Episode 580: Hot Stuff

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-teap partner, Barion Last, he sends this message out by podcast.

He's Jim Cornette!

Well, he's never fake a phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to render

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

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

Today, my hands are tied.

Huck Hogan's taking over amateur wrestling.

The Rock has an amateur makeup artist, and an amateur is booking AEW.

But then again, that's not news.

And joining me to talk about all this and so much more.

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

Co-host to you.

He's so good.

He's my second, third, and fourth man.

The great Brian last, everybody.

Loud today.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

We have a lot loud every day.

We have a lot to talk about.

You know, I'm actually excited for some of the things to hear what your perspective is.

The Eddie Gilbert episode, and uh,

Dynamite was a real winner.

And uh, yeah, it's great to see you.

By the way, the perspective, the word perspective, in one of

Uncle Dave's recent uh publications, he tried to say that they were going to preserve the legacy of

lucha libre in the wwe when they they said they're going to preserve it right but he wrote they're going to perverse it

it's all perspective folks you may be right you may be right yeah he may be crazy but it just might be the lunatic you're looking for It's weird.

You kind of sounded good singing that, but that's not the way Billy Joel.

Obviously, it's a much different key than Billy Joel.

He was a man.

I don't know what you're...

What the hell?

You kind kind of have like this Mickey Mouse kind of way of

when you sing.

Well, I'm just up because I'm being silly, I'm being silly and frivolous, like the kids, you know,

they're play.

It's ridiculous.

Whatever happened to Tony using the Pointer Sisters,

he's not excited anymore.

That went away quick.

I forgot all about that.

Well, something else about that show that made it exciting went away pretty quick, too.

Think about that.

It's exciting around here.

I don't know how much of the show we're going to do here in one piece, and I've told you this, but I'll let people,

it's Kentucky Oaks Day in Louisville, Kentucky.

Already people are just

they're jacking off every all over town, everywhere.

Nobody works.

They all go to the track or they watch TV or they do whatever they do.

Nothing gets done around here for three or four days derby weekend.

But the weather forecast has been changing all week.

And where at the start of the week,

They said that it was going to rain up until Oaks Day and then

probably not for the Oaks race.

Guess what we got coming in in just a few hours for post-time of the 151st running of the Kentucky Oaks?

Guess, Brad, just you'll never guess in a million years.

Just guess.

Is it going to rain?

They're calling for severe thunderstorms.

The whole area is under a goddamn thunderstorm watch already.

There's warnings in the western part of our television viewing area.

They're sending a shit in from paduca

and at first they maybe earlier today they said well it might go mostly south of the metro area we could now the i'm looking at the guy i figured out how to use the radar the weather radar on the computer here brian because i want to have some advanced notice of this i've already asked stace if she would be kind enough to come up and inform me if they break in to say we need to crawl under the pool table because I'm isolated from the real world up here while we're recording this thing but i'm watching this radar and there's a giant band of red mess coming straight from metro louisville

and

i don't know how many people are out at churchill downs today because since we're doing this i'm not able to watch the television they're already racing and things and such out there and there's people with the frivolous hats and etc but

They go have to, there is not a lot undercover at Churchill Downs when you're talking about a big crowd because much of it is either infield or out in the stands.

And if they got torrential rain and 60 mile an hour winds, them hats ain't going to look too good, are they?

Have they ever figured out how many people that attend are actually from Louisville?

Like the whole weekend, not just the Kentucky Derby, but you bringing up the Oaks and everything else.

Well, remember I said that they had 50 Tuesday, because that's our area code, 502.

See, that's a cute little marketing thing, for the local people to come on Tuesday where it's not as crowded because they don't want to get anywhere near

goddamn Churchill Downs on Derby Day unless they're, you know, on the board of Brown Foreman distillers and they're going straight into the goddamn luxury box with the hyperbaric chambers.

But is it like WrestleMania?

I mean, people are coming in from out of town.

They need other.

Oh, God.

Yes.

This is it.

The, the,

the Kentucky Derby is estimated as a $500 million impact on a city of Louisville.

Like they talk about WrestleMania being such and such number.

And for NBC television, they say this is the biggest thing that they do besides the Olympics and

something else that is some other kind of big sporting event that they only have every couple of years or whatever.

And

in good weather, which by the way, that's not going to be the end of it.

There's going to be more rain come through tonight.

And then the low is going to park right over the top of us.

And it's going to pour rain much of the day tomorrow during the goddamn Kentucky Derby races.

Not just not severe storms, but just anything from a light drizzle to a fairly steady rain, they're predicting for much of the day.

And in good weather, there is, I think the record for attendance is 175,000 people.

In shitty weather, there's still going to be 100,000 people out there because they've come in from all over the place.

And what else are they going to fucking do?

And the Barnstable Brown Party is tonight.

What's that?

Is that at the OVW of the Kentucky Derby scene?

No, the Barnstable Brown Party is the goddamn big celebrity Kentucky Derby party.

Anybody from Travis Tritt may be playing in a tent.

And Janet Jackson may be there and fucking TV movie stars, celebrities, major politicians.

If somebody is known and goes to the Derby and they're there on a Friday night, they go to the Barnstable Brown Party.

It's a big mansion in the Highlands.

And they said on the news, they've had like, I don't know how many dozen workers out there for weeks starting to set up.

They do a press tent.

They have people.

Again, allegedly in good weather, this will be about the time or 60 mile an hour winds might be blowing through the highlands, but people line the street to see these celebrities go in.

They get interviewed on TV, and then they go in this mansion and they have the party.

And it's by invite only, but they raise millions of dollars for some charity.

But the Barnstable Twins, you know who the Barnstable Twins are.

It must be a Southern thing.

I don't know who they are.

No.

Good.

No, it's not.

It's a worldwide.

Google the right now while I'm talking, and I'll fill you in on the rest of the weather and everything.

Google the Barnstable Twins.

And I want to hear you fucking

be embarrassed that you don't know who these people are.

But anyway, so they have the party, and then tomorrow's the derby, and there's 100 and something thousand people out there.

And it's going to rain, and the track's going to be muddy, and the people in the infield are going to be muddy.

And this thing's going to be broadcast on national television.

And the NBC's got it, so it'll be on the cock.

And you're going to see some soggy, rich,

pissed-off son of a bitches out there tomorrow.

But I'm betting on the mugger.

Have you found the Barnstable twins yet?

I'm looking at their pictures here.

Why are they famous and what do they do?

And how are they involved in any of the things you said?

They were the double mint twins.

Oh, oh, wow.

They were in the commercial, in the TV commercials years ago.

They were the double mint twins.

Weren't they like

twins that were in movies around that period of time?

No, that's that.

They were

like like discount great value barn stable twins.

But anyway, and and then one of them or somebody married a member of the brown family who

owns everything in the goddamn city.

So there you go.

All right.

But if you're not spending money on the Kentucky Derby this weekend,

Or since by the time you hear this, it may have already happened, if it indeed doesn't get rained out, you can send me some money because the sale has begun.

Corney's vault sale at jimcornet.com.

One of a kind and few of a kind and vintage items, trading cards, the final

copies of the sold-out action figures, promotional pictures from years ago, programs, magazines, event tickets, all kinds of cool.

but limited in number stuff.

I don't know what's going to be left.

They might have just grabbed it all like a bunch of hungry locusts, but check out jimcornet.com at Cornett's Collectibles for what may be left while you can still get it.

And I don't want to be too commercial, you know, for heaven's sake, but if you're saving money, if you didn't get to come to the derby because it was too wet, you got extra money.

I'm a safe bet every time.

See, Brian, think about that.

If you bet on a horse and the horse doesn't win, well, then you've lost your money.

But if you send me money for merchandise, you get merchandise.

And that way,

you've got something for your money.

So I'm much better than horse racing.

I'm still looking at pictures of the Doubleman twins over here.

And are they the current day or the old days?

Because I don't know what they look like now.

Okay.

The old days.

I hate that someone could say.

Man, who's that Doubleman twin fucking?

And the answer is Mr.

Brown.

Mr.

Brown, Mrs.

Brown, you've got a lovely daughter.

Oh my God.

All righty.

Oh, poor Peter Noon.

Peter Noon.

Why didn't he change his name to Peter Midnight?

Do you remember how Ed Sullivan introduced him when they debuted on the Ed Sullivan show?

Oh my God.

I've seen the clip, but I can't.

It was a complete fuck-up.

But what was it?

It's one of my two favorite ones.

And, you know, again, they were big on the radio.

This is coming on the heels of Beatle Mania and the British Invasion.

Mrs.

Brown, you've got a a lovely daughter.

He goes, and now here's Peter Herman Moon and Herman's Hermits.

My favorite ever that he fucked up was when he had Jim Henson on.

He had Jim Henson and the Muppets on a lot.

And I think it may be the first time or one of the first times he goes, and now

Jim Newsom's puppets.

He got the whole thing wrong.

Like not only the name, but then it didn't even get Muppets, just Jim Newsom's Puppets.

Can you imagine it's live TV?

You're about to perform and you hear that?

You're like, what the fuck?

Do you realize that that was one of the highest rated television programs in the United States of America for 22 years?

There's a lot of stuff that you hear about how popular it is.

You're like, wow.

I mean, a lot of it is time and place.

Like Arthur Godfrey was like the king of TV until very quickly he wasn't.

When people under 21 started getting televisions

programming.

Yeah.

When you had channels, all of a sudden, North Godfrey wasn't as popular as he was when there were no channels.

And Milton Burrow sold a lot of TVs when there was one show on at that time.

You know, it all, it's all relevant.

Sullivan got that position because he was a famous New York newspaper entertainment columnist.

That's right.

He was never meant to be on television or even radio.

But he ruled the newspapers and

the publicity that he could give you good good or bad, could, you know, make or break you.

And that's it.

It had all the acts, and people were beholden to him.

So that's the

network put him on.

And

people took a liking to him in some weird fashion.

He was personable in his fuck-uppedness.

And he kind of was out of the way.

You know, it was more of just, here's what I'm presenting.

And it was a mix of things.

So,

you know, for whatever reason, for those years, it really, I mean, it was a powerhouse powerhouse on sunday nights ratings wise

i i watched the ed sullivan show on sunday nights on network television i'm old enough he didn't go off the air until 1970.

and that's and he

he meant so much to middle america as they say

that when elvis you know they were going to burn elvis in the town square the adults when he was hot because oh my god he's thrusting his cock in the face of our kid or whatever the fuck was going on

Ed Sullivan, how do you, you know, I, I, this is a real fine boy, nice and respectful.

And then, like, the heat was off of him

just because he shook hands with Ed Sullivan.

Anyhow, of speaking of

speaking of the heat getting off of somebody, and/or maybe he needs an Ed Sullivan to shake hands with, or I don't know if this is a transition, but since we're talking about show business, have you seen the trailer?

I guess the first officially released trailer for the Rocks movie?

What is the Smashing Pumpkins or what is the name of Smashing Machine?

Smashing Machine.

The story of Mark Kerr.

Or Billy Corgan, either one.

He looks just as much like one as the other.

Did you see this trailer, first of all?

I did see this trailer.

It came on the heels of us hearing.

an interesting review of an early preview of the movie or an early cut of the movie.

And then you got to see some of the real action.

I'm sold, I can't wait to see this thing.

I can't wait to see this thing.

Okay.

Let's address the elephant in the room before we talk about the actual movie.

What the fuck did they think it was a good idea to put him in that makeup for?

He looks more like Andre the Giant than the actor that played Andre on Young Rock.

He looks more like Rocky Dennison Mask, to be honest with you.

But why

do that?

Where's Gar?

Why would you do?

Because,

I mean, Brian, I've only seen a couple of movies in my life.

It's not like, you know, that I've seen more than four or five movies, but I've seen a lot of fucking movies.

And there have been many movies,

successful movies, where

the person playing the

object of the biopic

had a passing resemblance or sometimes even no resemblance to the person in the movie, but because of the attitude and the setting and everything, it worked.

They didn't try to make him up like Jack Pierce in a Universal Horror feature would have

put this fucking guy's face together like a ransom note with odd, weird fake hair and

implants of whatever the fuck on his.

I don't understand.

Well, they had a lot of tattoos to cover.

They had a lot of tattoos to cover up, too.

You got to imagine.

But no, I'm talking about on his face.

How many fucking tattoos he had on his fucking face?

I didn't even, I couldn't look at the rest of the body or even the rest of the fucking movie.

I was too busy looking at his fucking face.

He looks like Uncle Dave with the broccolitis.

Well, the rumor is that The Rock thinks that this role could be the one that gets him in an Academy Award or at least an Oscar nomination.

And maybe that's why he combined the role of Mark Herr with the role of John Merrick, the elephant man.

Well,

the smashing machine.

He does not look like a human being.

That's it.

It's so distracting.

that it's gonna

the first response because everybody knows who the rock or who the rock looks like what the rock looks like i know and many of the people one would think that are going to see this movie are going to be fans of the rock

and the first thing that they're going to do is laugh

it's because

nobody

knows see it this is a reverse situation here

where

I'm trying to think of an example of a person who has played another famous person in a biopic, but you see it all the time: so-and-so is going to play Michael Jackson or this or that.

It may be a star playing

the role, but generally the person the movie is being made about is somewhat more famous.

You know what that person looked like, right?

So you could accept that, well, this guy can't look like Michael Jackson or whatever, but he's going for the flavor of it.

In the United States of America,

a minute portion of the people know what Mark Kerr looks like compared to The Rock.

Everybody knows

what he looks like.

So they're going to be laughing when they see that thing.

Can you disagree with that?

Trying to even think of a good comparison.

Like if you watch an old TV show and someone's role as an actor and you see them with like bullshit makeup on, like, all right, I'm doing this role now.

It looks like.

Frank Gwynne and the Munsters.

yeah it's that it was like almost it almost looks like that like behind the scenes or like that but like

there's something that's off

that feels like they're oblivious but again we've only seen the three minute review after reading the

or three minute preview after reading the short review about it who knows i mean maybe it'll all come together The short review said something to the effect of it looked like

the rest of the movie was a spoof and the rock was playing his part straight i believe is what the review said do you recall it that way it was something about like that the the film felt to the reviewer you know again we'll see what happens it felt like it was like a like a mockumentary or a spoof and the rock was playing it very very seriously it was totally different i think is what they said and now that was before we saw the makeup

So the idea that, you know, the movie may be seen as some as a spoof.

spoof and then here's the rock trying to get his academy award playing this as serious as he can and he looks like that

i don't know man this is gonna be really interesting what happens is is this is this spinal tap for the world of mma

Maybe spinal tap for seven bucks.

I don't know.

As a matter of fact, it might be that whoever fucking financed this thing is going to need a spinal tap.

The trailer just seems odd.

It just, you know,

like if you saw a movie and like they were making fun of the Academy Awards and they were naming projects that are just ridiculous that no one would do, like Arnold Schwarzenegger as Gandhi.

Like it's just, it's like, what the fuck is like, you know, you see like a short clip of it.

And it's like, yeah, that's funny because it's so ridiculous.

And then you see the raucous marker, the way it looked, it looked ridiculous.

I can't wait.

But he, I mean,

yes, he could have the, you know,

the same hair or whatever the fuck, but in that, the face, what have they what have they done to his face what have they done to my boy

all righty danny devito is greta garbo

i all i see is danny devito i don't see greta garbo all i see is dre johnson wearing a bunch of fucking makeup and showing four hours late i'm i'm just i'm standing on my

comment from having seen this is that

it may or may not be a good movie when we see the whole thing but i think the makeup is very distracting and the tone of the thing in the trailer seemed odd i'll let everybody else form their own opinions you know when i did yama pit fighting mark kerr was the one guy bob myra was hated and didn't want to like he like he instantly regretted shaking his hand it was like one of those like

I'll do it.

And now, wait a minute.

For one of our new listeners, they're going to think Brian was an MMA guy.

You didn't actually fight

in the pit of the fighting.

You were in the production end of the.

However, just because we didn't have the light, heavyweight tournament doesn't mean I can't claim the title for myself.

So that's what I've done.

Well, see, that's the thing.

You could set yourself up with a guy from Home Depot up in Piscataway and do Loitt Moxley did.

Piscataway win one match.

You win the whole tournament.

We'll see.

Maybe that'll be near the end.

Well, they got a Bojangles.

I was going to celebrate.

Try the Bojangles, maybe.

Yeah.

But no, Bob Meyerowitz, who created the UFC, had Semaphore Entertainment

as his company after DIR.

Years after his non-compete ran out, he got hungry to do MMA again.

And we do this pay-per-view event.

And there's a whole long, crazy story of the road to get there.

Heyman was involved at one point, or almost involved, or

tried to be involved, but then tried.

There was a whole weird scene going on with Heyman.

But anyway, we do the event, and Mark Kerr was a fillin

because Gary Goodrich went over, I think, to Korea and lost a kickboxing match.

And the New Jersey State Athletic Commission saw the video, Nick Lembo, and he said, you know, he can't work for you.

So we had to get someone else.

And Mark Kerr came in to fight Oleg Tokhtarov.

And if you ever see the footage of it, Oleg Takhtarov, just the most amazing matte technician you've ever seen.

get punched, he'll bleed, and then he works on the ground and he got him in a knee bar that was beautiful.

But Mark Kerr, when everyone was saying hello in the beginning, and Bob Meyerwood sees Mark Holman, he's like, hello, Mark.

How are you?

And he sees everyone.

Mark Kerr gets really excited, almost like a kid.

Like, hey, Bob, how are you?

Bob looks so fucking pissed to shake his hand.

And he said to me later, he's like, I hate Mark Kerr.

He walked out on us.

Well,

I wonder, does that happen a lot in as much in mixed martial arts?

In territorial wrestling?

Where is he?

He's gone.

He said, fuck it.

But

I would love to

delve into more of the MMA and The Rocks movie.

We say it's going to be a blockbuster.

You know, it looks like somebody blockbustered his face.

But when everybody sees this, they go out of your way, as the kids say, to see the trailer.

But I've received...

If you ever want to see The Rock with Agro Medley.

Their surgery, they can cure that now.

But I've received word that we must i think time travel because i've i've received the take cover warning for this weather here in town so

we we're going to pause it and hopefully uh you'll be back because you're fine hopefully i'll be back uh if louisville is still here can we can we get in the the time traveler so i can get under the pool table i don't know about we but i can get in the time travel machine we wish you at castle cornet the best hopefully we will see you again in the future

Jim, I know this is your show, but we are in the future.

Well, I'm waiting for the captain to turn the seatbelt sign off and say that we can stand up.

I didn't want to do anything to warp the space-time continuum.

Everybody's okay here.

We had to take a break.

If you were watching the

Kentucky Oaks on television, or I don't know if the network feed was on yet or not.

It might have been.

They got it on the USA network this year, by the way.

The NBC folks put it on USA.

So now it's the Kentucky Oaks and the Dog Show, I guess.

But they had to flash up at Churchill Downs.

There were 100,000 people out there in this weather coming in.

They flashed up on the screens.

Severe weather incoming.

Take shelter and the why, why, why.

And all the local TV stations are out there anyway.

So we're watching it.

It's time for the four o'clock news as we're watching the weather radar.

They're showing church of day these people in these fucking pink outfits and the fucking wild hats and all this shit.

And they're running because they couldn't just immediately all go home.

They had to go under

undercover, under

ceilings, roofs, shelters, what I'm trying to say.

And it's a giant outdoor racetrack.

So they were cramming in under the spaces and in the indoor space of the concourses, whatever they may call them.

And it was fucking chaos.

And I don't know

what the official wind and weather was at Churchill Downs, but as we're watching this go by.

And thankfully the strongest part of it, again, went to the north and south of us, kind of split the difference.

But the winds at the airport two, three miles away from Churchill Downs were 50 miles an hour.

And the rainfall rate,

right, like four or five miles from Churchill Downs was almost three inches an hour.

Now, it didn't rain for an hour, but that's what it would have rained three inches if it had rained like that for an hour, which means it's like fucking people just pouring buckets over your head.

