Episode 583: Applesauce

Like a midnight and the rock and roller He's in a fight for wrestling solar Using a racket and some mind controller He's Jim Cornette

The keys to the future held by the past And with tag team partner Barion Last He sends this message out by podcast He's Jim Cornet

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to perform

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

Come on, get everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Jim Cornette Experience.

Today, equal helpings of classic wrestling and current cosplaying.

And we're going to discuss how the WWE wants to make all the money that exists in the world.

And joining me, Hawaiian Brian, the podcasting lion, the king of the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network, Mr.

Co-host to you.

He's richer than Ain't Lola's homemade chocolate cake.

Be great, Brian, last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

I didn't hear how you insulted me because I was listening to the wonderful sounds coming out of the organ over here at Last Manor.

Yeah, there are some sounds that come out of your organ.

You got to fade that.

You got to, it ends abruptly on your intro.

And there ought to be either if you're not going to get now.

How did the Pyro meeting with the Pyro people work out?

Oh, I don't do Pyro.

I thought you said that you were going to start insisting on some Pyro here and now that you got theme music.

We'll see.

I don't think so.

well you're just all blah today i'm full of piss and vinegar today i don't want fireworks i don't want pyro what's your problem you want that well god damn it i'll take a firework and shove it up your sphincter there fella you like pyro on your burgers

i like pyro on my burgers

no you're thinking of aioli

has nothing to do with the Anderson brothers.

Anyway, I'm happy today for once.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been worried and beleaguered, storms and disruptions of my sleep pattern, and all these various catastrophes that have been going on.

And finally, the weather is quiet here all week and cooler than normal.

And

of course, it's going to rain at some point over Memorial Day weekend, but now they're saying maybe south instead of north,

so we might escape that.

And

I finally had a good night's sleep.

We took Stacey's folks over to Mark's feed store last night,

and I had

the

deluxe fish dinner with two sides being baked apples and

potato salad with an add-on three-bone rib, a cup of burgoo with some Texas toast, and a big old handful of the full basket of onion straws.

And I just ate until I felt like I was going to the chair and came home and went to sleep at about 8, 12

and didn't get up until 7 o'clock this morning.

And now I'm feeling finer than frog's hair and ready to hop, Brian.

It's going to be a graveyard digging at a coffin by long time weeping at a family crying.

About 8.12.

Can you give us more specific detail?

No, that was about 8.

About 8.12.

The last numbers you remember before you close your eyes?

Yes, because I was waiting to say I said, I'm getting sleepy.

And I was watching the clock there, but I didn't have the stopwatch.

So I couldn't get it, couldn't narrow it down anymore.

But now I finally feel good.

This might last a day or two.

Can I ask you a food-related question?

Well, go ahead.

It's going to be some nonsense.

I'm pretty sure.

It's not going to be nonsense.

Will you be nice?

This is your show.

You have to be a nice host, I guess is the point.

Have you been following?

Do you listen to this show?

Have you often?

Have you been following the Diddy trial?

The Diddy trial.

We've talked about Daddy Diddy.

Months ago.

Little itty-bitty diddy.

It's happening right now.

Have you been following it at all?

Well,

I haven't been like

reviewing the notes of the day every evening, but I do watch a lot of local news, which does have a minute or a minute and a half of break-ins of some really, especially if Poro Afternoon, not Gilbert Corsi, but Scott Reynolds on WDRB, when they have him on, he's an older white fella.

As Jim Ross said one time about Bob Caudle, he's the epitome of a white man wearing brown shoes.

And he has to talk about something, even though they're.

They're phrasing the things for local broadcast television in a day part where kids are watching.

He's still, you could, his face is turning red and he's his lip is trembling, having to talk.

And then the urination began, or whatever he's saying.

So, yeah, I know a little bit about it.

Those are some of the more dirty, a little bitty diddy, a little bitty about Diddy.

Okay, well, those are some of the more salacious stories that have gotten out there.

Here's one of the more underreported ones.

I have an article from the New York Post here

by four different people.

I don't know how four people wrote this article, but we'll find out.

Jurors at bombshell Diddy trial learned disgusting way he likes his burgers as extestify.

So we will move on from here, find out what you, the cheeseburger connoisseur.

All right, but now wait a minute.

Ain't gonna be baby oil.

He doesn't fry them in baby oil, does he?

I don't think that's healthy.

No,

I don't think he did that.

It might be fattening.

That's what Elvis's mom used to do for him, apparently, was fry his.

You know, I swear to God,

it is a method way down south, way down yonder in in the pawpaw patch that they would take fucking lard or oil in the pan and melt it and get it hot and everything and then put burgers in it and fry it.

There is a place in Memphis that still does their burgers in the grease that they have been recycling for a hundred years.

I think it's dyers, is it not?

I think it is.

And they're those there probably dyers, right?

I'm trying to think of the name of the place, but it's on Beale Street, but they're good.

People are going to be over with that fucking grease.

The fucking the, but it's not even appetizing to me to just have lard or oil or grease in the pan and then put the burger in on top of that, and then it mixes with all the other.

That's that's too much, even for me.

But go ahead, back to this article here.

He's a bad apple.

Sean Diddy Combs bizarrely puts applesauce on his cheeseburgers.

Disgusted jurors twice heard this week in the Bad Boy Records founders' Manhattan trial as his former assistant spilled the secrets from the witness stand

well

could you just stop here for a second first of all how the

with what he is accused of i'm wondering how this came up in in in the line of questioning to begin with and secondly what the is wrong with this guy now and the jurors apparently agree with me now if you you know now yeah you know we we've heard that he's he's goddamn throwing people out of windows and pissing on people on a daily habit and fucking doing all this other, but goddamn applesauce on a cheeseburger.

No, they've gone too far.

The jurors turned away in shock.

The second mention of Combs' fondness for applesauce-laden cheeseburgers came Thursday as his ex-employee George Kaplan testified about his use of a black Amex card.

the nickname for the highly exclusive American Express Centurion card.

Kaplan told defense attorney Mark Agnifilo, or something like that, that Combs's staff used the card to buy everything the music mogul requested, including baby oil, yacht leases, and villas.

The attorney asked, What about applesauce?

Wait a minute.

I can understand.

Hold on, hold on.

I can understand

you needing the black American Express Centurion Centurion card to lease yachts and buy villas.

But I'm pretty sure that with my regular old American Express card that I have, I could buy enough baby oil to even last Diddy for a while.

Well, I don't know.

I don't know if you've seen any of the photos of all the all the baby oil they got out of his room when he was in New York to surrender.

Like, this wasn't like, we've captured you.

This was the shit he was traveling with right before he's like, all right, the kick is up.

This is his like go-to baby oil, is carrying baby oil.

He's got a guy with a steamer truck full of baby oil with him when he goes to a picnic.

Listen, I want you to go out and get all this baby oil.

Are you sure?

You know you're about to like go away, right?

No, get all of this.

But let me go back to this.

All right.

Kaplan told defense attorney about baby oil, yacht leases, and villas.

Applesauce?

Asked the attorney.

Mr.

Combs loves applesauce and eats it on the side or on top of a lot of things, Kaplan responded.

Cheeseburgers

Cheeseburgers being one of them.

The lawyer asked if it was possible for Combs to track all those charges.

His world was the size of the Earth, Kaplan said.

He was doing business all over the world.

Frankly, to think that he knew where some of these things were coming from is unrealistic.

The eccentric applesauce burger pairing also came.

The eccentric applesauce burger pairing also came up Tuesday as David James, another of Combs' former assistants, testified about his time working for the hip-hop star.

James, who said he was responsible for Combs' riders, was asked what his former boss required and used ketchup as an example.

When Combs went to the UK, he traveled with American ketchup.

Because British tomato sauce is not the same, James said.

James also packed applesauce because Combs loved it so much that he even put it on his burgers.

Were you aware that he put applesauce on his cheeseburgers?

The lawyer asked.

Where were you when he put the applesauce on his cheeseburgers, sir?

I was not aware, but I knew he liked applesauce, James said.

Jurors grimaced when the lawyer mentioned that Combs liked applesauce on his cheeseburgers, with one of the panelists making a gag-like gesture.

A woman seated in the front of the jury box collapsed and had to be taken out for oxygen.

The saucy digressions were more lighthearted than the former assistant's hair-raising tales of Combs' alleged violence and abuse of his gal pals.

And then it goes into detail there, but that was the applesauce portion.

To get back to the question: Applesauce on a cheeseburger, what are your thoughts?

Well,

no, I've never heard of such a thing and would not be in favor of such a thing.

And frankly,

I think that the charges or the penalties against this individual should be doubled in some type of aggravated abuse of foodstuffs.

Where normally,

if you put applesauce on your cheeseburger, you should get X amount of time, you know, two to five years.

In this case, it ought to be aggravated.

It ought to double the potential time.

This individual sounds dangerous to me.

Do they give you now the other stuff?

Maybe they could just get off with a fine.

I don't know if you know the answer to this, and it's actually a serious question.

Do you have ketchup or applesauce in prison?

Oh, well,

that's what I was going to say about the only time that I've been on his side so far is when he had the concept of taking the ketchup to England because the ketchup's not the same, except it's only a concept there.

Because

to be honest with you, if you go,

and

I love my friends all over the UK, but we've talked about this from my trips there

in the 200 teens.

We went over this in detail.

If you go from America to England,

ketchup, American ketchup is the least of your priorities.

You're wanting the basics, like goddamn ice,

biscuits that are biscuits,

bacon that's bacon,

fucking

a variety of, you know, normal things that you come to expect.

And you order shit and they set it down in front of you.

You're like, what the fuck is that going to?

Stace sent one of her room service orders back because the shit that she ordered, I can't remember what it was or what she thought it was.

But neither one of us had ever seen what she ordered look like that.

So we thought that they got it wrong.

And then they called back and they said, said, oh, yeah, we'll make you another.

And it was the same fucking thing.

What was the question?

Applesauce on cheeseburgers.

Applesauce.

That's pure applesauce is what that is.

I think Diddy's in trouble now.

He might as well kiss freedom goodbye.

And ketchup or applesauce or whatever is not, it's not going to be the only sauce that he gets in prison, I'm sure.

There was another article this week about like one of the hotel managers or something saying that whenever Diddy checked in they always tacked on an extra thousand dollars for all the damage that would happen from candle wax and baby oil

would a thousand dollars really cover that kind of cleanup from baby oil and candle wax well i mean i just what was it on the ceiling what was i totally i don't know what he was they said it was all over the place i mean i don't know if he's just like dripping candles everywhere and i don't know what the's happening I would applesauce I would think you'd have to just discard the linens and any bedding involved, whether it be for applesauce or candle wax or baby oil or

sealing wax or whatever, or ships or whatever the case.

But I think

they would probably bring,

who are the Stanley steamer people in to do the whole of the steaming thing and the hazmat suit and everything?

That would cost more than $1,000.

Are you continuing to question me now?

Well, no, what I'm saying is we will stay on top of these major issues, the issues that the mainstream media may not be focusing on, but here at Cornet News, we'll make sure that you know anything happening in the world of cheeseburger arts.

Yes, because, you know, we want the people to get the real story around here, not this skewed perspective.

Do you like applesauce?

I have eaten applesauce.

I'm not against applesauce.

If there's applesauce in front of me and I'm hungry, I will eat it, but I will never

seek it out or order it when there are other options to be had.

Does that satisfy your curiosity?

Yeah, I mean, I really don't know where you would order it.

I mean, it comes with latkes, potato pancakes, and that's delicious, but other than that, I never like see on a menu.

I guess I don't look just like.

Well, no, if you go over at the IHOP, I guess the kids are.

If you're at IHOP, they got applesauce and probably Bob Evans.

They make a, at Bob Evans for the senior crowd, they make a special kind of applesauce out of prunes.

So it looks like some kind of cranberry pudding, but then it'll make you just shit your brains out by the time you get out to the car.

That's why a lot of you see a lot of elderly people with fucking plastic slip covers over their seats in their car after they go to Bob Evans.

Where do you stand on ketchup?

Is Heinz the only acceptable ketchup?

What do you do if you're stuck with Hunt's ketchup?

What are your thoughts?

Well, I get Heinz ketchup because I don't eat ketchup.

Maybe two or three times a year, I will dip some French fries in it, once again, if it's in front of me.

But otherwise, I'm not a ketchup person.

I prefer, I like remaulade.

I like tartar sauce.

I like mayonnaise.

I like the

Chick-fil-A

chicken sauce.

I like ranch dressing.

I like a variety of dippings.

And ketchup to me is too pedestrian and a little acidic.

But again, it's not like the bane of anyone's existence, like yellow mustard, which is despicable and should be eradicated from the earth.

And you're separating yellow mustard from spicy brown mustard, which kind of looks yellow.

Yeah, spicy brown mustard on a big old hot dog, or maybe even a turkey and bacon sandwich.

Now that can add a little pizzazz, but the yellow mustard is just blech.

All right, well, this is your blech.

Are you taking notes?

Yeah.

All right.

Well, then you won't have to ask me again because

I can't tell you how many people I get on Twitter trying to get me to educate you on how to eat because of your odd and bizarre habits concerning your food.

Oh, yeah.

Mr.

French toast.

Anyway, you know who else has odd and bizarre habits, by the way?

I don't know where you're going now.

No, I don't know.

No, our friend John fell.

And with the severe weather and all the schedule changes we've had and

uh

we should have said happy birthday to him last week and we didn't do it

so now it's a happy belated birthday to john fell in baltimore i don't i i don't even know what day this is right now but it was about a week ago about a week ago many years ago john fell was born So we wish you a happy birthday, John.

I hope you had one.

By now, you know.

You know whether you had a happy one or not.

So there's not really much we can do about it now, is there, Brian?

Happy belated birthday, John Fell in Baltimore.

All right.

Also,

you know, our friends Matt and Joanne Sturgeon

from over in West Virginia,

do you remember the couple that made the vote cornet last 2024 t-shirts last year?

