was just used to bass and bluegill. I went and got a scholarship to play Division I college football, and I picked a location because it was only ten minutes from 23,000 acres of public land, and twenty-five to thirty minutes from where I grew up surfing in Ponce Inlet and New Smyrna.

Tom Rowland: Wow, what school is that?

Hunter Smallback: Stetson University, out in DeLand. We just played Montana State the other day, the boys didn't do too good.

Tom Rowland: Was that on their homecoming? I was just in Bozeman this weekend, they didn't play this weekend, right? It was the weekend before.

Hunter Smallback: Weekend before, yeah.

Tom Rowland: But Montana State's good this year.

Hunter Smallback: They're unreal.

Tom Rowland: They're really good this year, it's a surprise really, because both my boys went to Montana State, and for their entire career I don't think they've been that good, certainly not this year. This weekend my daughter also goes to Auburn, and we had just finished our elk hunt and came back super tired, so we thought we'd watch some football and clean up all our stuff. I was trying to watch the Auburn-Georgia game, but it kept serving me the Montana State game instead. I turned off the location settings, turned off everything, and I kept getting the Montana State game. So we ended up watching it, and they were pretty good, I was really surprised how good they were.

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, they're a sound team, they're big, they're disciplined, they know what's going on, and they've got it going on over there this year. Even last year they were super good.

Tom Rowland: What position did you play?

Hunter Smallback: Defensive end. In high school I played both defensive end and tight end, got recruited for a few small places for tight end, but I got my head taken off in one game, decapitated basically, and ever since then I wasn't as good at catching the ball, but I could bend the corner really well and get after the quarterback or into the backfield. Defense was definitely my love.

Tom Rowland: Alright, so you played defensive end all the way through college?

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, defensive end the whole time, and I was also a backup long snapper just because I could do it, they like to travel fewer people so I could do both roles. College was so much fun, those guys I spent that much time with are truly like my brothers, everyone's going through the same hell together. Guys would come back to my school and say, enjoy high school, because when you get to college it's a lot of fun but it's a job, it's work. They'd have us there for hours a day with practice, a walkthrough, a lift, and then two or three meetings, especially on special teams. It was a lot, but I wouldn't trade a single second of it.

Tom Rowland: So when you finish your football career and graduate, what did you think you were gonna do?

Hunter Smallback: I was really locked in on sales, I enjoy sales. During the summers in college I worked as a salesman for Liquid Planet Marine, and I was set on going into sales afterward. Then, beginning of my senior year, the WWE reached out to me in a DM on Instagram. I looked at it and thought this has gotta be fake, but then I saw the account was verified with a million-plus followers, so I thought maybe I'll give them the interview. I took the interview with Brad, a recruiter at the time, and he liked me and pushed me to another interview. They liked me too, and ended up inviting me to a tryout at IMG Academy, where they flew in 32 people from around the world, guys from Nigeria, London, Canada, Australia, Washington, California, all over. It was a three-day tryout where they tested literally everything, kind of tried to break you, see what you're made of. We wrestled like I'd never wrestled before, and previous to this I'd never watched wrestling for one second in my life. I had no clue what was going on. I actually didn't even know who Shawn Michaels was. We did our thing, promos, different agility things in the ring to see how athletic we are, and I was very fortunate to be one of the four men who got contracts out of the entire tryout.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, four men, two women were awarded contracts.

Tom Rowland: I just watched a show on Netflix called Wrestlers, have you seen that?

Hunter Smallback: I think so, the one gym up in the Northeast.

Tom Rowland: Al Snow.

Hunter Smallback: Yep, I saw the first episode.

Tom Rowland: I have a fascination with wrestling, mostly because when I grew up there were only three channels on TV, and you'd wake up and the fishing shows were on early, so I'd watch all the fishing shows with my dad. Then the next thing that came on was Georgia Championship Wrestling, and everybody that most people have ever heard of came through Georgia Championship in some way, shape, or form. Then roller derby would come on after that. My dad had clocked out by then, but I ended up watching fishing shows, professional wrestling, and roller derby all in one morning. Call me a redneck, but I thought it was awesome.

Hunter Smallback: What a morning.

Tom Rowland: What a morning is right. By about 11:30 you were ready to tackle the world. But wrestling I just found to be pretty interesting, and a lot of people are surprised I might be a wrestling fan. I was an amateur wrestler, so there was a temptation to not like professional wrestling because people would say it's fake. But man, I don't think there's any more difficult way to make a living than being a professional wrestler. I've never done it, but I want to hear what you're saying, because you got into this not really knowing a lot about wrestling but you're very athletic. How big are you?

Hunter Smallback: Six-four, two hundred and thirty-five pounds right now.

Tom Rowland: How big were you when you played football?

Hunter Smallback: Two-forty to two-forty-five, I'd fluctuate quite a bit, but I was also about 10 percent body fat at two-forty, two-forty-three.

Tom Rowland: Wow, you're a big, athletic guy, and you've got the look that's perfect for wrestling. But what do you think got you through this tryout? I ask because I've been watching this wrestling show, Wrestlers, about a lower-level regional wrestling scene, and these people know everything about wrestling, they have generations of wrestlers in their families, and they're all trying to make it to where you are, working so hard, living in their cars, jumping off anything they're asked to. It just looks so tough, and it's brutal.

Hunter Smallback: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: So now you have this opportunity and you make it through, what do you think helped you secure that contract?