So that was chaos.

And Brian, you know, we live in the technological age now where you got cameras everywhere, right?

So now the local weather people, Mark Weinberg, my weather guy, they've got cameras not only in Louisville, but they got them to the north, the south, the east, and the west of town.

So if they say there's severe weather coming in from any direction or whatever, they can go to that camera and see what's going on, right?

Do you have that up there?

Do they have cameras?

Oh, and you're, I guess, in New York, they got cameras up everybody's ass, don't they?

They do.

Well,

they go to the, they said, we're, we're looking at the, after it had passed right here, right?

And it's, it's a little bit to the east of us.

They say, let's go to Simpsonville because the radar indicates it's coming in.

And they go, their camera in Simpsonville is on a golf course.

And, you know, they cut to it.

And of course, there's nobody on the golf course because there's horrible, you know, clouds and horrible weather coming in.

But right as they're saying, yes, I believe you can see the black clouds in the distance coming in from the west of Simpsonville.

To the left of the bottom of the screen comes a golf cart.

One lone, this giant wide shot of this massive golf course, and there's one lone golf cart coming in from

the left to the bottom of the screen.

And just as Mark Weinberg says, you know, you hate to see that.

An electrical storm is incoming.

Here's a golf cart.

You realize this guy has this golf cart floored.

And suddenly you're seeing on the fucking screen from the left-hand side,

it looks like a cloud coming in, like the movie The Fog.

There's a goddamn torrential rain windstorm following this guy.

He's trying to outrun it and it's gaining on him.

And suddenly, as this golf cart is flying up his fucking hill on the left half of the screen, you see trees starting to bend sideways and the fucking flag come out of the hole and it's fucking rain.

And right as the guy, it's gaining on on him.

And as he goes off to the right, underneath the fucking screen to the other side,

within seconds, the whole picture is obliterated by this fucking storm.

I don't know if it got him or not.

We haven't heard if there's any

missing persons in Simpsonville from playing golf, but one fucking guy, what an idiot.

Anyhow, should we go back to the middle of the city?

Maybe you saw Caddyshack when the oh that, yeah, the heavy stuff wasn't ready to come down for a couple hours yet.

Anyway,

there are idiots going around in wrestling also.

Some of them have been, I shouldn't say that, some of these people may very well

be nice, kind, friend to furry woodland creatures.

But

I just saw this since we took the break that they've fired people in the WWE.

And apparently some people on Twitter are upset.

How dare they fire people?

How dare they have not have 350 fucking wrestlers on the roster?

Well, when you're charging $40,000 for ringside seats, I could understand the expectation to hire everybody from the fans, at least.

Well,

at some point, they're going to need to start paying some of these people to come to, you know, since they bankrupted them.

But I looked at the list of names because at first I saw talents released, you you know, uproar.

I'm like, oh, shit.

And then I was like, well,

yeah.

Should we talk about this?

We can talk about it.

I have a list.

I don't know if you have a list as well.

I've got a list.

You've made my list.

Uh-oh.

I've got a list.

And

you can read them if you like.

I don't want to monopolize the show just because it's mine, but let's

I will stop you and argue with you when it's anybody that you know really might not be better off pursuing other

ventures i'm not talking about getting out of the wrestling business i'm talking about other other spots where

maybe they have a better chance because

i mean seriously in this day and age some of these people probably ain't gonna make the main event at wrestlemania but nevertheless on the other hand though you would have to think and we'll go through the list in a moment there may not be a lot of people on this list that Tony Kahn would necessarily want to pick up.

And then you have TNA, which is basically a WWE satellite at this point.

Maybe some of these people end up there and somehow back in the WWE system

proper within a few years.

But it'll be interesting to see the future here for the people on this list.

Let's go to the names.

Braun Strowman.

I didn't know you were going to lead with him.

He was like number five on the list I saw.

Oh, well, I led with him.

What are your thoughts?

Because, you know, again, the complaints I've seen from online fans

is this guy, clearly unable to walk, yeah, with knees that are really bad, pushed himself to help get over Bronson Reed and then Jacob Fatu, and now he's fired.

But what are your thoughts on Braun Strowman?

Well, but

this guy who can barely walk with knees that are shot

they released him once before

a few years ago, correct?

Correct.

Yeah.

When

they revealed, or it was rumored, at least at the time, how much he was making.

Because wasn't my reaction with Jesus Christ, no wonder I'd released him too.

They're saving that much money.

And the reason why, apparently, do I remember this correctly?

Stop me when I'm telling a lie or got things wrong.

He didn't work any independence because he wanted a lot of fucking money and nobody could afford to pay that much money, right?

And then they had.

I thought he was tied in with control your narrative, wasn't he?

Well, I don't.

That was something they were all going to try to do on their own.

They were going to change their purpose until they found jobs.

It didn't prevent him from fucking doing anything else he wanted to do, I would think, since he was in on it.

But the point is, I'm like, and then they brought him back and he's been a hurder gone more than not.

And

he ain't,

it's not special.

He ain't that good.

He ain't that big

compared to some of the other giants they've had.

It might be time to give him a rest.

I'm not surprised.

It's

yes.

And yes, he did work his ass off to do those things.

And they've paid him millions of dollars.

And they released him one time before, and he sat around because he had a bunch of money, apparently.

And then they've paid him probably a few more million dollars since he's been back so it's hard to have sympathy for this guy i have sympathy for the fact that they knew he had bad legs like what should we do how about we give a gimmick where he runs around ringside like a train

i can't walk why is he running around but it

him not being able to walk doesn't explain why he never touches anybody when he gives them the fucking tackle either though because

If he can get by him, he can run into him.

I don't feel like that.

And again, to your point that, you know, you can't just hire well i shouldn't say that wwe actually has people that work there forever but most of the time you can't work someplace forever he's been in the wwe system other than that sabbatical since what like 2011 2012 it's been a while he was like one of the adam rose

goofballs running around ringside with him i mean it's been a long time oh god that's yeah

But the point is, I'm not wishing him ill, but like I said, I would have to think, unless he's a complete fucking moron at the money that he's been making over the last number of years,

that

we don't need to go fund him.

And he can't fucking walk.

So

take some time off and go sign some autographs.

Do some fan fests.

Create your own narrative.

It has to be tough to be that size with that weight.

I mean, I have to wonder if he dropped weight, how much that would help his knees.

Obviously, if you're a wrestler and your whole gimmick is your Braun Strowman, you can't do that.

But

depending on what his wrestling opportunities are going forward, this may be a good time to drop some weight.

Well,

would it really be any difference if he was 50 pounds fucking lighter if he still looked in shape?

He's still a fucking giant.

Maybe, you know, that might help.

It has to be a fake Doink the Clown somewhere for him to work with.

Jim.

Also released Shayna Baszler.

I mean, she's been there quite a while, hadn't she?

Is, you know, is this a horrible thing, you know, to

a blow to the program?

Should the ops bring her in to counteract Marina Shafir?

Oh, good God, no.

Let's not feed that fucking thing.

Well, there is a history there.

That's the only reason I bring it up.

Well, I know, but I just don't want it to go on any longer.

Jim, also.

Oh, go ahead.

I was just going to say, you know, again, I think she was kind of

grandfathered in with Grandma Rousey, right?

And she's done very well there for a while.

And maybe it's, how could we miss you if you don't go away?

Also released, Dakota Kai.

If they didn't, if they didn't say this

on this release, how long would it take you to notice she was gone?

I liked Dakota Kai.

I thought she was a good babyface before she ever was a heel.

I thought she was like a great, sympathetic babyface.

And then she was a really good, like, skanky heel.

I really liked it.

The problem is, I think you do have some people,

at least up to this point, that seem to be injury-prone.

And no matter how talented someone is, if you know they're going to only be able to work a few months a year and then something's going to happen and they're going to hurt their knee or whatever it is and be out for eight months a year, it's hard to keep going through that cycle, isn't it?

Yes.

And again, this is a

modern cycle that a lot of these injuries happen, but when it's, you know, when it's more often and longer, at some point, you guess, well,

you know,

the time has passed.

Also released, I'll do these two together.

They were a tag team, Caden Carter and Katana Chance.

There you go.

We'll see if Katana Chance even stays in the business.

Again, she was an American Ninja Warrior, Casey Catanizaro.

She did other things, and then all of a sudden she was a wrestler, and it was all within the WWE system.

It wasn't like, I will work indies and work my way up.

WWE drafted her, brought her in, trained her, and now they're done.

We'll see if she even stays in the business.

Do you think she'll go back to Ninja Warrior rigging?

I don't know.

I don't know how much they're paying nowadays.

What is the call these days for Ninja Warriors?

I don't know.

Actually, I don't even seen a new episode in a while, so I don't know what they're currently doing.

I mean, just on a freelance basis, do they have a listing and a phone book?

If you want to hire your own Ninja Warrior, do they have contractors that not that I'm aware of, but maybe we have contacts in the Ninja Warrior world?

Maybe there's some other potential Ninja Warriors on this list.

Jim also released, and this is another one of the names that got a big reaction, it seemed like, from people online,

Cora Jade, who is an NXT star, who I think also may be in that category of frequently injured?

And

I'm trying to think.

Have we seen her on NXT?

A little bit.

She wasn't the cute short thing, was she?

No, that's Roxanne Perez.

Oh, oh, well, good, good, because she's good.

Have we seen Cora Jade?

What does Cora Jade look like?

Are there...

pictures available on the internet if i wanted to search for her uh big implants lots of tattoos

That doesn't narrow it down a lot.

Go ahead.

I don't know if I've seen her work too much, but she's been injured a lot from what I understand.

Jesus Christ, a bunch of fucking badasses in this ring these days.

They're always beating other people up.

Gigi Dolan has been released.

Oh, she was with the other girl and the other girl that had the three-girl thing going on.

But then one of the girls got replaced by another girl and they had a new three-girl thing going on when last I saw him.

It's interesting that she's the ex-wife of Darby Allen and his name is Darby Allen is attributed to Darby Crash, the lead singer of the Germs and Gigi Allen, noted

shitrock purveyor.

I don't know what exactly I'm going to call him.

So he's Allen, A-L-L-I-N, and her name is Gigi Dolan.

So even though they're not together, she took the beginning of Gigi Allen's name and he took the end of it.

I don't know what the hell that's supposed to mean.

And then you got to think that there's something wrong with her mentally too, if they were able to coexist as a happy couple.

So

there's that.

Back to the Indies and maybe she could do her tampon spot again.

Jim, Eddie Thorpe.

Oh, she's the one.

Yeah, remember that?

It was years ago.

Oh, good lord.

Well, I don't know when these girls change their names to stay ahead of the law.

I don't know what's going on in these people.

Eddie Thorpe has been released.

What?

Who?

Oh, Eddie.

I thought,

suddenly, I thought Eddie Munster for some reason.

Eddie Thorpe, well, bless his little P-Picket heart.

He used to be my mother's newspaper boy.

And it says here they've signed Butch Patrick.

So it's a fair trade.

But Eddie Thorpe, who you probably haven't seen too much in NXT, because that's where he was.

You're correct.

Riley Osbourne.

Riley Osborne.

Jim, wrestler or porn star?

Riley Osborne.

I think.

Man or woman?

Riley Osborne.

Actually, I don't even know.

I think it's a girl from Vivid Video.

Jim also released, and this one seemed to surprise some people, Jakara Jackson, who was the the tag team partner of Lash Legend.

Oh, but good Lord, didn't we see her one time be pretty spectacularly not good?

I don't even remember.

I remember the name.

I don't know what's going on.

And again, how many of these names are even names that the wrestlers

owned versus names that WWE gave them that they could never use again anywhere?

They could be wrestler formerly known as Jakara Jackson.

Why would you want to use any of these names?

Nobody knows any of these fucking names.

That's what I've I've said.

Maybe it might be best for them to go and pursue other avenues toward wrestling success than this program at their end.

It's very crowded.

Jim Wolfgang has been released.

And now we're back to the Eddie Munster jokes.

Who the fuck is Wolfgang?

Van Halen's son?

Wolfgang has been released, as well as Joe.

Mr.

Puck, was that it?

Was he the chef for the NXT fucking commissary?

Joe Coffey and Mark Coffey have been released.

The Coffee Brothers.

Are they the sons of Guy Coffee?

I don't know.

My grandparents, their neighbor in Pompano Beach years ago, was the guy who invented Mr.

Coffee.

No, your kid, the guy that used to play baseball?

No, that's Joe DiMaggio.

Jolt and Joe.

Yeah, he invented Mr.

Coffee.

No, he did the commercials.

He didn't invent Mr.

Coffee.

Well,

it's like the Guy Hair Club for Men.

He was also a client.

Where is that guy?

After WrestleMania 10, he disappeared.

No, he died from fucking hair poisoning.

All right, let's go.

We don't know that to be true, ladies and gentlemen.

Let's go back to this list, Jim.

A couple more names.

Aura Mensa.

I don't know who the hell that is.

Aura O-R-A Mensa.

M-E-N-S-A-H.

His gimmick was he was the smartest guy in a locker room.

You think it was like the dumbest person?

Like, what name should we give them?

How about Mensa?

Mensa.

Mensa.

Yeah, that'll be a good rib.

And finally, Jim, Javier Bernal.

Javier Bernal.

Bruleist.

Bueller?

Bueller?

Well, that's...

So that's the list, huh?

That's the list.

Nothing that seems too earth-shattering.

Usually, I shouldn't say usually, but you would think maybe this is just the first wave.

But we'll see what happens.

Well, that's a pretty good wave.

Are they trying to give a tsunami?

I mean, 15 people.

Get the fuck out of here.

it's 15 people that don't all due respect don't matter to the shows like you said if they're not on these shows no one's like oh my god where is casey kind of that's not even her name where's katana chance because that's a real name where's katana chance and her friend no one's saying that so i mean they're can't have a chance you know like in the past like even people like the good brothers when they got released people are like oh i mean some people were but these people i mean a lot of them were kind of i mean those two were kind of off tv already and Braun Strowman, to me, is the biggest name, no pun intended on the list.

But

how much more are you going to get out of him at this point?

That's why I'm saying, I think, you know, a good

overhaul of him, you know, maybe put in some artificial joints and, you know, strap him up in some type of support system with trusses and pulleys and lifts and,

you know, bring him back.

Based on the limited amount amount of people on that list that you know, is there anyone you would even think would be on Tony Khan's radar?

Well, I mean, there's always somebody's going to be friends with somebody that Tony's friends with.

And but they didn't release a word.

They didn't release a potential game changer, I guess is my point.

They didn't release someone who

could be Steve Austin.

You discover him and you give him the right gimmick and it takes off.

They didn't do that.

They didn't, they didn't fire a potential game winner, much less a game changer.

That's what I'm saying.

This is

with all due respect to these people you know no it's not in any way inflammatory they fear well we need to cut this to do that and

you know they're cutting everybody's cutting churchill downs announced right before the kentucky derby they were going to do a one billion dollar renovation of all these things for the international clientele coming in from the future and the big expansions they were going to do.

And now they say, well,

yeah, we're going to spend $30 million.

And I think they're going to pave the parking lot.

They say with the uncertain economic climate caused by the

recent events, they're going to put that off.

So

they're firing 15 fucking wrestlers.

And again, we'll see what happens.

WWE is in an interesting era when they're getting rid of house shows where the TV tapings and pay-per-views are more expensive than ever before.

They're not necessarily selling out everywhere like they were, but they are breaking financial records everywhere they go.

That can't sustain itself.

That's not going to last forever.

And we may already be kind of seeing the downside, the downswing begin.

But it's going to be a very interesting period of time.

And it'll probably be more releases and a lot of office releases, I would think, in the next year or so, just as they continue to get everything in the flywheel.

They're into the shyster part of the flywheel now, of shyster, flywheel, and shyster attorneys at law.

And I will say one thing about what you just said a minute ago, they're starting to get fewer people in some of the instances than they were, but they're

taking in more money.

It was the old joke, you know, amongst old timers: would you rather have

a thousand people paying $10 or one guy paying $10,000?

What's the difference?

But have you ever tried to work in front of one fucking person?

See, that's, you know, there's got to be a happy medium in there.

Jim, I know this is your show, but this has been sent to me by a bunch of the listeners.

I'm very curious, your thoughts.

Have you seen what Mercedes Monet is up to?

Thankfully, no, but

is she up to another position somewhere where we can get her off the television?

On her official website, this is the link that's been sent to me.

Let's be text buddies.

It's an image of her seemingly in the middle of her little dance.

And it has some examples here.

Someone said, Hi, Mercedes.

Is Snoop Dogg really your cousin?

When did you talk to him last?

And as a response here, he is.

I saw him in New York City.

We had dinner and talked fam.

Hi, Mercedes.

What are you doing today?

I'm with my dog trainer trying to potty train Bugs Bunny.

Mercedes!

Were you really hurt in your match with Momo?

100%.

Her kicks bruised my throat and I couldn't speak for two days.

Now you may be asking yourself, what the hell is this?

What is this?

Is what I was, I was about to ask you.

For just $99.99 a month, my super fans have always been my super friends.

Now like friends, they could text me directly and privately.

I'm so excited to finally be able to connect this way.

Sign up and text me now.

This is exclusive, one-on-one, personal and private.

You get a private number that only super fans can use.

How fucking private is it when it's open to anybody that will pay?

Is it even hers at AI?

But you get a private number that only her super fans can use.

Spots are extremely limited.

So if you want to chat with her directly, don't wait.

Make this happen.

Be the first to know with Monet Magazine.

Wait, wait, hold on.

What?

I added magazine.

It just says Monet Mag.

Sign up to get exclusive news, insights, and updates delivered straight to your inbox one full week before they go live on our website.

Monet Mag seems to be a different thing.

The listeners have been dying to know your thoughts on a wrestler, or specifically Mercedes Monet, charging $100 a month to allegedly

exchange texts with people.

Yes.

And by the way, should we do this?

This seems like easy money.

Well, no, because I'm not learning to text for any amount of money.

If it's AI, if we can just get AI Jim and AI Brian to respond.

Well, that's what I was about to fucking bring up.

Now, it just pumped the brakes.

How

since I'm not a texter like the kids are,

I understand it's a big deal to some people.

But how do you know that it's even her?

It's like when I've done cameos,

I can understand

that in terms of you know that it's me.

I am standing there talking to you.

or talking about people that you have told me about whatever they're,

I mean, they may be able to AI that now, but I didn't when I was doing the cameos and wouldn't.

But how do you know that this is the fucking

what?

What are you?

I'm looking at the uh previous covers, the front covers of Monet Mag.

Hold on, let me send you this lid.

I have no idea.

She has a magazine she puts out about herself.

I have no idea.

Holy shit, how many are you?

Are you sending me this so that I can

join the club there or read up on her and it'll change my mind somehow?

I just need a second person to see this.

I just sent you a link.

It should be there shortly.

Well, to point it, answer my question, though.

There is literally no way you're a texting person.

You know how it works.

There's no way that if it's just, well, you know how this technology works.

There's no way if it's just text that you can tell that this is the real person that you are

allegedly

writing to.

Even if you're saying, like, send me a picture of yourself, it could be like one picture they send to all the fans who are signing up for $100 a pop to

the text with alleged Mercedes Monet.

I can't get over the fact she has 40 issues of her magazine

written by Mercedes Monet.

Oh, no.

Wouldn't you know who won the pony?

Oh my God, I had no idea.

Wait a minute.

Oh, here it is.

I've got the link.

Mercedes.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Her name just slides right in.

She thinks a lot of herself, doesn't she?

It seems so.

Monet.

No, certainly to God, these are not all

magazines

devoted to her that they have

produced somehow.

Well, a digital magazine.

I don't think they're printing anything.

I can't imagine they're printing anything.

I know what that is.

Well, who's going to say?

Is this an entire?

I'm afraid to click on it.

Will it cost me anything?

It won't cost you anything, except dignity.

I'm clicked on one of them.

And her,

oh, issue 19.

And then there's more pictures with, I guess, these are stories.