Yeah, you know, I actually just recently saw that.

I have that upstairs.

Yeah.

Well, this is an email, not an email, but a letter actually from Matt, but this is them.

And I wanted to acknowledge them.

And they wrote a heck of a nice letter, but

I won't go through all of the details.

It's her, you know, medical file, but Joanne, Joe,

about a year ago, had.

issues, went to the emergency room and basically spent nine months in the hospital, had 10 surgeries and two bouts of sepsis.

And she was finally released to come home just in late March last year and had some rough times.

But Matt was listening to the podcast on the way he had to drive from Charleston, West Virginia, or outside of, as a matter of fact, Hurricane, which they say it hurricane over there, but it's hurricane.

He had to drive from there to Cleveland, to the Cleveland clinic on weekends and et cetera.

He was in a car on hours at a time to be able to see her as much as possible.

So he was listening to the show and we tickled his taint.

And so

now,

not only is Joe home

doing physical therapy twice a week and doing well.

But also he sent you and me, Brian, a copy of the Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

because he got tired of listening to me reach for the American Heritage Dictionary third edition,

and he got tired of you googling stuff, so he figured we could meet in the middle and come up with a bunch of new words.

And this is a great book, so I'm going to send you yours.

If nobody buys it at jimcornet.com in the next week, I'm going to send it to you.

Sounds good.

But anyway, Matt and Joe, we love you and we're thinking about you.

Anyway, I'm going to skip over that i what was that

well since we spent so much time talking about ketchup and mustard i didn't want to go off on this goddamn i'll save that for next week what's it about another tangent it's none your business and then you you see next week when i bring it up you'll think it's brand new because you didn't say because we already talked burgers you said we already talked ketchup and mustard

Huh, okay.

Well, we were talking about the ketchup and the mustard and the applesauce.

Pom chops and applesauce.

Well, once again, I guess this is a good time to remind everyone, once we're done with the AEW roster review, we're going to go through the condiment roster review, and we're going to go through all the condiments in developmental and on the main roster.

And I'll tell you what, they took the Louisiana fish fry brand remalade sauce out of Kroger.

They're not stocking it anymore.

And that's fucking crime.

Because if I'm a remalade fan, And if you're going to eat remalad, then that's a remillard you ought to be.

Was it not selling?

I don't know.

I bought it every time I went in there.

I don't know what their problem is.

Maybe they couldn't come to an agreement.

Sort of like the cable companies and the dish network won't be carrying your fucking programming.

I think we ought to start a petition.

Anyway, here's something about Madison Square Garden.

that I thought you might help me out with because I just saw this email this morning.

I said, well, let's bring it up

because it's from Mark Cole,

our friend in Colorado, who does the

Odessa Steps magazine.

And he sent an email.

He said, I came across the show from Madison Square Garden on February 26, 1973.

And on that show, Brian, where Dory, and he says, Dory Funk Sr., Terry Funk, Mil Moscaris.

Vern Gagne defending the AWA title.

And basically, he says, on the surface, this seems fishy.

Why were three other promoters working on a Madison Square Garden card in early 1973?

Any thoughts or stories you may have heard?

And I looked up the

card for that night.

And basically, I wanted you to tell me because you got a better grip off the top of your head on history.

If you remember, when did Vince Sr.

rejoin the NWA?

I'm going to have to look it up.

I would think early 70s, 72, 73, somewhere in that range.

Well, there you go.

And I was thinking the same thing.

And Mark said one theory that he had heard it had to do with the wrestler movie.

I was going to bring that up because I was just thinking timeline-wise, that came out in 74.

So that's a year later if they were trying to.

I'm sure.

I'm not, I don't think it was a big negotiation to get Vince to do his part in the movie, but you know, they were talking.

Well, I, well, see, actually,

I don't, i think it may have been incidental at best hey we're going to be in new york let's if i could get a camera to shoot vince or whatever the fuck right

what i'm thinking because

that would

that would take care of vern

vern was obviously heavily involved in the wrestler but why would the funks be showing up all of a sudden and also

All that year,

there were other outside territory guys.

Ron Fuller Fuller was there, I think, that fall.

Those guys all have something in common, the Funks and Ron Fuller.

It was coming from Eddie Graham.

Well, exactly.

That's the thing.

At that point,

I think that since Vince Sr.

had agreed to rejoin the NWA, and that's when they started saying WWWF champion instead of world champion on TV and et cetera.

I think he was trying to show Eddie Graham,

okay, I'll bring some of your guys because it was mostly Florida guys,

and Jack Briscoe was up, and et cetera, et cetera.

So that was because we have said before when we've talked about this, if Eddie Graham had lived,

he probably would have had

some type of major involvement by the end of it with Vince Jr.

because of his long association with Vince Sr.

The WWF,

Vince Sr.

and Willie Gilsenberg, all those guys, the office guys, they always had homes in Florida.

They vacationed down there.

They socialized.

And there was a pipeline there.

And so I think that

in answer to Mark's question,

it was just that

Vince Sr.

and Eddie Graham were probably the closest of Vince and any NWA promoter.

So

that was a relationship that they worked out.

And because remember, J.J.

Dillon even got the chance to wrestle in Madison Square Garden.

He was the last one.

He was the last one.

But listen to this card.

By the way, hold on.

Now I just moved my goddamn story.

Florida TV was on in New York on the Spanish channel.

Well, yes.

And that's why some of the, you know,

fans already knew who the Florida guys were.

And at the same time,

Vince never really did anything to try to prevent that or stop it or, you know,

fuck with it.

They cooperated.

Yeah.

But anyway, there was the other one that aired in New York eventually, LA, Mike LaBelle.

And that was because, again, the rosy relationship between that office and the McMahon's.

Yeah.

And,

you know, that way,

especially, I guess, Vince Sr.

figured, says LaBelle's in Los Angeles.

He's not going to try to expand into my fucking territory.

But if I get his talent over in my market, then it'll be easier easier when I bring him in.

And he did bring in a lot of guys from there.

As a matter of fact, listen to the card

that

Mark was talking about.

The Madison Square Garden show for February 26, 1973, the attendance was 22,098

up from the previous month of 22,096.

That's when they were doing

not only the sellout of the garden, but they were close-circuiting to the Felt Forum next door, which later became the Paramount Theater, correct?

Correct.

Yeah, because

the next month, 22,136 and 22,090, 22,146,

20,980 sell out business was down.

Anyway, Susan Green and Lily Thomas defeated Peggy Patterson and Paula Kaye.

Two out of three falls in 1812.

Who says the girls never got time in the WWF?

Tony Garrea defeated Mike Conrad at 1505.

Mike Graham, Eddie Graham's son, defeated Joe Turco, who was a longtime enhancement guy up there at that time, 542.

Listen to this one.

It was booked to be Terry Funk versus Eddie Graham,

which makes, you know, all the sense in the world.

But since Eddie Graham had to substitute for somebody later on in the show, Terry Funk defeated Chuck Richards.

Do you know who Chuck Richards was?

That was Chris Candido's grandfather.

Chuck Popeye Richards, Chris Candido's grandfather, who worked with Terry Funk in the garden.

And that was...

The reason why, apparently, that Popeye got his shot at uh the big building was that eddie graham was booked against terry funk but there was another substitution and they put eddie graham in that spot

but that's cool uh then

it was booked the awa world champion vern gagne

versus ray stevens

who had been working with

Pedro Morales for the WWWF title the previous few months in the garden, and then he had been beaten decisively, and he was kind of going down the card.

But at the same time, Ray Stevens was also with Nick Bockwinkle working for Vern Gagne.

And there was a relationship there, obviously, because, you know, they were coexisting.

So it was supposed to be Vern Gagne versus Ray Stevens.

But Ray Stevens didn't show up at all.

And who knows what the fuck, this was February, was his plane snowed in?

Who knows?

But instead, Vern Gagne beat Eddie Graham 14 minutes, 35 seconds.

Wow.

And

that has to be a unique match, doesn't it?

Would that have happened anywhere else at any time,

at least in the modern era, when both of them were who they were,

who they were?

Now that I think about it, I never even thought about this before.

I can't think of too many times.

I can't think of the Grahams and Vern in in the same place.

Well, exactly.

Yeah, I don't know.

And it would have,

I mean, at that point, when

Vern would have been even going to Japan, Eddie would have been pulling back because he already owned Florida.

I mean, they just really didn't coexist.

In the NWA meetings or promoters' meetings, or, you know, in cases like that, yes, but never actually in the ring on shows or working.

Again, by the 70s, Vern's schedule was, he would work three or four of his big towns.

What was the date on the show again?

February 26, 1973.

Because another big part of the equation here

is this is right after the war broke out in Georgia at the end of 72.

And this is right when people need to work on relationship building.

Yeah.

And,

you know, eventually Bruno got talked out of working for Gunkel, but they tried to get Bruno.

But Eddie Graham, this is a time where Vern Gagne was the most powerful person in the Midwest,

Vince Sr., the most powerful person in the Northeast,

and Roy Welch was getting up there in years.

Eddie Graham was certainly trying to make himself the powerhouse behind the scenes in southern wrestling with Florida and Georgia.

Yeah.

And

neither Nick or Roy would have been involved in at that level in that fight anyway, because, like you said, Roy was too old and nobody liked Nick that much.

But the rest of the card, hold on, because we got something else.

WWWF world champion Pedro Rallies pinned King Curtis in five minutes and 37 seconds.

So the world championship match that drew that was basically the advertised main event: 22,000 people went five minutes.

Victor Rivera

defeated, and you talked about the Los Angeles TV.

victor rivera had been over was was working the wwwf at this point in time regularly but had been over on the goddamn los angeles tv also

and he beat dory funk senior

11 minutes and 45 seconds this was

two or three months before dory sr died was it not yeah i can't remember what month he died in months before but yeah

but it wasn't

they didn't bring Dory Funk Sr.

to, and Dory and Terry had worked a tag match,

I'm going to say, in November or December, sometime before that.

Dory was the, not only the head of Amarillo, the Amarillo territory, which again, maybe Vince Sr.

and let him have it, right?

It's fucking West Texas,

but he was also

one of the most powerful decision makers in the NWA because of his sons, because of his track record and because he's the one that taught eddie graham

so

and

so you've got all these

minds getting together that year in the in the garden to just and also for the fans it was we are the mecca of wrestling and we're featuring the major stars from all over the country, actually all over the country with people we want to work with, right, that have some in with us.

You know, it's too bad that Eddie Graham, Dory Sr., and fucking Vince Sr.

didn't get together and take over the world.

It might have been different.

And then finally, Mil Moscaris beat Buddy Wolf

in the last match to send people out.

This is the beginning of, this is the early portion of the period of time where it was just an incredible hot streak at the garden that went until the early 80s.

You know, after they got back on regular TV and they were able to give up the spot they had on the Spanish language channel to Mike LaBelle and Eddie Graham, and the new garden opened,

all of a sudden, you know,

starting with the Pedro run, continuing through the Bruno second run into Billy Graham, into Backland, up until the early part of Hogan, you know, around, what, 86, 87, they stopped selling out every time.

Somewhere in there, maybe 85.

Yeah.

But it's an incredible hot streak that didn't let up.

How many of those shows had the Felt Forum open, like you said?

I mean, it's incredible.

Yeah.

And I mean, you know, you see the numbers 20,900, 20,600, 22,102 or whatever.

But here's what, listen to this.

November 1973, 16,148.

May have been bad weather, but televised on HBO, as you'll recall.

The early garden shows were when nobody fucking had HBO.

But on this card, dick slater

who would have been in 1973 working in florida i believe iron mike mccord

who would later on become austin idol

vern gagne

was on the card again andre in the main event

and uh

you know through this year you have other people from other territories That's interesting too, Andre,

because this would have been, and again, I don't have the dates in front of me, but this would have have been around the period of time where Andre kind of switched from Vern control to Vince control.

Yes.

Vince Sr.

control.

Well, and originally Montreal control.

And Vern was his booking agent in the United States, but he was still based out of Montreal.

But then

by 1974, Vince Sr.

is the one who sent him on

the first nationwide tour of all the territories that he did.

And so he had him.

As a matter of fact, hold on.

I just scrolled again.

I shouldn't have scrolled,

but I will find it.

Ah, November 12th, Strongbow and Andre beat Blackjack Lanza and Stan Stasiak.

Andre beat Jack Lanza on October 15th.

I don't specifically know if that was Andre's first appearance in the garden, but he seems to be starting regularly about that time.

But there you have it, Brian.

What did we have?

I forgot what the oh, Mark Cole wanted to know why all these people were in the same place at the same time without knifing each other.

There's a lot of interesting garden cards, you know, mixed amongst the regular Northeast regulars.

Just random people.

You're like, wow, what are they doing there against Johnny Rodds?

What?

April 29, 1974.

Robert Fuller pinned Ed Sullivan.

I have no idea who the fuck Ed Sullivan even was, but it was a really big match.

Robert Fuller

would not even get

a really big push.

Well, now maybe that's why he got the really big push.

Welcome to Talk of the Town.

But he hadn't got a singles push in Tennessee yet.

That came later in 74 for him.

So he was just

there.

That was Eddie Graham sending up his partner's

family.

That's what it was.

Right.

It would have been his partner's kid because that was after the switch.

So, Buddy Fuller was his partner in Florida.

Well, there you go.

Politics and wrestling make strange bedfellows.

And

here,

have you seen the

Houston payoff sheet that's been circulating on the Twitter machine over the past few days?

That several people have retweeted it because it's one of the pieces of paperwork that went out in the Paul Bosch estate sale.

And

people, you know, got a hold of some of these things, but this one caught my eye for a couple of reasons.

But the one with Bockwinkle and Dog on top.

Yeah, I've seen that.

I've seen it.

But again, a lot of these make the rounds.

They go around like every couple of years, someone discovers it for the first time.