Hunter Smallback: First off, I just got extremely blessed that they reached out to me, their recruiter found me on Instagram. Once I got to the tryout, I was just as bubbly as possible, which isn't too far from my normal self, and I could speak really well into a microphone, get up on stage in front of as many people and it just doesn't matter to me. A lot of people crumbled when they had to speak in front of that many people, and we're all ex-professional and collegiate athletes, there was an Olympian there. They're bringing in the baddest people from around the world. I don't know if you know who Grayson Waller is, he's probably the number-one guy right now in the WWE for doing promos. When we're in the ring, they say, say your full name and the number on your shirt, so I thought, I gotta stand out, the WWE is all about being different. I'd get up there and say, I'm Smallback 21, and I'm the future. I gave it a little something extra, and then people started copying me. Maybe the sixth or seventh time I got up there, I said, Smallback 21, and I'm here to replace you, and pointed right at Grayson Waller, but I had no clue who he was at that point. He looked at himself, then at me, and said, oh, you mean me? I said, yes sir, and he laughed and said, just wait till I get the microphone, I'm gonna bury you. I thought, oh no. Fast forward a couple hours, we did wrestling for like three hours straight, and went into our first promo. Again, I'd never watched wrestling before, so I had no clue what I was walking into. Everyone's rehearsing their lines, and I said, wait, you guys wrote stuff down? They laughed and said, you didn't? I said no, I don't know what to expect. I was only the second person to go, but before everyone went, they said, now we're gonna bring up our number-one promo guy, the best in the business, Grayson Waller, get up here. He's walking down the aisle, locking eyes with me the entire way, staring at me the whole time, and I'm thinking, oh brother, I'm screwed. He gets up there and tells us all his accolades, everything he's accomplished, and at the end he says, what are you, sorry little losers, how do you have the audacity to call me out in the ring today? He starts laying into me, saying I can't even do a shoulder roll, going at me so hard, and I'm sinking in my seat thinking, oh god. But he never says my name, though he's staring at me the whole time. He gets a mic, everyone claps, and I'm the second person to go, and I'm thinking, I gotta wing it, what am I good at? So I stand up and say, I'm Hunter Smallback, and I'm the future. I've summited frozen mountaintops. I've outrun avalanches on my snowboard. I've speared man-sized tuna off Los Sueños, Costa Rica. And then I throw my hands up and say, so it's only fitting I was the one to make Grayson Waller so nervous with just one remark, he was sweating through his fake spray tan. The whole room started dying laughing, the coaches were laughing, he was laughing. I had my hands up, and I said, I'm Hunter Smallback, and I'm here to stay.

Tom Rowland: Wow, it was awesome.

Hunter Smallback: It was awesome, and that went over. Afterwards he came up and shook my hand and said, mate, that was awesome, you established yourself, you poked fun at me without putting me down, and restated your name and stated what you were here for. That was perfect, do every promo like that. Ever since then, this has been good.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. Talking into the microphone, obviously if you've ever watched professional wrestling, that's a big real part of it, because you've gotta develop these storylines, create this character, these interviews beforehand, the promos as they call them. What about the actual wrestling, being in the ring and learning how to do this from knowing really nothing, was that difficult?

Learning to Wrestle at the WWE Performance Center

Hunter Smallback: Oh yeah, and it's still difficult. It's a steep learning curve for me, because I could sit there and look at the way a left tackle has his hand in the dirt, or his leg cocked, and know this is coming next, I could pick that apart all day long. But I've never watched wrestling. So people say, just get out there and flow, and I said, alright, I really don't know what flowing is, I have no prior knowledge. But our coaches are so good, we've got hall-of-famers as our coaches. Robbie Brookside and William Regal really help us get started, they say they hatch our eggs. Brookside really takes in the new wrestlers and molds them into a real old-fashioned wrestler, which in my opinion is kind of the best, because they give us all the tools, all the fundamentals, all the basics, and then it's just a thousand reps. We're taking bump after bump in his class, which is tough on the body, but you don't get good at something if you don't do a thousand reps, ten thousand reps, whatever it is. From there we get divided up based on our skill set into different coaches' classes, and it's so interesting, because once you leave the first class you feel like you have a decent knowledge of what's going on, and then you get to the next class and know nothing again. But you get to wrestle with these older, more veteran guys, and you learn so much so fast just by observing. Again, this is how I taught myself to hunt, and how I taught myself a majority of my fishing, just observing and trying to take in as much as possible.

Tom Rowland: That's super cool. How hard is it on the body? People say, oh, it's all fake, and I'm like, dude, that's a three-hundred-pound guy doing a backflip off the third rope, and he's supposed to not quite hit you but sell it like he squashed you. You don't think that guy could be a couple inches off and break three ribs, or tweak your shoulder, or his own shoulder? It just seems so tough. Some of these guys are old, some of the superstars are in their late forties, and that guy's still out there doing it. And yes, it's choreographed, but you don't think they do it perfectly every time? There's no way they do it perfectly every time, and then tomorrow night you're wrestling again. I always thought the two toughest ways to make a living are probably professional wrestler and rodeo cowboy. So what's your experience been so far?

Hunter Smallback: Oh man, it's been brutal. There's nothing fake about a slam. When you have another man your size or bigger lifting you above his head and slamming you on the ground, it's not a trampoline, it's giant wood planks with maybe an inch of padding on it, just so you don't blow your elbow out when it slams into the mat. It's a miniature car crash every single time. In football, you could go through someone and deliver the hit, and it's okay, you don't feel much because your adrenaline's up. But in wrestling, when you're the one getting thrown over another man's head and slammed into the mat, there's no way to be the hammer, you're the nail, you're the one taking the full brunt of the blow. It's just tough. We have massages every Tuesday and Wednesday, people there waiting for us, so we take full advantage of those, go to the chiropractor at least once a week. My chiropractor's awesome too, he's got people there that massage us as well. So I get a couple massages, get adjusted, stay stretching and lifting, all the stuff I've done my whole life as an athlete, which really protects you. The crazy thing is I've always had a big neck because I've always had to lug around a football helmet, but we do neck strength and work exercises every day, because if you don't tuck your chin when you hit someone or hit the ground, you get whiplash, and it's basically an instant concussion.

Tom Rowland: How do you train your neck, do you use one of those iron neck things?

Hunter Smallback: No, we do a lot of things where you're on the bench and someone sets a 25-pound plate on your forehead, or 10 pounds on the back, or pushes their palm on your forehead so you can use manual resistance. Everyone's usually working the neck on the x or y axis, forward to back, or side to side. But in the WWE we do things where we come all the way to the back shoulder blade, all the way to your forward left pec, so you're getting these different motions, and we even do twisting, practicing how to twist under tension. Literally every muscle fiber in your neck is getting worked, because we've gotta strengthen it in all situations.

