Episode 591: Agent Report Protocol

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Like the midnight and the rock and roll.

He's in a fight for wrestling solar using a racket and some mind control.

He's Jim Cornette.

The keys to the future, held by the past.

And with tag team partner Bariah at last, he sends this message out by podcast.

He's Jim Cornet.

Well, he's never fake a phone phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prepare

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornet.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome to the Jim Cornette Experience today.

Goldberg wasn't any happier with his retirement than the viewers were.

Some ex-TNA personnel won't be happy with me again.

And we all wish we were as happy as Uncle Dave when he watches the children play.

And joining me to talk about all this and more.

Hawaiian Brian, the podcasting line, the king of the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, Mr.

Co-HostU.

He's the happiest baseball fan since Happy Chandler, the great Brian Lask, everybody.

I came in late.

I didn't realize, I was listening to you, and I was so enraptured that I forgot.

Aloha, everyone.

Aloha, Jesus.

A pleasure to be here once again.

Happy Chandler, that's a name you pulled out of nowhere when you got me with the random baseball reference.

I didn't expect that.

Well, exactly, because you know what?

That is, as the kids say, it's a callback.

Because the other day you asked me,

I can't even remember why we were talking about these things but you said who's the most famous louisvillian you ever met and

i blurted out colonel sanders because but then i read well he's not from louisville he's a kentuckian and i never met ali so we settled on randy atcher

and then as i was talking about or in my mind talking to myself earlier today you know i have voices in my head

they counsel me and uh

happy happy happy chandler i should have said but he was a kentuckian even though he he wasn't a Louisvillian.

But you would have known who he was.

Do you know who else?

Tell the people who Happy Chandler was, Brian Last.

Why don't you do it?

Oh, now, come on now.

Hold on.

I'm looking for something that just hit me while you were saying that.

Yeah, you're looking up who Happy Chandler was besides the commissioner of baseball and why I would have met him.

No, what you're doing.

You know what hit me when you said Randy Acher?

You discovered randy acter died like almost at the exact same time that cowboy bob ellis did

wait a minute when did bob ellis find out randy atcher was dead cowboy bob well randy atcher

see you just you i know what where you were going but you mangled it so bad i'm gonna make fun of you we talked about that in september of 2018

And Bob Ellis died December 2018.

So within months of that.

So have you googled Happy Chandler yet?

No, hold on.

Let me do that for you.

Oh, come on now.

You don't, besides being the commissioner of baseball, you don't know who Happy Chandler was in relation to the state of Kentucky.

I know him from baseball.

I don't know him from Kentucky as much.

He was a senator from the state of Kentucky.

And boy, what a happy man.

What a happy-looking man this is in this photo.

That's why they called him happy.

But he wasn't just a senator.

He was a multi-term senator and a multi-term governor of the state of Kentucky, 20 years apart.

As a matter of fact, he was in

all kinds of politics for like 60 years, lived to be 90-something years old or whatever.

But my father knew him, and I was introduced to him one time when he was an old gray-haired man with a big smile.

And it oh, the only reason it registered on me

was because at that time, when I was five years old,

I'd never been introduced to an adult named Happy.

And that stuck with my little childlike brain until years later, I read something offhand that Happy Chandler was the commissioner of baseball.

I had no idea that that would have happened.

He was the,

I knew he was the governor and shit.

And

happy.

I have a couple of letters from him to my father laying around here in the Castle Cornet archive.

Wow, really?

That's amazing.

Is his autograph worth anything?

I have no idea.

Well, you're Mr.

Baseball.

If it was, you know, Bart Giamatti, it may be worth something.

He was only commissioner for a short period of time.

If it was Bart Giamatti, Happy Chandler wouldn't have known how to spell that.

That's why his name was Happy.

Anyway, I ain't happy about the day.

Brian, remember I was saying, is it ever going to stop raining?

And then it stopped raining and it wouldn't rain.

And it was 100 fucking degrees and it is humid.

And then I said,

we need some rain,

you know, because of the crops.

The crops need the rain, right?

It's drying out around here.

Tuesday night, we got an inch of rain.

Wednesday afternoon, we got an inch of rain.

And yesterday,

during the course of the day, we got two inches of rain right here on this very spot.

and there's flash flood warnings.

A camper

was recreational vehicles washed away in,

I believe, it was New Peak in Indiana,

just washed down the daggum, what used to be the road, and then just it stuck under the bridge and kind of broke up.

So now we're hoping it stops raining.

It is a real happy, I gotta dodge.

Yeah, Well, I got to dodge my storms now to go on my trip.

The big news, I'm going on a trip.

The big drone.

I'm going out of town.

And

now they're saying, well, scattered thunderstorms, but we can't predict these things.

The one yesterday gave us an inch of rain popped up like three miles east of here, what, or west, rather.

So I'm going to leave early and try to see if I have to stop and pull over and dodge these goddamn monsoons coming through the area.

But we'll have the full report next week on the experience.

And next week's drive-through is already recorded.

And we have just a fun show for everybody.

And that way

we will fill the programming time while I'm gone on the secret reconnaissance mission.

And we'll report back on the experience next week.

You feel like Black Beauty is ready?

Is Black Beauty up for the task?

Oh, I took Black Beauty back over to the car place at Old Tyler.

My boy Tyler over there, he put an additive in the front and an additive in the rear

in

the oil thing and in the gas thing.

He said, now you get out on the highway and you'll run this.

It'll just be slicker than whale shit and an ice flow in all of your tubes and hoses and things.

All right.

So now we know who to blame if there's a big explosion on I-95.

Well, I'm not going to be on I-95,

but I'll report back in if there's any reason that I should be chasing after Tyler with a baseball bat.

Word on the street is you're going to Orlando.

What is in Orlando now?

And what am I going to start at NXT and train?

You're going to NXT.

You're going to be the new commissioner of NXT.

Yeah.

Get all these young people.

in line in order.

What do you say?

Tow the line.

Tow the line.

Love isn't always on time.

No, I'm not going.

I'm going to Orlando later on in this program where I'm going to read some

reasons why I'm never going back to Orlando again.

And, you know, and I'll say this now, just a little tease.

Go ahead, go ahead.

Well, I mean, now that we're about to do this, why don't you, I mean, this is going to air after the fact.

Why don't you just say hello to all the people you're going to be meeting at SummerSlam?

No, wait a minute.

Jim is SummerSlam.

Jim's driving up here to New Jersey to get ready for SummerSlam, and he will be

by the time you hear this, I guess it may be a fan fest or two.

I mean, you'll be seeing.

Wait a minute.

SummerSlam is not next week, in all seriousness.

SummerSlam is not till August.

We're still in July.

It's like two weeks away.

Less than two weeks away, right?

Two weeks away.

What the fuck?

Oh, God damn it.

Yeah, it's two weeks away.

Well, I'll be back.

It's not this weekend.

It's next weekend.

All right, good.

I'll be back and have time to rest before going through that.

But I was going to mention

that yesterday, Hotchkiss Featherbottom was over here while the flash flood warnings were going on.

And we had a nice day looking through

negatives and going through memorabilia.

And I was just wondering, Brian,

would it be just swell if maybe by the end of the year, somebody was to publish something

with

great writing and fond remembrances of major wrestling stars of the past, along with reproducing photographs and memorabilia that had never been seen in public or maybe hasn't been seen for 50 years or more, something like that.

For the wrestling fan that likes to sit down in front of a roaring Christmas fire and just lose himself in the history of our fabled sport.

Wonder if somebody should do something like that.

Seems like a winner to me.

Well, I'll get Hotchkiss on it.

If only there was someone up to the task ready to tow the line ready to get in line get in order what is it were you towing the line now here

today is this a new expression of yours

you're not up to scratch

there you go that's my new one see

and most of the people out there have no idea what are they talking about it's old pugilistic

terminology.

The towing the line means you had to step up and tow the line that had been drawn to begin combat, or the scratch was the scratch of the line in the sand that you were supposed to meet to begin your pummeling of each other.

That's right.

Walk the plank is still walk the plank.

There really is no substitute for the actual literal meaning of that.

Walk the plank.

Yeah, that's kind of self-explanatory.

Speaking of walking the plank and committing public

fucking foolishness,

the cold play reveal.

This is the big news now.

This is the who is this fucking guy that I should care or be aware of?

He's some big businessman and his

who mistress.

Well, don't say that.

We don't know.

We don't know if there's any actual.

Well, no, I know these heathens and these goddamn blasphemers.

She's married to worse than a goddamn blasphemer.

They were both.

Well, and that's, and they're fornicators.

See?

You got your blasphemers and your fornicators at these cold play concerts.

This heavy metal rock and roll.

It's a devil music.

It's fucking Satanistic.

Do you ever play the Cold Play records backwards, Brian?

I don't play anything.

Do you hear what they've got to say?

No, I don't play Cold Play, really.

No.

Well, apparently

some people are playing around at Cold Play.

Yeah.

So the story is, again, that they're having a cold play concert i they they do these things around the country apparently

and

they've got a kiss cam like the goddamn the football game or the or the thing wherever they have the kiss cam i don't know

i i i don't you know follow these things But they've got it at a cold play concert.

And on the screen, they put up

a shot of this guy and this girl with their arms around each other in loving embrace.

And as soon as they see that they're on the

big screen, he goes, oh shit, and he ducks out of the camera view and she covers her face and turns away like they're on America's Most Wanted and everybody pops.

And

now we come to find out again.

Apparently, you

know the business world.

This guy is some big head honcho of some company.

And this is his, his mistress of human relations

in his company, and they're didddling each other without express written permission from Major League Baseball or their spouses.

Well, the New York Post is having a field day with this.

It's been like seven articles because they just put up another one in the last day.

The new article is: just promoted astronomer.

That's the name of the company this man was the CEO of, and this woman was the head of human resources for.

Just promoted astronomer VP of HR.

That's the underlink to the head of HR, identified by internet sleuths as the embarrassed woman on Cold Play Kiss Cam.

Because next to them, when he ducked down really awkwardly, you've never seen anyone do that before.

And then she turns around and covers her face as a woman next to them with her hand on her head.

That's the VP of HR.

So the whole department is involved in this scandal.

HR, by the way, for those of you who have never worked in a corporate environment, HR is the department that would deal with with inter-office relationships.

So, I mean, this thing is like.

Well, apparently they do a real good job.

If you need an inter-office relationship, head right on down to fucking human relations there.

This is as bad as it gets for an HR professional.

Her career is going to be,

who would hire her now?

I mean, unless you're just looking for

a good time at the Cold Play concert.

Again, not, and we'll get back to this main subject here in a second, but on a separate tangent, because you know how I am with the the corporate environment, I don't really understand.

Do people just say, Oh, I'd love to have a career in human resource management stuff?

Yes, I've known several women in my life who that was like their exact goal in life.

Yes,

what, how would you, how do you study for that?

And what do you do?

And what qualities might you have to have to sit there and go, oh, you're mad at him and he's mad at you?

And

can we all just get along?

I don't, what the fuck do they do?

I've have, I've, I've seen the human department in the WWE.

I don't know what the fuck they really did.

Well, a lot of this stuff is entry-level stuff.

When they get you in the door, they help you with your paperwork.

They sometimes do the introductory interview with potential hires.

I mean, they do things.

From my experience, though, HR people,

there's the way they deal with the everyday shit, and then there's them just doing what the executives and the company want them to do.

Very similar to like the commissioner of baseball.

He's the commissioner, but he works for the owners.

So at the end of the day, they're his boss.

It's the same thing here.

So the head of HR.

You're saying Happy was just a stooge.

Happy Chandler was just a stooge, just a stooge for the man.

By and large, that's what most commissioners have been.

Yes.

Well,

I believe he put his foot down a time or two.

I bet you he was that kind of guy.

But nevertheless, back to the.

Yeah, what do you think about the fact that the lead singer said, well, they're either having an affair or he said it on his microphone.

Did he do anything wrong as a man?

Well, no, because

let's examine this.

For one thing, they get a shot of these people at their concert, and the one guy ducks like he's seen somebody firing a fucking gun at him.

And the woman goes, oh my God, and covers her face like she's just seen donkey sex with a Dalmatian on stage.

And it was fucking funny.

But the more important question to ask is: if these two geniuses,

heads of a major corporation,

do not want to be seen together in public, why are they in a goddamn building with 20,000 people?

Standing there with her, him groping her upper frontal protuberances and her possibly standing there with the old reach around grope action.

What the fuck?

They could be in a work environment, they could be sitting next to each other in this box in this public setting, but they have to be hanging on each other in front of 20,000 people.

And I assume

the town they may live in.

Where are these people from and where did this happen?

This happened in Boston, I believe.

Is that where?

Astronomer Jones there operates?

I am not sure where.

I don't know too much about the company Astronomer.

I know that maybe they need better executives and maybe the board of directors is about to do something about that.

It'll be my first guess.

So I'm thinking if they're out in public hanging on each other like the betrothed husband and spouse or whatever the fuck

in front of all those people at a public event with cameras present.

And I think that that's just a good rib on them for just get a goddamn room at the Red Roof Inn dip shit.

You know, you don't expect that.

You know, you go there to have fun with your mistress at a Cold Play concert.

Obviously, you're playing right into her hands if you're taking her to a Cold Play concert.

And

it happens.

It's on the Kiss Cam.

Now, apparently, a second video has emerged of someone else filming the Kiss Cam.

Like no one filmed them in the arena.

Everyone just has different angles of them on the Kiss Cam, obviously.

You think that would go away.

The first articles are like Cold Play lead singer Chris Martin has fun with couple at concert.

And then all of a sudden it was like, here's who he is.

Here's who she is.

The wife believed it on social media.

Here's where they used to work.

Here's photos of that.

It just

became a bombardment.

This obviously must be heating up their website right now.

The fact that they've gotten

so deep into this.

You know what?

If Saturday Night Live had any balls, they would do that.

Okay.

They go, oh, the kiss cam.

Oh, go.

They go back to the concert.

They go back to the kiss cam.

Now there's

woman giving a guy blowjob in the fucking seat.

Oh, golly.

And they jump.

And then they go back to the stage.

And then they come back to the kiss cam.

And now there's a fucking guy fucking a sheep.

Oh, golly.

And just, you know, they're there.

See, I've done 15 minutes for NBC.

I think so.

Yeah.

It sounds like you just wrote Kentucky Fried Kiss Cam.

I'm not sure exactly what you did there.

What do you do?

If you're this guy, how do you recover your career?

Fuck the career.

Everybody's having a a career career what about their goddamn husband and or wife i'd be that would cause more

strife and concern yeah

oh it's on tv now

i'm seeing it in on one of the minors in the background here's the new angle of it of the woman turning around bullshit yeah it's on tv right now going viral in the worst way possible

it'll be on after the commercial break that was just a teaser to the commercial break and they had that on for a minute

all right it's a big news day, ladies and gentlemen.

Well,

there you go.

But anyway, no, you should go to concerts with your approved significant other or anyone that your significant other is approved.

Or elsewise, if you are in an unapproved significant other situation, then I only have sympathy if somebody releases the goddamn security camera footage from the Red Roof Inn.

Because even if they want to deny the affair,

even if they're like best possible excuses, no, we were just cuddling a little bit during this song.

They weren't even playing a song.

Yes, it was in between songs, wasn't it?

I was trying to get a tick out of her pants.

I just, you know, I love, I'm drunk, and I just love her.

And her working here has been so wonderful.

Her HR work is the best HR work I've ever HR'd.

So I just wanted to give her a big hug.

And I was so embarrassed by this hug that I ducked down like a villain.

I took like imaginary stares at her.

it there.

No, no, no, wait, wait, wait.

Here's what it was.

Yeah, I got it.

No, see, Brian, you are an amateur.

You're an amateur.

You got to have the wisdom of experience and age to come up with this.

Here's the story.

Honey, I was standing behind her just because I'm taller and I put her in front so she could get a better view.

And suddenly.

You know, it was hot in that stadium and they gave a shrimp cocktail and that cocktail sauce, boy, it was a little spicy.

And I think the shrimp were warm.

And all of a sudden, I started getting a little woozy and I threw my arms around the person in front of me just so I wouldn't, you know, pass out.

And at that point,

right as we got on camera, I realized I was going to vomit and I bent over.

Wow.

I thought she was so sorry.

And she was so.

That's what you should say.

She was so mortified by the stench of it that she had to cover her face and turn away.

The media doesn't tell you these things, honey.

No,

they don't tell you about the throwing up.

Looks like he's giving her the Heimlick.

See, I think that may be a better,

more plausible excuse.

I don't think he ought to use the word lick in any context when talking to his wife about this.

The other thing is, they weren't the first couple, I don't think, on the kiss cam.

From what I read in the first article about this.

If you see they're doing a kiss cam, don't you say, all right, well, you know, let's just separate for a minute.