But yeah, I saw that.

Well, I was looking at it in a different respective.

You know, Bobby Heenan was the interesting thing on there.

Oh, well, he went with Bachwinkle.

He didn't always go with Bachwinkle to Houston.

He went with Bockwinkle for that one.

Okay, the payoff.

Because he was written in at the bottom.

I'm wondering if Nick just said, God damn it, Bobby, you're coming with me.

It's going to be a huge house.

I need you.

We got to do this thing with Dog, whatever.

But there's a couple of ways that we can look at this.

And just the payoffs that the guys got

is just one of them.

But for other research I've been doing lately, this fits.

Paul Bosch was the last promoter, apparently

in the United States to use the old time method of paying the boys how you figured the

formula that it was supposed to be for paying the boys.

And he actually did it.

Now Sam Muchnik would have been the second to last, but he had retired by the time this show took place.

And It's also the one that Jimmy Crockett

testified to at a deposition in one of the Midnight Express lawsuits of how the promoter was supposed to figure how the boys were paid based on the gate.

And it's the formula that he learned from his father.

And then in that instance, I then applied that to the gate and what we got paid for being the main event, et cetera, and found out that

he underpaid us.

Ha ha, when you know who won a pony.

But the old formula.

especially the pre-television era.

I'm not even talking about pre-television, still through the 50s, maybe even early 60s, some people and the old holdovers that were promoters of towns, major markets in the old days, like Bosch and Muchnik would hang on.

But it was before the

modern explosion of every territory had to have TV in every one of their markets and had to fucking run this building and the rents expanded and things got more complicated.

And so who's going to to pay the price for it?

The fucking boys, right?

But the old formula, and Brian, help me on this because sometimes I don't explain mathematics well.

Stop me if you don't understand what I'm saying.

The old-time promoter's formula for paying the wrestlers on the card, allegedly,

was that you took the gate, the after-tax gate.

And in this case, this this Houston event did $93,700.

There were 11,214 people paid and 29 freebies they gave out.

So the gross was 93,70.

The 3% state tax was $2,811.

That means the net was $90,889.

And so if it was $90,000 even,

supposedly the formula is you take 30%

and you pay the boys.

So that would be

around $30,000, right?

A little bit less for 30% instead of 33%.

And of that

sum of money there,

the

30%,

the main event

would get 60% of that,

and the rest of the boys on a card would get 40%.

And you could do that could be

any figure from $100 on a preliminary match to $500, whatever, but that would be the pool of money that was available to the rest of the card was 40%

of the 30%.

Have I confused you so far?

You haven't lost me yet.

Now,

one question before you get back to this.

Yes.

How much of this jives with what Jim Crockett said under oath

in the Beckley trial?

Well, that formula is exactly what he said.

But the problem is what I figured it out based on the gate there and that we were the main event, what we got paid.

It didn't

fucking work, but we were 150 bucks short apiece or whatever it was.

But theoretically,

that would be the formula and so if if 30 grand is the the amount of money you're paying the boys and the main event gets six that's why the

sam mushnick st louis main events that we've talked about the payoffs of four and five and six thousand dollars and the next gal on a card would get twelve hundred or eight hundred or whatever because sam mushnick the main event in St.

Louis was everything

and so that's what he attributed to drawing the house and

keeping his business going.

And that's why he had the greatest main events in the NWA.

So, point being,

technically, that's why the boys were supposed to get 30% of the house.

And the main event was supposed to get 60% of that 30%.

And that does account for much Nick's payoffs in St.

Louis.

With Paul Bosch at the Sam Houston Coliseum, he did 90 grand,

$90,889.

He paid, by the way, $9,088 or 10% of the house went to booking.

That was the booking fee that went to the fucking San Antonio office

for using their talent.

That's the period of time when he had split from Fritz in Dallas and was using the San Antonio guys of Joe Blanchard.

So for the book, the

cooperation in booking the San Antonio talent, the San Antonio office got $9,000 off a show they didn't have anything to do with.

And

the guys that worked in San Antonio made as much this night each as they did working in the San Antonio territory the rest of the fucking week.

It's insane.

But nevertheless, out of that 90 grand,

not even including the 10% booking fee to San Antonio, Paul Bosch paid the talent $29,648

or right at

a third of the goddamn

net gate.

And that's why Bachwinkle and Dog for the AWA title that was in the main event got the big payoff.

They each got $3,000, which in 1982, today's money is right at $9,900.

So that's why Bachwinkle had wanted to buy into and did buy into the Houston office with Paul Bosch.

He owned 10%

because when he retired, he wanted to move there and take over from Bosch as the promoter.

And he made dates there to establish himself as a draw to aid in that.

you know, endeavor.

But point is, and it's also flying down to Houston.

And come on, Bobby, Bobby.

Well, also, Bobby didn't want to use the NWA world champion anymore after Harley race.

Well, yes, because he was on the outs with Harley for the no show and et cetera.

And Nick had been established, the AWA champion, was the world champion there.

And that's

Bachwigo brought Bobby and Bobby to manage.

got $1,200, which is the 36, almost four grand

today

to be in his corner.

And then they actually,

I'm thinking that he probably, I haven't done all the math on this to break down

if the preliminaries got 40%, the main event 60% or whatever, but he also figured in Gino Hernandez, Tommy Rich,

Mil Moscaris, and Wahoo McDaniel, and Tully Blanchard.

So I'm assuming they had a tag match and Moscaris worked somewhere.

Moscaris got

$2,250 plus $22 or $250 trans.

So

I'm thinking that Moscaris was just an attraction on the card.

And that tag match from San Antonio

was

Gino and

fucking, who would have been?

Would have been rich and...

Well, I was going to ask you that.

When did they, because I know Terry Funka said the reason he knew it was over as a promoter was when fans in Amarua were asking for Tommy Rich.

When did they actually get cable and TBS in Houston?

Probably by then, I would say.

But they would have definitely had video anyway.

But it's

point being, there's a tag match in there where everybody made $2,000

and that's like seven grand.

And Moscara has got $2,500 to be on a fucking card.

And then, but superstar Billy Graham

was it got uh 600 bucks plus 175 trans.

82 superstar Billy Graham.

But he was in, he was, where was he at that point?

He was getting ready for his WWF comeback as Kung Fu Billy Graham.

He may very well have, you know, been auditioning it down here.

But Hacksaw Duggan, Ricky Morton, Ken Lucas, Bob Sweetan, Scott Casey, Killer Brooks, all got Jimmy Golden, all got $600.

That's like handed one of these guys that is, they were making probably

$700 a week tops in the San Antonio territory at that point in time.

And, you know, boom, here you go.

Tiger Conway Sr.

got $100 to watch the back door.

Buck Robley got $1,200

for being the booker at that point in time, I believe.

Peter Burkholtz got $600 for being the son-in-law.

But

this also makes me question,

Brian, because this is the second best Sam Houston Coliseum ever.

The last stampede remains the biggest gate.

But

with 11,214 people, they did $93,700.

They told us we had 12,284 people and only $102,000 and our ticket prices were higher.

Because here is the problem.

Paul Bosch was still in full control of Houston, as he had been for so many years at this point in time.

But when

his business went down, as we've recounted here in the past,

working with the San Antonio office, and

he made the deal with Bill Watts so that Houston became one of the mid-south towns,

Watts took over the payoffs in Houston.

And Watts started paying the guys that were on the Houston cards on the same check as

it all came out of Oklahoma.

But before it came out of Oklahoma, it went to Oklahoma.

So I'm wondering if we did more than $102,000 at the Sam Houston Coliseum that night.

Because I know that we were in the main event, but we didn't get, of course, this was a single main event, but we got two grand a piece that night, me and the midnight.

So

anyway, is that in any way,

does that explain how that when you think about it, the wrestlers in the 30s and 40s and 50s

made more money

adjusted for inflation and considering the details than a lot of their counterparts in the 60s, 70s, and even even 80s in the territories.

Because,

you know, as expenses grew, the first thing they figured out was to not pay the boys as much.

And then it just became the way that things were.

Well, the other thing, too, was the houses were never really the same.

That WWE,

then and now, makes so much money, they can kind of pay anyone anything they want.

And even if they give a guy $15 million a year, you could possibly argue that if he's worth that, he may be worth a lot more and they're underpaying him.

But back then,

it was all based on the house, whether it was the garden or whether it was the Sam Houston Coliseum.

You had to draw the house in Houston.

You know, it's crazy to think that this is then and then within three, four years,

they would start seeing such a collapse in ticket sales that they would turn the Vince.

But it all happened and it all was dependent.

But you have guys who, again, WWE could pay them.

They earn it because they're making that much money.

But you got a lot of people in AEW make a lot of money, but do they actually bring it in?

But the expectation's there.

And I think,

you know,

the idea of being paid off the house is a foreign

concept in 2025.

Oh,

it's

it, it's not just international, it's foreign, it's alien, it's Pluto foreign.

The idea of being paid off the house or paid off the pay-per-view are both like dead concepts.

And you know what?

That's,

I'm sorry, but as a former performer, it gave you something to fucking work for, right?

Oh, shit, I'm going to goddamn get this thing going and it's going to draw and I'm going to get a payoff.

And I say, I'm making the same amount of money if I take a shit.

Would you feel the same today if like the last MP had happened in today's kind of world?

And after each night, Triple H held a press scrum and announced, you know, once again, we've broken every record we've ever had.

If you were part of that system, would it feel the same?

Would you have the same bragging rights as you do right now for what you guys legitimately did?

And that people came to see that match.

They didn't come to see the brand Mid-South Wrestling.

I mean, people want to see other matches, but the match drew the house.

Can someone say that today about WrestleMania?

Can someone say, well, I drew a hundred million dollar house.

Did you?

Did your match?

Yes, and nope.

Some people can say that, but it's more a cumulative track record over time rather than any one match because sooner or later, you know, a lot of people get a shot at the WrestleMania main event they have still kept special, obviously.

But,

you know,

WrestleMania is going to draw.

King of the Rings going to draw.

Fucking Survivor Series is going to draw.

Royal Rumbles.

It's all the brand, the trademark.

This thing has gotten way too big to pay on the house, And it's going to draw regardless of who's in there.

It's just how good it's going to draw and how good it's going to be.

But

what I think was

unfortunate about

wrestlers' finances for a period of time is, like I said, the guys in the 30s, 40s, and 50s were making a fucking fortune compared to what everybody else was making doing anything similar or even anything else.

And then suddenly for a couple generations there, there was a lot of fucking poverty-stricken fucking wrestlers.

And then now it's blossoming into where guys can make a fucking fortune in this business now,

sometimes without even ever selling a fucking ticket.

But there was a period of time in the middle where, you know, that's where you hear of all the guys, I was eating.

bologna sandwiches and sleeping in the back seat.

But

the the problem is, up until now or the modern era, you actually did have to sell those tickets.

Like when

Lex Luger came in and all guys like you, not that you were one of the workers, but you were in the back with them.

You talk about the house.

You talk about how much a Drew.

You may want to brag about, you know, hey, we, you know, did this at the Superdome.

Oh, yeah.

Did he have the same mindset?

Because he had a guaranteed contract.

He's one of the first guys you could say none of that mattered to him in terms of what he was going to be paid.

Well, well and and truthfully when he first came in there wasn't really any brags for him to make on his own he was in the group right and by the he got smartened up enough not to brag about it by the time he was in single main events

but that's

and even that wasn't it wasn't ridiculous

in terms of the contract for luger for the potential that you saw at the time it was

you know a little little above, definitely above guarantee.

There wasn't, there was no other guarantees, but it was a little above the level of the other, you know, three or four or five fucking top singles guys working in the company at the time.

But it wasn't like,

it wasn't ludicrous like when I guess the best,

when Vince gave Mark Merrow the guarantee.

It wasn't like, what the fuck?

Like that, because

it was obvious to everybody that there were tons of top guys in the WWF at the time that could fucking run circles around Mark Merrow in any aspect of the business, but you're giving him the big guarantee to go, what the fuck?

With Luger, everybody looked at him as like, yeah.

I can see, you know, he can make about that much money and draw money if you, you know, if he comes along.

It wasn't just

guys were still jealous, but if they had to admit it, they'd say, yeah, I can see it.

But also, back then, whether it was Luger or the Road Warriors or you and the Midnight Express, you can get these guaranteed contracts.

Your fate was still in the hands of the booker.

I mean, although someone like you

and maybe Luger, once you've been around a while and the Road Warriors had input,

you know, nowadays, especially like in AEW,

there's no,

not only do you not need to draw to make the money, how many of these guys would have any idea of what to do, what to say, or how to behave to do that, and there's no one there leading that way.

You know, you, you guys got those guaranteed contracts, but it wasn't like if you failed, it would have been on just you, it would have been on the booker.

Yeah.

And because I've said before, you know, it's, it's hard for great talent to overcome rotten booking, and it's awful hard for

great booking to fucking draw with rotten fucking talent.

You know, you need a little bit of both.

But,

you know, that was the thing about the territories is that the natural pecking order would kind of be sorted out because guys that drew in one place would get multiple opportunities in other places, usually, to do the same thing.

And over time,

when they won more often than they lost in that aspect, then they would get better reputations and

be brought to bigger territories, etc.

It wasn't like, well, we'll put this guy out there.

And, you know, if he, if he sucks now, then he's ruined over the whole country.

And also,

being so many territories, there were great places for really talented guys, not only in the ring, but behind the scenes, potential bookers in the office, whatever the fuck,

to make money.

If Bill Dundee, who nobody looks at and says, says, oh my God, what an incredible career.

They said, well, Flair moved to Charlotte, never had to go anywhere.

And Lawler was big in Memphis.

Bill Dundee comes over from Australia in 1975, didn't leave really the Tennessee territory until the end of 83

to go to Mid-South and be the booker.

So over that period, what is that, nine years?