Tom Rowland: You feel like that's helped prevent injury?

Hunter Smallback: A hundred percent.

Tom Rowland: Would you suggest that for regular people to be training their neck?

Hunter Smallback: I'd say any regular athlete, yes, middle school, high school, especially college, and especially in a contact sport. Your head is a big goofy thing, and if you don't have a strong neck to protect it, it's so easy to get concussions, or even these minor concussions that people brush under the rug, two or three of those are just as bad as one real severe one. It protects you fully.

Tom Rowland: In amateur wrestling we worked on the neck all the time, and what I have left from that is I can't fit into any dress shirt, I've got short arms and a giant neck. But that iron neck thing, have you seen it? It's like a halo you wear on your head, and your head can move, but you have a resistance band that goes down, so you're turning under tension. I've been thinking about getting one, because you can have the tension on the back or the front, and you're strengthening your neck like that, it's pretty cool.

Hunter Smallback: Sounds like something I need to invest in.

Tom Rowland: I'm surprised they don't have one there. Joe Rogan talks about it all the time. I'm sure they'd send you one if they thought they could get into the WWE training facility. But those guys have been training necks for a hundred years now, so they probably know what they're doing. Are some of the people you're training with getting injured and having to take time off for surgeries?

The Physical Toll of Professional Wrestling

Hunter Smallback: Oh yeah, it happens all the time, which is scary, because it's how we're making our livelihood. No one wants to walk around with a torn ACL or a broken leg or a bad concussion or a messed-up shoulder. It sounds crazy, and if you're not a former athlete it sounds even more crazy, but it gets to a point where you almost enjoy walking around a little beat up, you feel accomplished. You know you put the work in, so now you're gonna reap the benefits, gonna grow and get bigger, and your back's a little sore and your shoulder's aching, but you know you put the time in. You're sacrificing your body, for lack of a better sense, for what you love.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Hunter Smallback: And for the entertainment of other people.

Tom Rowland: That is exactly what you're doing, sacrificing your body for the entertainment of other people, and then you have to take care of that. I'd imagine the recovery protocol in professional wrestling has gotten way better, because if you look at some of the old documentaries, I got to spend the day with Diamond Dallas Page, he was on the podcast, and it was amazing. He's created this DDP Yoga, all about restoring movement. I saw he's working with Mick Foley right now, Mankind and Dude Love. I don't think there's anyone on the planet who took more of a beating than that guy, those cage matches, the Undertaker up on top of the cage, flips him over, he goes through the cage and lands on ten thousand thumbtacks.

Hunter Smallback: Oh my god, crazy.

Tom Rowland: He really landed on that many thumbtacks, stands up, and his whole back is covered in them.

Hunter Smallback: That's not fake.

Tom Rowland: No, it's choreographed, but he actually did that, and for him to be walking around now is unbelievable. That's what DDP's yoga has helped so many guys, Jake the Snake and others, regain some of their mobility, and lose weight, get off drugs, because that's gotta be a common cycle, you get injured, you have to work, and especially in the days of early OxyContin, when people didn't understand how addictive it was, a lot of those guys got messed up with that. But I'd imagine they've gotten better at helping you recover and prevent injury. How much, when you're learning these moves, do they talk about, if you do it like this you're gonna break your shoulder, you gotta do it like this, are they showing you how to do that?

Hunter Smallback: A hundred percent. They literally show us everything, as if you were someone like me who never watched it, that's how they teach it. Being an athlete, it's easy to pick up on, at least for me, but what's hard is connecting all the dots, you could have this many things in your arsenal, but you also have to know how to flow to get to the next place, how to react. The way we learn is to make wrestling as safe as possible, it's still a barbaric sport, but if we do it properly, it's safe enough.

Tom Rowland: Safe enough to get out of the ring that night and do it again the next night.

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, man. There's all kinds of stuff, just in my couple months there. When I was first learning how to take a hip toss, someone's literally picking you up and slamming you over their head, and you're landing on your back. I'm very competitive, and I wasn't learning it very well, and my classmates were doing really good at it, and I was getting so mad. So I kept taking hip toss after hip toss, and I was landing on my hip, and it actually jacked my hip up so bad it was painful to walk for like three weeks. The first week I couldn't lift, could barely walk right, and they did everything in their ability to get me healthy, dry needling, getting adjusted every other day, they sent me to a specialist for an MRI on my hip immediately to see exactly what the problem was so we could address it right away. There's so many trainers there, never really idle time, always something to do to get better, and they really provide that for you, which is great.

Planning a Duck Hunt in Canada

Tom Rowland: That's super cool. With where you are right now, how much time does that leave for hunting and fishing? We had you on the show, that was cool.

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, we're looking forward to that working out. Not as much time as I'd like, though. I don't think I'll ever have as much time as I'd like until I'm retired and living on the water. This Wednesday, not tomorrow, the next day, I'm actually headed out to Saskatchewan, Canada, to go duck hunting for three days. It's gonna be a five-day trip. I'm so excited.

Tom Rowland: Right on. I'm going there too, but not Saskatchewan, further west, almost due north of Bozeman. I'm taking my dad there. Are you doing a dry field hunt?

Hunter Smallback: We are, yeah.

Tom Rowland: I've never done it.

Hunter Smallback: That's so cool. First time I've ever hunted over land, I've always been in the swamp or over big water, and I've never seen a goose.

Tom Rowland: You're gonna love those, they're huge. Definitely a 12-gauge kind of sport rather than a 20-gauge sport. Who are you doing that with?

Hunter Smallback: One of my best friends, we played college football together, we're going up together. But I met a dude through a mutual friend who lives in Canada, he's a biologist. I told him, I've never been to Canada, I'd love to come fly fish or hunt or do anything, and he said, I'll take you fishing, tell me what you want to catch. So I took him out and we caught a bunch of speckled sea trout on the fly rod, which was his first saltwater fish ever.

Tom Rowland: Nice.