This is a chance here at the top in these very nice seats.

If you're not giving any more thought to what you're doing than to go out in public to begin with, then also you're probably thinking, well, there's 20,000 people here and we're just

here minding our own business.

What are the chances?

You think they are lined up?

You think the HR department had a lot of applicants like when they came back to work today?

I'd like to work there.

It looks like a lot of fun.

It seems like there's a lot of

positions to be filled in in the human resources department there.

So I'm sure they're probably right now bending over backwards trying to take all the applicants and entrance.

All right.

Well, this has been music news.

For music news, I'm Kurt Loader.

Thank you, Kurt, very much.

He always seemed like a...

creepy older guy, even when he was a younger guy.

Yeah, he was out of place.

And when I was a kid, he looked like he was so old.

And now looking back, it's like he wasn't really that old.

He was just

something about him seemed old.

He looked off-putting.

Here with Jesse Campbell.

Speaking of.

Here with Jesse Camp as Kurt Loader.

You know, it's just at one point it got really out of control.

But yes, I'm sorry to interrupt.

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yeah well i just speaking of people that are have been put off or are off put or maybe pissed off might be better

Well, you know, we said on whatever show we just recently did talking about the Saturday night's main event events events

with specifically Goldberg, and they went off the air on his speech, and it was not a shining moment of broadcast for the WWE's history as far as putting a show together with all of the caca that went on.

And Goldberg is coming.

And I just saw something before we get into this.

I saw something where he was quoted as saying, well, I got about two more weeks and then I can say what I want.

Like he already hadn't been saying what he wanted.

Yeah, I saw that.

Yeah, what is that?

I don't, maybe he signed a two-week non-disclosure if they fuck up my retirement.

I have no idea, but he's already said,

well, I would have wanted it on pay-per-view to begin with, which again, to be honest, is kind of a thing you would have expected.

you know,

for a guy with that name, if they were going to do this at all, right?

And he's complaining because Cena had a has a year, you know, retirement tour going on.

They're making a big deal out of it.

There, that's a little

much, as Mama Cornette used to say, because Goldberg's not in the shape Cena's in, as far as being able to still work a schedule and blah, blah, blah, and all those things.

Yeah, Goldberg actually makes contact with the people he works with, so he gets hurt too.

Well, yeah, yes.

And by the way, get well, poor Charles Robinson, 60 years old, who got a cracked rib from that spear.

God damn it, we're too old for that.

But Goldberg has valid complaints

that he has been registering and that they did rush it.

He said, you know, he would have loved to have announced it three months ago and done some kind of build, not to dominate television every week.

But Jesus Christ, with all those hours of TV and as we've talked about, many of them with

plenty of travelogues and spots and backstage vignettes,

but

they could have spared a little time for something like that, but they kind of rushed it and they put it on Saturday night's main event and then somehow

managed to mismanage.

Everybody has pointed out that, and we'll get into what Dave thinks about Seth Rollins in a a second, but as we're talking about one topic, one conspiracy theory here, Goldberg, Goldberg.

If the thing went wrong in the Seth Rollins

match, then

they should have had more time.

And theoretically,

they still had enough time to do,

you know, we were thinking before we said this, Brian, needs to be hard-hitting,

you know, exciting, big moves, quick in and out, and don't let, you know, don't let it drag type of thing.

And they didn't, they have 15 minutes.

And so, was the time of the match if they planned his speech in the ring and all those people were in the ring and he was saying shit and it was recorded

for

YouTube or whatever the fuck, It's not like they all went into business for themselves.

And why would you not

have some type of acknowledgement like that on Goldberg's

retirement?

So, the point being,

how did they botch this unless the match went twice as long as it was supposed to

and they didn't have time for the interview?

But Goldberg is acting like it was a complete surprise to him that that happened.

And I got to be honest with you, from having been in multiple companies, including that one in the truck.

If they had even a three-minute interview speech planned at the end and had to do a break before that, they would have been screaming in the referee's ear, tell them we're going off the fucking air if they don't go home in one minute.

I so I,

but you didn't see any semblance of panic in the finish of that match.

Like, oh, shit.

Like, they just started rushing shit, right?

So,

so, regardless of what's going on with Seth Rollins and regardless of what the timing was or wasn't, or whether they went short or long,

I don't understand

how this happened.

Either they weren't supposed to have a goddamn

ceremony in the ring at all and just decided to do it, or, but even then,

they were almost off the because they still had another break to go in the program,

so they were button up on being off the air with just the match

again.

They would have been signaling in the truck if there were some issues, but was it what I said the other day?

And I hate to be rambling here, but this none of it makes any sense.

Other than just a sloppy television production,

was Gunther having to slow down and wait for Goldberg not to to vomit, possibly, if he was blown up before that he could pick Gunther's big ass up and fucking jackhammer him?

Who knows what the fuck?

But

anyway, I don't blame Goldberg for being pissed.

Do you?

Not one bit.

And, you know, not that this is the same thing, but it's not even the same person running the show, but there's a history of WCW wrestlers kind of being

diminished.

Remember the Sting Triple H match at WrestleMania, which was kind of bizarre.

It was really entertaining, but it was a weird way to finish things off.

And then Sting was like, you know, that's not the way I want to go out.

Let me ask you this.

And no, I don't think Goldberg is wrong to be upset.

I think WWE

should have built this thing better.

That was the thing that really got Goldberg was a draw on pay-per-view, even.

Again, it's a different audience.

It's a different time.

Goldberg was a draw.

Build this thing up.

Make people care about the last match.

It just popped up.

They did the angle way back where Gunther hit Goldberg's son or whatever.

But then it was like six months between that and Goldberg appearing again.

And then it was a couple of weeks until the match on a Saturday night's main event in between pay-per-views.

And then

they screw him where they go from the finish right to a commercial as quick as they've ever done ever in the history of WWE.

And then they cut off his speech, which obviously meant a lot to him.

Taking all the negatives of Tony Khan out of the equation and AEW and any issues, you know, just the way they do things.

Should Tony Khan, if Goldberg's upset and Goldberg's talking like he wants a final match that does it right still,

is it worth it even for the positive publicity of doing something right for a wrestler after WWE did it wrong?

Is it worth trying to do something?

I think then you're opening up a can of peace where then, because if

Goldberg is pissed off about, you know, the unprofessionalism that he feels like he's dealt with up there,

imagine what he'd feel like when he was having to try to deal with these

people.

Tony would make him feel like a king.

There'd be chaos all around and it's AEW and the system of AEW and that is what it is.

But Goldberg and his family will have never been treated better in his entire time in professional dressing.

I know it's funny, but I'm being very serious.

No, maybe in his entire life, I was envisioning they were going to carry him on a giant pillow like a fucking sultan into the goddamn.

Well,

first of all,

we again.

I'm not trying to say after we acknowledged some of his shortcomings that he did seem

the aura was not what it once was because how could it be?

He's almost 60 and he was kind of limping around.

So he couldn't do like a Cena thing.

And we acknowledged that, you know,

the reactions were not like stone calls, stone call, because it's been a while.

Maybe network

was a better presentation for the age group and the older people that would be Goldberg's base audience.

So that, you know, it wasn't like he was going to have a big pay-per-view built around him.

But as a network television program,

if they're going to do it, that they didn't,

and I forget who was Solo and fucking Uso or whatever, did that need to be there rather than on Raw?

Right.

Or whatever.

If they weren't going to do it to where they

formatted it to where not only there would be a match, but there would be some kind of

celebration, acknowledgement,

whatever the fuck you want to call the deal.

And with honoring with the clips throughout and et cetera, and building up to be a bigger thing because that still could have been a major NBC television program in his hometown.

Where was the mayor?

Was the mayor of, goddamn it,

get the mayor of Atlanta to come out and say it's Goldberg Day or what it just some kind of shit as a presentation.

It was sloppily done.

So I don't blame him

for not feeling like, well, that was my fucking retirement.

So if

he wanted to do one on any kind of main platform, pay-per-view, national television, whatever.

He would have to talk to Tony, who I'm, as you said, and I am sure,

wink, wink, nod, nod without revealing any confidentiality.

He'd love to speak to Goldberg.

But does Goldberg want to fucking then,

again, just

take a chance?

I'll go through all this bullshit again.

Who's he going to fucking jackhammer down there?

And again, they're different people and different people react to situations in different ways.

But look at the way Sting was treated.

on his way out.

Look at Sting's retirement match, which was such a big deal for them, even though, again, a lot lot of shortcomings in terms of promotion and different things.

But obviously,

other than the pay-per-view cutting off in the middle of the speech, I guess it's just a thing that happens when you end the show with that.

They did better by Sting than WWE did by Goldberg.

And

again, I'm not saying you have Goldberg out there every week, and I'm not saying anything, but they rushed, like you said, an NBC Goldberg retirement should be a big deal.

You know, Saturday night's main event, when it originally aired, it didn't start with the main event and it didn't end with the main event.

The main event was usually timed to be around midnight.

And then there was still more show after that.

They didn't do that here.

They started with the jelly roll thing, which in terms of

mainstream acceptance, that's a big deal.

So you can't really blame them for starting off the NBC show with people that maybe people who aren't wrestling fans would.

Whoever actually flips through television channels nowadays would see them and go, hey, what's going on here?

But like you said, there were other things on that show that didn't need to be on at least before that.

They should have gone to the Goldberg match second.

And I don't understand why they didn't.

You can't tell me that the solo match would have done as well in the ratings as a Goldberg speech with random people in the background, you're trying to figure out who's who.

So they did wrong by him.

I actually think Goldberg's right to be mad about him.

And well, and there's going to be some TV nerds, and then we'll talk about who else has chimed in with his fucking

two cents.

And I think he needs some fucking change back.

But some of the TV nerds out there are going to say, well, the original Saturday Night's Main event, it was 11:30 to 1.

So the big match was about midnight.

And then it slows down.

You're fighting sleep.

There's attrition in the hut levels.

This was different.

It was 8 to 10.

And they wanted to peak with the big, you know, blah, blah, blah.

But

again, then manage your fucking time better and lay the thing out better and or have a better format to fucking begin with to account for these things and

you can't mean to tell me that if they'd have had three or four extra minutes at the end

that it would have been it looked as bad and as clunky and as unprofessional

with them just filling time with announcer reactions and the people cheering and drop some fucking balloons, whatever, then just

going to a break out of the middle of nowhere, coming back to see the guy in the ring for 10 seconds, and

it was just damn.

For a company that has, since Kevin Dunn was removed, or since Kevin Dunn left and they replaced him and changed to production, has really done a great job of capturing big moments, big feeling,

a better job than WWE had been doing just making things sometimes feel like it's in a certain place, not just generic arena one or two.

But they blew it.

You would think WWE would have figured this is a big deal, but they really did blow it.

I mean, I think anyone could have come up with a better way to handle the Goldberg retirement than a rushed feud, a match that cuts off, a speech that cuts off, an angry wrestler after the fact.

That's the other thing.

He's a guy who has been disgruntled in the past.

He's very good at gruntling.

Yeah, I mean, the only person who got a kick out of this whole thing was probably Bret Hart.

Brett Hart was the one who pulled the plug, actually.

WWE.

Yeah, the memes of Brett in the production truck.

the yeah but

uh

so but anyway out of all of this

controversy over goldberg not being happy in the show

or whatever

this this guy i i i don't want to i don't want to cuss early in the clip but i'm i'm just seeing how long i could wait before i call him what i want to say This Nimrod, Peter Rosenberg,

came out and made some statement somewhere, just basically taking a piss out of Goldberg.

Saying, well, he ought to be lucky.

He was on television.

He should have got speared and beat one, two, three.

Who the fuck is he?

Like, this fucking guy is somebody.

I'm already saying fuck anyway, right?

You can curse as much as you want.

Let's go to the Goldberg clip.

Go for it.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I thought we possibly might have a new topic here.

I don't know if anyone would tune in for a topic about Peter Rosenberg.

That's true.

So, point being,

Peter Rosenberg, who says he's in wrestling,

it's come to this now that the people on the periphery who talk about the people who talk about wrestling, kind of the commentators on some sub-platform of something

are in wrestling.

And he said, Goldberg should have done a job, but he ought to be lucky that they called him.

What the fuck is this guy's issue?

You know, I think people who kiss ass for work typically have a very difficult time accepting people that don't.

And when people have to constantly go out there and just blow the companies that will actually give them money for being mediocre,

that's what happens.

There are a lot of people that just kiss WWE as if you don't think Goldberg is entitled to be upset about his mic being cut off, you're a fucking cunt, Rosenberg.

And what the bleep that.

Jace bleeped that.

But I called him a cunt.

And, you know, just the whole thing is ridiculous.

It starts out with him saying, listen, Bill Goldberg, I have the quote here.

As a Jewish guy who's in wrestling and loves wrestling myself, obviously I appreciate his contribution.

He's a Jewish guy in the wrestling business compared to Goldberg.

He's in the wrestling business.

He's a New York radio guy, desperate for gigs, and WWE likes him because he kisses their ass.

But stop playing games.

Fucking suck on the air.

You have to kiss WWE ass for employment.

Say something negative about the company just once.

Yeah.

See where you are then.

Seriously.

Oh,

there is just

that's why New York, that's one of the reasons why New York radio is dead.

They have found just a crew of fucking simpletons and put them on the air over and over year after year.

And then people stop listening to the radio.

And this is a great example.

This idiot.

But this fellow is putting himself, this fine fellow is putting himself,

me and you, Bill.

We're both into business, so we can talk to each other.

He's got himself slotted in right there.

The man got a 15-minute match.

It should have been a squash.

Let's be honest.

He should have gotten Goldberged.

He should have been speared and taken out.

The man's pushing 60 years old.

Hasn't looked good in the ring.

Some would say ever.

But certainly not in the last few years.

Got to have a 15-minute match, a battle with the world champion, and get a few words live on television and complains about his mic getting cut off.

A few words.

Man, this idiot, you're not in the wrestling business.

You lick their ass so they keep you around.

Well, but apparently, in all seriousness, he's a hater.

I don't have to listen to New York radio.

Therefore, I don't have to listen to the people with taint on their tongue.

But

how can he with a straight face?

He's not a promoter either, as well as not being whatever the fuck else he's not.

Because he doesn't have any idea what he's talking about.

You should have squashed him.

No, you didn't.

No, it was an attraction.

We've just got finished saying this guy was a huge star and they should have made a network television show

about his last match and

built something out of it and work around his limitations.

No, it shouldn't have been 15 minutes, but a squash.

What kind of fucking moron is this guy?

Oh, there's more.

He still got in a nice little moment and got to be celebrated on.

Do you know how many people better than Goldberg?

Yo, he got celebrated on all right, but usually you get a separate payoff for that is at the end of the shoot.

Do you know how many people better than Goldberg their send-off was?

We wished him the best in their future endeavors.

This guy got to stand in the ring on national television and have a send-off.

You should be thanking your lucky stars for the money you've made and the appreciation you've gotten, which many don't even feel is fully deserved.

Now,

I'm so disappointed.

Hold on again.

The money you've made.

A good portion of the money that he's made in the business was with a different fucking company.

He's made a number of healthy payoffs with the WWE, but he was making some fucking money before that.

And this fucking guy, is he that desperate for a good review from Human Relations?

Clearly, this guy is desperate to stay in WWE's good graces and have them think that if we need someone to kiss our ass and suck our dick in public, this guy's ready to suck our dick.

And that's what it's about.

And that's why this guy's been on these shows.

And that's why no one takes him seriously.

And that's why people joke about him.

And I'm wondering if he ought to be trying to stay a little bit on the good side of goldberg just in case he does show up again yeah that's the last match goldberg should have now goldberg should call him out he's next can you have a can you imagine if they made up with goldberg they said oh we botched it come on back at the fucking royal rumble whatever the fuck it may be oh and

is peter gonna be there i'd like to see peter

I'm sure at that point he'll drop to his knees and ask to see Bill Goldberg's Peter because that's the kind of guy this is.

No fucking credibility, ass kisser, sucks on the air, brings nothing to the table go home shut up that's my opinion geez

the shit the nothing happening bags that infiltrated radio and bring nothing to the table hey i talk on my radio but they have like nothing they bring nothing and this guy is kissing ass see

See what?

There you go.

The same goddamn.

I thought you were going to say these nothing happening to suck up kiss asses that have infiltrated the wrestling business.

But it's the same principle.

Same thing.

It's the same thing.

And does some of the same ones infiltrate both?

Yeah.

Horrible.

He's making comments about Goldberg's retirement.

Like he knows anything.

He exposed in his comment there he doesn't know anything about promotion or booking.

But you know, he has to rush to say something that WWE may like.

Anyhow,

speaking of things that the WWE may or may not like being said,

how's that for a transition?

