Episode 577: Floods & Stuff

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Like a midnight tender rock and roller, he's in a fight for wrestling solar using a racket and some mind controller.

He's Jim Cornette.

The keys to the future, held by the past.

And with tag team partner, Barion Last, he sends this message out by podcast.

He's Jim Cornette.

Well, he's never fake a phoner.

phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prepare

your mind.

I can get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

Hello again, everybody.

The floodwaters are receding in Louisville and the AEW ship is taking on water.

It's the wrestling, wrestling everywhere, and not a drop to watch edition of the Jim Cornette Experience.

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

Co-host to you.

The captain that always goes down with the podcast.

Be great.

Brian last, everybody.

Hello, hi, Jim.

What a pleasure it is to be here once again.

Not exactly sure what we're going to talk about.

I have the idea of at least one thing.

Oh, I forgot to tell you, didn't I?

Yeah, but I'm sure we'll have a great time.

Well, yeah,

see, that's the thing.

It's all about having fun in the midst of crisis, Brian.

I'm in a disaster area.

We're in a state of emergency over here, but it's all about having fun.

in the face of crisis and chaos and pestilence and famine and flood and

financial destruction and all of the other wonderful things that occupy our waking hours.

It's time to just sit down and just you and me, Brian, just two bros doing a podcast, right?

You know, behind every dark cloud, there is a silver lining.

Well, I think behind every silver lining, there's a dark cloud when it came to what we're going to talk about at the end of the program.

So we'll try to have some fun up until then.

Because,

good lord people say sometimes that i just

ah at cornet that's his gimmick that's his stick he doesn't like anything and that's it he's just putting that on brian you you've known me for quite some time now do i work hard enough at these programs that i would go through the problem and the trouble of contrafting and and adopting a fake persona Or do I just basically say the first fucking thing that comes out of my mouth?

Yeah, this is kind of like our off-air conversation just just recorded and uh also with audio issues yeah hey what does the matter with my audio now don't even get started i didn't say anything right now just in general in the general

well

in general i'm in a goddamn disaster area so that's that's what we've got going for us here

the the the the the floods it finally the river has begun to recede, Brian.

And that's a gradual process, obviously.

uh well you don't have rivers where you you got the ocean up there the ocean comes in and out well you got some rivers i guess too that come from the ocean and go to the tributaries and the streams the passaic the

passaic that just sounds like a a ditch of filth the passaic river

But nevertheless, the river is receding, but it's still,

this is one of the top 10

floods of all time but as we found out since we've been watching the tv coverage because they got the drones now again when i was a kid if something happened they would put a little velcro picture of it stuck up on the weather map and say this is what's going on

but now they've got drones so you can see the the streets downtown some of the only way you can tell where the

that there is a street in the vicinity is you see the top of the street lights sticking out of the water about a foot or two.

And there are fish swimming on the first floor of the Galthouse Hotel downtown.

Did you hear about this?

No, I didn't see that.

There are the

bottom floor, thankfully, is mostly a parking garage, but they have like also employee

locker rooms and some type of facility.

Well, they're changing with the fishes on the first floor of the Galthaus now.

And it's officially the worst flood since 1997, which

I was still in Connecticut.

That may be the one time I was happy to be there because I've missed that one.

So,

but you know,

this has skewed the top 10 list here, Brian, all down the Ohio River, Cincinnati, and Louisville, and down to Western Kentucky.

All of the top 10 flood statistics are skewed.

Apparently, because the Army Corps of Engineers came in in the 60s and redid the dams and the locks and the flood walls and whole nine yards.

So it is somewhat more difficult now, one would think that it used to be to

flood downtown Louisville and sweep away people's homes on the southern Indiana banks and et cetera.

But

it's still doing that.

So

anyway, nothing compares to 1937, though, Sonny boy.

Back in my day, the 37 flood, baby.

That's back then.

That's when we, you know, we reverted to caveman times.

No,

I actually

have a personal connection to the 1937 flood, Brian.

Do you know this?

No, I do not know about your personal connection.

You know about the 37 flood.

You've mentioned it.

Well, the 37 flood, for those of you who didn't live in Louisville, Kentucky in 1937, was the all-time goddamn biblical proportion flood of this city.

And it didn't come from thunderstorms or tornadoes or severe weather in the spring or whatever.

Just for a freak thing, the first week of January, it started raining and it didn't stop for like fucking weeks.

And by the, toward the end of the month,

they had gotten as much rain as they were normally supposed to get over a six-month period in like two weeks or whatever which would be so a couple of

feet

and ever there was no army corps of engineer flood walls and and you said there's pictures of people in with rowboats down broadway

and

At one point, I think they said,

because of the photographer's office, the main photographers being downtown at the time, 50% of the historical pictures taken of Louisville, of the early derbies and all that bullshit, was lost because they wiped away their fucking negatives and their files and everything.

It knocked the radio stations off the air.

There were three of them at the time, I think.

And there was no television and phone service was iffy

because a lot of people in 1937 still might not have had a phone and it was wiping away all the shit.

But can you imagine the building code regulations, Brian, in the middle of the depression for a home on the side of the river?

It just swept these fucking people's homes away.

And they had to, my personal connection I've come to,

my dad had just started working for the Courier Journal, the newspaper.

And they had to move their printing.

I think it was over to Frankfurt.

But because with the radio stations off the air, phone service spotty, the town is flooded, it won't stop raining, people are panicking, the only way that they could spread the word of what was happening and try to, you know, avoid people goddamn freaking out was to get the newspaper printed twice a day, morning and evening.

So they would.

They went over to Frankfurt to print and then trucked the fucking things in by the tens and tens of thousands twice a day to fucking distributate around town so people didn't go out of their minds.

Can you imagine not being able to fuck?

It just, it's the whole town's flooded and your homes washed away and you can't even fucking call anybody and nobody can tell you what's going on.

I see your thrill.

No, I mean, I was there for Superstorm Sandy, but at least then we had radio and we had different things to keep us informed when there was no power for a few weeks.

No, this was back when people still saw in black and white.

And then the Army Corps of Engineers put dunes all over the beach.

Yes.

You know, we got to give a round of applause to the Army Corps of Engineers.

But yeah, 1937, in today's money, $1 billion in damage in the Louisville area is what it would have been to rebuild all that shit.

But they say this, they're going to get cleaned up by Derby, which is May the 3rd.

They're talking, it looks like this shit would take months.

Everything, I've seen video of dumpsters floating down the fucking,

what used to be, you know, land that is now the fucking river.

And there's driftwood and dreck everywhere.

And somehow they're going to get this disaster area cleaned up and spotless in three weeks.

We'll keep you posted, ladies and gentlemen.

All right, moving on to more,

we've still got to cover the current events, beat.

Brian, and this is kind of a music-related thing.

So I'm thinking you might be up on this.

There's a band called Weezer.

Apparently they're heavy smokers.

And no, but I believe Rivers Cuomo wheezed a lot when he was younger, which is how he got the name.

Well, the point is, this band Wheezer, there's somebody in the band Weezer who's married to a woman that the cops just shot and then arrested for attempted murder after shooting her.

And I just saw that on the on the Twitter moments before we got on the air.

That's why I was jotting this down to ask you if you could tell me what the fuck is going on there.

This is kind of the result of the idea of continuing the band without Matt Sharp.

This is what happens when you you get a replacement bass player.

No, I don't know.

I'm joking.

I'm making the Weezer fans happy because Matt Sharp

is a better band with Matt Sharp.

That's all.

People are.

I'm just saying you can't make mockery of this woman being mowed down in the streets.

Where was she?

Was she breaking in somewhere?

Well, she wasn't mowed down.

I mean, I saw...

I guess video of her after she was shot, and she seemed like she was cooperating at that point.

No, and then, you know, nothing makes you more cooperative than being shot by some motherfucker.

But the point being.

It's the replacement of the replacement bassist in Weezer.

He's been there a long time.

So now he, you know, kind of gets to act like a rock star too.

And it's his wife.

I've seen pictures of her.

And apparently there was some kind of thing where I guess it was a hit and run or multiple hidden runs, was it?

What the fuck were they running from?

She chasing.

She's chasing the cops or the cops are chasing her through the streets and people are run down.

What is happening?

Maybe I'm wrong.

I saw that the bass player came out of his house and they said, You have any comment about this?

And he said, I'll see you at Coachella.

So, I mean, I really don't know what to think about.

And, honey, watch that bleeding all over the sidewalk.

Um, what a promoter, though.

What

you know, honestly, if you had someone in wrestling like that, like his wife just went crazy and started shooting at the cops, and they shot her, and then she's alive, so there's no tragedy.

Uh,

but why were the cops there?

I don't know, but if you came out of your house and they said, You have any comedy, I'll see you at WrestleMania.

That's that's how you promote.

Can you Google this?

Because I just saw this and I thought it was a big story all the kids like you would know.

I always saw the bass.

Again,

if it was one of

the real Weezers.

If it was one of the other band members, I'd be a little more interested.

But this is like the bass player for the albums I stopped listening to.

He's not old enough to be Wheezing yet.

Let's see.

Let's go.

Who's a reputable source?

We'll go to the LA Times.

New details emerge.

After Jillian Lauren

get immediate access.

$1 for four months.

What the fuck?

Oh, for God's sake.

Yes, just somebody put the news out.

Hold on.

Do I already have a membership here?

I think I do.

There we go.

New d

what now won't let me.

Ah!

We'll go to a different website.

Here's the New York Post.

For free, Weezer basis bizarrely promotes Coich Hella's show day after his wife was shot by cops and charged with attempted murder.

The fuck?

And let me click on that so we can get the original article.

The moment Weezer Bassist Scott Schriner's wife surrenders to cops after shooting her following dramatic LA Manhunt.

Manhunt?

Well, then it seems like they got the wrong person.

Dramatic video captured the moment Weezer Bassist Scott Schriner's gun-wielding wife

surrendered outside her Los Angeles home.

after being shot and wounded by cops.

God damn.

When she allegedly inserted herself into a bizarre Hollywood-style chase.

The saga involving Jillian Shriner, 51, erupted in the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Eagle Rock Wednesday afternoon as police were chasing down three men from an earlier hidden run on the nearby highway.

I knew there was a hidden run somewhere.

Cops with the LAPD said they were assisting California Highway Patrol.

Chips.

Remember Chips?

Eric Estrada?

Chips.

Yes.

Officers in the hunt for three perps who had just fled the scene of the wreck on the Ventura Freeway when one of them was spotting,

I guess I mean spotted, was spotted running through a backyard.

It was then that they came face to face with the musician's wife, who was brandishing a handgun in the front yard of her home.

They ordered Jillian to drop the gun numerous times, but she refused and pointed it directly at the officers, police alleged.

Cops then opened fire and struck her in the shoulder before she fled into her home.

I guess this aerial footage.

Now, hold it.

I'm pausing here.

Who is recounting this story?

What do you mean?

It's the New York News.

Richard Blood and Emily Crane.

I don't think that's going to be the defense attorney's fucking story

of their encounter.

So I'm wondering where this information is coming from.

Again, not even going any further.

What's happened?

They're chasing three different people who were in a hidden run, who fled.

And while searching for them, they just find some woman in the street with a gun?

Well, no, did it say in the street, or didn't it say they were searching the backyard or something?

Well, they said she was in her front yard, actually.

I will correct her.

Oh, in her front yard, okay, in front yard, but

do you think that it's possible that this woman saw some fucking people running through her goddamn

yard and came out there with a gun?

Like, oh, shit, I'll be like they say on TV, you know, good cop and bad cop, or the good gun stops the bad gun or whatever.

And as she's standing there, a bunch of other people run up.

Were they in uniform?

Because if a bunch of

okay, then

there you go.

If you're not out there with ill intent, when the cops show up, and if you were trying to protect yourself in some fashion, you wouldn't be pointing the gun at the cops.

So, did they California?

What are the laws?

Are you allowed to just have a party with your gun in your front yard?

Well, you know, you're not allowed to.

Well, you can stand there and hold it, I assume, if nobody complains about it, but you can't be pointing it at anybody, animal,

vegetable, or mineral.

But the point I'm making is:

what is her defense

if she did indeed point the gun at the cops?

Or did they just stumble on her having some type of mental issue in her own front yard when they were chasing the other people?

Well, aerial footage captured by KTLA helicopters showed Jillian emerging from her property a short time later with the family's babysitter.

The two women could be seen walking down the driveway with their hands raised in the air.

before they lied face down in the middle of the street.

What if this was after she got shot?

She got shot and then went in the house and got the babysitter.

A young boy was then spotted emerging from home.

A young boy was then spotted emerging from the home, too, with his hands up.

The self-described rock wife was taken to the hospital where she was treated for a non-life-threatening gunshot wound.

Police recovered a nine-millimeter handgun from her home in the aftermath.

She was later booked on suspicion of attempted murder for wielding the gun at officers and cut loose after posting a $1 $1 million bond.

Jesus Christ.

L.A.

County jail record showed.

Meanwhile, separate bird's eye view footage captured the three-car crash that kicked off the entire ordeal.

Man, is there anyone who has the full video of the entire match?

I like to see it from beginning to end.

Like the dude running at the end doesn't have the impact.

If you can't see that, it's a surprise run-in.

One suspect allegedly stripped down to his boxers and tried to blend into the neighborhood by jumping into a pool.

And what was his plants?

I need to see this whole video.

Problem was, he still attracted attention because he was pissing on him.

I'm trying to see if there's anything else about

the Weezer wife.

Well, while you do that, let me just editorialize that once again.

You know, you could buy if they were chasing criminals through the neighborhood that she might have come out there with her weapon, like, what are you doing in my property or whatever the fuck when the cops come she wouldn't have been pointing it at them so that was she in some type of separate mental fucking freak out that they just happen to stumble on while they're trying to find these fucking gardeners and and pool invaders

and it it the story as told

doesn't make a lot of sense on basically those points, does it?

Gotta be something else going on.

I see another article here.

Weezer basis Scott Schreiner's wife diagnosed with cancer and had a hysterectomy weeks before arrest.

So apparently there is a lot going on there.

And it doesn't say anything about the gun or why.

But,

all right, get well soon?

Maybe?

What do you think?

Well, I mean, yes, please recover from the gunshot wound and or whatever

precipitated the behavior that led to the

cat that chased the rat that lived in the house.

Nevertheless, honey, there's a bunch of people in the middle of the day coming down the street.

All right, get the gun, go to the yard.

The cops will leave you alone.

