From Hogtown to Tinseltown: The rise of Chris Van Vliet

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Chris Van Vliet doesn’t hesitate when asked to search the archives of his vast memory to produce his earliest professional wrestling memory.

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“I remember in the late ’80s, wrestling just being on the TV at my grandparents’ house,” the Pickering native said during a Zoom interview with the Toronto Sun. “Not that my grandpa was a huge wrestling fan, but he just always loved having sports on the TV, whether that was a Blue Jays game or a Maple Leafs game or it was Saturday Night’s Main Event.”

Van Vliet, a four-time Emmy-winning TV host, Youtuber, Podcaster, entrepreneur and host of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, recalled that he was immediately struck by the characters he saw on TV.

“I remember seeing those larger-than-life characters and just being so impressed by the athleticism,” he said. “I very much remember seeing, I guess it would have been early ’90s, Koko B. Ware and Ultimate Warrior, Macho Man … I remember seeing those type of characters.”

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Van Vliet recalled how his uncle would ask him if he knew what an undertaker was.

“I was like ‘Yeah, it’s that guy,’” Van Vliet recalled, referring to the WWE Hall of Famer by the same name. “He was like ‘No, no. Like, do you know what an actual undertaker is?’ and that being a moment where I was like ‘Oh, okay, I didn’t realize it was also an occupation.’”

But it wasn’t until later, in the late 1990s, during World Wrestling Entertainment’s massive Attitude Era, that Van Vliet found himself completely infatuated with the travelling athletic circus that is the WWE.

“It was specifically Stone Cold (Steve Austin) and Vince (McMahon) that was the storyline that sucked me into it,” Van Vliet, 41, said.

Van Vliet, whose attention to detail and incredible total recall is constantly on display during his fascinating interviews with celebrities, athletes and pro wrestlers alike, can pinpoint the moment wrestling changed his life forever.

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“I remember having a moment in the late ’90s because back then, when you had a best friend who lived in another city, you did this crazy thing called talking on the phone,” he quipped. “So we would come home from school, we would talk on the phone every single night and then I knew that nine o’clock, every single Monday, our phone calls would abruptly come to an end because Monday Night Raw would be on. I lived at Pickering and he lived in Scarborough so there’s no way for us to see each other or chat other than on the phone.”

On this particular Monday night, the conversation wasn’t ready to conclude at 9 p.m., so Van Vliet decided to sync his TV with his friend’s so they could watch Monday Night Raw and during commercial breaks, their discussion could continue. Fate hit Van Vliet that night like a Stone Cold Stunner.

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“I remember seeing these characters and just being sucked into this whole story,” he recounted. “I went from watching zero minutes of wrestling to watching everything. It was Raw and (WCW) Nitro, Jakked and Metal and pay-per-views, everything. And I’m one of those people who, when I get into something, I go all the way in. I dive all the way in. I don’t check the temperature of the water. I don’t check the depth of the water. I just dive in. And that was wrestling for me.”

A natural-born athlete, Van Vliet said he grew up in the GTA playing hockey and baseball and even joined his high school wrestling team after falling in love with pro wrestling.

“I was a backyard wrestler in Pickering, the HCW, our organization, and I was Chris Sharpe, a classic heel, that was something I wanted to do,” he said as he laughed at the recollections. “I ended up going to wrestling school in Toronto. I went to the Squared Circle (Wrestling) for a few months in the summer between my second and third years of university.”

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Faced with the decision so many aspiring pro wrestlers face, to pursue the dream or not to pursue the dream, Van Vliet instead focused his attention on his other passion, broadcasting.

But his love for pro wrestling never waned, even today still being able to recall the first independent wrestling show he ever attended.

“It was Ron Hutchison’s Apocalypse Wrestling Federation that was the first indy show I ever went to, in a little bar called Cactus Pete’s,” Van Vliet said. “It was it was pretty crazy. I was there when Gail Kim debuted under a mask as a character named La Felina. Pretty cool.”

Hutchison, of course, is the legendary Toronto-based wrestling trainer who worked with the likes of Adam “Edge” Copeland, Christian Cage, Trish Stratus, Kim, Beth Phoenix and others who’d go on to enjoy varying degrees of success in the WWE and elsewhere.

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Once Van Vliet had chosen broadcasting over pro wrestling, he set out to conquer that career.

“I remember being four years old and having a Fisher-Price tape recorder with a little microphone attached to it, and I pretended to be the radio deejays or the broadcasters I heard on the radio,” Van Vliet said. “I remember pretending to be Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth because they called the Blue Jays games. When I went to high school, we had a communication studies class, and I didn’t know what that meant. But then someone said, ‘Yeah, we make TV shows.’ I was like ‘What?! We have a course where you make TV?’ And I was sold.”