I understand that some valuable, well, not valuable per se, but some confidential,

possibly before hidden

information has been released.

The wrestling version perhaps of the Epstein files

they've somehow got a hold of.

Is it our friend Thurston Howell?

Is he a second story man?

Did he climb into an office at night?

Or how

did they find this?

But they got the Netflix numbers for the

WWE programs on the Netflix around the world.

Is this correct?

This is correct.

I believe it's public information because Netflix is a publicly traded company.

So they disclose information about various aspects of their business from the financials to actual viewing numbers.

But they just disclosed a bunch of it all at the same time.

Because

I got a thing with a chart

and graphs and fucking

colored coded polls and then very small print that I cannot read.

But some of the colored polls look like they're getting shorter.

That's all I know.

Can you interpret any of this information?

Yeah, this is a hell of a setup here.

Ladies and gentlemen,

how did they get this information?

Is this valid information?

And is this information good or bad for anybody?

I don't know.

That's what we need to know here.

It's hard to say good or bad.

I think it, I wouldn't say is bad, but it definitely paints a more accurate picture of WWE's viewership on Netflix than we've had.

A lot of it's been guessing.

A lot of it's, you know, there were arguments between Dave Meltzer and AI, if you remember, about

the Netflix numbers were WWE Raw when they argued.

Like, Dave needs any artificial people to argue with when he's got enough of the real ones.

Like Raw on Netflix, if you look at it here, the opening episode, 6.9 million viewers.

The second episode, 4.4, then 3.6.

The last episode here, which was for the end of the second quarter, June 30th, 2025, through seven days, it did 1.4 million.

Oh, excuse me.

Through seven days, it did 2.5 million.

This was a little less than that.

So it's a declining viewership, but not gigantically.

But

this really just shows.

Oh, Oh, go ahead.

Sorry.

Well, I was going to say, taking the, I mean, the first episode was like the big thing, and the rock's here, and fucking Schwarzenegger is going to get fucked in the ass by Martha Stewart or whatever the fuck they were promoting, right?

It's the first time.

That's right.

The Rock was there.

If you throw that out, well, you didn't like Martha Stewart getting fucked by

who did she fuck?

Well, nevertheless.

Yeah, never.

You start the next week, did 4.4 million because there's still some new people.

and then you settle into 3.6 and then

from what it looks like to me they stayed between

3.1 and 3.6

all the way through

well the end of may

and then since then june has been 3 million 3.2 2.9 2.7 2.5

so

there is some

attrition, but to be honest, June, July, and August suck for television, more people take vacation and do bullshit.

I assume that's still true.

Back when 100 million people watch TV,

even though there's only 2 million of them now, they still take vacations at a same percentage.

So

I mean, they're between

for six months, between 2.5 this past week and 3.6 or whatever.

That ain't bad.

I don't see any cause for, I don't,

I, I don't, I don't see them doing anything that's going to spark anything up unless it's SummerSlam over the next few weeks.

But at the same time, it's summer.

And again, Raw is available only in the U.S.

But they've also worldwide have other content and they've had the premium live events.

Royal Raw.

Now, wait a minute.

Now you can't, you can, Raw is on Netflix, but nobody besides the United States or

people that patronize some of our sponsors and know how to do it can

watch it, is what you're saying.

That is right.

So we have global view.

Well, I shouldn't say that, but that is

what's only available in the United States.

There's still the peacock deal, which cuts into other things.

And obviously, SmackDown here isn't on Netflix.

It's still on the USA network.

Ah, all this other shit.

But worldwide, Royal Rumble did 3 million viewers,

13.3 million hours viewed with a runtime of four hours and 16 minutes.

But yeah, they're disclosing again, these are their worldwide numbers.

So, I mean, the SmackDown numbers here are not actually SmackDown

domestically.

Is it?

This would be worldwide?

Huh?

Interesting.

Well,

tell us more.

Unlike this segment,

here's something now.

I'm looking at it at the purple, at the purple polls.

The Royal Rumble did 3 million.

Elimination Chamber 1.9, WrestleMania,

2.4 million the first night, 2.8 million the second night.

One would have thought.

That that would do better than the Royal Rumble, but in effect, it did twice as much almost because it's two nights.

But then backlash, 1.5 million, Money in the Bank, 1.6 million, Night of Champions, 1 million.

Not a lot of people were into the Knight of Champions.

But this is

when you take into account that a

gigantic number of buys for a pay-per-view in the glory days of

WrestleMania or Royal Rumble was going to be,

you know, six, seven, seven, eight hundred thousand closing in on a million pay-per-views in that stratosphere, our bias rather.

A lot more people are seeing the big shows is my point.

NXT looks like they've flatlined.

I don't mean mean flatlined.

It looks like they never registered.

What the fuck?

They got very teeny, tiny little fucking polls.

And again, that's all international.

That's not counting the U.S.

for NXT.

It's interesting, though, when you look at Royal Rumble 3 million views worldwide, or at least international, not counting America, and then WrestleMania 2.4 and 2.8.

You know, again, the build was clunky.

There were extra weeks added.

The Rock and Travis Scott thing had no payoff.

The Cena heel turn had just started, but I don't know about you.

I'm surprised WrestleMania, I mean, I shouldn't be be surprised.

I guess it seems like WrestleMania should have been bigger, especially coming after the last year WWE just had, and they really dropped the ball.

Yeah, I mean,

especially night one being 2.4 million when Elimination Chamber was 1.9 million.

One would think there would be a larger

discrepancy between that and WrestleMania, but maybe I'm just old-fashioned.

And again, that's not counting counting America.

That's not counting whatever they did on Peacock, but this is everything else.

So, uh, when do we get the peacock files?

I don't know.

The peacock files.

Who's named in the peacock files?

I don't know.

We'll see who says the media is against him for publishing the peacock files.

Well, somebody's got to threaten to first before we get to the bottom of this.

We need to somebody to say we're going to publish the peacock files before somebody's going to say, don't publish the peacock files.

It'd It'd kind of be stupid to bring it up first.

When are we going to get the max files?

HBO Max, I should say now, I guess.

I was about to say, if you're talking about Maxwell Jacob Friedman, I'm not sure we're going to get his files.

All right.

This has been Ratings Talk.

Yes.

By the way, all of this is easily digestible.

WrestleNomics put something out, so go check them out.

They have all the.

I can't get out of this screen is my problem.

There we go.

That's their tagline.

I can't get out of this screen.

Where's my other thing?

I was lost there for a second because I couldn't click on it.

See, you've thrown me all off.

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All right,

we haven't covered the WWE television programming as much lately as we have the goings on of other things and people.

And we're going to get back to that

in more length next after my trip next week.

But there was a few things going on in WWE land as we're apparently coming close to SummerSlam.

My, how time slips away when I'm not thinking about something.

So we're going to have to catch up with the programs and go forward with our recommendations on the big two-night SummerSlam.

But there were a few things, as I said, on last week's Raw.

And

they have made me a fan of Naomi, Brian.

I'm saying that

she has made me a fan of Naomi.

What the, where did this all of a sudden come from?

She comes out.

She's the new champion.

We know that, you know, she won on the deal and the cash-in,

but she cuts this heel pro bo where she's just got all kinds of

bitchy attitude going on and

telling people off.

I didn't betray Bianca.

I outgrew her.

She wanted me to be a flunky.

All you raggedy heifers in the locker room better proceed with caution.

I mean, she was, she hooted them down from Whatner.

It was like, where the fuck did this come from?

Has she ever been that interesting before when doing anything?

I think she's been pretty good as a heel, but the promos of late, and especially that one after winning the world championship as a surprise when she cashed in at the evolution show,

I thought she was great.

And the way she handled the crowd, like you said, the attitude, she seemed believable, even though she's wearing a ridiculous outfit.

You believe her.

And I'm ready to say she's the best promo in her family.

Yes.

I don't have the tree right here in front of me.

So who knows, we may be overlooking somebody, but

that comes to mind.

Yes.

That's the kind of heel you don't like, but you want to watch them talk and do that stuff and just be a heel.

So I really like it.

Well, and see, that's the fans were cheering her when she came out because she's the new champion and they, you know, and you deserve it.

Everybody, you know, is that just happy to see the happenings.

But she and she cut a heel promo on him, and they still kind of cheered, but it was good.

Like you said, it was,

it was that we're seeing, you know,

some good shit.

And she meant it, sounded like she meant it, and people could see some truth in it, possibly.

But then

when Raggedy Heifers were mentioned, Rhea's music hit and she got a big pop.

And of course, they love her because she's a movie star.

Appearing at a theater or drive-in near you.

And

she came out and there was a obviously big response.

And,

you know, I'm not proceeding with caution because I'm not cautious.

I'm reckless and I'm pissed.

And she wants the title back, and she looks great.

And she lays down her statement with conviction, brief and to the point.

And I'm thinking, I want to see this.

And then EO Sky's music plays.

And so everybody can

go ahead and start getting mad early.

She got in a goddamn way again

because you've cut Naomi, the brand new champion of a recent heel.

She's being elevated.

She's cut this fucking promo.

And then here comes the top woman in the business, the most popular female performer.

in the wrestling business on the planet.

And she can talk

and they're about to go ahead.

And here comes

little fucking Annie Fanny.

And she looks like she's dressed for a picnic at the park.

Come on.

She doesn't look anything like little Annie Fanny.

She's getting, again, she's got a matching little,

cute little checkered outfit like she's going to a picnic, and she's a foot shorter than both of these raggedy heifers.

And

she comes, and it just she doesn't look intimidating

and she's coming out and smiling and shaking hands with the people

when these two behemoths have set this

mood of confrontation and when she gets finished shaking hands and smiling at everybody she gets in the ring and she takes the microphone and the promo goes to shit because she can't speak

and

she doesn't look intimidating and she can't speak and it appears she just wandered in.

And then, as soon as she tries to get the challenge out,

and Naomi says, okay, look, I didn't understand anything you just said.

Then Rhea starts arguing with Naomi to make sure that everybody knows she's on the babyface side by kind of taking up for the little

sister here instead of a little brother, little sister.

And then Pierce comes comes out and announces:

in three weeks, it's SummerSlam.

It's a goddamn three-way.

So,

what the segment did was make me want to see Naomi and Rhea Ripley

have this fucking match.

And then they stuck in,

EO.

Oh, EO.

EO.

So she can, you know, satisfy the longings and pangings of the grade school crowd and get in away and have another three-way.

Like, we need more of those.

Your thoughts?

Yeah, that was the same thing with WrestleMania.

They were setting up Bianca and Rhea, or at least it felt like it.

Seemed like it should have been the setup for it.

And then EO was involved.

Eo ended up winning.

They got away from Bianca and Rhea.

And

now we have this natural thing, you would think, between Naomi and Rhea.

Rhea was about to win.

Again, EO

lost the title, so she cost her it, but it's going to be another three-way.

And

I feel like there are way too many across wrestling.

It's not about the women's division.

It's a wrestling-wide problem.

It's a Triple H problem and a Tony Khan problem.

Way too many three-way matches.

It seems at times it's a crutch,

but that's what we'll get.

I'm sure it'll be a good match, too.

Why not have the single match before you have a three-way?

I agree.

you know i completely agree why not have normally three singles there should be different singles matches between the three competitors before the three-way when you start with a three-way

and then you you just go back to a regular old two-way well you're sometimes your expectations have have peaked early

Anyway,

I

love Rhea and now I love Naomi.

I'll love EO.

I don't care if she can do the moves from the sky and fly and be free and fly away.

All right.

But you like the segment overall because of Naomi's performance?

Yes.

I love me some Naomi.

And I haven't been this happy about Naomi since she was with the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Well, again, that wasn't her.

I don't even necessarily understand the reference, but did you see anything else on that?

Naomi?

Yes, I did, by the way.

Do you think they're taking

somewhat of our advice on

what we said about with Paul and Bron during Seth Rollins's absence, which we we got to discuss here in a second?

But

Gunther does the promo.

He comes out and basically it's aha, you know, I have continued to see yes.

I sound just like Gunther.

You okay?

See, I sound just like Gunther there.

When you know, who's next?

Who is next for me?

Because I have beaten the Goldberg and the Bill Goldberg thing.

And he

basically said he's going to sit there that night and watch the gauntlet match that they have.

You know what that is?

They ought to call it the King of the Mountain, but that one guy will sue him.

We're going to see who's going to be the next challenger at SummerSlam.

I don't care who it is.

They're all the same to me.

And then, boom, out comes Braun Breaker and Paul Heyman.

And I was hoping he'd say, well, what do you do with a horse when he breaks his leg?

But they didn't go that far.

But Paul cut the promo on what's going to happen when Braun.

wins the gauntlet and he's going to be the challenger at SummerSlam and he is going to be the next big thing and he's going to be the big dog and this is his yard because he's not a contender.

He's a Steiner

with another name.

Breaker.

It's a weird line that they use when they don't actually use the name Steiner.

They can, I know they can come out and say that he's a Steiner, but his name is not Steiner.

I'm getting confused, but nevertheless,

you know what Paul does that?

He's going to break through the glass ceiling and break your ass at SummerSlam.

So you're thinking, okay, this is

the direction they're going to go in with this gauntlet thing or whatever.

But more importantly,

you know, Paul is stepping up and being a spokesperson for Braun Breaker.

It worked for Brock.

And Braun's a whole lot more natural pro-wrestling talent than Brock Lesnar was.

So that is good.

And that's what, you know, we were hoping would happen in Seth's absence.

But

then this was a little bit of a swerve, as we'll find out here in a second.

It didn't quite go this way.

But you want to see

Braun Breaker and Gunther,

don't you, just because of the smash mouth offense?

Yeah.

And it's something that may not happen right away, but it will happen.

It has to happen.

And I think Gunther has been one one of the highlights on this show for a while.

His promos

have been maybe the best promos of anyone in wrestling all year.

And the confrontation,

it felt like one of those moments where the fans were kind of buzzing a little bit.

You know, what could happen here?

Gunther has always been a heel, even though they're starting to like him a little bit.

And, you know, he smirks so much when he delivers these nasty lines.

That it makes you like the guy.

He's got a good smile.

I feel like, Vince, you got a good smile.

Smile more.

yeah he he's a he's a u-boat captain with a sense of humor that's right that's right

and uh the braun breaker thing you know and again we'll talk about the rollins thing momentarily

the show

may be better without rollins and

the development of brawn breaker or the time frame it takes

And everything with Heyman may be more interesting.

All this may be better without Rollins around.

Whether that's going to be the case or not, time will tell.

But

I actually thought this week's Raw.

I just thought this week's Raw that you're talking about the clips from,

beyond the usual matches that you wouldn't care about that fill up the majority of the show.

But the moments that you wanted to see after the fact, I thought it was actually one of the better shows in a while.

And a lot of it was because who wasn't there?

Filling up a lot of screen time while people sing a song.

Well, they have to,

in someone's absence, they have to have somebody step into that.

And let's not overlook Bronson Reed, by the way, because

more Bronson Reed is good.

He's not going to be the top guy.

Braun Breaker will be.

But Bronson Reed, as a top heel, and then probably at some point, again, a babyface in a WWE has years if he's injury free and et cetera.

He's a main event guy.

So yes, more of him.

But with Paul being a spokesperson for Braun standing in front of Gunther or standing in front of any of the main event guys, it fits.

You're not instantly put off like, what is this?

It works.

But can you, before we move on to another thing on Raw, can you tell me?

What is Dave saying now about Seth Rollins?

First, he said said it was a work.

Then it was a work, but he's really hurt, but he worked being hurt so that it would cover for him being hurt.

But then he's maybe hurt, but he's not hurt as bad as what you would think he was hurt so he can surprise people and come back early.

But god damn it, a lot of the office and the talent is going to be mad.

When they find out that they've been worked because he's not hurt bad enough.

What is he fucking saying?

I'm not sure what you just said, but let me try to summarize.

There was a lot there, a lot of different viewpoints in a small period of time.

Dave Meltzer, I saw,

and I believe Brian Alvarez too separately

said that they heard, and I believe John Pollack was the

person who's a credible wrestling journalist.

They heard what was going to happen to Rollins in advance of what happened.

And

that there is a knee injury,

but it wasn't injured when he feigned the injury, according to them, or according to whatever the story is, at that moment in the match.

They had planned that out, and it went the way they expected to, so they could surprise people.

And when you think it out, you know, yeah, you know, I guess

if they could surprise people.

Well, I guess if the main event of SummerSlam is punk and Gunther

and the CM Punk Seth Rollins feud doesn't seem like they ever want to end it ever,

there's a natural way for Rollins, who everyone thought was a torn ACL.

It was just he got a scope

and he comes back, cashes in.

That's what makes it, I think, logical to people that it may be a work is the idea that it fits in line with what they're booking as the main event of SummerSlam.

