Episode 582: AEW Women's Roster Review

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 prevent

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome to the Jim Cornet Experience.

Today, another state of emergency episode.

Is it the weather report or the state of AEW?

We're going to cover all the natural disasters today.

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

Co-host to you.

He's the earthquake to my typhoon, the great Brian last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

Got Got a big episode, lots of things to discuss.

I thought last week's AEW episode was going to drive me off.

This was one of the worst episodes of a wrestling show I've ever seen.

And

I felt like it wasn't going to end.

At a certain point, I was like, man, this is not an overrun.

This is like a torture.

Everything feels like it's never going to end these days to me.

Brad, what was it two weeks ago?

I said, now

we started doing one of these fine, fine programs.

And about 20 minutes in, I got the word I needed to take shelter from the goddamn storm, shelter from the storm

because of the severe weather.

And now,

today, we've had this forecast for the last couple of days, and it just keeps getting more ridiculous and more ridiculous.

It's already thunderstormed and poured rain early in the morning and through mid-morning and noonish.

And now we got three choices, Brian, Brian, according to the mid-morning news.

Either

the line's going to come through later on tonight, but with supercells out in front of it that could produce tornadoes and just pop up at random wherever,

followed by a main line that's going to whack everybody,

or it's just going to be a main line that's going to whack everybody.

They've been using the term dangerous, destructive, golf ball size plus hail,

70 plus mile an hour winds, tornadoes, strong tornadoes likely.

And then they just ran another one this morning that said, well, with the rain that we had today, already it may have taken the energy out of the atmosphere where stuff, all this chaos will go right to the south of Metro Louisville.

But that's not likely, according to what they said.

So we sit here wondering, it's like waiting for a phone call from the governor.

What the fuck is going to happen to you and when?

We don't know.

It's become tiresome to use a Kevin Dunn term, right?

How many times have I talked about that this year?

And this is a worse forecast.

We had an F3 tornado one mile to the fucking side of us here.

Why don't you move?

Where are you going to go at this this point?

Northeast.

No, hold on, hold on now.

You've got hurricanes on the west, on the east coast.

You had a hurricane.

They got hurricanes in Florida all the time.

They got hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico.

They got earthquakes on the West Coast.

They have goddamn

50 degrees below zero up in the Great Plains.

And the weather that we're getting here, it's even worse out in fucking Oklahoma and Arkansas and those places where the tornadoes just run wild and free.

So where are you going to go?

Underground, that's it.

We all need to go underground.

You start.

You first.

Well, I guess except for the earthquakes.

Because that would kind of be, you'd be closer to the

that wouldn't work, would it, Brian?

Maybe you'll learn more about them, be able to share your learnings with society.

We need some kind of tri-level situation where in good weather, your house, you can just live on the first floor and just walk right out in the sunshine and the rainbows.

And when the severe thunderstorms come, you get down in the basement in your lead-covered shelter.

And whenever the earthquakes happen, you run up on the second floor because you're farther away from the fucking earthquake.

All right.

Well, this is

geology.

Well,

it's another show.

Look at here.

I got all this,

all this paper sitting in front of me.

I haven't had time to prepare because I've been too busy worrying about my impending doom.

This is getting to me.

I'm too old for this to be stressed about whether or not that we're going to be blown from the face of the earth several times per year.

I'm, I'm,

it's taking a toll on my psyche in my elderly years.

If I get seriously injured by a lightning bolt, I maybe not have long enough time to recover.

You should move.

How long does it take to recover getting hit by a lightning bolt?

You're the only person I know who's been hit by lightning.

You tell me.

Well, I didn't actually get hit by a lightning bolt.

I got hit by the lightning that passed through the house.

So it wasn't like I was just standing out in the woods and you bam, they picked that spot to land.

That's bad.

It was like that electric gremlin in the phone and gremlins too.

Of all the places you previously lived for wrestling, Louisiana,

of course, Charlotte, Morristown, Tennessee, Connecticut, Atlanta.

Atlanta.

If you had to move back to one of those, which one would you pick?

Well, let's rule out Connecticut and Louisiana.

Connecticut for all the reasons that we've talked about and

Louisiana because it's just too swampy down there, too muggy, it's too humid.

Nashville, did you live in Nashville when you first started?

Well, yes, I lived in Nashville, and that's

if you'd asked me 25 years ago, I would have said Charlotte because I loved Charlotte, it's so green, and it says it was like a small town, even though it was a city, and

it would just have all kinds of nice things.

But the last number of times I've been there, goddamn, it's like driving into fucking downtown Dallas.

So

I would have to say Nashville of all of the places that I've lived because Atlanta, you're worse than Charlotte.

Atlanta was too busy for me in 1985.

So does that answer your question?

Yeah, no, Nashville's not busy at all right now.

Well, no, out of all that's the thing is Nashville right now, probably.

Well, if you, if you got out,

like go all the way up Gallatin Road and just kind of go out way past Hendersonville into Goodlitzville.

It used to be nice out there, nice and country.

I don't know what's happened these days.

What about you?

Of all the places you've ever lived, where would you go back and live again?

You know, I had my fill of everywhere else.

I'm happy where I am.

I took as much as I was going to get in terms of enjoyment out of the previous places.

I'm over here now.

How many different states have you you lived in in your life?

Two.

New York and California.

But I've had various homes.

Yet you've been in various homes.

You know what?

If I was actually going to answer that, maybe Lido Beach.

I loved living in Lido Beach.

And I was very happy living in Lido Beach.

And it's nice having and it's nice having the dunes as a dead end at the end of the street.

I love that.

The dunes of Lido Beach.

That sounds like a goddamn 50s William Castle horror movie.

All right.

Anyway, before we get into

any more tomfoolery that we can talk about to put off talking about the wrestling,

Brian and I both, all of us here at the Jace, everybody,

want to send out our best wishes to Jim Ross publicly here on the program because the news just came out.

shortly before we're doing, we're recording this that he's been diagnosed with colon cancer and

is going to be having,

well, they say surgery treat.

I don't know how, I don't know what they do for this, but he's going to be having something done about it very soon.

And we just wanted to say publicly, JR, we love you.

And,

you know, get over.

He has unfortunately had,

you know, going back what, 25 years, just a string of health issues with the Bell's palsy and et cetera.

And

seems like at some point,

Mother Nature and the odds would give a brother a break.

But we love you, JR, and uh, we're thinking about you.

He should move.

Where's he gonna move?

Then you can,

I was very happy in Lido Beach.

If

that's the incident, because it's in the water there, that you just have no illness or pestilence come up and

Leto, oh, oh, oh, oh,

oh boy JR likes it when I when I sing when you butcher Boz Skaggs oh yeah that's one of JR's favorite things

hey I saw a story there I heard a story on television I saw the people telling the story on television if that makes it any easier to decipher here

I'd been watching Family Feud while I was doing some of the mail orders to find Cornettes collectibles customers and that's on WDRB here in Louisville.

It's a Fox station.

So

I go, I put some stuff up.

I come back in.

You know who John Walsh is, the America's Most Wanted Guy.

Oh, yeah, of course.

Right?

Yeah.

Well, apparently they had an America's Most Wanted anniversary special of some kind or whatever.

What are you laughing already?

America's Most Wanted Reunion Special.

We bring back all your favorites.

They get all the murderers and rapists together.

Hey, guys, so what's going on with you today in your life?

You may remember the star of season one.

He ate three nurses after killing their parents.

It's Julian.

No, they had it.

It was, well, they were celebrating the fine people on the.

on the production side of the thing that have brought all these murderers and killers and things to justice is what I'm trying to say.

But it was some type.

It's been 40 years since whatever.

It's a network special.

God damn it.

Jesus Christ, Brian.

Don't hyper-analyze this thing.

And John Walsh is there.

And he's got his son is apparently taking on the mantle of being a co-host of this thing because John is somewhat up.

He'd have to be in his 70s, right?

He's very gray-haired.

Maybe.

I mean, that's how he first became prominently known.

I believe he lived in Florida, and his son was abducted and murdered by someone.

And that got him.

Adam.

Adam.

And that

got John Walsh to, you know, kind of be someone looking for justice for any of these criminals who were out there.

I didn't know he had another son, actually.

Well, yeah.

And

this, I say kid, he looks like he's, he was 30-something years old.

I'm a bad judge at my age.

But yeah, he had before he got a television show, he had been an advocate and a crusader for the, you know, various laws.

governing these type of things.

But anyway, so they're doing this show, Brian.

So now we've established for the kids, America's Most Wanted was a TV show on Fox for years that would

run profiles on

felons that were on the loose, criminals that had escaped, run off.

Somehow we're trying to find these people.

America's Most Wanted.

People literally on the FBI Most Wanted list.

Yes, yes.

That's where America's Most Wanted Harris and Storm got their fucking tag team name.

But anyway, so one of the stories they tell, and this is, is, I'm not making this up.

I heard this.

I swear I did.

But the

like one of the shows, they did a story on this guy that had murdered the cook at a bar and grill, right?

And then the guy got away somehow and he's he's out on the loose.

And they had done a profile on him.

And they hired John Taffer to come in and help them rebuild the industry.

They all quit now.

No, it's even, hold on, it gets even worse.

So on the night that this show airs, all the people at this particular bar and grill, they got the TV on and they're watching and they're like, I hope they find the guy that got old Harry, right?

So they watch that.

And,

you know, then, okay, it goes on to the next segment, a completely unrelated

escaped person, a completely

wanted person, completely unrelated to anything that we've just seen before.

that profile starts playing on the screen which the tv is still on in the bar and grill

and they look up and they say wait a minute that's our new cook no the new cook was the subject of

he was in he's in the back room because they call the cops go get him he's in the back oh my god that's amazing He was the new cook that apparently replaced the cook that got killed by the guy that they were looking for in the fucking previous segment.

so there you go you know when that guy applied for the job he's like thank god america's most wanted is off the air i'm safe safe here no this was back in the day back in the day when when they were doing this on a regular basis that's he had been loose for some time

apparently had culinary skills that show should still be on the air

that should be

like a public service thing put that thing on the air.

Well, this also looked like that he that John Walsh was pitching his son to be the host of the thing, if it potentially maybe a pilot or an opportunity there.

So,

did you watch Cops?

Were you a fan of Cops?

Oh, yeah, I love Cops because those are both Fox shows back in the day.

Well, yes, and also Married with Children, yeah, Simpsons,

Christina Applegate.

Uh,

but no, Cops was great because

that's what

the reality television

that I was trying to pitch to Vince McMahon was cops because Vince McMahon,

it came on the air in 1989.

When I'm talking to him in 1996, he'd still never seen that and may have never seen it.

He's probably seen a couple filmed on location at this point.

He's never watched it on television.

But I said,

the locker room shit or the outside shit or whatever, the one camera stuff, the cinema verite where you're in the action and it's violent.

That, you know, that's the kind of reality television,

the flavor that I thought should be applied to some of the slickly produced TL Hopper WWF that he was going for.

And shit stain came along with reality television Jerry Springer.

It kind of defeated the whole fucking purpose.

But anyway, so watch out.

Whoever you hire as a cook in your bar and grill, folks, watch out.

How many of the floating cooks in the floating cook pool that just, you know, go from town to town with a bag over their shoulder?

Hey, I'm looking for work.

You know, you need a chef.

How many of those people are criminals?

Well, I do.

The former criminals, not the judge.

Is there a large floating cook community?

Is it like a bunch of people standing outside, you know, fucking Kroger said, I will cook for you?

I don't know.

I think it'd probably be just you would, it seems like you would have to pass some kind of skill of being able to properly cook the shit that's on the menu, but I don't know if they do background checks.

I don't know.

We'll talk more about diner problems in the future here on the show.

Yes.

I got an email, actually not an email, a letter, from our friend Jasper Tappenbutts.

He just mentioned Okada is so lazy, his smoke detector has a snooze button.

I just thought that was apropos.

I don't want to ruin the review, and I certainly want you to bring it up again in the review for those who missed this part of the show.

But I popped when he ran out there in that same fucking suit again.

I thought like he wore it one time and he was like, okay, I can never do this again.

I made a mistake.

I didn't realize TV adds 30 pounds to your suit.

And then he wore it again.

I couldn't believe it.

I couldn't believe it.

It's well, it's.

I think he just shows up however he rolls out of bed.

And okay,

bitch.

I wish I had that job.

Oh, well.

I wish I could be Okada.

All that money do nothing.

That's.

And there are still people who go, oh, my gosh, he looked in Kenny's eyes.

They looked at each other.

Holy shit.

It was a holy shit moment.

Most of the time, Okada looks like he's the guy that just shit his pants.

Bitch.

Was that the whole email?

Is that the entirety of that email that Okada?

Yes, yes, yes.

That's that was the statement.

Okay.

But also, we heard from Todd, and he sent it to me, but he says, hi, Mr.

Cornett and Mr.

Last.

So you're in there too.

And he's very respectful.

Very respectful.

I appreciate that.

He's from upstate New York.

So at least he's not from

your neck of the woods.

Well, the Northeast.

This is all one big neck.

Well,

he might be stuck in your throat then.

No, he wanted to say thank you to us again because he's listening.

He's had.

life kicking the shit out of him lately.

And

he's been listening to the shows to cheer up a little bit.

And also he has kids, which he finds joy in his kids and the drive-through and the experience.

And I recommend Todd cheeseburgers also.

The greasier, the better, whatever you feel bad.

If you're really down, just and

just make sure the cheese is so hot that it burns your fingertips.

Did he say he likes cheese?

Well, no, but everybody.

So recommend a hamburger.

Why do you go write the cheeseburger?

You leave an entire population of people, assuming this guy likes things that you like.

A hamburger is not going to make anybody feel better when they're in a depressed state of mind.

It would make me feel better right now, a couple of hamburgers.

It would make me even more pissed off because then I would do, well, now I've got to go get the cheese.

And by the time I get the cheese and melt the cheese and all the other shits get done,

you got a burger with no cheese.

I.

Don't think there has been such a time.

Oh, come on.

Come on, really?

I declined a burger with no cheese.

You run out of cheese, but you have another fresh burger on the grill ready to go.

Well, you never run out of cheese.

What the fuck is the matter with you?

I don't plan for cheese.

I don't know cheese preparation schedules.

You don't plan for cheese if you're doing burgers on the grill.

If I'm grilling and you want cheeseburgers, you could bring the cheese.

No, I write the ingredients down about three days before any kind of function like that to make sure that I got everything.

And you can't not have the most most crucial part of the goddamn meal so of course i've never i've never run out of cheese can we agree that todd probably likes the burger can we agree on that

i don't know he may be a goddamn vegetarian well that's true okay well that'd be in which case that's probably why he's sadagum depressed well he wouldn't want the cheese do vegetarians eat cheese actually i guess they do vegans don't eat cheese do they well but but then if you have the cheese but you don't have the meat

well then you, you,

you're just all fucked up.

Well, again, so you got to have the cheese and the meat in proper proportions.