Hunter Smallback: We were catching some on gurglers too, so he was freaking out watching them come up and eat off the surface. Once the tide was moving good enough, we got in front of one of the bunkers with the trolling motor, started drifting mullet, jumped probably a 40-pound tarpon and landed probably a 15-pounder, and he was so ecstatic. He said, we've gotta have you up, duck hunting is probably the best thing I could put you on. I said, well good, duck hunting is one of my favorites anyway. But this was ten or eleven months in advance, so in the back of my mind I'm thinking this guy's full of it, he just wants to go fishing, but it's cool, I love to fish. About three months out I hit him up and said, still love to come duck hunt, and he said, great, here's the dates, I'll be there. So I took two days off work to make this five-day trip happen.

Tom Rowland: Oh, that's awesome. I think it's gonna be really great, I have high hopes. My dad's 85, and we're doing a similar thing with an outfitter, but I looked long and hard for a place I could take him that wasn't the usual waders, John boat, flooded timber with stumps underneath the water, treacherous, not really a place I wanted to take my dad. So I was looking for something easier, and came across this hunt, and one of my best friends is gonna be up there with his family too. I just hope we have some action, because that's my dad's favorite type of hunting.

Hunter Smallback: For sure, he loves it.

Tom Rowland: Really looking forward to it. I'll look forward to seeing how you do up there too, we'll exchange pictures. I've talked to a number of people who've done that kind of hunting up there, and apparently it can be really, really good.

Hunter Smallback: Not only is the variety of species so abundant, but you can kill, and my numbers might be wrong, this is just what my buddy told me, eight ducks, four of which can be pintail, whereas here in Florida you can only kill one pintail regardless of sex. Eight ducks, eight Canada geese, twelve speckle-bellies, twenty snow geese, and five sandhill cranes, and you can get the sandhills in one day.

Tom Rowland: You can get sandhills without a special permit or anything?

Hunter Smallback: Just like you would ducks, which is crazy.

Tom Rowland: Here you can't even kill them, the filet mignon of the sky. I've never eaten one, but I hear they're really good.

Hunter Smallback: Same here, never eaten one, but heard they're delicious. I love to cook too, so I'm super excited to go get a freezer full of meat.

Tom Rowland: Right on, good job, that'll be fun.

Building a Wrestling Character and a Life Outdoors

Tom Rowland: So where do people watch you wrestle? How does somebody follow you, watch what you're doing, see you wrestle, maybe even in person?

Hunter Smallback: You guys can follow me on Instagram, that's where I post the most, it's just H Smallback, small as in a child, and back. Hopefully soon, I haven't had my real debut yet, but on WWE and then on Peacock would be the best way to follow us. You can also follow WWE NXT on any social media platform, they post great content all the time.

Tom Rowland: Nice. Do you have any idea when your debut might be, is it up to you, or up to them to pick you?

Hunter Smallback: Up to me, I wonder. It's a little bit of everything. Character development is huge, which I've just recently kind of figured out, a good character.

Tom Rowland: I hope it's gonna be Ernest Hemingway-esque, catching marlin and boxing, that seems like it would be a great character.

Hunter Smallback: It's funny you mention that, it's actually very close to that. I tell people my inspiration is like the most interesting man in the world from the Dos Equis commercial, mixed with Steve Irwin. It's fun and energetic, and I tell stories of hunting and fishing and adventures, and loop that back into wrestling. It's fun, man, it's just so fun.

Tom Rowland: Do you get coaching on character development too?

Hunter Smallback: Oh yeah, we get equal coaching with that as we do wrestling, which is wild. They're liking it, so I like it as well, it's so much easier to dive into something you already love. They just want it to be original to you, they tell us, take your normal self and turn it up to ten, turn it up a hundred times, and there you go, there's your persona.

Tom Rowland: That's it, and that's you, hunter, fisherman, surfer. How about the snowboarding, are you a snowboarder?

Hunter Smallback: Absolutely love it, man. I skied throughout my life till I was probably nine or so, maybe a little older, like 13. My dad snowboarded, and I'd surfed, my dad's a big-time surfer, so was my uncle, and I thought, dude, I gotta try snowboarding. I picked it up in two days, by the third day I hit my first black diamond. I never even considered skiing again, because snowboarding is so much fun.

Tom Rowland: Where was your first place you went?

Hunter Smallback: Beech Mountain in North Carolina, and Sugar Mountain too. Once I started snowboarding, I started traveling a ton, all over Utah and Colorado. Now the main thing I do is take the highest chairlift up and then hike to the complete summit of the mountain, as high as we can go, and just rip it down the backcountry. The snow is so pristine and so steep, but it's so exciting, dude, it's unmatched. It's like hooking a tarpon and watching them sky five times in a row, you get the same knee-shaking, heart-pounding excitement.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. I know about the knees shaking, even to this day it still happens with the big tarpon. Man, I wish you luck. We had Hunter on the show, on Saltwater Experience, which will be a 2024 show, probably on Discovery Channel in the second quarter. We had a great day, really fun, lots of snook, and then Hunter got to see the ferocity of the sharks in the backcountry of the Everglades, which I'm sure you've seen before, but that particular day they were pretty aggressive.

Hunter Smallback: I've seen some gnarly sharks up here, but never like that.

A Shark-Infested Day on Saltwater Experience

Tom Rowland: That's how it is down there, man, they're ravenous.

Hunter Smallback: I don't know how much you want me to say because I don't want to give anything away for the excitement of the TV show, but I seriously have never seen sharks that ferocious and that on top of us, it made for very interesting fishing. It was crazy.

Tom Rowland: We pulled up to this spot, and Rich said, okay, at the last spot you were able to fight these fish any way you wanted to, well, that's over, you're gonna need to fight them as fast as you possibly can. And man, he was so right, we were swinging nice snook into the boat, slinging them in to keep them away from the sharks. It was crazy, and once that happens a few times you just gotta move. It'll make for an exciting TV show, for sure.

Hunter Smallback: It made for an exciting fishing experience, I can tell you that. Nobody wants to see a snook get bit in half, and we managed to keep all of ours from getting attacked.

Tom Rowland: That was pretty amazing, but everybody had to be super careful, if you let off a little bit, they were coming in. The sharks were right behind them.