And now there's this story that apparently

some people believe they knew exactly what was going to happen before it happened.

So there's something going on.

Okay.

And if, you know, if he runs out and does a leaping series of jumping jacks and everything's fine at SummerSlam and cashes in or whatever, then I will come out here to be, you know what, I got fooled.

I'm an idiot.

I don't know what I'm talking about.

But until then,

if they were, even if he was,

if he has a knee injury

already and they want to do an angle

to cover up for it.

Is I'm following this story because it's minor, he needs to take care of it, whatever.

Then, why does he, on a knee injury, want to injure it by doing a leaping fucking moonsault and landing on it in the middle of the ring?

That might be a good way to fucking injure it for fuck's sake, for real.

Yeah, that's the other question.

But, secondly,

why,

even with Heyman involved, I say even with

the opposite of even with Heyman involved,

I would have to think they'd be able to come up with a better way to do it than to just have a shitty fucking match on a big network TV show that they're going to shit to bed on later on with everything else to begin with anyway.

Instead of,

yeah, we're going to go fucking two minutes because apparently it wasn't bad enough if it's a work.

It wasn't bad enough that he didn't think he couldn't do a goddamn springboard moonsault off the ropes, land on his feet and do whatever the fuck, right?

So why couldn't they have a halfway decent five-minute fucking match with some goddamn regular spots and then do some kind of moonsault outside through the desk?

which would be probably safer than what they were doing there on a bad knee.

And he can't get up from it.

They'll shit.

And then they do the,

oh my God, we're all shocked and we got to call an audible and whatever the fuck.

Instead of just making it flat and fucking what the fuck and calling attention to that it's a bunch of fake bullshit that we didn't even bother to make exciting.

Because they still know it's a bunch of fake bullshit, but we can make it exciting.

I don't see how

that with the minds involved, that would be the best thing that they could come up with to do on purpose is what that is, what they did there.

So, right.

And it was right after a commercial break.

So, the match had been going a little while.

The announcers were talking about the fact that he has bad knees or has a bad knee.

And then they do that.

If you were going to do a knee injury, why wouldn't it be something simpler?

Why wouldn't it be something

could have been anything?

Could have been more, again, more exciting.

The match hadn't been going on television that long because of the commercial break.

Did they format it?

Oh, we'll go 90 seconds.

We'll come back and then we'll do this boring fucking flat finish about 60 seconds from there

and just really fuck the people.

Well, here's the other problem.

Well, you know, again, you're trying to think about how this could work if it was a work.

What's the finish to Gunther versus CM Punk at SummerSlam?

I honestly...

How do you get there?

That's the issue.

I honestly

believe

that Seth may have been going to be involved

in

the match.

I don't know now whether he will be or not.

We'll wait and see.

But that is a conundrum without Seth.

But I think that it possibly comes down

to

Paul and Braun.

What if they did what you suggested last time we talked?

What have they cashed in right there?

That's well, that's, I'm thinking something may, they may do something.

I don't know if they'll cash in, although that would be, that would be glorious.

And that would shake people up.

And now that you've said it, I'm fucking thinking I like it better.

But at the very least, they will.

They will fuck with punk because by then they will be,

you know, pressing Gunther a little bit more.

And we want to see that match.

So that would help that match and it would give Punk a reason to be mad at

Paul's guys like he's mad at Seth if Seth is not around.

If that makes any sense.

But again, I just

I don't care if they were trying to make it look like a shoot or not.

The thing that still sticks with me is that is the crummiest, boringest looking try to make it look like a shoot that i've ever seen anybody come up with

so there there's that

we shall see

and

we go to the end of this thing where punk

won the gauntlet wouldn't you know who won the gauntlet our boy punk

And the brawn was a tease, but it turned out not.

But

the two two Brauns then beat up Punk and Jey Uso

and got heat on them and stacked them up and went for the tsunami.

And then you heard the music and it's Roman Reigns return.

And then Paul put his best, oh, shit face on for this.

And he got a huge pop.

He's still over.

The place went nuts and it hadn't been teased.

They didn't know he was going to be there.

And he came out and hit the ring and made the big comeback: Samoan drop on Bronson Reed and the Superman punch on

Breaker and Speared Reed.

And

all the heels bailed out.

And then there was Jay laying there and Punk laying there.

And Roman helped Jay up to his feet and dusted him off.

And

my brother.

And he looks at Punk and Punk's looking up with his hand like, eh, me?

And Roman just looked at him.

And Punk had to get up on his own

and they kind of were staring at each other but of course the fans were singing roman reigns roman reigns roman reigns that tune

but roman's back but there's tension with him and the punkster

and

you know that there's another

Again, they've got all of the

top guys.

There's some some guys that they know or they are aligned with that are their friends, and other guys, even if they're a babyface or a heel, they don't like or they don't trust for some halfway, legitimate and rememberable reason.

And so they can go a bunch of different directions.

But

what'd you think of that?

What'd you think of that pop when he came out?

Well, yes, that's the thing.

I mean, he's still massively over.

It's not like that anybody's, you know, slacking off on Roman.

Punk's over.

Roman is over.

Drew's back in the picture now.

They've got a lot of guys that are over and a lot of ways that they can go.

So to your earlier point,

you know,

I hope it would be nice that Seth wasn't hurt for six or nine months or whatever, if it's not bad.

So I'm not wishing that on him.

But if he is,

then they've still got guys that they can reposition.

And

bringing Paul Heyman up with Braun Breaker, I think that's going to be, it's going to be fresher.

It'll make them have a little bit newer look and different combinations.

I agree.

But if Seth Rollins comes out, like I said,

doing goddamn ballet dancing.

at SummerSlam, then I'll eat my words.

But until then,

below me, those of you who think i

it was too boring it was too blah it was too well we can't do this on network tv on purpose

they could have come up with a better way if they could have planned it

yeah i mean unless we hear that there's a surgery planned in the next two weeks something's up because he said he couldn't get an mri it was too swollen well let's see what happens within the next two weeks we have to hear about something Well, no, and to be, no, he didn't say he couldn't get an MRI because it was too swollen.

He said they'd had a test and the results were inconclusive because it was too swollen, which honestly was told to me one time in one of my ACL injuries, well, it's really swollen.

So we can't tell for sure.

But we think due to the,

what was it, the...

The fat cells that are in the blood we drained off of it.

That's what it was.

We think there's a tear, but we're going to wait a couple of days.

But point being, we're not even going to know it a couple weeks if a surgery isn't scheduled.

We're going to know if he's gone four to six months, then it was a serious injury.

And if he's back in

a couple months, we might not know for sure because things happen.

And if he's back at SummerSlam, it was a big fucking rip.

That's the way we're going to be able to

tell how this thing worked.

WWE TV seems promising if if Rollins is going to be out for a while.

Again,

you get to save some time.

Goldberg would have gotten his speech if they didn't have to sing his song, Seth Rollins, on that Saturday.

Yeah.

But those were the highlights of WWE Raw.

But that wasn't all the highlights of the WWE this week because they were on, or several representatives of same were on the Jimmy Kimmel show, now not featuring Jimmy Kimmel.

Because apparently, Jimmy Kimmel

got wind of what they were trying to do, took the night off, and the guest host was Jelly Roll.

Jellyroll.

And can we go ahead and talk about it right now

that everybody's been sending us?

And he's made a comment.

And I

don't know what to make of it.

That Jelly Roll, when doing one of his media interviews or, you know, the publicity, wherever it was, he said, Oh, I've been a wrestling fan since I was a kid.

You know,

my family, we grew up, we were wrestling fans.

I used to go to Smuggy Mountain Wrestling and then he'd move on.

That's all he said.

He didn't list any names or dates, places, anything like that.

But he's from Nashville.

And we didn't run Nashville.

And our...

Our TV show didn't air in Nashville.

And so I will call out to the cult of Cornette now.

Does anybody out there

has he provided any further details on was he a

big fan of Killer Kyle or

was he at the Newport,

you know, Tennessee fucking armory or the

some county fair or has he gone into more detail?

Because

I don't remember a six or eight-year-old fat kid with a bunch of tattoos on his face wandering around back then.

He was born in 84.

So

he'd have been 10.

In 94, yeah.

I don't remember a single 500-pound 10-year-old with tattoos on his face.

You sure?

I mean, you ran a lot of interesting towns.

No, a couple of 400-poundsers, but not

five.

But what is his real name?

His real name is

Jason Bradley DeFord.

Jason Bradley

We never had any entrance from him in our dream match contests.

Well, you wouldn't know those names now, thinking back to it.

I was the one that was reading the mail.

Didn't ring a bell.

Anyway, Jelly Roll hosted Jimmy Kimmel,

who wasn't even there.

It was Jelly.

It wasn't me.

I wasn't even there.

And he had Randy Orton as his guest.

And Orton is good on like mainstream mainstream talk and television shows, even if his friend is not interviewing him.

But he, you know, is a typical talk show segment.

He's talking about his kids.

And he put Jelly Roll over for how hard that he's working for SummerSlam and this big tag team match they've got.

And again, Orton looks good and he's well-spoken and personable in those situations.

So there's nothing out of the ordinary.

And they showed the video of the angle they did on TV where Jelly got Claymore kicked by Drew and the whole thing with Logan Paul.

And then suddenly

Drew McIntyre walks in.

And

at this point,

they just kind of had to go into it.

There was hardly any preamble whatever.

I guess what I'm saying is.

Even though we knew everybody was going to get in a fight, they couldn't have worked it where they had another minute before they had to get in the fucking fight.

You see what I'm saying, Brian?

Because by the time that Drew walked over to it, they're already ready to fight on network TV on a talk show.

It was not, it was like, this escalated quickly.

And it did.

And it did.

And there was a lot of balsa wood destroyed in the process.

Well, hold on now, because first.

It's got to de-escalate quickly because Drew came in and cut a little promo,

said, Jellyroll, you lost 200 pounds.

You're an inspiration to trailer trash around the world.

How's it feel to see your little Tootsie roll for the first time in 20 years?

And then Orton just stands up.

Hey, don't do that.

And he shoves him and he shoves him back.

And they get in a fight.

And they fight through the back doors where they just hit the double doors and they open and they fight through the doors and they close and they have fought off.

And you don't hear anything else.

And you don't see anything else.

And neither one of them ever comes back, nor is there anyone rushing after them.

It's like, okay, they're gone.

So then

Jelly Roll starts pitching to break.

Well, you know, sorry that happened.

You know, and

as soon as he starts pitching to break, Logan Paul comes out and starts cutting a promo on Dummy Roll.

And then he slaps him.

And fucking

Jelly Roll takes it and he kind of sells it for a minute while Logan Paul's berating him.

And then he grabs Logan Paul by the neck and choke slams him through the

announce desk, the host desk there,

folded him up like an accordion.

And then he cut a promo, promoing the match and pitching the break while Logan Paul is laying there, probably legitimately unconscious, because

that was a goddamn gimmick.

That was a gimmick desk.

You know, now

you hear all the time the people saying, oh, they gimmicked the desk on raw or they got a gimmick table or whatever.

Well, the desk, yes, you can.

or at least when I was there in the old days, you could pull some pins on the desk so that it would collapse if landed on, but it was still made out of

the same material that the goddamn desk was made out of, right?

And the tables, sometimes they need to be gimmicked in that there is a

some of them have a kind of metal band around that'll slice your goddamn head off just if in the wrong way.

So sometimes you have to take something like that off or whatever, but they're tables that also serve the function of tables.

But, Brian,

I can't believe that every

talk show, television talk show host desk is made out of balsa wood and paper-mâché.

Can you?

No way.

Did you see that?

It didn't break his fall at all.

He went straight through the goddamn thing.

It looked like it just disintegrated.

They actually had a gimmick

host desk it was so thin you could see how thin the wood was or whatever it was was when he went through it yeah that's the thing i bet you

being a real television show

that they heard that somebody was going to be thrown through a desk and they got a legitimate fake

desk made not knowing

that it that's worse

being thrown through nothing on the back of your head on the floor is worse than goddamn being thrown through something because the something

hopefully will somehow

impede your progress to the fucking floor.

It softens it a bit when the thing, you know, if all conditions are right.

But anyhow,

I was like, God damn, I'm surprised he ever got up.

But anyway, I can't wait to see this big grudge tag team contest if they ever find

Drew McIntyre and Randy Orton.

Do you think, where do they are they a New York show or are they a Los Angeles show?

That's an LA show.

That's Hollywood.

Well, fuck, they need to get they could be out there in the Hollywood Hills just fighting amongst themselves, Drew.

And

that's how they should open SmackDown.

They should open SmackDown.

They just brawl into the building.

They've been going for days.

Don't steal that from Kevin Sullivan and Blackjack Mulligan.

All righty.

Anyways, so that was our WWE report.

We'll have more on this as we lead into Summer Schlam.

Should they call it Power Schlam?

No.

How about one night would be Summer Schlam and the next night would be Power Schlam?

Why?

Just to change things up.

I don't know.

I don't know if they get the copyright on Power Schlam.

It may be tied up.

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All righty, Brian.

Well, before we talk about some more of the new stuff, we got to go back and talk about some of the old stuff.

And

it's been quite popular

here lately on the program that we've been going back through some of my file drawers and looking at the old paperwork and the TNA agent reports and various communication that I had there and some of the WWE stuff, the OBW stuff.

I had, again, something else I forgot about.

We had done, or I had done

an agent report before that last set that we had been talking about, about

seven or eight months beforehand.

And I'd forgotten that they were trying to make that a thing at one point.

And I'll explain as we get through this how it didn't.

become a thing

but also

because everybody still asks or wonders or they can't get a grip on

what is the job of an agent or a producer in the wrestling on the TV shows and everything.

And

TNA tried to put it down on paper.

And I thought if you want to learn something

about the job description.

You're going to, but at the same time, as they put it down on paper and they kept going with it,

it becomes more and more obvious how fucking ridiculous that it is to try to write it down on paper.

Does that make any sense to you, Brian?

It does.

I should say it doesn't, it doesn't, but no, I understand what you're saying.

I can't wait to hear how they put it down there.

It is one of those jobs that people wonder about: a producer, an agent.

How much of that was a Vince McMahon creation?

Probably all of it, really.

They started doing it in WCW when Turner Broadcasting had taken over.

And it still wasn't as many people and wasn't to the degree.

It was more like,

you know, somebody on the creative team or whatever, you know, give these instructions or whatever.

And then,

you know, Vince, of course, took it and ran with it because it made everything more.

more like television, more like movie making, more like entertainment.

And

then, with the way that the programs

evolved, and at the same time, as the TVs were getting more and more intricate and more and more complicated, and you had to know where everything was and what was going on,

the talent started getting less and less experienced as one increased, the other decreased.

And then it

became like you almost can't do this without it.

There's not one person who doesn't have

the time of the day or the capability to deal with everything, right?

So that's, and now we're stuck with it.

But this agent report

sent to my old friend Terry Taylor.

You remember us talking about him, Brian.

This was Friday, January 16th, 2009.

And this was about the pay-per-view that was done on the 11th and the TV tapings

on the 12th and 13th.

And

not real long, but

this was actually, I made note at the top of it.

This was the, when I got the website, remember I told you it was 2009.

This was the very first email I sent all by myself without Stacey helping me.

How about them apples?

I've got it documented right here.

I've been doing this for 16 years now, the email thing.

You should sell copies of that.

Jim Cornett's first email.

Well, and as a matter of fact, I might when I read it, see if you think there's anything to that.

Rookie year email.

So this was for the Genesis pay-per-view, as I said, January 11th.

And I'm just, I'm going to hop through a couple of things, but

Sheikh Abdul Bashir against Shane Sewell.

And they were a pleasure to work with, attentive, did their best, do exactly as told.

Following Shelley versus Sabin, the crowd was tired, but they worked hard and got the people into it by the finish.

Good match.

Earl Hebner did well.

Crowd popped for the finish, blah, blah, blah.

Rhino versus Sting.

They went in with a lot of handicaps.

Sting's knees, having to follow Angle versus Jeff, which was impossible.

That was the night.

And this pay-per-view, by the way, was not

for once in Orlando.

That was the night that we were in Charlotte on location at the old Charlotte Coliseum.

Jeff Jarrett and Kurt Angle had the match that night.

It was the best match that

I ever saw in the history of TNA wrestling.

Anyway,

here's the problem.

They had booked Sting versus Rhino.

Sting,

at this point, was in the main event mafia.

Do you remember that thing?

Where he was in the group of top heels, even though he wasn't a heel?

Yeah, again, this is a period of time I would read about, but I didn't watch it.

It didn't seem like I should watch it.

And I kind of know about the main event mafia.

Yeah.

Kevin Ash, right?

Hooker T.

Yes, yes.

Somebody

had put together a group of heels called the Main Event Mafia because they had been big stars on the big television programs, not our little TNA production.