To this day, Van Vliet said he remains grateful for everything he has in his life.

“I was so lucky and this is the great thing about life is it’s luck makes preparation,” he said. “It’s that old adage. I was so lucky to go to a high school where we had a communication studies class and we had an actual TV studio in there. I always loved broadcasting. I always loved the idea of storytelling because that is at the heart of broadcasting. But the fact that I could learn about this changed my entire life.”

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After high school, Van Vliet attended Wilfred Laurier University, where he pursued a communications studies degree.

“I loved my time there,” he said. As the clock ticked on his university career, Van Vliet recalled this moment of clarity, and fear, about his future.

“In my final year, I had an epiphany like ‘Oh my gosh, I’m having the best time at university, but when we graduate at the end of this year, we have to go work for the rest of our lives.’”

In that moment, he said, he realized only one thing mattered to him: “I didn’t want to be one of those people who hated their job,” he said. “I don’t want to be one of those people who can’t appreciate Sunday because they’ve got to wake up on Monday and go to a job that they don’t enjoy.’ And, in that moment, I made a decision that I just didn’t want to hate my job. Not that I wanted to love my job, I just didn’t want to hate my job.”

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The one thing he was certain of in those days was that he absolutely loved broadcasting. So he reached out to every radio station and TV station in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, explaining that he was a fourth-year communications studies student who was passionate about broadcasting and willing to volunteer or work for free to get some practical experience.

“And 91.5 The Beat said sure, come be on our street team,” Van Vliet recalled. “And Rogers 20, said ‘We love volunteers, come on in.’ And 570 News said ‘We don’t offer volunteer positions, but how would you like a job?’”

Bingo.

“So I got a job as a board operator,” Van Vliet said. “I would stay afterwards and I would record radio demo reels.”

Next, he turned his focus to finding an internship to add to his practical experience.

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“Nobody would give me an opportunity,” he said. “No one. I scoured the internet, I found the email address for the general manager at CHEX TV in Peterborough, and I emailed him and I said, ‘Hey, it’s reading week next week, I’m going to be in Peterborough — which was a total lie as I hadn’t been to Peterborough in years — could I just come by and talk to you about a possible internship.’ He said, ‘Sure, I guess if you’re going to be in town, come on by. And I talked myself into getting an internship there.”

Two weeks into that internship, the station put Van Vliet on TV as an intern, doing some local reporting. That gig turned into a job as a videographer at CHEX TV where Van Vliet was writing, shooting, editing and producing his own stories.

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“I was driving an hour each way while working my old job at the Pickering Town Centre at PJ’s Pet Centre to pay for the gas to get to Peterborough because the internship didn’t pay anything,” he said. “That’s really where this began. It just began with a goal and a dream of this is the thing I want to do. It seemed extremely unlikely, but I wanted to do everything in my power to at least try to make it happen.”

From CHEX, Van Vliet moved to Vancouver where he was hired by Razer Television.

“I was in the CHUM family, which was bought out by CTV,” Van Vliet said. “I was a TV host there for a show called 969. While there, he also hosted Razer News, a celebrity news program. In 2007, Van Vliet was voted as the third favourite Vancouver TV personality by the readers of TV Week Magazine.

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Eventually, he moved back to Toronto, where he later joined SUN TV. It was in 2007 that his two worlds, broadcasting and pro wrestling, collided like the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object.

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“I did my first wrestling interview with Bobby Lashley in 2007, SUN TV in Toronto,” he said, noting that despite the countless interviews he’s done since, that remains his only chat with Lashley.

Eventually, he hired a talent agent, who helped him get a number of auditions and opportunities in the U.S., including one with a CBS affiliate in Cleveland where he eventually became an entertainment reporter.

“That was my first job in the U.S. in 2010,” he said.

In 2012, Van Vliet won two Sports Emmy Awards for his Best Host and Best Single Sports Story for his report on Gregory Iron, a pro wrestler from Cleveland who wrestles despite being born with cerebral palsy. In 2014, Van Vliet won his third Sports Emmy Award for best host, a feat he repeated in 2015.

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Following WOIO, Van Vliet moved to WSVN, a Fox affiliate in Miami before breaking out onto his own and moving to Los Angeles, where he’s established himself as one of the best interviewers on the planet. Most recently, his work with WWE has been garnering massive attention.

“I’m really fortunate to say I get to do my own thing now,” he said from his studio in L.A.

The Canadian kid from the GTA admitted sometimes he has to stop and take stock of the crazy journey that his life has taken him on, specifically in recent years as he’s broken out on his own and built an empire.

