Chef Donny is trading the kitchen for the pasture. His new show, Making The Cut, premieres tonight, and the debut episode sends him and Michael Katic out to Joe Thomas's cattle operation in Wisconsin for a 2-day, boots-in-the-mud shoot. If you don't know the name, Thomas spent 11 seasons at left tackle for the Browns, made the Pro Bowl his first 10 years in the league, and got a first-ballot bust in Canton back in 2023. Since retiring he's built out Hall of Fame Farms, a roughly 4,000-acre Wagyu operation in Wisconsin's Driftless Region that ships premium beef under the Hall of Fame Beef label. That's the barn Chef Donny is walking into.
Chef Donny previewed the farm visit with footage of cattle, tractors, and the Hall of Fame Beef gear.
The clip is straightforward promo stuff — cows running down a gravel road, a red tractor, Donny in the branded cap talking up the trip. Nothing scandalous there. The show is dropping tonight at 6pm CST, and Donny's been doing laps on social media tagging basically every Barstool handle he can think of to make sure people tune in.
But this is Barstool, so the actual news cycle around the premiere isn't about Wagyu marbling — it's about Donny showing up on the Yak to hype it himself. He apparently requested the guest spot personally, which is a very Chef Donny move.
Chef Donny told the Yak hosts he asked to come on the show himself to promote the premiere.
That's where the fun started. Instead of just letting him plug the show, the Yak crew ran the trailer back and zeroed in on what they're calling a very convenient edit — the kind of cut that suspiciously skips right past whatever actually happened on camera. It's a bit, not breaking news, but it's the kind of ribbing Donny's earned as a recurring Barstool character.
The Yak hosts reacted to the trailer, ribbing Donny over a suspiciously timed cut.
None of it stops the premiere from happening on schedule tonight. Whether the show holds up as a legit farm-to-table series or turns into another vehicle for Donny to get roasted by his own coworkers is the real question — and honestly, with this crew, it's probably both. Either way, a Hall of Famer's Wagyu ranch is a genuinely interesting setting for episode 1, edited trailer or not.