And Sting was in it, even though he was a babyface.

And even though when he was booked against other babyfaces and you would try to come up with a finish, he wouldn't cheat.

He'd say, But still, you can't beat him with a way.

I'm not a heel.

Then why are you in the heel group?

Ask Vince,

and then everybody would ask Vince,

and he would explain it, and then we still wouldn't know what the fuck he was talking about.

So

we had

a top made-of-it heel that

a top made-of-it babyface in the heel group, but he is a babyface, so he wouldn't cheat.

And Vince will explain everything.

So they had booked Sting versus Rhino.

Sting's knees were bad.

He had to follow angle against Jeff.

Rhino,

because of, again, someone's stories that they

wrote and

had to be perpetrated and all the time and effort goes into the backstage interviews.

Rhino had to do a pre-tape.

No, I'm sorry.

Well, they may have done a pre-tape, but Rhino had to go to the ring for the match, selling an attack from earlier in the day,

which meant that he had to get color.

in the locker room for the pre-tapes and then again in the match.

Oh, man.

So I said he deserves special attention, special mention

for him to get color in a fucking locker room to satisfy the goddamn production demands of this demented weasel booking this thing.

And he had to go in selling the storyline beating.

So he's selling, he's hurt.

The heel he's facing is staying in Charlotte.

So he was a huge babyface.

And I said, so all said the match was not very good, but it wasn't their fault.

So then,

Brian.

Whose fault was it, Jim?

I just said it wasn't their fault.

But then, we were in Charlotte for a pay-per-view on Sunday night, 8 to 11 p.m., and then everybody had to go to...

Orlando the next day for TV.

So everybody was goddamn tired and beat up and wore out.

And not including me, I wasn't beat up, but I was double wore out because I drove.

So I got in about 10 o'clock in the morning and

I took Stace with me so I wouldn't run off fugging road and fall asleep on the way.

And we checked in about 10 o'clock in the morning at the hotel, got a couple hours' sleep, and it was over at this goddamn amusement park.

I wasn't amused.

So we do the TV on January 12th.

And

this was,

remember I said the goddamn

a lot of the problems stemmed from having that match between Hernandez and Sting,

you know, and in that tournament.

Well, in January, they had a match between Hernandez and Sting.

But this was when Sting was actually in the heel group before he had broken out of it or whatever, and also

with 18 million people running in, and before they had decided to fully do the, you know, the whole Super Mex thing, but they wanted to make something out of Hernandez.

So

Hernandez versus Sting also involved Sewell, Homicide, Angle, Booker, Steiner, Devon, AJ, Bubba, and all the referees.

Between the late arrivals, tons of pre-tapes, and general talent malaise after the trip from Charlotte, I was unable to get all these people in the same place until 5:30 p.m.

At that point, I got less than halfway through laying it out before Booker started his usual complaining.

It was too busy.

It buried the referee.

It didn't make sense.

It wasn't real.

The problem is he had valid points about much of it.

But nobody liked the manner he complains, as well as that the time to do so was not 30 minutes to showtime.

At 4.15, he was eating a salad and not even dressed.

Anyway, I got Jeff,

who gave them a stern talking to and told them they were grown men, work it out.

And that's a.

It was finally a point where I said, fuck it.

Let me go see if I can get someone to lend some

authority to this and get everybody on the same page to figure something out if they didn't like what shit stain

had wanted them to do, which was the shits, right?

So

we changed the finish from a go ahead.

But Jeff was there.

This is before Jeff was gone.

That's the big difference between this round of reports and the other ones you did.

Yes.

And that's, and this is an example of what he was doing on a regular goddamn basis.

And why that when he was not there, everything went to shit.

We changed the finish from a pinfall to a disqualification, eliminated some extraneous spots written in on the format.

And upon execution, it turned out to be a wild segment with lots of heat.

And Jeff was happy.

Match-wise, Sting did great, and Hernandez looked his best ever as a single, and the crowd took him as a top guy.

But that was the case.

This is

one goddamn match that we had to do on a taping of a two-hour TV show.

It involves 15 people.

Nobody involved in it likes what they're being told to fucking do because it doesn't make sense, et cetera, et cetera, because it didn't.

Booker's a pain in the ass about it.

And we got to go get Jeff, who's at, goddammit, take this out, take that out, do this, put that in.

And it's you guys, your grown men, work it out.

How often were spots written on the format?

Whenever dipshit we could think of them.

You know, there'd be bullet points for the promo and it match starts, and then every once in a while it'd be a bullet point would be, so-and-so gets put through a table.

So-and-so and so-and-so get involved.

How?

Why?

For what?

It just

just different bullet points.

What the fuck?

Because he sees in his head.

He replays over and over his greatest nine months of fucking success in his 40-year career.

A bunch of attitude-era bullshit with no context.

Everybody running around, everybody running in.

Does this sound familiar?

Except the talent on the TV shows these days and AEW is not smart enough to be able to tell that it doesn't make any sense and they can't fucking do it.

They just try anyway.

Anywho,

so then here's the TV, the January 13th, the next night.

Because I'm just at this point,

I'm just doing the matches

that I was given.

And as I mentioned before,

they would give me either the matches with the young guys that they wanted to elevate or the main event guys that they wanted to me to referee and try to.

Okay, what don't you like about it?

What don't you like about it?

Okay, let's figure out another way to weasel out of that.

That type of thing.

I had success with that.

But nevertheless,

so the following day,

I had P.D.

Williams and Eric Young versus Booker T and Scott Steiner.

And Shane Sewell was the referee, Glamour Boy Shane from Puerto Rico.

Blonde man, very, very nice and polite.

Good work.

And they were going to do an angle with Booker and Shane.

whatever the fuck.

But can you imagine how easy it was to get Booker, T, and Scott Steiner sat down with Pete Williams and Eric Young in January of 2009?

Would you like to hear this?

Let's hear this.

This was bloody rotten all the way around.

Eric, Petey, and Shane were all ready to go over it, but we waited an hour until the heels were finished with their pre-tapes, then all sat down.

And see, here's another thing.

Because the thing that Shitstain could control in almost in their entirety of

all the things that went into the show were the pre-taped interviews, because he could be in the back with the talent.

He could produce them.

He could make sure they're exactly like he wanted them.

And they took for fucking ever.

And he even had a rule one time,

the pre-tapes when we were formatting the show.

Well, I i say we i it was formatted by the time i got it but like i believe mike tenae was doing the timing when the show was timed

you had to leave a minute and a half minimum for each backstage pre-tape even if they only had to say hi how are you see you later minute and a half When we would do them in less to save time for live content, for more matches, for fucking live promos in the ring in front of the people,

he would get mad.

Well, they didn't say everything.

Nobody gave a shit whether they said all that shit or not.

They got the point across.

We got back out to live.

So he made, he made a stink about it.

It was hanging up crews, crews that were in the back, not only a crew in the promo room, but if something needed to be on location, he had an ENG crew hanging around.

And he's producing them all himself.

So he's got to run from one thing to another.

And there's nothing but pre-tapes the whole goddamn show

because he wanted to hear everybody speak his fucking stupid words.

And that's why it took so long because nobody could deliver that shit.

It didn't make any sense.

So

we're all waiting to go over the shit that's going to take place in the ring in front of the people for 10 or 15 minutes while these minute and a half pre-tapes are going on.

Anyway,

then we all sat down.

I gave him the outline of the match exactly as written.

Savio sat in and witnessed.

I asked if there were any questions, and everyone said they had it.

Booker's only change here was: I wanted Shane to hit Steiner once on his comeback, but Booker said he wanted to keep the quote-unquote big comeback on him.

Once they got in the ring, it was a different match.

The Heels ate Eric up for three minutes, then Booker beat him and never let Petey in the ring.

And this was an elimination match, apparently, as you'll find out.

They keep going.

But yeah, just boom, boom, boom, bam.

Then

they ate Petey up.

And once they'd done that, then they started giving him hope spots, which was exactly backward from the way it was laid out.

Then Booker beat Petey too

instead of Steiner as it was supposed to be.

And Booker said afterwards he forgot because they were on a roll.

The match was boring and crappy, and Jeff was pretty much disgusted.

How often?

I remember him walking around shaking his head a lot.

How often do you ever hear that?

Like we forgot what we were doing because we were on a roll or some variation of that.

Is that a common excuse?

Not, not very.

No, I think that's the first time I'd ever heard it.

I've heard, yeah, we were on a roll.

We really kept it going, but not, we were on such a roll, I've forgotten did the wrong fucking thing.

Then Shane's big comeback because they wanted the referee.

They'd been milking this for where this is finally when Shane goes crazy and makes a comeback and reveals that he can take care of himself and he's going to transition to a wrestler or whatever.

Shane's big comeback consisted of four punches Booker staggered for before Steiner stopped him, which was what I had predicted to Sabio after hearing what Booker had said earlier.

Afterward, Eric and Petey were depressed about their showing and the match in general and complained that Booker would not go over anything beforehand, which is his usual MO, as he just calls it in the ring to make it quote unquote real.

And that's what he'd do.

Cause

again, as I've said, a lot of the guys would try to dig in and overcome the obstacles of having an idiot in charge of creative and a fucking bigger boron owning the company.

And a lot of guys would try hard and then zone out.

But some people were sometimes there because they got to go to the amusement park until about three o'clock in the afternoon.

And they live very close by.

Anyway, I told them not to worry as Jeff knew it wasn't their fault.

And I tried to come up with some suggestions for what they could have done to make it better without cooperation from their opponents, but I couldn't.

It was clear Booker and to somewhat lesser extent Steiner did not see these guys as belonging in the ring with them or worthy of selling for.

And so just ate them up and did just enough of what they were supposed to do to get by without being yelled at

and truthfully there's a point of

point of legitimacy to that too because it's booker t and scott steiner against p.t.

williams and eric young

and uh but anyway um

I said, Terry, let me know if this is the kind of thing you need going forward or if you need anything else.

I'll talk to you soon about my contract.

And he wrote back, said, this is exactly what we want.

Well done.

Please contact me anytime regarding your contract, which I then renewed.

And I think at a raise

within the next week or so.

And then that's why in the following

end of the September season, and I was doing a lot more work, I was thinking about another raise when we talked in January.

which we didn't end up talking in January.

But

that was, Jeff was there, but it was starting to be an issue.

The younger guys, the older guys, who's laying on their ass, who's really contributing.

You know, there was the Kurt Angle couldn't have worked any harder if he was a goddamn ditch digger, but and Mick Foley

overworked himself for the physical condition he was in while he was there.

A lot of the other guys

sometimes didn't want to do that.

And so Jeff was trying to keep control of everybody.

And at the same time,

you know, as we've said, the creative was just, it was a bone of contention with everybody.

Both the television production crew trying to shoot this shit and trying to be in 18 places at once because,

you know, the famous request, it wasn't in TNA.

It was in WCW.

But a number of the crew in TNA were there in WCW when.

Shitstain called them up on Friday and said, yeah, in Boston on Monday, we need a partridge family bus.

Like there's a store for those things.

So, every time that

would shark boy needed to live in a fish tank,

there would be actually people that were being paid to produce this television program in some respect or another.

That instead of concentrating on shit that needed to be done, they were out trying to build a goddamn apartment that looked like the inside of a fish tank

because somebody thought they were goddamn Orson Welles.

But anywho,

so that's why

that these agent reports for caught were called for, were asked for, whatever.

We're going to start doing this.

And Brian, you may say, well, where's the rest of them?

I think that was it until, again, the ones I've just read after Jeff was gone.

And Dixie wanted to know what was going on in her own company.

And everybody's got a fucking report in.

because

from what I remember,

I wrote this, which this was

two and a half or whatever pages typewritten, sent it in.

I think they got a lot of agent reports

either turned in on McDonald's napkins or not turned in at all, or told verbally at the bar that night at the hotel.

And so

they they didn't get the cooperation they wanted on that.

So they went and they wrote a kind of a, well, it says TNA official agent producer guidelines and report policy.

Does this sound like it might be anything you'd want to hear?

Oh, yeah.

So this is basically after that last round of reports,

someone there.

Maybe you know, you could tell us, but someone there said it was a good idea to put together an actual protocol for all the agents to know how to submit these reports that they were going to have to start submitting.

And how to do their job and when they're going to do it and who they're talking to and everything.

Because my report was sent in on January 16th.

This is dated February 19th.

So apparently they didn't get the fucking cooperation they wanted before.

So they sent this out.

This is to all

TNA agents, producers,

BG James, Luca Road Dog,

Jim Cornette,

Juan Rivera, Husavio Vega, Jeff Jarrett, Dutch Mantel, Vince Russo, Matt Conway, Bob Ryder, and Terry Taylor.

Immediately following each impact taping, a report, either verbal or written, will be given or relayed to Rudy for documentation by each producer agent on the individual matches or in rings they agented that night.

This report will be given before the agents leave the grounds of Universal.

In this way, agent reports should be in the system before 12 midnight.

In cases of pay-per-views, agents will be given 24 hours to submit the report in order to have the agents fresh when they deliver the report.

On TNA live event shows, the agent should submit the event report within 24 hours.

Okay, we got about five pages to go, but already they've shot themselves in the foot.

And here's the thing.

What they're saying is that, yes, after the TV taping, after you have gotten here at noon and you have sweat in this goddamn miserable Orlando, Florida weather, and you have run back and forth in these sound stages and you have done all the shit that we're about to fucking document that you need to do.

Then we want you to go and sit down and write a goddamn report and hand it in before you go to the hotel or wherever you're going where you can get some fucking food because it's already 9, 10 o'clock at night.

But on a pay-per-view, since you've been here since 11 this morning and it's already 11 at night, you got 24 hours.

That means you can leave here because you don't need to be back here for 12 hours to do the whole thing over again.

So you got plenty of time to write your report, right?

So they effectively not only

shut everybody else down from doing any kind of written report, but they even turned me off of it because there ain't no way I was going to fucking do that, right?

So

they immediately never got any more agent reports.

But

any questions before I continue on?

No, no questions right now.

So what, and I mean, do you see that?

Because I said to Terry, I said,

how the fuck are we going to sit after our brains are fried and we just need something to eat and some sleep, we're going to sit down and write this before we come over here and do all of this again?

And then again, the next day, I said, Are you out of here?

Nobody's going to do this.

Guess what?

Nobody did it.

So then

only agents listed above will be allowed in the room for the agent meeting immediately following the production meeting.

So after we have the production meeting with TV crew and announcers, referee, various people.

going over the show, then all the agents are supposed to have a meeting.

The meeting room will be completely cleared so as not to have any other distractions.

All agents' producers, except Jeff Jarrett, who will be holding a similar meeting on production issues with Keith Mitchell and Dave Sahati inside the impact zone, will meet with Dutch and Vince as a group for storyline and match purposes.

All pertinent info relating to the matches will be written out on the impact format sheets.

that each agent will have

that we just went over in the production meeting.

Any questions that arise should be and will be hashed out with Dutch and Vince at that time.

When all questions have been answered and each agent is satisfied that he has enough info, he will then take the information and convey it to the individual talents involved.

All agents will also be informed as to whether they will need to meet with Keith Mitchell or Dave Sahi later in the day for extra elements involved in a segment match, such as outside-the-ring activity, lighting, music cues, special camera shots, or special entrances such as lights out or the suicide entrance.

Agents,

Mowage.

Agents will inform talents early in the day if there is a walkthrough scheduled for their match and a time will be given for the walkthrough.

All talent will be expected to meet the scheduled time unless a valid reason prohibits them from attending, such as a pre-tape, photo shoot, or other pending company business.

Talent should inform the agent as soon as possible if there is a conflict with the meeting of the specified time.

Agent will then reschedule the walkthrough.

Failure to meet the walkthrough time can result in a warning or fine.

And then parakeets are going to fly out my ass as I whistle Dixie on a xylophone while eating Christmas fruit cake my Aunt Fanny baked me.

Nobody was ever fined.

Nobody was ever disciplined for not meeting a time of a walkthrough because everything was always behind, because everybody was wandering around

with their own grumpiness going on in a fucking amusement park, sound stage, with their own agendas and doing shit stains pre-tapes all fucking day.

There was no fucking time schedule for anything.

You could say that.

And you'd be standing out there with your dick in your hand.

If a walkthrough is not scheduled, Brian, the match will be laid out by the agent as prescribed by creative, and talent will then take charge of the execution of the match.

Talent will then relay back to the agent how the match will be executed.

And the agent, at his discretion, can suggest changes and make sure that the match meets with what creative has laid out.

Agent needs to know from talent any special moves or looks so that the truck needs to be alerted.

And I mean, there's more and more about lighting effects and et cetera.

And Mike calls and talk to the floor director.

And

all talent should be,

no talent is to leave the go position unless Bob Ryder instructs them to do so.