And then you've, then that is what will kill any type of depression or bad feelings is to bite in.

And you don't even have to have a bun.

Just come on.

What the?

Just if you're just really feeling bad, just.

Take that fucking cheese-covered greasy patty and just break it and have it start sticking in your face.

You have not done that, have you?

And you will feel better.

Have you ever run out of bread?

Every once in a while I've run it, but see running out of running out of buns or bread or whatever, it not all at the same time.

If I don't have a bun, I might have bread.

If I don't have bread, I might have a bunch.

See, I might want a patty melt instead of a fucking burger.

Well, Todd, feel better.

Is Todd with 1D or 2D for the show notes?

Todd's with 2D.

He's double D's.

Double D, Todd.

Feel better, Todd.

We're all rooting for the double D

and enjoy your burger or however you like it.

Yes, and with extra cheese.

Brian, I got an email

from one of the AEW wrestlers.

I haven't told you about this yet.

I just, I saw this as I was perusing, trying to get ready for the show.

But would you, would you like me to tell you about this now?

Should we do this in private or should I just read this AEW wrestler email?

I have no idea where you're going.

So feel free to take over the, it's your show, actually.

Do whatever you want.

Well, the subject.

And John, yes, Seth.

That was the Jacksons, correct?

I believe so.

Well, there you go.

Not one of their better hits, but yeah.

Well, but still, you know, hey, blame it on the boogie.

How was it compared to your hits there?

Blame it on the boogie was where it was at, not that.

Well, okay, but really, shake your body down to the ground if you want to.

Do you like can you feel it?

That's like late era Jackson's.

Can you feel it?

No, no, no, no, no, I didn't feel it.

Okay,

anyway, this email,

the subject line was: instead of calling me a nobody for attention, why don't you try to help?

Oh, well,

that's a challenge.

And the email says, First, my name is Miles Hawkins, and that's in capitals.

I am an NCAA all-American trained by some of the best wrestling schools in the mid-Atlantic.

Why do you have to go to more than one?

Was he expelled at some point?

And I am the guy who did the job for Hobbes on AEW Dynamite.

I am certainly not a nobody.

I don't even remember.

Do you remember?

Yeah, what did you say?

Yo, this is legitimate because,

well, remember, it was a couple weeks ago.

They had a match where it was Hobbs and Samoa Joe.

And

goddamn, is it who's in their grid?

They heard Shapupi.

Somebody else came, or

whoever their other guy was.

They heard Hook.

They had Shapupi, though.

They heard Hook.

That's right.

They got Shapupi.

He was one of the guys on the other side of the things.

They had a job match.

like I said, three minutes or whatever the fuck.

And I said, Well, it was Samoa Joe and Hobbs and whoever versus nobody.

And then we moved on.

I said, The baby faces won the goddamn thing.

And we were critiquing the show.

That's the way I remember this guy.

And I don't actually think that we bothered to watch the match to even talk about him any further.

But apparently,

he was highly offended by us saying he was nobody.

Can you look up the results of dynamite from a couple weeks ago and see who else was on nobody's team?

Or do you have a, is there a search engine you can find with that information?

I will continue on reading the email.

While I completely understand that the premise of your show is to shit on modern wrestling for attention,

you are someone that I would like to hear your unbiased out of podcasting character opinions and advice in short i'm here to see if you can help me or are you full of it

so now basically brian here the the premise of what we do is to shit on modern wrestling to get attention

we can't really mean it because it you know it they're obviously doing a great job

but if you have any criticism I'd like to hear it.

Besides the fact that I'm sorry, I'm not actually getting any extra attention, calling Miles Standish, or I'm sorry, Miles Hawkins a nobody.

But instead of asking sincerely,

he's taken the attitude that, again, I'm just in character, but they're not doing anything really wrong.

Miles, I'm sorry, I don't have a a character.

I have an opinion.

And my opinion

was about the overall show

and whether or not that your match was of any importance.

And nobody had seen you on television ever before.

Now, I could have, like some of the sorry sacks of shit that they've rolled out there in the past to do jobs that have just been visually ridiculous looking or completely inept and out of of place.

I could have broken that down, but

you didn't really look like that.

You just looked like a guy that nobody knew who the fuck he was.

That's why you were labeled newbody.

I'm trying to find the results.

And apparently it was the April 30th, 2025 episode of Dynamite.

I have to go to a different website.

The one I have here does know who he is because it says match two, the ops versus Hawkins and two other guys.

So I literally have to go to another website now to find this.

Let's go.

But the two other guys, did they fucking send them a nasty email over at that website and say, we're not other guys?

I remember this match.

He was the other guy.

How did I say it the other way?

It was the ops versus Nick Camarado,

Rhett Titus, and Miles Hawkins.

Okay.

Rhett Titus, I worked with in Ring of Honor 15 years ago.

That's why I knew him.

Camarato, we've seen on TV before there long in the past.

And then where was nobody?

Because we'd never seen him before.

But anyway,

again, Miles, you weren't important enough for us to go into detail on in the overall critique of the show in that particular slot you were in.

However,

and truthfully and honestly, I don't plan on watching a lot of your extended matches in the future, but just as an overall

suggestion, if you're going to ask any

veteran or any more experienced person than you are for advice,

don't preface it by saying, well, I know you just say shit like that because you want to get attention and you can't really mean it, but what am I doing right?

He needs to ask with a better attitude.

I guess if I can answer his question, what you're doing right is publicity.

Now I'll remember your name maybe another week.

I had no memory of that match until jim made me go look it up again and then i kind of remembered it because nick hamerano reappeared i don't even remember what this guy looks like but now also he was an ncaa all-american which means he's doomed in that environment because the last thing they want is anybody trying to bring any type of athletic background to that show but at the same time he sounds like his

attitude would fit right in with the indie crowd.

So he didn't say where he trained or who trained him.

Some of the best wrestling schools in the mid-Atlantic.

I can't name one of those particular things right now.

Was George South training guys at one point?

Or am I thinking about something else?

I don't know what George has been doing in recent years.

He's trained plenty of guys in the past.

I know Austin, Idaho has a school in Greenville, I think.

I haven't heard anything about that in quite some time.

I don't know.

I heard Tommy Rich was sleeping under the ring.

Hey,

he's he's he's well, he's waiting for his cue.

But uh, but anyway, nevertheless, I, whoever the best wrestling schools in the mid-Atlantic are,

uh, they should have had a class in attitude when you, when you're trying to get uh, helpful hints.

And you're saying things for attention because you're critiquing the wrestling that I guess he likes, that he thinks everything is good, everything's just going great, whatever.

Just keep doing what they're doing.

I don't even know.

I just think he may have been stung because he thinks quite often and fondly of himself.

And nobody,

because I mean, thinking, think of the fucking things I've said about other people and they never sent me an email.

And the whole tell me what I'm doing right based on what?

Yes, you've fucking laid down wonderfully.

There's if we ever do see him on television again, we'll have to pay attention so that we can pick his game apart in detail.

Should they use this as a gimmick for him to help him get more TV?

The whole thing that he gets mad when the fans chant, nobody, you're nobody.

You're a real nowhere man.

And like it makes him lose his mind and, you know, he loses his matches or something because of it.

At least then there's.

I don't know.

No, wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

We get one of the girls involved.

You're nobody till somebody loves you.

Ooh.

And then he finds himself somebody to love.

Who would he be if not nobody?

Well, then later on, as soon as he finds somebody to love, he'll be somebody.

And then they can say, there's somebody.

This is some good shit, man.

I think you should think about that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Move over, Tony.

All righty then.

Well, that was communication from the front.

I got to plug again.

The WHAS Crusade for Children is coming up June 7th and 8th.

And it's the 72nd annual crusade.

And for the new kids out there, again, this is the oldest and largest annual fundraising event, local event of its kind anywhere in the country.

And they've raised,

God, what was the total?

$100 and something million dollars over the past 72 years for special needs kids in.

all of Kentucky and southern Indiana.

And if you can, just look it up WHAS Crusade for Children, either crusade.org, whatever.

We've done some fundraisers in the past.

I'm just wore out on time.

So I'm sending a check in this year and putting everybody's name on it.

But if you want to send something, then you can check it out online.

It's a very worthy cause.

And if you have already sent me money

over the past couple of weeks, you'll be happy to know that the first 200 plus orders have been processed and in the hands of the Feather Bottoms to be labeled and shipped this week and more to come.

We're going to be caught up in the next two weeks.

And you can find what is left available for sale at Jim Cornette.

Oh, there's still a bunch of good stuff there, folks.

I kid, but we did sell out of a lot of the singular and few of a kind items.

jimcornet.com.

And

thankfully for the Feather bottoms speedy assembly system there's not the weight that there has been in the past with volumes of orders of this number

what are you doing brian over there did you ever you you

what

you you you found the the google you had to go to two different websites to get the results of aew shouldn't they have that on their website well they did there was a link to dynamite results from this week and then i found last week but there wasn't like a link on their page to get the actual show by show so i had to just google it but i didn't know which week it was so that's something that they ought to do for because tony's statistics minded right

and he wanted the sports-based presentation and he wanted to bring the statistics into everything

He should be put in charge of compiling everybody's one loss record for the website for all the statistic nerds like him to look up and just argue and conversate over,

and somebody else ought to be in charge of who wins and who loses.

And then Tony should just write it down.

I think that would be his place in a wrestling promotion: keeping track of the winners and the losers and the

numbers.

Oh, well, you stop it.

We should be encouraging him.

He should be an on-air character more and more.

So he can point and grin, and all right, we'll get there.

He He behaves like a silent comedy star.

I love him.

Yeah,

he's doing panama, even though there's goddamn, it's obviously television with audio, but he won't speak to people in front of him unless there's a microphone.

He'll just point and smile and nod his head.

That segment where Shelton Benjamin found MJF, someone needs to take that and play it back with no sound, like in black and white.

Just have like some piano behind it or something and watch Tony.

It works.

Eyebrows go up and down, he's making faces.

He's like a dummy, he looks like a ventriloquist dummy.

Just the eyebrows are going, the mouth is opening and closing.

But this, the, the Buster Keaton soundtrack, right?

The fucking silent movie comedy.

All right,

anyway, let's talk about some of the old wrestling Brian.

The dark side of the ring episode this week was on the chic, not the iron sheik, but the original sheik.

And,

you know, again, my favorite part is just getting a chance to see the video.

And I know somebody's going to say, oh, Cornell, you got all those VHSs.

Well, I like seeing it all in one place, and I want other people to see it too.

Video of the Sheik in 2025 instead of the goddamn 87th replay of the fucking hell in a cell between

Vince and Stephanie or whatever.

The video and the

talking heads were a combination of,

you know, the guys, obviously, this was Sabu's

last public interview, I guess, that he did, but the guys that worked with him, the sheik, telling stories about him.

And

they got the grandkids, the two granddaughters and the grandson.

to kind of talk about the family side, which was cool because you never hear from them.

But otherwise,

it again, it wasn't a step-by-step delineation of his entire career, which lasted for what, 50 fucking two years or whatever.

But I liked the footage and the stories.

Go ahead,

start tearing it apart so we can

pick it apart from here.

Well, again, and you know, it's always tough for me because I know a lot about this kind of stuff.

So, you know, I'm watching things that more than likely almost always I know more about the subjects and the things than the people actually making the shows.

So it's hard for me to,

well, yeah, you're somehow.

Or that they have time to fucking

include.

There's plenty of time.

The problem is the style of the show sucks.

And

the reenactments have never been more unnecessary than they were here, especially if you can't find someone who looks like the fucking chic from behind.

You can't even master that.

No, the reenactments reenactments take away from it jericho's narration as slow as he can like that takes away from it was really good enrolling in the first like 15 minutes or so as a chic documentary with just you and dave brzeynski and other people and not everyone got the big introduction where they talk and go and then he threw fire and then they go to hi i'm dab brzeynski and i knew the chic for 50 years like the unnecessary introductions that again go with the style of the show that these guys are just locked into.

But I thought there was some cool footage, and I thought the early part is a documentary of the chic

was all right.

But again, the reenactments at this point are just a waste of money and a waste of time, probably just to justify the existence of the show.

Well, thank you for that cheerful assessment.

You were great.

You were great.

You were great.

And I liked your outfit.

It was a change of outfit from last time.

So a different color show.

Well,

thank you.

I can't remember what the fuck I was wearing and I just watched this show.

I don't know.

You've been on every single episode this season, just about they still need to do a slow-mo close-up of I'm Jim Cordette of you holding the magazine.

It almost makes it creepy.

It's so slow.

It's like, oh my gosh.

No, but, but, you know, the thing is, is that the more of me,

the magnitude of me, it, it draws the numbers.

I can't fault them for that, Brian.

I think that's exactly what it is.

Yeah.

They, they pretty much,

you know, next season, one of the episodes is going to be 30-minute slow-mo's of me just making faces.

It's sort of like the puppy bowl.

You'll just sit and watch it.

To get away from my critique, and for anyone who thinks I'm just a negative guy, I'm sorry, I'm just a guy who knows my shit about not just wrestling, but also documentary film.

What did you think

of Sabu in this?

Because obviously he's been on a lot of people's minds.

based on his passing in the last week.

What did you think seeing Sabu here?

Well, I thought,

you know it it seems kind of is it poetic uh i think the most important thing for sabu

would have been that he was able to before he went he was able to talk about and praise and tell these stories about his uncle because he was he was a father to him and in which he said in the

sheik used to beat sabu's real father up

so i think that's probably

you know if

is it one of those things where if you have to go, at least you did this exact thing that you would want to do.

It's the first time the sheik's been talked about on mainstream television in years and years, and Sabu got to be a big part of it.

So I would think that would

be something that he would be proud of.

And,

you know, you mentioned the voice, his voice is that you have to listen so quick.

But it,

again, this probably is the first time that any major number of people of AU, probably no more than me, have ever heard Sabu speak before, isn't it?

And of course, he did shoot interviews, but in terms of a wide audience on TV,

unless he was previously featured in

which Dark Side, what?

I guess it would have been Onita FMW.

Unless he was featured in that one or one of the ECW ones, this would be the certainly the most they've heard from him.

Yeah.

And I mean, you know, I'm not, obviously, I know he's done some shoot interviews and fanfest stuff and everything, but I mean, on television on, you know, a wide basis.

But,

and

I'm just thinking now that I think about that, who's got

tape of the chic actually speaking English to people?

Is there any tape of that?

No.

Have you seen any?

Remember, maybe Berzinski.

Yeah, nothing I'm aware of.

Remember a few years ago, there was footage from, I forget what news magazine show going around showing Detroit wrestling, and there was narration over it.

At the end, they said that's Ed Farhat, and people thought it was the chic, but it was actually Captain Ed George.

Remember that?

It was like 1970s.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Because technically he was Ed Farhat.

Yeah, that's right.

Just not the right one.

Anyway, but yeah, and with Sabu,

I think he added great perspective to it because he was one of the boys and a member of the family.