I guarantee you adjusted for inflation

between

what he made from Jerry Jarrett and what he made from fucking gimmick sales, pictures,

he easily made in today's money, two and a half to three million dollars.

For nine years,

he lived in the same town.

He didn't have to travel to a town any farther than 250 miles away.

He worked six days a week, be off on Sunday,

home almost every night except one,

Top guy as a babyface and a heel.

It not only used well during that whole period of time, one of the top stars, most popular guys,

became the booker at a few different points.

And fucking, that's in the territory days, that was success.

That was

a lot of guys in other territories would be envious of that motherfucker.

You know, but unfortunately, people don't know how to look sometimes at the measure of whether you were successful or not in the wrestling business.

And he was the idol of all the teenage girls in the mid-South area.

Not the mid-south wrestling area, but the actual middle of the south.

When did Dundee settle?

Like, when did he feel comfortable enough?

Because the last thing a lot of wrestlers wanted to do was buy a house to settle down, and then you find out you're getting booked down the card or you're not getting booked at all.

When did he feel comfortable enough to settle and have his family there?

Well, he and Barnes, George Barnes, had been a tag team in Australia, and Bobby Shane had recommended because they couldn't get used, Barnett wouldn't use them over there.

And then

the conglomerate that bought after him wouldn't use them

and felt they were too small, et cetera, et cetera.

So Bobby Shane had told him, go to Tennessee to work for Jerry Jarrett, not Nick Gulis, right?

You tell him you came to work for a little man.

And

so they came in January of 75.

And I think that, well, I know Dundee bought his house in the summer of 90 or the fall of 1977 because.

They got the down payment for the house the two weeks in a row where Dundee and his wife Beverly got their heads shaved in the matches with Lawler.

Because that was those two nights, even at $3,000 a piece, three grand per head at six grand in 1977.

I think that's about

30, 35 grand or whatever in today's money.

They used that as the down payment on their fucking house.

And

I mean, by that point, it was pretty obvious that he was figured in.

And

again, when you're talking about you work six days a week in a territory where you never never even have to see the airport, and you're yes, you're in the car every day, but you're also working a show in your hometown once a week.

And

you know, you're making the equivalent of what would today be

five to 300 grand a year,

you know, a lot of independent wrestlers would take that, right?

And did I mention the girls?

A lot of independent wrestlers would take that.

You mentioned his wife.

You mentioned he had a wife.

He had all of them things.

Bill Dundee was a very, very popular

fellow with the young ladies at the matches.

So they make the down payment on the house when they do the hair matches.

When he gets the job booking in Louisiana, that must have changed a lot of things.

He didn't really think he was going to have to go somewhere else and do that.

What did he do?

Did they

stay at the house and he lived in a hotel?

How did Dundee live in himself?

Well, I wasn't following him around, but no, he kept,

I think he kept the same house because remember he went back to, that was the Tennessee territory was his home base.

He had a run, which they had an apartment in Louisiana.

But my God, I know how much money we were making.

I know how much money he had to been making.

He probably either rented out the house.

I never asked him or whatever, but I believe he kept the house.

Went back there, was back in Memphis for a while in 85 and again

87, 88.

So

he was in and out of there for quite a while.

A lot of times guys in those days would

end up with a house in one place and having to be renting something in another place, but only if they were

If you were successful enough to have a job in two different territories, it was worth it, I guess.

I kept my apartment in the summer of 83 in Nashville.

I never moved out when I went to Atlanta.

I said, I'm the top manager of this fucking place.

I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket.

And so I paid two months' rent and I was right back, and I'd never even moved my furniture.

Got to think ahead.

What are we doing here?

This is your show.

We're having a good time.

You know what you've got to do?

I told you that formula, Brian.

The formula for figuring out payoffs and how much that guys should get and thinking ahead you sometimes it's confusing you should have professional help when you're in business you should get professional you should get professional help if you want to go into business but once you're in business you need professional help covering you with all the things that you you know they might not

They might not have just your viewpoint of things.

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That's our friends at Shopify, Brian.

Because instead of worrying and fretting over whether Paul Bosch is going to give you 60% of the 40% of the 90% of the after-tax gate, you can just open your own business.

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No, they won't.

That is something they absolutely will not be doing.

Well, indirectly they will because they'll make you enough money.

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That's still indirectly or directly, not them doing it.

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No, neither.

And

they can cut your hair.

I saw that on the news.

Who can cut your hair?

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Well, Brian, you know, and the one thing is, they never go back on their word over at Shopify, do they?

No, they do not.

They're men and people of their word, but you know who has gone back on their word here

that they have given to a great American metropolis.

The news just came out here a day or two ago, whatever it was.

WrestleMania 2026, no longer set for New Orleans, Louisiana.

NOLA.

And they're going to get the money in the bank instead.

But if you try to

discover why this decision was made,

apparently they are not speaking from TKO headquarters on that.

But

also, the smart money, as they say, out in Las Vegas, is now betting on Las Vegas to be WrestleMania again

next year.

So

they're just whores now, aren't they, Brian?

You know, for anyone who ever thought that about Vince in terms of how he commercialized everything, we're seeing it at a different level right now.

And I think WWE is literally for the highest bidder, even if they come in after the bidding is over.

They made a big deal out of New Orleans.

It was another one of these things that Joyne Johnson reappeared.

I know.

Yes, he had to come back to make that.

He said, I definitely want to make this announcement.

And that turned to shit, too.

What do you think?

How did he hear about it?

I wonder.

Did he just, you know, hear about it when it went out on the fucking websites?

And he was like, wait a minute, I said it was going to be there.

What the fuck?

The only possible explanation

is that Las Vegas said, oh, we

made a bundle off of this in some fashion.

We want to do it again and we'll give you X more, twice as much, whatever the fuck.

But

basically, the statement was made by the

Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation that the

event is being rescheduled to a later, unspecified year,

not 2026.

But they do get the money in the bank.

No date given, usually takes place in June or July.

Sounds like WWE gets money in the bank than gets out of town.

Well, and also, and we've got figures from our friend Thurston Howell over at WrestleNomics.

Not getting WrestleMania, getting money in the bank.

That apparently some of the money that the WWE is getting,

they got Las Vegas, the local Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

provided WWE with a $5 million site fee.

They also qualified for an additional $4.2 million in tax credits under a program offered by the Nevada state government.

So that $10 million.

Now, obviously, New Orleans was

ponying up, but maybe they just, you know, they couldn't hang.

And WWE is going to receive

$7.1 million from the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority for the first ever two-day summer slam this this year at MetLife Stadium.

So

they're making $5 to $10 million just to go to a goddamn place before they sell the first ticket.

And, but, you know, that used to be something that would kill a town, but I don't know if you can kill a town now.

But for the fans, because I was about to say for the fans in New Orleans, the people that go to WrestleMania, The majority of them don't live in whatever town it is.

But in the old days, if you promised a major event to a market and then said, oh, never mind, we're going somewhere else.

You might as well not come back with anything, right?

Are they going to edit the announcement out of the

out of the archives?

How does that work?

Well, they made such a big deal out of it.

The rock had to be there to make this big announcement.

And then Las Vegas said, we heard you talking to the Saudis.

We'll give you 5 million more.

Jesus, that's where it's gonna.

That's where we're going.

We're ending up where it's gonna be just WrestleMania.

WrestleMania, Dubai, WrestleMania.

It's just gonna be whoever gives them the most money.

That's where they go.

So, WrestleMania is like a kidnap victim, and the whoever pays the highest ransom is the winning bidder.

Yeah, pretty much.

If Vince wanted to spend some money, he could have WrestleMania in his backyard.

The also

in

related news,

they're not making enough money, Brian, just on these site fees and everything.

Because listen to some of these gates again.

Our friend Thurston,

but this is

public record in some cases, but

they did a house show in Nottingham, UK

on March 23rd, sold 8,211 tickets and the gross was $995,000.

Is that

that's

how much is that per ticket?

How much is that per head?

Because how sustainable is that?

Wait, do you have a calculator?

I'm actually interested in

what that is.

Well, wait a minute.

Let's not even do that one.

Let's do Glasgow

on March 24th, 10,342 people paid $2.626 million.

So

is that $2,600 a ticket, or have I got too many zeros in there?

I can't be.

I didn't write down the numbers that you were saying.

Sorry.

Well,

$2,600,000 divided by $10,000.

What the fuck is that?

That sounds ridiculous to me.

$260

a ticket.

$200,000.

Okay,

I did have one too many zeros, but an average ticket of $260.

Raw in London, $14,816 paid $3.5 million.

SmackDown in Rosemont, Illinois, April 4th, 15,000 people paid $2.3 million.

The WrestleMania

97 fucking gate in the Rosemont horizon wasn't a million dollars.

I don't believe.

And yeah, Sacramento, 13,000 paid 1.7 million.

Fort Worth, 11,000 something paid 1.5 million.

And apparently the Raw in London beat the Money in the Bank in 2023 in the same venue, which had a $3.3 million gate.

But of course, the record for an arena for the WWE

is the Raw premiere on Netflix in Los Angeles with a $4.8 million gate.

Again,

WrestleMania 96 was Los Angeles, right?

With Anaheim, Arrowhead Pond, Michaels and Hart.

Was that a million-dollar gate?

I don't even think so.

Jesus H.

Christ.

Well, to your earlier topic, you think Vince was hiding how much money he was really making.

Now, obviously, they've raised the ticket prices and the prices for everything through the roof.

I ask how sustainable it is.

That's why.

You know, it's one thing, It used to be like the thing to compare WWF to Barnum and Bailey.

You know, they come to town once a year and you'll go see them, but it's not like a weekly or monthly thing.

You know, Barnum and Bailey never priced people out really that bad.

It's a whole new animal right now with WWE.

You have to wonder how returnable

and how frequently, well, I guess they don't even have to go anywhere frequently anymore.

They just jump on a jet and go overseas.

Well, and see, that's a couple of things.

Barnum and Bailey was always an even more family thing than Vince ever tried to be, even in the cartoon days.

And the fun for the whole family, that was the whole idea.

They couldn't price people out.

And the territories, as

entertainment tickets, I mean, when I was,

how old was I?

When I was 17 years old, maybe 18 years old, I saw Earth, Wind, and Fire for $7.

Right?

But the ringside wrestling tickets were still only fucking five.

Were all tickets $7 or was like, how much was the top tier ticket if there was one?

I, you know, I'd have to go back and look at the maybe

it was 10 and 7,

was it?

But a lot of concerts in those days until the who was just, hey, $7, get there early and get up front.

But concert and sports tickets took off

and got more expensive.

Wrestling tickets didn't because they were were there in a town more often much more often than any they didn't have an off season they were there weekly or bi-weekly or monthly or whatever they had the same clientele and then they'd get the casual fans for the big shows

so they kept it affordable because

if you just kept your base audience coming you still made a profit in those days if you had a territory that existed for any period of time

and you didn't want to price them out.

And it was hard for the same people to do something, you know, four times a month if it was very expensive.

But

this is this is not even, this is pricing out a lot of people that just have regular fucking jobs or employed, pay their taxes,

you know, don't have goddamn creditors coming after them, but can't afford money like this.

And,

you know,

they are only going someplace every once in a while now, but still

to

it's a destination thing for a lot of these fans now, the big events, but they got to fly there.

They got to have a hotel.

They got to all this other stuff.

And WWE should start their own like credit union just so they can give credit to the fans who are going to spend that money on them.

And they could call it the WWE Company Store.

I owe my soul to the company store.

I understand you make $60,000 a year and you want a $40,000 SummerSlam ticket.

Let's look at your credit here.

Oh, you have no credit.

All right, we'll give you a loan for a million dollars.

A robust loan.

And

but anyway,

I'm just hoping that they don't fall on hard times over there.

They're struggling, but we'll keep an eye on them.

And if

there's any GoFundMes, we'll let people know.

Back to the New Orleans thing, because again, that's your old stomping grounds.

What do you think of the fact that they just pulled out of that town?

I mean, they moved moved WrestleMania 7

at the last minute, in a sense, but that was because of ticket sales.

This wasn't an issue.

No, changing buildings in a town is sometimes done for a variety of reasons, but just announcing the biggest show of the year for a town and then two months later said, nope, you know, we changed our mind.

That's that's different.

And

again, if it was

the days when New Orleans had regular wrestling, all those fans would be offended.

Like Greensboro, when they took Starcade away, because they were also running Greensboro another 20 fucking times every year.

But that was the thing the fans look forward to every year.

So they just said, well, you don't want to give us Greensboro.

We'll quit coming at all.

Or don't want to give us, don't want to give us Starcade.

We'll quit coming at all.

With New Orleans or any town, it's a new generation

to where they're not really regular wrestling fans because they don't have regular wrestling.

So it'll probably

leave a bad taste in the mouth of the people who live in and around New Orleans

that wanted to come without having to get on a plane and take a goddamn family vacation.

But

most of the people, if they do WrestleMania in New Orleans, are going to fly in anyway.

Like never before, WWE is for sale.

You know, maybe not the ownership, but in terms of anything you want, in terms of product placement, in terms of them coming to your town, you play your cards right.

You can get UFC,

make it a package deal, or NXT, make it a small package.

It's a whole volume.

Pro-bull riding, get some bullshit in there.

If you had a different person running AEW,

It's a great opportunity for a second company to publicly run against that.

Like, imagine if Paul Heyman right now ran AEW

or ECW, you know, and it was now, whatever you want to say.

He wouldn't use the fact that they're pricing people out.

He wouldn't advertise the fact that, you know, come

bring your whole family here and have a great night.

Like, whatever it is, there's an opportunity to right now use the direction that they're going in, and it's a long-term direction.

Use that to build a number too.

It won't happen, but the opportunity would be there right now.

Well, there's already signs in the crowd the other night on Raw or SmackDown.

I've sold my car to get this seat or whatever.

So

they know, and these are the happiest people to spend money I've ever seen.

Holy mackerel.