All talent run-ins will be directed from the truck and relayed to the go position.

All agents are to be, this is,

and you're supposed to brush your teeth in the morning and you're supposed to eat lunch before you starve to death these are all details that go into the job

but what they did was they ran a disorganized

operation in many ways especially on tv days because of the

somewhat short staffedness of production crew and the short

mentality

of the creative department.

And nothing ever hit a fucking schedule.

And you're running back and forth doing all this shit, but nobody could ever.

I mean, it goes on for pages and pages.

Do you know who actually wrote this?

Like who put the words to paper?

Yeah, yes.

What Dixie again said, oh, we got to have a standard procedure for all of this.

And then they all sat down, everybody in the office, and she fielded all the ideas and all the input, and then had somebody

write this all fucking out like anybody was going to enforce it or could even ever remember it.

Failure to meet the guidelines set forth by the agent producer can result in a warning or fine.

In case of a fine, it'll be up to each individual agent to suggest a fine within their report.

However, before a fine is levied, a warning will be issued by talent relations to the talent via email and phone call.

Talent Relations will then copy creative and the individual agent on the warning so that communication is maintained.

In this manner, both talent relations, creative, the agent, and the individual talent, sounds like more than both, will all be aware that a warning has been issued.

If a second warning is issued, a fine could be levied.

In the case of a fine, the procedure above will be followed.

What the fuck is it?

Jesus.

You know how many people I ever find in TNA as the head agent?

How many?

Nobody.

Because they'd have fucking laughed at me.

Because they're like, we're out here in this goddamn fucking zoo in the middle of this shit.

And

you're finding me because I didn't show up at 3:15 for the in-ring walkthrough.

I mean, it's just,

it's what in a perfect world

everyone would do at a wrestling taping for five pages, ignoring the fact that their world wasn't perfect and that nobody was ever going to get to anybody.

Even if Jeff Jerry, if Phil Watts was there,

they couldn't follow this.

This would have been a memo that Watts would have fucking torn up.

to make it easier to give the talent reports is another reason why they're never anymore done.

I got the form over here.

I can't reach it, but instead of making the agents right,

God forbid that happened,

they came up with a form that you could just fill out like agent name, match.

And it's like a report card thing, attitude, and a little box that you could like write four words in or check or make a comment.

Attitude, performance, like grammar,

you know,

congeniality.

How are they groomed?

Well groomed, well dressed,

and then sign it at the bottom.

That's make it easier to hand in.

I said, I can't fucking do this.

How the fuck did I write anything meaningful on this?

This is caca.

So it just all went away.

Well, so did you from TNA.

And apparently, any Christmas cards I'm going to get from Booker Team, I'm not mad at him.

I'm not knocking Booker, but he just, he was the one that just wasn't going to put up with this foolishness.

And he let everybody know how miserable he was about it.

Was he like that from the moment he got there?

No, I think he liked it the first month or so, I think.

And it was like, oh, God damn.

I was like, I used to, with Road Dog and fucking Savio, I was like, God damn, I'll flip y'all for Booker's match, or I'll buy y'all's cheese steaks at at the commissary.

Here you take Booker's Match.

Because he would point out every goddamn thing that was wrong with the stupid shit that was on the format and was told to us by creative to do.

And a lot of people would do that, but then we would sit down and be constructive to find ways around it and everybody working together.

Bookard would pick everything apart and take the piss out of it, but not be interested in solving it in any way, just telling us what's wrong with it.

Come back.

When you fix it, come back and see me.

Well, fuck.

Throw something in here.

Did he ever say anything to Russo?

I don't know because I, you know, if

I was never around,

the only time I was ever with any talent and Russo is when we would have to go get him.

Remember that time I told you a story was

there was somehow he had written something where

the match had a finish, but the match had never started.

There was never an official official start to a fucking wrestling match.

A fight broke out, and somehow they're doing a finish with a referee.

And I asked in the production meeting,

I said, How can we have a finish when the match never started?

Ah, nobody will notice.

So, to a man, to a single breathing human, every time that I got somebody in the segment and explained to them what we were going to do, the first thing they said was, well, the match never started.

So I called him over.

And in front of the talent, I said,

How can we finish the match when it never starts?

And he said some shit.

And when he left, they all looked at me and said,

We don't understand what the fuck he's talking about.

So we just made up a goddamn start to the fucking match

and put it in there.

So I was never in a lot of

joint meetings with talent with Russo.

I don't know whether

Booker, he wouldn't say any specific person.

Maybe he didn't know that, you know, who was behind it.

Dutch was on the creative team.

One would think that everybody would know well enough not to blame Dutch.

And I, you know, Jeff would come in.

Whenever you would have to, he would call Jeff in,

he would just

simplify it like it should have been to begin with, take out the really stupid parts everybody had a problem with and just tighten it up and go the same direction.

But it, you know, it just, there were varying degrees of who was helpful bearing up under what we all had to bear up under

and who just, you know, was pissy about it because

they were pissy about it.

Anyway, that's more of that type of TNA paperwork.

And that's what, you know, it was, it was a mark owning the company that would make

to say, well, we ought to do this.

Send everybody out a guideline.

So then everybody's got to sit down.

And well, what should the guidelines be?

And then when you realize

to write down a wrestling producer or agent's job or booker's job,

you could just sit there and write until the day is over with and you've done nothing because it could be anything.

You have to know what

when you talk to guys and they go over a match.

You have to know what then would need to be relayed to the truck.

I don't need to tell the director he's going to grab a headlock right before the hip toss,

but I do need to tell the director and so he can relay to the cameramen if the guy's going to jump up to the top rope and dive out into the fucking crowd.

They might miss that.

They don't know it's coming.

Or if I'm talking to the guys and they want to do something and there's going to be a big run-in.

Well, maybe they want to do it in the wrong place.

Maybe it needs to be on the other side of the ring with their back to so-and-so so they don't see something coming.

But then I got to go tell the goddamn director that you need to be shooting with your hand held on the right side of the ring post instead of the left like normal, because if they come that way, you won't be able to see them.

And it's just endless running back and forth all goddamn day with details that you have to know who needs to know this in this chain of command of chain of events of things and who doesn't need to know it.

And you need to tell the, know how to tell the people that need to know what they need to know, and don't waste the time of the people, it ain't going to matter anyway.

And that's being a wrestling agent.

The head agent.

Well, I didn't get enough head.

Not for that job.

I've had easier jobs where I got more head.

But, Brian, would you like to know how to get ahead?

Yeah.

Don't get in the wrestling business.

Here's the thing, folks, right now, do not get in the wrestling business.

Instead, what you need to do is you need to come up with a dream.

You need to have a dream.

You need to have a product in mind or a service in mind or something that you can release upon the world.

Goods and services and things.

that will make life better for other people and will make you a shit ton load of money in the process.

And I can't think of anybody better.

Yes, as you hear the ringing of the cash register that is on the bicycle connected to the basket of the old woman who lives down the way.

Oh, come on now.

I can't think of any better partner that anybody with a dream could have than Shopify because Shopify, they're the dream factory, baby.

They're like the MGM Studios of 2025, more stars than there are in the heavens.

They They are going to take and they're going to put a marketing team behind you.

They're going to put expertise in websites behind you.

They're going to use a commerce platform that's a heavy-hitting platform serving millions of businesses around the world.

They're going to put it behind you.

And you better hope that nobody starts fucking throwing shit because

You're going to be hit first, but you're going to be the face, if all goes right, of this this dynamic new company that's going to make you a ton of money.

Because also

Shopify, they're already known around the world, the purple button that people love to punch.

Brian, what happens every time somebody punches a purple button?

Somebody else makes money.

Somebody else, there you go.

See, they're doing it already.

Every time somebody punches a purple button, an angel gets his wings and somebody else gets one of your products,

whatever it may be.

I guess they could get more of your products if they want to.

They can buy as many of your products as they want.

Would you just stop that now?

I think we've got the idea.

The point is, Shopify is your commerce expert with world-class expertise at everything from managing inventory.

to international shipping to processing returns.

They've got a marketing team.

They have got AI tools.

They've got ready-to-use templates.

They've got design studio experts.

All they need is you.

Turn your life over to them.

Repent.

Change your ways.

Get on the wagon.

Stay away from demon rum and turn your life over to Shopify.

And in turn, they'll be your sugar daddy.

And they will pay for, they'll pay for everything because they'll make you a ton of money.

You'll be rolling in filthy lucre.

You'll be able to have the

absolute best cosmetic surgery.

Brian, if, if, if you want something taken off, you'll be able to afford to have it taken off.

If you want something put on,

you'll be able to afford to have it put on and get the extra large.

I don't know what.

That's all because what?

That's because you're going to make a fortune with a, you're going to be a big business typhoon with our friends at Shopify behind you.

And right now, you can turn your big business idea into reality and

cha-ching.

Cha-ching.

There you go.

With Shopify on your side by signing up for a $1 a month trial period and start selling today at shopify.com slash JCE.

You sign up with Shopify, you're going to be selling like an auctioneer.

You're going to be screaming.

Oh, my God.

Oh, I can't take it no more.

That's not what you're going to be screaming.

You're going to be

wrong kind of selling.

Enjoy metaphorically inside your head because there are all those great sales and the great partner you have building up your store.

Of course, Jim, Shopify powers our online store and they can power the listeners, our good friends at Shopify.

They can power you too.

So

power up, folks.

Shopify.com/slash JCE, a $1 a month trial period.

Of course, you'll never want to let them go.

Never want to give you up.

Never want to let you.

You will never want to stop fondling your representative of Shopify.

Shopify.

Let's not put it that way.

Well, you're going to praise them and make over them and pat on them and hug them and kiss them and squeeze them and call him George at shopify.com slash JCE for that.

For that $1 a month trial period,

somebody's going to at least have to put out once, aren't they, to get a deal like that the deal is based around the wonderful help you'll be getting in this new partnership with shopify again they power our store and there's no sexual quid pro quo it's just about commerce and business and doing the right no they're your business our friends at shopify who we're going to say nice things about our friends

at shopify yes yes there's there's no quid pro quo they don't have to do anything dirty back to you but it seems like for them giving you such a good deal deal, you ought to at least a little hand action under the table.

Again, one more

time, Jim, that promo code for that great deal

for that hand action under the table.

Shopify.com.

Nope.

That wasn't the deal we didn't have.

That wasn't the deal.

I wasn't speaking of.

No,

there's another great deal I was specifically speaking about.

Do you know what it is?

You're speaking about that deal.

Shopify.

Shopify.com/slash JCE is the $1 a month trial period deal type of thing.

Five knuckle shuffle option.

That is what it is, of course.

Shopify.com slash JCE.

All righty, Brad.

I guess while we're talking about stroking organs and pleasuring people and giving them all kinds of good feely-feely rubby rubs, Uncle Dave

is at it again.

He is graded.

What do you call it like a gymnastics gymnastics scoring system

in the Olympics?

He's gray, or he's given out report cards to the children on their cheerleading routines.

Or how would you describe the

over-effusive,

verbal, and

potentially manual fellatio that he gives all of these matches on these AEW pay-per-views, Brian?

He's done it again.

He's overdoing it.

He's just gone off the beam again.

Well, you would have to think if there was ever a show

looking at the lineup, all in Texas may cause the most

you know private orgasms of any show in wrestling, other than maybe Dream Slam or Dream Slam.

But now, when I thought, I thought that Uncle Dave is all about the athleticism and the flippy-flops and the cheerleading routines and the gymnastics and the roundoffs and the Japanese fighting spirit.

I didn't think he liked the garbage wrestling and the broken glass and the barbed wire and the fucking Drano down the throat and the flamethrowers and the tomfoolery.

He says sometimes it works for that room, but does he really

put on the same level as his precious gymnasts, the kind of guys that,

you know, fucking bite the heads off chickens and do that type of thing?

He's still supporting this just because it works in the room.

Well, it was a big one.

Did Rex Reed, when he was reviewing movies, say, well,

I hated goddamn behind the green door, but everybody around me was jacking off, so it worked for the room.

I missed that Rex Reed column.

I was wondering.

Let's go to this.

In his era, it was Siskel and Ebert weren't old enough to get in at the time.

Let's go now.

Did you hear?

Let's talk about the injury list first now, Brian.

Okay.

Because some people are hurt after the pay-per-view now we

they did 18 hospitalization angles but son of a bitch one

at least one of the people they carried out on the stretcher is actually hurt now pair they carried joe out samoa joe

but he's going to go do

promotion

for a television program that he's involved in

So they broke his neck and carried him out on a stretcher.

Unless he does that promotional tour with a goddamn neck brace like I did

after Bullet Bob Armstrong Powell drove me, then it's just bullshit.

You have a talent

in that company where nobody thinks anybody is a star in the real world because they're not.

Right?

They don't have movie stars.

They don't have.

MJF is going to be in happy Gilmore number 17 or whatever.

And

that's a big deal for them.

But they can't just say, hey, Samoa Joe's in a TV show.

He's going to be going around the world tour, and they have to hospitalize him on their TV so everybody sees it.

Go, oh, yeah,

he's supposed to be in a hospital.

So that's Joe.

Did you hear about Osprey, Brian?

You know, I had just heard about this, actually.

Funny you bring it up.

I had just heard that he...

Apparently is really, really banged up, as you would suspect someone who wrestles the style he does would be.

so apparently it was a good thing they didn't put the world title on him because now he's taken off of a month or so

and the guy only i i i say only wrestles once a week but honestly with the like you said the that he does of his own volition i'm surprised he's not a goddamn iron lung already but now they've lost osprey for at least the next several weeks.

And

their big pay-per-view in August is the forbidden door.

All them furiners like Osprey, they love to come through the forbidden door.

Now he can't come through the forbidden door because it's not handicap accessible.

But the one that really kills me, Brian.

Oh, I didn't know there was another one.

Mina Mellons.

You didn't hear about Mina?

I have Mina Shirakawa for the record.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

No.

She broke her hand.

She is out with a broken hand.

So they did some some kind of angle or said something.

They blamed it on Athena.

But do you know how she broke her hand apparently?

No,

giving Thunder Rosa a spinning back fist.

She broke her hand on Thunder Rosa's head.

Wow.

How's Thunder Rosa?

Nobody said.

They didn't say they didn't think to ask.

they did not think to ask well how's how's the bridge of thunder rose's nose or whatever that didn't come up is that a tough move to work a spinning well of course that's why you're a idiot if you do it or take it it's more this japanese

where

again i'm sorry but for um

the past couple of generations over there, if you get brain damage, they take it as a fucking badge of honor.

No,

the discus punch for Carrie was a work, but spinning around backwards where you really are swinging a fist when you can't see where it's going, fuck you.

I'm not going to be there when you turn around.

It's fucking stupid.

But anyhow, we wish them all the best in their future recoveries.

But now at least Moxley isn't isn't the champion anymore.

But now it's Paige, which is

shite, but

should have been Osprey, but now he's fucking hurt anyway, so he'd be out.

So, what did Uncle Dave think about all of this?

Certainly, he took a stand on the distastefulness of the final contest, but we'll find out when we get there.

Well, we have it here.

This is the new Wrestling Observer newsletter for

what's the date on this thing?

July 21st, 2025.

The star ratings for all in Texas, the day-long extravaganza.

You could have fit every parade of champions inside of the length of this show.

The opening contest, Jim, Marshall, and Ross von Erich, and Dustin Rhodes, and Sammy Guevara,

beating Shane Taylor, Lee Moriarty, Charlie Bravo, and Sean Dean seven minutes, 12 seconds, two and a quarter stars.

Well, we didn't see it, so we can't take them to task for that.

But one would

one would think, with the way that he just bestows stars like Tinker Bell sprinkling the fucking fairy dust, that you would give the Von Ericks a few more stars

in the heart of Texas, but that's just me.

Well, again, we didn't see it.

Something's causing Swami to go ape shit in the background.

Big

Swami doesn't even agree with these things.

Big Boom AJ

and and Hologram,

and Tomo Hiro, Ishii,

and Kyle O'Reilly.

There's a team for you.

Defeated Rocky Romero, Trent Peretto, Lance Archer, and Hetchichero, who just signed a contract.

Okay, hold on.

I'm going to say, obviously, you have to think that anything that the earlier guys were involved in, the Von Erickson, Texas, a few of those, Dustin Rhodes, great worker, got two and a half stars.

This

conglomeration of mess,

the only reason it's going to get more than that is because there's a Japanese fellow in it.

I don't know if that's the reason, but in 12 minutes and 50 seconds, three-star match.

There you go.

Jim, FTR

defeated the Outrunners, 16 minutes, 18 seconds, three-star match.

I would think that's kind of right down the middle.

FTR can get something out of most folks.

Didn't go overboard, but didn't say it stunk.

Maybe he's going to be realistic today.