And,

you know, he was there.

Obviously, also, we talked about it when we talked about Sabu that

the Sheikh taught him how to maintain himself as a star, but it was a different time.

But then at the end, there was Sheik kind of promoting Sabu, right?

Like, and I'll, and I'll come along.

And then Sabu probably wanted him to come along, even if he didn't.

And

then the fucking,

you feel so bad for the whole group of people on that wcw pay-per-view when sabu does the flip and lands on chic and breaks his leg

and then stop him

well i know but that's the thing he was not supposed to throw fire on a clip they showed on the dark side episode or if you go back and see that pay-per-view wherever it may be

located,

they didn't want him to throw the fire on the pay-per-view and he wasn't supposed to throw the fire.

And Sabu wins the match, boom, one, two, three, whatever.

After the moonsault, it breaks the Sheikh's lower leg.

And Sheikh's out there limping, and he just leans in the ring and throws the, it was a masked guy.

I can't remember who it was, but he throws it.

Mr.

JL, Jerry Lynn.

Mr.

JL, that's right.

Okay, he throws the fireball at

Jerry Lynn there in that mask who didn't even know it was coming.

And he's like, what the fuck just happened?

And everybody almost missed it because

it wasn't even being focused on.

So it's just a train wreck.

You know, I remember when they brought him to ECW in early 94,

and as soon as I say who was a part of this, you'll know who was responsible for him getting there.

It was him and I think Kevin Sullivan versus two people.

I forget who.

I think it was the night the line was crossed, February 94.

And, you know, there's all this chaos happening all up and down the card.

When the sheet came out, like the giant speakers or units that were part of the ecw entrance in the arena like he pushed them over something because all of a sudden you just see like this tower fall down and there's like this little old man like not worried at all about this

oh

see that he knew he had to do something he probably looked out there and said jesus christ these guys are doing my

And that's what I've had a lot of people on Twitter go, oh, well, you would hate this.

See, I thought you hated hardcore wrestling.

And you would, if you've been listening to the program here for any amount of time,

we've talked about the positives and the negatives, but the positive in this case was that, A, he was the only one fucking doing it.

At one point, in pretty much in all of the business, and then even with the various offshoot chics.

You never saw more than one or two of them in the course of a year or two in the same place.

And at the same time, this is it

on a professional basis, Brian.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to explain this.

Again, when I was a fan and saw the chic,

I was scared shitless, and most everybody else in the building was too.

And he had the aura and projected the

attitude that he could go after somebody and do anything.

And he would do that enough that you would kind of believe it, right?

And

the matches were chaos and insane.

And there's blood, and there's objects, and there's fire, and there's whatever.

And the energy level is always up.

And the fans freaked out over that, especially because it was out of the norm.

It was unusual for anything to get out of control like that.

That's why it worked.

But also, going back as a professional, this was my point.

You can look and see that besides being very

energetic with a fucking blade,

nobody was going to get really hurt in a match with the chic.

That's these guys

are plunging off high precipices through furniture and diving and spinning and catching and groups of people with elbows going everywhere, all the things that we talk about.

And

there's much more

professional risk in doing bullshit like that

than there was in working with the chic, much less the

death matches now where they're in barbed wire and the light tubes and the fucking Legos and the thumbtacks and it's just childish, ridiculous shit.

that is involving obvious cooperation amongst people with no fucking aura whatsoever, that don't have reputations and can't change the mood in the room.

The freak show shit.

And it happens constantly.

One of those two styles of things.

That's the problem why I can

have admiration for the chic, having been the single biggest money-drawing heel of the modern era

and what he was doing,

and still piss on this shit.

And at the same time,

before I get off my soapbox, Brian, last,

the whole point of the thing that we always make is when this was in and out,

it worked.

But if that's all you had,

it was death.

It killed a territory.

You couldn't go that far always.

And while it had the, even with Sheikh as the boss in Detroit, while it had the spectacular rise in the amazing business,

eventually,

and that's what Sheik was close with Dory Funk Sr., which is why Dory Jr.

and Terry always worked for him and got him involved in Japan, et cetera, Baba, whole nine yards.

But

Sputnik Monroe told me one time, because he used to go work West Texas in the 60s a lot too.

Sputnik said, yeah,

Dory call me up and say, Hey, Sputs, you got to come in here and teach these guys how to take bumps again.

I had the chic in here for a month, and now everybody works like the chic.

You had to change it up.

I'm sorry, I yield the floor.

No, you're doing great.

The match I mentioned before, I want to correct myself.

It was from February 94, February 5th, 94, ECW Arena.

The night the line was crossed.

The match, three minutes and 15 seconds.

Kevin Sullivan and the Tasmaniac with woman lost to the chic

and Pat Tanaka.

Good lord, how was that

team or combination in any way explained in the course of the promotion?

At that time, Kevin and the Tasmania, as you know, because he brought him to Smoky Mountain, they were aligned together.

And I know before this, without remembering the direct lead up, that Pat Tanaka was there with Paul Diamond, I think, in November at least of 93.

So maybe this was,

if I had to guess without knowing, maybe Paul Diamond can't make it.

So I called the sheik.

Yeah, you know,

maybe nobody will notice the difference.

But anyway, back to the show.

They, I love the shot of the plaque on the mansion, the house the chic built,

1974.

I think they could have gone into more detail on how big a star the chic was in wrestling, not only because I know we talked a lot about it, but again, time constraints, I know, but they concentrated on Detroit to the extent they didn't really mention Toronto.

And Toronto.

Nothing about that.

And that's one of the great examples of the Sheik becoming really popular, then hurting the crowds.

Yes.

And,

you know, that was even more,

even though the Sheik wasn't the boss as he was in Michigan.

He drew more people in Toronto between 67 and 75 in that streak that he had.

And Detroit was selling between 200 and 250,000 tickets a year.

And they only do shows every other week.

But as we, at the same time, we've talked about it.

He was doing outdates, the chic, in Texas, in Los Angeles, where he'd go and main event in the Olympic auditorium and make a hell of a payoff and go get all of his new suits made.

And when the war was settled, they did 16,000 people at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis with him and Bruiser.

So he worked for Nick Gulis and was,

Gulis had gotten him to where if in Nashville, Chattanooga, and

maybe Birmingham at the end,

if the Sheik was on the card, it still brought the house up a bit because he had been featured so heavily.

Sometimes.

Gulis would just bring Sheik in out of nowhere to work with Fargo, put it in the main event.

And

often they'd go to the municipal auditorium in Nashville instead of the fairgrounds because it'd be a bigger crowd.

So

he was a bigger star in a wider area, and they should have had more mention of Detroit or of Toronto than Detroit.

Then you could use the footage of him and Andre.

Well, which the footage was in there anyway, but it wasn't in a context.

Right.

That's my point.

But did you like the story that Dave Drayson or Dave Brzinsky?

Well, folks, again, for the kids, our friend Dave Brzezinski was super mouthed Dave Drayson as a manager.

But he told a story of going to dinner with Bruno after Bruno had come into the Kobo one night.

And, you know, Bruno said, I won't be back next show because he was supposed to get two grand and he got $800.

And

that was one thing about the chic, where they made tremendous, he made tremendous money and he paid guys well when he was making it most of the time.

But then

toward the end, that came back to biting when they were making,

they were taking in much less money and he was still living like a goddamn sheik.

I mean, the jewels and the suits and the cars and the whole apparatus.

And

I've heard stories from the NWA meetings that I went to in the 80s when

some of the

more elderly folks would talk about the sheik would go and spend $20,000 at the casino or whatever when they had the meeting in Las Vegas just while he was there.

And that was 50 years ago.

But

I mentioned, and it was a fact from Brian Solomon's book, Blood and Fire, Order It Today, Folks.

The Sheik declared $400,000 on his personal income tax in what was it, 73 or or 74 one of those years

and that would be over two million dollars today

and also he owned the business you mean nobody was

sticking cash in their pocket from the goddamn programs or whatever

so it the money he was making was massive

but the he he had gotten too old by the time that the territory started going down

the whole thing got

got old not only the style style but him himself aren't stories too that like captain ed george would run into the locker room and say the box office has been robbed well yeah no that was the the the most epitome

and i'm sorry again i think captain ed george got mad at us one time and and uh because we said that his dad used a blade or whatever that's what it was

but this terry funk told me that this was a true story

and it wasn't like when we're doing a shoot interview or anything i I asked him about it, just as we were sitting there one day.

I said, did this really happen?

Right.

And he said, yes, they, Dory and Terry came up, I think it was like 1978, probably something like that.

The Kobo was down and they worked a tag team angle with the Sheikh and Abdullah.

And they worked there and they did these angles and they had a number of houses that weren't any good.

And finally,

they goddamn have the big blow-off match or whatever.

And

Terry said he was sitting in a locker room.

He looked, I said, I looked at Junior.

I said, Well, it looks like we're going to get at least finally get a decent payoff, Junior, out of this thing tonight.

And just then, Captain Ed George flung the locker room door open and said, The box office has been robbed.

They got all the money.

And they,

someone

apparently,

and I think, didn't we?

We had Berzinski tells this story, I think, at one point years ago.

Yeah, he must have.

But I think someone actually did go to the box office and get the money, but we're not

totally sure how it happened.

And, and,

and yeah,

it was also in question how many times the box office was robbed around that period.

Well, that was, that was, that was the only time it got knocked over while the funks were in the house.

Because after that, they were.

But yeah,

they robbed the box office.

And that's what, you know,

he had that second run.

The time period

that Sheik got to be a star for BABA and all Japan and the Sheik and Abdullah versus the Funks program and et cetera, et cetera, was.

Well, really 77 to 82-ish,

right before

both both the Japanese companies started really young in their rosters and up in their in-ring.

Also, the original Brody and Hansen.

Well, Brody and Hansen.

Yeah, which you know, then, but that's the thing:

Sheikh's gimmick was so new, and they'd seen the pictures and they'd never seen him live.

And he got over massive as he usually did.

But then, after,

unfortunately, after a few years, he was by that point

50, what,

late 50s at least or late uh by the early 80s and just it it didn't work out and

so then what did the the one uh was it the one guy they they i don't know if they asked solomon they had uh uh jim friedman who wrote the book drawing heat that was about small-time yeah ontario circuit and the bear man dav mcignan etc was sheik was working with.

But

they said he was, Sheik and his wife at one point were living in the kitchen of the mansion because they couldn't afford to keep it up

and that's i think that's the same guy that put it in perspective because so much happened in this thing so quickly and it went from black and white to color and

no one really put a gauge on it and that guy said he goes he was born in the 20s yeah and that was like the moment where it's like wow he really was like by the late 70s he was already incredibly old to be doing what he was doing and then he just didn't stop well and

see, there was a thing, and again, Solomon covers it in his book.

And I'm trying to remember, I put medical problems out of my head when I can, but he had had a major operation along about like 1975-ish

and had a scar that was visible when he wore his trunks.

I think it was some stomach operation.

What do they take out of your stomach?

I don't know.

But

that

it seemed like like it changed his, his aura, his presentation, because

even for the people that were still scared of him before that with gray hair and when he got flabby, when he had the scar, now it's like, oh, shit, that's not a fucking,

you know, superhuman creature.

That's a kind of older guy.

But yeah, and some of the later footage from, you know, just independent shows in Michigan, him and Bobo, for instance, you could tell he dyed his hair because all of a sudden it was jet black.

Yeah.

And then he went back gray later on.

I guess he figured, fuck it, you know, they know by now.

But

that was the thing is that

you feel bad because the Sheik and Bobo

that sold out the Kobo so many times and all over the

Sheikh and Bobo was a match underneath Tolos and Blassey at the LA Coliseum in 71.

I mean, that match went everywhere.

And then they were doing it in front of 300 people in Brantford, Ontario, or whatever, 35 years later.

It's just.

You bring up Tolos.

I forgot all about it.

When FMW was bringing over the chic, remember they booked for one of those stadium shows, Killer Kowalski, against John Polis in like 1992 or 93?

Yes.

Yes.

And

I mean, Tolos always was in good shape, but I mean, so was Walter, but Walter at that point was much older, I think, than Tolis was.

They were both really old.

It was a really bad idea and not a good match.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But nevertheless, and then they covered the Flaming Ring match where they tried to and succeeded in setting the man on fire for real.

You know, in Japan where he came back as the people.

And this is a true story.

They didn't make it up.

The people on the plane that the Sheik was flying back from Japan after the flaming ring match with Onita

were complaining because they could still smell his flesh, his burntness of his flesh.

You know how

the last time you burned a body, you know, you can't hardly get that smell out of your nose, right?

I have no comment.

But it was, you know, it was kind of unoff-putting on the plane to be smelling this charred human being.

Well, imagine being that level of hurt that far away from home.

Yeah.

And just wanting to get home, just wanting to get on a plane and get home.

Jeez.

Do you think

they had your story early on with one of the unnecessary reenactments of the chic pulling up to the Kobo in 88?

Yes.

In the middle.

And what a great story, by the way.

Do you think like a story about why it went south should have been presented?

Like he showed up.

They had a great house.

he expected a lot of money there was a problem the next show well i presented the that story but it didn't make the final cut

but should we fill the people in or do they know it by now i hate to repeat ourselves we're talking about the chic because we're on the subject yeah

the the

they had brought the chic back to the kobo in detroit for the great american bash 1988 dusty was booking dusty knew how

dusty had worked in Detroit in the 70s.

And there's a famous picture of Dusty with the U.S.

title belt

on the side of the ring with all the fans putting their arms around him.

And there's black people and white people.

And this is in Detroit in the early to mid-70s with the racial issues.

And it's just an iconic wrestling picture, right?

So

Crockett was trying to draw in Detroit.

Sheik meant something after all that time.

He hadn't been in the Kobo in eight years,

so they booked the Sheik in the main event.

It's and I say this every time because they did a goddamn double turn, but originally, was it going to be Rhodes and Murdoch against Sullivan and Sheik?

Or was it Rhodes?

It was Rhodes and Sheik against Sullivan and Murdoch.

And they did the double turn and came back with Rhodes and Murdoch against Sullivan and Sheik.

But nevertheless,

when the time came for the show,

the Crockett, it drew his biggest house ever in Detroit.

It was over a couple grand, over $100,000 at the Kobo.

Looked fucking great.

They have the match.

They do the angle to come back with the main event the next month, as I just said.

And then the Shei got mad when they gave him a payoff.

I don't know how much it was

that they gave him, but he had expected 10%

because he was the sheik and it was the Kobo and he expected this.

So they didn't give him 10 grand.

So he said, fuck you, I'm not coming back.

He'd been working in, he hadn't even been working in rec centers at that point in 1988.

He hadn't been wrestling at all, really, for a few years at that point.

But I'm sure they gave him a couple thousand dollars.

But it was a principle thing.

He didn't get 10 grand.

Do you think it's just because Vince didn't need the help that he never did anything?