“It’s pretty crazy to think back to who the 16-year-old version of me was walking down the hallways of Pine Ridge Secondary School and asking people questions just so I could shout ‘It doesn’t matter what you think!’” he said, stealing one of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s famous lines. “To then fast forward 15 years later and I’m sitting down with The Rock and he’s yelling ‘It doesn’t matter!’ at me, it’s pretty incredible to think about it.

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“There’s a lot of times when it just doesn’t feel real, like it doesn’t feel real to have someone who’s at the level of the people that I’m so grateful to be able to share conversations with, to be able to say ‘Hey man, just grab my number, that’ll be way easier to connect’ or like, ‘Hey, shoot me a text later with that thing we were talking about during the interview.’ It’s pretty incredible.”

Van Vliet’s interviews are among the exception, in-depth, casual and the sense of trust he instils in his subjects is evident from the outset. That’s something, he said, that came through building trust. He’s still as fascinated by the lives of pro wrestlers today, he said, as he was as a kid at his grandparents.

“They had a dream, they had a goal, they worked really hard and they accomplished it,” he said. “I hope that through my podcast and through the interviews that I do that I’m able to show anybody who is watching or listening that they’re able to do it as well. The only difference between those people and anyone listening to my show is that those people put in the time, they put in the work and they chased after it, even when it didn’t feel like it was possible to make it happen.

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“I just love the idea of reverse engineering someone’s success, going from the end, where they are now, and all the success that they have, and all the fame that they have associated with that and reverse engineering it back to step one or two or three of their journey and being able to go ‘Oh wow, they stumbled early on,’ or ‘Ohh, didn’t look like this was a possibility,’ but they persevered in they made it happen.”

Recently, Van Vliet sat down with new Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes for a compelling interview that has half a million views on YouTube in a short period of time.

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“I’ve known Cody for a long time, and I’ve been fortunate to interview him at a lot of different stages of his career,” Van Vliet said. “Our first interview was WrestleMania 27, when he was wearing the face mask as “Dashing” Cody Rhodes. I interviewed him when he was the Ring of Honor champion, when he was on the indies, I did an interview with him last year when his documentary came out, and now to do an interview with him after all the talk about finishing the story, to be able to do an interview with him now after he’s finished the story was pretty cool.”

For Van Vliet, whose interviews are as renowned for their casual nature as the content they produce, it’s all about his curious nature.

“I’ve just always led with curiosity,” he said. “I’ve always just genuinely been a curious person. So I think for me, with any interview, whether it’s Cody Rhodes or anybody else, it just starts with what are the obvious questions here? What are the things that I personally want to know? And hopefully through me asking them, other people who are watching or listening can get an answer to a question that maybe they’ve always wanted to know the answer to.”

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The other thing that is paramount, Van Vliet said, is being present in the interview.

“From the second that (Cody) walked in the room, it was like seeing an old friend,” he said. We talked for whatever was an hour and 15 minutes. I just like to approach any conversation like that like it’s a conversation. Just be present. Larry King has this great quote that I love: I never learned anything while I was talking. I think that one of the greatest things that you could do as a communicator is just to listen, to be present in the moment.

“And if they say something that might steer the conversation in a different direction, be ready to go in that other direction and be ready to follow the conversation over there. And that’s why someone like Howard Stern or Oprah (Winfrey) or Joe Rogan are the best at what they do, because they’re truly present in the conversation and they’re listening. I try to have a fraction of that.”

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Van Vliet is humble when asked about his incredible career, and about any one moment that stands out as his turning point.

“It’s important to realize that nobody has an audience,” he said. “Everybody starts from zero. I don’t think there’s just one. I think it’s like a set of stairs, one, one stair takes you up to the next one to the next one. A lot of little things like to get that job at MTV 2 Canada, Razer TV is what was called the time, to be on a national show at 23 years old, that was a big one.

“And then to get a job and to be able to leave work and live in the U.S., that was a huge one. And within my first week of working at the CBS affiliate in Cleveland, I was at the Oscars. That was pretty cool to be on the most famous red carpet in the world, on the biggest night in entertainment.”

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He recalled an idea that proved to be a huge part of developing his following.

“I think things started to change when I realized that when WWE or TNA would come to town, they would come to the TV station, they would promote the event,” he said. “I think it started to change for me when I realized I would do a 10- or 15- or 20-minute interview with the wrestler who I grew up watching and we would only air 30 seconds of it on TV. I was asking questions I wanted to know the answer to as a fan and no one would see it.”

So he decided to take the rest of that unaired footage, destined for oblivion otherwise, and he began to post clips to a YouTube he created.

