Boy Meets World stars Danielle Fishel and Will Friedle recounted their experience at WWE Monday Night Raw in Los Angeles. Fishel is a longtime fan and Friedle knew very little about WWE but came out of the show with an appreciation for pro wrestling.
“Most of you who listen to the show know that I am a wrestling fan,” Fishel shared. “It goes back many years. I used to go to WWE back when it was WWF, to see Raw, to see Wrestlemania. There have been times where I fell out of it and wasn’t paying attention, but it always pulled me back in. I’ve been a back-and-forth fan for decades. Then Jensen [Karp] and I started dating. Jensen used to work for the WWE. He started taking me to PWG shows in Reseda in the San Fernando Valley. PWG is an independent wrestling organization. Pro Wrestling Guerrilla is what PWG stands for. They had a small setup in Reseda, and you could go and watch local wrestlers wrestle, and it’s incredible. But the greatest thing about wrestling that I think more people are starting to catch on to is the community and the showmanship, the pageantry, it’s all so amazing. So WWE recently did a deal with Netflix, and now you can watch WWE on Netflix. They premiered with Raw. Every single Monday night they do Monday Night Raw. It premiered on the fifth, and I asked Will if he had any interest in going. I asked Will and Susan if they had any interest in joining Jensen and me. Will was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll go.’ And I was so excited because, as Ryder, as you know, it’s hard to get Will out of his house. And I was excited that, you know, Ryder was out of town. We had asked Ryder as well, but Ryder couldn’t go. And Will was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll go.’ And then I thought, ‘What are the odds he’s actually gonna go? I wonder if he’s gonna back out when we get close.’ He didn’t. Why don’t we talk about it from your point of view? Let’s talk about what we talked about on the drive over. You had no idea what to expect. What were you expecting?”
Friedle admitted, “I don’t know. I mean, I truly don’t know. So, you know, obviously, Boy Meets World has some connection with wrestling. We had Vader on, and he threw me around a ring for a while. Mick Foley, Mankind, we’re still good friends with Mick, so, you know, I had some idea… I thought I had some idea of what the world was going to be like.”
He continued, “The way that Danielle hooked me was she was like, ‘It is fantasy. It’s Dungeons and Dragons. It’s live-action role-playing.’ And so when I put that into my head, I was like, okay, plus I already knew about the athleticism and how incredible [the wrestlers are]…”
On the first-class experience provided by WWE, Friedle recounted:
“There’s this beautiful room behind the Lexus room that’s all just this buffet laid out. A full bar, tons of people in there… being with Jensen and Danielle at this is like being at a German wedding with somebody who speaks German. I was sitting next to the people that actually knew the language of everything that was happening. So we’re sitting there, we’re getting our food, and we’re like, okay, let’s go in. The fights are about to start. So we walk in, packed, 18,000 fans… everyone with belts and signs, every age, every color, every gender, everything is represented. It is the most beautiful hodgepodge of people you’ve ever seen in your life. And when I mean packed, there was not a seat in this place. From the time this event started, to four hours later when it ended, no one got up and left. They walk us essentially ringside.”
Fishel recalled the opening of the show with Triple H and then The Rock’s entrance:
“We’re facing the direction Hunter and The Rock are facing. Two cameras, so we’re on the camera side, so they’re facing us. We’re just looking directly into their faces. We’re four rows back, and it’s unbelievable. I am a massive Rock fan. I have been. He’s one of the people that really sucked me into wrestling many years ago. He’s the only reason I can raise an eyebrow. I just want you to know, because I couldn’t raise an eyebrow. I could only raise both eyebrows. I couldn’t do just the one… I was doing a movie called ‘Rockets’ Red Glare,’ a TV movie in Santa Maria. And I had gone to a wrestling match recently, and I was like, oh, The Rock and the eyebrow. And I was like, I can’t raise an eyebrow. I can’t raise an eyebrow. And the makeup artist said, ‘Well, you just need to train yourself to learn.’ I was like, ‘Well, how do you do that?’ And she’s like, ‘Just stare at your eyebrows in the mirror and tell yourself, raise your left eyebrow.’ So every single day on the set of this movie, while she was doing my makeup, I would just try to raise it. Anyway, I can do it now, and I love it, and it’s because of The Rock. I learned how to raise an eyebrow because I wanted to be like The Rock.”
Overall, Fishel and Friedle had a memorable experience at WWE Raw. Both are now considering going to WrestleMania in Las Vegas. Click below to listen to the entire podcast.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Boy Meets World with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