What the fuck?

This is just.

Her and her friends standing next to a tree.

What is going on here?

Oh, it doesn't give you the whole, goddamn.

Well, I guess it hold on.

She's really figured out how to shake down the fans.

I got to give her credit.

It's a picture of her

under a tree

and a

one-paragraph story that she wrote about her experience under the tree.

Oh, well, post-view, 73 people looked at this.

So maybe she's not going to.

My assistant and I took an Uber to this amazing five-mile hike.

When we were finished, though, we ended up having to walk another five miles to a little motel for help.

We had no cell service and we're an hour and a half from our hotel.

So these dumb douchebags

hop in somebody else's fucking car

and get driven to drive five miles through the woods or to walk five miles through the woods.

And when.

When they get finished, though, they realize, well, we're five miles out in the fucking woods.

And they got to walk another five miles to find somebody that can help them

get an hour and a half back to their hotel.

Oh, but the housekeeper's son was so nice.

He picked me and my assistant up.

Good fucking job her assistant is doing.

What's she assisting with?

Hey, that poor assistant got dragged on a hike.

You think she wanted to go on that?

And drove us all the way back himself,

saving us the $500 we would have had to pay for a car service.

That's five text messages.

So, but wait a minute.

Besides the fact that they just willy-nilly went out in the woods on foot, $500 away from their goddamn hotel, they get in a car with the housekeeper's son.

Who is that, Anthony Perkins?

That's his little fucking motel.

The fuck?

Norman.

What is the matter with you?

Norman, Norman, can you take them?

Well, that's the magazine, folks.

There you go.

She has, like I said, certainly figured out how to shake down the fans.

And unfortunately, I'm looking at another one here: only 110 post views.

So she may be producing content, but it doesn't mean it's being consumed by more than 110 people.

I bet you we just got her some attention.

Cool.

What is this?

All right.

Wrestle Snow Days and Newbie Culture from the same issue you did.

My team and I were talking about the recent team.

My team.

My team.

Why do you have a team?

You don't draw any money.

She's got a team to get her out of the woods.

My team and I were talking about the recent hurricane that hit my home state of Florida.

Besides coming up with a new side hustle of tornado food delivery, I was really grateful that my home was fine during the recent storm.

This got me thinking about how the weather has affected wrestling shows and traveling to wrestling shows.

I was reminded of the time when I, Bailey, Apollo, and a few others literally got stuck in Colorado due to a snowstorm.

We had to stay because driving the six hours to the next town was too dangerous.

That was rare.

The term the show must go on was probably written for wrestling because I know no other world that lives up to that notion.

What?

How about the world that it came from?

Show business.

That's exactly right.

The fuck?

And how is this woman constantly stranded in some type of wilderness?

Poor pre-planning leads to piss-poor performance.

All right.

Well, I can honestly say I have never been stranded

against my will

in an environment.

I've been stranded in a hotel due to weather or things, but I've never been stranded out in the goddamn nature against my will just due to

poor planning on my part as to where the fuck I was.

Well, again, if we can get AI cornet and last maybe we can make some of this text money what do you think well you know what it sounds like to me like because you said she's she's producing it but is anybody consuming it

you know you need a platform brian also you need you need somebody behind you you need some professionals because apparently if she can't find her way out of the woods

then apparently

it's she's not hiring the right people

so you need professionals behind you if you're going to make money like this.

If you want to produce some content or some merchandise, goods and services, things that can be traded for compensation in the form of lucrative financial money, there you go, then go to Shopify.

Go to Shopify because that way they will lead you out of the financial woods and into

Prosperitie.

And you will respect their prosperiti because Shopify,

they're powering us on our show shirts now at the various places that you can get them.

You click on our YouTube videos or various, they were on the shop app.

The shop app.

That's right.

The shop app.

That's where all the big boys are.

You got to be almost, it's better than the Dow Jones and the S P, the shits and piss.

It's better than every, it is the, that's not the king shit.

The standard employers, not shit and piss.

No, have you seen it in the last month or two?

It's shit and piss.

Maybe you're right.

Maybe you're right.

But Shopify, they're the big boys with the shop app and the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world.

10% of all the e-commerce in the United States from household names like Mattel

and Gymshark.

They've never been in my household, but some people go to the gym or feed sharks or whatever they do.

All the way down to the little folks.

The brand's just getting started like Mercedes Moon with 73

designated viewers.

You can get started with your own design studio.

Hundreds of ready-to-use templates.

Shopify is going to help you build that online store, accelerate your content creation.

They've got helpful tools from OWL.

You talk about the OWL.

I mean A1, AI, AI.

A1.

That's right.

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Thank you, Linda.

They write the product descriptions, the page headlines.

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You've got a marketing team behind you.

Social media campaigns, boy, these people,

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And Shopify is your commerce expert with world-class expertise.

They're going to manage inventory, international shipping, processing returns and beyond.

And all this, you might think, going to cost you a fortune, an arm and a leg.

You're going to have to give them your left testicle.

No, I tell you no.

And once again, I say nay.

It's only $1 a month on a trial period.

And once that you get on trial and you're found not guilty, then they'll deal with you on a more professional basis.

But right now,

if you go to shopify.com slash JCE.

Then you can avail yourself of these incredible services and you can see what all is going on with Shopify and how they can make you

for only one dollar a month on the trial period and then you will be sold and you will be you will be enamored of their services so that you will then pay any price and then they got you exactly where they want you so one dollar a month trial period and start selling today

shopify.com slash jce brian this could obviously help

Mercedes out with her various situations there with her magazine and her.

I'm sure she's going to start her own television station pretty soon.

Well, we'll see.

Again, you can create it whatever you want.

Will people consume it?

And whether it's Moan Mag, or I guess it would be Monet Mag or anything else.

I think a good old-fashioned Moan Mag from her might probably

go there to make the most money, or she can bring back the cigarette advertising.

People say, look, the Joe Camel's back on the magazine.

Ladies and gentlemen, and that is indeed what we are going to accuse you of being.

We are here to talk about a fine partner for your business, Shopify.

As Jim said before, we use it.

We're not just talking.

We also use Shopify.

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One more time, Jim.

That professional promo code.

Shopify.com slash JCE.

Ow!

Oh, Brian, speaking to people that are looking for a new line of work or maybe have found a new line of work, we got to talk about

the latest venture from our friends Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff.

And before we talk about actually what it is, they put out a video.

Did you see the video, the black and white video with the kind of

NWO style groovy vibe for all the young hipsters that are, you know,

middle-aged and fucking with it or whatever.

I made it about 10 seconds into that groovy video and I gave up.

No, I had to watch it.

No, you should have because it over and over.

Folks, I encourage you, again, seek this out.

It's not catching.

You can watch it and emerge unscathed.

But it was, how old is Hulk Hogan?

He's 70.

He's got to be at least 71, 72.

72.

I think Eric Bischoff is around there.

They were trying to.

act like they acted in the NWO videos, the black and white, cool, groovy videos when

they were, well, goddamn, 25 years ago, they were still almost 50.

It was kind of ridiculous then, but now it's worse.

And by the way, the stars of those videos were Kevin Nash and Scott Hall.

If you actually look back at those videos, who aren't his part of this?

Yeah.

Because they were only almost 40, but nevertheless.

They did.

And Bischoff 69.

Hogan 71, Bischoff 69.

There you go.

Combined age, 140.

And these two guys are in the leather and the thing, and they're talking about how cool they are.

They got something else cool coming up, and they're all cool, and they're turning their backs to each other.

It looked like one of those goddamn movable bumper fucking spoofs on Family Guy.

Looked like they would text you for $100.

As a matter of fact, it'd be $200 because there's two of them.

That's true.

But they're doing the quick cuts and the whole thing in black and white and doing this NWO style presentation about what they've got coming up you'll never believe it it's going to be great and who's the third man we got a third man

who's the third man that's the tease of the video

and i heard a lot of people on on the inner webs where he was vince mcmahon that's what vince is doing vince is going to be the third guy they're going to start a new wrestling promotion

I did not think that.

I think, you know,

I thought they were going to announce a brand new

podcast or some right

i didn't imagine

that there would be anybody that would spend money on matching these two up with the product that it turns out that it is and i didn't have any idea that their third man would be

basically

someone that nobody has ever heard of before,

but but is probably the one putting the money in the thing.

Or at least providing some conduit to this world.

His name is Izzy, Brian.

Izzy Martinez.

And

Izzy, so it's going to be Hokie,

Eric, and Izzy.

And they are going to be running

Real American Wrestling.

No, that's not the name.

Real American Freestyle Wrestling.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Real American RAF, Real American Freestyle

Wrestling.

It's a,

I don't, I can't even say this with a straight face.

It's

genuine

amateur wrestling for a shoot with weight classes, just like they do in amateur wrestling, with Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff as the face of it.

Does this write itself?

It did not,

is not Kurt Angle, is not Brock Lesnar, is not goddamn, it's Hulk Hogan.

Help me, Brian.

I don't know how to help you understand.

Is this going to be Hulk Hogan's wrestlicious?

I really don't know.

Is it some guy with money who's just like, hey, I want to do something with real wrestling, so I'll hire Hogan and Bischoff.

I have no idea i'd love to know what went behind the decision making to pair these uh people up for

freestyle wrestling

there have been attempts to do there have been attempts to do

i guess the best way to put it professional amateur wrestling going back to the beginning of professional wrestling it's never worked out

and With the creative brain trust of Bischoff and Hogan involved,

I can't imagine that this will work out well for the investors.

Well, that's the thing now.

Hulk Hogan, hold on.

I'm looking at one of the press releases, maybe press escapes.

Hulk Hogan is going to be the commissioner, and he's bringing his decades of experience in pro wrestling to the league

where he...

He has this incredible background in amateur wrestling and would know any fucking thing about it whatsoever.

Yeah, it's not even my good guy Hogan.

It's NWO Hogan.

It's going to be Will Hogan as the commissioner.

But Bischoff is the chief media officer overseeing the production and storytelling aspects.

Now,

television production,

he's had a lot of experience.

I might give you that, but storytelling aspects.

He couldn't book guys that were used to being booked.

How's he going to book people who don't know what booking is?

I'm serious.

That's a very good question.

It's a very good question.

He's going to, okay, now before you do your suplex and beat this guy from fucking Penn State or whatever, do the pose.

And when he does the pose, the guy from Penn State comes up and fucking full Nelson's him and are they going to try to do promos?

Are they going to try to do promos with these legitimate athletes who have never done promos unless they practice in a mirror because they're wrestling fans.

They're just going to stick a mic here, Chris Taylor.

What do you think?

I mean, what are they going to do?

Oh my God.

Remember what happened when they actually did that after Vern broke him in?

Poor fella.

But now, and okay, so Hogan's the commissioner.

Bischoff is the chief media officer overseeing the production and storytelling.

They are aiming to infuse RAF with a blend of authenticity and entertainment.

Ted DiBiase is the CFO.

What could go wrong?

There is no way to blend authenticity and entertainment by the very nature of each one of those things.

And the third man is revealed to be Israel Izzy Martinez, a respected freestyle wrestling coach with a history of training elite athletes.

So you can't make millions of dollars in that position.

So there's some money behind this.

I bet you Izzy is their conduit to the wrestling talent and/or the money.

And the first event, Brian, is going to be August 30th in Cleveland.

Matches across various weight classes, notable athletes such as Olympic silver medalist Kennedy Blades, whoever he is.

And former UFC fighter Ben Askren.

I've heard his name.

And would he be closing in on 50?

Looking for work.

With potential appearances by Wyatt Hendrickson and Gable Stevenson,

who the WWE couldn't make television friendly.

And they plan to debut a weekly show titled American Grit.

I don't know.

It sounds like either a cooking show or a construction worker show.

On June 15th, available on streaming platforms and regional sports networks, and a pay-per-view event.

No, get out of here.

No.

A pay-per-view event.

Well, hold on now.

I did not know this.

This surprised me.

See, you got to get the

Rio press releases here.

July 4th,

2025 in Philadelphia.

Pay-per-view declaration.

See what they're doing there?

July the 4th, Philadelphia.

Declaration is the name of the pay-per-view.

Fans eager for authentic matches and compelling storytelling have much to look forward to as RAF prepares to make its debut.

It should have been Real American Wrestling and it could have been Raw

because now it's RAF.

And RAF isn't too far removed from Riff.

So now we're just talking about Riff RAF.

The next pay-per-view will be in Boston.

It'll be the Investor's Money Tea Party where they just throw the Investor's Money over the boat into the water.

But in all seriousness,

when you think of high quality amateur wrestling, the name of Hulk Hogan would be almost at the bottom of the list of anybody in the professional wrestling business.

And

I know for a fact from working with people who have been involved in all of these worlds that in the time of Hulkamania, actually, as it was happening, most of the amateur wrestlers hated him because it was the bullshit wrestling that they weren't doing, but these bullshit wrestlers were making millions of dollars.

And

it's just the idea that he can, in any way, relate

to any of this, and that somebody

thinks that he's still

happening in wrestling.

Oh, well, we'll capitalize on this incredible role that the WWE is on, and that, you know, the big rights fees and all this stuff, and we'll get not Steve Austin, but Hulk Hogan.

I can understand if somebody went to Austin with this

because he being himself could pull it off as a personality and with respect to what the other guys were doing, but Hogan is just going to be bullshit because that's what he's, his DNA is made of, bull and and

and now he you know he still wears the classic hulk hogan look but his arms although impressive for a 71 year old

you know they don't look as impressive anywhere so now they're just like wrinkly old arms well we we don't need to make fun of his you know sagging physique he you know He looks like a deflated parade balloon.

We don't need to say things like that.

But the point is, that's why he's 70-something years old.

He has nothing to do with amateur wrestling.

They're trying to mix two worlds that are

completely opposite they need a heel referee in amateur wrestling we've never seen that

no you ask some amateur wrestlers we've seen it a bunch of times

but ask danny hodge about that time at the olympics did you see what hogan said to tmz about his uh his history with legitimate athletes in wrestling

I don't have the exact quote in front of me, and I don't want to fuck it up, so read it so we can all laugh together.

Okay, it's from an article I have here from Cageside Seats talking about examples of athletes who opened his eyes about the sky being the limit for amateur wrestlers.

Here's a quote.

I've been in the ring with some really crazy wrestlers.

Like, I got Brock Lesnar right after he left the UFC.

I got him first.

I got Kurt Angle when his eyeballs used to roll back like a shark and he'd come after me.

You know, God.

Benjamin Shelton, all these different guys.

What?

Wait, what?

No.

Yes, you know.

No, he didn't say that.

Benjamin Shelton, all these different guys that I've had the opportunity to see adapt to our business.

And I said, you know something?

There's something there with these amateur guys.

Like Benjamin Shelton.

But wait, he just had the epiphany.

Hulk Hogan just had the epiphany.

that in the pro wrestling business, well, there's something we can do with these amateur guys.

what the fuck jack pepper would like a word and by the way he never got brock lesnar after brock lesnar left the ufc that's no well let's let's go down the line number one he doesn't know what shelton benjamin's name is

number two

kurt angle i worked with kurt angle in memphis for randy hail's power pro wrestling before he had debuted on the main roster when he was still in developmental and i watched his workouts when he had never debuted anywhere.

And he was still working out with Tom Pridge and Dorifeng Jr.

and actually worked with him physically as a heel manager.

And he was a babyface in Memphis.

And he was always a great athlete and always all the things that we know that he was, but he never lost himself and his eyes didn't roll back in his fucking head and he didn't go into madman shoot mode.

And he was pretty professional from the start and wasn't dangerous at all.

And lastly,

you fucking moron, Brock Lesnar right out of the UFC.

Brock was the NCAA champion in the year 2000.

He came to OVW.

We trained him in 2001.

He made his main roster debut up there.

And I believe

in late 2001, 2002, whatever it was, that's when he had his match with Hogan.

He'd never been in the UFC.

He'd never done a day of mixed martial arts.

He had done amateur wrestling and played, tried to play a little football.

No, he hadn't even played football at that point yet.

So, no, he wouldn't go to the UFC for another fucking four or five years, would he?

He didn't get Brock when he was fresh out of the UFC or fresh out of the NCAA.

He got him when he was fresh out of OVW.

So he was the safest then he was ever going to be.

Well, that was one part of it.

So

he got Brock, he got Kurt, and of course, Benjamin Shelton.

Benjamin Shelton.

That sounds like a stock brokerage firm.

That Hulk Hogan never lets you down.

I have to say, every time he opens his mouth, there's some kind of crazy quote.

And now he's going to be involved with amateur wrestling.

Do you remember like in the 80s, and it's a long time ago at this point, in the 80s, like Jeff Blatnick, who was a legitimate wrestler.

He would like do appearances, challenge Hulk Hogan.

Like this guy says he's a wrestler.

I watch him.

He can't do anything.

I challenge him to a legitimate fight right now.

The entire amateur wrestling community despised Hulk Hogan when it, when Hulkomania was happening.

And

then also, let's not gloss over this before we move on to the next Hogan part of our story.

Pay-per-view July 4th, 2025.

Unless that's a misprint, that's in two months.

Yeah.

How?

That's.

And they're going to debut a weekly show on streaming and regional sports networks june 15th that's in what networks

well that doesn't say i mean youtube's

that's in five weeks youtube's obviously a streaming network that anyone could put their content on but do they actually have a deal with anyone is someone paying them for this content they just announced the thing is gonna

happen

Now, wait, but now wait a minute.

It says the inaugural event is scheduled for August 30, 2025 in Cleveland.

Maybe they mean 2026 for the paper.

Do they mean 2026?

Is this potentially a misprint?

Because none of this makes any sense.

But okay, so then

they're talking about doing a pay-per-view at a year.

Yeah.

Mark it down right now.

Let's see if that thing comes off.

That's got to be a misprint.

All right.

Some of these.

You know what I did?

I made the mistake.

I got this off the Wrestling Observer news site.

God damn it.

That's the first fucking problem.

All right.

right, let's get rid of that.

But anyway, the last thing that we need to cover on the Hulk Hogan beat is: did you see

that people lost their minds when he did some morning talk show?

And I guess, in honor of this announcement and his chance to,

you know, play beach party with fucking Bischoff again or whatever, he's trying to look younger.

So he went back to the Hollywood Hulk Hogan beard of the NWO, where his goofy goatee is still blonde, but the sides are black and all that various thing.

But since apparently all the source material has got to be gray now, if it's there at all on top of his head, he had to really do the shoe polish thing and it looked odd.

But people were acting like he came out and he had cancer or something.

Did you see all the uproar of this?

It made headlines.

People shocked over, concerned over Hulk Hogan's look and appearance.

I thought, what the fuck?

Yeah, I saw that.

That was the headline in New York Post, and I was like, oh my God, what did he look like?

And then I see it's just him with a beard.

I'm like, oh,

I saw that for several years.

He's well, he's always got some kind of goofy hairdo, and

bad die jobs are funny to look at, but not that fucking concerning.

You know, so, but it says something, though, about as big as the NWO got, the general public still sees Hulk Hogan as the classic Hulk Hogan, not as the NWO Hulk Hogan, which worked really well, spectacularly well for wrestling, but didn't necessarily cross over to mainstream society the way the classic look of Hogan did.

Well, yeah, because it was how it was two years.

Everybody, if you think of Hulk Hogan, you think of 80s Hulk Hogan, Hulk Hogan, rocking wrestling, the whole, that whole genre.

And it's not like he does anything to play that look down.

But yeah, in this case, he thought he'd have a more heelish edge.

So he comes out

looking like he fell asleep and fell over and chin first into an ink pad.

And people

think, maybe they thought he, they were mentally concerned for him.

They thought he'd lost his mind, not that he was terminally ill.

They would have only thought that if he came in and started telling the truth.

Jimmy Hart should grow a beard.

Jimmy Hart used to look so cool.

He should grow a beard back.

But then he's got to dye the bottom as well as the top.

So what?

He's doing it anyway?

Well, but then that's, you know, that's more time.