Just don't drop it.

Even if they say drop it, just hold on to it.

Just don't drop it.

Man, if that was any other neighborhood, she'd be dead.

You're in your front yard, the cops yell, put down your gun, you don't, they shoot you, and then you run into your house.

That was any other neighborhood in LA, she'd be dead.

Well, not any other neighborhood, but some other neighborhoods.

The fuck.

Some of the other neighborhoods in the LA area.

Can you imagine?

Put down your gun.

No, shoot her.

Where'd she go?

She ran in the house.

The fuck?

How does that happen?

If I'm a cop and I shoot some regular, normal-sized-looking woman, and she just, her reaction is to run in the house, I'm going to leave her in the fucking house.

I'm not going after her.

Fuck.

If you shoot me, I'm going to sit right there and wait on a fucking doctor.

And by the way, I'm sorry if I upset any Weezer fans.

I'm a Weezer fan, too.

The band was better with Matt Sharp.

The first album and Pinkerton were better than everything they've done since.

And they've had some good songs and they've had some catchy songs.

And that other bassist who was there for a brief time did an all right job, I guess.

But geez, name a catchy song.

What would I know Weezer from?

Buddy Holly.

But no, I'm not asking you about Buddy Holly, I'm asking you about Wheezer.

That may be their most famous song, so I think you want to.

Well, sing the song.

I'm not going to be singing here.

Oh, goddammit.

I couldn't fucking pick happy birthday out of that.

I have to learn it first.

You have to learn it.

I'm saying, give me the words.

Recite the words like Vincent Price doing spoken word poetry.

Ooh, wee-oo, just like Buddy Holly.

And you're Mary Tyler Moore.

And I'm trying to say it out loud without singing it.

And I don't care what they say about us anyway.

I don't care about that.

Can you give me another Wheezer song that I would instantly know?

I don't know if you're really their audience.

The sweater song?

The sweater song.

Pink Triangle.

Maybe you know that one?

No?

Can you recite any of those?

I'm done with the recitation.

Yeah, done with the recitation.

All right.

Well, we got to the bottom of that i hope everyone's enjoyed our look at the news the last several weeks here on the show talking about all the

things happening all over

coach the energy out there felt different what changed for the team today it was the new game day scratchers from the california lottery play is everything those games sent the team's energy through the roof are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field hey a little play makes your day and today it made the game that's all for now coach one more question Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

Well, here's something that was in the news recently.

This is a follow-up to the press release that we just read on a show that we just did about the sale that they just made of the company that I

formerly owned

to the Faversham people.

A guy, and I retweeted it, and now I jotted it down again real quickly before we started recording, so I lost his name.

I'm sorry.

But

remember, Ohio Valley Wrestling that they announced, we talked about has been sold to a concern in...

in the UK that also has a football team.

And we were pontificating, Brian, you and I, about why the fuck would the big time

company that owns this football team over there in Faversham and, you know, and all this, I suddenly get a little wrestling school in Louisville, Kentucky was the gist of our conversation.

And

somebody on Twitter sent, here's the,

the new owners are Haverford West, and they're in Wales.

They're in Wales, which is not Wales.

When I was a kid, I always wondered why that guy got to be the prince of whales what the is he aquaman and he gets to

be the lord and savior of the whale and what's he doing for the whales

but it's confusingly similar for people you know in the in the american lands does nothing about the blubber problem

that does nothing about the blubber problem the the by the way the illicit blubber problem

but anyway

in whales it's haverford West.

And type this in now.

We may get more information about this company.

This press release made them sound like this was goddamn,

this was the NFL.

This was major league football or baseball.

This was something, right?

Haverford West in Wales, they tweeted a picture of the football field that they've got over there.

They are located in a town with a population, Brian, you know what the population is of Haverford West in Wales?

No.

11,000 people.

Oh, that's not what I thought it would be.

They sent a picture.

It's a football field in a wilderness.

It's a beautiful football field, gorgeous.

And it looks well maintained and manscaped and everything.

And it's in the middle of a fucking wilderness.

So Haverford West in Wales, can you look, can we get more information about a company that owns a football team in a town of 11,000 people over there has now bought a wrestling school in Louisville, Kentucky, where say what you will about the state of OVW, there's 11,000 people living within a fucking half a mile radius of the goddamn Davis Arena over there.

I don't know what the fuck is happening here.

Have you found it?

Do they have this on Google?

I'd like to be there for the walkthrough where it's like, this place is splendid.

May I please see the tape catalog?

I'd like to see some of that early Cena footage.

I don't know what to say.

Well, no, nobody at this point, nobody thinks they're going to get the.

Cena footage out of that these days.

Whoever has been, and that's what we also contemplated on the mystery of why that there have been more people investing in OVW over the past four or five years than there has the stock market.

And the mayor owned a piece of it and the radio guy owns a piece of it and there's a fucking company from dipshit shire fucking farms in England or Wales owns a piece of it or owns most of it now.

And my cousin's friend, the doctor, had invested in it.

Where is this money going?

And what are they buying?

Well, when you lose 30,000 a month, you have to find ways to finance the thing it's uh well that would that would stress me as an individual losses like that for heaven's sake much less of a large company like but have you googled the haverford west in wales people oh i grew i i grew i grew

i googled haverford west uh so i got the actual uh town

Yeah, I didn't know whether they say it over there with like hyphens, like it's Haverford West in Wales.

it's uh

and here's how you say it in welch i might have been going to try that haberford west what's the second part of it

well it's it's haberford west they're they're in wales that's the

the guy tweeted the picture of the football fields and population over is 11 000.

uh haberford west football club that's what you meant yes yes i've googled it I don't know how they name it.

As strange as it may seem, they give these towns in the UK strange names these days.

You got who's on first, what's on second?

I don't know who's on third.

It's very rare when someone would buy OVW and go, so this is splendid.

This arena will double our audience.

Yeah.

They play at Ogie Bridge Meadow Stadium, which accommodates 2,100 spectators.

Well, geez, the Davis Arena will go 500 if the fire marshal turns his back.

Not that they need it lately, but if they only have 11,000 people living there,

I guess it's a lot of.

Well, that ain't bad, I guess.

Then are they near any?

We'll finish that and then find out if they're near some type of large metropolitan area we've heard of, like Stratford-upon-Avon or the old pig and whistle.

Well, I have to go back to the other page for that, but they were the club was found, found, or formed, as it says.

How long were they missing?

It was formed in 1899, and it was renamed Haverford West Town in 1901.

And this is just a boring history from what it reads like here.

Let's go back to the actual locale,

Haverford West, which is a county town of Pembrokeshire, Wales, and the most populous urban area of Pembrokeshire, if that is indeed how you butcher that, with a population of 14,000

596 in 2011.

Wait a minute.

That is the, so the tweeter was wrong.

It's not 11,000, it's 14,500 or whatever, but that's the most populous.

Hold on, I'm confused, though.

It says it's the most populous urban area with a population of 14,596.

And next sentence, it is also a community consisting of 12,042 people,

making it the second most populous community in the county after Milford Haven.

That's an NXT name if I ever heard it.

Milford.

Here he comes, Milford Haven.

Ladies and gentlemen, he's the man that gravity said fuck you to.

The suburbs include the former parish of Prendergrast,

Albert Town, and the residential and industrial areas of Withybush.

Oh, goddammit, no.

That's exactly what it's saying.

Can you see when they have the big football game and the coach looks over and says, oh, goddamn troublemakers from Whiffy Bush are pulling up?

Haverford West is also a strategic location.

It was the lowest bridging point of the western Clidau before the Clidau bridge opened in 1975.

Oh, that's a body of water.

The Clidau.

Or it's something that most men can't find on a woman, the Clidau, which is it?

They have been English-speaking for centuries.

And then there's a bunch here about the order.

What else did you want to do?

They have a castle.

What else do you want to do?

Is that an endorsement?

They learned to communicate hundreds of years ago.

Any other information you need about this place it seems uh no that's great i

again i have questions on why that a company that owns a football team in the middle of bum fuck whales as as

well they used to say i'm looking at the uh section on wikipedia under economy a new town library opened in 2018 in the former riverside market building So that's pretty big.

They got a library now.

Under economy, a new library has opened up.

Who the fuck says, we've got a great money-making scheme, a library.

That doesn't happen.

And yeah, anything else you need to know about?

They're cracking down on those late fees, though, Brian.

Oh, Christian Bale, the actor.

He's from there.

Augustus.

But he doesn't live there now, does he?

Maybe he's putting the money up for OVW.

Has he been in a wrestling movie?

He has not yet.

I'm trying to see any other names you may know.

Connie Fisher, the actress.

I'm thinking of Connie Francis.

Yeah, me too.

Ellis James, stand-up comedian.

Apparently, he needs to sit down.

This is Chelsea Manning, American activist and whistleblower.

Huh.

From Wales.

Who knew?

I don't remember a girl with a whistle act.

Was she on the Ed Sullivan show?

Also, Waldo Williams.

That's a great name.

A Welsh language poet and pacifist.

I thought that was Wendy Williams' father.

Waldo's here.

And then a bunch of soccer players, as you would guess.

All right.

But point being, again, you know, we'll keep up on this story.

But yes, the West Wickerford Fabersham fucking Shamrocks have

purchased OVW and they're going to work hand in hand from across the pond from Shepherdsville Road to a field in the middle of Wales.

I can't wait till

one of them is going to run into Nikon.

I'm in the wrestling business too.

I own OVW.

All right.

This is, I said, one of those shows.

We're at a disaster area.

And as a result, I've got a lot of papers here, a lot of notes, a lot of things jotted down.

We're going to talk about some things.

The new t-shirts that we have on sale for sale.

here on the on the fine programs are are a big hit now where you can show your support for your program, Corney's Drive-Thru, or just put my face on your chest.

If you turn the shirt inside out where the design is facing inside, I will suckle you as you sleep to relax you.

And you can do those, Brian, by a number of ways, but clicking on

the YouTube videos, it's right down below there, or going to the app for the shopping, the shop app.

Shop app.

And

the other ways that you can enumerate.

That's right.

Of course, ArcadianVanguard.com is a direct link right to the store.

And the products in the store are listed on YouTube.

You can click any one of them.

It'll take you right there.

And we have t-shirts up now, more to come.

Travis Heckle artwork to come on shirts.

Again, I keep phrasing this in awful ways, but Travis Heckle artwork on shirts and much, much more to come.

Thank you to everyone who's been posting pictures of the shirts arriving.

Everyone seems really happy with them.

It's never, here's a picture of me wearing it.

It's here's a picture of the shirt next to the ripped open package.

But we appreciate it nonetheless.

Thank you.

Actually, we have gotten three or four complaints from the U.S.

Postal Service because people are taking pictures of the carrier bringing the shirt.

And

some of these people are, you know, they're on parole from various places.

They don't spread their pictures around.

So

anyway, but also, Brian, as I mentioned last week, and I'm going to talk about it again a little bit today in more detail, because the people have been demanding to know the big May mayhem sale at jimcornet.com courtesy of Cornett's Collectibles begins on Saturday, May the 3rd at noon Eastern time, which also is Derby Day.

So you can just mark it down by that.

I know everybody traditionally, the first thing they do around April time is start marking down when Derby Day is.

Well, you do that, right?

Every year, Brian.

The first Saturday in May, that's the immediate thing you think of, the Kentucky Derby.

I'd focus more on the Belmont.

Well, anyway, focus more on May 3rd at noon.

That's when this stuff goes on.

Because there's going to be something for everybody

going up at gymcornet.com.

Actually, I should rephrase that.

There's going to be stuff that everybody may be interested in, but it's not going to be for everybody because I don't have that many of each of these things.

And I will elaborate in that for the month of May's sale, Hotchkiss Featherbottom, and the rest of the Featherbottom family and I have gotten together together and consolidated two storage units into one because of the recent sales that we've had.

Thank you for your support.

And we've gone through everything.

And in addition,

I have been diving into the vault, Brian, into the finally, after long, long

fucking

procrastination.

I've finally been weeding stuff out of the vault that I've been used to either take to FanFest to sell in person or have been

meaning to list and get rid of because I've got two or three copies or whatever the case may be or the dreg because now that I got the the whangdoodle uh inventory feature the one on the website the whang doodle inventory feature that thing's a whangdoodle

uh because remember my old website I just had to kind of cut shit off when I was close because the inventory feature didn't work and I'd oversell shit.

Well, now Hotchkiss has got that shit straightened out.

So

basically, we have got a limited number of a variety of things, including some classic memorabilia going all the way back to the 50s.

There's going to be one copy in this sale of, I'm sure you have this in your library, Brian, the 1953 edition of the Wrestling Fans Book by Sid Feeder, the kind of oversized paperback.

Yeah, I got a few of those.

Got a few.

And well, thank you very much.

Well, I got one extra one and I'm going to sell it.

But it's a fascinating book.

All this information is going to be popping up on Saturday, June or May the 3rd, when the sale goes on.

But I've also got two copies of one of Bobby Heenan's books, Chair Shots, that he left here when he did an appearance.

I think it was 2004, and he had two left, and he didn't want to carry them back on the plane.

And I'm going to sell both of those and, in Bobby's honor,

send that money also to the City of Hope as we do with our

pink breast cancer pink variant.

But anyway, there's we've got down to the bottom of boxes.

I've got 10 copies of the hardcover edition of Behind the Curtain.

I've got five more copies of Tuesday Night at the Gardens that I can autograph.

We've got some old Smoky Mountain Wrestling programs.

in mint condition, bagged and boarded, but not a lot.

I think there's,

I believe, two or three of the Knight of Legends programs left.

Some of the ringside reports.

We've got some DVDs left.

If you missed out on the Knight of Legends DVD or

Smoky Mountain Wrestling, Blood Brawls and Grudges, I think we got four.

My trading cards

that I talked about, that that guy was extorting money from me or extorting autographs from me and selling them for money.

Remember, I told you,

and by the way, I sent him the letter saying, Hey, fuck you, in his self-addressed stamped envelope saying, Fuck you, you fucking asshole.

You ruined it for everybody.

Ain't signing shit anymore because you make me think you're a fucking fan that wants something signed, and you sell it on eBay for $100 and $200 a piece.

And fuck you.

And then I signed the letter.

I'm not going to sign this because you've had too many free autographs already, but you know who the fuck this is.

So what do you think about that?

All right, at Cornettes Collectibles.

Yeah, but I've got a bunch of my trading cards now, like the 2008 TNA cards.

I've got 19 of one, nine of another, six of another.