A lot of those guys, you know, a lot of them were just to steal them from Vern, but a lot of the guys of that generation would at least show up at some point.

You know, the crusher, Team Little Hulk Hogan out of nowhere, Mad Dog Vashon worked there.

It wasn't ever, it was never like a big event.

We're coming to Detroit, you know, and in this guy's corner will be the original Sheik or just the Sheik.

Everyone started calling him the original Sheik when the Iron Sheik popped up, but it was just well, there may have been,

think about it, the Iron Shei popped up in 1983,

which is probably the first time that Vince would have ever considered using the Sheik in any kind of legend role because of his national expansion, because the one place the Sheik worked the Northeast, even Madison Square Garden, Boston, Philly, whatever, late 50s, early 60s, and had a few matches with Bruno.

He worked the Boston Garden in like 72.

Yeah,

not in Madison Square Garden, though, because

I think probably issues they thought they'd have with the Athletic Commission.

But he was never one of the main guys there during the WWWF post-1963

era, except for a couple runs with Bruno, which

didn't get to the garden.

So I think that Vince Jr.

thought, I've got the iron cheek.

It'll just be confusing.

And

he didn't particularly

by that point

with the chic would have wanted 10%.

I mean, who knows what conversation may have ever happened.

Yeah, like you said, that's crazy just because you hear about his financial situation.

And I'm sure Dusty didn't give him a bad payday.

No, that's what I'm saying.

You know, we were in a fucking tag match with the Fantastics underneath.

And I mean, I don't have it in front of me, but I would assume on that house in that era, that I believe we got 800 or 1,000 bucks a piece in a tag match underneath.

So I would think the chic probably got a few thousand dollars, maybe a little more.

But

god damn it, Brian, you got to stand up for yourself in this business.

It's a principle of the thing.

Well, that was the

chic.

And now we're ready for a next week is going to be, by the way, Daphne, which I'm looking forward to because I'm not involved in this.

I'm just going to watch it as a viewer.

But Stacy was really,

she really liked Daphne.

They were friends not only when we used to go down for TNA tapings, but also they did the Facebook or the internet, whatever the kids do.

And Stacy taught quite a lot of Daphne.

So I'm glad to see

she's got, I don't think I'm on this.

I've commented on it before, but who knows?

I pop up everywhere.

Is Stacy on it?

No, Stacy's not on it.

You never know.

Well, no, we're not trying to do some kind of family package here.

But she just personally liked Daphne and they used to speak back and forth.

So we're looking forward to seeing that.

But after watching all that chic,

Brian, I'm telling you, you, I was ready for a good night's sleep.

And

I'll tell you what, I didn't have to go far to do it because all I had to do was walk right into my beautiful, spacious bedroom and flop down on my comfy,

spacious helix sleep mattress.

It's comfy.

Because I ordered it exactly the way I like it.

And by cracky, that's the way they gave it to me.

And it's spacious because

I can, you know, Brian, I try this just to make sure I'm not growing.

I can lean caddy cornered on this, on this mattress and touch my toes to one corner and I can't reach the other corner.

That's how big it is.

That's where you know you got room to spread out, Brian.

That's what people.

People are sleeping in confined spaces these days.

Have you heard about this on the news?

I've not, what news exactly are you talking about?

America's,

well, no, you hear it on the news that people, as the modern world progresses and space becomes at a premium, people are sleeping in confined spaces.

You got those businessmen's hotels over in Japan where they sleep in like drawers like they did in, you know, like on Seinfeld.

You pull out the drawer and there's a person sleeping there instead of your old dirty underwear.

Or

because the mattresses have risen in cost in all these fancy damn brick and mortar mattress stores over the past number of years.

A lot of people are opting to either buy a smaller mattress or get a big one and split it with their next door neighbor.

And when they cut it down the side, it never really,

you know, when you cut that thing in half, Brian, it's going to lose some of its integrity.

When you cut what in half?

The mattress that you're splitting.

No, you don't have to split any mattress.

Don't cut the mattress.

Well, you do.

That's not what you do on.

You don't have to

do on these expensive mattresses from these big name retailers because they cost so much.

You know, you got to go sometimes.

They'll buy a mattress and not only will they cut it down the middle and split it with their next door neighbor, but then that guy will rent that piece of mattress out to the guy next door

just on the weekends when he has his son-in-law coming.

I don't know what's going on over there in Louisville right now in that neighborhood.

The point is, you got to save money and get a comfortable mattress where you can have a good night's sleep.

Yes, I agree.

Yes, and that's why you go to Helix.

If you've got night sweats, they can cool you down.

If you've got back pain, they can prop you up.

If you've got delirium tremens and wake up screaming every night, they've got actually deluxe mattress accessories, including something you can stuff in your mouth so you don't wake the rest of the house up.

They've got all these type of things.

And Brian, You know, we got a holiday coming up.

Memorial Day, that's where you sit down and you memorize, you remember all of the nights that you didn't have a good night's sleep.

And then on Memorial Day itself, you buy you a new mattress.

That's the way they celebrate it over in Bolivia and parts of the Fiji Islands.

Well, we can save you money.

We don't know any of that, but we could save people money.

Let's focus on what we know.

We know that.

Yes, we do.

And because all you got to do is go to helixleep.com slash JCE.

and i'm going to tell you what

the memorial day sale is in full force 27

27

off site wide

and a free bedding bundle which is a sheet set and mattress protector with any deluxe mattress order or elite mattress order now the sheet set and the mattress protector I believe that also comes with the thing that you can stuff in your mouth in case you wake up screaming in the night.

It does not come with you.

No, no, and this has helix has nothing to do with your night sweats, Jim.

Oh, so you're supposed to stick your head under the mattress protector so when you're screaming in fear from your nightly nightmares, you won't wake up the rest of the house.

Again, let's focus on the percentage of the audience, which is likely all of them that don't have these issues.

The pleasant night's sleep can only get better with a great mattress, a comfortable mattress, a mattress just for you.

We have Helix here in my house.

You have them over there.

I know you love them.

We love them.

We never cut them in half.

We love them.

We sleep on them.

Helix, they're there for you.

Tell them, Jim.

You love them.

You sleep on them.

Sometimes you just grab them and squeeze them real tight.

Whether you got snoring or back pain or sleep apnea or whatever the case.

You might be able to be addressed by one of the fine mattresses at Helix.

You go, you take the quiz.

You tell them what kind of thing you like, what problems you got.

You tell them about that digestion and acid reflux in the middle of the night you tell them about the way you secretly cheated on your first husband and never did tell him before he died in that awful flaming plane crash

you tell them a variety of things and then they fix up a mattress that's just for you

and boom and you're gonna say i don't know why it's funny that that's the example you used you have the flaming debt you're gonna say

27 off side wide you're gonna get a free bedding bundle oh yeah.

That sheet set and mattress protector with any of the Lux or Elite mattress orders.

And that's the Memorial Day sale.

But hurry because that don't last forever because Memorial Day is coming up.

And then you'll just be screwed by the first part of June.

So anyway, helixleep.com slash JCE.

And just remember, folks, even if you...

weren't thinking about getting a new mattress, as we talked about on the program here a week or two ago, just think of all the things that you've done on that mattress if you've had it for a while, and/or your significant other or your pet or anybody else that's been on it, and the stains that they may have made.

And those sheets don't catch everything.

It's going to end up on that.

Stick your nose in the mattress you're sleeping on right now and tell me if you can get a good night's sleep.

Helixleep.com/slash JCE.

Just clear all that negativity out of your life for 2025.

We love Helix.

You will will too.

HelixSleep.com slash JCE.

Let's be positive here.

Yes, no poop on a helix sleep.

No, no vomit, no boogers.

Why do you have to add any of this?

Well,

think about this.

When you get this brand new mattress from Helix, there'll be no poop, no, no drool,

no, no pee, no PET stains, no potential.

I don't know if you have bloody sores on your body.

And did I mention the poop?

None of that will have ever touched this mattress if you buy it right now.

Once again, helixleep.com, but the one in your house, come on.

Once again, let's just end with saying that the helix promises you'll be getting a brand new, clean mattress.

Brand new.

Let's focus on brand new.

And just for you, that's the helixway, helixleep.com slash JCE.

That's right.

We won't even go into dust, mites, and earwax.

Let's stay positive here.

I'm positive.

There's dust, mites, and earwax on your current mattress.

Helix.

All right.

Well, now that we're all refreshed with a good night's sleep and we have all of our faculties about us, Brian, shall we delve into beach break from AEW?

It was in Chicago, that noted place for spring break on the beach.

Maybe he means it's a break from the beach for people who are at the beach.

They have to come back to the city from the beach where they are to have a break from the beach.

Stop enjoying your vacation.

Come back to the windy city.

Yeah, that kind of thing.

Stop enjoying your vacation to watch our show.

All right.

Again, we're not going to try to do blow by blow on the matches as much as explain why all the matches blew.

No,

just the, I don't,

I don't don't know what the fuck.

There's something in there somewhere, but they can't figure it out.

And I mean, now Ian Ricobani

is on the commentary team with Taz and old Sockface, and Tony Schiavone was there because he did interviews, but maybe they're giving us a rest of that

or giving poor Tony a rest.

He's a senior citizen now.

But

the first match was

Will Osprey and Hangnail Page against

Josh Alexander.

They call him old one ear Alexander over there.

And our friend Tega Shit.

So they can have another dream match that involves 18 fucking people and 16 matches that they're going to have in the future.

But

again, did you notice during Osprey's entrance, they got stuck in a double box with the same camera.

And every time they were trying to get out of something,

did you see that, first of all, where they had the double box up?

Just a highlight of the episode was when all of a sudden it was picture and picture of Osprey while Osprey was coming to the ring.

Well, yes, it's the picture and I say double box.

That's a technical term.

The picture and picture

was the same camera shot of Osprey walking to the ring and they would go full to

a floor camera or something.

Then they'd try to go back to that shot and they'd have the double box again with the same thing it was it was like something was stuck

so then they start this match and it was like something was stuck hey it's the same stuff they always do now with alexander and he was trying to be serious and

I mean, it's comedic that they, in his first night on television, they introduced him as a guy whose ear once fell off and he's got serious neck issues.

So we're supposed to be scared of him.

And then they beat him.

And then they beat him and they beat him again.

And now they beat him here.

Don't forget they beat him here.

But

it was 25 minutes into the show and there was still

this match was going on.

And they did a contrived back and forth at the finish where the baby faces, because

Osprey and Paige obviously are about to clash or collide or whatever.

And

so they don't trust each other.

But they did this back and forth where the babyface would almost hit the other one.

And then the other one would almost hit the other.

It was so fast you couldn't follow it.

And they took it far enough that it just wasn't believable.

They did every

the babyface almost has a misunderstanding spot that has ever been done in wrestling all at the same finish.

And then finally, both the babyfaces gave Alexander their goddamn finishes at the same time and beat him.

The only new, fresh guy that might be interesting.

Can we do something with him?

He hadn't won a fucking match yet.

It's the same thing they did to Kevin Knight.

He's looking good.

They bring him in.

He doesn't won a match.

Maybe he ought to bring somebody in, and he looks like shit.

Then he could win everywhere.

Oh, I forgot.

They did that with Pockets.

But anyway, after the match that was won by the the babyfaces that can't get along, then Take ran up behind Osprey and ran him into Paige, and the heels beat up Osprey.

But then he got up and started making his own comeback and then

was spinning around, nailing everybody when Paige walked up behind him, spun around and nailed him too.

So the only thing he was missing was Tanaka throwing salt in Bruno and Pedro's eyes, Tanaka and Fuji.

And then

it's

they've been pushed into each other twice, I believe, at this point.

They've fucking once punched the other.

So then they stood there and yelled at each other and made menacing faces.

The end.

Did I miss any of the finer points?

It went a while.

The crowd was one of those AEW crowds where they're there and they'll stare.

And then every now and and then you hear a chant and you look at the crowd and you're like, well, they're not really moving.

Is it really coming from them?

But it must be.

It's almost like a new

operatic way of getting your voice out there without moving or something.

Well, they like Carly Cameron.

She's a ventriloquist.

It was fine.

The problem was as soon as these four guys came out there, you knew that Josh Alexander was going to be the one to lose.

Based on the way Tony books things and based on the people in this match, you just knew it.

And that's exactly what happened.

It just took 20 minutes to get there.

I thought, just like you,

the end spot where, and we've seen it plenty of times, where the baby faces almost hit each other and they tease, something could happen.

It was contrived.

Contrived is the best word for it.

Why wouldn't

Paige, I know, has been a heel, but now he's apologized for all the heel things he did, kind of, or whatever.

But Osprey,

why couldn't

Osprey have accidentally just hit Paige and Alexander beat Paige and then Paige be mad at Osprey?

But it was an accident.

But nevertheless.

You know, the other thing is on the topic of Alexander, on the topic of Kevin Knight,

whether they're world beaters or not

makes me wonder, doesn't have to be them.

Is there anyone that AEW has brought in and just put over strong right away?

Like, really put over.

Like, they go out there and crush every week on TV for a month.

Is there anyone?

Well, Bobby Lashley hadn't been beat yet

that I remember.

Has he wrestled four matches on TV in a month?

You know, the way you would naturally try to get someone over in the old days, put them on every episode, crushing someone until they're over.

No, but I was going to say Shelton Benjamin has won most of them, but they didn't beat him three weeks in because they were bringing Lashley in.

MJF, again,

didn't do a lot of jobs, but didn't wrestle a lot.

There's no,

I mean, you know, Pockets or one of the Japanese fantasy objects of Kenny.

You could actually argue they booked Orange Cassidy stronger than anyone in the company in the history of the company.

Yeah,

that's why it's so laughable.

But at least he's got two legs, Brian.

That's not really a good transition here.

Well, I think, you know,

it's apropos

because at least Pockets has two legs, but our next competitor does not.

So apparently Ricochet on collision on Saturday or Thursday or whenever it aired last week stole the artificial leg of Zach Gowan,

who

has not been heard of, and at least that I know of for a long, long time.

And I guess because they were in Detroit,

since they had Rhino come out and do a job, they brought the one-legged man to have some kind of ass-kicking contest and got his leg stolen.

And now they drove him down to Chicago

to get his leg back.

And this is not a fucking rib, folks.

This is, they had Ricochet

wrestle a one-legged man who used to be a wrestler 20 years ago, and I wasn't in favor of it then.

And

I know that

there's been a lot of visually ridiculous things on this program, from the talent to the artificial walls they build to throw people through to the special effects that have gone awry.

But can you imagine anybody that hasn't ever seen this wrestling program, but is predisposed to watch a wrestling show, is used to the WWE, but maybe wants to see something a little different and is flipping around and

sees a one-legged wrestler fighting the midget that stole his fake leg.

I thought he was more impressive, too.

If they really wanted to put him over, other than the finish, I thought he was great.

He stole the show.

And the last time I had heard of him, I think he did an assembly at one of my kids' schools.