And, you know, shit, me and Jimmy's age, we ain't got that much more time.

We don't want to spend time on doing things that we don't really need to do.

Me and Jimmy's age.

He's like 15 years, 20 years older than you.

19.

He's 19 years old.

Wow.

He's it 17.

Wait a minute.

I think it's 19.

I think it's 19.

But see,

that's, you know, he carries it so well.

He's, he's ageless and timeless

man hogan hogan never lets you down hogan's hopeless anytime he opens his mouth he never benjamin shelton what do you think benjamin shelton thought when he heard that quote

excellent comment yeah superstar thanks hulk uh well you know the but hogan could have easily easily brian forestall this this

this not crisis, but this controversy over his health.

He didn't, it was a self-inflicted wound.

He didn't have to do it.

He made the mistake.

If only

he had had some way to just before he did that TV show,

remove the hair from some of his face so he wouldn't look so odd and bizarre and off-putting.

But because he didn't know about our friends at Harry's, He went out there and made a dadgum fool of himself there on the national television.

And folks, I would invite you not to do the same things that Hulk Hogan does.

Don't lie.

Don't take those type of vitamins.

And do not go out on television or in public with shit looking like it's growing like a fungus all over your face and it's just out of control.

There's a way around this.

You don't need to do it.

You can go to Harry's.com.

That's H-A-R-R-Y-S dot com.

And our friends at Harry's are going to fick you up, fick you up.

They're going to fix you up.

They're going to pick up

your looks is what they're going to do.

They're going to make you more attractive because they're going to make it easier and better for you to have a great shaving experience.

And right now, they've got a trial set.

You know, they got all the great products.

They got the incredibly ergonomically designed razor that's such a pleasure to hold in your hand.

They've got the German engineered blades with five blades in the cartridge that snaps right onto that bad boy.

And it just shaves every single hair on your face or your lip or your chinny chin chin

right off at the at the top of the epidermis there.

It's a seamless transition.

And they've got the incredible

high quality richly lathering shave gel that they've got that smells so good.

And you can get one of their trial sets containing all of these things.

Normally it's 10 bucks, but right now you can get it for $6

at harry's.com/slash JCE.

And then,

then, Brian, you can sign up if you want, and they will bring you these things to your door on a regular basis when you say, and it's cheaper than going to the store.

You don't have to go through that

prying that burglar alarm thing off the cartridges.

And

when the people, when they bring you your shaving supplies, if you invite them in, I've found they will come up to the bathroom.

And if they won't shave you themselves, they'll watch you shave.

But you've got to be at least naked to the waist.

There's no one who will watch you except for you in the mirror responsibly shaving.

Harry stays out of the picture, but supplies you with the tools you need to.

Fix yourself up.

Yes.

And well, no, this isn't Harry that comes in.

It's the delivery guy.

But he said, Look, I'll come up and shave you if you'll be naked to the waist.

Again, you, I don't know what the hell you're talking about.

You will shave yourself.

The delivery Harry's has nothing to do with the delivery people.

They use couriers like every other business.

And I don't want to have to be Harry's lawyer and get them out of trouble.

I want to be able to tell the people the wonderful ways that Harry's can be there for you.

It's a great razor.

It's a great subscription.

I have Harry's here for when I need to clean up.

What part of Harry do you have there?

I i have his wonderful ergonomic if that is indeed the word

uh a razor uh handle handle is the word handle for the razor jim it's great tell them about it

yes yes they've got a handle on the razor so that makes it easier to grip you can put your hand around it then you can just wave it all around in the air and shave like you just don't care.

And there is a box, I think, you can check on the website if you want somebody to come in and

go through the whole shaving process with you.

No box.

That's the thing.

No box.

No box.

No box.

No box.

No box.

Go to Harry's.com slash JCE right now again, folks, because that's where you'll get the trial set for $6

that normally sells for $10.

That means you're saving $4.

And, well, that's just swell.

And you'll get a travel cover on the razor because these things are sharper than a mother-in-law's tongue and they could slice and dice you.

That's why they put the travel cover on it.

So you can travel around with it.

Travel around with these things in your pocket if you're in a bad neighborhood.

And if some son of a bitch comes up and starts trouble at you, you whip one of these razors out of your pocket.

You say, Let's not.

I'll fucking shave you with my Harry's razor if you don't fucking back off, motherfucker.

I think we should focus on you.

I'll cut you

long, wide, deep, and repeatedly.

Once again,

Harry's great razors.

For you at home in your bathroom doing your thing with your shaving.

And the outside world

is another story.

Let's talk about inside, indoors, in your skin, getting rid of that hair with Harry's.

Yes, yes.

You see it all the time on the news.

All of these people fending off attacks on the street with a Harry's.

Fucking razor with the five.

You don't see this.

Because the people, people know that those Germans make sharp blades.

You don't see this, but we can say that Harry's does make a sharp blade.

These are great razors.

And once again, without any further trouble, Jim, how can the listeners get this great deal?

They can go to harry's.com slash JCE.

That's what they can do.

That's right.

Nice and easy there at the end.

Thank you very much, sir.

Yes.

Well, I tell you what, this one grandmother whipped it out of her purse and these two fucking guys ran down the street.

All right.

AEW

did a television program other night in Norfolk, Virginia.

I haven't felt so bad for the people of Norfolk since that last fucking hurricane came in off the coast.

It was April 30th.

So they can't even blame April Fool's Day for this.

Are they just Are they just giving up and just writing down names now?

What's happening here?

This is

I'm looking at these notes that I made while I was watching this show, and I'm like,

they are burying everyone in seas of groups, aren't they?

Eight-man tags, six-man tag.

That's always been a problem with Tony's booking, yeah.

Uh,

so they started out the program with the all-star eight-man tag, which is a gimmick that we used to do in Ring of Honor,

where for a special

DVD that we would shoot in Dayton, Ohio, or or whatever, you'd have the singles champion, the TV champion, the tag team champion against their top challengers.

And it'd be a nice, it's a cold match as an attraction for a

DVD release, right?

So they decide to lead off with the show with Mark Briscoe.

None of these people are champions, by the way, just it's an all-star because they say they're stars.

Mark Briscoe, Kevin Knight, Hong Kong Fuy, and Kenny

versus Ricochet, the Buckaroos, and their friend O'Sleepy.

And

after the seven minutes of entrances, they decided to go another 27 minutes.

And

random observations I have.

Who is the audience for Hong Kong Fuye?

He's He's too much of a little sissy-looking grinny nerd for a male to like him, but he's

it would seem to be as appealing to the opposite sex as a yeast infection.

So who is the

and

a real martial arts fan, like a Bruce Lee fan or whatever, would think, well, let's look at this little fucking twit.

So what's the audience for this guy, Brian?

People who are really into athleticism.

And,

you know, he could do flips.

And he also has his own unique kicks.

And that's what it takes.

The commentators are yelling at us how big guys don't matter anymore.

Weights

don't matter anymore.

These are the most exciting people.

Like they really made a point to point that out as ludicrous as it sounded on commentary here while the fans sat there.

And then every now and then they'd break into a chant.

You're like, oh, okay, they are into it.

And then it would go dead silent again.

Well, you watched a lot more of this thing than I did because I knew what it was going to be like.

But I did see that the entrance of the buckaroos sounded like that somebody had gone and unplugged the crowd microphones.

They did, again, as I said, seven minutes of entrances.

And the first thing they did was try to do the arm pump spot.

The old Midnight Express arm pump spot.

But they didn't know how to set it up.

They didn't know the timing of it.

They didn't know the execution of it.

The guy didn't know how to sell it.

And they didn't really know how to properly work the payoff as

to not make the whole thing look just

like they're fucking doing it all on purpose.

But they tried.

And I said, you know,

I'm going to fast forward to see how long this thing is.

And then I started to get fascinated

with.

how long it was going on fast forward and it still wouldn't be over.

Half an hour of panic at the playground.

I saw somebody on Twitter say, I wonder what Cornette's going to say about last night's circle jerk.

That's what they, I'm sure the children had a wonderful fucking time.

And it would have probably taken me three hours to notate

what was wrong with it from a professional wrestling standpoint, and then about as long to tell you.

So, I'm going to save everybody that time because

the people involved, besides Mark Briscoe, wouldn't learn anything anyway.

So,

what are we trying to do here,

trying to lead a horse to water that won't drink?

And it's amazing how many of the things that the big indie/slash Young Buck fans used to really love

just seem old hat at this point.

The spot where, you know, I'm giving them credit for it because they did it the most, but other people have done it too.

Where if it's an eight-man match, one after another, one guy runs in to get a move and then another guy, like they time it out perfectly.

Oh, yeah.

First time you see that, maybe a react to it.

It's coin of the realm now.

It doesn't stand out.

And,

you know, we'll talk about the ratings later, but I would say if there was any way to drive off your audience right out of the gate, this is the match I'd put on.

Well,

it's toned up because you have people there who fans will react to.

I think more people would be interested in a Ricochet segment or an Omega segment than just

a long, endless match with dead silence at times.

With guys just in a group, you can an eight-man, random, eight-man tag team match like this, when they're moving that quick, you can't even fucking keep track visually or mentally who's on whose side at some points.

But besides that.

The fucking, again, you've got a couple of stars potentially buried in this ricochet they're trying to do something with

Kenny

is one of the more popular babyfaces.

And for some reason, their crowd still likes the fucking lazy Japanese guy.

But they're just covered up and buried, and they're all just doing moves over and over.

And it looks like the Ed Sullivan show with

the acrobatic troop, as you mentioned, when one guy will stand there and the other guy runs and they do the move.

And then the other guy runs, they do the move.

And it's just ridiculous.

More like the the guy spinning plates

yeah again you know i think this is where tony con's booking is tone deaf he takes things and people and he just throws them all together in this mess of a match which the hardcore fan of aew who never admitted anything was wrong until well after the fact, even when they were watching it, they may like this kind of match, but this match is a major disconnect.

Watching this match and just thinking about the world of WWE, and I'm not really high on WWE right now.

It's like it looks so amateur hour.

This specific match.

It look if you, if you put it up against any territory wrestling match,

it would still look amateur.

It looks amateur because it's amateur.

It's children playing wrestler and doing.

funny spots and cool moves so that people will appreciate how good they are at performing this fake shit.

You know, and again, we'll talk about the ratings later, but at some point, I'd really love a serious,

if someone has time to do a serious look.

I think the Young Bucks may be guilty of driving off more fans than like anyone else in modern wrestling.

Like every segment they're on, specific things they were involved in, like airing that punk footage.

They drive away audience.

And the more you feature them and the more smug they act, because they, look, they've got the money.

They've got the money and they could just seemingly jerk off all over their own faces on TV.

But there isn't an audience for it and they drive away people.

Well,

that's the thing is because even with some of these other fucking clowns, you know,

you can say, oh, Kenny's a nice guy and he has pets or whatever, or even Hong Kong Fui, maybe he does volunteer work somewhere.

He's an inoffensive type of person.

But everybody's caught up to the fact that the fucking buckaroos are two little smarmy douchebags.

They're fucking,

they're not likable people.

It is not, they're playing themselves on television.

They are little smarmy fucking twits.

And they

can get away with that when you draw.

You can get away with that when you could sell t-shirts.

Well, yes, but that's what I'm saying is that there are fans who like these other.

baby faces, even though they don't really do a good job of getting themselves over to begin with in the ring or whatever.

Well, we like them.

You know, they're nice guys, but these two,

everything's wrong with them.

And they're not likable in any personal way either.

So that's why it's like, what the fuck?

Why are these children allowed to play on this television show to a lot of people?

And it's just ridiculous.

They're visually ridiculous and they've made themselves ridiculous and not in a likable way.

And if you're a long-term viewer of this show, you see them as the walking embodiment of all the problems with AEW.

Yeah, it's come out in the press

how many stupid backstage things they've been involved in to run off real talent and et cetera.

So,

yeah, now people are holding their nose and turning their head when they come out.

But anyway,

you know,

remember when I said,

The Hurt Syndicate, at least they don't haven't been forced to do anything or haven't done anything.

I don't say we're forced at gunpoint.

It makes them look stupid.

The streak ended.

I'm not talking about the interview in the ring, and we'll get to that in a minute, but they have them walk in.

Benjamin Shelton, as Hulk Hogan calls him,

and Bobby Lashley at MVP, they come in and they've got fake fans standing in the back of the arena, like it's a place where five random people would just be able to congregate.

Nobody's asked them what they're doing there.

And they're chanting, We hurt people, we hurt people, because they're fans of the hurt syndicate.

So they walk up to him, and for no reason, they beat him up.

But Lashley grabs one guy, he touched him, and the guy launched himself into the air and fucking bounced off a goddamn column.

And

it's just so fake.

It was

It was unnecessary.

It didn't help.

Unnecessary.

It was cringy.

Yeah.

They could have walked in because then they walk off 10 feet from where they've just left these five guys laying

and they converse amongst themselves for a second.

MVPs try to say, hey, MJF, and Shelton's kind of on his side now, too.

Hey, you know, and Lashley's like, I don't trust.

And MVP's like, hey, if he ever does anything, I'm paraphrasing.

If he ever does anything to screw us, we'll fuck him up and that'll be it.

And they could have done the same thing walking in and just caught that bit of conversation.

But I guarantee you, that was neither one of their ideas.

That was something they probably didn't feel like fucking arguing with the petulant child that they work for

about.

But it was, it's so fucking phony looking.

Yeah.

Speaking of phony looking, next we had a six-man tag down from the eight-man tag with Samoa Joe, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Shapupi

against Rhett Titus,

Comarato.

He's back,

and nobody.

I missed his name the first time.

I've never seen him before.

I don't think we'll ever see him again.

I didn't write the name down.

Because in three minutes, Hobbs beat nobody.

Poor Camarado.

Why will I wonder if he's just happy to be wherever he is getting a check from these people.

Do you think he's one of the guys?

Because he's there from the start.

They're still paying him.

Do you think they just book him twice a year?

Didn't we hear like a year ago he was released?

Maybe he just escaped.

Yeah, he had been sick, I think, also.

But he was one of those guys.

Again, we're not even knowing how much talent he has, and we're talking like five years in now.

But if they had given him the time and attention they gave a Jack Perry,

he would have made Annie Garcia.

He would have maybe had a a star because at least he looks like the size of a WWE star.

Well, anyway, after the

baby faces triumphed, Dick the Boozer and the Boer Horseman hit the ring and attacked.

And they started what I loosely describe as a fight around Ringside.

While the Stooges were

mixing it up with each other, Joe gets Moxley in the entranceway, which was only,

again, with their new setup in the smaller buildings, about 50 feet from the ring.

He gets him in the rear naked choke.

And while Moxley is in the choke, he starts waving his finger and pointing and making faces like he's giving signals

for the guys to do something,

not even in a working way.

It's like, no, do this now.

He's got me in the thing.

And at that point,

fucking Claudio gave Shapupi, I believe it was,

the drop on the chair like he did the hook a while back.

So Joe would let go of Moxley to run in and help Shapupi.

And then all the heels ran off.

And then Joe cut a promo on Moxley.

And again, now

Joe's a great promo, but now he's trying so hard.

Everybody's trying so hard because they, I think they know whether they'll admit it to the other side or not, but they know that working with this fucking schlub is death.

And so Joe's frothing at the mouth.

I want you one-on-one in a cage.

And then they announce it will be

Joe and Moxley immediately.

Joe and Moxley, one-on-one in a cage in two weeks on TV for free, and they had a graphic built.

So

he's going to beat Samoa Joe

because they have a fucking stadium show coming up

and they have nobody that anybody, they got a champion that the fans want to see somebody beat him.

Anybody

just get rid of him.

But they've got nobody ready to draw a stadium crowd with him or anything approaching that

and now the joe at least former champion and a credible son of a bitch and they're going to do that on tv in two weeks for free

can can you help me in any way understand no tony connect

the fans reaction to the death riders again very telling It's not the boo, they're the heels.

It's the boo.

I wish this would end.

I wish this would go away.

Everyone is sick of the Moxley stuff.

From the people who work there to the fans at home watching it, to the longtime AEW diehards.

Everyone wants that to end.

The other problem is, what do you move on to?

Like, nothing is set up.

This Moxley run has been going on a while.

Who's set up right now to win the title and

for it to help them?

I'm not saying they shouldn't get the belt off him.

I'm just saying.

Yes, that's what I, yes.

Who?

Who would it be?

Darby's on a mountain.

So it can't be him.

MJF's in the middle of this thing with the Hurts Indicate.

It ain't going to end anytime soon.

Swerve is in the wild, I guess.

He's involved in various things.

It could be Swerve.

Osprey seemed like the pick, but he hasn't done anything with Moxley.

And he's in six and eight mans where he can cartwheel with his friends.

Yeah, it's slim pickings.

Well, anyway, the nine o'clock hour was an interesting choice.

Apparently, they believe Tony Storm's star power alone will draw the fans at 9 o'clock because

they booked her with Miyo Yamasha from Tokyo Josie Pro Wrestling.

And the bell rang at 9 o'clock.

It might as well have been Tony Storm against Ethel, the cashier at Target.

Why not book two guys down the street on the corner at the top of the hour that would pull a number

only if you knew them then it would fucking sell out the first time

we've never seen this woman before have we have we ever seen this woman before i don't remember ever seeing her before but the commentators made it sound like she had done something related to aew before but i have no idea who she is well and they showed some

again it doesn't matter you can't just say okay we're gonna show 30 seconds of fucking footage and we're going to tell you how great she is.

You've never seen her before.

And she's going to come in and go against the top girl in the company.

And it's going to go 10 minutes.

And then Tony Storm is going to win.

So now Mia Shimada

or whatever the fuck can go away again.

And

her face was oddly flat.

It looked like she'd been chasing parked cars.

But anyway, Storm wins

then

mercedes comes out to very little reaction

and said that she was coming after tony storm's belt and then jamie hayter came out

and nailed mercedes

one time and mercedes ran away

And while that was happening, Tony Storm was laying in the middle of the ring, either having convulsions or doing snow angels.

I couldn't tell which.

And that was the way that that came to an end.

Those are buddy Landell's favorite kind of women, the snow angels.

Yeah, I guess we're going to get Mercedes versus Tony soon.

Maybe if Tony would read a copy of Monet Mag, she would have an upper hand, understand what's going on out in the forest or wherever.

Hey, you know what?

You know what she needs to do?

She needs to just get her a one-way ride to the fucking woods.

With her assistant.

Yeah, that's good.

With her assistant and her whole team.

Send her and her whole team out in the woods that's what happened to camille everyone's always wondering what happened to camille she went out to the woods with mercedes never came back

she's like the jason voorhees of the women's division over there you know what

now i understand when when she went out in the woods with mercedes that's how mercedes got back she resorted to cannibalism she ate camille You know, it has to be said, and I know I've said it before, Jamie Hayter, it's puzzling how

she had a good look and she went away and she came back.

And it's the least flattering

look on a female wrestler i've ever seen just the bright red hair and like yeah sparkly green outfit it just it's not it's

it detracts from how good she is because i can't

i don't know it's just it looks like it's out of the 70s

you know like a twisted mcdonald's or something i don't know what it is but i don't like

i don't like it Anyway, let's get to the Hurts Syndicate segment because at least again,

people are interested and there's something going on.

And the Hurts came out again,

laid the premise out.

We've been discussing a fourth member, needs three thumbs up.

MVP says we're going to try one more time.

Calls MJF out.

MJF comes out.

They weren't on fire for this, but they weren't dead like, you know, everything else, the fans I'm talking about.

And,

you MJF is to Lashley, is like, you have a good car ride in, bro.

You know, and

MVPs, remember our discussion.

MVP gives the thumbs up.

Benjamin Shelton gives the thumbs up.

And Lashley's milking it.

He's got it out there.

And they milked it a while because the fans started rumbling.

And they're with this.

And they were, and he's going by and filing down and got a reaction.

Oh, they thought that was it.

And MJF gets hot.

He said, you know what, Bob, I think I'm about sick of your shit.