The WWF trading card, 22

of those that I'm signing personally

and can authenticate.

Don't be ripped off for hundreds of dollars on eBay or by phony stuff.

Guess what else I got?

I found a stack.

Don't quit.

now.

No, the things they do with pharmaceuticals these days are miraculous.

I found a stack of my original, not reproductions, original 1993 publicity photo, my first one from the WWF, a black and white 8 by 10 glossy as was still standard back in those days.

And it's got the WWF logo on it, and Tom Buchanan took the picture.

And

obviously, these are 32 years old and they're, I've had them in a bag.

So you don't just find these laying around anymore.

But I believe 80 something, I think is what I got.

People will have a chance to get one of those signed and personalized by me.

And some Smoky Mountains, the Smoky Mountain Wrestling event tickets.

Did I tell you about this?

Oh, what are those?

I actually didn't know anything about this.

I've got a limited number again

of Smoky Mountain Wrestling event tickets tickets because when we ordered our first tickets and we got the roll of general admission tickets, right?

And if anybody's gone to the fair, you when you see tickets coming off a roll, those were general admission tickets for the spot shows back in those days.

You just order them from a ticket company and it'd have your name of your company on it or whatever you wanted on it, and each one would be numbered.

The printer spelled Smokey wrong, S-M-O-K-E-Y, Smokey Mountain Wrestling.

And Sandy Scott comes up.

He had just gotten the tickets in the mail like the week before our first spot show.

I think it was the first,

it was either the first TV taping that we did or the first spot show.

And he said, look at this shit.

I said, God damn it.

And that's what we sold on the first event because we had the tickets and we didn't have time to get them reprinted.

And then I had the roll stuck in a box all this time.

And we got the tickets reprinted before our next show.

So you can have a unique bit of nostalgia with regular untorn Smokey Vat Wrestling general admission tickets.

Wow, that's pretty cool.

And

some other things.

And also, we've gone through the whole figure supply.

And we have, again, taken a couple of boxes that clamshells were bashed in shipping or cracked or whatever and re-shelled them.

And also, I decided, you know, me, I'm a hoarder, Brian, not even a collector.

When I got the original figure, I put two boxes in the storage.

I said, after I dies, I'll need these.

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

So we were able to, of the figures that have been sold out, come up with between 20 and 25 of a few of them.

And

they will go on sale also, included, by the way, on the announcer playset.

I'm looking at my notes.

We're down to four of them with the corner of the box crinkled.

So therefore, we're selling them for half price.

And the original Christmas variant that they didn't paint my handkerchief or

put in a tennis racket.

We're selling it.

We've got 38 of those.

We're selling for half price.

If you missed out on it from five or six years ago.

That one's a good deal because that's actually, I guess, an error.

It's a limited error.

Yes.

That's why I've redid with the current Santa Corny figures because because they fucked up the first ones and we didn't,

we sold them, people enjoyed them.

They were the first Christmas variant, but I was personally miffed.

And also, that's before that the toy company figured out that they were making enough money off of me, they could make a tennis ragon.

But as I said, those are half price.

We do have, as I said, a couple of boxes of the original

red and yellow action figure that was the one that started it all.

And

i think the raw variant and the bloody variant are 20 something those are regular price because they're brand new but there's also

four or five bloody variants that the factory left out the tennis racket tray so we're selling those at ten dollars off

so basically it's corny's vault sale One of a kind, limited number vintage items.

We're going to have some older

60s and 70s wrestling magazines also on there and maybe some other things if we get time.

But it's going to be cool for you classic wrestling collectors Saturday, May 3rd

at noon Eastern time.

And like you said, some stuff going back to the 50s, not everything involving you, just some things you actually collected that you weren't necessarily a part of.

Yes, because, you know, not everything has to be about me.

Just most things.

Well, this is your show.

I'll step back every once in a while.

It is my show.

Anyway, what have we talked about?

So

do you even, I'm just going to, I don't even know if this is worthy of spending any time on, but I also saw the Linda McMahon clip.

Did you see that where she called?

Remember, I said AI when I first saw, started seeing it, I thought, who's this owl guy?

Well, apparently, even I am smarter than the Secretary of the Department of Education because she just did an interview on a political show, not a fucking wrestling site.

And she's sitting on a couch with these other people that stared at her like she had steaming turds hanging out of her mouth.

She didn't call it AI, she called it A1.

Oh, they have this A1.

Have you seen her lately?

I have.

It looks like she's going to the same plastic surgeon that fucked up Vince's face.

The state of that, no,

it's worse.

She looked

she she's had so many facelifts she ought to have nipples on her chin but she was speaking like the elephant woman and the secretary of education her face is stretched so

i don't know if it's too tight or sideways

because it's something's happening there but and her makeup was done by a mortician she wanted all the facelifts because it would help her keep her eyes open all the time to see where vince is

But anyway.

How do you not know AI?

I mean, forget about the fact that she is in the position she ridiculously bought herself into.

Forget about that.

Forget about the fact she was an executive for many years, but that's a while ago.

Everything happening in the newspaper, on the news,

doesn't matter what you believe.

Doesn't matter what side you're on on anything.

Everyone's talking about AI.

Every business leader, everyone.

How do you think it's A1?

It's not a matter of whether you agree with it or not.

It's how to pronounce the fucking word, the name, the it's it, I even know that.

I've heard so many people talking about this fucking shit

that I jokingly sometimes refer to it as our friend Al, but it, yes, it's AI, not A1, the steak sauce.

That's a big.

How the fuck do you mess that up?

How old is Linda now?

And I'm not talking about she's old and out of touch.

I'm talking about,

is there some decline here, like there is with all the rest of her contemporaries in her social circle?

76.

Trombones

led the United States.

110 more points dropped the Dow.

Maybe she had steak for lunch.

And she was thinking of the steak sauce.

Well, if that's the case, then she would have been more in favor of it than she was.

She wanted wanted the kids in schools to have it.

A1.

What a ding bat.

All righty.

But anyway, I've got, hold on.

Oh, also, I saw this.

We want to send out our best to one of the cult of cornet listeners.

It's a small town, so in case she might be the victim of harassment from some

type of unsavory gangs, maybe the Van Buren boys or something up there, but she's from Chillicothe, Ohio, and her name is Hope.

And

we just wanted to say thank you for thanking us because she said, I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you.

After years of hard work, long nights, and plenty of stress, I'm finally graduating.

And through all of it, your podcast has been a constant source of laughter and entertainment that kept me moving forward.

No matter how overwhelming school or life got, I could always count on your wit, humor, and storytelling to brighten my day.

Whether it was a deep dive into wrestling history or a hilarious rant, your show made even the toughest days easier.

So, while you may not have been in the classroom with me, you were definitely part of the journey.

I just wanted to share my appreciation and let you know that your work makes a difference even to a stressed-out student finally crossing the finish line.

P.S., can you sign the enclosed 18 trading cards oh no no no hey

no i've said no really really

but no there was nothing there was no request of anything just a sentimental

let me take you on a sentimental journey just a sentimental letter from hope here from chillicothe ohio that's right up right up a little farther north of here

and i wanted to say congratulate brian congratulate that she

achieved her dream and her goals and has graduated.

I don't know.

There's something suspicious about this whole thing.

Chillicothe.

You're going to find out this is like Bobby Fulton, like emailing under the false name.

No, Bobby Fulton isn't going to email me under a fudge.

Just Bobby Fulton happens to be the most famous resident of Chillicothe, Ohio.

That doesn't mean that he's the only one.

They've got almost as many people up there in Chillicothe now as they do over in Faversham.

What did Hope graduate from?

High school or college?

Well, she didn't say she was a stressed-out student who graduated.

I don't.

What are you, you need to goddamn?

She didn't include a photocopy of her driver's license either or the diploma, but I have no reason to doubt the

veracity of her claims.

Congratulations, Hope.

School sucks.

Move on with your life.

All right.

Well, we can cross that off our list.

Did you see the dark side of the ring this past week?

I once again lit up the

small screen the way I do the silver screen with my witty and incisive commentary.

But this week, Dark Side of the Ring was on

the entire career, not just my involvement in it, the man they call Vader.

Are you up on Dark Side?

I did see the episode, yes.

And I thought they, again, they did a

good job in this this one because,

you know, between myself, JR, Mick, Nick Patrick, but also his family, his son, Jesse, and his ex-wife, his friend Dave.

Dave's not here, man.

Stan Hansen, Jerry Briscoe.

The budget must be increasing for the talking head.

I wonder if I need to ask for a raise.

You should tell them to make it dark side of the ring starring Jim Cornette.

Oh, come on now.

That's what I would do if I was negotiating negotiating for you.

I'm not, well, I know, but I'm not trying to hog the spotlight again.

The magnitude of me, sometimes I need to pull back to give others the spotlight.

For heaven's sake, I'm, you know,

I'm nearing the sunset of my years.

I want to fade off slowly

down winter highway in the summertime.

Anyway, we came back to Dark Side of the Ring on Vice TV.

And Mick Foley, again, very articulate.

Is it somehow, has brain damage helped his goddamn verbal ability?

He always comes up with a profound thing to say or a very articulate or insightful comment or whatever.

I'm thinking maybe more of us ought to get whacked over the head with a chair every

couple of days for a few years.

You want to go first, Brian?

No, and maybe it's just a work.

Maybe he's perfectly fine, but he knows that if he keeps telling people he has brain damage, they'll be so surprised when he spits out a sentence.

Because every time I see him, he seems like he's perfectly fine.

Yes.

I mean, I wish

if I had fucking

wrestling schools full of people who could talk like that, you know, it would be right as rain.

Anyway,

you know, it occurred to me that when they went into some of Leon's childhood, which I was not aware of of the exact nature of the rotten neighborhood he grew up in or some of the stories that his family told.

But when they went into that, he kind of found sports, you know, as a way, as many people do, to focus himself.

And he played football and he was,

you know, pretty good in college, but then he was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams, but injuries at that point, which

would play a part with him on and off, you know, because of his size all his life.

But he was drafted by the Rams, but never actually got to play with them.

He was drafted, as the graphic said, in 1978.

But then

they had him from previous footage that he'd recorded before he passed.

telling a story about how he barged into the locker room in Denver.

He's from Colorado and told Bruiser Brody that he was there to find a job

and trained in the AWA, which he did.

I had not heard that, had you heard the Brody story about, because I hadn't heard it.

I had not heard that before, no.

But it makes sense that Brody was working for Vern at that point in time.

You can imagine Leon White,

he said he got all dressed up, right?

He needs a job.

He sees wrestling on TV.

I can see him.

going down there and being somebody in the community.

I can see him somewhere or another bluffing his way in the locker room.

And I can see Bruiser Brody standing up and saying, who the fuck are you?

I just had never heard that story, but he wanted a job.

And however, he went down there, he made a connection.

Vern did break him in.

Who trained him?

They didn't actually say in this thing, who trained him?

Well, see, that's the thing is, I don't know specifically, but in that era, I would imagine that Brad Reynolds may have had something to do with it in the mid-80s.

Because they mentioned that Brody, you know, had that conversation quickly in the locker room, which I'd never heard before.

And then the next thing in the show is him and Brody wrestling in the ring.

Like that was how he was taught, which clearly was not.

Well, yeah, this was a gloss over because we got to get to, you know, the rest of his life.

But that's another thing: his family didn't provide any perspective on

he would have talked to Brody in the AWA and barged in or whatever

somewhere around 84-ish because he was already in the ring by 85 and they would have given him some level of training.

And that's why I'm thinking, as I recall, probably Greg Gagne,

you know, had something to do with it, but I think Ringens was starting to,

at that time, work with the camp guys that they might have as Vern's camps were slowing down.

Point being, what did he do between being drafted but not played in 1978 and 1984?

He was kind of floating.

And see, that's something else we've talked about before: is Leon started late.

I mean, he picked things up quick, but

for the sake of his athletic prime, he started late when he was already somewhere around 30.

I can't remember the exact age.

But then you see him working with Hanson and Brody and the stiff shit.

And,

you know, we've talked about this also: that

Leon baby bull white,

any bull power for Otto Vons

in

Germany, Austria, was not exactly a Bafo gimmick.

And he was green as a pepper tree starting from scratch.

But when they gave him the Vader gimmick in Japan,

and at the, you know, for a first

however long, all he had to do was steamroll people, he got in the ring with world-class talent and picked it up and how to work as himself and the basic concept of,

you know, try not to kill people and make it look good

very quickly.

But at that point,

when they get into the

Japanese stuff,

I'm glad they had Hansen there for the eyeball thing.

That was just grotesque.

But you,

you can literally see Leon with his fucking fingers kind of pushing it back in and closing his shit over the top of it.

That was just nasty.

But Stay, you know, Stan Hansen is as blind as a bat.

He's so nearsighted.

The glasses are not a gimmick.

They didn't even bring up the fact that was a big inter-promotional match.

It was a dream match.

It was New Japan versus all Japan.

I don't know that the Vice TV audience on Tuesday night was.

I have to say, I was so disappointed with this.

There was some good stuff in it, but it wasn't like I really liked the first episode.

They glossed past stuff they introduced things the timeline was just completely out of whack you know at one point it went the very end it was just like all of a sudden we went from here to he's dead yeah

i mean they left that a ton of just a tour

well they only had 45 minutes but yeah we're we're gonna to the because they made a couple more leaps here

I mean, Mick Foley's saying that the whole thing with him and Vader elevated WCW.

It didn't do anything for WCW.

WCW was dead.

It Mick Foley's career.

It got more, it got that got more attention on Mick Foley and Cactus Jack in 93

than anything else had up to that point.

Yeah, even and the reason why that it got the attention to him was because they edited it.

Remember

when he agreed to have Vader hard wave and came up with the idea and wanted him to and had him hard wave and they showed one eye punch on this uh on the highlights here

but

WCW, they ordered the cameras to pull back and they edited some of the shit because they thought it was too violent.

So he got beat up and most of it didn't make air.

But because of the cacophony from at the time, the emerging smart fan base and people who heard about it, that got more talk about Mick maybe than having seen it.

Go ahead.

No, but also I think another thing that it's kind of important, especially with the narrative they tried to weave here, you know, Vader lost the fight to Paul Orndorff and his wife said that was kind of the beginning of the end.

Yeah.

Nothing went right in WWE.

He went to UWFI.

Remember, they brought him in to be the guy to help get Takata over.

Not that Takata wasn't already over, but that's a pretty big thing.