Anyway.

Send some here.

Go in your mommy and daddy's purse and find those little green pieces of paper with the presidents on it.

Send them.

All right, Soupy.

Come on, Soupy, now none of that.

Anyway,

moving along, I get we should talk about the Dark Side of the Ring episode that aired this past week.

It's the semi-final episode of the season.

Next week is the finale.

And this week was on Daphne.

And we had talked about it when we did the preview and

et cetera, but it just,

I mean, the whole thing was sad.

And I mentioned that Stacey and she got along real well.

She staced thought a lot of her, was really,

you know, hurt with what happened.

And it's a sad story overall.

But, you know, and we'll talk about the show first, but also it just, again, brought up to me

why that there ought to be more.

How can I say this?

Sane, level-headed fucking people

in charge of what people are allowed to do or not do on wrestling programs, not just now, but 15 years ago.

It still existed as an issue.

It just has gotten worse.

But I was just seeing this show.

Are you referencing the concussion, the TNA concussion that they showed?

Well, yes.

And the

thing that led to it and the bullshit she had to go through afterwards.

But just the

thing is, is that this wasn't really a wrestling show per se of a long career, because unfortunately her career wasn't very long.

And

probably rightfully so, there was a wrestling connection to it, but it was just the story of Daphne herself and how

she

ended up getting into something that she really enjoyed and tried to pursue it as a dream, but ended up through mental health issues and,

you know, being taken advantage of quite honestly

uh

you know she ended up worse off for being involved with it

and

i never knew that she got started as an actress with wcw i knew

peripherally she had been on wcw programming and the stuff that the that she did with David Flair and Devin Storman, et cetera, but I thought she had started in the Indies and didn't know that,

you know, she had just answered an

audition call or whatever and was apparently in movies as a kid.

I didn't know she was in Santa Claus the movie.

Do you remember that?

I didn't know that they made Santa Claus the movie, to be honest with you, but it's quite the spectrum.

I'm a little older than you are.

Dudley Moore plays an elf, and it's not like a comedy or anything.

It's like a very serious, very, very serious movie.

He was a very serious elf.

He plays an elf, and he breaks away from Santa and the reindeer and, you know, Mother Claus Claws and everything else.

Runs opposition?

He goes to work for another promoter to work opposition to Santa with like this.

I don't know if that was poisonous, but it was like candy that makes you fly but could also explode.

And then eventually, you know, he sees his evil ways and misses his fellow elves and returns to Santa's love.

Santa Claus, the movie.

She was in it.

Or the 80s in a nutshell, yes.

Well, anyway.

Well, they said it.

They said Santa Claus.

They didn't say Santa Claus the movie, but that's the only Santa Claus I know.

Somebody out there is going to send us a list of movies featuring Santa Claus.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

That was a good one, too.

Nevertheless, back to Daphne.

When WCW folded,

you know,

and of course, they didn't go into a chapter and verse, but she was peripherally back and forth with Indies.

I think she quit

the wrestling business for a while, but then wanted to get back in it.

And

I think I mentioned last week, I think I switched 2004 and 2006 or whatever, but

she was in OVW here in 2003

for a very brief time when she got the developmental thing.

And then, boom, she was gone again.

I think they also might have sent her to Deep South for a while because she didn't spend much time here.

But

you got the idea that her family knew that it would probably be better for her

and for her mental health if she stayed out of wrestling, but they couldn't talk her out of it.

And she got better

with medication.

But then TNA, I was there when she came in.

She was there

after I was gone.

But I had again forgotten because I've.

A lot of the stuff in TNA, I didn't commit to memory.

I remember obviously Daphne being there, but I forgot she had done the Sarah Palin thing.

And

at least it got her a job, is all I was going to say.

That was another

Russo,

you know, scenario where

she became the Sarah Palin spoof, and then Dr.

Stevie got started.

And finally, she got to be herself after some period of metamorphosis there.

But

anyway,

I'd never seen the bump that she took that injured her that they had talked about because that was after, I think

I'm going to say that was the period like two or three months after I was gone from TNA is when the bump took place.

Because it wasn't long afterwards.

So I wasn't watching any of the programming at that time.

But when you see it, it's just so

they'd worked out as Mick Foley was unnecessary.

And just

why?

Mick Foley's working with Abyss in one of the hardcore matches, and they've got a table with barbed wire on it on the floor at ringside.

And Daphne is standing on the second turnbuckle.

And

Abyss had his, you know, hand around her throat and is like a choke slam, but actually, it's just she's going to push her and she's going to do the

trust fall type of thing

from

eight or ten feet in the air through a fucking table with barbed wire on it onto the fucking concrete floor that has a shitty amount of padding to begin with.

And

some of the talking heads on the Mick Foley was on here, and Mick's

very,

a very nice guy and very well spoken.

And, you know, he feels bad about a variety of things that happen to people.

But he's also said, well, she wanted to do it.

Well, but if somebody wants to jump off a bridge, isn't that a whole industry for law enforcement to go and have somebody talk them down from it?

Does everybody need to?

I don't think she came to work that day.

You know, go and I'll tell you what, the fucking most fun thing that I could could ever do would be if I jump off a fucking ring through a goddamn barbed wire wrap table.

She wanted to do it because she was into the business and caught up in the moment and potentially not want to lose her job.

But

so,

and also,

we'll talk about repercussions from things like that in a second, but

she came back from that too soon.

Which, yes, again, people are dedicated to their

jobs when they love them.

And I'm not saying she wasn't, but also

there's always an aspect of I'm going to lose my spot,

or if I don't get back there, whatever.

And dad, insult to injury, after they'd asked her to do this, they put her in the ring with that.

I'd again heard about the name Rosie Lotta Love.

Some morbidly obese green bitch that I guess Bubba Dudley had trained down at their school that they wanted for some perverse reason to push.

And this fat fucking douchebag

just jumps up in the air and sits down on Daphne's chest.

And Daphne at 110 pounds to make up for this corpulent fucking douchebag's 400,

she just fucked her sternum up.

And there was all kinds of goddamn bullshit at the time

coming from TNA about it came down to

no,

they didn't pay her medical bills.

She had to fucking sue them.

They didn't help her with the doctors for where she'd been flung through furniture and barbed wire and sat on by goddamn fat ass.

for no fucking reason but unprofessionalism.

And when they finally settled with her,

and Dixie Carter, her fucking rich, fucking snot-nosed bitch ass had something to do with this, the settlement did include action figures that she could sell on indies and at fanfests.

Did anybody wonder why that everybody thought that was a fucking

Dixie Carter was Tony Khan more elegant with tits?

It was still a goddamn vanity production.

Wine, not white claw.

So, of course, when you've got somebody that suffers from bipolar disorder to begin with, and you give them brain damage with concussions, well, that's

not good.

And that's, you know,

she was doing appearances in FanFest pretty much after

that when she, the injuries added up and she couldn't wrestle anymore.

And that's, you know, but that's where she wanted her brain donated to research because of a variety of things.

But that, um,

when I saw that, I'm like, why the fuck?

Why the fuck was that an important thing that you would do with a talent on your roster in the overall scheme of things that it was worth it?

When Bubba Dudley powerbombed Jillian Hall through a table on OVW, not even on TV in a dark match at my building, I cussed him out and

began some prickliness between us and fucking had to take Jillian Hall off TV for three weeks so she'd be in a hospital.

Because it's just why?

Why would you do that?

Anyway,

she had Daphne.

had started raising money for NAMI, the National Alliance or Association, I can't remember for mental illness, but M-N-A-M-I.

And you may remember Stacey did the

fundraiser a couple years ago on our website in honor of Daphne with the t-shirts.

But,

you know, this was just a sad episode.

They finished on the only uplifting note that they could find.

that she trained a girl that had been badly injured and had all kinds of health issues to have a match and fulfill her dream or whatever, but

it was hard to have an uplifting

into this one.

I've rambled, Brian.

What'd you think?

Don't be too tough.

No, I actually thought as far as

an episode, you know, if you take away the whole idea, it's a wrestling documentary of any sort, I think it's one of their strongest episodes.

I think a lot of that's because they had really good talking heads who could

genuinely speak to to a lot of things.

You know, I have questions from watching in terms of timeline and everything.

And I know that's sometimes a problem with some of these, but by and large, I think they did a really good job.

It was definitely one of the saddest ones,

if not the saddest one ever.

Because almost from like the jump, you're kind of,

you know, everyone, you know, you can kind of tell it's a sad one.

Good to see Devin Storm.

I've known him a long time, and he's one of the good guys, uh, always nice to see him and that he's healthy.

And what we should identify that he is Crowbar or Chris Ford.

I can't remember how they chironed him, but he'll always be Devin Storm to us because of Dangerous Devin Storm, his collect his connection to Dennis Coraluzzo.

What was Dangerous Devin Storm's hometown?

Do you remember?

Oh, good lord, no, I'm ashamed I don't.

Pacific Palisades, California.

That's where he got that accent by way of North Jersey.

That's right.

But

at any rate, next week, Muhammad Hassan.

I'm looking forward to this one.

Yeah, this one I'm really looking forward to.

Yeah, this was

a horse of a different color in that it wasn't.

And I've said this when we talked about it before, it wasn't really a tragedy for poor old Mark Magnus.

Mark Capani, he ended up being a successful professional educator and in the school system and everything and a normal adult human.

But boy,

they gave him a career homicide with that gimmick.

But Muhammad Hassan will be

next week and I will be adding some comments to that one.

I took him and Davari out to get their first Arab clothes.

You know that, don't you?

Over to men's warehouse.

I believe so.

I believe you said that before.

Yeah, I just took him in.

I said, make make them look like they got money

oh but the question is nothing says money like joseph abud

well you know hey he's arab

see

but the the thing is

what is too dangerous what is just ridiculous what is not worth it

And I'm just, I was thinking about that because this was just a couple months after I was gone.

And it was, I was gone a couple of months after Jeff was gone.

And

I would like to think that maybe if I had been at that show, I could have called to somebody's attention, why the fuck do this?

Because there were a few times that I did that, not necessarily because something was overly dangerous, often because it made

one of the main event guys look fucking, or one or more look stupid.

And if that was the case, I could

get Jeff in the corner and say, Jeff,

if I could come up with a different way to get to the same place in terms of a promo or an angle or whatever.

The time that they wanted me as the commissioner to announce Rick and Scott Steiner in a tag team match against Kurt and Karen Angle.

And the Steiners were the babyfaces.

And

I walked out, I went down the street to the Wendy's, had two triple cheeseburgers, thought of a fucking alternate way to get to the same place they wanted to get in the end without making that match, and went back and sat down with Jeff.

And he said, yes.

And of course, Russo was fucking,

his head caught on fire.

I think we ended up making it a handicap match with the Steiners against Angles.

Weaselly heel was going to get what was coming to him, but then they turned the tables in the end or whatever, but just to not be ridiculous, right?

And there was a deal where I

threw my body in front of Eric Young, beating up Sting and Hernandez with a baseball bat before a pay-per-view where they were in main events and he was maybe not even on the card.

But

in some cases, I have talked people out of or swayed them from doing shit.

Why?

Why do you want to do this?

What is the reward for doing this?

Because if

you've got talent on your program that is over with your audience,

and you have got

personalities and issues between them that the people are interested in,

then you don't need to create chaos with furniture and danger and blood constantly.

It's only when you're trying to hot shot, to wave your willie out on the street and say, look at me, look at me.

This, can you top this bullshit?

And, you know,

I know a lot of people like to say, well, all the Cornell's businesses went out of business.

If all of my businesses, how many businesses have you had to begin with?

How many thousands of hours of wrestling, television, and live events have you produced single-handedly?

When you have anywhere near that level of experience in that stratosphere, come and see me.

Otherwise, blow me.

And in Ohio Valley Wrestling, which not only was a successful training program, but also was one of the only two full-time profitable wrestling promotions in the United States of America for six or seven year period.

We might have broken a table three times a year

at the gardens in front of a 6,000 people.

The Hardys and Lita against the disciples of sin, Lita put sin through a table,

or Trailer Park Trash and Flash at the gardens and their blow off in front of 4,000 people.

They broke a table.

We never used barbed wire of any description.

We never, as a matter of fact, it was against the law in the state of Kentucky to bleed.

So we didn't use blood.

But

we were the biggest

ongoing entertainment attraction at Six Flags, Kentucky Kingdom here with wrestling.

In Smokey Man Wrestling, we used a barbed wire cage and we worked it.

The barbed wire was encircling everyone.

The idea was to stay away from it, not take bumps in it.

That's what they wanted to see.

So you give a little bit to them.

Never used thumbtacks, never used light tubes, never used real fire

on people.

We burned a flag or two.

Nobody ever took any bumps on broken glass.

Nobody ever broke an unbaked bottle on anybody.

And in Ring of Honor, I've told stories about how I tried to talk a few people off the ledge, literally.

or would let them do their dive off the balcony only after walking through it and even making sure that the goddamn railing wasn't slick

think about things ahead of time and determine whether it's worth it or not but this and this

110 pound girl

that's different than drew mcintyre taking that bump and i'm sorry if that sounds sexist but it's also factual

And I don't know why that, especially it galled me.

I know shit stain was was still there.

I don't know who else was involved in any kind of decision making.

But why would you ask, especially for no appreciable reward,

how many tickets was it going to sell?

How many paper at that time, how many pay-per-views was it going to sell?

Did anybody even buy TNA pay-per-views at that point?

What difference was it going to make to business on a positive basis to throw this girl 10 feet in in the air through barbed wire and furniture.

And certainly I would like to think that if I'd have been there, I could have said, well, we do something else.

But the inmates had taken over the asylum.

So this ain't new.

The disgust I have for AEW and all these indie goofballs doing this shit for no good reason otherwise than their fucking marks for themselves because it makes the business look bad when the girl is not paralyzed permanently and ever recovers again.

