During an appearance on the Alex Feuz Show, sports broadcaster Bob Costas opened up about his famous 2001 interview with WWE Chairman Vince McMahon.

Here's what Costas had to say about the interview:

On his reaction when McMahon got combative with him:

“Well, I knew it was good television. It was live. It’s HBO, so there are no commercials. It went on for nearly a half an hour, and much of that was unremitting tension. So I know it’s good TV, but I’m trying to stay with a line of questioning that has journalistic merit. I wasn’t trying to stir it up beyond what it already was. I didn’t expect him to react that way. But when he did, the idea is to keep your composure, keep your wits about you. And I didn’t think, as some people did, that I was in any kind of real physical peril. But I knew he was trying to intimidate me, both with body language and with the words that were coming back at me. And then when he came forward in his seat and started jabbing a finger toward me, I actually came forward closer to him and smiled at him a little bit, and I think that at him off all the more.”

On people who thought McMahon “won” that exchange:

“And I guess there are some people who are hardcore wrestling fans or whatever, who think that the winner of an exchange , if there has to be a winner, there doesn’t always have to be. But if it becomes confrontational like that, people are gonna see it in those terms. The winner is whoever yelled the loudest, or whoever seemed as if they could win a back alley fight. Oh sure, Vince McMahon could have crushed me like a grape if he wanted to. But by that line of reasoning, as he himself has said subsequently, ‘It would have been interesting if Bob was closer to my size.’ Well let’s take that logic or illogic and push it forward. I don’t know what Chuck Todd’s weight is, but let’s say Chuck Todd weighs 175 pounds as the host of Meet the Press. And some Senator from Illinois also weighs 175 pounds and he doesn’t like the line of questioning. As long as they’re in the same weight division, why don’t they just duke it out?

“Do you see how preposterous this position is? This is a conversation and if the merits of the questions and answers are to be determined by who can win an arm wrestling match or some sort of back alley fight, then eventually Vince McMahon or anybody else would run up to somebody bigger and stronger than they would. And would that decide the merits of the points they’re trying to make? I’m very content with what happened on that night in 2001. I hope, so he can sleep well, I hope that Vince is too.”