It was the credibility of Vader being a badass that he could fit in with those guys over in UWFI

and that's what they were looking for.

But that was all around that same period of time too.

And the Hogan stuff.

They pointed at the Hogan stuff.

If you remember the Baltimore pay-per-view, fans brought a giant sign that they hung from the top that said, shoot, Vader, shoot.

Like they want, the fans wanted it.

They made it sound like, oh, it was kind of an impasse because Hogan worked soft and Vader was big and bad.

The fans really wanted something to happen, a lot of WCW fans at that point.

Oh, yeah, because they were already sick of Hulk to begin with at that point.

But now, the one thing, though, I agree with you.

The UWFI was a big deal, but what his wife said was that was really the start

the decline, not maybe necessarily financially in his career at that point, but him starting to make bad decisions.

That that was the start of that.

And

I think that you know that you can probably say it was right because everything had gone,

you know,

great for Vader around the world until that point.

And then he's out of

WCW.

And

oh, and after the Joe Thurman, they had Joe Thurman.

Yeah, I've never seen him interviewed.

I couldn't believe what he looked like now.

And well, he looks, he looks better now than he did then.

I didn't even think it was the same guy.

Yeah, a good back breaking is good for you, I guess, 20 years later.

But, you know,

I'm trying

knowing Leon, right?

But also, I'm trying to listen to Joe Thurman's description of what happened.

Would he say, you know, can you take the power bomb?

Yeah, yeah, okay, see out there.

I can see that.

And it was a handicap match, and it was Vader.

It's not like they're going to set up any spots ahead of time.

And Thurman said, as soon as they got in the ring, he said, they're playing into the story that Leon became Vader, which we've talked about and got his head mad.

Sometimes he couldn't turn it off right away.

But Thurman Thurman said in the ring, it changed.

As soon as he picked him up, he was like, Come here, you little son of a bitch, you're gonna go up for this, or whatever.

He said,

From the just the highlights that they showed,

it looks like that maybe

Joe Thurman, when he, when Leon first

did whatever he did, I think that he reached out in one of those bear paws to the head.

Thurman kind of delayed and kind of staggered, like he didn't go down on something or the chest bump or whatever, because I think he was

probably like, what the fuck was that?

I don't know what to do.

And then Leon hammered him.

And I'm thinking it was, could Leon have been mad because he didn't take a bump?

But I don't, they didn't show the whole match in unedited, but I could only see

in that situation, Leon.

Just out of nowhere saying, you're going to go up for this, you little son of a bitch, or you sack of shit whatever if something previously had been like what the does this guy have any idea what he's doing

but nevertheless on the power bomb

it looked to me like he threw him more out of disgust like here this is over with

than he did trying to

throw him down with any force.

But

when he did that, he over-rotated him and the guy's fucking knees came up over his shoulders.

So it's no wonder he broke his back.

But

Jesus Christ.

And it looked, but now when they, when that, and I was about to say one more thing,

they said Leon in the locker room afterwards, and I fully believe this, because, and Mick said it, he wouldn't lie.

was upset and distraught and et cetera.

I believe that.

But Thurman said, as soon as he looked, Vader looked down at him.

You could see that he was upset or he was distraught or whatever.

No, the footage they showed of the actual incident, as soon as Leon got up, he looked down at him like, you stupid motherfucker.

So I think it was, he thought that he had just

powerbombed the guy and covered him and the guy couldn't work or whatever.

And he thought he was a piece of shit.

And then when he realized, or somebody told him, well, yeah, he's fucked up.

Then he legitimately did get

you know concerned but he didn't know right away that's the point i was going to make what'd you think about what they said about his reaction afterwards where he went to joe thurman in the hospital and he was crying about it and his wife talked about how emotional he could be at times did you ever see that side of him yes yes see that's why i'm saying i believe all of that

because

It just wouldn't have happened in the ring.

It would have been when he got back and saw something was wrong and people were upset.

And then it would go the complete other way.

Remember,

the guy who works himself up to go and be Vader and his son referenced it that time in,

I think it was Tulsa when he pulled Michaels' hair too hard and

fucking Michaels fired up some kind of comeback and Leon took a bump, rolled out of the ring

and he had tears in his eyes because he's...

He just said, if I pull his hair like that one more time, it'll be my job.

And

then, you know, again, he could be pissed off about something, but he would see a kid in a wheelchair over in the corner and he'd be over there with tears puddling up in his eyes.

He was just back and forth, boom, boom, which was,

you know, that at

points,

he had admitted that it was hard for him to turn off Vader.

And his wife, apparently, at one point, was scared to leave him because she thought he might kill her.

But then otherwise, yes, he would get all, or he'd get, he'd get meaningful.

Like he'd have a sit down.

But Mr.

McMahon, it would be so much more beneficial to the athletes if we could have a full set of barbells on the ring truck or whatever.

I mean, he would go and make pitches like that.

Like

it, remember when he first started cussing out the

commentator, the announcer, the TV host in Saudi Arabia?

Right before he started snatching me, he said, frankly, I'm insulted by your insinuation.

He would start out like that and suddenly he'd snatch a motherfucker.

You know,

his emotions were back and forth.

The Sean Michaels stuff here was really interesting.

Obviously, we got to see you the most fired up you've been in several seasons on this show.

But, you know, that's what led to Sid getting his run,

leading to the Alamo dome, was the fact that Sean didn't want to work with Vader, wouldn't.

And, you know, his wife said Sean was Vince's boy.

And Vader would never be anyone's boy.

And again, I think the more you look at that period period of time and the strange control that Shawn Michaels had over Vince, considering he wasn't doing good business, there's still a lot of questions that need to be answered about why

was so much allowed from Sean Michaels.

I've never under it.

Buddy Rogers drew money.

You know, Buddy Rogers is a paint, but Buddy Rogers drew money.

Shawn Michaels didn't.

And

I've said before a million times, I've never seen the, and not only Michaels, but circle, whatever his circle was around him, the level of put-uppedness with stuff from anybody.

But, and there's something,

Vince saw something about himself

in Sean, some of the boyhood dream that you could see the gleam in his eye.

But a lot of people think that Vince saw a lot of himself in Sean Michaels.

Well, you know what I mean.

But nevertheless, but the point is that did sabotage Vader's run because, and I've mentioned this, and it wasn't like that Vince told me this because I was talent involved in the match, and they always tell talent bullshit.

I was on the creative team.

These were in the creative media.

We were planning the

structure of the pay-per-views and the schedule for the company for the next six months.

And originally, SummerSlam 96,

it would be

Michaels and Vader as it was in Cleveland, I believe we were.

And

the reason they did the, Brian, I can't put one foot in front of another without seeing it in front of me, but they did two false finishes and two restarts, as I think you'll remember.

And then finally, Michaels got a quick one, as Vince used to say.

But there was room, but there was controversy.

There was room for rematches.

Originally, again,

before that match even came up, Vader was probably going to go over a bit stronger,

or we were going to

throw it out at SummerSlam, is what I'm trying to say,

with some kind of disputed finish that nobody would get pinned.

Then Vader was going to win the title from Michaels at the Royal, or that Royal Rumble, the Survivor Series in November.

And that would culminate in January, as everybody recalls, which was in San Antonio, Texas at the Alamo Dome.

And they didn't do stadiums back then.

But Vince wanted to,

with a cheap general admission ticket in Shawn Michaels' hometown,

draw 50,000 people or whatever it was to see Michaels beat Vader and win the title back.

That was the three-pay-per-view program that he he wanted to do before the whole thing got started.

And by the time that,

again, they did house show matches beforehand in those days between guys.

So by the time during July or early August, whatever it was, that

Leon had worked with Michaels in the house shows,

they changed the SummerSlam finish to instead of just being thrown out.

in all the confusion, they threw it out twice and then had a quick one.

So Michaels at least left with a win.

And then by

shortly after that, Vader was X Nade out of

Survivor Series and Royal Rumble.

And if you remember,

the Survivor Series crowd in New York turned on Shawn Michaels.

They made Sid the big baby face that night.

It was a really interesting dynamic.

And again, Sean Michaels kind of got away with everything.

And for anyone who's new to the show, Jim did a watch-along of that match, Sean versus Vader at SummerSlam, and that's on the YouTube channel.

Yes, and that's why I was so pissed off

because I could understand Michael's being a prick was not news at that point, right?

Was not,

you know, just goddamn, oh, my God, this is unheard of.

But actually in the middle of a fucking main event world title match on pay-per-view and in front of whatever was 18,000 or 20,000 people in Cleveland to just stop and go, move.

I said move.

You dumb motherfucker.

And just, ah, I couldn't believe it.

Not even, he could have grabbed a chin lock on him and whispered in his ear, I hate you and I'm going to get you fired, but don't scream it in front of the people.

But anyway, nevertheless,

Vince lost interest.

We've covered these things about his WWF stay.

And as Jim Ross said,

Leon also was high maintenance.

You couldn't get him happy or healthy both at the same time.

Hey, Jim Ross said something here about the Duke Weight Loss Clinic.

I know you've always talked about it in the past with Yokozuna.

I didn't realize Yokozuna went there with Vader.

Can I be honest with you?

Yeah.

As Ernie Ladd said to me one time when he was courting us for Vince McMahon in 1986, have I ever lied to you?

I'm not trying to cast aspersions on JR's veracity, but his memory at this point in time of events from 30 years ago may be conflated because no, they didn't go at the same time.

But Yoko went.

He went and he's the one that had the Underground Railroad for Fried Chicken going on.

Leon,

I don't believe actually got sent to Duke.

It was discussed because

it had happened with Yokozuda before.

But Leon is the one who JR on Vince's behest had to negotiate a weight clause into his contract because he got,

I'm going to say up to 440.

And it just, it, you know, that was too much, especially at his age.

So, and there was much consternation.

Leon was very insulted that, you know, but he had played in the nfl

and it wasn't like that you know should have been a big shock but nevertheless that's

but jr remembers them hanging out in bunk beds boy can you see the size of those bunk beds over at duke losing weight and eating chicken

uh

but anyway

so that

I think Mick Foley, again, he put it best with Leon's run in the WWF, he was browbeaten until he lost his mojo.

And I think that's kind of, you know, the thing, unfortunately.

And then, you know, his wife said he, you know, he had a pain pill issue.

His son had gone to college and his wife had left him.

So he's drinking and sleeping for days at a time.

And I guess that was probably

out of Brian, you kept up with that stuff at that point in time

better than I did.

But when he went into the diabetic coma in Japan, was that potentially the end of his Japanese deal?

They generally didn't like boys going into comas over there.

You see, that's the thing I actually have to go back and look at.

It definitely wasn't.

I mean, I got to see the timeline because it went from, he left WWF to he goes into the coma to he's dead.

There's a lot of time.

He returned to Raw, made a few guest appearances.

They didn't always turn out well.

I remember when he tripped, and I think it was because of his weight, maybe.

Yeah.

But he made it.

But also, yeah, yeah there was like 15 years 18 years or whatever i mean i saw him wrestle will osprey yes so i mean it's not like you know he just left wwf and got sick and died i don't know about how many japan tours he did after the fact i mean it didn't stop japan from bringing terry gordy over it may have stopped baba but it didn't stop him from going to japan I'm thinking that, and again, you know, it's just going off of memory, that Leon was away from the wrestling business for quite a while.

The early 2000s, I think, would have wrapped up anything he did in Japan except maybe, you know, an appearance, but not any type of regular wrestling.

And I remember because he talked about it when I managed him, he had an interest

in some type of real estate, whether it was a strip mall or commercial property, whatever in Colorado and managed that.

But then suddenly, what, mid-20 teens, he started popping up doing fanfests and conventions again.

He hadn't been around in a while.

And that's why I saw him in Lexington at LexCon one year.

And he did the thing with Osprey.

He, for

a little while there, he did some more matches.

And then he announced

that the doctors had given him two years to live with congestive heart failure.

But yeah, that's this episode went from the early 2000s to, well, I've announced I've got two years to live.

There's 15 years in between.

So,

and then as I recall, after he had his

quadruple bypass and the initial heart issues, he was still able, was he not, to do

some limited autograph sessions or whatever.

And then,

you know, he

obviously caught sick and they said pneumonia and went into a coma and passed away in the hospital.

What was it like when you ran into him?

What was his reaction?

Because obviously you managed him and you hadn't seen him in many years.

You know, was he warm and everything?

Yeah, well, was he warm?

No,

we went for the classic wrestler handshake and the hug at the same time with the left arm.

Yes, we did that.

And his booth was next to mine and they had given him one of the FanFest helpers, but I tried to clue him in on what some of the shortcuts were around the area.

And, you know, we chatted back and forth when we weren't busy, but no, there was no issue or anything like that.

But I think that's another thing when he told me what he'd been doing.

He made it sound more interesting maybe than it sounded like from this

show.

But

yeah, you know, that's the thing.

But I will say that it seemed like that he didn't understand

the

FanFest circuit or the independent circuit that he was still trying to hold everybody to the state.

Well,

you know, it's like the NFL players, they would do this for them.

Yeah,

this ain't that.

Well, anyway, Dark Side of the Ring, Vader.

And of course,

next week is the Tony Atlas episode.

Yes, Mr.

USA Tony atlas and i i don't

i don't i want you to watch it tuesday nights at 10 o'clock folks uh eastern time on vice tv i don't think i'm on this one i'm not sure i can't remember we talk about so many things

but uh

one way or another it's going to be a good program even if if i'm not on it it just won't be i mean it just won't be the mechanics it just won't be one of the more popular episodes because you've been on every episode this season and everyone thinks of you They should really make it dark side of the ring starring Jim Cornette.

What about dark side of Jim Cornette starring the ring?

Oh, I don't know if you're prepared for that.

Well,

but anyway, nevertheless, folks, and Brian, you'll agree.

We've just talked about Vaders.

You'll agree with this.

You know, being in the hospital is no fun under any circumstances.

But one of the biggest problems when you're in the hospital and you're hooked up to a machine and you're waiting to see if Aunt Fanny or Cousin Junior is going to come in to pull the plug.

It's really adding insult to injury when you're laying on one of those hospital mattresses, isn't it?

I mean, you know, those men, it's like a bean bag.

And they're little teeny tiny, they're so wide you can't turn over,

and they're so thin that you can feel every bone of yours grinding on whatever's underneath that, which seems like a pointed skeletal frame of pure steel, iodized even.

And

if you try to sit up and get off of it, the bed sores, you're going to attach yourself to that kind of plastic covering and it's going to take a layer of skin off.