Says the Outrunners dressed as Newport Menthol cigarettes.

There was actually a Newport's chant during the match.

It was good, but nothing compared to their TV match.

So apparently they had a match, I'm going to guess, on collision, that was better than three stars.

Samoa Joe, Katsuyuri Shibata, and Powerhouse Hobbs, otherwise known as the Ops, defeated Gabe Kidd, Claudio Casignoli, and Wheeler Yuta, 14 minutes, 30 seconds,

3 35 stars.

Oh, good.

All right, here we start again.

Now, if it's on the main show,

everything's got to be 3.5 or above.

Another multiple-man match, but

we saw that.

And

now I guess that means all the pre-show matches stunk if this was better than them.

MJF won the Casino Battle Royal

34 minutes, 51 seconds,

four-star match.

They had the ingredients of something in there.

They got sidetracked and it went a while and et cetera, et cetera.

But

again, you know, this is

we're

not talking about

Undertaker Michaels angle fucking flare steamboat territory in any of this shit.

And it's just, it's embarrassing at this point for Uncle Dave.

This is what he wrote about the Adam Cole promo.

He apparently seriously considered announcing his retirement, but said that he's just not in the frame of mind to say anything about it yet.

This shocked the crowd silent, and they stayed that way for a while.

Dustin Rhodes won the TNT Championship over Sammy Guevara, Kyle Fletcher, and Daniel Garcia.

15 minutes, 21 seconds,

three-star match.

I mean,

I would think that that one would have been better than the opening match, and we didn't even care for it, but nevertheless.

Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay defeated the Young Bucks 26 minutes,

17 17 seconds.

Here we go.

Five and a half star match.

This was one of the best tag team matches ever held in the U.S.

Oh my God.

And it was particularly impressive the way they turned the crowd around.

What?

And had them heading for the Owls?

What is he talking about?

How they turned the crowd around?

I guess because they were dead silent for the Young Bucks coming out there and for the early portion of the match before they started kicking out of every single move they could do.

The crowd wasn't as into it.

So this is what you have to do to have the...

Now, by the way, the best tag team match in the United States, at least in 35 or 40 years or so, did come from AEW.

But as we recall, it was...

FTR versus Jay White and Juice Robinson out of nowhere on collision.

And that two summers ago, I still have that show on my DVR.

That was one of the best matches I've seen in years from anybody, any company.

This was not that.

This was a collection of fucking amateur gymnasts trying to land on their feet whenever they wanted to and show everybody that this is a bunch of horseshoe

legitimate sport.

And you see it more and more today than ever before.

The people don't react to the bucks.

They react to the spots.

Well, yeah, because nobody gives a shit about these two turd blossoms, and they haven't for a long time.

And when they start doing all the flips, every ah,

and then it's over with, and they wait for people to do more flips or fall through more furniture.

But no, that this was the best of anything, no, except

again, if they're auditioning for America's Got Talent,

the

tumbling routine was wonderful.

But

this is Dave's issue.

Yeah, this is Dave's issue.

He likes to watch children play.

I'm beginning to worry about him.

Has he got a raincoat?

Jim Athena.

I don't know if he has a raincoat.

Athena won the women's gauntlet match for a title shot.

26 minutes, 59 seconds, four-star match.

Of course it was.

I mean, again, this was in the middle of this seven-hour fucking journey through misery.

We didn't watch it.

I don't care what he thought of it.

All right.

Well, the next match: Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin, the Hurt Syndicate, won a three-way to retain their titles over Christian Cage and Nick Wayne.

And Mike Bailey and Kevin Knight,

18 minutes, 59 seconds,

four-star match.

Oh, Jesus.

And was it, was

Was he also grading on the ridiculousness of the multiple angles at the end of the thing and the whole awkwardness of this whole quasi-turn that somebody is doing?

Yeah, it appears he just recounted what happened without any opinion or conjecture.

Okay.

I mean, I love the Hurt Syndicate.

They did the best they could, but this was a mess.

Tony Storm defeated Mercedes Monet

to retain her AEW Women's Championship 25 minutes, 12 seconds,

four and three-quarter stars.

It never ends.

Every match is just greater than the next.

Just

absolutely greater than the next.

And now they're almost at five stars.

Okay.

Kazushiko Okada defeated Kenny Omega, 30 minutes, 31 seconds to unify.

All right.

Now, here's the test.

Here is the fucking test.

He's seen great American matches.

He's seen great Japanese matches.

This was neither.

It was two guys

that used to do great things

that can't anymore, and one of them doesn't try, Okada.

Certainly, he had to be disappointed considering what they have done in the past, what they've been capable of with what they turned out here.

Four and three-quarter stars.

The strategy was to treat this not as match five of the 2017 to 2018 series, with the idea many people watching had not seen that prior series, but as match one of the AEW 2025 series.

Well,

they did that.

It was a match, and you don't want to see it again.

I think even fans of Omega, and I guess even maybe Okana, I think even they think the interference was a bit much for the match.

But

the main event:

Adam Page

defeated Jon Moxley to win the AEW World Championship, Texas death match, 35 minutes,

53 seconds,

five and a half stars.

This convoluted mess, this garbage-minded wrestling match, alleged wrestling match between these two dipshits who don't have any idea how to put anything together, the multiple hospitalization angles, multiple referees being buried by people wandered around just doing shit for the sake of it, people running in, diving in, rappelling in,

blood being splattered everywhere, people being stabbed with forks and thrown through furniture and goddamn carried out on stretchers

and falling in broken glass.

And

didn't they have something around?

They had the chair wrapped in barbed wire.

And

he thinks this is somehow somehow a great

accomplishment in our dear sport.

According to Dave Meltzer, this was an epic.

And the work is rotten.

And the work when you talk about Moxley, his work is rotten.

Go ahead.

According to Dave Meltzer, this was an epic Texas death match, perhaps the best one I've ever seen.

And it's not the kind of match I like at all.

But given the story, the interference was part of it and not a crutch for it.

And the weapons were also part of the story.

The story being that Moxley's a moron who likes these stupid weapons, I guess.

And

likes to slice himself up on purpose in front of people.

Well, there they are.

And just to complete the night,

real quick, I'll give you the star ratings for Saturday night's main event.

Orton beating Drew McIntyre, eight minutes, 24 seconds, two and three-quarter stars.

Not to say it was any better than that or worse than that.

Solo Sokoa defeated Jimmy Uso, 10 minutes, 48 seconds, three and three-quarter stars.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

L.A.

Night defeated.

That wasn't three and three-quarter if the first one was two and a half.

No, I don't think so.

L.A.

Knight defeated Seth Rollins, 11 minutes, 36 seconds, 3.5 stars.

What?

And Gunther defeated Bill Goldberg, 14 minutes, 19 seconds, and a half stars.

I think he's gone out of his mind for everybody, but he just loves the other folks more.

But

it's just, it's ridiculous that suddenly this one company has done what no other wrestling promotion in the history of the world has ever done.

And that's put on like 18 five-star matches over the course of this, all of it with bad work,

holes you could drive a semi-truck through in the booking, unconvincing promos,

and a bunch of fucking children out there doing their tumbling routines.

And this is his dream wrestling promotion.

This is why, because they listen to him, because Tony's a mark for him.

Tony's a mark for everything.

And the boys just want this praise.

They'll never get any better because they won't change anything because he's telling them this is all great.

And for the record, a match that I thought was really good, Women's Evolution main event.

Naomi winning the world title during EO versus Rhea, 26 minutes, 18 seconds,

four and three-quarter stars.

Almost there.

Almost got it.

It's as good as five, but it's not five.

But it's as good as five if you learn.

What would you like to learn what they did on AEW this past Wednesday briefly?

No, please.

No, no.

Well, Professor,

we're going to just run through a bit of it.

There's a couple of things I'm going to comment on.

And otherwise, again, I'm in the malaise like I am with the WWE.

It's even harder to watch the WWE because the regular television programs are longer.

And

on the streaming, as we know, it's harder to skip through things.

But now, apparently, AEW, this was July 16th.

They've landed in Chicago for their residency at the Aragon Ballroom.

And

I got to be honest with you, it actually looked better.

It's a smaller crowd, but it's a loud crowd.

They can get some good shots because the room is kind of picturesque.

You can't tell there's nobody there like you could when they were in the bigger buildings or just the nondescript, empty exhibition hall kind of buildings.

But

they're going to do like eight shows over the next three weeks or whatever in this

in this building in Chicago.

Shouldn't they have

before they booked eight shows in a row in Chicago, thought, well, I guess we shouldn't have run punk off?

He could have goddamn turned them away from

all of these shows.

I have to say, it looked cool.

You know, I know it was kind of a mental block to go to the smaller buildings and eventually they did and it's been hit or miss, but I think it looked really cool.

It looked different.

You wanted it to look different to WWE, not like you're trying to, you know, have that kind of production when you can't.

And I thought it was really cool.

The only thing they missed was giving everybody a special Owl's number one Chicago Italian beef.

I think that would have made the experience.

But

here's my problem.

That's why I was kind of burnt on this show.

Nothing has changed.

After that marathon pay-per-view, at least we'll get rid of Dick the Boozer as world champion, or we'll get rid of the goddamn EVP bullshit

or whatever.

Well, the same people are on the show doing the same things.

It's just they

moved them into a different position.

And

Adam Page was first out, the new world champion, going to do a live interview.

They made sure to mention the new world champion.

He's in a six-man tag team match tonight.

And he gets in a ring.

Tony Schiavone hands him the microphone and just wanders off.

What a fucking great interview.

Barbara Walters, move over.

And Paige does the same thing

that he always does.

He's memorized a very verbose statement with a lot of eloquent, meaningful things that he memorizes and delivers with the fake tough guy vase vase, voice and face.

And nobody really talks like that.

And he sounds like a douchebag.

What's the point?

And the pandering, too, the pandering to the audience that actually I feel.

Well, that's the thing: nobody goes, yes, you deserve it when they're chanting, you deserve it.

No, you deserve it.

Okay, he's a baby face.

That's great.

But then he never smiles.

He goes through this statement.

You are the ones who demanded a fully realized pro wrestling.

What the fuck is that?

That was a quote.

You were the ones who demanded a fully realized pro wrestling.

And then he said, a do-it-yourself pro wrestling.

And I could buy that.

It does look do-it-yourself, but why is he saying these things?

Is it we do this all because of you?

Now it's our

You see, that's where that's where it's supposed to.

We do this all for you.

Tony should cut a salary then.

That should be the next move.

Yeah.

You told me what your motivation is, buddy.

Half off.

But that was the whole promo.

He said nothing to set up nothing

besides the overflowery thank you to the fans and the rah-rah speech for AEW.

Because we're the greatest company.

And he thanked,

he thanked a lot of people.

But he started, I want to thank Orange Cassidy.

Where the fuck did that come from?

It made no sense.

I'm sure he did something a while back, and this guy's a friend of his, but goddamn, he thanked Orange Cassidy, Jay White, Edge, Shapupi, Hobbs, Samoa Joe, Brian Danielson, Darby Allen, Osprey.

And then the fans chanted Swerve's house and he had to thank Swerve.

Well, you know what that was?

That That was him running down the people that have tried to knock off Moxley since he won the belt.

Wasn't Orange Cassidy one of the first?

I don't know or care, but this went for fucking ever.

And then finally, he said,

you know, I bled and I sweat.

And yes, I cried it all in.

And they say that makes me weak.

Yeah, it does.

You're a fucking weak pussy.

Yeah.

But he says, they say that makes me weak.

But I have a wife and two kids who love me and millions of fans.

So

he didn't actually say it didn't make him weak.

He just said, I don't care if it makes me weak because I got a wife and two kids.

The millions of fans, I think, was an exaggeration.

And then he got bleeped for saying fuck and it was over.

I'm the fucking world champion.

There's no.

He doesn't.

I see people saying, oh my God, he's connecting with the fans.

He doesn't connect with people verbally.

Maybe these people, they're already connected.

They're very easy to plug into.

But if you're talking about a widespread audience, he's not a CM Punk.

He's not a Drew McIntyre.

He's not an MJF if you're talking about this company verbally.

He does the same shit and it sounds the same way.

He has the same fucking look on his douchebaggy face, same fucking rotten haircut.

Does the same stupid shit in his matches.

This looks like it'll be a successful title run.

Yes, yeah, it's going to be great.

Kyle Felcher beat Masquerita Dorito in 11 minutes.

So now they're doing the thing where the Hardley boys are being

bullied and made fun of and talked down to because they're not EVPs anymore.

And now everybody everybody can say what they really think

like they couldn't to begin with, right?

Renee Moxley Good made fun of them and Marina Schaefer blew him off without speaking to him.

And they found their locker room door and a guy was crossing out EVPs with a black Sharpie.

But they can't even do this.

Yeah, why would they have the locker room then?

Well, but besides that, they're acting.

And that's what it was, acting.

they act because they're trying to be funny somehow.

They amuse themselves, I guess.

But they were trying to be funny with the bad acting.

And so it's not even convincing that they're really upset or that anybody's doing anything to them.

It's just bullshit, like in one of their little YouTube videos.

And

they tell Don Fallus, well, we're not going to join your family, but we might be friends.

This is, I wrote, this is continuing.

I thought they were writing them off the show.

I foolishly hoped

that they'd realize nobody wants to see these two fucking jackoffs.

And, but no, they're going to continue it.

They're just not EVPs anymore.

So they're going to be phony in a lesser role.

Because then

they come out

for their match with Josh Alexander and Chi-Chi-Chi-Chia.

Isn't Josh Alexander a heel?

I thought he was part of the child.

No, I forgot.

Wasn't he?

Well, hold on.

This is what I'm writing.

I said they come out for a match with Chichi Chia and Josh Alexander.

And I wrote, isn't Josh Alexander a heel?

Then I realized it's an eight-man tag team match.

I saw the other team come out.

Then here come these two nitwits saying, okay, no, it's an eight-man.

But they get a separate entrance where they don't get Pyro.

The video shows them getting beat up,

and they get a phony ring announcement where the announcer is like he doesn't care about.

So now these four

have to go in an eight-man tag with Hong Kong Fuye, Bandito, Kevin Knight, and Brody King.

Another eight-man tag.

Why don't they try to set something up or get somebody over by having a straight tag team match?

We forgot because they can't.

The Hardley boys need multiple people to play with and bounce off of and alley oop them up in the air.

So everybody in the match finally hit somebody with everything

while that hollow-eyed, hairless, slack-jawed imbecile Rick Knox just stood there and gaped at him.

And they did some really phony shit and beat Bandito.

And the Heels beat the babyfaces.

I don't think they cheated.

You can't really tell.

They just kind of beat them.

But that was 15 minutes.

Are they not even smart enough to realize now they did a job on the pay-per-view?

So now if they're going to still be on the program, they should come out and kind of get a win back in a tag match and do something to

impress someone somehow.

That's the boring old way they used to do things, Grandpa.

We do things differently.

We don't rely on those old wrestling tropes until everything doesn't work.

Well, it was at nine o'clock now, Brian.

Halfway through this son of a bitch,

Edge came out and the crowd sang to him and he thanked the fans.

We do this all for you.

So now here.

Oh, God.

Edge on the pay-per-view came out when Cage had been attacked by his own minions, Nick Plain and Nick Plain's mom and Pip Sabian.

And they beat the shit out of Christian Cage

after they had lost the tag team match.

And Edge came out, ran the heels off, picked up Christian, and said, go find yourself,

which was not what Christian said to Edge, which was, go fuck yourself

back before.

So now Edge says, I didn't come out to save Cage.

Cage has made me miserable, done a bunch of rotten things to me, all because of jealousy.

And I don't blame Nick and Pip for what they did.

So now he's agreeing with the heels.

You should have turned on my old partner.

There's nothing untoward or out of the way about that.

He said, I told you they'd do it.

I told you so.

I hope that Christian pulls his head out of his ass.

But I came back to get FTR.

Boy, this is a convoluted turn of somebody.

I think it's the babyface turn of Christian, if anyone's turning.

Well, but wouldn't he be mad at goddamn, then the babyface turn needs to be.

He's mad at his former cohorts that turned on him and beat him up and left him laying there.

But if Edge wants FTR

and they're trying to get Christian and Edge back together, then doesn't Edge have to help Christian kick the shit out of Nick and Pip

before Christian will help Edge kick the shit out of FTR?

I don't know if there's an order of events.

It's just revenge, kind of like kill Bill style.

One by one, I'll take you all down.

Edge is mad because FTR helped him get back in shape so that he could.

come back to wrestling.

And then he came there and they formed rated FTR.

And then they started complaining.

And they put me on a shelf for four months.

Well, I've been doing this for 33 years.

I don't have four months.

I'm like, God damn.

Ah, way to remind people that you're even older than you are.

They don't know he started when he was 16 or whatever.