And Lashley grabs him.

And, no, as a matter of fact, he said, what do you want?

You want

the women, the money, the cars?

What would you want for this?

What about some roguing?

You big bald son of a bitch.

And that's when Lashley grabbed him.

and mvp and shelton had turned and walked off like oh god

but he grabs him and he puts him back in the turnbuckle and mjf has started monte

montel and conan

conan

he's screaming montel and lashley's got him trapped there in a corner and he says we hurt people you want to impress me hurt somebody

And then the fans start chanting, we hurt people, we hurt people.

And Lashley let MJF go, and he's, MJF is trembling and selling.

And MVP looks at MJF.

He's like, what the fuck?

You talk too much.

And again,

people are interested.

I don't know if they ever need to make a decision.

They just need to keep coming out and doing this shit.

At least it's a break from the children having fun.

Does Tony Khan have a thing against bald people?

Well, you know, they have.

MJF calls him a bald bitch.

Ricochet, the big thing the fans yell at him is bald.

Imagine if you were a bald fan going to these shows, you'd feel left out or picked upon.

Well, they do look odd.

Bald people look odd.

You know, fuck.

At least do something about it.

Like Mercedes, get a wig.

She's got that, you know, alopecia or propecia or whatever she's got.

You can read more about that in Monet Mag.

mag issues in monet mag you know how i went bald at 22.

okay listen listen let's uh i don't even know what we're talking about uh well we were talking about the hurt syndicate but you know what going to what they're doing here what do you think the idea that mjf now is to go hurt someone should we see it or should we just see the aftermath

oh

Boy, that's tough because if you just see the aftermath, then it's on like, it's like every other goddamn phony bullshit thing they've done

because they've done it 100 times where you run up, oh, the guy's laying there.

Someone's attacked him.

And if you,

who's he going to hurt?

I guess you can just hurt some random person, but see, if this had been,

I know the talent involved is doing the best they can,

but it seems like that since the hurt syndicate has been there for a while now, they would have actually had some type of rivalry with someone.

There would be ill feelings enough

that if MJF hurt that person or one of those people, that that might make Bobby Lashley smile.

But since they've had

no rivalry with anybody or meaningful program, because there's nobody that can,

they have no tag teams, nobody can stand up to them either physically or in the booking or either,

they're not really identified with any enemy.

You see what I'm saying, the Hurt Syndicate.

There's no ready

Midnight Express, Rock and Roll Express, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Jerry Lawler, Bill Dundee,

whatever the fuck.

So

then if MGF just goes and hurts some random doofus,

or even if it's some name, but it's not connected to the, I guess that proves the point.

There could be so many more things going on here if the talent didn't have to come up with their own shit to to avoid being trapped in any of Tony's shit with Tony's friends and their shit.

That's the problem.

So a lot of these things could be done better, but you're only working with

what you can control.

And you got to think once MJF joins the Hurt Syndicate and figuring that he probably will,

then at least you can kind of shift the focus to what he said his goal was.

to have them help him win back to world title, however long that road is.

But like you you said, Sheldon and Bobby need,

whatever they're doing, you could always have Bobby kind of hates MJF, but they need something to do themselves.

And who is it going to be?

Yeah.

FTR now heals,

and they're seemingly doing a program with the Rock and Roll Express.

No, I don't know who they're actually doing anything with.

Maybe Edge when he comes back finally.

The Young Bucks ain't going to wrestle the Hurts Syndicate.

That ain't going to happen.

And that couldn't be a feud.

That would be the most ridiculous feud ever.

I don't see any free agents out there for Tony to bring in that it would work.

What about Oro Mensa and Javier Burnell?

Those are two released wrestlers.

Is that what that is?

Yes, I think that's who they are.

I don't know who they are, so I can't say that.

Yeah, see, that's the point.

And honestly, if they add MJF to this group, they're going to kick the shit out of the rest of the company all put together.

Unless you did Hurt Syndicate versus Death Riders.

If the whole thing is MJF trying to get to the world title and if Moxley's the champion, but again, then you have a weird

heel dynamic, even though clearly the Hurts Syndicate and MJF will be cheered over the Death Riders every day.

Well,

and they are being cheered already.

So what the fuck?

What about if MJF gets the plumber

and the Hurts Syndicate is there to keep the Stooges away?

The people would.

It would get the Hurt Syndicate and MJF over his raving babyfaces to be the ones to put an end to this madness.

The match ain't going to be any good with Moxley in it, regardless of who he's fucking wrestling.

So Moxley would be the problem.

Moxley would complain to Tony that he wouldn't want to put over MJF again.

I guarantee you that is exactly what would happen.

Oh, I forgot that these people get to pick these things instead of the boss actually telling them what to do.

That would be a problem.

Yeah.

Well, maybe they could just go out and shoot for it.

Shoot for it.

Because, well, think about this.

You got Lashley and and Shelton in the corner.

So that negates Claudio Wheeler, Marina, Pack, if he's still fucking in this country or uninjured or whatever his status is.

And

from what we've seen from Moxley's grappling tournaments in Newport, MJF's got a 50-50 chance.

He wrestled in high school.

Yeah.

MJF probably has more wrestling experience actually than Moxley.

So let him shoot for it.

Well, we'll see what happens, but I like that idea.

Brian, I'm just thinking that

maybe,

maybe the reason why that MJF is not getting the message is because, you know, MJF likes to listen to his own inner voices.

He likes to march to the beat of his own different drummer.

He's always preoccupied with himself, and maybe he's not hearing what Bobby Lashley is saying because he's listening to MJF's greatest hits on his Raycon Everyday Wireless Earbuds.

Do you think that's a possibility?

No, MJF's greatest hits, what's that?

Well, that's all his great promos.

He listens to them over and over.

Oh, not his songs, not his singing.

Well, he probably listened to his singing also.

Well, he's probably listening to himself on the Rosie O'Donnell show, or was it the Roseanne Barr show?

What Rose show was he on?

Rose Marie?

It was Rosie O'Donnell.

She taped him in hat.

Well, they all had shows at one point or another, but folks, Father's Day is coming up.

And that's one of the most confusing days in MJF's life, from what I understand.

But

if you're pretty sure, at least convinced that you know exactly who your father is, ladies and gentlemen, you're going to want to get him a treat for Father's Day.

You're going to want to treat Dad to a pair of the Everyday Earbuds by Raycon because he deserves to relax.

He deserves to enjoy his favorite music, his podcast, even his phone calls.

And most of all, on Father's Day, he enjoys not having to listen to the nattering and the bitching and the moaning and the whining of your mother who got her own day just a month before his day

and now she wants to monopolize his day with more of her nenny ninny nin so get your dad the raycon everyday earbuds and he's going to stick them at his ears and he's not going to have to listen to that old who

for a whole day on father's day hey let's uh

let's be nice to the listeners and their moms well some of these mothers are mothers you know.

The Raycon's latest model is better than ever for dad.

It's got a 32-hour battery life.

He can stay away from the old nag's fucking voice for 32 hours.

Multi-point connectivity lets him pair with two devices at once.

I bet

knowing his wife, that's probably the kinkiest thing he's done in a year or two.

And dad can wave goodbye to that tangled old pair of wired headphones.

And then, you know, that's the thing is the only drawback to not having a wire on these things is he's not going to be able to tie mom's hands so that she can't point at him and nag at him and make him work on Father's Day.

Let's talk specifically about your own ears, your own.

And these earbuds, they come with active noise cancellation so you can cancel out other people's noise that you don't want to listen to.

That's right.

And it's they're an accessible, dad-friendly price point also, because Raycon started half the price of the other premium audio brands.

and they come in a spectrum of vibrant colors to match your dad's vibe.

And maybe his mood is just black, get him black, or maybe his face is red because of his high blood pressure, get him red.

Whatever you want to get your dad, maybe he's gray because he's starting to develop a deathly pallor in his old age.

So get him a gray pair.

But if your dad's not liking his Raycons, they offer a 30-day happiness guarantee return policy.

No questions asked.

And let's say, let's say your dad's older and you get him a pair of Raycons.

He only makes it another three weeks.

You can pluck these things out of his ears before they take him to the fucking funeral home and send him back, get your money back.

What's the matter with you?

Let's not use this as an example.

Let's talk about it.

We've got to be practical.

No, that is, we do, but that is not it.

And that is not practical, but practical.

Do you know what Mama Cornett told me to make sure that I had her gold teeth taken out first?

But I didn't do that because I didn't want to be unseemly, but she it was on her mind.

So

again, folks, 30-day happiness guarantee return policy, no questions.

They're not going to ask, hey, was this, did these come out of a corpse?

But go to buyraycon.com/slash JCE right now, B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N dot com slash JCE,

and you're going to get 15% off site-wide.

15%.

It's amazing.

It's unbelievable.

15% off already inexpensive earbuds.

And most of them have never been worn by a dead man.

By Raycon.

All of them.com.

All of them are brand new.

No corpses involved in any of the process involved here.

Let's stress that.

Well, they clean them up first.

They put peroxide on them.

Brand new Raycon earbuds for you.

What's that promo code without any more?

I don't know what fantasy you're going into over there, but

let's help.

Yes.

It's buyraycon.com slash JCE.

15% off everything in the place.

All right.

Well, Raycon is a

popular earbud here in the house.

We all have a

pair, a set.

I can't speak.

You've got me thrown off.

Let's get back to the.

Yes, the AEW Dynamite.

Oh, the big main event coming up next.

They're all main events, ladies and gentlemen, for the Ring of Honor television title.

Nick Plain with Nick Plain's mom and Pip Sabian

and Christian Cage

defended against Jay Lethal.

So again,

they had Jay Lethal, what was it, three years now?

A guy that could outperform 80% of the roster, could talk.

They could have done something with him.

He's been mired down and

ever since.

And now

they've got Nick Plain, who

at some point in the future might be

a marketable wrestling talent for a national television show.

But right now, they put him on at 18.

He's 19.

Maybe he's 20.

He's a skinny indie guy that can do moves.

He's got no body, no look, and no gimmick,

except for that moop face, and that he's accompanied by his mother, who's bigger than the entire rest of the group of heels,

and is apparently presented as some kind of whoer

who just threw his dead father over for Christian Cage.

And Jay Lethal is a world-class talent that's booked into obscurity and fed to a bland kid in a rotten fucking angle.

So that was that.

And guess who won?

I think that match was only there so that the Young Bucks wouldn't drive away the most amount of people because that match popping up out of nowhere and giving as much time as it was, that's a ratings disaster.

That's a recipe for ratings disaster.

Yes.

Well,

there was an angle behind it.

They did a backstage interview where they, hey, let's go have a match.

Okay.

So that was that uh and yes nick plain did beat jay lethal you're correct

because

you know the old saying it's not who you know it's who you blow that used to be the old saying

but i don't think nick plain is blowing anybody i think that a bunch of these people just

they're just so friendly They're just so friendly.

How can we not put them on TV?

They're just so friendly and deserving.

Now, are you ready for the the main event, Brian?

Protostar Kyle Felcher

against hangnail Adam Page in the

Owen Hart tournament match.

Can you explain to me what the protostar's gimmick is?

He's got a bald head.

He's coming out wearing reading glasses.

He's got a pink leather outfit with feathers on it that looks like it came out of Rip Rogers' closet.

What is his gimmick?

His gimmick is that he has looked at everyone else's gimmick and tried to take a little bit from everyone.

He's kind of like the Seth Franklin Rollins of the Don Cowlis family.

What is his gimmick?

I don't know.

He's just wacky.

He had long hair or the bleach blonde hair and the whiny voice.

He's put on a ton of muscle.

He looks physically great.

Physically great.

But, you know, it's like a little bit of HBK in the...

the wardrobe.

It's a little bit of Randy Orton, a little bit of this.

Doesn't really connect yet.

He's trying.

He's trying, though.

And that's it.

I wonder if they're giving him voice lessons because we haven't heard him talk in a while.

But

again, this kid is a perfect example.

If there was somewhere, and I'm not talking about NXT, if there was somewhere that this guy, small,

regional, could go to be the top guy.

and have experienced people

teaching, explaining.

Here's how you do it.

And he's working at the flea market or he's working at the rec center or whatever.

And

then you could develop something and then put it on national television when you figured it out.

But as it is, it's just all being thrown together as they go.

And

they think that having

20-minute long fucking matches

where they do all kinds of moves is going to get him over when there's absolutely no rhyme or reason to

his booking, his progress in the company, the way that he dresses doesn't match the way that he looks, doesn't match the way that he talks.

He is the proto-star.

He's the prototype of the superstar.

I don't know what the fuck.

So he's got everything, but I'm afraid, and he needs a manager because he doesn't have one right now.

Don't a manager, he just goes and does commentary.

But

I'm afraid by the time he gets out of here that he's going to have a lot of bad habits and he's going to lost a lot of time that he could have learned a lot of shit.

Anyway,

they started this thing, and at 10 p.m.

Eastern, they had been going 20 fucking minutes.

And they went about two minutes into the overrun.

And I'll give you the finish.

Paige goes for the buckshot Lariat, but as he's flipping over the top, Kyle shoves the referee out of the way.

And when Paige lands, he football kicks Paige right in the balls.

Woo!

And picks him up and gives him a hell of a looking brainbuster.

Boom, and covers him.

And the referee goes down one, two,

and fucking the dip shit kicks out.

And within one minute,

the guy that got kicked in the balls and brainbustered did the same move, the buck shot, where he flipped over the top rope and clotheslined him.

One, two, three, beat the fucking guy that just kicked him in the balls and brainbustered him like nothing was wrong and nothing had happened.

How do you give a guy that finish

and expect him not to quit, walk out, give his notice, go, you fight you?

Yeah, here's the thing,

He's going to go for the buck shot.

You're going to football kick him right in the nuts.

And then you're going to pick him up and brain buster him.

And your brainbuster looks great.

And he's going to kick out of that.

And then he's going to get up and kick your ass and hit his finish one, two, three.

That would be the sign for you to just pick your goddamn bag up and walk out to your car.

And now the tournament final

of the Owen Hart tournament is Paige versus Osprey.

What the fuck?

It could have been Osprey versus Kyle,

and you would have had a babyface and a heel.

Paige is all over the place.

He's

convicted.

He's conflicted.

I wish he was convicted.

He's the bad guy that feels bad about being bad.

So he's kind of good or whatever the fuck they're trying to do with him now.

But it doesn't, the point is, it doesn't make sense to have him against Osprey.

osprey should win this osprey should win the world title in the stadium show instead of being in six man tags with his buddies

and if you'd have

if you'd have had this match and had kyle beat page here with the football kick to the nuts and the brain buster then it don't hurt paige and he's pretty much useless at this point anyway they just they've deluded themselves into thinking that paige is still over when he went over to begin with.

But Kyle could have beaten Paige with that finish and then go and put Osprey over

in the goddamn finals and an Osprey is set.

Instead, Paige is stale and who cares?

But he just beat the kid that's a lot newer and a lot more athletic.

And this kid has to get beat by, or now he has to get beat by Osprey.

And Osprey better beat Paige clean instead of kicking him in the nuts or whatever.

So

Paige traded getting fucked in the semifinal by a heel to get beaten clean by another babyface in the finals, which again is something that if you gave that option to any other babyface in history,

they'd say, I'll be fucked in the semifinals or I'll give my notice.

What if he's going over in the finals?

Well, then they're complete idiots.

And in that case, then

Osprey needs to quit for fucking booking Malfeasans.

Because if you in any way pick Paige over Osprey at this point in time in this company, you're a goddamn raven idiot.

A babbling fool.

Well,

that was another babbling episode of AEW Dynamite.

Another tournament, another dynamite.

All right, Jim, well, let's go to the ratings this week for another banger of an episode of AEW Dynamite.

AEW Dynamite on TBS Wednesday, April 30th, 2025, 8 to 10.05 p.m.

On average, watched by 629,000 viewers.

They're back up from their miserable 521 last week to the miserable 620-something they've been doing for the past few months

progress i guess is what we would call that dynamite was number five for the night in the key demo on cable behind the nba the nhl and jesse waters on fox news

but the positives 21 up from last week at 521

and 5 percent on the trailing four-week average of 600 000 viewers good lord let's go to the quarterly hours these were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Quarter one, 8 to 8.15 p.m.

Kenny Omega, Kevin Knight, Mark Briscoe, and Speedball Mike Bailey versus the Elite and Ricochet with Picture and Picture,

727,000 viewers.

That's, again,

they've killed the Big Bang theory.

That's a lot less than they used to start with, but I think think it's, is it bigger than last week?

Last week's was exceptionally bad across.

That's right.

So they've got a ways to go here to fall for their average.

We go to quarter two.

The continuation of that big superstar eight-man tag match with picture and picture.

604,000 viewers.

Jesus Christ, 123,000 people

in the middle of that thing.

It wasn't like there was a natural spot where you said, okay, well, one thing's finished.

It was, yeah, I can believe it.

We go to quarter three, 8:30 to 8:45 p.m.

The finale of the eight-man tag match, the Hurt Syndicate backstage, an ad break, and the ops versus Miles Hawkins, Nick Camerado, and Rhett Titus, and the post-match with the Death Riders,

625,000 viewers.

And they got 21,000 back of the 123,000 that they ran off.

We go now to quarter four, 8.45 to 9 p.m.

The Samoa Joe Live promo, Mercedes Monet backstage.

Oh, it's an interview.

It's a backstage interview.

Excuse me.

An ad break.

The Patriarchy's backstage angle.

And the start of Tony Storm versus Miu Yamashita.

Yamishta.

What is it?

Like Takeshita?

Well, either way, I don't know.

616,000 viewers.

So they're back down another 9,000, but

they almost got to come up somewhere to make their average, don't they?

You would think.

We go to the big 9 o'clock hour, 9 to 9.15 p.m.

The continuation of Yamashita versus Storm with picture and picture.

The post-match with Mercedes Monet

and Jamie Hayter.

The Don Callis family backstage promo.

And MVP's Live promo,

639,000 viewers.

So the top of the hour,

even with

what was her name?

Gladys Kravitz against Tony Storm, they got 23,000 people back.

I guess

at this level, that's something.

We go now to quarter six, 9.15 to 9.30 p.m.

The Hurt Syndicate MJF live angle, a recap, and the start of Nick Wayne versus Jay Lethal through an ad break.

670,000 viewers.

Oh.

Also, the biggest jump in the key demo for this segment went from 211 to 229.

uh not counting the overrun that was the biggest jump in the show

and

the Hurts Syndicate and MJF.

That's right.

People are actually interested in what's going to go on.

They see them.

They're simple people.

They see them.

They click.

Well, we go now to quarter.

And by the way, when is the last time that quarter six on this program was within 60,000 viewers of the starting point?

Almost never.

They're finding the Hurts Syndicate wherever they put them.

We go now to quarter seven, 9.30 to 9.45 p.m.

The continuation of Nick Wayne versus Jay Lethal, the post-match with the Patriarchy, and the start of Adam Page versus Kyle Fletcher with Picture and Picture.

581,000 viewers.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

Now we come back to reality.

That's

89,000 people.

So, all right, it's over with, and here comes the kids.

So,

well, we now have quarter eight.

I remind you, we have a five-minute overrun, 9:45 to 10 p.m.

The continuation of Paige versus Fletcher with Picture and Picture,

565,000 viewers.

Five-minute overrun, continuation of the match and the post-match, 634,000.

Now, wait a minute.

What?

I wonder what

was the difference.

Well, I know what was on after because I recorded it.

It was a rerun of Modern Family.

It wasn't like the hockey game that they had to end on time for last week or whenever.

But Modern Family reruns have not been.

The overrun has been

has been losing instead of gaining.

So that's odd.

But it couldn't have been this match because it was only two minutes.

People wouldn't have had time to suddenly hear what was going on and get there before it was over

so i don't know that's that's an aberration but

727 to 565 so that would be they lost 162 000 people which

for them is not unusual so this was kind of an ordinary show

well there it is another dynamite a lack of star power and uh

after that jim some are ready for a good night's sleep A good nap.