And if the girl is paralyzed and never recovers again, well, it kind of sucks for the girl or the guy, as the case may be.

So why do this stupid fucking shit?

And here's a lesson to all of you in 2025 that was just on TV from fucking 15 years ago.

Don't ask people to do stupid shit that doesn't mean anything for business just because you're all marks, you think you're fucking movie stunt men.

I'm sorry, Brian.

What do you think?

Well, like you said, a lot of these things have no impact.

So what are you really doing?

You know, the situation we're talking about with Daphne.

It wasn't going to cause the rating to go up or down.

It was just something on, it was just something to happen

that had pretty bad consequences.

There's a lot of that.

Look, how many guys

we're going to find out really hurt their necks and their shoulders and their backs from

being big so they had to always be out there to catch whoever was flipping off whatever on the floor?

You know, we're going to hear about that.

I mean, there's,

it's a pro-injury style of wrestling right now.

And,

you know, Mick Foley

justifies everything that he did because it's what he wanted to do.

And that's how he could justify that for anyone else.

But that's kind of the problem right now.

You don't have the leadership.

But

you know what?

Another difference was

the stuff that Mick Foley did,

and of course, we've said people abused it and thought they could do the same thing without seeing Mick's other talents and appeal and et cetera.

But

Mick Foley had a legitimate reason to believe that if he got over on top, he could make seven figures a year, and he did.

There was never a goddamn position or a spot open or a way in the freaking world that Daphne was ever going to make the same amount of money as Mick Foley, but she's out there taking the same kind of bumps.

And

at some point,

You know, yes, we all enjoyed being in the wrestling business because it was fun performing and whatever we were performing.

But at some point, you have to be

halfway, you know, a level-headed person and realize what you should be or shouldn't be doing with your body.

And also the company

that is, or the promotion or the entity that's doing the thing,

it has to be.

I mean, I always wanted the guys to fucking go out and have any match they wanted to have.

But if somebody had just decided they were going to go up to the second level of the building and take bumps off the balcony and I didn't know about it, I would have, I'd have fired them if they lived.

The promotion has to have some responsibility for not letting some of these people make decisions they shouldn't make.

And that refers to the guys, the girls, and everybody in the business these days, just because they think it's so much fun.

It ain't going to be fun.

As they used to say, when you're sucking soup through a straw or when you're around or walking around riding around in your motorized wheelchair

i think a sad reality is that too many wrestlers see a lot of these things that you're talking about whether it's thumbtacks or you know the chair shots are really aren't the issue they once were but a lot of these different things

i think too many see it as a rite of passage like it's something you're supposed to do it's become it's become normalized both on the independent scene and on the mainstream scene even but what's the matter then with the younger generation if there had been any rite of passage for anything that i ever wanted to do in my life whether for fun or profit and somebody said well first you got to fall in some thumbtacks well you i'll find something else thank you

and that's that you mentioned chair shots

that's

that's another thing that they that was an issue because they made it one because they were idiots and they were marks for themselves.

Chair shots were never given in wrestling with full force to the fucking head with no hands, no blocking, no art, no trick of the trade, no whatever.

Almost never.

The people that did do it didn't get a chance to do it too much more.

People would just not let them hit them with a chair.

But

then the ECW idiots and all of the hardcore bullshit, they started to, oh, how hard can you hit me and I can take it?

Because we want to make it real.

Well, what you did was you made everything else phony and you made yourself stupid.

And because people were conditioned to chair shots delivered as the art.

Bobby Eaton could give or take one.

Every professional could give or take one.

I would

much rather be hit by a chair by anybody in the territory wrestling days than again stand under one of these fucking awkward fuckers trying to catch them.

And but when they became marks and decided to do it for real,

then everybody got up in arms.

Well, now with what we know about concussions, there shouldn't be any chair shots.

No shit, there should have been no chair shots anyway, you dumb fuckers.

Where were we going with that?

What is too dangerous?

What should be allowed?

What is the art?

A lot of, yes.

The art of pro wrestling is simulating conflict in a manner in which it might hurt, but it won't injure you.

A lot of things in wrestling hurt, but they don't hurt you.

And

the things that the guys are doing now

that

they think somehow makes wrestling more legitimate actually makes it more fake and see-through.

Because

it's shit that requires much more setup, much more obvious cooperation.

And then you get your holy shit moment where it's like, holy shit,

they're both dead.

But that's the antithesis of what you're trying to get out of wrestling, the the idea that there isn't cooperation and it is a real conflict, and that's what you're supposed to make look real.

That's totally forgotten.

So,

in effect, you're damaging yourself for real

to the people that most know that the shit you're doing is phony.

So, y'all can have it.

I need a drink, Brian.

Oh, do you now?

I need a drink.

Now, a lot of people would say, oh, Cordette, we didn't know you were a Tipler.

We didn't know you were a booze hound, a whino.

No, no, no.

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Oh, okay.

Well, then, no regrets.

No regrets.

Well, Brian, before we go any further, what in the Sam Hill is going on at the Arcadian Vanguard Network this week?

Oh, it's another busy week, even as I lose my voice over here and my usual gibberish and everything else.

Go through.

Just go through and come back through the side, ladies and gentlemen.

Ladies and gentlemen, on Twitter at Super Podcast, or of course, facebook.com/slash Arcadia Vanguard, the wrestling news each and every day.

Get your wrestling news from the wrestling news for free.

No clickbait, no paywall, just the wrestling news.

Wherever it's happening, we'll have it the next day.

The morning wrestling newscast, the wrestling news.

Sometimes you even have it before it happens.

Of course, I want to bring up, shut up and wrestle with Brian Solomon, his guest this week, Tony Richards, author of the upcoming book on Dory Funk Sr.

and the Amarillo Territory.

I am looking forward to that, by the way.

I don't know too much about that book, so I'm actually looking forward to that.

I hope it's good.

I don't either, but I want a good book on that thing there.

You know, here we are, 2025.

There are still territories there are no books on at all.

It's kind of crazy.

But here, this show today, S-U-A-Wpod.com, or shut up and wrestle with Brian Solomon, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast.

The

shit.

Fuck you.

The mothership.

Brief and to the point.

No sound effects needed.

605pod.com,

the mothership.

That sounded painful.

You know what?

Somehow.

How do you see?

You're taking too big of a risk.

There's no reward for that much risk.

You got to temper these things.

Well, all right.

You're right about this.

Speaking of rewarding a risk, and I don't know.

AEW aired dynamite this past week, unlike collision, which didn't air this past week.

Should we mention that first?

All of it didn't air.

I guess it was last week now, but whatever the case, did we ever find out?

Did anybody ever accept responsibility for why that the Saturday night collision from whatever the fuck

aired the first hour and a half, and then suddenly the Rocks Black Adam movie came on and

people were like,

where's the last half hour?

It was weird.

I had it on one of the monitors in here because the Mets were on.

And they had a Steve Mongo McMichael tribute.

And I saw Dean Malenko was out there.

There was a woman out there.

I had it on mute, so I don't know if it was his daughter or a wife or I don't know who she was, to be quite, I'm just guessing.

And then Ric Flair,

who has a very interesting fashion sense, as we all know.

And I'm kind of looking up at that every now and then to see what's going on.

And then before I know it, I look up and I'm like, why is the DC logo on the screen?

And it's just around 9.30.

They just cut out and went to Black Adam, which was in the

guide for 10 p.m.

They started at a half hour early.

Well, from what I understand, then

Tony had tweeted out, oh,

transmission difficulty, and it'll be okay on the West Coast.

And it'll be up on Macs.

And then it wasn't okay on the West Coast, and it wasn't up on Macs.

And then nobody heard anything about it for a few days.

And then finally,

I think apparently they did post the

entire show online for anybody by that point that was that motivated to see the rest of it.

But

it wasn't a transmission error in terms of they had a

flawless tape that just needed to be beamed out to the populace.

It had to be something to do with the actual,

we used to say the tape, the tape was bad.

Now it would be a foul or

whatever the fuck, but something apparently was not able to be transmitted and took a few days to fix.

And that apparently is all we know now about.

They have a lot of troubles

with their technical situation to be

a big of a budget a company as they are and to have a network like TBS, TNT, that

whole conglomerate behind them, they still.

I mean, I was used to it in 1989 when they would book a building that

there was no seats in or they would fucking forget to call a TV truck or whatever, but this is,

you know, they did that.

I didn't know.

Are you talking about center stage?

Yes.

They booked us for a TV taping at center stage when the building was being renovated and they ripped all the seats out.

They expected the fans to sit on concrete ledges with concrete dust on them.

But that, again, that was when things were a whole lot smaller and a whole and the budget was a whole lot smaller.

I can't believe that they still can't get their shit together in this day and age.

But nevertheless,

did it do a rating?

Black Adam should have helped them for the last two quarters.

Dude, I didn't even check.

What do you think just about the symbolism of it?

The idea they go off.

have wwe's board member come on in his biggest passion project to date

they should they should have had a special promo tape just in case with rock said hey you want to see some real cut that other stuff put my movie on and those aew fans would have lost their minds they got a scroll at the bottom of the screen saying that there were problems

and then uh

Yeah, I don't know.

That was the only thing I knew about the show, really.

I wanted to see the Mongo McMichael thing to see what it was.

and then it went off the air.

They should have that scroll ready because I think every week, Wednesday night, about 8.15 or so,

they should scroll.

Yeah, there's a lot of problems with this program.

Unfortunately, transmission is not one of them.

So anyway, the point is collision, part of it aired.

Unfortunately,

Dynamite on May 21st, all of it aired.

From Albuquerque, they should have taken a left turn, Brian.

At Albuquerque, they would have come up a better.

They would have ended up in Kookamunga.

Oh, boy.

Yeah, Kookamunga was all over this show.

The opening segment was a face-to-face interview with Hangman, Adam Page, and Will Osprey.

And all I've got to say, to you folks out there who were fortunate enough not to have witnessed this marathon marathon therapy session, as the kids say, is that Uncle Dave Meltzer thought that this was the most brilliant thing ever, made them both look like stars, and was probably the best face-off this year.

That's what I was

quoted at.

Yes.

No, he did not say that.

Yet, he didn't even qualify best AEW face-off.

Like all that shit with Punk and Drew and all that other stuff.

Not only was this not any of those, but it also won worst haircut.

Oh, it

Tony Shivati, who's supposed to be the interviewer, introduces both these guys and then hands off the microphone and stands in the corner like a schmo

while they start talking.

And once that they have said they're not going to fight, then he just gets out of the ring like he was just waiting to make sure he didn't have to fucking exert his authoritarians.

And then they let these two twits

have their

dramatic rendition

in the ring with the spotlight just on the two of them,

where they try and fail

to have this,

again, dramatic story behind this.

That,

good God,

Osprey's trying the folksy comedy that falls flat.

He wants to have a beer with Paige, but Paige doesn't know where to trust him or not.

And

it's just over scripted, rotten material about shit that only these indie-level,

you know, minded fans could possibly get into.

And with the dramatic

and flowery verbiage that they've come up with in their minds, where they think they're Shakespeare.

And

it's bad enough when they've got

not only allegedly professional writers, but also big stars in in wrestling that can talk, delivering

dramatic shit in the WWE.

But when it's two fucking nitwits that make their own shit up,

and by virtue of a billionaire not being able to yank a knot in anybody's tail and take control of his business, they're just allowed to go out there and drone on for 20 minutes.

Holy fuck.

Osprey.

really wants to win the title.

He wants to bring it home.

And he wants to be the main event with Paige at double or nothing, even though they got to follow the anarchy in the arena, Matt.

Like, that's going to be hard to follow.

And

he wants to go on and win the title at the stadium because he starts complaining about his 15-hour flight every week.

Every week, mate, I'm jet-lagged on Tuesdays.

And I'm away from move to the country you work in, dipshit.

He leaves his six-year-old every Tuesday.

I've said there's people that got more problems than taking a 15-hour round-trip flight once a fucking week and leaving your six-year-old to make a couple million dollars a year, but they can't figure they're trying to be

members of the common people.

And at the same time, people are looking at him going, You're getting paid to do this shit?

He just hasn't met the right realtor yet.

And he knows how bad that hanger wants it, but he wants it just a little bit more

and at least osprey tries to have as a matter of fact he tries too hard

but he tries to have some oomph to him but as somebody on twitter said his voice sounds like a garbage disposal with a british accent

but then when page comes back he's got the memorized material that he delivers in a stagey way,

a stilted, stiff, and unnatural way with lots of big words that if he does use in real life, he shouldn't.

And they're enunciated correctly.

And he says, well, it's business with you, Osprey.

With me, it's personal.

That sounds familiar.

I just heard that on the other channel not long ago.

And Paige, when he starts yelling, he looks like he's going to cry.

And he's venting about Christmas morning when I saw my son, or my son saw me staring out the window, looking for someone that would never come back.

What the fuck is this?

Is this goddamn summer of 42 bullshit?

And he said, my wife pities me.

I pity her.

And he went on forever

about wanting to make everybody proud of him.

I need to know there's some kind of light at the end of this two-year tunnel through hell.

And I'm like, they're talking about

this bullshit about I wanted more than you do.

I want to be the champion mate

instead of goddamn pins.

People have real problems.

This was not a two-year tunnel through hell, except for the people that were watching you on television.

It was hell on them.

I wrote, this is some soft, pussy-ass lifetime movie shit here.

And then Osprey promised to show up Sunday and do his best.

And they yelled some more.

It wouldn't end.

It was a scene from a backyard wrestling federation production on VHS.

And finally, Osprey got a pop when he got bleeped for saying fuck.

But this

is a 20 minutes.

What about the beer?

What about the beer?

Oh, and then they drank a bunch of beer aggressively at each other.

What do you think of that?

Because they had the awkwardness of he gives Paige the beer.

And of course, we know Paige has a drinking problem.

The character of Batman Paige has a drinking problem.

So he drank it anyway.

My wife hates me.

