3 QUESTIONS with Matt "Palasma" Palaski

In this edition of 3 QUESTIONS, I’m introducing you to one of my closest friends who has started to gain a small following on social media for his unique, offbeat wrestling parody clips.

Matt “Palasma” Palaski grew up a fan of professional wrestling, but over the past year, for fun, he began creating content for TikTok and YouTube, using slick editing with original ideas, culminating in hilarious short videos.

Recently, his work was spotlighted in an episode of Botchamania, made famous by Maffew Gregg, one of the all-time greats in pro wrestling spoof media. Excited by seeing my friend succeed, I reached out to Matt to ask him some questions regarding his creative vision and the reasoning behind creating content.

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1) What has led you into creating unique video content for TikTok?

MATT: YOU, you asshole! You sent me the Midnight Express's second theme song and I honestly wasn't familiar with that one. And on the first listen, I could very easily envision Cornette saying "Vince Russo" in rhythm over the first 2 bars of the chorus. And as an avid listener of his podcasts, I knew finding insults would be really easy. I made that video and shared it with a few folks and we got a nice laugh.

Here is the video Matt is discussing:

(NOTE: For some dumb reason, the Cornette video's audio doesn't work right on some devices - the Creator)

But the big push was right before TikTok got banned in January. OCT put out a duet challenge to their song "TikTok baby" and I piped in the “Steiner math” promo. That got a small pop and I enjoyed making those 2 videos so I figured "let’s see how far I can push this."

2) The first video that led you to get some serious views was the Stone Cold Steve Austin Powers video. How long did it take to make and what was your thought when a few wrestling sites used it for 3:16 day in March?

MATT: The video itself, maybe 4 hours, including the time it took to run the face-swap AI, make the title card in GIMP, etc. I actually wasted a lot of time, because initially I wanted to face swap the entire opening scene of the movie, but the AI struggled on wide shots, or when the face you want to swap isn't the only face in focus. 

Like the scene at the end with JR and King. I actually took the original video, sliced it in half in Kdenlive (using rotoscope) into two different videos. Each video had one of the 2 women in it. Fed the 2 videos separately into the AI to swap either JR or King, then re-spliced the videos back together into KDENLIVE. The red box is the rotoscope. The second pic is me disabling the "King layer", and it looks like this on the timeline. I had to take those steps because 2 in focus faces kept tripping up the AI and making it look like crap.

The real pain in the ass was installing, tweaking and fine tuning the AI server on my local machine. I think I must have spent probably like 12 hours over the course of a week to get it in the shape it's in now. However, I view that as an investment. I learned new things doing that, and I don't have to rely on a website to do any of the AI stuff anymore.

I kinda limit myself to not spend more than an afternoon on these videos. Modern platforms all rely on algorithms and could bury your videos at the drop of a hat. So the last thing I want to do is see 12+ hours of work go down the drain because "the algorithm" is in a bad mood. I spent a ton of time on the "bash at the baywatch" and the "thomas the genetic freak" videos and both those videos did "meh"

And man I was hyped to see it getting passed around. On TikTok it's still my best video. I don't care too much about getting cited/credited, most of this stuff can easily get flagged or buried for copyright anyway so any video that breaks through is a win in my book. That and I'm learning stuff in the process.

3) Your video was recently featured on Maffew's Botchamania. The feeling I can imagine was like when Dr. Demento played Weird Al's first parody. Seriously, what does that feel like for a creator when your work hits that type of platform?

MATT: Oh hell yeah. A million percent on that parallel. I'm a casual wrestling fan. But I've always followed the memes. I remember watching the first few botchamanias and casually following them for a while. But once the YouTube channel went up in 2021, during the height of the pandemic, it became something me and the Mrs. look forward to and watch whenever a new one drops.

The platforms I've put my videos on can be very "brutal" with their algorithms. I have several videos which have gotten buried that I don't think should have. So to have a video make it to a "show" I'm a massive fan of gives me a needed push to keep doing it. Honestly it's the same as the feeling I got when a YTMND page I created made it to the "top of the week" list. No I will not tell you the page and/or user.

Skip to 14:34 for the video, if it hasn't been timestamped already.

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Please follow Matt on TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@teh_palasma. His stuff is very innovative and I’m sure you will find something he made to “pop” people. Truly, a star is on the rise.

Jon Harder

Jon@HardwayHQ.com