Hunter Smallback: We need to make an episode and go build one of those bamboo fly rods in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Have you seen that?

Tom Rowland: Yes, I've seen it, it's amazing. I want to have that guy on the podcast.

Hunter Smallback: You need to, that guy's a badass.

Tom Rowland: It's such a cool story too, who wants to buy a $3,000 bamboo rod these days that doesn't have a guarantee, you could break it. That's what he was doing, he was a very high-end craftsman, and then he got this idea to do classes where you learn how to make your own rod. Instead of taking the same amount of time to make one fly rod, he's now teaching 30 people how to do it, and he's killing it, because it's so cool. People don't necessarily even want to fish with it, but wanting to learn how to do it is another part of the sport, you learn how to tie flies, build a rod, maybe build a cane rod, or a wooden drift boat. There's just so many things in fishing, especially fly fishing, it's like a craft, and you can keep going down these rabbit holes to learn more. Building a bamboo rod would be super cool, and that's where I'd go to do it, I've heard nothing but good things about that guy.

Hunter Smallback: A hundred percent. Should do that.

Tom Rowland: I would love to.

Chasing Elk with a Bow

Hunter Smallback: So Tom, you know I love to bow hunt, I'm obsessed with chasing whitetail with a bow, but you get to chase elk with a bow, which to me has gotta be the pinnacle of hunting anywhere in the world. Tell me about your trip you just went on.

Tom Rowland: You said the right thing, chasing them is the fun part, luckily, because we have had success. My son and I have killed elk before, but man, I think elk hunting is maybe the most difficult thing I've ever tried to do with a bow.

Hunter Smallback: Really?

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I think it's really right up there. There are some comparisons to fishing, fly fishing for permit is definitely hard, it takes a lot of time to make a lot of mistakes, learn a little from each one, and then actually start to make it happen. You're having success, and then replicating that success. But it takes a really long time to be so confident in permit fishing on the fly that you're doing everything right and expect to catch one. I certainly got there, and there's so much about this learning process with bow hunting for elk that's very similar to permit fishing.

Hunter Smallback: What's cool about the elk, a little different from the permit, is when you're chasing permit you might have to pole miles, but you're not scaling miles up mountains and then down the backside to another one.

Tom Rowland: That's the difference, I think. Permit fishing is very challenging, tarpon fishing is very challenging, and there's a lot of incredibly physical effort in both, but not like elk hunting. Wherever you're hunting, find the steepest hill, and that's where they're gonna be. Once you get to the top of that hill and reach a false summit, you think, well, that's definitely the top, that's as high as we can go, and somehow you get to the top of that, and you gotta go higher, and higher. One time last year we hiked uphill all day, and I thought, well, at least it's gonna be all downhill from here. No, it was uphill, maybe a little downhill and then more uphill, and then somehow we came uphill back to the truck.

Hunter Smallback: So, Tom, you're telling me just like my grandpa's stories, you went uphill both ways?

Tom Rowland: I'm telling you, it's uphill both ways, into the wind, always into the wind. I don't know how it happens, but that's where they are. Then you get way up to the top of this hill, and you're looking through binoculars, and finally you see them, on another hill across the valley, and those are the only ones you can find, so those are the ones you're going after. But in order to get there with the wind right, you gotta go around the backside of that hill, up over the top, and then drop down on them, that's the only way you're gonna get there.

Hunter Smallback: And hope they're still there.

Tom Rowland: Right, and there's a 90% chance they're not gonna be, because they can smell so well from so far away. I have a tremendous respect for the elk, and the more I go after them, the more respect I have for them, that is a tough animal. For example, we'd look through binoculars and find a herd, think, okay, we gotta get there, check the wind, figure out how to get there, and we could get right up on them if we did it right. But when you finally get up there, it looks like a flat area where they're just walking around, grazing, laying down, two bulls sparring, some spikes sparring, elk cows up on their hind legs fighting each other with their front hooves, everything. And then they just decide they've had enough of that place and start walking, and they don't even look like they're walking fast, but dude, they are gone. A lot of the Indian tribes used to call them the Wapiti, and claimed they were spirits, like ghosts, and I saw why. There's one screaming, bugling, not far away, and you think any moment he's coming in, and then just poof, he's screaming over here, and you can tell he's going away, he winded you somehow, and he's gone.

Hunter Smallback: Tell me what it's like to hear a bugle out of just dead silence, pristine nothingness, and then that animal scream, what's that like?

Tom Rowland: It's one of the coolest things I've experienced in all of nature. Sometimes you can hear them from a long way away, but when you have one that's close to you, you can actually feel it, like if you're at a concert and there's a deep bass, you can feel that as well as hear it. That's what it felt like to me, like, wow, that guy is close, and that guy's big. When they're younger they have more of an immature kind of call, but when they get older, the big king-of-the-mountain guy has this deep, raspy bugle that sounds different from the rest, and you know that's the guy. We got so close to some herds that had five bulls in them, and you could actually watch and see which one was bugling, and sure enough, that deep, raspy sound was always the big one. There are guys out there like Cameron Hanes and Remi Warren who are so good at this, and if they find that out, there's a really good chance they're gonna kill it. For us, we're learning every time, and for everything to come together where you can get an elk within, you know, 60 yards, my boys are dialed in at 80, but that's too far to shoot an animal, because if it takes one step, it takes a long time for that arrow to fly out there. Really, a 60-yard shot is good. My son killed one at 54 yards and drilled it exactly where he wanted to. So you're really looking at 60 or less, and we had one at 12 yards once, but that was actually too close, there was no way to draw back the bow without him seeing. Sometimes they'll drop their head or look back and give you that opportunity, but that was a lesson learned, we probably could've picked a better place. It's the same thing with permit fishing, what I used to do is go back through those scenarios after a close call, what did we do right, what did we do wrong, and how can I replicate that same situation but do something slightly different so we actually catch that fish. That's what I started doing with elk hunting too, what happened there, why did we fail, because everything happened right, we were in the right place, we made the right calls, and the bull comes on a string straight to us, and then it's like, if we were set up slightly different we would've had a number of shots. In one situation we thought it was over and moved, but it wasn't over at all, and here comes the satellite bull in on us, and that's experience, those are experience things we just don't have enough of yet. That's where the physicality of elk hunting versus fishing, or even versus whitetail, comes in, there's so much walking, and if you spook them, they're gone. So if you're in good shape, you can go do that again on another hill five miles over, and the more opportunities you have, one of those is gonna be set up perfect. The wind, in certain situations we had everything perfect, and then the wind would swirl a little, and it's over.