My wife hates me.

Yes, that's

this is not, we want to hear problems about

you screwed me out of the title you stabbed me in the back you did the the ordinary that wrestlers are supposed to get mad about not

oh all these people they're my reputation whatever the this's about i just

and they want They want to talk like it's real when their fans know above all others that it's all phony as a football bat.

And

instead of concentrating on coming up with all this material to make people think that it's the insiders that it's all a shoot they ought to concentrate on their performance because that tells me it's bullshit

i do you did you see anything that i did and the haircuts my god my god Well, Adam Page kind of got that haircut a ways back, and now it still looks as douchey as it did when he got it.

But Osprey,

you know, with the conversation being how he needs to dress like a star and

be a star, if they're going to pay him like a star, and there's a chance the fans will treat him like one, why not be one?

Again, he comes out there just dressed like,

you know, anyone, but the haircut.

It was like a fresh bowl haircut parted in the middle.

It was ridiculous.

I couldn't take this whole thing at all seriously.

What are they arguing about?

They're arguing about nothing.

They're arguing about nothing.

But that's the point.

There's no substance to this.

It's just

who's outperforming the other guy for the benefit of all these fans.

That's what they all fucking

are on at the end in various ways.

And it's just,

anywho.

That was the first segment, but now we got to go to the wrestling, Brian.

And they brought out the heavy hitters, the big guns

a six-man tag team match with dick the boozer and the buckaroos against samoa joe powerhouse hobbs and swerve strickland

and

even they're in albuquerque in like a theater of some kind

And it's on a street that there wasn't a fucking car going past.

There wasn't a bystander.

They've got the boozer and Marina Schaefer out on an empty street.

And then they walk in the door through the empty outer building.

And Moxley is just blathering nonsense while he's doing that and punching himself in the fucking chin.

And then he comes through the building.

So they waste five minutes on this.

Well, the 10 people who are buying concessions just stand there and watch.

Yes, that's the thing is you pass more people

in my front yard

than he did from the time he went out on the street.

and it looks like they're nowhere why did they do that

so then

here came the kookamonga kids to

no reaction as usual

and they start this match and from the bell it goes 20 more minutes after they've done these entrances

and you know you know the

You know the drill.

Everybody did a bunch of moves.

And finally, Swerve pinned one of the Hardley boys.

So that took 20 minutes to get to that point.

Then

here comes Wheeler Useless and Claudio and the Heels beat up the babyface.

Marina Schaefer beat up Nana.

God damn it.

They've done nothing.

They never did anything to establish Nana as a manager that had any competence whatsoever.

And now even the women just beat him up.

He can't do anything nana is a black man from new york certainly he could be even for 30 seconds with marita schaefer even if she's a goddamn judo expert

one would think

he's a former wrestler

well being a wrestler don't mean you're tough anymore but still he's from new york for heaven's sake you got his queens from queens see

He

used to live next door to Eddie Murphy.

It's a bad neighborhood.

You got to be able to take care of yourself.

Anyway, then Shapupi came in with the phoniest shit of the night.

Did you see this?

I watched this whole thing.

I was entranced by it.

Yeah.

When everything he did was just like a parody of what wrestling is.

It was so see-through.

And then Schaefer came in and nutted him.

So

then

they played music.

And Willow came running running down to the ring as fast as Willow was running.

By the time she got to the ring, both her eyes were black.

And she started doing running spots with Marina Schaefer.

And she threw a bunch of fake blows of various kinds.

And then more music played.

And here came Kenny.

And he got in the ring and did a few moves.

And then he made a face.

And then he pointed, and then he skipped, and then he hit the ropes, and he hit one of the buckaroos with a fake knee lift.

And then he pointed

again.

And Swerve pulled out a table, and Kenny tried to put

one of the bucks through it, and Claudio saved him.

And the heels were bailing out, and Joe cut a promo on him and got a big pop when he said fuck and it got bleeped.

And so, from entrances through all this chaos at the end,

it was 30 minutes.

And then I don't want to skip ahead and ruin the chronology,

but Joe's promo was a sane man would wait till next weekend, but I'm not a sane man.

So the threat was a very veiled, very veiled, almost disguised threat was that they're going to kick the shit out of him some more later on tonight.

But they waited not only until after the main event, which we'll get to, and I'm pretty sure drove away a significant portion of the viewing audience,

but into the overrun before then,

all the guys in this garbage match

came back, got in another fight.

Now, with what's the name of the guy that keeps coming out now and interfering?

Oh, Gabe Kidd.

Gabe Kidd, who looks like Josh Alexander to me.

Are they separated from birth?

Twin brothers.

At least Josh Alexander has the headgear to separate himself.

Well, the point is these fucking guys, they got in another fight.

They broke a bunch of furniture again.

They fought all over the place.

They put multiple people through tables to promote, allegedly, this

garbage match that they're going to have with five or six guys on each side where they do all this shit and they fight in the arena.

They've already done the match.

But

with all of this, I've said before, you fucking blithering idiots.

You shoot the angle fighting in the arena.

You have the match in the ring.

The angle is we get out of control and we fight all over the place for two minutes or three minutes or whatever, just enough to tease people and get them up.

And then you book the match and you have most of that in the fucking ring.

But the problem is, these guys can't have a match in the ring.

So they've done five or ten minutes here all over the arena with furniture and chairs and jumping and diving and pointing and gesticulating and farting about.

And then they're going to come back at the pay-per-view that they want people to pay for and they're going to do all this same shit for twice or three times as long.

What the

with music

with music

And

what the fuck is their is their deal?

You've just given them the shit that they're supposed to pay for for free.

The baby faces would come up once, then the heels are up, and then the baby face are having it, blah, blah, blah, but all the furniture gets broken, and you ain't going to do anything different.

Yeah, it's one thing to go off the air mid-south wrestling, or more appropriately, UWF style, where everyone is going to be in that matches brawling, and you go off the air, you get like 30 seconds of it.

This went on and on and on and on.

This

on and on.

This wouldn't end.

And it became comical because of that.

And that's the audience that they're shooting for: the people who want to laugh at phony wrestling, because otherwise they wouldn't be doing this.

But

as we've seen, the audience that wants to laugh at phony wrestling is limited.

And it gets comical because it's so ridiculous, because they're out there doing all the shit that they think is fun, and that the

little indie bubble that they live in

is, you know, they like that kind of thing.

But, you know,

it's just meaningless for drawing money or putting a program together where you're advancing personalities and making stars.

It's just chaos with children, now with children.

Because anytime the lollipop guild guild is in it,

even with guys like Samoa Joe and Hobbes,

if you've got the bucks in there, it's comedy to begin with.

So

we've been talking about what kind of money matches can they put together?

They have none because they concentrate on doing horseshit like this to appease these indie-minded nitwits that think that they're special instead of making stars and putting matches together that'll draw money on a widespread basis.

And they'll just gimmick it up.

But still, someone will get hurt.

Every time someone will get hurt.

Yes.

And there's always the chance of that also.

What do the kids call it, Brian?

Are they tone deaf?

They're tone deaf.

They can't hear the tone of the room.

They don't know that their shit is passe and overdone and blase

and boring.

Is it tone deaf?

Is that the word?

Tone local.

I wonder if the MD hearing aids will help people that are tone deaf.

I didn't know where you were going.

Now it makes perfect sense.

It makes perfect sense now, doesn't it?

Well, I don't know about that

deaf, but yes.

Well, it depends on what kind of tones you're deaf to.

Or if you're one of the deaf tones.

Folks, did you know that MD Hearing recently cut their price in in half despite all of this inflation craziness going on in the world because they have figured out a way

to have finer quality apparatuses or apparati at lower prices and they're making it up in volume

because gas is expensive, food's expensive, everything's expensive.

If you go try to get a hearing aid from a clinic or a hospital, or some type of, you know, one of these pop-up things that people operate out of the trunk of their cars on the corner.

Many times you will go up to a Plymouth or a Chrysler with a guy selling hearing aids out of the back of that.

Not many times.

And you'll get a good deal, but you will find out that they don't work as well or last as long as the folks at MD Hearing.

A Plymouth or a Chrysler?

What year is this example taking place?

But this was back in the 70s.

Old Grandpa John, he couldn't hear toward the end.

And he got both the Chrysler and the Plymouth brand hearing aids, and they didn't help him at at all.

But folks, MD Hearing.

Yes, MD Hearing, let's talk about them.

They are.

Yes.

They make high quality, easy to use, rechargeable hearing aids with exceptional sound quality that are personalized to your hearing profile.

And they fit inside your ear.

So nobody's even going to know it's there.

We've mentioned this before.

If they get close enough that they can see this hearing aid, you're allowed to punch them because they're invading your space.

You're not allowed to punch it.

You have no authority to say that anyway, but you're not allowed to.

No, they'd have to be sitting on your shoulder.

I mean, no court of law in the land would convict you.

If somebody gets close enough to you to get a good look at this MD hearing aid in your ear, at least an elbow in the ribs.

Plus, MD hearing has just launched the NEO Excess MD hearing smallest hearing aid ever.

Never take it out because if you take it out, it's so small, you'll never find it again.

Well, no, let's not say never.

Take it out when it's time to take it out.

No, because you always want to hear.

What if you're sleeping in the middle of night and somebody says fire?

If you ain't got your hearing aid in, you're going to be a crispy critter because you won't hear that.

MD hearing.

They're going to say things that people are not supposed to do.

I don't know if they're supposed to sleep.

Well, with they're not supposed to sleep through a fire in a crowded theater.

A crowded theater?

Well, you're not supposed to yell fire in a crowded theater.

You're not supposed to sleep through one either.

MD hearing is just as good as premium quality hearing aids that you see about all the time.

$297 for a pair of hearing aids from MD Hearing.

It's just crazy.

That's the end.

And

Edward S., you know him.

He's been in the news.

That's why he's not allowed to reveal his last name.

He calls, he's in the Federal Witness Protection Program.

He calls MD Hearing the best hearing aid I've used at any price.

Edward was recently rescued from a desert island and he hadn't heard anything for 40 years.

But MD Hearing was founded by an ENT surgeon who saw how many of his patients needed hearing aids but couldn't afford them.

Every time he'd go out in his in his waiting room there, he'd say next and nobody would stand up.

He made it his mission.

Stop it.

You're laughing about serious.

It's very

serious.

He made it his mission to develop a quality hearing aid that anyone could afford.

And now, when he goes out in his office and he says next,

they all stand up and jump him.

MD here sold.

They've sold over.

They've sold.

They have sold to others and they can sell to you for a great deal.

Yes,

two million times they've sold hearing aids to people.

I wonder if it's different people.

Different people.

There are multiple people.

What am I defending here right now?

I'm talking about great hearing aids for a great price, a new price just for you, a great deal from MD hearing.

Yes,

that's what it is.

They offer a 45-day risk-free trial, 100% money-back guarantee.

And when people are yelling at you, now you'll be able to hear it unless you turn them off.

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Go to shop MD Hearing, shopmdhearing.com

and use the promo code JCE to get a pair of hearing aids for just $297.

That's $149 an ear, not even.

So Brian, if somebody came up to you and said, hey, if you don't give me $150, I'm going to to make you deaf in one ear.

You'd do it, wouldn't you?

Well, let's not use this kind of example, this kind of thuggery.

Let's talk about the people

at home who need

a little boost, need to be able to hear a little better.

A lot of us have hearing loss due to going to concerts and standing near giant amplifiers.

MD hearing, a great resource for you.

Or Pyro.

in TNA's little closet they used to shoot in, but and they got a free extra charging case, which is a hundred dollar value is going to come along with the ride for that 297.

And again, 150 bucks an ear.

What would be the price on your left or right nut?

And which are you more fond of?

Your nuts or your ears?

Again, what

and again, if you want to spend 600 bucks, you can take care of your ears and your nuts.

Listen, let's get to your nuts if you don't take care of your hearing.

Let's get to the nuts and bolts.

And that is a great deal

for the listeners who need a little help with their hearing.

It's one of the senses.

Yes, you're nuts.

You're nuts.

If you don't go to shopmdhearing.com and use the promo code JCE to get a pair of hearing aids and a free extra charging case, $100 value for just $297.

It's like a sore dick and a busted drum.

You can't beat it.

Your senses will be working overtime.

MD hearing.

One more time, Jim.

What's that?

Special code.

Well, now, if you get your senses to work overtime they're going to want more money but go to shopmdhearing.com and use the promo code jce that's how you're going to get into all this stuff here

but now i'm not not sure about the overtime

oh there's that transition music that we've all come to know yes yes i'm i'm already headed that way uh we had

Again, the reliable segment of the AEW programs are usually the Hurt Syndicate and the MJF

appearances where MJF's trying to get into the group and et cetera.

And

they did a good job here, but they got interrupted.

I will back up.

The Hurt Syndicate and their lawyer was in the ring.

And hey.

Did you notice that old Mark Sterling was actually halfway straight, didn't fucking throw in the goddamn,

you know, comedy and the Ritz Brothers act.

And it was kind of the Ritz brothers, as legitimate as he could be.

But

the Hurts and their lawyer were in the ring, and Mark Sterling was in the ring.

He brought MJF out

for the big induction.

MJF not only was cutting a promo, he was doing good, but MVP was feeling saucy.

He healed on the crowd.

They blistered Albuquerque.

MVP has not really been that much of an outright heel to people

on TV, but in this case.

Yeah, Albuquerque and Brian Keefe.

Yes.

Those are two of his favorites.

That's right.

And Big Bill.

Yeah.

But

again, they both blistered Albuquerque and the fans and Sterling didn't fuck it up.

And everybody had signed except Bobby Lashley the agreement.

And Bobby was thinking about it and reading it and conferring it.

And the crowd was all over this.

They were really reactive.

The crowd was into it.

They're just thinking about signing a paper because it's actually something they can follow.

It's a logical, sensible thing that's happening.