And then you have the bed sores that look like that you've been eaten by piranhas.

But yeah, the hospital bed mattresses are, they're so wide you can't get around them, so low you can't get under them, and so high you can't get over them.

You just don't want to be anywhere near them.

Again, I don't know what the hell you're talking about or where you're going with all this, but we do know some people that instead of whatever mattresses you're talking about, make the finest mattresses that can be delivered directly to you at home.

We're talking about our friends at Helix Sleep.

Yes, or as a matter of fact, if you know you're going to be in the hospital for an extended length of time, I bet if you went ahead and just put that address in and just put the room number, they'd send your Helix mattress right to the hospital.

It doesn't work like that.

Let's

do delivery.

You could put a couple of those slings around Granny, one around her feet, one up under her arms, and just lift her up and slide the one mattress out, throw it out the window, put the helix down,

and then just get the old folks mattress.

Folks, helix mattresses are for everybody.

They got mattresses for people that like firm ones, people that like soft ones.

They got mattresses that cool you down, that heat you up, that help with the snoring or the back pain or the sleep apnea.

They got kids' mattresses.

They've even got old folks mattresses that whenever Aunt Fanny or maybe Granny Ethel goes ahead and just loses control in the middle of the night and waters the plants in her sleep, while it'll suck it right up and shoot it right out into a tube underneath the bed, right out into the street.

That's something that you can take comfort in in your later years.

But folks, no matter what it is, helixleep.com has a mattress for you.

So again, if you're, let's say, for example,

you've tried to jump the fountain at caesar's palace on a motorcycle and you've fractured your pelvis in 19 places you're going to want a nice comfortable mattress brian right i think what do you identify with that i think you would want a nice comfortable mattress like the ones they have at helix sleep yes well you just get at helixleep.com and you take a little quiz about how you like to sleep and and the the side, the position on your side, on your back or whatever whether your pelvis is broken or not they may ask you to send a few photographs of your pelvis unclothed of course because they want to make sure the measurement no they don't do that they don't ask for that all you have to do is go to helix sleep.com of course promo code jce and get the sleep survey figure out exactly the kind of mattress that is right for you something that you will love and want and that's all you have to do that's the helix way

and then it's delivered to your door and then your pelvis will thank you because you can just open that box, put it in the place it needs to be, unwrap the plastic wrapping, and

it breathes to life.

And then you're sleeping not with the fishes, but with the angels.

Your birds are chirping.

Your sun is shining.

As a matter of fact, it's going to be so bright for you on a helix mattress.

You're going to have to wear those sleep blinders in the middle of the night just to dull down the sunshine that's beaming down upon you.

And if you go to helixleep.com/slash JCE,

you're going to get 20% off and two free dream pillows with the mattress purchase, 20% off.

And that's anything.

Get five or six mattresses.

Hand some out down the street.

You'll get 20% off everything.

So that'll add up to a substantial saving.

Buy some mattresses for the future.

These things only last 15, 20 years, so stock up.

20% off side-wide, two free dream pillows with a purchase of a mattress at helixleep.com slash JCE.

That's right.

Our friends at Helix Sleep, they are there.

They support us.

Support them, helixleep.com slash JCE.

I see what you did there.

Support.

You see?

Because of the excellent support that Helix mattresses give your back or your ribs or your genitals or whatever you need a lift in in the course of the night.

Let's end on a good note.

Yes, they are there to support you, Helix Sleep.

Jim, on the topic of support.

Yes.

Can we talk before?

I know we got Dynamite coming up.

Can we talk about the star ratings?

We just reviewed AEW Dynasty from Philadelphia.

It's fresh on my mind still.

And I just got this morning's Wrestling Observer newsletter.

I made sure.

Now you want to see, after we've said what we said, you want to see if Uncle Dave agrees with us now at this point.

You got to figure at some point there'll be a meeting in the middle, as opposed to him being on a scale that ends in infinity, which is it keeps going out there into the distance.

Maybe that explains

I think, I think Dave is an AEW supporter, and that's another word for a jock strap.

And I think that's what the service that he's performing here.

Well, of course, AEW Dynasty Jim, you did not watch much of the pre-show from what I remember.

Nick Wayne, Action Engine Ready, and Leo Rush defeated Dante and Darius Martin, known as Top Flight, and A.R.

Fox,

11 minutes, 17 seconds, four and a quarter stars.

Now, for the record, you didn't see it.

It was an exciting match, and Layla Gray looked amazing at ringside.

I'm sure she did.

That's a star right there.

How does this get a fucking higher rating than Gone with the Wind in the fucking official movie rating book?

Right.

What?

Again,

this used to be flare and steamboat numbers.

This was reserved for the

piece de resistance

instead of the piece de pie face of the.

Okay.

Yeah, the pre-show match was

Kurt Angle-like in its intensity.

Well, again, for the record, you didn't see it.

Match two, Anthony Bowens defeated Max Caster 40 seconds.

No star rating given.

Well, now, why leave them out?

Did it accomplish what it was supposed to accomplish?

It's not about the star rating is not

graded with or concurrent on or whatever, dependent on the time of the match.

You can have a stinker that goes 45 minutes or a fucking barn burner that goes six.

So, what of the presentation

that they were supposed to do there?

How was it?

See, he's slacking in his goddamn duties.

Well, we go now to the main card.

Will Osprey defeated Kevin Knight, 13 minutes, 50 seconds, four and a half stars.

Again, the way you can look at this is we're entering like Undertaker and Sean Michaels' level of match rating, but at the same time, you can also say that Will Osprey, their top baby face against one of their new new baby faces for little or any good purpose, was only a quarter of a star better than the fucking eight-man scrambled eggs pre-show match, which makes better sense.

You know, every show for Dave is like a male dream slam.

Remember when all Japan women had like a six-hour show, every match was five stars?

Every AEW show was like his dream slam.

Actually, thankfully, Brian, I don't remember that.

And my life is better for it.

Well, Jim, the next match, Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin, the Hurts Syndicate, defeated Big Bill and Brian Keith 10 minutes, 28 seconds,

two and a half stars.

He must be, Dave must be moonlighting as the president of the Brian Keith fan club.

He didn't like that one.

You know what he wrote here at the end?

He, you know, he describes a little bit about what happened when MJF getting involved.

It was fine.

All right.

That's a

new one.

Mercedes Monet defeated Julia Hart, 12 minutes, 55 seconds.

Once again, two and a half stars.

Okay, now, obviously, we said that the Hurt Syndicate match was a TV match with a TV angle at the end,

but nobody, you know, like took a shit and wiped their face in it in the middle of the ring, but it was the same as the awkward ladies match that followed that.

Because I guess two and a half, is that now his his dud?

Can you get lower than two and a half unless you wipe the feces on your face?

Well, we shall find out.

Jim, speaking of feces, there's old Feces' face.

Wheeler Yuda,

Pack, there he is, and Claudio Castignoli defeated FTR and Adam Copeland 14 minutes, 53 seconds,

four and a half stars.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

What did he give?

Was it five stars or was it four and three quarter perhaps that he gave FTR and Juice and old light switch Jay White a couple of years ago that had the greatest tag team match of modern times?

It was at least five stars.

It may have actually gone past it, but I don't know.

I don't know, but it

it was it wasn't this, dog.

Isn't that what they say?

It wasn't this, dog.

Well, you know, and it says 14 14 minutes, 53 seconds, maybe that's what he did because the match felt like it was double the length.

He doubled the star rating.

It was two stars, it became four and a half.

They started, they had sex and procreated.

The stars did during the length of this contest.

Jim, Timeless Tony Storm defeated Megan Bain 15 minutes, 24 seconds, four-star match.

Okay,

again,

even if

you like all of the participants and you like everything in the world, and potentially you're on some form of liquid ecstasy, I don't know.

This is the same guy that would award

an all-time classic four stars in his previous life before he lost his mind.

But now suddenly this has morphed into, well, they get four stars because it can be more stars.

He established something, but now he's so afraid of hurting these people's feelings that he just starts making up that more stars is fine.

And they feel good because they got four stars from the teacher.

Well, Jim, the next match, Kyle Fletcher defeated Mark Briscoe 16 minutes, 11 seconds.

I thought you were going to say 16 stars.

Four and three-quarter stars.

Okay, what was the girls' match a second ago?

Four stars.

Okay,

so again, you're saying that I agree with you.

Kyle and Briscoe was much, much better,

much better than Storm and

Drung or whatever the fuck.

But

it has to still be in the four-star range.

It's just now levels of excellence that he bestows upon them.

You know, I almost wonder what you said before: is two and a half dud

is four

like the baseline, and anything under four is negative stars.

Like, is two and a half stars now, Dave's negative two stars 15 years ago.

I don't, wait a minute.

That's what he's doing, Brian.

You figured it out accidentally.

He's on the on the Celsius.

He's on a Celsius star rating.

Maybe, maybe so.

See, you got to translate it to the Fahrenheit.

Well, Jim, for the Ring of Honor title, Bandito

defeated Chris Jericho, the Frito Bandito.

It's 16 minutes, 22 seconds.

Good lord.

Three and a quarter stars.

I don't know.

Maybe that's the new dud.

I don't, I,

you know, he'll, he'll, he'll, he'll, he'll kind of halfway be honest about

Jericho's desiccated

corpse and

give him only three and a half, which, you know, is kind of still a kind of backhanded slap.

Well, Jim, in 15 minutes and 34 seconds of a no time limit, everyone barred from ringside match, or as we used to call it, a match.

Adam Cole won the TNT title from Daniel Garcia.

Three and a quarter stars.

Ooh.

So again, there, he's having to begrudgingly admit

that

it ain't happening here.

See, now

he's establishing a pattern.

These are the people that only are

above average should feel slighted.

Kenny Omega

defeated Ricochet and speedball Mike Bailey 30 minutes, 56 seconds.

Jesus Christ.

Four and three-quarter stars.

And actually, on this topic, I have not heard this, but I see Melton.

Well, and by the way, hold on a second now.

I really think that that should be a different score, Brian, because

in that match in particular with those participants, They should have scored this under the Olympic method

with, you know, the 9.0 and a 9.1 and 9.2

and give it a perfect 10.

Or maybe he wants to back off and just make it a 9.8

so nobody will accuse him of favoritism.

But still, it shouldn't be just a standard four and three quarters like the mere mortals that aren't stars of their own video game.

Well, I was going to say before, the Meltzer said what account, Jim, tweeted out a couple of things.

One of them, apparently, are some of the guys who go to Dave's pay-per-view parties at his house saying that he got mad when they were laughing at some of the silly stuff in the match.

Oh, good God.

Because he was taking it very seriously.

But here's some audio.

Let's see what this is.

I have not heard this.

Tweeted out by Meltzer.

Said what?

Here's what he wrote: Jesus Christ.

Meltzer has now proclaimed the AEW Dynasty triple threat match with Kenny Ricochet and Speedboat as one of the greatest three ways in the history of wrestling.

North Korean propaganda has nothing on Uncle Dave.

Let's hear what

We just had a pay-per-view on

Sunday night.

And usually you hype like this pay-per-view was great by the replay.

I mean, they may have mentioned that, but I do not recall anything that got me to where, like, oh man, I need to see this replay.

And

like.

And he clearly loved the entire fucking thing.

So that says something.

But besides that, he's already fucking seen it.

why does he have seen the replay is the replay more for people who have already seen it or for people that missed it i would think it's for people that missed it oh you missed it well now you can get it

instead of oh you've already seen it well watch it again what to pay for it again

is that a large segment of the audience i'm not sure let's go back to this audio here

Focused on, because there was like strong stuff.

I mean, there's the hit, you know, the significance of the finish of the main event, you know, with the Young Bucks return and all that.

The three-way was, you know, one of the better three-way matches in the history of wrestling.

It was fantastic.

Let's stop there for a second.

We watched it.

It went a while.

Again, there was some stuff that looked ridiculous in it.

You promoted some of the first three-way matches in this country.

We've seen good ones and bad ones.

Was that one of the best ever?

No, of course not.

Because, and again, I'm not going to say, oh, and mine were, you know, when the dirty white boy wrestled Trey.

No, but when you think about,

to be honest, before they were again prostituted out and worn down and made just blase

and everyday,

some of the three ways that went on on those WWF pay-per-views in the late 90s, Taker and Michaels and whoever the fuck else, I would go for that, or I'd go for some of the modern TNA stuff or whatever if people,

you know, had that in their mind.

But

all of those incidents,

you had stars involved.

This is,

again, because Dave has gone out of his mind to fetishize these, fetishize

these

gymnasts and the cheerleading alley-oop routines, and the, oh my gosh, and ignore the fact that most of this stuff, again, looks phony as fuck.

There's no good reason to be doing it.

There's no good reason to have the match.

There's no story.

There's no angle.

There's no seeking retribution or triumph or whatever.

It's just, oh, gosh, here's a bunch of fucking guys that do spots.

that are going to get together and vault with each other.

And that in Dave's mind is

at the same time, he'll say, but you need story in wrestling.

And he's looking at the other company making a bloody fucking fortune, going in exactly the opposite direction and doing as little as possible.

And he still can't get it.

Not everybody is sitting there beating off on the fucking three cart wheels into a goddamn Hava Corona over the fucking top rope.

And people are getting hurt on simpler shit than that because they're rushing rushing and doing so much.

But that's a story for later on.

Let's go back to this audio from, yes, Wrestling Observer Radio.

Fletcher and Briscoe,

you know,

the tournament matches, the Will Osprey match, Mercedes match.

I mean, there's, you know, the different championship matches up and down.

Tony Storm, Megan Vane, which was a great match.

I mean, they really should have like just, we had another great pay-per-view because it's like, you know, people buy these things for the next two weeks, especially the first week out.

And it was almost like they gave up on this one for whatever reason, rather than tried to get late buys and tried to hype it after the fact.

Because did they do anything like, did the announcers ever talk about how great the three-way was?

Because that should have been the main selling point.

Oh, boy, three-way is this.

It was the best three-ways of all time.

And you got to see it to believe it.

30 minutes and blah, blah, blah.

And I don't recall them doing that.

And when Kidding was out, you know, he didn't talk about the match at all.

He was, which, I mean.

Because it was a throwaway throwaway match.

That's what you don't seem to get there.

You gave it a bunch of stars, but it was a throwaway match.

He probably shouldn't have because his focus should be on the future thing.

But the announcers, I mean, there should have been.