“It was an interview I did with The Miz in 2011 where he talked about some things he hadn’t talked about before, like that he got concussed at WrestleMania 27 and doesn’t remember the end of that match, which was crazy,” Van Vliet said.

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That clip, along with others, spurred interest. In 2019, when Canadian Chris Jericho signed with All Elite Wrestling, Van Vliet landed the first interview with the former WWE champion following his signing.

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“We did it in the backseat of his car,” he said. “I drove four and a half hours to do this 20-minute interview him, and then turned around, drove 4.5 hours back, and my friend was driving my car so I could edit the interview on my laptop so we could get it up as quickly as possible. I think it was moments like that, where just getting the yes from that guest, getting someone to say, ‘Sure, yeah, we’ll do this’ and through that, being able to get it out to as many people as possible.”

Ranked among Van Vliet’s biggest interviews is one he did with the aforementioned Undertaker, the wrestler, not the mortician.

“That was pretty cool, at his house, for two hours,” Van Vliet recounted.

After being a guest on The Undertaker’s podcast that day, Van Vliet responded in kind, interviewing arguably the greatest character of all time at his home in Texas.

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“We were all set up, ready to go, and I said, ‘How much time do we have?’ He goes, we can talk until you get all the bullshit out of me.’ We talked for almost two hours. What’s amazing about Mark Calaway is he couldn’t be any further from The Undertaker character. He is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and one of the kindest people as well.”

And then there was his most recent interview with The Final Boss, The Rock, who took the WWE by storm last year with his return and subsequent match at WrestleMania 40 in Philadelphia.

“I’ve been so incredibly fortunate to interview The Rock 10 times, not that I’m counting or anything,” he said with a laugh. “But this last interview, I had recently found out I was going to be a dad and The Rock is so proudly a dad and a girl dad. I just asked him for a little bit of advice, and I was honestly expecting him to give me some throwaway cliche answer like, ‘Oh, yeah, get your sleep now.’

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“For him to take the time during that interview to give me some genuine advice that I actually acted upon was amazing, and it was also one of the first times I’d said out loud ‘I’m going to be a dad.’ And I got choked up as I was saying it, and he immediately got up, walked over, gave me a big hug, and it was just such an expected, unexpected moment. And it was it was one I’ll never forget.”

As much success, and as long a journey as Van Vliet has enjoyed so far, in many ways, his career is still just taking off. Asked about the prospect of joining WWE, which often recruits broadcasters with a love for pro wrestling, the Torontonian said he’s taking his life one day at a time.

“I mostly just look at the day-to-day,” he said. “I’m in a really fortunate position right now where I can have conversations with people who work for any company, and I don’t ever want that to change. I could talk to somebody from WWE or AEW, or TNA or New Japan or an independent wrestler, but I really just look at what’s in front of us.”

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Every day, Van Vliet jots down his so-called ‘Get to do’ list.

“These are the things I get to do today, not the things I have to do to,” he said. “I think when you reframe that, that changes your life. I don’t have any massive aspirations for where I want to be in the next five or 10 years, but my goodness, I am incredibly grateful for all of the opportunities that I have, and gratitude has been such a cornerstone of my life. It’s why I end every conversation asking my guests, what are three things they’re grateful for. Because we always have something to be grateful for, even when things aren’t going well. You always have something in your life that you can be thankful for.”

One thing the man who goes simply by CVV is grateful for is that inner voice that has led him since he was just a young child. That voice that has been his guiding force for as long as he can remember.

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“I know I wouldn’t change anything,” he said of his life and career. “I’m a big fan of Back to the Future. I love the concept of like everything happens for a reason. And I know that we’re both here, sitting here, having this conversation because of everything that’s happened before this.”

Asked what advice he might give his younger self, Van Vliet harkened to something he heard 16-time WWE champion John Cena say.

“I think I would just go back and tell that kid to just enjoy every moment,” he said. “John Cena said something during one of our interviews that I’ll never forget, three very powerful words. He said, control the controllable. You can’t control what other people say. You can’t control what other people do but what you have 100% control over is how you react to what other people say and what other people do. And I think I would just say to that little kid: just enjoy it.”

Oh, and maybe watch more wrestling, Van Vliet said.

“My parents were not fans of wrestling and are not fans of wrestling,” he said. “I remember my dad standing in front of the TV with his arms crossed, because he didn’t want me watching the things that were going on in the Attitude Era, and I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t want my kid watching what was going on at the Attitude Era at that time. But it certainly is cool to look back and see how far we’ve come.”

Jan Murphy is a reporter and former editor for The Kingston Whig-Standard, a longtime wrestling reporter and lifelong pro wrestling fan. He can be reached at [email protected] or on X at @Jan_Murphy

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