Hunter Smallback: Yes, oh, that's crazy.

Tom Rowland: It's a predominant wind coming one direction, and we're set up perfectly for it, and then the wind starts to die and switches real quick and goes back to the same thing it was doing before, that's all it has to do. In those situations, I'm sure somebody listening who knows a lot more about elk hunting than I do is thinking, well, that's because you're set up too far down in that little ravine, and that's what the wind does down in there, it switches, and we're learning those things. So the temptation is, maybe we should get a guide, but my boys and I are having such a good time trying to learn this, even though it's heartbreaking as hell, so tough. You put in five miles of hard walking and it doesn't happen, but I'd rather that happen than not have any targets to hunt at all, because it's so easy to walk through an area and it looks like they were there five minutes ago, rubs, tracks, poop, everything super fresh. But once we started to find them consistently, I think there's just a big difference between finding them and watching them, and closing the distance. We're getting really good at the first part, but the difference between that and catching, or killing, is what we've gotta work on. That's what happened with the tarpon and the permit and the bonefish too. It's like, you know, I remember when I was first starting guiding, we'd go out and it's like, well, we saw 50 permit today. Okay, well, that's cool, how many shots did you get? We got 40 shots. How many did you catch? Zero, right? At some point in my guiding career, I thought, I don't wanna just go out there and look at them. So is it better to sit in a place where you see two or three and can catch one of those, or go to a place where you see 50 or 60 but almost never catch them? Those are things I had to learn. I think we're doing that with elk, going to some places where it would be very difficult to kill one, where we could make a slight change and go to another place where we might not see as many, but you have this lone bull, and the lone bull is what you want.

Hunter Smallback: Less eyes to bust you, less noses.

Tom Rowland: All of that. But he's also probably been kicked out, and he's looking to establish his own little harem, or he needs somebody. And maybe there's another bull that's been kicked out too, and now he wants to establish his dominance over that other one. So whether they're coming to fight or to mate, there's a strong draw this time of year, and you can get them to come right to you, sometimes at a gallop, which is crazy. We haven't had that happen yet, but I saw an Instagram video of one that literally ran up a trail at a bowhunter, he couldn't even shoot it, it was running so fast at him. And it's not running away from something, it's running to you, a 900-pound animal running at you with these freaking swords on its head. It does look scary, there were a couple times we thought, at 12 yards we need to shoot this thing, I don't want it to come any further. And 12 yards is really too close, you'd be much better off if it was 30 and it turned broadside. That's like the textbook thing you see on all the Cameron Hanes videos. But sometimes if the setup is such that the only shot you're gonna get is when he comes into this little clearing right here, you've probably not set up exactly right. It's like trout fishing, if I ever see a big fish rising somewhere, I always think, if I hook that fish, where am I gonna land it? Thinking ahead like that is what we're not necessarily doing with elk hunting right now, because we haven't had enough experience to learn all these different possibilities. There's no problem getting that lone bull to come to us, but if we're drawing him into a place that's gonna be very difficult to kill him, we need to move, but sometimes you can't, because of the wind. Sometimes you just can't, and that's what makes it so difficult, sometimes you even know this isn't an ideal situation, but it's the only way we can make this happen. And I think a lot of people who are good at this just make it happen.

Hunter Smallback: It is wild, dude.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, but you would love it, because you've got the physicality to make it happen and walk those hills. And then if you kill one, you could pack it out, that's the other thing we hadn't even touched on. Every time I think an elk hunt is going to get easier, it only gets harder, even to the situation of, okay, we found them, now we're gonna kill one, yes, we got it done, this is amazing, this is a huge accomplishment. And then it's like, okay, so we're done, this is success, but oh, we gotta pack this thing out. Some days it's like a two-day pack-out, eight or nine miles back to the truck, you carry as much as you possibly can, you run out of daylight, and then you have to go back out first thing in the morning and get the rest of it. It never gets easier, it only gets harder.

Hunter Smallback: Oh yeah, so to kill one is absurdly hard, the training you have to go through, and then you do kill one and there's cloud nine, and then what I can only assume is cloud eleven, where you are after you killed a bull elk with your bow. How long does that euphoric excitement last while you've got 60 pounds on your back and you have to go 10 miles and do it six more times?

Tom Rowland: For a real, maniac, insane person who likes to do physical things like you or me, it's gonna last every footstep. You're gonna be so excited that you've had success and you're actually carrying this thing out on your back, and it's gonna last for years, maybe for the rest of your life. For me, I've never come off the high of the first one my son killed, I'm just hoping to be able to have that experience again while I still can, because you can put too much on your back. With the first one he killed, there were only two of us there, and he kept saying, man, I wish Hayden, our other son, was here, because he could carry a lot of stuff. But I said, I think if he was here, it would only be harder, because you and I picked amounts of weight we could carry, and came back the next day and had an equal load. If we'd had three people there, the temptation would've been to get the whole thing out in one go, and everybody would've been carrying more, and I think it would've been way harder. We might have gotten it out in one go, but if there's 50 pounds left, you don't wanna just come back for 50 pounds tomorrow, so you load the whole thing up, just like carrying your groceries in, you don't wanna come back for one bag.

Hunter Smallback: You gotta do it in one trip.

Tom Rowland: But I just love it, it's one of my favorite weeks of the year, and it's so full of highs and lows. You were talking about regret, and it's like that, your fear of regret. There is a fear of that in elk hunting, like, we really should go up to the top of that hill, and then you decide, man, we're so tired today, we've got 20 miles under our belts, maybe we'll save that for tomorrow. And then later you're thinking, dude, that's probably where they were, we looked everywhere else, and had we gotten up there we might have seen one, and that might have been the difference. Or you get to some place and aren't careful about cresting the hill on the skyline, and you see it.