A good nap at least.

Sleep it off.

It's like a horrible hangover when you watch this show.

You want to sleep it off.

And

Brian, I can't believe my eyes here.

I can't believe what I'm seeing.

You know, Memorial Day is coming up.

That's when you go out to the cemetery, dig up some of your friends and relatives and have a beer with them.

And on Memorial Day, they have a lot of sales, right?

Well, apparently our friends at Helix Sleep are having a Memorial Day sale.

And

because they like the listeners of the Jim Cornette experience, you're getting early access to it.

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In fact, I probably have to get another one soon.

We have a request from one of the little ones here for a new bed.

We'll probably go to Helix.

Are those kids wanting new beds again?

Please don't start picking on the kids again.

You You built those bunk beds for them

that not only do they have a place to sleep, but you can press that button and they just stack up one on top of another so the little kids can't get out and wander around at night.

Let's not invent things that aren't there.

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Tell me about that at gym.

Well, that's because we talk about things that have not been invented yet because we want them to be invented.

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they just, they lose their.

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They stop breathing multiple times overnight and that can be related not only to your position but also to what you're sleeping on they found that they did a scientific survey brian and most people who sleep out on the ground without a mattress snore and have sleep apnea

who did this and if you did the survey

They did a survey of people, homeless people sleeping out in the park.

Who did?

Who did the survey?

The cops.

The cops?

go up to the they'd go up to the homeless people and they'd kick them in the ribs and they'd say hey you asleep every single time they said no well ladies and gentlemen let's focus on indoors inside

because that's why you need a mattress if you can actually take your helix mattress out in the backyard you can do that if it's it's a free country As a matter of fact, take it in your neighbor's backyard because he won't mind.

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Well,

it can be fine.

Sooner or later, it's going to be over.

They did another survey.

96% of people that

96% of the people that sleep on helix sleep mattresses wake up the next morning.

That is a statistic.

You can't can't argue with science.

I can argue with wherever you derive this from, which I think is nowhere.

Over at the old folks' home.

All the people 94 to 98 years old,

when they're sleeping on a helix mattress, 96% of them wake up the next morning.

And you will too, folks.

Chances are.

Was this survey also conducted by the cops?

Well, when they were, they were, there was an old person that was trying to sell their pain medication,

you know, and they frown on that.

So they did an undercover bust.

Yeah, they got Granny Fanny, too.

That's what, that's what the junkies called her, Granny Fanny.

But anyway, folks, if, and as a matter of fact, they have some Helix mattresses over there that are being sold as now that they've been used as evidence.

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Maybe mom and pop want to share a mattress.

And then, you know, that happened.

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Well, before we get to our main event, Brian, what's going on in the world of the Arcadian Vanguard Network this week?

Oh, man, I just got french fries all over the place.

It's that kind of week on the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network.

Get information about all the shows on Twitter at Super Podcasts or on Facebook at facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard.

Of course, each and every day, get your wrestling news for free from the wrestling news at the wrestlingnews.com directly, or wherever you find your favorite podcast.

No clickbait, no opinion, no conjecture, no paywall, just the wrestling news.

Once again, the wrestlingnews.com.

Want to make mention of Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam.

Hey, look back at the second annual David von Erich Parade of Champions in 1985.

You were on that show.

I was there.

You were in in the ring when the car got destroyed weren't you

uh

what because that was part of the big multi-man match right and you managed rip oliver oh that's right i was in that too yeah

i hated the whole goddamn thing because that was when i was handcuffed next to little john when the fantastics were supposed to

wrestle the midnight express and decide the american tag team title and the finish was fucked up because he was green and they were stupid.

But otherwise, now I don't mean they, the Fantastics, I mean they world class and Ken Mantel.

But otherwise, yeah, I think I was in that thing too.

One of my favorite moments when Gary Hart gets on the mic and he just goes, Moon, Moon, one man gang, destroy that car.

And you hear the gasp of the women when he says destroy that car, the idea that the Von Ericks would have their car destroyed.

And that's Mike Von Ericks' greatest moment as a wrestler when he does the run and it jumps on one man gang.

But hear hear more about that.

McAdamPod.com or stick to wrestling with John McAdam, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

You've mentioned Tom Burke a few times recently.

He's on Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon, S-U-A-W-Pod.com, or look for Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon, wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the Mothership.

More to come very, very soon.

Go through the archive, 605pod.com.

Available wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

The None of my other shit.

Well, we're going to now talk about last week's episode, or not this week, whatever the fuck.

The previous episode that has just been aired of Dark Side of the Ring was on Hot Stuff Eddie Gilbert.

And

I liked the idea and the concept and the subject of this one, and also because I knew Eddie and it was Memphis wrestling.

And,

you know, you get to see, again, footage that has not been beat to death on national television and a guy that doesn't get talked about as much as

the usual suspects in

today's environment.

But then I realized it was impossible.

They told the story of Eddie's problems,

but as a timeline of his life and/or an explanation of those problems in any kind of detail, It was all over the place.

You can't do it.

Because

I think Dutch Mantel

was one of the talking heads, said it probably better than anybody.

I don't think Eddie ever booked anywhere longer than six months.

Maybe even not that.

In Memphis, sometimes it was measured in weeks.

And he was back and forth because of the.

Because of the problems that he had that they talked about during the show.

He was so many different places and back and forth and on the outs with everybody.

The timeline on this program got jumbled and a lot of stuff was glossed over.

And you couldn't really

explain to anybody who didn't know the story already how the fuck Eddie went from here in 85 to there in 87, but was suddenly back at 86 and was working with Jim Crockett when he briefly tried to start up a promotion again five years after the non-compete to blah, blah, blah.

You see what I'm saying, Brian?

There was no way to tell this story coherently in 45 minutes.

I don't know if I'll agree with that.

I think you could have told the story coherently.

You could have told the story better.

It felt disjointed.

It was all over the place.

They fucked up the timeline.

Big mistakes, little mistakes.

They said that he was the booker for Mid-South.

He booked for the UWF in 87.

It hadn't been mid-South in over a year.

And, you know, I think...

It's a complicated topic because it's one that wrestling fans love, but it really doesn't appeal to people who don't know wrestling.

So you have to make it good.

But I feel like they left out so much stuff.

They glossed over stuff.

You know, they never really, other than pain pills, they never said that he had an issue with anything else.

And I'm not going to say that he did or didn't, but a lot of people, a lot of people who were around did.

I don't know about that, but I thought it was also.

The way they glossed over Missy Hyatt.

And again, I know they were only married or a short period of time, but their relationship lasted.

There was another talking head that would not have participated had Missy participated, and I'm not talking about Medusa.

Right.

And even if Missy wasn't going to participate, because who knows if Missy would have wanted to, we really don't know.

They kind of ignored that whole world

where while working for the UWF and working with these young guys and gaining the respect of Bill Watson, his dad's there working as a referee,

John Tatum's girlfriend leaves him in in the middle of an angle to really go and be with Eddie.

And they get married.

What?

Wasn't Terry Taylor and Bruce Pritchard there at the wedding?

I mean, they got married while they were down there.

Well, and that's the thing:

I don't know what it was about that part of the country and fucking angles with wives and ex-wives or future wives, but in Dallas and/or UWF for that, what, two-year period, there was a lot of that type of thing happening.

And then remember, Missy got brought to the WWF to host Missy's Manor in 1987.

And they wanted Eddie.

And Eddie was going to go.

And then Watts made him the booker.

And again, this is the end.

This is 87, right before Crockett bought them.

Yeah.

And that's why Eddie didn't go.

And who knows if it would have worked or lasted, but the Eddie Gilbert, Missy Hyatt package

was a really good one that kind of burned out pretty quickly.

They made it sound like Missy was his longtime manager.

WCW phased her out as a manager pretty early on until the Nasty Boys came around.

But again, none of that Missy Hyatt stuff really made it to this.

Continental didn't even exist.

I think I saw a clip.

I saw a video clip.

When you say he booked all these places for six months at a pop,

UWF got sold.

He didn't really get fired as booker as much as,

I mean, I guess technically he did, but it wasn't the same thing.

Continental was where he got a lot of attention.

Because that was on national TV on cable.

And that ended pretty quickly.

and that was before people realized that he was going to burn out as a booker well because wasn't it the road to birmingham that the fans loved and the early tape traders loved that he was building to this big event in birmingham which was their big town i mean he was doing everything right in that

instance but didn't he wasn't it a case was it was david woods at that point right that owned the thing that's correct yes And the David Woods had bought from Ron Fuller.

David Woods was a television executive in Alabama.

He owned one of of the stations that aired Continental, and he ended up buying a thing.

And

as often happens,

when somebody back in those days, especially from outside the business, bought a wrestling promotion, didn't he finally go to Eddie and say, Jesus Christ, this is costing a lot of money?

And Eddie was like, well, yeah, but the booking's great.

Yeah, but it's costing me a lot of money.

That type of thing.

There was that.

push-pull.

Well, I guess the point of the story is Eddie did a great job of building to the road to Birmingham.

He didn't make it to the road to Birmingham.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I was about to say then the punchline was at the

end of the yellow brick road.

Eddie didn't get there.

But, you know, again, we're talking about what story they told here.

That's really where people put Eddie and Heyman together for the first time, you know, where they knew they were friends because he brought Paul and he brought Missy with him, obviously.

And that was all Continental.

Returns to Memphis.

One of my favorite things they showed a clip of when Lawrence shows up in a studio all in black and

going in their parking lot.

But again, that all happened before he returned to the NWA and got put on the committee.

They jumbled all that together.

Well, yes, and we're actually jumping ahead here from the television program standpoint because they did start, obviously, with

Eddie is a small boy.

That's where he started.

And the talking heads were good.

Mick, myself, Dutch, Medusa was great.

Ricky Morton, that Darla Staggs, who I haven't seen since the old WFIA conventions.

Todd Gordon needs subtitles, doesn't he?

Can you understand him?

Is this.

No, I thought the same thing.

It seems like his tongue is swelling to overfill his fucking mouth.

My question was, did he always talk like that?

Because the stuff they show him in ECW, he's always kind of yelling like this.

So you can't really tell what his real speaking voice is.

But yeah, he needs subtitles.

You can't understand him.

Yeah.

Well, he didn't have anything to really add of any importance anyway.

But they had great, you know, old video footage of most of the pictures of Eddie before he got into business and some early on.

And he and Tommy were mine that

I

allowed them to use for the program because,

as I said, you know, I'd known Eddie since we were both 15.

I met him the first time I went to Memphis.

Tommy had brought he and Doug down and I have pictures of him from that point.

We were both 15 years old

and he knew that was his goal one of the one of these days was getting a wrestling business and they had the that picture from the wfia convention and i think it was 1979

was eddie donny liable brian hildebrand tom burke pete lederberg don wilson dave berzynski

And they have the picture of Diane Devine presenting me with the photo award.

That was 1978 in Knoxville.

Eddie came over to the Knoxville convention also, where we stayed in the beautiful Andrew Johnson Hotel on Gay Street.

That's where Terry Justice, when he came down, he was still alive doing the bulletin.

They started calling him TJ Raid because

apparently one floor of the Andrew Johnson was worse than some of the rest of them.

And he got on that floor and he was...

seen getting into the elevator with two cans of fucking raid with him.

But you see, there's something that they didn't even mention that was always part of the Eddie Gilbert lore.

He had a fan club before he was a wrestler, Terry Justice.

And who knows how enamored he really was with Eddie?

You hear lots of things.

Started the TNT Power fan club before Eddie ever wrestled.

And they would say, Oh, Lou These was a member, and this person was a member.

But Eddie was...

Because Terry was comping him all the bulletins.

Lou These didn't send in $6 to be a member of Eddie Gilbert's fan club in 1979.

But

that's the thing is that Eddie had talked to all the fans there and Terry Justice doing the bulletin.

And Terry was such a nice young man and so interested in the business.

And, you know, he said, I'll do a fan club for you and Tommy.

And yeah, okay.

And originally, Eddie's name was Tommy Gilbert Jr.

That's why it was TNT Power, Tommy and Tommy.

And then when he

did that for like three weeks, and I think I can't remember who was even booking at that point.

Probably Jerry Jarrett.

Somebody said, no, that ain't right.

Let's, let's not.

Because Eddie's real name was Thomas Edward Gilbert Jr.

You know,

they showed a brief clip of this, but let me ask you about it because it's always an angle that I loved when I saw it on video.

And I think it's one of the greatest things to put over the realism of Tommy Gilbert and how believable he was.

I guess it would have been right after

the big talent exodus in 79, where they had the Waynes versus the Gilberts.

Yeah.

And they had that angle on TV where Tommy, I just remember the way you, you know, you, you say something about my kid again, I'll beat your brains in.

Like, you believe him as he's saying this.

And then the Waynes, like, handcuff him and beat the shit out of Eddie and bloody him up.

And yeah, and see, Eddie and Ken were the same age.

And

I think Buddy and Tommy, Buddy may have been a just tad bit older than Tommy, but two father and son

wrestling teams, both from the state of Tennessee, one heel, one babyface.

People knew that Buddy Wayne and Tommy Gilbert had been in the territory on and off for ages.

And there was a natural rivalry there.

And that's again when Jarrett lost all the talent when everybody went back to Knoxville for Robert Fuller.

And that's when he did the original Tupelo concession stand brawl and

had like the Waynes and the Gilberts underneath and very little and brought Fargo back and popped the territory with all of that.

But,

you know, that was at the time,

Tommy and Eddie,

as a father-son team, Eddie was able to fill the spot of being the rookie kid that was kind of small and he could sell and Tommy could make the comeback because people believed in Tommy and his work was so fucking good.

And then

he had to get out from under Tommy's shadow.

At some point, that's when they put him and Ricky Morton together.

This was two years before the Rock and Roll Express.

And they did that

concession stand brawl with Onita and Fuji that led to Onita thinking, well, this goddamn garbage wrestling, I could make money with this thing.

So that night built that whole, and Onita had never heard of any shit like that.

He'd come over as one of Baba's young boys on excursion.

This is where Darkseid pisses me off.

How do you try to tell the story of that match?

Again, the third Tupelo concession stand brawl.

And you don't even mention the promoter's wife attacking Tojo Yamamoto.

The promoter's wife attacked the wrestler who then slaps her in the face.

How do you not bring that up, mention it, show the clip you showed everything else?

How do you not to really show how wild that was?

That's what I would have shown.

Uh, well,

big fat old lady, she comes in there, the camera, like it's almost like it turned back on.

Like, what's going on here?

Let's turn it back on.

Oh, I know, and Jay, she's got those

just cottage cheese thighs and those shorts and that floweredy shirt.

It's the middle of summer, I think.

Anyway, so it's hot in that building.

And

oh, God, maybe they couldn't get Ms.

Sheffield to sign a release.

I can't remember.

How do you not show that?

How do you not show that?

How do you not?

What the hell?

Riggy Morton had the best comment.

He said, that shit hurts, buddy.

And that's the thing.

It was the best one of those concession stand brawls because there was young guys that had a lot to prove and trying to work hard and get a spot.

And

it drew the least because it was the third time and people had seen it and it wasn't new anymore.

But at that point, I mean, you know, they pushed that angle for a while at Eddie and Ricky as a as a babyface team.

And that was, you know, barely two years into when he started.

And they they skipped over that he'd worked as a 17-year-old over in Malden, Missouri for Henry Rogers, because Tennessee had the age requirement.

But he was able to sneak in and get a little bit experience in Malden by the time he turned 18.

So anyway, and then the first run with the WWF.

And I remember I talked to him on the phone a couple of times when he was up there as just before I got started.

I was still doing the photography, but and he sent me some programs and stuff from up there.

He was so excited about it and the match with Tiger Mask.

And I was, I was a big Tiger Mask fan.

So I was like, mark it out for him.

Jesus Christ, you got to work with this fucking guy.

But the wreck

that he had is what led to, you know, a lot of his other problems.

I mean,

Eddie was always, the Gilbert family.

was noted.

I remember Teeny, Christine Jarrett, said to me one time, she said, Tommy's very moody.

They were all moody in some respect.

I don't know if this led to all of his problems, but it led to the majority of the bad ones was the car wreck.

And was that not the same night as Snooka?

Yeah, they didn't bring that up either.

I couldn't believe it.

Well, you see, then you're branching off into a whole nother story.

If you just said, This was the same night that Snooka killed his girlfriend.

People are going, what?

We want to hear more about that.

Well, that was season five.

We're not talking about that right now.

Because I think that was part of Eddie's story.

Like, Eddie came to in the hospital when he was on the Gurney and like Fuji and Morocco were there.

And he was just confused.

Like, what was going on?

They were there because of Snookah.

Yeah.

So

he came back in months from a broken neck and that chest compression, which did do damage to his heart.

hitting the steering wheel.

And he was back a few months later.

And that was all because he couldn't fathom the idea of losing his spot in the WWF that he had already.

I mean,

and that was a big deal because nobody in those days went from Memphis

to the WWF

that quickly after they'd started wrestling.

And

I got the impression.

that it may have been they were going to do some kind of deal with Bob Backlund and Eddie as a protege type of thing, maybe at one point.

Well, they did kind of do that after the Mass Superstar injury thing.

Bob Backlund trained him like how to do the ab wheel and neck bridges and stuff.

Yeah, but I mean, it may have been that they planned that they were going to do more of it earlier, earlier before Hogan.

Earlier.

Yeah, because the stuff with the Mass Superstar was just right before Hogan got there.

Yeah.

So,

boom.

And of course, Eddie meets George Zahorian during that run.

And then the superstar gave him the neck breaker to capitalize on the neck of the whole nine yards.

But

they've obviously made mention of the fact that Zahorian

played a part in his career from that point, even if he wasn't into territory.

We talked about all the back and forth to the booking.

When he went back to Memphis in 84 and 85, I think he became.

Yeah, but that's the other thing.

They said he was right away became Hasta Feddy Gilbert.

No, he didn't.

New fabulous ones.

They brought him as a babyface and tried to put him in a top spot.

Yeah.

He and Tommy Rich

bombed as the new fabulous ones.

And the reason for that was because Stan and Steve,

Jarrett had

basically lost him because they wanted to make more money.

And I think that was at the point in time where he was not going to give anybody, probably besides Lawler, a guarantee.

But they went to work for Vern.

So Jarrett had Fargo cut cut the promo where,

well, my boys have disappointed me, but I found two new boys.

And it didn't work.

You couldn't replace the fabulous ones.

That was a phenomenon.

And with Eddie and Tommy,

no, they tried it.

The new fabulous ones did not work.

And then when they did the split, that's when.

Eddie started.

But then again,

if you tried to explain that, you'd have to explain who the fabulous ones were.

And this gets complicated yeah well then you could have showed the clip of eddie bleeding all over memphis tv while pete letterberg and howard baum stand there for the wfia tag team of the year thing which is one of the best angles he ever did

and again he was just bleeding everywhere it was both of them were it was incredible but anyway that's when hot stuff came out and i i i liked the uh what he had especially when he had the perm and they'd found girls to do the music videos with because he, you know, he was trying to do the MTV thing.

but that's during that period of time he got a chance to go to mid-south and work there

and

be more of a develop himself more as a heel

and that's where he was there for a while until oh yeah watts two years finally decided okay

you know maybe i'm going to give this kid an opportunity to book and

It was timing.

It wasn't Eddie's fault that the economy, you know, around Louisiana collapsed and the oil fucking deal, whatever the fuck.

But Watts had tried to expand and it wasn't happening.

And he had to sell to Crockett.

And

that kind of derailed Eddie again.

And you saw from that shoot interview that they had clips of that he did.

With Bob Barnett.

That was Bob Barnett's video.

Yeah.

And I wish he'd have.

invested in either a light or a hotel room with bulbs in the lamps.

But at that point, you know, Crockett had bought the UWF

and Dusty was in charge of creative for Crockett, and he was going to figure out who did what at that point and probably tell them

what to do.

Same as he'd done in, he sent Dundee to book Kansas City.

And he had sent Bubba.

