Exclusive Interview with Comedian Brad Williams | No-Contest Wrestling

Comedian Brad Williams sat down with O'Shea Jackson Jr. and TJ Jefferson on the No Contest Wrestling Podcast for the full Tuesday tour. Pitch for his Netflix special. Pit bulls. Big Show. The Ducks. And the only piece of advice Williams will give about becoming a comedian.

Williams' new special, "Brad Williams Live on Short Street," dropped April 12 and was already at 700,000 views on YouTube at the time of the conversation.

The opening was a comp Williams gets every week. Hornswoggle.

"It's always there's a dwarf of the moment," Williams said. "When I was coming up, it was Wee Man from Jackass, then it was Dinklage for a while, and it was Hornswoggle for a while. People can't comprehend that there's more than one."

The conversation pivoted to Williams' actual background. He went to USC.

"I was a year away from graduating and then I started doing comedy and I was like, well, that's what I want to do," Williams said. "I dropped out, but I was going to get a communications degree. It's not like when I dropped out, we lost a cancer cure. Shout out Annenberg."

The Trojan connection landed with O'Shea, who also went to USC for screenwriting before his father pulled him into the NWA movie. The Dr. Dre building on campus came up.

"Like if you would have told me top 10 people that will not have a building at USC, certainly the '90s, and then anytime after that, I'd been like, well Dre would never have a, but now Dr. Dre has a building at USC," Williams said. "So it's like, all right man, that'll do it. I don't think I'm going to get a building. I'll take a bench."

The origin story for the comedy itself was warm.

"If I'm ever on a podcast and I'm like one of these guys that says like, hey man, comedy comes from pain, comes from trauma, I had a rough childhood, slap me," Williams said. "I did not come from trauma and pain. Grew up in Orange County, California. Mom and dad stayed together the whole time."

Williams credited comedy as a defense mechanism.

"Comedy was how I made friends," Williams said. "Comedy is how it was the defense mechanism. Someone comes at me, has something to say, then I fire back with a joke and they're like, all right, all right, we cool."

His advice for anyone who wants to be a comedian was simple and direct.

"To say I want to be a comedian is like saying I want to be an Avenger," Williams said. "It's like, I don't really know how. I just looks awesome, I'd like to do it. But anything that you want to do, the best advice is to just start doing it."

He laid out the path.

"If you want to be a director, start directing whatever you can," Williams said. "You want to write stuff, write stuff. Like you want to be a comedian, start doing standup wherever they have a microphone. I can't tell you how many coffee shops I drove like two hours because they had an open mic night for me to talk for five minutes in front of people that are just trying to enjoy a latte. That's how you come up."

The math, in his framing, is unsentimental.

"There's no book you can read, no class you can take, no piece of advice that you can hear that will instantly make you good," Williams said. "You just have to be good by doing it. Just doing it, getting better. Put in 10,000 hours."

He has put in twenty-two of those years.

"I blinked and I'm 42," Williams said. "I've been doing comedy for 22 years. I'm married with a six-year-old. What happened, man?"

The new club-veteran framing surprises him.

"Whenever like now I'm having some success and people now I walk into the club and people look at me like, oh, that's the Elder Statesman," Williams said. "I'm still the kid from Orange County."

The hosts compared notes on culture. White culture has its own version, Williams said, of Black culture's "Unk."

"We have sirs," Williams said.

His Club Shay Shay appearance was a crash course.

"I didn't know what Unk was until I went on the Club Shay podcast," Williams said. "Oh my god, I learned so much stuff."

The follow-up gig in Austin had a bit. The black audience members were dapping up the white guy with the dwarfism while his actual Black opener got nothing.

"My opening act, great comic, his name is JB Ball, he's a six foot three black guy," Williams said. "All the black guys in Austin are coming to me like, Yo, Club Shay, like respect. And my actual black opener is like, no love, nothing, nothing. Y'all come up and dab up the white guy."

His sports allegiances are mixed.

"I'm a lifelong die-hard Broncos fan," Williams said. "My dad went to Stanford and then he wanted us to support a Stanford-led team, and that was either Elway with the Broncos or Plunkett with the Raiders. The joke I make is, I don't have face tattoos or prior, so the Broncos."

His Lakers piece was a real frustration with Stephen A. Smith.

"He said that the Lakers weren't on TV before LeBron James," Williams said. "The reason why there's any kind of regional sports networks is because of the Lakers. Jerry Buss invented Prime Ticket."

The pit bull conversation is where Williams went the longest. His two pits, Diego and Daisy, came up first.

"I got Diego and Daisy, and my wife's Chinese, so those are the only double D's I have in my house," Williams said.

The reputation pivot was a real one for him.

"I was one of those guys too that I thought pit bulls were these like aggressive DMX violent," Williams said. "Then you get one, you be around one that hasn't been corrupted by an aggressive owner, and then they're like, oh, you guys are the sweetest. You guys are the absolute best."

The street effect, in his framing, is a perk.

"Walking down the street as a four-foot-four guy with a pit bull," Williams said. "The ego boost when I see guys crossing the street."

Williams explained why he relates to pit bulls.

"They have giant heads. I have a giant," Williams said. "Like that's a giant head. Mike Myers in So I Married an Axe Murderer. Head paper."

The wrestling thread closed it. Williams is friends with Lance Archer, the Murder Hawk Monster.

"One of the sweetest men you'll ever meet," Williams said. "He hates it when I say this on a podcast. He's like, I'm the Murder Monster. It's like, dude, you're a teddy bear."

The Big Show talk-is-Jericho podcast episode was the comparison piece.

"It was just him and I comparing our lives," Williams said. "He's a giant. I am the opposite of that. Very similar lives in terms of like, oh, clothes are hard to get. Travel kind of sucks. Showers in hotel rooms are weird, but for completely opposite reasons. Him, he can't fit. Me, if the shower head is crooked, I look up like, well, all right. I got to call somebody."

His one specific Big Show memory came back mid-conversation.

"It was after WrestleMania 21," Williams said. "His fist literally went from my chin to my forehead. He does a punch in the face, you're like, yeah, I'm down, I'm out for the fight anymore. It's over."

Williams shared one closing wish about being immortalized.

"My goal is to have a rapper, any rapper, drop my name in a track," Williams said. "It could be a diss. It could be anything. When I heard Pitbull drop Katt Williams' name in a track, and I know that's about as white of a rapper as you could get, but when I heard that, I'm like, oh, I want that. Like I want a rapper to drop my name. Just say short, like Brad Williams, small, like something like that."

O'Shea promised to work on it.