Yeah, yeah.

No, seriously, a few years back, just about like, you know, a motivational thing.

And they said it was good.

He was a very nice guy.

And every kid wants to get out of class and go to a semester.

Boy, about school in New York brought this guy in from Michigan.

I think it's like a circuit.

I think, like, the people who go to your school, then go to the next school, then go to the next school.

It's just they work a like a wrestling circuit, actually.

Those people are

operating out of a fucking unmarked white panel van.

Do you think this is the opportunity to bring back the legless guy from the early days of AEW and the Battle Royal and give him an opponent in his own division?

No, because he didn't have any legs.

See, if he fought a one-legged man, that wouldn't be fair.

Although, maybe because he would have no legs, his balance would be better because,

you know, it seems like Gowen would be sort of leaning sideways a lot of the time.

Nevertheless,

so they

thought, I guess, this is going to get a bunch of heat on Ricochet to beat up the

physically challenged individual, except that Ricochet from the start of the match was selling that he was afraid of the one-legged man and bailing out of the ring and fucking

ah face like, oh shit, he's going to hurt me.

And then

everything on the air was the one-legged man kicking the shit out of Ricochet.

They did like two minutes, then they went to a break right as Ricochet had stopped him, apparently for heat.

And when they came back, Gowan was starting to come back.

And then

Ricochet stopped him and hit a 360-degree splash off the top and got a two-count.

And then hit him with a shooting star and got a two-count.

And then hit him with some other big kind of move, I don't know the name of and got a two-count.

What the fuck

on a one-legged fucking 40-year-old guy that hasn't wrestled in 20 years?

And then Ricochet went out and got the scissors.

I can't beat him any other way.

I must stab him through the heart.

And when he gets in the ring, the referee who's Knox, so of course this is going to be horrible, grabs the scissors away,

goes to the ropes and calls for someone

to amble over and get the scissors from him.

So he turned his back for 45 seconds.

While Gowen hit, after Gowen has been 360 and shooting starred and big Fernham Durnhamed, He's up and has got his own leg and hits not the real one, the fake one,

and hit Ricochet with the fake leg and covered him and got a two count.

God damn, at this point, just win even.

And then Gowen did a moonsault off the top, which he missed, and Ricochet hit a thinger-dinger one-two-three.

Everybody involved in this ought to be ashamed of themselves.

And then Ricochet got back on Gowen, and Mark Briscoe ran out to save him.

But every

match, either the heel is going to win and then beat

Babyface up afterwards, or the heel is going to lose and then beat Babyface up afterwards.

Your thoughts on the one-legged man in the Asking contest?

You know, sadly, this was one of the more entertaining things on this episode.

There were a lot of things that I couldn't sit through.

This, I had no problem sitting through.

I thought Gowen, all things considered, was pretty impressive.

Obviously, he's been practicing what he could do in this.

Like I said, I think the average person who tuned in, they would go, What is this?

And then they would think he was the one being featured as a star, not Ricochet.

Yeah.

And there's so many problems with it.

And the fact that he can

do all those things

is amazing for him and spreads a thick layer of feces all over the credibility of the business.

Okay,

goddamn, do we bring a guy out in an iron lung and watch him climb up and do a moonsault?

For the record, the last man in an iron lung died, I believe, last year.

Well, he shouldn't have tried to do that moonsault.

Anyway,

moving on to the one redeeming feature of this program, the hurt syndicate.

We hurt people.

MJF was in the back.

First of all, they're talking to him.

He's excited.

This is going to happen tonight.

I'm going to be involved with the Hurts.

And the question comes up, well, what are they going to do to you if they say no?

And then he's like, oh,

you see him thinking.

And then MVP comes in and says,

We need to, you know, make sure that you come to the ring after our match tonight.

We like, we've got something for you.

Oh, so what's going to happen here?

But in the meantime, they've got to have the world tag team champions wrestle every once in a while.

But as we've talked about for weeks now, it's ridiculous that there is no tag team

physically over with the fans,

work-wise, that is any kind of money match with these guys because everybody else is a bunch of fucking kids.

And so here we have

a couple of fucking kids, the Martin Brothers, top flight,

Dante and

Devonshire, whatever his name is.

And, you know,

they worked this match smart, I think.

The Hurts did, because

they had the baby faces open up with a bunch of flying, double teaming, got them off balance.

They could take some bumps for them because, shit, what's going on?

And everything.

And the faces did the snazzy stuff.

And then, boom, they cut them both off.

One of them was going to dive through on Lashley, and Lashley standing on the floor caught him by the neck and just fucking spun him around and rammed him into the post.

And Sheldon suplexed the other.

And they beat him up and they hurt or hurt locked Dante.

And that was,

they gave the babyfaces a bunch of their shit at the start, but if they had beaten these guys up and then let them come back at the end, it would have been ridiculous.

And also the match was short, they didn't have time for it.

So they got to shine in at the start and then boom, and it was pretty

cut and dried from there.

But you're thinking then.

Well, we're going to see.

It's what everybody's waiting on.

We will see MJF of what's going to go on here, right?

That's the point of the thing.

Well, suddenly, out comes Dustin Rhodes and Sammy Guevara.

Sammy's still there.

Did you know Sammy was still there?

I did know that he was teaming with Dustin in Ring of Honor.

I didn't know he was going to be so well dressed.

Maybe it's a new Sammy Guevara.

He was dressed in a pale blue prom.

So remember, I told you that tuxedo

that I wore to fucking Jerry Jarrett's housewarming.

It was the same fucking color.

I swear to God.

So Dustin is out there with half his face painted and his whole bodysuit on and dressed to wrestle.

And Sammy's in a prom outfit.

And

Dustin, he said something

that contained the word asshole and got it bleeped.

But then

the Hurt Syndicate is in the ring.

Dustin and Sammy are on the floor and Dustin says, I think it's obvious what we want.

And there was no reaction at all because no, no, it wasn't

because

they came.

Also, Dustin and Sammy came out.

They've got like three or four fucking belts hanging off of them.

They got Ring of Honor tag team belts.

There's another belt there.

The two guys in the ring are the tag team champions.

So they kind of half-ass explain they want a tag title versus tag title match, I guess.

Or maybe they want

just a match for the tag titles that the Hurts have without putting up theirs.

I don't fucking know.

Because suddenly,

music plays.

You think, where's MJF?

The music plays.

Here comes Action Andretti and Leo Rush.

And now it

crew.

Their name is.

Their name should be the who are those two guys that are 12 years old and 5'2?

Because they come out, and as soon as Andretti starts talking, the fans are shut the fuck up.

And they're trying to bleep that.

And Leo Rush talks to Lashley because they got history, right?

And I've said Leo should be a manager.

God damn it.

But

they want a tag team title match.

Both of them together are not as big as Bobby Lashley.

And Shelton Benjamin's better wrestler than Bobby Lashley.

And then Dustin says, no, you can't cut in line.

And they all start arguing.

And then MVP has to say, okay, enough.

You all fight on collision and the winner gets us at double or nothing.

And I wrote, good God, because I see now

the Hurts are trying to do their thing and their thing with MJF, but in the middle, they got shoehorned in this.

confrontation between Dustin Rhodes and a bunch of fucking whining children

about who's going to have the match at the pay-per-view, that they had to do that and set up a match on collision and then get them out of the way so that they could do the thing that everybody was waiting on.

And an MVP says, well, I'm being told we've got to go to a break.

But

when we come back, MJF's going to get what he deserves.

So now the MJF or MVP has to be the host of the fucking show now.

Before I go any further, this,

this what the i

i would buy it if it was dustin and sammy and andretti and leo

against shelton and bobby four on two it would be entertaining enough they'd go eight or ten minutes

otherwise what the are we doing here

were you hoping like i was hoping that crew would beat dustin and sammy they got that tag title shot

Well, they're not going to do it until collision.

So we don't know yet.

Well, yeah, and I think they may have taped it or if they didn't.

Either way, I don't know.

Also, we do know?

I don't know.

It's collision.

I actually don't know for sure when it is taped or aired this week.

But,

yeah, that was a segment.

All right.

You know, we said they had no tag team division, and this was their response.

Every tag team they could, they got out there, and this is all that they could.

And this is all they could.

I'm entertained endlessly by Leo Rush.

I've never heard Action Angeli really talk before.

You know, do something.

Do something with them or do nothing with them, not like do something every now and then for like a week with them.

That's what they're going to do something with them weekly.

We saw them.

Very weekly.

It's like monthly.

We saw them in one month.

They were in the crowd in those big jackets and we said, what the fuck is that?

And then we didn't see them for another month.

And then like they were in a random match.

And then we didn't see them for another month.

It's just every month they make a random appearance.

They wandered out in the crowd last week, too, Remember?

They came out in the crowd to watch another segment and then they were never seen again.

So maybe they got lost or mugged or I don't know.

I feel like if you're not at least five foot six, you ought to have an adult accompanying you at the crowd of a wrestling show.

And one more thing I'll say, top flight, they got fucking Layla Gray out there as their manager.

She's one of the best looking women in wrestling, and she's like a feckless babyface manager.

Why?

How does that help anyone?

How does it help these two be babyfaces when everybody's just sitting there going, what the fuck?

Neither one of these two are good enough looking to fucking deserve her.

So it's just a distraction.

And why would she be there?

Why do they need her help?

Why is she there?

If you want her to be a manager or a valet, make her a heel one and actually get something out of it.

She's a really good-looking woman, but Missy Hyatt was really good-looking when she was a feckless babyface manager for the Steiners, it wasn't really working.

And that was the Steiners

instead of the

miscellaneous, the nobodies.

That's them fighting words, Brian.

When you call somebody a nobody, I didn't know they were a team now.

I knew there was one nobody, I didn't know that they were going to be a team.

That's pretty scary.

Nobody,

so they came back.

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

Nobody can do wrestling like you do.

And nobody wants to see you too.

So they came back from the break and then they called out MJF.

And MJF's music plays.

There's no MJF.

And remember, he was a little nervous about what might happen to him when he, you know, comes out there.

So

Shelton runs to the back and he goes through the curtain and he's going through the dark area and they go to what

serves as the gorilla position for them.

And they had just enough light in there that you could see that Tony Khan stands up with his headset on.

And I believe there was poor Jerry Lynn, who has to just see his life flashing in front of his eyes every time he sits at that table for a taping.

And Sanjay.

And Sanjay.

And, but Tony Khan stands up, and that's where you talked about it earlier.

He's doing the silent movie comedian faces like Ben Turpin with the big eyes and the wiggling of the non-existent mustache.

And he's pointing.

He's back here, but he's not really even mouthing words.

He's just got the big smile.

And MJF is hiding behind the table.

And Tony does the marionette.

looking thing where he's

the strings are being pulled.

He's here.

He's here.

So Tony got on camera.

And then Shelton goes around there and grabs MJF.

And MJF is Shelton, buddy.

I was just looking for you, baby.

Yeah, you want to go out there?

Yeah, that's a good idea.

You know,

so

then they get out of there, thankfully, before

Tony had some kind of goddamn America's Got Talent Act he broke into.

And then

once they get in the ring, MVP's promo teased that they were just going to kill him.

And finally, he has to vote one more time.

MVP gives his thumb up.

And then Shelton Benjamin gives his thumb up.

And then it's up to Bob.

And Lashley puts his arm around MJF and he sticks the thumb out and starts milking it.

And in the back, Shelton is liking a stance for the super kick.

Like,

if that thumb goes down, I'm going to knock this guy's head off.

And Lashley milks it, milks it, and thumbs up.

And the crowd pops.

They wanted to see that.

And Lashley hugs or MVP or MJF hugs Lashley.

Hugs Lashley.

He jumped into his arms.

He jumped into his arms.

I don't know if Lashley expected that, but that was pretty funny.

And he kind of dropped him on his ass.

And the fans started chanting, We hurt people, we hurt people.

And

now MVP says next week,

the official contract signing of MJF into the Hurt Syndicate.

But there's one more little tease that they did a little bit later on in the back where MJF was all smiles and

MVP, you know, says, next week, we're going to present you your contract with the Hurt Syndicate.

And MJF says, I'm going to have my lawyer go over it.

And I'm sure it'll be great.

And he brings in his lawyer, Mark Sterling.

And MVP isn't real happy.

He's talking about having a lawyer go over the contract, but I'm not happy that they've got this fucking underneath goof in this deal, which now is going to

take away, hopefully at minimum, from what they're doing because Sterling's a goof.

He can only be funny.

Nobody ever believed in him and he never had a position where you should.

So I don't know why they got him stuck in this fucking thing.

But otherwise, that's the way they left it.

There's going to be a contract presented next week, and

MJF is going to have the fake lawyer look at it and

what might happen.

But at least we got

the three thumbs up.

And MJF said to MVP, what would you do if you had a contract?

Wouldn't you have your lawyer look it over?

Yeah.

And MVP had to say, well, yeah, that's what I would do.

But again, if MJF's so smart, why does he have the undercard managing,

comedy managing lawyer as his lawyer?

See, there's the fly in the ointment.

Although he did have that wonderful multi-week feud where it was Wardlow versus Mark Sterling and the security guards.

That went somewhere.

But you know, the thing is, Brian, for a while there, I was worried.

I was thinking, is this going to be a situation where they're going to turn on MJF?

They're going to beat MJF senseless.

They're going to excommunicate him, not only from the Hurt Syndicate, but from AEW in general.

And MJF's going to be home without a job, without a career, without a way to make money.

And nobody wanted to see that for poor Maxwell Jacob Feinstein, as Spectrum Cable calls him.

They wanted to know that he had something to fall back on, Brian.

And, you know,

I don't want to betray any confidences here, but everybody knows that I'm quite an MJF fan.

At least I have been in the past when he was allowed to shine.

And

I gave him a few words of encouragement and advice a few years ago.

We were standing there, and he said to me, He said, Jim Cornett, he said,

How can I make sure that I don't end up broke and penniless in the wrestling profession like people have done before me?

And I say one word, one word to you, MJF,

Shopify.

And he took that.

What?

He took that advice to heart.

And I'll have you know.

When did this conversation happen?

Where?

Well, this was years ago back in MLW when we were together.

He picked my brain on a way to have something to fall back on.

And I said, Shopify.

And I'll have you know that now

MJF has MJF Incorporated Limited Partnership

Co.

ready to go on the internet as soon as this wrestling thing doesn't work out.

Well, we don't know that.

And I guess maybe

the high syndicate would want to learn these kind of facts before they get involved.

I don't know whether I'm allowed to divulge that information or not, but I'll tell you what, he's going to be selling everything from whiskey to widgets.

And Shopify

is the commerce platform.

Well, there's a big market for widgets these days.

Just think about Bridget the widget.

Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all of the e-commerce in the United States.

Yes.