Bubba Rogers there to get experience.

And he did the same thing with Bubba and the UWF.

It was all going to be interconnected.

But

the television show here acted like Eddie went straight from the UWF to the WCW creative.

And that was what, a year and a half, wasn't it?

Because that's when he went to Continental.

That's when he went to Continental and then Memphis and then he returned at the end of Memphis again.

Yeah.

That's right.

Actually, you're right.

It was Memphis at the beginning of 88 and then Continental, then Memphis at the end of 88.

And then he went back to the NWA.

They did the thing with Ricky Steamboat.

Yes.

And he went back to finally back to the NWA because that's when Dusty had left when they fired Dusty over the Road Warriors angle.

That was a year and a half later.

He didn't go straight to creative because there was no creative committee for Crockett.

It was Dusty until November 88.

So that's where the, you know, again, the back and forth booking, the timeline gets confusing, but Eddie was doing a good job again.

Good TV

with the UWF, but the territory had gone down because they were had a

financial depression, recession in the whole core market, and they tried to expand too quick.

Same thing that Crockett did without really a recession in his core area.

And

I can't remember who that Dusty put in charge of the UWF before they

melded it together into one.

But he asked me one time, I think think I've told you this.

On Crockett's plane, we're riding somewhere.

And Dusty asked me, because he knew that the Midnight Night Ben had worked Louisiana.

He said, kid, do you think you could book Louisiana?

And I shit myself

because

I didn't want to say, no, I don't think I can book anything to Dusty Rhodes, right?

I would want to say I had confidence, but at the same time, I was afraid if I said that I think I could, he would have let me.

And it was a dead fucking territory.

I was like, being at midnight, we're the fucking main roster here,

making good money.

And we don't want to get sent out to Louisiana like Bubba got sent to Kansas City.

So I said something to the effect of, well, Dusty, you know, the territory's been in bad shape for a while.

And he moved on with other

topics.

But that's, you know, that was the thing is that setup wasn't going to particularly be a long-term thing anyway.

Hey, real quick, if you don't mind me asking a quick aside that just popped up.

I didn't know about that conversation.

Do you think Dusty saw you before then as a future booker?

When did you first think that Dusty may see you as someone who's not just a performer, someone who could do stuff behind the scenes?

Well,

probably,

I mean, it depends on what stuff is behind the scenes.

He pretty much from the start left me alone on promos except to tell me the subjects to talk about or what to sell.

And then

by

what, a year and a half, I was doing the finishes for the Midnight for TV matches pretty much straight off also.

As far as

how shows finishes or contributing to the finishes in top matches, important angles, after the first,

after 86, yeah, he would, you know, if I said, hey, Dusty, what about blah, blah, blah?

You know, he would start listing there.

So, and this was 887 late.

So somewhere in the, and then

in 88, I pitched the Fantastics and he went with that.

The whole idea of the angle, bringing them in, the order of matches.

And then.

The original Midnight he had agreed to and unfortunately was gone two weeks after we shot the angle, which is what killed that.

But

so after a little while, different things.

But anywho,

as Dutch said, one of the worst things you can do is be on a booking committee.

And that was true.

And it never works.

And they've never worked.

And we've talked about our WCW deep dives, Brian.

How can the people find

the 89 fiasco and booking committee on YouTube for the background of this?

What are those videos titled?

Just go to YouTube and search for Jim Cornette Omnibus, and it'll be one of those.

Well, basically, the 1989,

88 into 89 booking situation

in

WCW.

Eddie had gotten there,

and Jim Ross was always a big proponent of Eddie's.

And it's not like anybody was particularly burying him to begin with.

But George Scott was the booker, and that's how Steamboat came back.

And since Eddie had been involved in the deal with Wyndham, and they had the match with Flair and Wyndham, Eddie, and Steamboat, the mystery part,

and debuted Steamboat that way.

And then

Eddie was being used, but when George Scott got fired, that's when the committee was formed.

Jim Ross, Eddie Gilbert, Kevin Sullivan, Jody Hamilton was in there, Jim Barnett, Jim Hurd.

And the committee, as we've talked about,

their results were even worse than George Scott's booking because he had set the thing on such a pace that in three months

they couldn't turn it around.

It was getting worse.

And George Scott had

you know, pissed off a lot of talent, done a variety of damage.

So that's why Flair in the middle of summertime, told Heard, said, No, this thing is fucking collapsing.

You know, from where we were six months ago, this is insane.

I want to be the booker.

And that's how he got the job.

And

as documentation in our history and my records has also shown, Flair was the most successful one for the first fucking five years they owned the company.

But nevertheless,

how I got involved in this, and I want to clarify something that again was glossed over on the show.

The finish that Eddie changed in Memphis, and I'll get to the details in a second, it wasn't changed for him to win the match by pinfall and beat Ron Simmons.

He changed it to a DQ.

So he still changed the finish, but it wasn't as heinous as what it was reenacted to be.

But I think there was tension with Flair and Eddie from the start because Flair knew Jim Jim Ross.

Flair obviously knew Kevin Sullivan.

Flair obviously knew Jim Barnett.

And Barnett wasn't

throwing out, you know, this and that angle and that finish and all that stuff.

He was there as an advisor to Heard who was whistling Stranger in Paradise.

The one that Flair had the problem with from the start was Heard,

but Flair also, I don't think, he and Eddie were from two different schools of booking.

In Memphis, it's a weekly territory and you use everybody, you involve everybody.

The guy could be in the first match one week, but you shoot an angle and he's in the main event the next week.

And it's, you know, it's crazier.

It's a little more chaos.

That was Eddie's style because that's what he grew up on and that's what he knew.

Flair was more

Carolina's, Flair had been all over the world.

He'd seen every kind of booking, but Carolina's St.

Louis,

the bigger picture.

You've got clear main event guys, clear mid-card guys, clear preliminary guys.

You do the angles and the haha and the gaga with the main guys.

You don't do it with everybody up and down the card.

When Kevin and I would try to do stuff with Mick Foley, Flair would sit down.

Do you see him wrestling for the NWA world title?

No, at that time we didn't, regardless of who the champion was.

So don't worry about him.

Let's concentrate on the money.

He had that fucking philosophy.

He would book the opponents and the main event matches and let us fill in details of those and then put the rest of the card together.

So

I think they had two different philosophies.

Flair didn't recognize Eddie as a major talent because

in that atmosphere, you've got to remember.

that Eddie probably,

if he was going to work for the big companies starting in the 90s, it would have been in creative.

If he worked, it would have been middle card in the WWF or in WCW, and he would have been more involved in booking because,

yes, Eddie could be a top guy in Continental in the ring.

Eddie could be a top guy in Memphis in the ring.

But now you've got Eddie on national television as a wrestler when you've got Ricky Steamboat and Ric Flair and the Road Warriors and the Midnight Express and Barry Wyndham

and world-class guys.

Brian, I'm not being

disrespectful to Eddie when I say that maybe in the ring, although he was very good, that's kind of elite company on a national television show.

He was not going to main event in that environment, right?

I think that's fair.

So

from the way they picked talent to their approach, Flair and Eddie were not particularly suited for each other.

But the thing that I said was true in that Flair called me on the phone one day

and he said, I'm fixed to have an opening on the creative team.

Are you interested?

And I'm like, oh, he goes, yes, because right here, yes, on the big one, not getting sent to Louisiana.

Yes.

But that's what he told me.

They had a show in Memphis at the Coliseum.

Flair wasn't on the card.

Eddie, as a representative of the booking committee,

had changed the finish on a preliminary match between him and Ron Simmons because he didn't think he should, as a baby face in Memphis, even at a preliminary match, he should do a job, even to Ron Simmons.

And he changed it to a DQ because Simmons was a heel.

And the worst things have happened, but still come on.

That was the problem is that Eddie was taking the small picture seriously and not looking at the big picture.

You know, the new booker has come in and it's Rick fucking Flair.

So you're going to change your finish, his finish that he gave you of a preliminary match in Memphis because you don't want to lose in Memphis to Ron Simmons,

who Flair,

Ron Simmons is Flair's kind of guy, Florida State football, real athlete, all-American.

He's going to push this motherfucker.

And so he, he just, the things that people get upset about, Vince McMahon has his peccadillos.

Flair was like, can you believe this fucking guy changed the fucking finish?

And I'm just kind of sitting there like,

yeah.

So he said, I'll let you know since you're interested.

And about a week later, okay, you start coming to the booking meetings because he had to move Eddie out.

I felt bad, but what am I going to do?

I didn't change the fucking finish.

And I did, at least I got to tell the story that it went around for quite some time.

And I believe it came from Eddie that, well, I walked in one day and Cornette was in my chair.

No,

I never, I was never in the same meeting as Eddie.

He was gone, done, and I started.

And again, to tie back to, you know, they told part of the story at the end with ECW, with Heyman and him, but Eddie gets pushed out from the booking committee.

That's right when Heyman has his meltdown with Ric Flair.

Yes, as a matter of fact.

It was all interconnected.

Remember the trouble they got in the next year when they revealed that there was a program, I guess, in the works with Lawler and Luger, and then it came out and never happened and i think it was eddie that planted the seed with all the sheet items

oh man yeah paul and eddie had their own sheet pipeline back then they they were back and then yeah well yeah heard

led eddie out of his contract to go back to book memphis and see that's the thing okay

I know he wanted to be the booker and I bet his feelings were hurt that he was demoted, but he had a contract making at minimum $100,000 a year.

And he may have been on one of the 125 or 150s because that was the range at that point.

And he got out of that early to go back and book Memphis when the main event guys there, besides Lawler, probably weren't making $500 a week

instead of

staying on tele.

And I know I've left on a lot of money to go do my own thing also, but I was

kind of going to actually be the boss of most of it.

But also,

he didn't have a lot of options left

and he hadn't saved a lot of money.

And he just wanted to be the booker so bad that he would be the booker in front of almost nobody.

Then, rather than still stay on national television and try to work harder to get over with the people and the blah, blah, blah, even if there's tension with the booker.

You know what I mean?

So he wasn't even 30.

And that's the other thing.

Like, all this is happening.

I think he's still like 28, 29 years old.

Yeah.

WCW,

you know, that's when him and Missy broke up.

And that couldn't have been easy because she was someone featured on air, eventually featured more than him,

even though they were tied together in the early days.

And then all of a sudden, it was kind of like, all right, now you're just going to be with the Steiners.

All right, now just have Missy host segments.

Yeah.

And it was a Mark Merrow and Sable situation, also, where everybody was looking at her her and nobody was looking at him

but uh that run in memphis is when he ran lawler over in the parking lot

and

the fans actually lit up the switchboard of the police station calling or 911 or whatever calling a cop saying there's been a murder a vehicular murder on TV on Channel 5.

And the cops went over there not to arrest somebody for murder because they, as soon as they heard Lawler in Channel 5, they knew knew what was going on, but they went over there and told Lawler, go out there and show these fucking people that you're still alive or we're going to take you to jail because we got crooks to catch and everybody in town is calling us to go avenge your death.

So,

I mean, he got people talking

and he wanted to go to jail.

For he said, I'll go to jail for it, which that's what they used to do in the old days for Angles.

The guy, they'd have a fight on the street and the guy'd get arrested on purpose, go to jail, make the paper.

But they weren't going to arrest Eddie because the cops knew it was a work.

They were just, they were going to be mad at the wrestling company if they didn't, you know.

I guess the thing, go ahead.

So that's 1990.

Obviously, he does indies.

He works for Joel Goodhart, Dennis Carluzzo, things like that.

But when you came in in 91 with the fabulous ones,

that wasn't the same run, right?

Am I wrong?

But he had already left and come back to Memphis in the middle of that.

No.

Well,

I don't know how many times he left and came back before I got there, but the deal

I had come home.

Was it Thanksgiving?

It was Thanksgiving.

I came home Thanksgiving, 1990, because it's the first time I'd had time off in ages because we just quit WCW.

And I wanted to go down to the matches

and, you know, fucking see everybody and visit Teeny and whatever.

And I'm trying to think.

I think I talked to Eddie because Eddie called it.

I said, I'll be there at the Louisville Gardens Tuesday after Thanksgiving or whatever, or before whatever it was, if you want to talk about doing something.

And then I watched the TV that Saturday morning before the Tuesday, and he had booked me.

I was in Jeff Jarrett's corner against him and his manager, Sam Lowe.

And I thought, okay, I got to go buy a suit.

And then we talked about because Stan had quit also.

So that's where I pitched him an angle.

Let's come in and do this with Lawler and et cetera.

And we can, well, he wanted to first, because we came in as baby faces to help

against

Lawler against Eddie and his brother Doug and a dirty white boy.

And then we had six mans.

Downtown Bruno was their manager.

So we had eight men.

And then we turned on Lawler on TV and

the angle was laid out.

I still have it on paper right here somewhere,

where we'd work with Lawler and Dundee, and then that would lead to Lawler and Jeff.

And then Fargo would come in, and we would put Fargo in a fucking hospital.

And then either that would get the business up or somebody would kill us.

And then he'd come back and blah, blah, blah.

And then they'd beat the fuck out of all of us and off we'd go.

And Eddie agreed to all that.

And we started, Eddie gave us a guarantee.

We agreed to that.

And then

I don't know if we actually started that program.

As a matter of fact, I don't think we did.

We had said it to start and we had a date.

And Jerry Jarrett called me up and said,

well,

I fired Eddie as my booker.

And I want to know what y'all were going to do because he didn't tell me.

So I

so I told him, I said, well, this is going to be that.

And I told him the whole thing again.

And he loved it.

He said, that's great.

We'll do it.

So we started doing it.

And that's when the goddamn Gulf War happened and the TVs were preempted and everybody was getting bombed.

And Memphis TV for the first time was knocked off the air by news.

And

we did okay,

but not anything to brag about.

I think Memphis was at four grand the first week and we got it up to I think 12.

And Nashville, we got from two to six, but I mean, still, it was just puny.

And then Jerry said, once that we brought Fargo in, instead of hurting him, putting him in the hospital, and then doing the other stuff, and then coming back in six weeks and blowing it off, he said, Let's just finish it here.

I can't afford y'all anymore.

I was like, We were $300 a night or something.

I was like, All right, God damn it.

This whole thing's been fucked up with the TVs and everything.

So

Fargo comes in, he's the referee, or no, he's in there.

I I can't remember what we did.

And we do the blow off and they beat us.

Jeff and Lawler and Dundee's involved and Fargo.

And then we're going back to the locker room, me and the Fabs.

And I swear to God,

Eddie Gilbert runs by us.

Didn't even know he was there.

He ran by us on the way to the ring and fucking threw a fireball and burned Lawler.

And the next week, it was Eddie Gilbert versus Jerry Lawler again.

That had been the main event on the $4,000 house the week before we started this fucking thing.

See, fired Eddie.

We did a six-week angle.

Eddie brought Eddie back and put him in a fucking main event.

But that's one of those Eddie things.

You never knew if it was part of the show or not when all of a sudden he started running into the ring.

Yes.

Well, and they brought that up

with the, well, I should mention also chronologically.

I was there for the Cactus Jack and Eddie Gilbert thing for Joel Goodhart's TWA in Philadelphia.

I was on the card that night also.

And they didn't have a two out of three fall match.

They had a two out of three match series in one night.

And I can't remember the stipulations exactly, but it was like one match was Falls Count Anywhere.

And then one match was.

Goddamn, I don't know, no disqualification.

And then the third match was barbed wire.

And they did it first and in the middle and then on last.

And that had never been done before.

I don't know if anybody's done it since.

And Cactus loved the idea of it.

This was a hot indie.

Nobody knew at the time that Goodhart was selling out and losing money.

But

it got a lot of attention again.

And Eddie was in something that got a lot of attention.

But did you see the shot with the bottle where he broke the bottle over Mick's head?

Oh, yeah.

I remember that.

That was a big deal.

Again, all these pictures of these matches, even though it was an indie, because it was in Philadelphia, it was in PWI.

It was in the Napolitano magazines.

So when magazines still mattered, these photos were out there.

They didn't bake the bottle.

They didn't bake.

Eddie came up to me because I was talking to him about it.

I said, this is a wild deal you're going to do tonight, right?

He said,

I want to break his bottle over his head.

He said, we're not baking it.

I said, what?

Can you do that?

He said, he says he can.

Cactus wanted it to look so good.

He said, just break the bottle over my head.

So that was actually Eddie Gilbert breaking a bottle over a motherfucker's head.

But it didn't break right away.

Yes, it did.

No, what?

Not the first time.

They showed the shot where it broke.

It broke eventually.

Eventually it did, yeah.

But I think he hit him like three times.

And you heard this dull funk.

And I'm like, what the fuck?

So

then he began working for Todd Gordon, the Tony Khan of 1993,

who,

regardless of whatever you think about ECW, whether you liked it or not, when he said, I just wanted something believable like what I grew up with,

would you call, of all things that you could call ECW good or bad, would it be the most believable wrestling you've ever seen?

Would that be a description?

Hard-hitting.

I don't know if believable is necessarily the word, but.

But believable would indicate that we don't obviously see that these fuckers are doing this on purpose.

And that was not the case.

But nevertheless,

and I mean, we've talked about this.

Memphis didn't work in Philadelphia like Philadelphia wouldn't have worked in Memphis.

And Eddie was trading the king of Philly, and they're on sports channel Philadelphia.

Nobody's seeing this thing.

And the, you know, I think they probably had more fans

around the country trading tapes than they actually had in Philadelphia.

And then

Eddie was paranoid, and per Todd Gordon, he was paranoid and he quit.

And Eddie had been quoted as saying

in the shoot that he did: when a booker takes over, there's a power struggle starting from day one.

Goddamn.

That may be.

He'd been booking Continental when business was blah.

And most of the Fullers just wanted to go to the goddamn lake and do their shit, right?

I don't think that there was a horrible power struggle in Memphis.

Nobody wanted the booker's job at that point.

But you see,

that's part of the thing, too.

It was very public amongst smart fans because it was very public that Eddie was butting heads with Lawler.

or whatever was going on in Memphis.

It wasn't like a smooth booking journey.

And it was always like a countdown, it felt like, until

when is Eddie going to be gone again?

I mean, they didn't even bring up the GWF here.

He booked the GWF.

I forgot about that.

Yeah.

That was the last good period of the GWF.

The Patriot.

Global Wrestling Federation.

Yeah.

After the Patriot left, the big feud was the Dark Patriot, Doug Gilbert versus Eddie Gilbert.

And let me ask you this.

What managed by Bruce Pritchard?

Well, what would the smart behause Bruce had got fired and,

you know, he wanted to go to Texas.

What would the smart fans do today if the booker booked his brother, who's never drawn a dime in his life, under a full body outfit to work with him in the main event?

Well, it would definitely be a different reaction nowadays, especially if it was someone unproven.

Or, you know, if it was just known, people would react to it.

If Penta was the booker and he was in a feud with Ray Phoenix, it's not the same as Randy Savage working with Lanny Popo.

Actually, Lanny Popo drew some money every once in a while, but nevertheless.

So Eddie, Todd Gordon says Eddie's paranoid and he got mad and he quit days before their big show.

But then he called him to say he was sorry a couple of days beforehand, Todd Gordon had replaced him.

with Kevin Sullivan, not as booker, but as in his match as an in-ring talent.

But Eddie said he wanted to come and say goodbye to the boys.

And then,

and were you there?

You heard about it.

Was that one of your, because you've told me the story because I wasn't there.

No, I didn't go there.

But that was.

I was talking to people who were there and I knew, you know, I was really into everything happening at the time.

So he goes out that nobody knows Eddie, he

nobody knows he's going to do this and nobody said he could do it.

He goes out and starts doing a promo in the ring, even though that it was announced that he would not be there.

Something happened.

He's being replaced.

But Eddie shows up and goes out in the finish of the match where they can't cut around it and starts doing a promo.

This is basically what happened, right?

Yeah.

And again, if Eddie was following the news and all of a sudden he heard Kevin Sullivan was there, he knew, he had to know that meant that Paulie was getting power and control.