And finally, Bobby signed, and boom.

And like I said, the crowd's all over him.

And then music plays.

And

here's the rub.

Here's the problem.

Here comes Dustin Rhodes and Sammy Guevara again.

And

in the ring, you've got big time heels.

You've got the tag team champions, Lashley and Benjamin, you've got MJF,

you got MVP, who has a

somewhat of stature and cachet in the industry, a reputation for, and here comes the Mid-Card Express.

Because yeah, I'm appreciative of Dustin's talents,

but he's about where he's going to be now.

The people know he's there to have a good match with the kids and

put people over.

And Sammy's there because he got punished off of the big TV because he was a dick.

And they're not top guys.

And this match is not going to sell a fucking ticket or a buy or a view or whatever the fuck.

But now,

and Dustin did the whole interview while Sammy just stared there and gawked.

And Dustin again was trying really hard, too hard.

He can talk, but he had no material here and he went too long.

At one point, he said, the first double or nothing was an unforgettable night you're never going to forget.

And only time will tell if we stand the test of time.

And then his whole thing, we were here at day one,

the day one guy.

So six years later, we're in the same position and in sammy's case worse is what they might as well say

and they're standing there already wearing tag team title belts and they're barking at the guys in the ring that they want their belts because everybody's got belts

so visually a lot of people who don't live their lives over this thing is gonna say well what's the difference and who cares

it's just

They've got nobody

credible to work with their tag team champions, except their other tag team champions that are tag team champions of a fictitious promotion that doesn't really exist.

And this is what they're spending national TV time on.

Help me understand, Brian.

I'm actually really into Sammy Guevara's new gimmick, which is like, I fucked up.

It's in how I wear a suit.

That classic babyface move to show you that I'm a changed person.

I wear a suit every week.

I like Dustin's fire and i always do

but you know in a week where a lot of things went way too long he was given way too much time on the mic here every time he gets on the mic you're happy to hear from him and then like you start thinking you know maybe he's the heel

the more he talks like you know maybe he's not the babyface here

yeah i don't know i mean pay-per-views this weekend they needed a match

and I think about that they needed a match the pay-per-views this weekend the tag team champions.

That's the level of intricacy that is going into this booking.

All righty then.

Did you see the contest between, we just mentioned Anthony Bowens the other day.

Where's he been?

Well, he was back and Billy Gunn's still in his corner.

Caster is still on the missing persons list, but Bowens versus Ricochet.

I could have gone for this if they put Bowens over.

But

Ricochet hit him in the head with, Bowens made a comeback.

Ricochet rolled out on the floor, reached under the ring when Bowens tried to get him.

Ricochet had the golden shears, a pair of gold painted scissors, and stabbed.

Bowens in the head with the scissors.

And there was no blood or no hole in his head.

He stabbed him in the head with the scissors.

And Bowens sold it.

Like, oh.

And then Ricochet hit his little clothesline finish on him.

The scissors being stabbed in his head wasn't enough.

The clothesline was what finished him off.

It was a horrible finish, poorly executed.

Why?

If he was a tailor or a quilt maker,

maybe then scissors should be his gimmick.

But

a quilt maker?

You know what?

Quilt maker.

In this case, it actually works if you're finishing Bowens up.

His whole thing was scissor me

and then Ricochet scissored him.

Son of a bitch.

You're right.

He scissored him, daddy.

You know, and the thing is, that is actually kind of cute.

And they didn't even think of it themselves.

He'd been using the scissors independently of the acclaimed.

Right.

It wasn't building up to this.

No, it just was out of nowhere because he used scissors before on other people.

And then Ricochet leaves the ring, but Mark Briscoe comes out wheeling a gurney.

They're going to have a stretcher match, Brian, between Mark Briscoe and Ricochet.

And again, do you know the reason

why they decided to book a stretcher match between Ricochet and Mark Briscoe?

This was reported by Uncle Dave, who's the mouth organ for Tony Khan.

Actually, I have no idea why.

I was wondering that.

Because the first time that Tony Khan's father, when he was a little kid, little teeth tatty baby, took him to see wrestling outside of Illinois, where they lived, it was the ECW Arena and Sabu was at a stretcher match.

So

naturally, that means that Ricochet and fucking

Mark Briscoe need to be in a stretcher match this week on a pay-per-view.

I think it's more likely that Tony saw Ellie Gante versus Sid Vicious in a stretcher match.

Well, I have a feeling that

one isn't on a stretcher.

No, he got on the stretcher, and then as soon as they called it, he stood up and walked out.

But I think that one will be better than this one because from what I heard, I try to block the commentators out, but I believe they said the winner is going to be the first person

to put the guy on the stretcher, wheel him out of the arena, put him in the ambulance and close the door like a coffin, a coffin match or a goddamn casket match.

But if that's the case,

then the first time they go in the back, they're pretty much going to have to stay there unless they come back out to the ring and wrestle longer and then take a few more trips, which means it's just going to be full-on garbage from the start to the finish.

So that's which they've already got a full-on start-to-finish garbage match in the multiple man

arena assholes match.

And then the so

yeah, this is going to be

really bad.

Did I miss anything about Bowens and Ricochet before we move on to the main event?

I don't think so.

No.

Okay.

Well, I should, there, it's a double main event.

There was a main event

face-to-face confrontation and then a main event match.

The main event face-to-face confrontation was Renee Moxley Good in the ring with Jamie Hayter and Mercedes Moon.

And I wrote, oh fuck no, I've got shit to do and it doesn't include watching Mercedes Moon do a bad audition for her acting reel,

which

When I stopped to listen to a little bit of it in the middle was what she was doing.

Has there ever been a worse promo of more phony

individual

apparently in real life as well as on television than mercedes moon

she thinks she's goddamn greta garbo

and i mean it's just

this is the girl that can't find her way out of the woods by her own admission according to uh monet mag

According to Monet Mag, which she apparently is the ghostwriter for.

Apparently she's the publisher, the editor, the head writer, everything.

And so anyway, they did that.

And poor Jamie Hayter, again, looking like a

fucking fluorescent fucking gummy bear.

And then the main event wrestling match was Mina Mellons

versus Julia Hart.

With Tony Storm sitting next to the announcers, slipping in what they allegedly call commentary.

That was it.

That was the main event.

They think

because

they have done a light tease of all of these idiots getting back together for a reprise of their garbage match, that they will sit through Mina Mellons and Julia Hart.

I can't wait to hear the ratings.

I don't know anything ahead of time.

But that went over to the overrun.

And then the aforementioned, we talked about it earlier.

They had the reprise of the 10-man garbage match fellows with more furniture.

But

they just, they just gave up for the previous 20 minutes with between the segment with Mercedes and Jamie and the segment with Mina and Julia.

Everybody else had moved on, had they not?

Well, you know, you would think maybe that they didn't put their best effort forward because they knew they were up against game one of the Knicks versus the Pacers.

However, that wouldn't explain bringing back everyone they brought back for the very end of the show

for the very long segment.

I was surprised how much time they gave this.

And it came on the back of the Mercedes-Monet Jamie Hayter in ring.

We'll see.

I haven't looked at the ratings yet either, so this will be surprising.

Well, in that case, Brian, unless you have any punctuation to put on this review of this program, let's see if anybody watched it and where they decided to take mercy on themselves and in the insanity.

All right, Jim.

Well, I have the numbers here.

AEW Dynamite on TBS.

Wednesday, May 21st, 2025,

8 to 10.08 p.m.

On average, watched by 575,000 viewers.

Ouch, I believe they were well over 600 last week, so for that big cage match, so they have they've gone back down to reality this week.

682 last week, four-week average, 615.

So down off both.

Again, Knicks versus Pacers

was on the sister channel, TNT,

and of course, lots of other.

action-packed activities on TV.

Do you really think that people who are predisposed to watch the Knicks and the Pacers in the NBA Finals are also predisposed to watch Julia Hart and Mina Mellons?

Well, that was why during that match, I ended up turning it off and going to the Knicks game, and I returned on DVR the next morning to see the end of the show.

Well, where did we start, Brian?

Well, the quarter-hour breakdown here, Jim, these were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Quarter one,

8 to 8:15 p.m.

The Adam Page Will Osprey Osprey live promo.

714,000 viewers.

Okay.

And that

is, again, as we've said, lower than they normally start at.

But last week, they started a little bit higher, but they kept it.

I don't see

how they're going to keep much of this and make their average.

So I have a feeling that there will be some attrition going forward.

Will we go to quarter two?

8.15 to 8.30 p.m.

The continuation of Paige and Osprey in the ring.

Longer.

And the start of Jon Moxley and the Young Bucks versus Swerve Strickland and the Ops with Picture and Picture,

644,000 viewers.

Well, there went 70,000 people, but normally when the Buckaroos appear on the screen,

for the next quarter, there's some element of channel changing, and they've already dropped quite a bit.

Are they going further, or did they settle into a pattern here?

Well, we go to quarter three, 8:30 to 8:45 p.m.

Continuation of Moxley and the Bucks versus Swerve in the Ops with picture in picture,

608,000 viewers.

Oh,

okay.

So

just to clarify,

they put in two of the EVPs, the Lollipop Guild, the Kookamunga Kids,

and the

world champion Vic the Boozer.

And on the opposite side was a former champion, Samoa Joe, and a former champion, Swerve Strickland,

and poor old Hobbs.

And that star power lost them 36,000 viewers.

Well, we go now.

Doogie-doogie.

We go now at a quarter four, 8:45 to 9 p.m.

The continuation of Moxley and the Bucks versus Swerve and the Ops.

The post-match with the Death Riders, Kenny Omega, Willow Nightingale, and that's it.

The MJF and the Hurts Syndicate and smart Mark Sterling backstage angle and ad break.

And the start of the Hurt Syndicate MJF

contract signing live act yeah the the the backstage angle was just a promo where they said we're coming up on about to do the goddamn contract deal so there was no angle involved but it was the story

627 000 viewers

And there comes 19,000 poor souls back because all of a sudden, here comes the Hurt Syndicate and MJF, I would imagine, because they're the only things different than what people tuned out previously.

But now we come to the top of the hour and the Hurts Syndicate, MJF in the ring.

We come to the top of the hour, 9 to 9.15 p.m.

And again, I think they were in the ring at the end of the previous quarter.

Yes.

The big 9 o'clock hour, the Hurts Syndicate, MJF, Mark Sterling, Dustin Rhodes, Sammy Guevara live angle,

the Okada Backstage promo.

An ad break, and the start of Ricochet versus Anthony Bowens.

I must mention, Okada now has unbleached his hair.

It's brown hair.

So he looks even more fucking like a normal schmo than he used to.

And he didn't say bitch.

So there you go.

557,000 viewers, bitch.

Oh, Christ.

Well, that's 50, 70,000 more people.

Good heavens.

One would suppose that after

they saw Sammy and Dustin come out and/or then went into the rest there, they're like, Well, fuck it.

I mean,

maybe once they realized Black Adam wasn't coming on, they changed the channel.

Boy, that's that's that's disheartening.

Well, we go now to quarter six, 9:15 to 9:30 p.m.

The continuation of Ricochet versus Bowens with picture and picture and the post-match with Mark Briscoe,

followed by an ad break,

518,000 viewers.

Good night.

They got to pick something up, or they're not going to be able to make their average unless my math is off, but they've only got two quarters and an overrun.

The overrun may be suspect, but go ahead.

We go now to quarter seven, 9:30 to 9.45 p.m.

The Stokely Hathaway FTR backstage promo.

Followed by the Jamie Hayter Mercedes Monet,

live angle, and then an ad break, 501,000 viewers.

Okay.

They're down 213,000 people, and they've got Mina Mellons and Tony's, not Tony, but Julia coming up.

So this, are they going under 400?

Well, again, a lot of competition.

The Knicks.

Will we go now to quarter eight?

fucking air water we go now to quarter eight I remind you we have an eight minute overrun nine forty five to ten p.m.

Mina Shirakawa vs.

Julia Hart with picture and picture and the post match with Tony Storm

four hundred ninety five thousand viewers wow eight minute overrun

the young bucks death riders the ops kenny omega swerve strickland willow nightingale Prince Nana, Gabe Kidd Live Angle,

455,000 viewers.

Oh, good lord.

They lost 40,000 people on the overrun with their big feature match for the pay-per-view.

So that 200 and

they lost 259,000 viewers in the course of the program.

They started with 714, ended up with 455.

that's

it's that's 40 of the audience approximately that they started with that they ended up with by the time the thing was over and if we did the deal

where that we used to where we took out the first quarter number and we took out the overrun number to get their real viewership

that might help them this time i think

that's crazy it's that's true because the overrun used to artificially inflate the number.

Now it's dragging it down.

Well, again, this doesn't include Max.

No, no, because MJF was watching another program, too.

I don't mean as a Nielsen viewer.

I mean it doesn't count the

gigantic streaming numbers with Macs.

Yet millions and millions of people on Macs.

Are uh, yeah, because it's all, it's the younger generation.

It's what's hip with the cool kids and the hep cats.

All righty, well, you know what the next program is that we're going to do.

It's yours, and we're going to talk about Saturday night's main event and

double or nothing.

We know we're betting on nothing rather than double, and plus, whatever else crazy stuff goes on in the world of wrestling over the next few days.

Yeah, something's got to happen.

Tony Khan's been kind of quiet, he hasn't twerked off lately.

Something's got to happen.

Well, if Tony twerps off, we will be there.

Is he twerping or twerking?

I don't know.

I really don't know.

I'm not part of that.

Twerking Tony Khan.

That could be a gimmick.

He could come out bouncing his butt up and down.

No.

No?

No.

All right.

MD hearing, folks, or $150 an ear for a nut or an ear or whatever.

Until the drive-through in a few days and the experience next week here on the program for Brian.

I am Jim.

Thank you.

Fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.

Get the experience, get the experience of Jim Cornette

of Jim Connest,

of Jim Connet.