Hey! (EW) is the creation of RJ City and a mainstay of weekly All Elite Wrestling programming on their YouTube channel.
RJ City recently sat down with Stephanie Chase of Digital Spy to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked how his weekly talk show with All Elite Wrestling became a reality, City said it happened after he pitched an idea on Twitter about driving AEW wrestlers to the pay-per-view, and Tony Khan loved the idea.
“I had flippantly tweeted out one of my previous failed pitches where I would drive wrestlers to the show and for some reason, it was a very popular tweet,” RJ City explained. “Then [Tony] messaged me and he’s like, ‘Let’s do this.’ I was like, ‘Oh my god, are you sure?’ And then he said, ‘Yes, let’s do sit-down interviews too’. Then he just gave the green light to do it and then put me in touch with Kevin [Sullivan] who I was friendly with before and knew my work, and Sonjay [Dutt] who has been pulling for me to work at a variety of wrestling promotions for over a decade now.”
When asked how they came up with the name of the show, RJ City said he wrote up a brainstorming short with a big list of names, and while he believes Hey! (EW) might have been the stupidest idea; that’s the one everyone liked the best.
“I had drawn up a pitch and the way the show looks and the way it’s structured is really just because of the resources we have depending on a show day. Like, there’s only so much set, obviously, we’re in like, a storage closet in an arena, or a hotel conference room, and the set was built to be portable. The sign is on wheels, the sign I have [is] because I thought I would have to be sneaking into locker rooms or ambushing people as they came out of the bathroom. So we have all these little things like that. I wrote up a whole brainstorming sheet and I had a big list of titles and sometimes when you write you just go, ‘I’m not even going to worry about if it’s good first, I’m just going to write’, and the first idea of a title was Hey! (EW) and it was probably the stupidest idea. Then we got on a conference call and Kevin said, ‘I think we all agree, the title has to be Hey! (EW)’.”
One of the most popular episodes of Hey! (EW) involved Danhausen, who is a good friend of RJ City. City spoke about how proud he is of Danhausen for betting on himself, creating his own character, and sticking with it.
“I’m incredibly proud of him because he cracks the mold in terms of breaking beyond wrestling and he does it in such his own way,” RJ City said. “[The character] came from him, it was definitely stuff that he was interested in and sometimes you don’t know how to put the pieces together but other times you’re just listening to other people. At first you want to do what you’re told what you should do, how to make it in this business and a lot of times that doesn’t work, nor does it make you happy because it isn’t coming from yourself. Then you go, ‘F**k these people,’ and you start doing your own shit and at first, it’s incredibly confusing and people don’t understand and you have to be like, ‘No, this is me and I’m sticking with it.'”
READ MORE: RJ City Pitches ‘Sweet Cheek Music’ And ‘Rectum’ As Names For Toni Storm’s Hip Attack
What do you make of RJ City’s comments? What is your favorite episode of Hey! (EW)? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