Imagine that it's midnight and you're lying in bed and you're hitting the button on that thing that you've been looking for, whether it's the latest in electronic marital aids or whether it's just a a purdy little vase that you want to sit on your your nightstand and stare at as you're trying to sleep

but you're just hitting all these buttons and that purple shop pay button is the one you're looking out for because that one makes it easy to buy something online and if you're with shopify then you get access to that purple button not to send people money but

to make money Every time somebody hits a purple button, an angel gets its wings and you get paid because Shopify gives you a leg up with hundreds of beautiful ready-to-go templates to express your brand style.

They can tackle all the important tasks, inventory, payments, analytics, lawsuits, potential product liability.

Whoa, whoa.

Whoa, I don't know if they handle that.

And of course, let's not worry about that.

Let's talk to Mr.

and Mrs.

America.

doing business the right way with the right products safely and securely for the American public.

And of course, use them, them being Shopify.

They are there for you.

They being Shopify for your business, Shopify.

Yes, let's say, for example, that you want to sell some type of uranium on the dark web.

Now, Shopify.

No, no.

No, Shopify will have nothing to do with that.

And hopefully you won't either.

And the authorities should.

Let's stay away from uranium on the dark web.

All right.

Well, in that case, let's say that you want to

take human remains and make them a lot of them.

Oh, we will not say that.

We will not say human remains.

Let's say you want to take a look.

We know just the skin, just the skin for the lampshade.

Let's say that's the science of the lambs.

Let's say you want to sell a nice widget online.

Well, and all you've got to do is grab that widget around the neck and tell him, come here with me, widget.

I'm going to sell you.

And you put him up on Shopify, and that widget is going to get sold, and you're going to make

money.

The iconic purple purple shop pay button that's used by millions of businesses around the world can now be connected to you.

And every time that somebody punches that purple button around the world, you'll get, as a matter of fact, they give you a device you can put in your pants pocket.

It will give you a slight electric shock every time somebody presses.

So you'll know that you're making money and that they're working for you.

No, they not being Shopify, they will not be giving you anything.

It'll give you an electric shock.

Well, not even a shock, more like just a prod they got the best converting checkout on the planet are you waiting for a table at the cheesecake factory yeah well it's a little it's a little bit stiffer than that you're going to know it's there but that way you know that you've made money Folks, if you want to see less carts being abandoned and more money going in your pocket because of your business that you're running online, thanks to the power of Shopify and their overlord capabilities over the rest of the pewy peons on the internet,

go right now to

slash JCE

for a $1 a month trial period.

They are only going to charge you the sum of $1 per month.

That's 100 pennies over 30 days for the trial period that they can show you what they can do for you.

And you can then,

in turn, later on, you're going to have to show them what you can do for them.

Sometimes that can take a number of years and be quite painful.

But Shopify.com.

Not the way it works, but shopify.com.

Yes.

Yes.

Slash JCE.

That's the way that works.

And you're going to get that $1 a month trial period.

Where get in deep today, because it's about as deep as I can possibly tell you to go.

Shopify.com/slash JCE.

That's what they're doing over there.

That's what they're doing over there.

That's what we're doing over here.

Of course, Shopify Powers, our online store with the t-shirts with Travis Heckle's artwork.

And for the drive-thru,

You're juggling a lot.

Full-time job, side hustle, maybe a family.

And now you're thinking about grad school?

That's not crazy.

That's ambitious.

At American Public University, we respect the hustle and we're built for it.

Our flexible online master's programs are made for real life because big dreams deserve a real path.

Learn more about APU's 40-plus career-relevant master's degrees and certificates at apu.apus.edu.

APU, built for the hustle.

But Jim, let's get back to being balls deep in AEW Dynamite.

Well, I wish that you hadn't said that because the next match was a four-way for some unknown reason

featuring Tony Storm, Sky Blue, Mina Mellons,

and Azumi.

Have we seen Azumi before?

Azumi is another one of the

perky, frisky little Japanese small people that uh

kenny paved the way for them to import here well apparently she has a lot of fans i didn't know uh how to pronounce her name we've seen her name before azm

but apparently it's pronounced azumi and i had not seen her azm was a sub-genre on x videos

x videos that a porno site

well if you don't know

But

they had a four-way there.

Well, I guess we're still on the no, we're talking about the restios.

We're still on X videos.

Yeah, they had a four-way thing there, and a bunch of girls

hair flew in the air, and they, they all fought.

Um,

now they're doing it that they're trying to,

I guess, cross-promote from collision to

dynamite here.

We've said they should do that, but maybe they ought to

keep us up on a few things a little bit better than they do.

Because out of the blue, there's tony shiavani and nigel mcginnis standing in the ring and nigel wants to apologize to daniel garcia

and i thought at first because he's apologizing because fr beat him up on collision apparently he was apologizing because he had all he could stand he couldn't stand anymore and he jumped on ftr and got garcia disqualified

So Nigel apologized for overstepping his boundaries and interfering in old Danny's business.

And

when Nigel apologized to the fans booed, then he apologized.

And then

Garcia didn't want the apology

because he gave a rabble-rousing speech where

FTR wants to end all of our careers, wants to do identity.

Garcia is a horrible promo and the material was putrid, but half of this sounded like like Garcia was turning heel

almost like he was, I don't want your apology, like he was going to fuck Nigel up.

But then he

was like, if you're not going to stand beside me,

say then run back to be just an announcer, or you can stand up with us and fight these guys, or whatever the fuck was going on here.

And then Stokely came out and I said, fuck it.

I just,

I didn't pay any attention until suddenly FTR came out from under the ring and

they jumped Garcia and beat the shit out of him until old Fat Mac Daddy came in with a fake crowbar and ran him off.

The one

tag team that we mentioned

that you would take seriously against the Hurts Syndicate, but the Hurts Syndicate and FTR are both portrayed as heels, but the Hurts Syndicate, because they've been portrayed as really professional looking badass heels the people are cheering them whereas the people aren't really cheering fr anymore and they're not really overly booing them either because they've just

buried those guys

so but now they're

fucking

daniel garcia and nigel is the match here because we haven't seen the color commentator can't take anymore so he's going to challenge the heel thing anytime recently.

So hopefully, you know, Nigel has no problem with Gunther, and he can return to commentary next week.

You look, the problem is, you know, FTR is stuck in that cycle too, like everyone else.

If you're only working with these people and they've been doing shit with Garcia for a while,

as we've said before, it ain't going to happen with Garcia.

He's put on no size.

He doesn't look like a wrestler, and he does the worst promos ever.

And Nigel,

I don't think Nigel's really been fully established on Dynamite to the people who weren't following a Ring of Honor or TNA, and mostly Ring of Honor, because he wasn't even Nigel McGinnison TNA

15 years ago.

And that was 15 years ago.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's the thing is he did a match on a pay-per-view here not long ago, but on Dynamite,

you know, he's an ex-wrestler.

You wouldn't have any idea potentially to how good he was from what they have presented here.

Are you ready for the main event, young man?

The big cage match, the big world title match, Samoa Joe and Dick the Boozer.

This match was putrid.

Awful.

I like Joe.

Just awful.

I like Joe.

But

the best that Moxley can be is substandard.

It's just not possible, is it?

Because anything he touches turns to shit.

And if you watch his work, his work is horrible.

And then he relies on the same garbage over and over again.

I don't know if it's because it's what he likes or just all he knows, the standing there and trading the bad looking forearms over and over and over again.

Jesus Christ, the worst matches, the worst fucking heel stable, the worst everything.

What did you say when Joe was hitting the ropes and coming back for the foot wash on the face and all that stuff?

He can't even sell that.

He just lays there and you see the foot go by him because there's no registering or reaction of the thing.

But

anyway,

they started this match almost at 10 o'clock.

So they went like five minutes or whatever and then took a break at 9.57.

And they were on break until 10 o'clock.

And during the break,

not only did all the groups apparently come to ringside, but Moxley started bleeding like a stuck hog.

So

in the break, you miss the excitement.

I don't know what the fuck they're doing.

And when they came back from the break, they were standing in the middle of the ring trading forearms.

And at this point, the hard camera couldn't get its focus through the cage.

I thought I was watching an old

VHS tape.

But finally,

Joe gets a sleeper on Moxley, and the baby faces are all there to stop all the heels from climbing the cage.

And Willow can stop Schaefer, and

they get another girl to stop Yuda,

whatever.

But some guy, then in a black hoodie, we've never seen this before.

Some guy in a black hoodie runs up and slides the briefcase through the corner of the cage where it meets turnbuckles

into Moxley, and Moxley hits Joe over the head with the briefcase and covers him one, two, three.

And then the guy whips his hood off, and there is no

reaction

anywhere because it, I was going, who the fuck is that guy?

And then the announcer said, oh, it's Gabe Kidd.

He looked like bald guy with a red beard.

Hey, Josh Alexander took off his headgear.

That was my first thought.

And yeah,

they're very similar, aren't they?

And then kid and Claudio beat up Hobbs.

Schaefer beats up Willow.

Gabe hugs Moxley.

And then the Buckaroos music plays.

And here they come.

And

there's no reaction, Brian.

Did you hear any reaction, Brian?

There hasn't been a reaction in a while for them.

They just walk down the ramp and wearing the

curious fashion choices that they have,

and they get in a ring and they offer their hands to Moxley.

So now they're going to join with the Boer Horseman.

But then suddenly, music plays,

and here comes Kenny.

And Kenny comes out and gets a fight with the heels on the floor, boom, boom, boom.

But then O'Sleepy

comes out

again

in

the Marlon Perkins outfit from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

It's like a new take on David Burns' outfit.

Stop making sense.

And they get Kenny in the ring.

When Maddie, Maddie of the Lollipop Guild has come out, he's got a walkie-talkie because since they're EVPs,

he got them to raise the cage and he can get them to lower the cage, right?

Because they're calling shots,

which is another thing about this whole thing that doesn't make any goddamn sense.

Because apparently, the whole idea of Moxley's thing is to

he hated the way the company was being run and the people in it.

So he wanted to fuck it all up.

So let's go to two of the people that started it to be on the same side.

What the fuck?

So

they lower the cage, and all the heels are in there beating up Joe and Cannie.

And they are not recreating the atmosphere of,

you know, be it four heels on Dusty in the cage in the Omni.

Because the fans are just kind of.

Did you see how Okada was able to leave?

Oh, and I forgot to mention that because you mentioned it to me and I said, what?

I went back.

Okada didn't get in the cage with the rest of them because somehow while he was on the floor, old Hong Kong Fuye, Spitball Bailey himself, ran out and fought Okada off.

But the reason why I didn't know that is because when you go back and look at the show,

it's on screen for three seconds in the dark back of the arena that Okada is lazily jogging

out of the entranceway, and Bailey is behind him throwing the kicks at the guy's back.

I'm going to kick you away from here.

So they were gone, and they didn't even get in a cage.

And then

they've got fucking the cages down, and they're beating up Kenny and Joe.

And then Squerve's music plays.

And he just walks out to the ring and climbs the cage, and all the heels turn and stare at him on top.

And he jumps off on them, and they all catch him, and he lands and they all fall down

and then the cage raises

and the heels leave

because and there's matt on the

walkie talkie hurry hurry hurry there's still like six of them

and then it's swerve they've got the other two guys dead

And they raise the cage and all the heels run out.

And then Swerve gets to say once again how he's the most dangerous man in AEW

and he challenged them all for the garbage match at the pay-per-view.

Anarchy in the arena,

formerly football field fuckery,

and which,

how many boar horsemen and how many buckaroos

is it, which is part is going to be who's the teams here?

Well, if it's five on five, I think that's what it's been in the past.

Obviously, Moxley on one side, Samoa Joe on the other, you would think.

The Bucs and Gabe Kidd on Moxley's side.

Maybe Okada 2.

And on the other side, you would have Kenny,

Swerve.

And then there are two open spots.

Is it Speedball?

Is it Powerhouse Hobbs who was involved in this?

Is it,

dare I say, Shapoopy?

I don't know.

It better be Hobbs instead of Bailey.

I don't know which team to put my money on.

Would you send a Girl Scout into a goddamn war zone?

Did you see that?

So I guess that's kind of what the Jacksons are.

It may be valuable to have someone who can kick people away in the middle of that match.

If you're trying to do something and one of the other guys is coming, you need someone who could just start flashing those kicks like a helicopter and get rid of them.

Well, it might be something to have somebody that can kick people away because they've already got plenty of them that can run people off.

That Speedball Bailey thing is the funniest thing ever because someone said, go, you go out there.

You, you, go, go, go.

And he comes out there and no one sees it.

I don't even, did the announcers mention it?

I think they mentioned anything.

Did they mention his name?

I don't think they said anything.

I think one of them after he was gone said, wait, was that Bailey?

Oh, well, there it is.

We get Anarchy in the Arena.

Coming up at double or nothing.

That'll be a fun review.

It always is.

It's always a memorable band review.

Will they play the music non-stop?

That's been a thing in the past.

Remember, Chris Jericho made a big deal out of the brilliance of his character because he knew that heel would hate music.

So he had to turn off the music.

But we've seen it in the past.

Well, we see it here.

Turn off the radio.

Well, Brian, here's a question I've got.

Did anybody watch this thing this week?

And we're talking about what is the date on this program, May the 14th.

14th.

Did anybody watch the thing?

Well, we have them here, the AEW Dynamite ratings, according to WrestleNomics,

May 14th, 2025, 8 to 10.13 p.m.

On average, watched by 682,000 viewers.

Oh.

So they...

put the cage match in the big cage it brought them another what 50 or 60 000 people from what they've been doing.

But the question is, did they hang out to the end to see it?

Well, this is up eight percent from last week, which was 629, and 14 percent over the trailing four-week average of 601,000 viewers up against the Knicks and the Celtics.

You would have thought that really could have hurt this, and it doesn't appear that it did.

I don't know that a lot of the AEW faithful are actually fans of real sports.

Let's go to the quarter hours.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics, AEW Dynamite on TBS, May 14th, 2025, not counting max.

Allegedly.

Quarter one, 8 to 8.15 p.m.

Adam Page and Will Ospreay versus Josh Alexander and Konosuke Takesha with picture in picture

732,000 viewers.

Aha, so they

appear like they're going to keep their audience this week.

I can't wait to see how this develops.

We develop into quarter two, 8:15 to 8:30 p.m., the continuation of the previous tag match, a Jon Moxley Samoa Joe video, and a top flight promo,

689,000 viewers.

And that's a drop of only 43,000, which is much less than normal from quarter one to quarter two.

And

they're going to keep pretty steady to make this average.

Well, we we go to quarter three, 8.30 to 8.45 p.m.

Zach Gowan versus Ricochet with Picture and Picture and an MJF promo,

664,000 viewers.

Okay, they may have left for a little while on the one-legged guy, and they'll be back shortly.

Well, we go to...

They hopped out for something to

go to quarter four,

8.45.

They'll hop right back in.

Why don't they they hire the wrong one-legged guy like Lauren Idas did for a natural feud between the two one-legged guys?

Zach Gowan used to be a waiter at the IHOP, by the way.

Okay, let's stop it.