They showed clips of the pay-per-view, but I don't think they did any hard sales to buy the pay-per-view, which

was another thing that was kind of like stopping watching the show going, like, why aren't you talking about the pay-per-view that just happened?

You know, I mean, WWE would have these freaking newspaper, you know, and website website clippings on the top and hyping like you missed this and

everything like that.

And AEW just kind of nothing on that.

And it was you missed Hong Kong Fuy in his greatest moment.

Lots of things happened.

The greatest three-way match in wrestling history.

Yeah, it's not going to really sell any pay-per-views, I don't think.

But let's go back.

We have one last match here, Jim.

Jon Moxley defeated Swerve Strickland 31 minutes, 28 seconds,

three and three-quarter stars.

Oh, see, now he's straddling the middle.

He says, some people really like this, but some people really hated this.

And I don't want to alienate any of the rest of my dwindling fucking audience that I have sway over.

So I'm going to put it in the middle because it's controversy.

She, many Christmas.

And obviously from that audio, he thought this was just one of the great pay-per-views.

Everyone should go out of their way to see it.

I didn't feel that way watching it.

And again, I'm sorry, but they do so much that they invariably have so many fucking fumfers

and flummoxes

that, you know,

I'm just used to looking.

I'm sorry.

I apologize.

I was trained to look at talent with a major league eye.

If you can get all the way through your dance routine without slipping and busting your ass,

then I will give you more points than if you goddamn did 14 pirouettes and then fucking blew explosive diarrhea in the judge's direction.

I think I've made my point abundantly clear.

I don't care if he really is a black belt.

Speedball Bailey doing a move where he just jumps and does a kick from one side to the other, back and forth, back and forth.

It's a funny-looking thing.

It doesn't look like he's really kicking the shit out of him.

It looks like he's learned some kind of dance that'll be Lincoln Center this fall.

It's fucking, it's yes, Nuriev would be proud, but not fucking Emilianko.

I don't, yeah.

Well, Mel Tseranko really liked the pay-per-view, and those are the star ratings from the Wrestling Observer for AEW Dynasty.

Well, would you like to go into AEW Dynamite from this past Wednesday night, April the 9th, in the

charm city of Baltimore?

They've lost their charm.

I think they'll have pitchforks if they do another one of these.

Brian, I keep saying

nobody will do anything different.

It's the same old stuff week after week.

Nobody will do something different.

Change things up a little bit.

Get my attention.

And they took me to their word and they did something different.

And I'm going to have to say that the first 35 minutes of this wrestling program was without doubt and fear of contradiction

the worst consecutive 35 minutes of a wrestling show I've ever seen in my life.

I mean, they gave it all to us here.

They had a nonsensical, slow interview to start, followed by a boring match,

followed by a fucking horrible, multi-part interview, followed

by another fucking match where they, they, I said, well, the only thing left to do is carry somebody out.

And son of a bitch, they got there and they hurt somebody

and they exposed the business while they were hurting the guy.

And that was in 35 minutes.

I'm astonished.

I didn't know it was possible.

To be fair, they had a big finale with the puking in the ring.

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, the puking did fit.

That was the icing on the cake.

The puking in the ring, but I'm talking about just this because they did break the first 35 up

for just a second

because then

I believe.

No, wait a minute.

They didn't.

It was still rotten, but it wasn't as rotten as that.

It was rotten in kind of the Jade Cargill debut way for me.

I got a kick out of it for all the wrong reasons because I got to a point where I really believed, you know what?

Tony's going to go commercial-free and nothing's going to ever end.

It's just going to go right into the next thing, and your head's going to spin.

Like, wait, what's happening now?

And then it just goes into the next thing.

You know, maybe he is a great booker, but he didn't even do that.

He didn't even do that.

The silliness

for the most part ended at a certain point.

And well, they opened up with the pre-tape promo in the back with the cinematic camera effect where one's in the front and one's to the side of Dick the Boozer and the four horsemen,

where

again,

he's wonderfully articulate if the idea of using words is to just string them together.

But it's talking in circles.

It's more, nobody still knows what he's talking about or what the fuck he wants or is trying to do.

It's all riddles and

nonsense.

And he does that.

And then they play the music.

And here he comes with Marina Schaefer through the arena.

And I swear to God, to open the show, his opponent is Shibu.

And

the first almost

like, you know, we talked about Raqqa versus Ricky Starr the other day.

That was a dream match, match of the century at one point for some fans.

This match here for this century, the man whose brain was removed versus the man with no brain.

That's a big deal.

Why isn't Dave making a big deal about that?

That should be hyped up.

The Shapupi's gimmick is he's the wrestler because he has absolutely no charisma or personality whatsoever.

So they do the silly phone thing with him, the phone translator, and

he's somehow not only a wrestler, but because he's the

wrestler fellow, he gets to just not sell when people just hit him.

But he doesn't react either.

Register, as the boys used to say.

You don't have to sell something, but you have to register it to show that it was a legitimate blow, but they don't understand these nuances.

But they both, so they think they're both shooters.

And I don't know whether Shippupi might be a goddamn another Kawada, who knows?

But we know that the boozer gets stretched

at the, you know, by the Home Depot clerk in the amateur jiu-jitsu tournaments in Newport on weekends.

But for the first almost three minutes, they've worked either amateur wrestling or mixed in with the amateur jiu-jitsu.

Worked is the

description.

It was almost stationary.

It was a slow pace.

There was no aggression.

They're going through the moves of these things, but I've watched

legitimate world-class wrestlers do this shit.

And before everybody's like, oh, fuck you, Cornet, and it's all fake.

I'm talking about.

I was there when Kurt Angle broke into business.

We've had him in fucking training, and Shelton Benjamin and Brock Lester, for that matter, and a few more NCAA champions, Sylvester Turkay.

I know what it looks like when they, at a top level, want to try to aggressively have a friendly little shoot.

This wasn't it.

Have I made my point, Brian?

I believe so.

And, but Moxley thinks that he's so over that he can show this MMA expertise, and people are going to go, wow.

And it's just, so they do three minutes of this, and then

Moxley pie faced him, and Shapupi slapped him.

So then they traded the chops where Shapupi doesn't even react.

He stands there and lets

Moxley chop him and then stood there and let Moxley kick him in the head four times.

Did the big old big boo get boom, bruiser brody, boom.

Do it again.

And then as soon as they did that,

he got the abdominal stretch on Moxley.

I said, what the f ⁇ ?

They're amateur wrestling.

They're trading chops.

They're goddamn, they're kicking each other in the head.

Then they're going to an abdominal stretch.

And then Moxley just started beating him up.

And then Moxley gave him a pile driver, and he stood right up and just kicked Moxley in the face.

And even Tony Schiavone said, Well, I've never seen a guy get pile driven and just stand right up before.

Well, maybe they put a thing.

Maybe they put a special plate in his head when they removed his brain.

It makes sense.

That well, that's what they need to start marketing now: he's got the goddamn brain plate.

And then maybe they could could just call him that the brain plate Shibata

but point being they did this and then within five minutes I guess out of nowhere

Shibata gets the sleeper and Moxley reaches up and rakes his eyes and reversed the sleeper and took him down and choked him and the referee rang the bell

and it was what just

it never got going with anything but it there was no pro wrestling in it.

There was some going through the motions MMA

at half speed or amateur wrestling or strong style stuff.

But it was boring as fuck.

Death jitsu.

It was death ratings.

But so that was that.

But then.

The music plays.

And out representing the lollipop guild from the land of Lilliput comes the buckaroos wearing more weird shit.

I don't know what the fuck's happening here.

Old Nikki looked like he was the Maitre Da Swingers Club.

And

basically,

when they come out, Moxley and Marina

leave

and the buckaroos get on the microphone and they start to end every announcer is saying oh the evps

and they're doing their promo whereas evps of the brian

they've been gone six months now right

uh at least maybe more than

okay

they got on the the uh the the what are they on now not netflix with the big boys they're on max max and they're they're supposed to have gotten a new audience yeah allegedly allegedly but even last time when they were back they were just the EVPs

and they had dropped Tony Khan on his head and et cetera.

But shouldn't it, just in case there are any new viewers,

shouldn't somebody be trying to explain why these two turd blossoms are executive vice presidents of this promotion?

Or does that just make the whole thing look more

hogwash and made up and bullshit?

If anybody had just started watching this thing a few months ago, who are these fucking guys?

What the fuck?

And

why, why in the world would they, of all people, be vice presidents, these cheesy, snide-faced little whippets?

So, and when they tried,

they tried to take over

AEW and they hurt Tony Kahn and they wanted to assert their positions as EVPs.

But then when Moxley started trying to do the same thing, the last time we saw him, they were burning their memos and fucking running off in fear.

And now they come back and help him.

So naturally, what they are addressing is, everybody wants to know why.

Yeah, because it don't make any fucking sense.

And they did it for Adam Page.

They screwed Swerve for Adam Page.

They did it for him, his friend.

And of course, at that point, the fans started chanting Swerve's house because at least that's fun for them.

And

I'm just thinking, they're dressed in these ludicrous outfits.

They look like children.

They can't fucking talk.

And then they also, they consider what they did for Moxley a peace offering.

They want to see.

The locker room rise to the occasion and change the world just like they did.

How is the locker room rising to the occasion?

By the way, you're always trying to pour bleach down their throat or whatever the fuck Moxley's doing.

And to rise to the occasion, doesn't that mean that they're asking for somebody to beat the shit out of them?

Yeah, what occasion?

The occasion is the same one as Moxley.

To rise to the occasion, somebody needs to beat the shit out of you.

That's what you want to see,

and that will change the world.

It doesn't.

It's goddamn, it's gibberish.

And Maddie's delivery is so stagey.

He'll

watch this interview back when they got the handheld camera on him.

He memorizes shit.

He makes a point and then he looks away because it's a nervous tick of people who are thinking of the next line.

And then he'll snap back to the camera to deliver it.

And he doesn't use contractions.

What we could not do rather than what we couldn't do.

He doesn't speak normally because he's reciting this.

But Moxley did what they couldn't do, win the world heavyweight title.

No, because they're tag team dipshits.

So imagine how great it could be if Death Riders and the Buckaroos joined forces.

So come on out and let's talk business.

And I'm thinking, oh, good Lord, but Kenny's music plays.

Here comes Kenny.

I said, it's a bad acting hall of fame.

Here comes Kenny now in his hoodie and gym shorts.

And

he's in the aisleway.

And of course, breathily

says, you know, the last time that we met,

you pushed me off the stretcher, taking me off.

on a ride to the hospital.

But fortunately, he then established, Brian, that he forgave them.

He actually said it twice, of course, this speech.

I came back for my legacy and the safety of the company, not for revenge.

As soon as he said the safety of the company, I was like, where's he going to go with this?

Because the only thing to say would be, you guys are killing the company, which has been something said by even some of the talent.

going back but he didn't say that either he did he just said the safety of the company and let that dangle like that they were in danger unless I was here to part the seed.

But

they shot an angle where they turned on their best buddy and beat him up in the stomach where he had to diverticulitis.

And

the

baby face comes back and forgives the heels.

Has that ever been done before?

And now we're good.

We're good, guys.

It's okay.

I'm worried about my legacy and the safety of the company since they're all crippling each other.

Maybe that's what he meant.

But has that ever happened?

They shot a turn angle, and then before they even fought the guys, no, it's okay.

I forgive you.

No, they're breaking new ground in AEW.

That's Tony Khan, quite the booker.

So then

Kenny

decided that he is a stand-up comic

And he tried to do a routine.

And I don't know, Brian, you've been in locker rooms and in the presence of, over the course of your life, a various amount of the pro wrestlers.

And would you say that almost everyone that you've ever met could tell jokes or stories or captivate a room with a speech in a more entertaining fashion than Kenny can?

The delivery of material is not necessarily his greatest skill.

No, not nor the coming up with the material because you know this was his.

What would the fans have done online if Vince McMahon had made Roman Reigns say Dookie

instead of suffer and suck a turkey?

Well, actually, a lot of people know the name or know the word Dookie from No Holds Bard, where for no good reason, Hulk Hogan lifted up a limo driver who was scared of getting beat up.

And he said, what's that smell?

And the guy said, Dookie.

That was written by Vince McMahon.

Yeah, but I don't know that any pro wrestler has actually uh voluntarily used it in a promo since then, never, no.

But Kenny goes on a stand-up routine and he tells a story of a friend he had who he played video games with, who had two little shih tzus that used to shit

all over the floor.

But he said, Dookie,

and and he said, as more dookie kept collecting on the floor, he had to finally say, hey, dude, come over and play games at my house.

And that's what the Bucks are like without Kenny.

What the?

That is not a cogent simile.

Number one,

why do you want the guy who obviously puts up with just accumulating dog shit in his own home to come over to your house just to play video games?

Fuck him.

Let him keep his filth in his own house.

Don't visit him.

Secondly, it wasn't the most stunning fucking

true life weave into an angle that we have heard in the shoot promo age.

And the people are sitting there going, what the fuck?

Then they started chanting lightly, dookie dookie.

So then the breathy sing-song delivery of the stand-up on the, the he was trying to blister the bucks but he had no material and the delivery was

ah because he doesn't know and the people are like what the

and then he just said

so let's cut out the middle man i'll just come in the ring and we'll fight

and he starts to get in the right am i lying when i say he said that just like that well he said that the fans were They actually had a little bit of a pop.

They were hoping there would be a fight.

Well, they were hoping that was the end of the fucking promo.

And then, as he's getting in the ring, they play Okada's music.

And here comes Okada to the ring.

Brian was-this was the best part.

He looked like he was wearing an ill-fitting game warden suit.

It looked like he had the giant pockets in the khaki color that they used to hold the,

I guess, the bear repellent or whatever the fuck.

And was it the right size?

Was it?

No, it was

the right size for somebody, but not him.

That was the least intimidating walk-in, whatever, a surprise appearance by a heel I've ever seen because of the outfit.

And it was hanging off his stooped shoulders, but he wasn't moving his arms, was he?

I seem to recall him just

like the girl on Seinfeld.

But he looked again like some kind of county game warden about to give you a ticket for fishing without a license, coming down in this

somebody.

Do you think where they were in Baltimore, somebody took him to some discount store and ribbed him and said, oh, this is the style?

Where would you find something like that?

I'm starting to think Okada just gets the game.

And he said, I'm going to get this guy to pay me all this money.

And each week I'm going to show less effort and see at what point they say something.

And then this week he just showed up.

He would, again, I've never seen a less intimidating look

on a heel ever.