And, you know, they kind of talked about the issues with those two, but they didn't really go into how it fell apart so quickly.

And again, the only outside substance that was mentioned here was painkillers.

Who knows what was really going on at the time?

People that were very involved and new people thought maybe there were other things involved.

Was caffeine involved?

He may have been very caffeinated.

They brought up that Pauly at that time was all about Jim Crockett.

I mean, that was one of the quotes that people said that he said backstage.

This is Jim Crockett's show now.

Yeah.

And Eddie Gilbert.

And before we gloss over some of the fans, before we lose them, Jim Crockett, his five-year non-compete had ended, and he was trying to start the wrestling network out of Dallas.

And

he thought Paul was going to be his booker because Paul wanted to be his booker because Paul was going to be, that would be national television

that he wanted to get a hold of.

And Paul and Kevin were always close.

Kevin's coming in.

Paul's there.

Eddie's paranoid, whatever, all these people.

And when Eddie goes to the fucking ring to

cut the promo, Paul's screaming, cut the mic, cut the mic, right?

But the rib was apparently,

Eddie didn't really say anything bad like, fuck these people.

He said, please keep supporting ECW who's trying to sweet talk Todd into getting his job back.

Yeah, I think Eddie really felt remorseful.

I mean, he called Todd back already and tried to get back on after Kevin Selden got booked.

And

again, I don't know how doing a run-in, even if you are going to do it.

If you say, I'm just going to run in and thank the fans, why would anyone believe you?

Why would anyone think, okay, that sounds good?

Well, oh, yeah.

I mean, it's preposterous, but apparently, that's what he was really going to do.

But he did it to finish the match.

And Paul, who's obviously thinking, what would I do in this situation?

I'd try to fuck everybody as best I could because that's what he always does.

See Coraluzo's comma Dennis in the NWA.

He cuts fucking Eddie's mic.

Well, then Doug is there.

Eddie's brother,

who, as everyone can tell, is probably not a Mensa member.

And Doug takes a baseball bat and clears out to fuck busts up the fucking locker room.

So that certainly made the Gilberts welcome to come back.

And apparently from that incident, Paul and Eddie never spoke again.

What would you think if you were the booker?

And unexpectedly your best friend, who at the moment you're having issues with that may be based around substance abuse, abuse, maybe based around jealousy, maybe based around opportunity.

Maybe based around the fact the guys just quit and left the promoter in the lurch five days before the big show that he booked and is starring on.

And then he shows up anyway and says, I'm just going to go cut a promo.

I'm not going to tell anybody about it.

I'd have yanked his fucking cord too.

Do you think Paul Heyman?

Did Paul Heyman do anything wrong accepting that booking job?

Like you were saying before, you know, the story was Jim Cornette was one day sitting in my chair.

Paul Heyman was working in ECW.

He was Eddie's manager.

Obviously, he knew Todd Gordon and had conversations with him.

Did Paul, who has always been an opportunist,

but did Paul do anything wrong accepting that job, doing that job?

Do you think Paul did anything wrong there?

Well, they're wildly different setups to this, but

no, technically not.

Now, did Paul?

See, we don't never, we never know with Paul what actions he may have taken or not taken to benefit himself.

Did he step in when he didn't have to step in or vice versa?

He's very subtle with these things.

But Paul had been Eddie's protege, and Eddie had been the booker and he had taken Paul around as the heel manager and the assistant and the good friend and et cetera.

They're both there together.

If Todd Gordon had suddenly come to Paul and said, I don't like Eddie anymore and I don't don't like his work and I want you to be the booker.

Well, that may have been a tough spot to take the, well, he didn't really do anything wrong.

But when Eddie called up and fucking quit

and said, I'm not going to be there, well, then no, Paul didn't do anything wrong.

But the question is,

who was telling Eddie?

Maybe his brother.

Maybe somebody else, this fucking guy's not respecting you.

Or what words were put in at what time to

to take an already susceptible thinker and make him more susceptible to thinking something

that i think would be we will never know nobody will know but that may have some because

who's the guy that would call me up after i walked out of wcw before it was blatantly obvious i wasn't coming back

he'd call me up and he'd say you got him right where you want him They'll give you anything to come back.

I'm not coming back, Paul.

They'll give you anything.

I'm not coming back, Paul.

Every once in a while, just to see, before I had left,

he would come up to me and start talking to me about how fucking stupid it was that they were doing this to our angle and that to our angle.

And he'd put his arm around me and almost walked me to the back door like he ought to just walk out right now.

So

you never know what kind of fucking.

sway.

Right, but

also it's a little different

not knowing how the future will turn out.

It's a little different pushing someone out of a position working for a national company like WCW versus the booker for ECW.

It wasn't like Todd Gordon was paying them in a

terrible amount of money or anything.

I was still.

Well, yeah, but that's that's the thing is, is Eddie was in some cases, as people say, Jim Ross said this about Eddie one time to me

during this 1989 thing.

Eddie is his own worst enemy

because he

was impatient

not only to get the things he wanted, but once he had them, he was impatient

that people were interfering with it.

And I mean, I can identify,

but

I had a history of waiting a lot longer

to blow up

and then potentially blowing up a little bit farther.

But I try to work within what the conditions were that prevailed in most respects until finally I just had my Popeye moment.

But Eddie's Popeye moments came quickly.

Yeah, you know, they didn't even bring up one that

you kind of consider it an Eddie moment because he's there, but it may be more of a Doug moment.

But I remember in that shoot interview that Bob Barnett did, it was brought up.

Remember, they went to work for Wing, but he didn't work as Eddie Gilbert.

He was working like as Freddy Krueger or something.

He was working under a mask.

Yes.

Well, when they did the movie Monsters, they had Michael Myers and they had Freddy Krueger.

Oh, maybe it was Michael Myers.

No, that's what it was.

He was as michael myers and doug was i forget what doug was maybe he was freddy i think doug was freddy yeah yeah and they both pull off their masks and eddie just stands there and it's doug on the mic you know we're the gilberts and this place is full of and the ibaragi's full of

in japan all of a sudden they're doing this thing you hear in japan

i know they go all the way to japan for some outlaw group anyway and they're in a fucking bar it's not like japan in those days it was a fucking indie outlaw group doing movie monsters in the ring and they unmask and doug and you can barely understand him because he's hillbilly cuts a promo on the mic screaming while they're acting and they unmasked and people are like

there was no response whatsoever because there's no history

who the they were yeah

so this is my brother eddie gilbert he'd never i don't think eddie

toured japan you were not going to put up with this kind of treatment i guess they didn't want to be the movie monsters well why did they go over there to go all that way?

It's weird.

What do you do?

We're not going to put up with this kind of treatment and like you're in a high school gym.

Yeah.

It's one thing if you're in an arena.

It's like, okay, I sent a message.

But when you're in a gym and the cafeteria is next door, it's like you didn't really send any message.

If Ernie Ladd's trick of if the promoter wouldn't pay him what he thought he was worth, walking around the ring and then out the front door of the arena didn't work if it was a fucking high school gym with 82 people in it.

So this kind of leads us into the end of 94.

I got to meet Eddie at the NWA tournament November 19th, 94 in Cherry Hill that Dennis did.

You were there, obviously.

It was a really, it was a fun weekend.

ECW

ran against it.

That was when they had the deal where WCW gave them talent to settle a potential lawsuit over when worlds collide, I believe.

So they got Kevin Sullivan.

and maybe Sherry.

I think they were supposed to get Steve Austin, but they got Brian Pillman.

Didn't they get Bobby, Bobby and Arn at one point?

That was in 94.

That was earlier in 94.

Bobby and Arn is like the one feud that it's kind of cool.

It went from WCW to Smoky Mountain to ECW.

It just kept moving from one place to another, and it was great everywhere it went.

But Eddie came up and worked at, and he did brawls with, I think, Tom Brandy and Tracy Smothers, which were a lot of fun.

That was before those were commonplace everywhere, especially in the Northeast.

It was a Memphis thing.

It felt like it was a...

He's bringing Memphis stuff up here for those that didn't get any better.

And then a few months later, he goes to work for you.

And then

a few weeks later, whatever it is, he goes to Puerto Rico.

But,

you know, that's why when people talk about what would Eddie's future have been, if that made any sense the way I said it, what would Eddie's future have been

if he had not passed as young as he did?

You know, later that year is when Nitro comes out.

A couple years later is when WWF starts changing the way they do TV to.

They'd already started Monday Night Raw.

Yeah, they had already had Rawson's 93, but you know, they get the attitude era a few years later.

You know, I don't know.

I always wonder, you know, would Eddie have been a guy that had a tough time finding things to do?

And then a new generation of kids would rediscover him in, you know, 2010.

And all of a sudden he's working Ring of Honor or something.

And then he, you know, walks out.

Well, no.

Well, in all seriousness, here is the problem.

And the situation with Smoky Mountain in Puerto Rico illustrates, if all things being equal, for the attitude era when

not only WCW was hiring more people, but then the WWF was expanding and

everything that has happened since then,

Eddie's future would have been in producing, in booking, in agenting, in

even if it was for a TNA or a ring of honor, much less rather than a WWE or whatever,

that would have been where it was.

But all things weren't equal because think about this.

As I was sitting there watching the show, I realized the juxtaposition of this.

I needed a new heel tag team in Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and we needed to just draw some money,

you know, generally.

And Thanksgiving of 94

blown off a bunch of stuff.

And, you know, and in Christmas, you know, we did fan appreciation night and everything and the big Christmas show, but you got to start the year with something.

And I had heard that Eddie was in Lexington, Tennessee, home, not working Memphis.

He had actually tried to run for some type of political office in Lexington or in that county.

Yeah, I forgot about that.

That was a thing at that time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But he wouldn't work in Memphis because he was on the outs with Lawler or Jared, whoever the fuck, and he wasn't anywhere else.

And he's, so he's in effect, he's 300 miles away from Knoxville.

So I called him and I said, Eddie, I got this idea because that's when Dutch had recommended Glenn Jacobs, Unibomb.

He needs to get out of Puerto Rico.

He's a great kid.

Take him.

He's seven feet tall.

Okay.

I need a partner for him that can talk and work because he's green and blah.

He doesn't know what he's doing yet.

Eddie,

you want to be this guy's partner?

It's Shawn Michaels and diesel pairing, UB hot stuff.

Help me with this thing.

Help do your own stuff.

Come up with your own shit or help me book it.

I just need to draw some money.

I'm a little tired.

I could use some help, right?

Throw some shit in, whatever the fuck.

You're across the state from home.

You can work here every weekend.

You can be home the rest of the week and you're going to be on television.

And he's okay.

And he did the first taping where we did four TV shows.

He came out, and did an interview, worked with Ricky Morton, shot an angle with Unabomb, came back and had Eddie Gilbert and Unabomb against the Rock and Roll Express.

And that's the last time I ever saw him.

And Ricky Morton's sitting there recording.

Now, Ricky

has never met an exaggeration he didn't like.

I wanted to hear what you thought of what he said here.

Well, Ricky said, Eddie told me, I ain't coming back.

I've got the chance to go to Puerto Rico.

Well, I wish he'd have told me.

I mean, Eddie or Ricky.

I don't think that he actually told Ricky then.

I really don't.

And to be honest, I don't even know if he'd been called yet.

Because the problem was we had from like the first Monday in January of 1995 to January 28th between that TV taping and when Eddie was booked next in Knoxville.

And I think he got a call probably in between those times.

And it was to book Puerto Rico, and he'd rather book than breathe.

So, with all respect to Ricky, you know, and it's 30 years ago, maybe he remembers it that way.

But I think Ricky at the time would have come to me and said, hey,

you know, we're going to have to find somebody else to work with in Knoxville because it was fucking his deal up.

And as I recall, when

I heard a couple weeks later after the TV,

somebody said, or it was on, it was the results were on a newsletter or whatever.

Eddie was was in Puerto Rico.

So I called Tommy Gilbert.

I called Eddie's house and I got Tommy.

I said, Tommy, is Eddie coming back

from Puerto Rico for this shot?

Oh,

I haven't talked to him today.

I'll tell him to call you.

And I didn't hear nothing.

And then that's when we had to find Al Snow.

But the point is, Ricky and Robert didn't seem too happy when Eddie didn't show up and we were having to go through all this switching and everything.

But here's the goddamn deal.

he went to take a booking job in Puerto Rico for a company that not only was not doing the business it had historically at that time, but also had no relationship with the WWF.

Whereas

I had already sent guys to the WWF, WWF talent was coming down to my shows regularly.

Fucking,

it was the door at that point in time.

If Eddie wanted to go somewhere.

Because later on, not only the Rock and Roll Express for a brief period of time would end up there, but Al Snow, the guy that replaced him, would end up there.

And his partner, Glenn Jacobs, would end up there.

And Chris Candido and a bunch of other people he'd been working with ended up there.

He shot himself in the foot by going away from the opportunity

because he wanted to be the booker.

And he didn't want to be kind of the half booker.

With me, he wanted to be the whole booker.

Do you think there was heat, you know, from one-sided heat?

Going back to the WCW thing and the booking committee, do you think that lasted with him or he screwed you over the way you would have screwed anyone over?

Well, that's, it was, it had been six years, no, five years.

And besides that, if.

If there'd have been heat when I called him up and said, hey, you want to do this?

Why would he fake that he was so excited to do it and

work out the whole deal and the money and the dates and everything just so that he could come and no-show me to get even to me with me?

He got a chance to book, and that was more important than anything else.

Even a chance to

be in your home state and make the same amount of money as you are in another goddamn hemisphere and lose a chance to maybe get seen.

And Jim Ross was there,

and he was soon to go back to the WWF.

And he was doing my fucking announcing, and he knew Eddie.

He was a fan of Eddie's from before.

He had a bunch of his friends and a bunch of people that he could work with that were connected to the WWF.

And instead, he went to Puerto Rico to be the booker

where he had no talent to work for him and no fucking gates.

So, and I i said on the tv show again three months later he was dead turns out it was six weeks six weeks after he had done that show for me and i never saw him again and and he was dead

and we brought up ken wayne earlier who uh you know obviously is in jail for being a pervert and a dirtbag but

And that one surprised me almost more than anything else in the history of wrestling.

But go ahead.

But I believe the story was, and correct me if I'm wrong, you know, he was in that early feud we mentioned earlier, the Waynes against the Gilberts at the very start of Eddie's career in Memphis.

He was the one that found him, right?

Wasn't that the story he like climbed in the window and found him when he didn't respond?

Yeah, because I mean, let's face it, at this point, Ken

didn't really have any territories, were all gone.

A lot of guys were, you know, going to Puerto Rico or doing whatever they had to do.

And Eddie and Ken had known each other for a long time.

So he booked Ken down there, and Ken's one had to climb in the window and fucking find him.

But anyhow, and I thought for a long time, I was like, you know, I was, for six weeks, I was mad at him.

How the, why the fuck would he do this to me?

Why didn't he just say no at the start or be honest and call me?

But then obviously after he dies, I get, I didn't stay mad at him after that.

But

I felt bad that if he hadn't left

Tennessee and gone there, it might not have happened, probably wouldn't have happened.

Look at it on the other side.

If it would have happened, you know, if it was really just years of buildup of his heart and mixed with the pain medication, if that's really what it was, and it happened when he was working for you,

it would have gotten a ton of negative publicity for your company, right?

Well, I've never even thought of that or thought of it that way, but

probably wouldn't have helped.

I mean, you can't get any worse publicity than Puerto Rican wrestling has gotten.

That was nothing down there, but yeah, that would have been a kind of a big deal.

What did you think?

Because I had never seen it before, and I'm sure you hadn't either.

I don't know.

It looked like it was inside the house, but Doug Gilbert almost had like a museum of Eddie Gilbert.

Did you see that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that looks like that's his office in his house now.

And I, you know, that's really cool.

Can't blame him for that.

He's got a lot of Eddie stuff.

And

he looked up, Doug looked up to his, both of them looked up up to tommy as their father and doug looked up to eddie as his big brother closer than most

i wish i had better things to say about doug but he's just a idiot and pissed me off 10 years ago just being stupid so he started it i could actually say that he's you yeah yes you he actually start for oh god damn i'm gonna tell that story it's my show and then i'll end it up

So Howard Brody writes his fucking biography, right?

Swimming with Piranhas,

My Life in Wrestling wrestling or whatever it was and howard sends me the manuscript and before it was printed into book form the manuscript was like a thousand pages he had taken notes on everything he'd ever done in his life said howard you certainly wrote a long book but i wrote him a foreword to his book because he's a friend of mine and it helped me and

what i was able to read of the book seemed captivating

And

so I wrote him, my friend Howard wrote this book and he's had many ups and downs in wrestling by this book.

And when they print the book, it's on the cover, Swimming with Piranhas by Howard Brody, foreword by Jim Cornet.

And then one day on the internet, Doug Gilbert is calling me a no-good motherfucker and a liar and a piece of shit.

And Stacey said,

she's on the computer.

She said, what the fuck is Doug Gilbert's problem?

And I think he'd found her Facebook cussing me out or some shit.

And I got to say, what the fuck?

And the book that you and Howard Brody wrote and what you said about my brother, I said, what the fuck is I wrote the foreword to Howard Brody's book?

And I didn't even remember what Howard said about Eddie, but he always liked Eddie, was complimentary about Eddie, but he was also honest that Eddie probably had some chemical help in the things that he, mistakes he made.

And fucking Doug Gilbert is cussing me out for this and calling me all kinds of names.

You lied about my brother.

I said, you fucking hillbilly redneck.

Have you ever read a book?

If you've ever read a book, then go back and read this one.

I didn't write the book.

I wrote to people that Howard's my friend and he wrote a book.

And I did the foreword for the book.

That's why my name is on it, you redneck simpleton.

And then I called him a bunch of names.

And then we've never spoken again since.

Well, to give him a little bit of credit, I was so delighted when he held up the poster that had Jerry Thinking Lawler.

I wonder if you noticed it because that was the first Eddie Gilles Memorial Brawl that Dennis did.

He held it up.

I've got that poster on my vault ceiling.

The Jerry Thinking Lawler.

The printer couldn't figure out the king.

I guess it was Dennis's handwriting.

But anyway, but yeah, Doug had a problem with Howard's book and he blamed me for it.

And fuck you, Doug, by the way, just because you're a goddamn idiot to have gone to that lengths to piss me off for this long over something that stupid that you couldn't even fucking figure out.

And also, let's be honest,

that was another thing that was weighing Eddie down as a booker was hauling around his doughy, pudgy, fucking, non-talented, hillbilly sounding younger brother, putting him in top positions.

Didn't fucking work.

But nevertheless,

we persevere.

We've gone a long time today, haven't we?

Now that the severe weather was over i don't feel like i'm going to die impendingly yeah the mets just got rained out there in st louis well the derby's about to get rained out and uh i are we about to to just finish up we're not going to get rained out we're indoors but we'll just we'll be done with this episode well this is your show but one last thing because i didn't see the preview what is next week's dark side

Billy Jack Haynes, baby.

Ooh, ooh, I'm very anxious to see how they're very curious to see how they put this together.

Yes, they got a jailhouse interview, by the way.

Oh, fuck.

Yeah, so this is this was gonna be because it doesn't even have to make sense with Billy Jack because

nothing about Billy Jack makes sense, and it doesn't even matter the chronological order because

just talk about how fucking batshit he is.

They should just launch a new show.

I can't wait to see the reenactment of him in a lucha mask with a video camera shooting murders and drug deals on the railroad tracks.

They should just launch a new show, 45 minutes with Billy, and just interview him and let him say whatever he wants and put it up unedited and let people make their own decisions.

I have a feeling the Multnomah County Sheriff's Department might have something to say about that.

But

anyway, folks, otherwise, that's been the experience.

We're coming back with the drive-through in a few days, unless I can talk Brian out of it.

And we will see you then.

And until then, stay dry, everybody.

Thank you.

Fuck you.

And bye-bye.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Connet,

of Jim Connet,

of Jim Connet.