Hunter Smallback: And see, if you're anything like me, that what-if, my endless imagination would eat me alive, because in my mind that would be where the 400-inch elk was.

Tom Rowland: Of course. But that 400-incher, I think we saw it. I saw the biggest elk I've ever seen. And then there's other problems, we're on this massive ranch, so big, but there are more bordering properties, and a number of times the elk go to the bordering property, and there's nothing we can do, you can't step foot on anywhere that's not your property. So when that happens, you found them, forecasted the behavior, and they slid a little to the east or west or north or south, and they're not accessible to you, so now you've wasted that time, time you could've spent somewhere you're legally allowed to hunt. The same thing happens on public land going to private land, or vice versa, it doesn't get any easier on private land either, because private land has its own challenges too, since there are no other hunters there, so the elk tend to do whatever they want. On public land we've seen another hunter push them toward you a little, and that's cool, we'll take it. But they're just so challenging, if you haven't done it, you really need to do it.

Hunter Smallback: Oh yeah, you got me fired up, just tell me about it, dude.

Tom Rowland: It's so fun, man, but anybody who decides that's something they want to do, there is no physical condition you can be in that's too prepared for elk hunting. That's why Cameron Hanes runs marathons every day for a month, because what he's going to experience out there is likely harder than that. It's hard to even get your head around until you've done it a few times, going through deadfall that's up to your neck, and the most challenging walking you'll ever experience. But it's just so fun, and it's such an incredibly beautiful place where these elk live, it's like fishing for trout or permit or bonefish, they don't live in ugly places, they only live in these incredible, beautiful places where they can do what they need to do. An elk needs a lot of territory, but it's such a tough animal, regardless of the terrain and the weather, they've got bears and wolves and cats after them constantly, and bow hunters. They're just amazing at what they do, which is surviving.

Hunter Smallback: It is, dude, it really is. I've gotta experience it for myself.

Ice Baths, CrossFit, and Launching Chillax

Hunter Smallback: I know you're big into CrossFit too, and with all this training, do you ever take ice baths for recovery?

Tom Rowland: Yes. Now that you told me I was training for the Old Man Olympics, I've been doing extra training to get ready for this elk trip, and in preparation for the CrossFit Games this year I've really upped my training. I do an ice bath almost every day, mixed with sauna. On these competitive weeks, where there'll be an online competition and maybe three workouts that week, you can do them as many times as you want to get your best score, but there's a deadline for when you have to submit it. You could do a workout 15 times if you wanted and take your best score, but sooner or later the scores start going down, it's a point of diminishing returns. So usually I'll repeat each one once, do it, try it a second time, and I almost always get a better score the second time. Sometimes on the third time I don't, so that was a wasted effort. When I'm doing that over the course of a week, sometimes I'm taking two ice baths a day.

Hunter Smallback: Really?

Tom Rowland: Yeah, because your body has its own natural response from weight training, that's why your legs get sore, you're tearing down the muscle a little, and it's flooding with lactic acid and other things that are part of the repair process. If you lift hard and then get in an ice bath immediately, you're blunting that natural response. But if you're in a competition, it's okay to do that, because you'll be fresh in an hour, you're not getting stronger from that session, but you're being prepared, your recovery time is so much better. So I'll do a workout, maybe take an ice bath, and have another competitive workout later that afternoon. But when I have a training session, I try to spread the ice bath out six or eight hours away from the training.

Hunter Smallback: That would mean your muscles could still benefit.

Tom Rowland: Well, that's what I read, it's bro science all over the place here, but that's what I read, spread it out as far away from a training session as possible. On a competitive day, when you watch the CrossFit Games, those guys are doing their competitive workout in the sun, it's hot, and every one of them goes immediately to the ice bath, sometimes two people sharing a tiny little ice bath, somebody else comes and puts their arm in there, whatever they can get, because it's so beneficial. Do you guys do it at the wrestling?

Hunter Smallback: Oh yeah, we do it all the time. I actually do it so much that a good friend and I started our own ice bath company.

Tom Rowland: Nice.

Hunter Smallback: It's called Chillax. We have portable ice baths in two different sizes, a 30-gallon and a 90-gallon, and the 90-gallon's huge.

Tom Rowland: Is it inflatable?

Hunter Smallback: Yes, just like those inflatable paddleboards. It comes with a giant backpack, almost like a blow-up bed, and you pump it up with a bike pump, and we have a chiller unit that keeps the water, chills it down to 35 degrees. It's got a two-stage filter, the first is a legitimate filter to get any particles out, and the second is actually a UV light, so it's getting the water as clean as possible and constantly circulating it.

Tom Rowland: That's cool.

Hunter Smallback: This unit, if you left it on 24 hours a day for a month, it only increased the electric bill by $28. So you could have a portable ice bath in your backyard, garage, or porch.

Tom Rowland: How much is that?

Hunter Smallback: Just the ice baths are $800, and the full unit, the whole setup, is $2,200.

Tom Rowland: That seems very reasonable, some of these ice baths I'm seeing now are $14,000.

Hunter Smallback: Oh yeah, crazy expensive, and even ones similar to ours are double the price. Being an athlete my whole life, it was mandatory that we took ice baths every single day during fall camp, we had a checklist and everything. Being in the WWE, my body gets abused every day, so I need every advantage I can get. I was trying to buy one, and they're astronomically priced, so I thought, why not use my platform to try to have a more affordable version for regular people, whether it's kids in high school or trying to become collegiate or professional athletes, they need to recover too, instead of buying 50 bags of ice a week and putting them in a bathtub that doesn't even hold the water anyway. So we came up with this idea, and started it just after I started WWE, and we're fully launched as of like a week or two.

Tom Rowland: That's so cool, that's really good, man, I think you'll do great with that.

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, thank you. So it's called Chillax, we'll have to send you one to see how you like it.