IHOP is awesome for French toast.

8:45 to 9 p.m., quarter four.

Top flight versus Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin.

And the post-match with Dustin Rhodes.

Sam Miguevara and his prom outfit.

Leo Rush and Action Andretti, otherwise known as crew,

and an ad break,

696,000 viewers.

All right, so they brought 32,000 back and got the second highest rated quarter so far, besides the start,

to see the Hurts and their various businesses.

Well, that continues into quarter five, the big nine o'clock hour, 9 to 9:15 p.m.,

the Hurt Business and MJF's live promo, an ad break, and Tony Storm versus Mina Shirakawa.

WrestleNomics wrote it as Zam, Z-A-M,

versus ASIM.

Is that how you said it?

ASIAM?

Azumi.

Azumi.

Versus Sky Blue.

685,000 viewers.

And at the top of the hour, there, they lost 11,000, but the girls' match did start fairly quickly.

We go quickly to quarter six, 9:15 and 9:30 p.m.

The continuation of the previously mentioned four-way match with Picture and Picture, and the post-match with Mercedes-Monet and Jamie Hayter,

and the Sabu tribute video with Taz,

690,000 viewers.

Remarkably, this is the most consistent AEW television program ever because they have had

the biggest range was 36, 68,000 from quarter one to quarter three, and then they've bounced back up halfway.

689, 664, 696, 685, 690.

They got to be waiting for the cage match.

That's the only explanation.

Well, we go to quarter seven, 9:30 to 9.45 p.m.

An ad break.

MJF and MVP with Mark Sterling in the back, the Nigel McGinnis, Daniel Garcia, Stokely Hathaway, FTR, Daddy Magic live promo.

Jesus Christ.

And an ad break,

655,000 viewers.

Ooh, maybe they shouldn't have put that right before the cage match because now that's the lowest quarter of the show, and

they lost 35,000 in 15 minutes.

Well, we go to the next 15-minute segment, quarter eight.

I remind you, we have a 13-minute overrun.

Quarter eight, nine forty-five to ten PM.

Samoa Joe vs.

John Moxley in a cage.

Picture and picture ads.

Six hundred fifty one thousand viewers.

Jesus.

Thirteen minute overrun with the big post match with the Death Riders.

Powerhouse Hobbs.

Gabe Kidd.

Okada, Omega, Young Bucks, Okada, Omega, oh, I want to take you.

Swerve, and don't forget about speedball.

673,000 viewers.

Okay, I'm mixed because

I said they were waiting for the cage match, waiting for the cage match.

The cage match starts.

and it's the lowest quarter of the night.

And the overrun,

counting I assume the people that tuned in to see the first 15 minutes of modern family

picked up 22,000 but it was still

the third lowest quarter of the

fourth lowest quarter that whatever

the cage match didn't do so good in the overall scheme of things it seems like it kept them there and once it started they said fuck it

very confusing well that was aew dynamite obviously things are heating up for them on the road to double or nothing.

They're doubling down.

And Saturday night's main event on Saturday and double or nothing on Sunday for Memorial Day weekend.

We don't even get a holiday from this abuse.

Oh, well, Brian, what in the world are they doing?

Over there to abuse people at the Arcadian Vanguard Network this week.

No one's being abused, and I'm losing my voice, so we'll make this quick.

Go through the archive of everything or do whatever you need to do

on Twitter at superpodcasts, facebook.com/slash Arcadian Vanguard.

Every day, the wrestling news, you get everything that's happening for free.

What's better than that?

The morning wrestling newscast with Mike Semper V.

Get it today, thewrestlingnews.com.

Shut up and wrestle with Brian Solomon.

Has a great episode up with the Blue Meanie, a tribute to Sabu.

Hear that today at SUAWPod.com.

Look for Shut Up and Wrestle, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast.

Don't do it.

Don't do it.

The mothership.

All right.

I was hoping the extra drama would

hide what has been taken away.

Go through the archive, 605pod.com, wherever you find your favorite podcast, the mothership.

You said three hours ago, I woke up with a sore throat and I'm losing my voice.

It's starting.

Now it's starting now.

I powered through for a while.

The adrenaline of this scintillating wrestling talk really got me going.

And now.

Well, well, we're going to try to scintillate a little bit more because what we did, we promised last week that we were going to start looking at the AEW roster because the conversation has turned over the past several shows to what can they do?

Who can they have work with so-and-so?

Who can they possibly elevate whatever?

So we are going to be

examining the roster.

And now that we have learned that again, we did this a few years ago

thought maybe they might have smartened up but the roster is

brian what did you say was over 150 individuals easily

is is on what they admit is the active aew roster

and again i'm going based on their website i'm going based on what's on their site under roster because there are some people here that i don't know that might be a clue as to

although you can't take it as gospel just because it's on their website and they claim these people.

But since there's so many of them and

both of us have pressing issues, you with trying to regain your voice and me with trying to avoid being blown away in severe weather, we're not going to do all of them in one clip.

I think that would be a little bit ridiculous.

So, one thing that we have talked about

is the

dearth of talent and talent that can be focused on in the women's division in AEW.

The WWE has pretty much won that horse race handily.

And that's a surprise with Aubrey Ed on the AEW side.

But we thought we would take a look at the women's roster, which is a little bit smaller, and see

what treasures lay in a sea of mediocrity there.

And we'll start tackling them first, correct?

Well, we could do, obviously, the men's roster is gigantic and maybe a two-parter, just that alone.

The women's roster is here.

We also have the broadcasters.

I don't think we need to do the referees or the coaches.

From what I've seen, I'd pretty much start from scratch with a scorched earth policy with the referees.

I don't even know who some of these people are.

Who's Ariel Levy?

He's one of the broadcasters.

Ariel Levy.

I've never heard that name or seen anyone

described as that name on the television.

No, Caprice.

I didn't know Caprice wasn't doing Ring of Honor anyway.

I mean, Ian Ricobani is here.

I don't know if this is just

AEW.

It appears to have a lot of Ring of Honor people.

So I don't know.

Bobby Cruz is here

next to Carlos Cabrera.

I think the Ring of Honor folks should be there as well.

Well, let's go to the champions currently for the women's division.

The AEW Women's World Champion is Tony Storm,

and the TBS champion is Mercedes Monet.

Well,

first of all, let's answer the easy one.

No, I would attempt to get, I would call my credit card company and dispute the charge on Mercedes Monet as quickly as possible.

And

I just would like to just not see her anymore on television ever again doing anything.

Give her a,

Tony Khan's got an unlimited amount of money, right?

He could say, Look, here's a vacation for you and your whole team to the Amazonian rainforest.

Because the way that she gets stuck in the wilderness just here in this country, we'd never see her again.

And what Tony said, because you'd save whatever millions of dollars that Tony was suckered into paying for her

when it's just no, no,

no.

If she was as good as she comes off thinking that she is, that would be great.

But new

Tony Storm, gimmick or not, I'd keep her in a heartbeat because people love her.

But I believe I would have tried to take advantage of her thespianism, her acting talent,

without letting her go full-fledged into just a fucking psychopath that everybody's going along with, and it became just a rib.

But, and

some people are going to say, well, well, that's the point of the thing, but I don't know particularly that

her going all this far with it has helped as much as what she's just done in the ring with a few select individuals.

But nevertheless, I'd keep one and I'd boot one.

What are you snapping or clicking over there?

What's going on?

I'm sorry.

I got my pen because I'm writing down what you're saying.

I'm picking up what you're laying down.

I'm writing down these names.

I'm taking, I'm making my list.

I'm checking it twice.

All right, so Mercedes is gone, Tony is here.

What do you do with that savings?

The money,

goddamn, you could cure cancer.

All right, well, let's go to the women's roster here.

Again, this is according to the official AEW website, aew or allelite wrestling.com.

The first one is someone I thought had left the company, so I don't know.

The living dead girl, Abaddon

Abaddon would be gone, gone, gone.

What the?

That's a complete rib anyway, remember?

Like, it was like a

half-baked Pillsbury biscuit with makeup on.

Okay,

let's move on here with the list.

Anna Jay.

You got to keep Anna Jay because I don't want you to cuss me.

But she's a young girl and she's very fetching.

She seems to be somewhat athletic.

And we're bearing in mind when we make this list that

the one thing we don't know is how attitudes are or learning capabilities.

But it would be worth putting her in

a good, decent, wholesome training program and train her various

talents in the right way.

So now we're two and two.

The Ring of Honor Women's World Champion, Athena.

Help me.

Oh, wait a minute.

She's the one that used to have the big ass that she would sit on people and just be real stiff.

But last time we saw her, she lost some weight.

Again, this may not be my recollection of things.

Maybe this is the way you remember these things.

But Athena, she is the Ring of Honor Women's World Champion.

Well,

whoop-de-ding.

I don't know.

Let's put her in the middle because we may have to come back to that.

I don't know that I would boot her completely, but if it's the one I'm thinking about, as reckless as she used to be, I'd boot her in a heartbeat, but she may have,

she may have got better.

This next one's an interesting one.

Dr.

Britt Baker, DMD.

I mean, do we have to pay for the private detective to find her?

Or can we just call her up and ask her to come back to work?

At one point, I would have said yes when they first started.

I said, well, she's, she's attractive.

She can work a little bit.

She's a professional, you know, a good face for the women's division of the company.

But six years later,

I think a bunch of people have figured out that maybe she wasn't all she was cracked up to be.

And I think she needs a rest.

I believe I'd let her go.

Well, She's resting now because she doesn't show up, but I don't know why she's still getting paid.

Hypothetically, I'm not even saying it's Britt Baker because there's two sides to every story.

But if you know someone's a pain in the ass and you know you're paying them well and you know that their position or their stature would kind of necessitate a raise whenever their contract was up to hold on to them,

but they do either create problems or get involved in problems or are in the middle of problems with various people at various

Do you almost want to feed that sort of energy to WWE?

If you're not worried, it's not going to affect your business.

Do you almost want to say, you know,

this person's a bit of a pain in the ass in the locker room?

Let her go do this over there.

Well, I think the WWE has done a little bit of that on their side.

It might be time they get a little taste of their own medicine.

The problem is you can lead the WWE to the horse, but can you make them drink it?

Or whatever that old saying is.

All right, well, Jim, next on the list, the virtuosa,

Deanna Perrazo.

And I guess she's also part of a faction.

It says the Vendetta.

You know, she wasn't bad.

What we saw.

We haven't seen her in a long time.

She wasn't probably going to make a big difference in the fortunes of this business either way but i can't say that she wouldn't be good to have to

work

with

any top girls you might be able to establish so let's keep her on for a second and again she may be a case of someone who has been in and out of the show there was never really anything done

on a multi-week level to establish her and get people to care you know you do vignettes, but if they just pop up every now and then and then nothing happens, they don't really mean anything.

Well, but besides, on the other, the other way to look at it, though, is she hasn't been around long enough, like some of the talent where they've just done so many stupid things.

You're like, oh, please, I don't want to see any more of this shit.

So she's, you know, reasonably fresh.

Next on the list here, Jim, Diamante.

My God, have we seen her in five years?

She was with LAX, right?

Was that

she was with, what was the name of the

girl who they fired because she was,

who did she stiff on TV?

Was it Thunga Rosa?

She like just stiffs someone on TV and like made a face like, oh, God, rolled her eyes.

She had a partner, Evelise.

Evilise.

She was evil.

At least.

Yeah, I at least.

Let's assume that Diamante ain't ever coming back because we haven't seen her in five years and she's on the gone list.

All right, the next one here, you have to see this fetching photo one day.

Emi Sakura.

Oh, good lord.

Can we get rid of her and then bring her back so we can get rid of ever again?

We have not seen Emi Sakura in a while.

Emi Sakura was a semi-regular presence in the early days.

If she's still on the roster.

or on their roster page, do you think I mean she's still under contract?

She's still getting paid?

Is that all this is?

Is just everyone under contract?

Your guess is as good as mine, but if they're blatantly featuring someone on their website as part of their roster

that we haven't seen in years, you would think they're still affiliated and still getting paid.

Jim, next on the list here, the AEW women's roster, Harley Cameron.

Yeah, again,

people seem to like her.

As you mentioned, she's very talented, just not in wrestling.

But I'm going to keep her because it doesn't mean she has to be a wrestler.

There's something to be done with somebody that has talent, even if she was

one of the announcers instead of the miscellaneous people they find to stand there, just hold a microphone.

Renee Moxley Good adds nothing to the thing of Missatoot.

You know, Harley Cameron could do something a little different, or a manager, or a valet, or a female assistant of some kind.

I wish I had a time machine, I could manage her in vaudeville.

I feel like I'd make a fortune.

There you go, and have a little monkey dressed up in a suit on a leash next to you.

Perfect.

Well, Jim, next here on the list, Hikaru Shida.

Again, I, you know,

they have poisoned the opportunity for any female Japanese wrestler to really shine in this company because of all of the ridiculous, unfit,

untalented, indie-level silliness that they have presented.

That if you lined everybody up on the

stage in a police lineup, they wouldn't be able to tell Emmy Sakura from Hikaru Shida from fucking et cetera, et cetera.

Because everybody dresses and acts the same fucking way.

I take that as you will not be bringing her onto your list.

I will not be bringing her onto the list.

I used to think that, you know, her specifically, because I don't think you could frame them all one way, but I think you specifically were unfair to her.

And I put over her work and then I started to watch her.

Her work's awful.

She's the most overrated.

I have to say it.

She's the most overrated.

I think people like her just because they know Kenny likes her.

So it's like she must be good because Kenny wouldn't be friends with someone who couldn't work a great match.

But she's

stinks.

Riho's better than her.

Riho is better than a Karushida.

Let's continue on this list here, Jim.

Jamie Hayter, that 70s girl.

Oh, my God.

Again, I saw the other night.

It's just, it's off-putting.

It looks like fucking Richie Cunningham and Drag trying to beat somebody up.

It's,

if there's a talent, let's write her down.

There's a talent underneath there, but I'd fucking stick,

I'd turn a bucket of black paint over her head and I'd stick her in something that showed whether she had curves or just lumps or something stuck in her pocket.

All right, Jim, next on the list from the hounds of hell, Julia Hart.

Julia Hart, again, she may not be a great wrestler, but she's got a great look.

And,

you know, I'm writing down these keepers, but then I'm writing them down to be something else besides wrestlers.

We got to be careful we don't have too many of those.

But let's keep Julia right now.

All right.

Do you keep the next one here on the list, Jim?

Camille.

Well, the question is, did they keep Camille?

Where be Camille?

Of course, I'd want Camille if I'm opening up a women's division from scratch.

So we'll keep her.

So far, she and Tony Storm would be fighting over the title.

What if there's a whole community of these wrestlers on top of the mountain that Darby's climbing that are just, they've been booked off the show.

That's where Tony has sent them.

Yeah.

So that it's, it's like one of the really souped up NDA deal where if you want to stay under contract, but you can't talk, so we're going to put you on top of Mount Everest.