It was like, here's my neighbor, Wilson, like just this

fucking look.

Like, what is he wearing?

So, yeah, that was.

You wait till my brother, wait till my brother gets off of work.

How big a boy is he?

So he comes out, but before that, they

can

assault, attack, perpetrate, or penetrate Kenny, Swerve's music plays.

And as they're watching for Smurve, Smurv, as they're watching for Smurv.

That's Papa Smurve to you.

I sounded like Arthur Treacher.

And now here's Merv.

And

as they were watching for Smurv from the front, coming out of the entryway, well, old Swerve swerved him and he came in from behind with a chair and the heels turned around and said, oh my god, and they just scared and they bailed out with no contact.

And they left the babyfaces standing in the ring and the fans chanting Swerve's house.

So then

Kenny,

he's smiling and, you know, he leaves the ring and takes bows on the way out down the short aisleway.

He's actually

giving them the parade wave and taking the obligatory bow, but he has left the ring to swerve

so that swerve can now orate.

So have we kept up with this, Brian?

So we had the fucking plumber and his clown show and they beat Shapoopy.

And then

the other ones came out, the Buckaroos, but they got run off

by.

Now, who ran them off?

Hold on here.

Kenny, well,

he didn't run them off swerve ran him off kenny was out there well kenny was going to run them off but okana came out that's right okada came out and then swerve came out well now swerve's out there talking

and the first thing he said was it's buck hunting season and i swear to god i was like my god this is a loony tune buck season Moxley season, buck season, Moxley season.

And as soon as Swerve starts talking, talking,

I know that you might not believe this.

You might think I'm making this up.

Pack attacks Swerve from behind.

And Nana is in the ring.

Did you notice this?

And again,

I wish I love Nana.

I've knew him in Ring of Honor.

He's a nice guy.

And I wish if he hadn't been listening to the show, and I understand people got lives, things to do, but somebody playing this part because I've been talking about how they continue to bury him.

He's in a very awkward position as a babyface manager, but the people

want to like him.

And the things they do where they bury him, where he has to just watch, even though he's a grown man

and it just watches or he runs off or whatever, makes him look like a pussy.

But in this case, this was so avoidable

because Nana is standing in the ring watching Swerve do the promo and on camera.

You see,

Nana sees Pack coming and gets the oh shit face and doesn't warn Swerve, doesn't point and say, look behind you, doesn't try to run toward the impending attack.

He shits himself and facially and jumps out of the ropes, out of the ring on the floor.

and leaves his friend to get attacked from behind.

He's not even going, hey, waving his arms, watch out.

He just jumps out.

That could have been avoided.

He knows Pack is coming.

And he ought to know if they bother to even

talk through this, much less walk through this.

He ought to know what direction he's coming from.

Just be looking somewhere else while your man is talking and you're

inciting the fans to chant or whatever you're doing.

And again,

you want to neutralize swerve first.

So yes, PA should blister Swerve and then Nana should turn around and Pack should punch Nana in the face and he can take a bump out on the floor.

And then

all is right with the world.

But instead, Nana comes off as a guy that will bail on a friend at the first sign of fucking trouble in a heartbeat.

And why do you want to like him?

So then Pak starts standing on Swerve's face and the referee rolls into the ring and the announcers say, well, this match was scheduled and advertised.

My God, we'll be right back after this.

And that's when they take the break.

So one would think,

Brian, that when we come back on the other side of the break, we're going to be, they're going to be, there's a helicopter going over my house now, part of the rescue fucking operation.

Do you hear that, Brian?

I don't.

Well, I do, and it's very loud and distracting.

You would think that when they come back from the break, they'd be in the midst of a pitched battle, one would think, right?

Because he's already been attacked.

And of course, unless they're throwing this whole thing out and this match ain't going to take place, they probably

are pulling hair and gouging eyes and all kinds of stuff.

They come back from the break.

Pack is standing in the ring.

Swerve is sitting in the corner with a pissed-off look on his face.

The announcers say that Pack

punished Swerve Strickland throughout the entire break.

And now the referee says, okay, and rings the bell.

And Swerve jumps up and levels Pack with one fucking boot.

So

let me understand the logic of this.

Yes, their match was advertised.

Okay.

And while Swerve's in the ring, PAC jumps on him.

Okay, the referee comes in the ring.

Okay.

Now, one would think that

at this point, one of only a couple things could happen is number one, the referee could say, ring the bell, start the match.

Or number two, the heel could just continue kicking a snot out of the babyface till the referee said, fuck it, we're calling this off because he won't stop.

Or,

Well, that's about one of the two things, but

why would the referee allow

the heel to beat the shit out of this guy for the entire commercial break?

Why then would he stop him right when it comes back on TV where it might be exciting?

And why then, after he's let the heel kick the shit out of the baby face for the past three minutes, would he then ring the bell to start the match?

And then, if the baby face has had the shit kicked out of him for the last three minutes, why did he get up and proceed to kick the shit out of the heel that attacked him to begin with?

And one more question.

Is this what LSD looks like?

No.

Well, are you going to answer the other stuff I asked first?

No, I thought we were just going to focus on the psychedelics and maybe mushrooms would be more your thing if I was really thinking about it.

I can't explain this.

I explain the logic of AEW's referees and what they do.

I can't do that.

How do you even go over this in the fucking back and not think, wait a minute, what are we saying?

So then

Swerve hit Pack with 14 punches, I counted, and a kick.

Most of them looked phony, and Pack didn't bump for anything.

He just slumped in the corner.

But Swerve is just like rib shots that, like, in the vicinity of, I mean, what is going on with everybody's quality control?

And then they go to the floor, and Swerve beats him up all over ringside.

And And then they get back in the ring and

it's kind of slow for a minute.

And then Pack tries a

running hurricane rana.

But when he gets his legs around Swerve, Swerve catches him and stops it and

picks him up.

And the idea of it

was supposed to be he was going to give him a buckle bomb in the corner.

And then from there, we'll never know.

Because when Swerve caught him, Pack is a stout-looking young fellow.

He's short, but he's stocky.

And Swerve is not exactly Ken Patera in the Olympic weightlifting team.

So he tries to pick him up to buckle bomb him,

but he gives him a sloppy buckle bomb.

And if anybody wants to go back and look at this,

And I remember a talk I had 10 years ago, I saw Sting at a fan fest.

And that's when Seth Rollins had given him the buckle bomb.

That's when he took,

what was it, fucking the six years off wrestling.

But in a perfect world,

you're supposed to be bucklebombed into the turnbuckle,

at least by this is how the originators did it,

where the top rope comes

underneath your armpits and the middle of your shoulders hits the top turnbuckle.

And even that, when it was done properly to sting, that's what he told me.

He said, as soon as he hit that top buckle, he felt something in his neck and shit started, went numb.

And he was like, oh, fuck.

Because when you're shot across the turnbuckle from corner to corner in the ring, you're hitting at a flat rate.

And that's the deal.

The guys that took the best turnbuckles were the ones that hit it the flattest.

You could get momentum and turn and hit flat and move the ring across the floor.

And it at the same time, hitting flat didn't put any more pressure than was necessary on any one part of your body.

And it didn't snap your neck like

if all of your momentum is concentrated in hitting with your shoulders

and your shoulder blades and the back of your neck only.

So

what this knucklehead did,

he didn't have him.

And instead of saying, well, no, maybe I ought to just power bomb him

anyway, because it's not like the guy was going to go, oh my God, I'll fuck this up by being powerbombed in the ring.

He's still got to buckle bomb him.

He throws him sideways and he was out too far.

Swerve was out too far from the buckle.

And he didn't throw him flat.

He threw him sideways so that

you get these in my head, the sides, the left side side and or shoulder area

of Pack hit the top rope

a ways out from the buckle where it looked like

that then whipsawed Pack around

to where the rest of his head kind of hit maybe under the top buckle, but it spun his body around with enough centrifugal force that when he landed sideways, his foot was under him,

right ankle, and that he landed right on it.

And

I mean, I'm, I'm, again, willing to be corrected, but when he landed from that buckle bomb, I got a clue when he started screaming in fucking pain

and grabbing his ankle

and never regained his proper footing after that, that that may have been the incident that did it.

And that's what happened.

He didn't go flat in with both feet under him.

He was, swerve was too far out and he threw him sideways and he hit the top rope and whipsawed down.

And he could have very well have broken his ankle because that much speed from the spin combined with not being able to control where you were going or get your feet under you,

you can't prepare.

But then they fucked the whole goddamn business up, Brian.

Well, you want to go into this before we talk about how then they shit all over the business and made it look like a complete idiocy.

How by having the doctor check on him in the middle of the match?

Well, this whole thing that we're going to go through that just made no sense.

But I mean, you know, otherwise, this thing is this show is snake bit.

It's a bad match followed by a bad promo, followed by people coming out that the fans might care about, but they don't care about what they're doing here and they and they just not delivered well.

And then they get another match going, and this guy is going to the fucking hospital.

What the the fuck is the matter with his program?

Again, I'm not the one to answer that, so I can't help you.

So then

here's what happens:

his right ankle is obviously fucked, and he's talking to the referee, and they're trying to communicate something.

Swerve pulls him out and does like a snapmare.

And Pax sits there and is looking over his shoulder

like because he swerve does the thing where he comes off with the kick to the head.

So he's looking for something like, what's this guy going to hit me with?

I'll see it coming because I'm obviously fucked up.

And Swerve gives him an elbow in the back of the head.

And I thought, well, that'll be it.

Now you'll pin him.

Swerve gets up and starts strutting around

and then walks over slowly and stands on Pack.

And I'm like, what the fuck?

Why are they not going home?

Because obviously this guy knows he's fucked, or why are they

doing this in this fashion?

And then there's some more talking, but Pac is trying to get up.

He can't stand up, so he rolls to the floor.

Well, now it is obvious to the entire building and the television audience that this guy can't stand up.

And he rolls out to the floor, and the doctor comes up and is checking.

And the referee's not counting.

What the hell is the matter?

You're telling people, oh my God, I'm unplanned, hurt in the middle of this fake presentation, and we don't know whether we're about to resume our goddamn normal programming.

But also,

for the sake of this guy's going to get further injured,

he leaves the doctor and rolls back in the ring and hops on one foot twice into a super kick,

which one would think maybe somebody has buzzed the referee.

Tell Swerve, just beat him.

So he walks into that, hops into the super kick, and he goes down and Swerve goes the top rope.

I think, my guy, you just super cooked him, cover him.

He goes to the top rope and Pak has to turn around and sit up and stare at this fucking guy.

He's already got who knows what wrong with his ankle.

And now he's got to sit there and stare at this guy.

Well, this guy takes forever to stand on a top rope and do the double stomp off.

Boom, then one, two, three.

And

it will break this down in a second, what they might could have done, but

the end result that they got was this gutsy heel shoved the doctor away and returned to fight on one leg so that the babyface could take advantage of it and beat a cripple.

But,

okay, all the kids these days,

they've heard that

back in those days, we didn't stop matches and get the finish in, kid.

That's the most important thing.

Get the finish in, kid.

But because unfortunately, none of the current crop of talent maybe has heard in detail directly from some of those veterans said, we didn't stop the match.

You got to get the finish in, kid, that it doesn't mean you get to, you have to get the planned finish in.

It means you need to get a finish in, the finish them who's supposed to win, who's supposed to lose, give you a one, two, three.

That you can get in.

But you don't,

when he came down and he fucking knew his ankle was fucked,

you can buy a little time by him selling in the corner and the referee coming in and him telling the referee and the referee conveying to Swerve, I'm fucked, back up.

And the referee can kill a segment by backing him up and swerve could get him chanting Swerve's house.

And then the referee has a good 15 seconds to go over there and say, can you go on with this or are you fucked?

And considering the fact that he never did stand up after that, I would think that Pac would probably already know that he was somewhat injured.

So when Swerve brought him out of the corner and gave him a snapmare and he's sitting there, he could get it, give him the kick in the back of the head and cover one, two, three.

He's going to win anyway.

But he didn't.

He started hot dogging.

What is the conversation like in the ring?

Did Pak just say, no, it's only a flesh wound?

And then when he rolls to the floor, the referee has to start counting.

The doctor's checking on the guy, yes, but the referee has to start counting because how do you ever have a count out?

If the guy can just roll to the floor and say, let me let the doctor work on me for a a little while.

If this was legitimate, because that's another

reasoning behind

always getting the finish in.

You didn't want to do something to expose the business.

You didn't want the wrong guy to win a match, whatever.

But this was both exposing the business and risking the guy getting further hurt.

When the doctor, do they want to institute a rule where if a wrestler signals

something that he gets 15 seconds to confer with the ringside physician before the count starts

and close the loophole, a guy can't break up a cover or submission hold by signaling that because

the opponent cannot be in contact with his body at the time he calls for it.

It has to be during a break after a bad fall or whatever.

You could put something like that in and give them a chance.

But otherwise, referee count, it's a shoot.

And it seems like that it wouldn't have been that difficult for PA to tell Swerve, I'm fucked, beat me now.

And then after he rolled out in the doctor conference, when he comes back in hopping on one fucking foot,

you just super kicked him.

Cover him.

But again, already the business is exposed because everything's come to a complete halt.

While suddenly, in the middle of this fake bullshit, the guy's really hurt.

So we got to stop everything.

But that was the meaning behind in the old days, get the finish in, get a finish in.

And I've told a story before, but real briefly, I saw a guy in the Louisville Gardens break his leg in a match and win the match.

Tommy Gilbert and Ray Candy against Luke Graham and John Rogers.

And Gilbert gave a vertical suplex to Rogers.

His leg folded up underneath him.

It broke his lower leg right in half.

He never did get up on his feet after that.

But as he's laying there and they're selling,

it still was awkward, but not nearly as awkward as this for nearly as long because the partners jumped in and drew the referee and did a little back and forth.

And once the guy stopped screaming about his leg,

they adopted a plan.

And Luke Graham did the loaded elbow to the fucking throat of, I think it was Ray Candy.

And Candy fell backwards over the guy with the broken leg.

And he grabbed him one, two, three, and a

fucking schoolboy.

And then they helped him out.

But that was over in

seconds compared to what this long, drawn-out thing was.

And again,

how does it make the why does the babyface think in his mind?

Everybody knows this guy's hurt.

His leg is broken or whatever the fuck.

I've just super kicked him.

I got to go to the top and jump off on him.

It's going to look phony.