Tom Rowland: The way I do mine is I have a 350 Yeti that I pour ice into, I have an ice machine that makes 850 pounds of ice a day, and I take like ten five-gallon buckets to the Yeti. If it's just me getting in there, I can go for three or four or five days before the water gets gross.

Hunter Smallback: Oh wow.

Tom Rowland: But it does get gross, and if there's five people getting in, it's an everyday change. Not everybody has the opportunity to get ice, and even if they did, how are you gonna put 50 bags of ice in the back of your hatchback?

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, exactly, you know what I'm saying. And another great thing about ours is the water's constantly circulating, so you can never really build up that layer of warm water around your body.

Tom Rowland: That's real. I have probably a foot and a half of ice in that Yeti and the rest is water, and it can get real cold, but I like it.

Hunter Smallback: Still seems like you keep it at hypothermic degrees.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, but that's kind of a cheap backyard way to do it, whereas what you've got going on with the filters and the chiller, that's way better.

Hunter Smallback: It is, it's definitely beneficial. Nowadays even people who aren't athletes are doing it just to help with weight loss, and the effects of the ice bath give you a very similar dopamine release as a hit of cocaine does. But cocaine only lasts fifteen minutes, whereas the dopamine release from the ice bath lasts three to six hours after you get out.

Tom Rowland: There's so much research on the effects on depression, how cold can help with depression, tons of research on that, so lots of benefits. Sometimes people ask me why I do it, and I don't really know, it just feels like it's doing something. There's no question, a hundred percent, that it's good for my knees. Not that I have bad knees, but sometimes after a lot of back squats or snatches, the next morning you come down the stairs and you're like, oof, I did some stuff.

Hunter Smallback: Feel you.

Tom Rowland: And then you get in the ice bath, and the next morning you're straight down the stairs, no big deal. It's so good. Well, I'll check out Chillax, that's good, man, I'm glad you're doing that, and I'm so glad we got to make this happen. It's been really cool getting to know you and learning a little bit about professional wrestling, that's the extra part. You're an awesome fisherman, and it was fun to spend the day with you fishing, and whether you're a professional wrestler or not, getting to know somebody who's actually doing that and on their way up is pretty cool. So congratulations to you, and we'll be watching on NXT to see you make your debut, and when you do, I'll put it on our socials and make sure we get some people over there to watch it.

Hunter Smallback: That'd be awesome.

Closing Thoughts and Where to Follow Hunter

Tom Rowland: Tell them one more time how they can follow what you're doing, your social media, and what is the name of your character, do you know?

Hunter Smallback: I'm gonna have to tell you that when it comes out, I do know, but it's kind of kept on the DL for a little bit.

Tom Rowland: You gotta keep that down, I understand.

Hunter Smallback: But yeah, you can follow me on social media, H Smallback is all my handles, and I'm actually coming out with a YouTube series as well, called Sights and Tides.

Tom Rowland: Nice, what do you do on that?

Hunter Smallback: A lot of hunting, a lot of fishing, a little bit of surfing, kind of everything I love to do outside. We're gonna be fully documenting our entire trip to Canada, posting videos of all the documents you need to get there, the way you get guns into Canada, because it's actually kind of tough. And then just all of our hunting and everything, kind of showing people my lifestyle.

Tom Rowland: Is that up now, is that channel created?

Hunter Smallback: Yeah, it's up now, we only have the intro video out right now, but more content is coming soon. We've got some gator hunts we're editing right now, and the night after we did our show, I went out with Garrett fly fishing the dock lights, and dude, I caught four tarpon on the fly rod that night.

Tom Rowland: That's sick, that's so great, super cool.

Hunter Smallback: So, again, everything I love, we're just putting it out there, now I'm just sharing it with people.

Tom Rowland: Alright, cool. Talk about how we met.

Hunter Smallback: We met at iCast, and a lot of men this day and age, a lot of people in general, just aren't attached to their feelings, or feel the need to be a manly man, and I feel like I'm one, but I saw you and immediately came over just to give you praise, because your show was so impactful on me growing up and growing my passion for fishing so much. I had never even thought about being on the show, I was just starstruck that I saw Tom Rowland. I came over and thanked you for having such an amazing show, and for giving back so much, and for inspiring me to grow my passion for fishing and adventure from bass in the backyard all the way to saltwater. I have a wonderful platform with the WWE, but just going out of your way to say something nice to someone, or to thank them for something, you don't know the type of doors that opens, or the effect it has on someone's heart or well-being. If there's one thing I could kind of encourage anyone from today, yes, get out and fish, go hunt, do that, but also be kind, and if you feel some type of way, go let someone know. And if it's negative, maybe you keep it to yourself, but spreading the love is a real thing.

Tom Rowland: And from the other side of it, sometimes when you're first starting out and it's not going as well as it is right now, you just think, man, if this just matters to one person, it'll all be worth it. You always hear people say that, and especially in the beginning, when the show's losing money and you're trying so hard to make it better, it would be an easy place to quit, and you're just thinking, if I could just make an impact on one person, that would be worth everything. And that's what it's all about. When you're saying you should go out and say something to somebody who's meant something to you, you have no idea what that means to that person, that could be the thing that keeps them going. Sometimes something seems so big that it's obviously rolling and can go forever, but that might not be the way it is, that person might be thinking about cashing it in and stopping. But one comment from somebody who watches the show could be the total difference for them too, like, wow, it is working, it did make a difference to somebody, and they keep going. So it's cool. But yeah, it's awesome, man, I was glad to get to know you there, and it's turned out good.

Hunter Smallback: Awesome. Yeah, man, well, again, thank you just so tremendously much for having me on the TV show, and you guys treated me like a king. The room was amazing, the fishing was the best snook fishing of my life, and just being able to be on the boat with you guys, dude, just made my heart happy, bro, just out there cracking it up, catching fish. There's nothing better than that.

Tom Rowland: Love it, I love it. It was awesome, man. Alright, thanks, Hunter, and we will have another great guest next week. Follow Hunter and watch him as he makes his big rise in the WWE. Alright, see you, Hunter.

Hunter Smallback: Alright, thank you. Later.