And then Darby comes and he discovers a vault door at the top and he opens it and all the fucking trapped wrestlers spill out.

Darby's going to, I mean, what a baby face.

He's climbing Mount Everest to save with a skateboard, with his skateboard, to save all the wrestlers that have been booked into oblivion.

And then it'll look like the entire Marvel universe has been released, and there'll be Darby like the silver surfer on the front of it with his skateboard bringing them all down the mountain.

All right, Jim, next on the list, I don't know where on the mountain she would be, Karen Jarrett.

Well, no, you can't.

I'm not even putting Karen in this discussion because she's not a wrestler or going to wrestle.

But when we get to Jeff, I would have Jeff with Karen if I was going to have Jeff, but not on this list.

What about Kiera Hogan?

You know,

if she's not going to bring Brooke and Nick, she can't come.

She's off the list.

And I don't remember the last time we saw her on this show, so I don't even know what she's doing.

She was one of the baddies, remember, with Jade Cargill?

Ah, that's right.

Well,

Jade left and took her baddies and went home.

That's still one of the most remarkable entresses ever.

Jade would come out there and do her pose, and then on either side of her, she would have her baddies whose move was to turn away from the camera and bend over so it was just their ass in the air and then shake their ass.

That's still one of the most remarkable entrances I've ever seen.

But I guess Kira Hogan can't make it on your list.

What about Chris Statlander?

We got to keep poor Statlander.

We got to keep her because one of these days, if she lives long enough, she might be a star.

What about Layla Gray,

who in this photo is wearing some bizarre, like, it's not a military uniform, but it's kind of, because the colors aren't military, but it's like an old school 1940s military.

She's saluting something.

I don't know what the.

Well, I don't know what.

Let's let Layla Gray go for a couple of years to join the Peace Corps.

It'll make a man out of.

Oh, see, I think she's the one who could probably be a good valet, but

who knows?

Madison Rain.

Madison Rain here on the list.

Yeah, they hired her to be a coach.

She has not wrestled there, or at least we haven't seen her on television.

And

I can't evaluate her coaching because I know people there that in the past have known what the fuck they're doing but you still see these matches so i'm assuming and have been somewhat told that just nobody listens so i don't know what she's telling them but i'm not going to put her on this list of active wrestlers so she might have to go well speaking of people that aren't active wrestlers although they are under contract we believe still

mariah may

yeah

oh because tony's miffed because she wants to go to the to the big show as they say And I'm not talking about Paul White.

So he's just put her on ice.

But we would keep her

again, providing that any and all of these people can be produced and have a good attitude and want to

pull the same rope, as they say.

We got to keep Maria.

What about the problem, Marina Shafir from the Death Riders?

Let's let her ride off into the sunset.

I mean, you know,

she has a striking look,

but

unless the guys are going to be allowed to get even,

I'm sorry, but she doesn't need to be beating up any guys.

And

I don't recall her work being that stellar.

So, and she's had the stench of grisly death on her because of being involved in this whole Boer Horseman thing.

So

let's let Marina go to Marina Del Rey.

All right.

I guess goodbye, Marina.

What about Megan Bain?

We got to keep Megan Bain until we can figure out what's wrong with her, that she's not somewhere else becoming a star.

She's got the look.

I'm going for stupid.

She's got the look.

Let's not start guessing what her problem is, but she doesn't know the look of a star.

You got to say.

There's evidence.

She apparently is dating Jelly Nutella.

Oh, that's always like a good road up on the Indies.

so you know yeah let's see that's how this little weasley con man part-time fucking

meth addict looking guy uh gets these girls because he makes them think i can get you booked on the spring break and i can enhance your career or whatever because he's he's a good con man he's just a rotten wrestler but i think that's what it is she's got to be really stupid to fall for that and that's the only because she doesn't have a visible flaw so we'll see what happens.

Let's keep her.

We're going to keep her.

All right.

Mercedes Martinez.

If she indeed hasn't died of old age since the last time we saw her, I.

Well, I mean, what the fuck?

How long has it been?

You know.

She hasn't died of old age.

She's been on TV in five years.

I think, you know,

let's go for

if she's a good worker, as I, or I remember her being a good worker, but let's

try to go more for the modern era.

Jim, what about from the patriarchy, Mother Wayne?

Well,

again, she's not a wrestler.

I've never met this lady.

I'm not trying to say anything bad about her.

And her poor husband passed away.

The only bad thing she's done is have that fucking moop-faced kid.

But she's not without Nick Plain, Nick Plain's mom becomes unnecessary, and you wouldn't have Nick Plain.

So I think Mom Wayne,

you know, because you know what they say, when you send the Wayne to Spain, he's awful plain.

So put him on a train.

Well, we're not talking about him.

We're talking about her.

Well, they're both going.

We just ain't got to him yet.

All right.

What about Nyla Rose?

Again, when's the last time you saw it?

Yeah, where's Nyla Rose been?

We haven't seen her in forever.

You could do something with Nyla Rose with the size alone.

She's been gone long enough that they don't remember that she was beaten by many people half her size.

So I would attempt to rehabilitate Nyla Rose if possible.

And again, she had Vicki Guerrero as a manager.

That didn't help anything.

I I don't know if that helped anything.

And she lost to Riho a few times, but that was a long time ago.

What about the super bad girl, Penelope Ford?

Good old Penelope Pitstop.

She's another one of the Janella castoffs, right?

She's got dried jelly on her.

No, there's no...

There's no facials.

She's an athletic cheerleader that is doing wrestling moves by rote.

She's not pretty enough to hang in the WWE with the major leagues, but she's pretty enough for the indies, but she's adopted an indie style where she goes from move to move.

Like, this is what we do next, this is what we do next.

And nah, I don't, I don't, I think we've seen the best we're going to see.

I think that'd be the big thing.

I don't know how much improvement there's been in her work in five years of being on national TV.

In fact, it may have gone into retrograde.

I don't know

jim what about queen aminata

uh i remember she's painfully thin no she's not

she strikes me as i remember being tall and thin somewhat tall i think would be fair well and she's a queen that would that mean possibly she's also somewhat thin

I don't know.

I don't want to bad mouth anyone because I can't remember ever watching her fucking work.

So let's put her in the middle.

Okay.

Here's a name we haven't heard in a while.

Rebel.

Good Lord.

I think she retired from the business.

She was doing the thing with Britt Baker, but she used to work in TNA.

Before that, she was in, I think, a dancer in the music business, whatever.

I believe I liked her, oh, Reba.

as the sidekick of Britt Baker, but

I think we got to put her on the no list because I think she's already gone anyway.

See, that was Britt Baker's best stuff when she had Reba and she had Jamie Hayter.

Like, it all works.

And then there was no payoff because they never had a big blow up between Britt and Hayter.

So.

No payoff should be the title of the book on AEW.

Now, there's a fluffy book apparently coming out that'll be filled with lots of fluff about the fluffy, wonderful time that everyone's had over there.

We'll see.

Are you trying to say that a lot of these girls are fluffers?

I'm not saying that.

That's not in any way what I said.

Let's move forward with this list,

Jim.

The Ring of Honor Women's World TV champion,

Red Velvet.

Again, I remember painfully thin, very small.

We haven't seen her on regular television in ages.

She used to do the standing moonsault where she would miss people every time with it, didn't she?

She may have done that for a good while, yeah.

You know,

I put her in the middle,

Jim.

What about Riho?

Riho, gotta go

to Soho.

Yeah, Riho's gone.

She is gone so fast that she will meet herself coming in.

I'd keep her.

She'd be on my list.

Jim, what about Ruby Soho?

Ruby Soho.

We haven't seen her in a long time.

What happened to her?

She got pregnant.

Goodbye, Ruby Soso.

You didn't take your pill on time.

Will you stop?

Now you're

now you're growing a fetus inside you, and it's all on my dime.

I believe she may have had the child already.

I think I heard that.

Well, bring them both back to work.

Jim, let's move forward with this list.

Oh, hold on.

Where am I putting her?

That sounds like you want to keep her and the kid.

I don't know what the hell's going on over there.

Let's keep her for a while.

See what happens.

If she's refound her dedication, not going to go off willy-nilly and get impregnated again.

It was part of that big angle with her and Koolhan Luke.

Remember, Saraya turned on the...

He apparently used more than his hand, or we wouldn't be in this situation.

Well, she's on this list, even though she's not there anymore, I don't believe.

Saraya from the Outcasts.

Didn't she just say she quit wrestling?

Is it just a thing where her contract actually hasn't run out,

or did they just not take her off their website?

I don't know, but I'm taking her off my list because she got a rubber band neck.

And

I don't think the time has passed.

The woman of a thousand holds, Serena Deeb.

Serena

is a very good worker.

She spent a lot of time.

She trained with Rip Rogers, trained in OVW with a lot of the trainers we had.

She's been around the business for a while.

The way that they presented her was

so disinteresting.

But if you're going to have a division of women,

if she's not on the roster, she'd be the trainer to me.

At least for in-ring work, not promos or, you know, goddamn.

hey, Serena, give them a lesson in Chicago wrestling history.

That might not be it, but training women how to actually in-ring wrestle, I would think they could do worse.

What about Sky Blue?

Boy, she's, is she the one whose ass you like?

First of all, I don't think I've ever said that or like that on the show.

And there are not that way.

But there are other women.

I mean, it's not like she would be unique and i'm not even saying you would be her but you beaten around the girls bush about it okay you've turned this aew women's roster review into something out of fucking

hey that's because like francis from fort jonathan ontario said i'm sexiest all right well that doesn't mean you have to make this screw magazine i guess is my point well i'm sorry brian goldstein

Well, let's uh, where were we?

Is there another name?

Are you keeping uh sky blue?

You You didn't say that.

All you did was

pervert.

I can't remember.

She's an attractive little thing.

Let's put her on the list and see what happened.

Just returned, I believe, the wrestling.

Here's another one we haven't seen in a while, but I guess based on when she would have had her child, if she was going to return, it may happen.

Ty Mellow.

Oh, I remember Ty Mellow Conte.

Yeah, she's the one used to talk about how you liked her ass, right?

No, I don't think she had that good of an ass.

Okay, you're

maybe you're thinking to the wrong person then.

I'll stick up for her here.

Uh-uh.

Oh,

I'm trying to mellow.

Maybe that was

some other kind of.

I'm trying to think of who.

You've dragged me down to your level.

Why don't we?

All I remember is we used to make jokes about Ty Mello's name.

She was married to somebody and then she broke up with them and she had another name and then she came back and she was with and had another.

I don't was it Ty Conte?

Ty Conte, yes.

Sounds like a Ford dealership.

All right, we don't care anyway.

She's not on the list.

Go ahead.

Tri-County, Ty Conti Ford has the brand.

See, Ty Conte in Tri-County.

Jim, also on the list.

Also from the vendetta,

Taya Valkyrie.

Again, I was a fan of hers because she has size.

She had a look.

Seemed like that when I saw her on some indie shows, she could work.

But then when we saw her in this atmosphere for a little while, it was the e.

But she was also in with some people that were e.

But then.

We saw her several months ago.

She had

some way or another, her hair turned some kind of mellow, yellow, greenish, yellow type of thing.

Maybe she was showering with Thai mellow.

But is she still even there?

I don't know.

She might, she might, I don't know.

Let's put her in the middle.

All right.

Tya in the middle.

Only a few more names here, Jim.

Thunder Rosa.

Thunder Rosa, same thing as Serena Deep.

She's been around a while.

She can work.

But the way she was presented, blah,

and then she had issues, or the other girls had issues with her, or she had issues with them.

Thunder Rosa, again, can have a good match, but can she draw you any money?

Probably not.

But then again,

most of the people on this list can't either.

She and Serena ought to be the coaches.

We'll put her down.

We'll keep her for right now.

Willow Nightingale.

Willow, let's keep her she's got a bouncy

personality that's people like her smiling she's been booked like too but we're just talking about we're looking at these women like purely like pieces of meat no we're not yeah yes we are we're not looking at them like they've been they've been ruined by bad booking or they've got bad attitudes or they're related or married to people that have bad attitudes.

We're just looking at them purely like pieces of meat that if we were promoters and bookers having a women's division, would we want them on our roster or not?

That's the

fairest, most unmisogynistic way to look at it.

Look at them like they're just strictly pieces of meat.

Is that the way we look at the men's roster too?

Just like they're purely pieces of meat.

Tube steaks smothered in underwear.

All right, let's get.

We have one more name here on the list, Jim.

Just like the spots we do.

You save it for the end, and then you just go over the top.

The magical girl, Yuka Sakazaki.

Oh, let's every time I see her, she makes me Yuka.

Let's get rid of her as quick as we can.

Okay, so that is the women's roster of AEW.

Well, hold on here: two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, nine.

Well, all right,

sixteen,

two, three, three,

four, five, six, that's 38 women.

38.

But when you go down the list of people we hardly ever see, hold on, let me check those off.

Unfortunately, we see too much of her.

And Count Soraya, who said she's gone.

We don't really see Rosa a lot anymore.

We don't see Serena a lot anymore.

Rubies out there popping out to kids.

Now the Rose is gone.

So

out of that, what did I say, 38,

2, 3, 4?

And also Red Velvet, where's she been?

Five box.

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18.

Out of the 38, 19 people we haven't seen in months or years.

And out of the 38, I kept

16 with four more in the middle.

And

that was on first blush.

If I had to pare it down to actually meet a budget,

and or considering that some of these girls would be projects, if you had a training program, you could get rid of another half a dozen of them.

So you'd come up with,

if you count the ones in the middle we got 20 you'd come up with uh 10 12 14 that you could try to do something with as the basis of things

so i'll keep this paper and we'll come back and revisit that all right well there it is don't what are you ripping

i ripped it off the pad so i can keep it in a file

all right well ladies and gentlemen that was the uh Hey, now you want to hear something else?

All right,

there we go.

What are you ripping that?

What are you doing now?

That's the notes for today's program because we're done with it.

Why rip them?

There's so much you could do positively with them.

What?

Am I going to put them in a landfill to help aid the environment?

For the library, for the Hall of Fame.

Well, in that case, I'll rewrite my notes and have somebody type them up.

All right.

Well, that was the AEW women's roster as of this moment.

According to their website.

So

we'll return next time with the men's roster.

Yes, and or anything else that managers and announcers and all that other type of thing, the ancillary people as well.

This may take a while to muddle through this list, but we're going to we're going to figure out 50 people or so that Tony Khan could keep and actually try to draw some money with once he got a new booker.

All right, and we're going to get a new show.

Because this is the old show and it's over with.

Brian, any parting thoughts?

There you go, baby.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

And we will be back on the drive-thru, which this week will be pay-per-view-free, ladies and gentlemen.

You got that to look forward to.

And until then, for Brian, I'm Jim.

And for Ty Mello Conte,

thank you.

Fuck you.

And bye-bye, everybody.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Connest.

of Jim Connet