Then, goddamn, what is he?

Fucking 60?

Then FTR's music plays, but FTR is not there.

It's Stokely and security guys.

And Stokely comes out and starts doing a promo.

The problem is

nobody would listen to him because now they've decided that it's fun for them to boo over Stokely like they do over Dominic and they were doing for a while over Don.

They ain't going to listen to him.

They're going to boo over it.

But Stokely needs time to cut promos and he needs things to say and events to be.

constructed to where he's taken seriously because nobody takes him seriously.

He's dressed in the fucking warm-up suit and he can talk and he's got some facial expressions, but he has never, ever

been allowed to do anything

that would seriously affect anything serious.

He's never been the reason why somebody won a world championship or something important.

He's never been presented as a legitimate top manager.

well, neither is Don.

Don just does shit to look like a clown, too, and over-funny everything.

But FTR needs a fucking Heyman, not a goddamn Scatman Cruthers.

So then they don't listen to him.

But it's probably a good thing because the message that he was delivering was he's gone and pulled strings.

And if Edge attacks FTR, then he's fired.

So let me get this straight.

Everybody else in the company can just come out at random in the back, in the parking lot, in goddamn hotel rooms in the ring, and just lay waste to whoever the fuck they want.

But Stokely's important enough

that he made him, made Tony Khan say, well, if Edge fucks with FTR, I'll just fire that fucking Edge.

They just make rules when they want them.

The rules where nobody can interfere in this kind of title match.

And we'll have it on the show and everybody's like, well, you can't interfere in this match.

And then you'll have a match in two segments where everybody interferes.

Why couldn't you fucking stop them?

Oh, it wasn't the right kind of title match.

What the fuck?

So nobody listened to Stokely.

Edge is fired if he attacks FTR.

Edge didn't sell like he was upset, mad,

or in any way offended by anything that Stokely said.

He got the fans to chant oompa loompa at him.

He wasn't upset about the stipulation that he would be fired.

He then booted security, threw them all out of the ring.

Stokely, for some reason, turned his back.

I think to look for more security, who ran off.

And then,

instead of just jumping out of the goddamn ring and running away,

when he saw that there was no security and he was in the ring with Edge alone,

he did a funny take, turned around,

saw Edge, and then ran toward Edge so Edge could spear him.

And he speared him.

That's not music.

That's not how you would have handled it.

I don't.

what the fuck?

The first,

if that had been laid out to me,

the first thing I would have said was, okay, when Edge dumps all the security out of the ring and I turn around

to fucking see that the security on the floor is running away,

then if Edge is going to back up in the corner and milk that he's going to spear me,

what is keeping me from leaving?

Why would I turn around and be speared?

That is the first thing that I would have asked.

And to be perfectly honest,

I would have suggested that maybe, just maybe,

Edge fucking tosses these security guards out of the goddamn ring and boots the guy or whatever.

And my other security guards, I wave them in and they run that way.

And I say, yes, I've got him.

And he ducks them and bumps bumps them out.

I turn around and go, oh, shit,

and start to leave.

And he goddamn grabs the back of my jacket and he flings me into the ring where I goddamn get on my hands and knees like, oh, God, don't do that.

And as he grabs me, I try to pull out of the fucking jacket and he pulls the jacket off and throws it.

And as I stand up, like, where'd my fucking coat go?

Then he can goddamn spear me.

And then you've got some movement going where i'm trying to escape the inevitable and we're milking it to where it doesn't happen right away but i don't look like an idiot for just standing there and fake for just standing there letting him do it

but that's just me

anyway

do you have any comments on that thing we just talked about no i'm with you

I agree with everything you just said and the way you look at it.

We're making time.

Made a lot of sense.

That's right.

They had another four-way match.

The winner gets $100,000,

which I guess is better than what was it the other day, 4 million pesos or 400,000 yen or what?

Where were they?

6 million pesos or 4, some pesos for sure.

Yeah, whatever.

Anyway, Queen Y Iota and Thecla and Chris Statlander and Willow had a four-way where they did stuff to each other until they were done.

And in the end, Statlander and Willow fought off.

And then Blue Sky came down to draw the referee.

Julia Hart rolls in the ring and blows the mist in Queen

Wyayota's face.

And Thecla beat her one, two, three.

Did you see the mist?

Did you actually see how she did it?

How did I saw that she blew it and I saw it landed on the face, but I didn't.

There's like no clouds.

Exactly.

It was just like she spit it.

Just like a clump.

Yeah.

Yeah.

With Muda, like there would be like a mist.

Like you would, like, ooh, something happened there.

This, it was just like a direct shot.

Like, boom, right to the face.

Well, remember, last time she missed completely.

So I guess this time she just wanted straight to the

Tony Storm did an interview

in one of the opera boxes.

She would be a tremendous actress on some type of television show.

Maybe she could be the center center square on the Hollywood Squares.

She's entertaining.

You can't believe some of the sexual double entendre

that gets thrown out and is allowed on network television.

Thankfully, no children are watching.

They're just participating in the show.

But

I got to say, if AEW is a parody of pro wrestling, which it is, she's the best at it.

This is entertaining in some fashion.

I'm almost willing to say that if this was a legitimate,

straightforward wrestling promotion and she was doing the same shit and where it stood out as she's the only crazy nut and not just it's constant,

I think I'd like it.

But on a show that's already a goddamn glorified Saturday night live sketch, isn't this just,

isn't this just too too far, too much, too ridiculous?

It never, it never,

you don't have comedy relief in a serious program with them.

You every once in a while get some element of seriousness like Adam Cole's speech in the middle of a goddamn donkey show

that never ends.

I would like it if it was on a,

as part of some kind of a legitimate promotion, I think.

She's doing something.

Yeah, listen, you know, I would like it as a recurring character on like a talk show.

I think it's funny.

I think it's really great performance art.

It's entertaining.

She has some clever lines.

She has some really clever lines I find myself laughing about after the fact.

It's not two different things I've seen where she talks about eating Mercedes out during the match.

But, you know, everything's in black and white.

It is one of those things that from like the early days or pre-AEW, that we always hated, the ironic wrestling fan, the fans that launched Orange Cassidy and people like that, because, you know, they like the

idea that here's this unwrestler on this wrestling show.

She's really talented and really entertaining.

But I'm with you.

I enjoy what she does, except for the fact that if I watch it during the wrestling, I'm like, this doesn't belong here.

Okada beats somebody.

They didn't even mention his name.

He can't even make a squash match entertaining for a minute.

Remember in the old days when that's all you got on TV?

But if somebody came like, oh, here comes Terry Funk or here comes the Sheikh or Abdullah or goddamn somebody that's just going to do their shit

and we get to see it, right?

No.

Is it blah.

Bly for a minute match, got on the microphone, gargled a little unintelligible phrase and said bitch to Swerve.

And then Swerve came out and called him a bitch.

What are you going to do about it, bitch?

And he didn't do anything about it.

He left.

The end.

The fuck with Okada.

God damn, why don't they just mail him his check and let him send a goddamn cardboard stand-up in?

It'd be more exciting.

Are you ready for our main event?

Oh, boy, we got there quick.

Let's go go to the main event.

We did.

Mark Briscoe, Powerhouse Hobbs, and the new champion, Hangnail Page against Dick the Boozer, Claudio, and Wheeler Useless.

It's the same shit they were doing.

They just switched the belt.

We're not going to get rid of these guys.

We're not going to not have to look at Moxley every fucking week.

They're going to do the same shit.

The new world champion in a six-man tag still can't be rid of the Boer Horseman.

And they went for an extra runover this time because they didn't even ring the bell till five minutes to 10.

They went to break two minutes later, came back at 10 o'clock.

The crowd was deathly silent.

They go five minutes, take another break.

They're taking breaks in the overruns now.

And finally,

I have never,

I don't know if this may be the stupidest thing that anybody's ever done in a wrestling ring because

it wasn't just one person going into business for themselves.

Multiple people had to plan that this was going to happen and think that this was a thing you should do.

Brian, I will tell you what they did

and then I will let you tell the people why that it's fucking stupid.

Rather than me, the

experienced veteran, I'll let you, the talented amateur.

Claudio gets Paige up on his shoulders for the doomsday device, like the Road Warriors.

Oh, Wheeler comes off the top rope with the clothesline for the doomsday device, like the Road Warriors, right?

And he hits him with it.

Guess what Paige did?

He flipped backwards, landed on his feet, no sold the clothesline, and made a comeback,

followed by a back flip off the the top to the floor, where then five other people did moves to each other, and then Paige jackknifed Claudio one, two, three.

Brian, what's the stupid part of landing on your feet from the doomsday device and making a comeback?

I don't know.

If they would bother to stop and think for one second,

they would realize that it's not the goddamn bump that is supposed to be the devastating thing about the doomsday device.

It's the clothesline.

That's right.

You're being held up in the air, and a guy's flying off the top rope and clotheslining you.

And he hits you so hard, it turns you a flip and you land on the fucking ground.

But apparently, Wheeler,

is so weak, he couldn't pull a greasy string out of a cat's ass

because he just clotheslined the guy, and the guy just backflip, landed on his feet, and made a comeback.

The wrestlers don't even know how wrestling works

because they're so indie-minded, they're more worried about,

oh, I can do this, rather than, well, wouldn't it be stupid if you did?

So then

Moxley jumped on Paige and the heels got heat.

The same shit they've been doing for months and months.

And then the lights go out and Darby Allen is in the balcony.

And while Darby Allen is in the balcony and Moxley is staring with that stupefied look on his face, Paige buckshots Moxley,

even though they had just beaten him up just seconds before.

And then everybody left.

15-minute overrun.

They're doing the same shit they've been doing.

Nothing has changed.

Not even the people.

They just switched the fucking belt.

They've learned nothing.

Those are my thoughts.

Another banner episode of AEW Dynamite.

What do you think about this as a episode coming off the pay-per-view?

Well,

I didn't think much of it as an episode anywhere coming off of, going into, it did nothing.

What are we, what, what has changed?

What are we looking forward to?

Osprey's gone.

One of their big baby faces, like, see what he's going to do.

No.

Fucking, all we saw was six-man tags, eight-man tags, four-way with girls for $100,000.

More multi-person gaga with the same people.

that we thought we might get rid of in favor of some new people that we don't see enough enough of.

Hold on, I guess Darby's back.

Darby's back.

Darby's back.

And Moxley appears to be petrified.

It's good to see Darby's back, especially after seeing his front.

All right.

Well, that was AEW Dynamite for July 16th, 2025.

What about the Arcadian Vanguard network of programming for this fine coming week of July whatever through whatever.

I got to come out of a dead dog dedication.

What the fuck?

Another great week on the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network.

Get information at all the shows on Twitter at Super Podcasts or on Facebook at facebook.com/slash Arcadian Vanguard.

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Each and every day, each and every morning, wake up and listen to the wrestling news.

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Just the facts, ma'am.

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Thewrestlingnews.com directly or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Look for Arcadia Vanguard's The Wrestling News.

Want to make mention of Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam?

A big look at 1978 WWWF with some rare audio, not heard before on a podcast, I believe.

That's the best way I could say it.

McAdamPod.com.

Look for Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the membership.

Well, Swami's barking.

I got him going.

One of these days, folks, 605pod.com, available wherever you find your favorite podcasts, The Mothership.

One of these days, my friends, the ratings never end.

And we're going to tell you before we go whether anybody watched AEW this past Wednesday night.

Yeah.

Yeah, we are.

AEW Dynamite for July 16th, 2025, Jim.

You got them numbers there, Brian.

I got the numbers here from 8 to 10.

Some of them got some of them bunch of numbers over there.

You're looking for some numbers?

I can get you some numbers.

8 to 10.14 p.m.

On average, watched by 588,000 viewers.

What the?

You know, it seems like they're almost coordinating things now, that they, they.

They end up with very similar numbers from week to week, almost like

they're comparing notes, the viewers.

Are you going to watch watch this week well if you watch i'll watch but if you ain't going to watch i ain't going to watch

and it either goes up together or down together is it back down and it weren't they up last week or was that the week before

last week they were 637

and the four that's what they they got they go 630 then they go 580 then they go 630 they go 580.

That's the cable audience now.

I mean, I don't think you could expect, if you get anything in the 700s, it's amazing.

That means you actually have some interest beyond your audience.

But the audience now is between

640 and 550.

But let's go to the quarterly hour breakdown.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Quarter one,

8 to 8.15 p.m., the Adam Page Live promo,

747,000 viewers.

Okay, that does not bode well for the rest of the program.

Maybe he ran them off early.

I don't know.

We'll see.

but that's a decent starting point for lately.

But

they're going to have to drop a ways to hit their average.

We go to quarter two, 8:15, 8:30 p.m.

Mascara Dorada versus Kyle Fletcher with Picture in Picture.

602,000 viewers.

Oh, good lord.

Okay, so people really don't like Adam Page.

145,000 people in the first 15 minutes after he opened his Yap.

Well, we go to quarter three,

8:30 to 8:45 p.m.

The Young Bucks and Don Cowas backstage.

An ad break, the MJF and Hurt Syndicate promo in the back, and the start of Hetchichero, Josh Alexander, and the Young Bucks versus Bandito, Brody King, and Jet Speed.

556,000 viewers.

Good lord.

Okay.

Well, there's the page effect followed by the buck effect,

which was another 46,000 people.

Now they're down

191,000, but now they're going to have to come back up

to hit their average.

Well, we go to quarter four, 8.45 to 9 p.m.

The continuation of that match with Hetchichero, Josh Alexander, the Young Bucks, and Bandito and Brody King, and Speedball and Kevin Knight with picture and picture and an ad break,

555,000 viewers.

As long as the buckaroos are on the screen, nobody's coming back.

So

we're at the top of the hour at nine o'clock, quarter five.

They've dropped, as I said, almost 200,000 in the first hour.

They've got to come back up and they've got Edge coming up.

So this would seem to be the place where if they were going to get some people back, they would do it here.

Well, we go to quarter five, the big nine o'clock hour, nine to nine: 15 p.m.

Cope and Stokely Hathaway's live promo.

It's really Cope's promo and confrontation with Stokely.

And Mark Briscoe's promo,

620,000 viewers.

There you go.

We got 465,000 back.

Now, at least we're up over 600,000 again, but

what have they got to climb with?

Very little.

Well, the little continues into quarter six, 9.15 to 9.30 p.m.

Thecla, or Tecla, excuse me, versus Queen Amanana

Statlander.

Oh, Quiz Statlander!

This is Chris Statlander and Willow Nightingale.

She's in that too.

Picture a picture and an ad break.

582,000 viewers.

Yeah, that wasn't really

anything to gain viewers or write home about.

So now they're back down under six.

I think they may just limp on to the finish here.

Well, we go to quarter seven, nine: thirty to nine: forty-five p.m.

The Tony Storm Athena live promo,

Kip Sabian, Nick Wayne, and Mama Wayne in the back for a promo.

And the Kazushka Okada Entrance and live promo,

563,000 viewers.

Still not the show low.

That was quarter three and four with the Hardley boys involved, but they're getting there.

Well, we go to quarter eight, and I remind you we have a 14-minute overrun, so that's basically another quarter right there.

9:45 to 10 p.m.

Swerve, Strickland, and Okada's confrontation, an ad break, Adam Page, Mark Briscoe, and Powerhouse Hobbes versus Moxley, Claudio, and Wheeler with Picture and Picture.

526,000 viewers.

Oof, 14-minute overrun, 10 to 10.14 p.m.

Match continues, and Picture and Picture, 536,000.

So 10,000 people that tuned in to see Impractical Jokers were like, what the fuck is this?

It's Moxley.

Good Lord.

Why they're back to their old habits.

Yeah, they're back to their old habits.

They lost over

211,000 viewers, or almost 35% of their audience, I believe, judging from the math in my head, which is what they used to do, but they started with bigger numbers and finished with bigger numbers in those days.

And

the three,

four lowest quarters out of nine

either featured Moxley or the Buckaroos.

So,

good to see they're making changes.

And the key demo relatively steady: 221, 212, 203, 201, 219 for the big nine o'clock hour, 203, 201, 195, 204.

That's the only thing they're holding steady on, really.

Everything else is

well, they're holding steady on exactly where everything falls apart and where everything comes back.

I shouldn't say they're not holding steady over a number,

but uh, that's the

that's the facts, ma'am.

AW.

Well, in that case, ma'am or man or Ming or whoever,

we are done for today.

We're coming back in a few days with a drive-through that'll be a special fun episode for everybody while I'm on my little fact-finding mission.

And then we'll be back with the experience next week.

We'll tell y'all about it and so much more and preview the excitement that is the coming of Summerflam.

And in parting,

we wish you love, peace, soul, and a lack of modern wrestling to hang around your neck.

Until next week, thank you, fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.