It always does, but especially now because the guy's got to fucking wiggle into position and stare at me when everybody's looking at him going, oh my God, his leg's hurt.

And then I'm going to fucking

Why not just take him back behind the barn and shoot him, old yeller?

This was the worst 35 minutes of wrestling television in history, Brian.

In history?

That's a.

In history.

That's a long period of time there.

You know, there was a lot.

Again, I was intrigued by the fact that nothing was ending and that eventually it ended.

You know, everyone's chasing everyone.

Does Swerve see himself as a babyface, even though he is?

Because like you said, you would understand the philosophy of the babyface needing to

hit his downed opponent after he's hurt to win like just the whole thing didn't make any sense but i guess he wanted to get his stuff in he was going to get his stuff in and he did whose house

the doctors he's added an extra wing for aew injuries

But, you know, the doctors may be the only ones that are really coming out ahead on this thing, Brian, because even though these AEW guys are getting paid a lot of money, the toll on their bodies, the wear and tear of the surgeries, the injuries, the crises, don't you think that

maybe these poor beleaguered pro wrestlers ought to have something to fall back on whenever they're laid up in a hospital bed, some way to generate some income, some way to build a future for themselves in the business world?

You think?

Oh, sure.

I mean, for instance, right now, maybe PAX's setting up PAX collectibles.

I don't know if people want any of PAC's collectibles because all he really has is black boots, black tights, and stringy, greasy hair.

But he could think of something, and that's the point.

They need something to fall back on because they're falling down with so much more frequency.

Because let's say, Brian, for example, that while PA is laid up in the hospital bed, He's got an idea.

He wants to sell football uniforms to the team over there in West Fabersham.

He needs a platform.

He needs somebody to help him out to put these dreams into action and turn them into reality and more importantly, make the

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I don't know about any of that, but let's go back to a mindful of wrestling.

AEW Dynamite.

All righty then.

There was some promos for this this ridiculous eight-man tag they're about to have.

Renee Moxley Good was in the back with Adam Page.

He doesn't know who the wild card is.

There's a wild card again.

There's always a wild card.

What is Tony's fascination?

It's like he's goddamn hanging with the rat pack.

His fascination with gambling.

Is this an issue?

Should we send him to

Gamblers Anonymous or Bookers Anonymous?

You know, I went to Alcoholics Anonymous one time.

It didn't work for me.

I just started drinking under another name.

So after he established he didn't know who the wild card was, Paige burst into

Swerve's locker room, but Nana was there, but Swerve wasn't there.

And Paige said that he wasn't helping Swerve

and he needed them to stay out of his business.

And Nana.

The man who deserts his friends, tried to stand up and say, hey, you know, I can't speak for Swerve, but I regret what that we did.

But Paige cut him off and wouldn't listen to him because he's the hot-headed millennial cowboy.

So now apparently, from what Uncle Dave thinks, they're trying to build up where Paige and Swerve will become a tag team.

Boy, the folks have been clamoring for that.

They've got so much in common.

Similar gimmicks and backgrounds.

Well, is that a good match for Texas Stadium or whatever the hell it is?

Swerve and Adam Page versus the Bucs.

So Adam Page could be conflicted again.

He doesn't know who to help.

He doesn't know what side he's on.

I think it's as good as they're going to get, is my answer.

It's good as they're going to get.

So then they had an eight-man tag match.

Ricochet,

Action Andretti, Leo Rush, and Frank Mortis

against Will Osprey, Kevin Knight, Mark Briscoe, and Hong Kong Fuye.

And the reason why this match was meaningful is because the winning team

allegedly would win $400,000, Brian.

Did you hear this announcement?

Yeah, that was like the big pitch of the match that these guys are really motivated because of the $400,000

victory purse.

What fucking sense?

They used to laugh at the AWA $50,000 battle royals back in the day, but this brings a whole new.

You've got Ricochet, who again,

in their presentation, should be viewed as one of their top heels.

And he's with Andretti, Leo Rush, and Mortis,

just

undercard talent.

Osprey,

who should be their next world champion, sooner the better, in my opinion, but it'll probably happen in Texas.

is teaming with, okay, Mark Briscoe, we've established, they haven't put him at that level, even though he's the best talent on this team.

Kevin Knight, we've seen him three or four times.

And Hong Kong Fuye,

to any adult watching, makes the babyface team look silly to begin with, just visually, just being there.

Just the

ridiculousness of this fucking nerd.

And then, and we're going to have an eight-man tag amongst people that means nothing and put a couple of our stars in it and the winning team wins $400,000.

Imagine

showing this to people who haven't seen wrestling in 20 years and they wake up from the coma and they say, boy, I've missed wrestling.

Can I watch some wrestling?

And you show them this.

They go, what the fuck?

Who are these children?

And surprise, the babyfaces won $400,000.

Your thoughts on the subtleties of this contest?

No, I really have nothing to add to the $400,000 review.

Well, they did a video recap of FTR Turning on Edge.

Edge is out indefinitely again.

He just got back, didn't he?

He's out indefinitely.

Tony Schiavone did an editorial on how disappointed that everybody is in FTR.

Lance Russell did it better.

Let's just say that.

Then,

usually this is the segment, if we're going to get something worth anything, we're going to get it here.

Here came the Hurt Syndicate to the ring, and the celebration was set up.

They got the belt stand, and they got the table with the champagne and the poster of their victory.

And the fans were chanting MVP.

And, you know, MVP made the announcement that they're, you know, punks jump up to get beat down.

And that's what old Big Bill and Brian Keith were.

And they're going to have a toast to celebrate another win of their championship.

And of course, this is a

somewhat flimsy

see-through excuse for MJF to come out, but he does.

And

they've got a little bit of the old days back with this.

I like the interplay.

MJF comes into the ring and poses next to Shelton like he's in the fucking group.

And Shelton's kind of looking at him sideways, like, what the fuck?

And the fans are chanting, he's our scumbag again.

Brian, they are caught in a vicious

logic vacuum where the only time that the people like MJF and chant for him is when he is a heel,

preferably a despicable heel, or lined.

with other heels that they also like and cheer for.

But if he becomes a babyface and it kills him deader than fucking four o'clock,

yeah,

yeah.

So MJF says, that's right, we hurt people, baby.

And he cuts the promo about how Tony wanted to be in this fuckockta Owen Hart tournament and wrestle every week and sweat my balls off like some schlub, but I can

bypass that because now that I'm rolling with the syndicate, daddy gets to cut the line and get back the triple B, baby.

Here's nothing I got to be fair.

And I enjoyed, is the point I was going to make here, I enjoyed

MJF's banter here because he was back being the smartass again.

He wasn't trying so hard.

He wasn't yelling at the people to make them not like him.

But then I said it earlier, so I will be fair, it applied here too.

I said,

after six months, why does any potential new viewer understand why those two

despicable weasels, the buckaroos, are the executive vice presidents?

What is the triple B?

MV,

I keep saying, there's too many of them in the group.

MJF is the only one calling it the Triple B now, and he doesn't explain it.

The announcers don't call it that.

For a new potential viewer, MJF has not been the champion for over a year.

Would they know what the triple B is?

Would it have more impact if not only MJF just dropped that in, that beautiful AEW World Championship belt that I redesigned and christened the

every once in a while so everybody's up on what the fuck he's talking about?

Or is this another case of the Bill Watts thing where he'd send out a memo?

Gentlemen, I know you're all superstars and all the fans know everything, but

see what I'm saying?

Yeah, I mean, we haven't even seen the title in almost a year.

So

who knows what it looks like?

And Moxley does not look like a fastidious housekeeper.

But what was the triple B?

That was the,

well, it was the, but what did it stand for?

It was the Burberry Blowjob

belt.

I don't know.

Burberry, big Burberry belt or brown

belt.

This is why that it needs reinforcement.

But anyway, then MJF said, I scratched your back and now you guys scratch mine.

You know, MVP Montel, do I have to sign a contract or is it one of those old school blood brother type of deals?

And Lashley says, shut up, Max.

And, you know, it was cute that you tried to help us, but you didn't get the job done.

We don't need you.

And we've never needed you.

And then Bobby and MJF start arguing and pointing fingers with each other.

And Shelton's kind of smiling there, but he stepped in between and MVP tried to calm Lashley down.

And MVP told MJF, hey, we go way back, but to join, you need three thumbs up.

And MVP gave him the thumb up and then Shelton stuck it out in the middle.

and then turned it down.

And Lashley said, thank you.

Thank you.

I liked that.

He hugged Shelton.

He's like, thank you.

That's what I'm trying to say.

And they took the belts and they left the ring.

And MVP just shrugs at MJF, right?

What are you going to do?

So we still don't.

But again, I like this.

And it'll help MJF instead of having to go out there and just scream at people all the time because.

He's being penalized because he's still one of the better speakers in the company, but nobody cares about any of his shit before.

But that was that.

Yeah, I really like that.

I've liked everything with MJF and the Hurt Syndicate so far.

I think it's bringing out the best of Bobby Lashley.

We're actually getting to see some fire in promos and stuff.

And Shelton standing there bemused by the whole thing.

MJF should show up dressed like them,

wearing a really nice three-piece suit just to fit in a little more.

But I've enjoyed all of this a lot.

Well, and then I'll jump ahead because to keep the continuity going, which is more than i can say for this program

later on they were in the back with alicia a toot

a toot with the hurts and

lashley was telling you know mvp and everybody hey mjf can't be trusted we don't like him we don't need him

and shelton's like yeah but but little george costanza is kind of funny

and then

But again,

a lot of these wrestlers are nearsighted, apparently, these days, because Shelton and Bobby, under some flimsy pretense, they leave the promo and within five seconds, there's a knock at the door and MJF comes in.

And MJF says, MVP, do I look like a female dog to you?

Why do they treat me like a punk bitch?

And this, again, this was good with MVP.

Your reputation precedes you.

That's why.

But

this is business.

In business, find out what your consumer wants and give it to him.

And then he walks out and leaves MJF there to ponder that word of wisdom.

So there's still something going on here.

So

at least we don't have to watch him interact with other people.

Anyway, they had Thunder Rosa and Chris Statlander in the Owen Hart Tournament Female Division.

I'm sure Owen would be pleased.

And then we got to

the Chris Jericho segment.

And Brian, have you heard that apparently old Chris Jericho

is taking some time off?

It may be time for a break, just to make sure that his gimmick isn't getting worn out.

We'll talk about a couple different things, but the idea

that he was the Ring of Honor champion, even though he was the antithesis of everything that that the Ring of Honor fan base, big, small, good, bad, or indifferent,

would have ever looked for in the Ring of Honor world champion, was because since he had a name, Tony was shopping a TV deal for Ring of Honor, right?

That was

the reasoning that he's a big name and it would help get a TV deal.

Well, he just lost the Ring of Honor belt and now he's taking time off.

I think that sounds like it's bad news for the Ring of Honor TV deal.

And didn't Tony Khan already said

he's not going to do business with somebody outside the WBD umbrella.

So

what did he think that they were going to put another show of his, Ring of Honor, on

one of their networks when

the numbers for what he had were dropping?

You're broke up over the Ring of Honor world title situation.

I can't explain Tony's Tony's eye.

your head is your head there's little little tweety birds just wandering like me just circling around your head what is happening here i don't think there's anyone who was involved in ring of honor in the previous

in any of the previous owners under any of the previous owners or anyone who followed it who thinks tony's doing a good job with it or has any idea what he's doing with it

well jericho was in the ring for this one

And it was the TV time with the learning tree set.

And he's got the trees trees, and he's got the monitor.

And I haven't enjoyed watching Jericho come out since he dropped Judas.

At least we could hear the song.

I'm a come, I'm a come, I'm a coming, irrelevant, irrelevant in the ring.

So, Jericho was kind of morose that he lost the Ring of Honor title, but he was,

you know,

unfortunately penalized by the assistance of the Stooge mother of Bandito.

And

he has his family, but I have mine.

And I want to bring my family out right now.

And he introduced Big Bill and Brian Keith.

And

Jericho starts prefacing by saying, well, you guys didn't win the tag team title either.

And Big Bill shut him up.

And

Brian, you saw this interview, right?

Did you pay any attention or did it just kind of fly by you like a lot of the Jericho?

Oh, no.

I watched this.

I wanted to see if this was going to be be the big turn for Big Bill and Brian Keith where they'd become babyfaces sick of Chris Jericho.

And for a minute, I thought it may happen.

Well, thankfully, it didn't.

Because if they never replay any of this again, Big Bill should find all the copies of the tape and burn it.

Big Bill,

if this was his

effort to try to do a breakthrough promo, he had the material here.

He had the potential passion behind it.

He had the reasoning for it.

There was no,

he memorized this and he recited it.

He was neither comfortable nor was there any kind of delivery.

He was trying to speak like a college professor and enunciate everything, talking like a robot.

No emotion, no inflection.

no cadence.

But if we are out here so you can berate us, then let me know right now and I can leave.

That even said, I've been getting real angry as of late.

This seven-foot fucking long-haired goddamn giant Greg Allman looking motherfucker, whatever.

He wouldn't speak like that.

Sounds like, he sounds like Kenny.

Sounds like a fucking soft putz.

And he did this interview telling,

instead of telling Jericho, we're sick and tired of this shit,

he was polite to him.

Instead of saying, we're not going to be brow beaten by you anymore, he's like, well, we'll just leave if we have to stand here and take this abuse.

It's like, this is the fucking seven-foot ass kicker.

Looking at it in that perspective, did this or did this not suck donkey balls?

No, this was not good.

I didn't say it was good.

All right.

I just wanted to make sure that you didn't think it was a breakthrough performance or anything.

But then Jericho

calmly said, That's not why I brought you out here.

I care about you.

I want to help you.

Your victories are mine and your failures are mine.

And then he starts working himself up.

And of course, he says, Some may say that I lost the Ring of Honor world title because Big Bill, you weren't there for me.

Some might even say it's your fault.

But I'm not saying that.

I'm not angry.

And now Jericho's auditioning for the next independent movie here with this emotional roller coaster of a scene.

I'm not angry.

I'm just disappointed.

And that's what he repeats then over and over.

I'm not angry.

I'm just disappointed while he's smashing the TV with the baseball bat.

You know, these new flat screens that are only like an inch thick, they don't really fucking break and bust up like those old-fashioned TVs did.

It just kind of takes effort,

crinkles up, and just, you know, it doesn't really go anywhere.

There's nothing in the inside it to fly out of it.

But nevertheless, he beat the TV up with the bat, and he really got a pop when he got bleeped for something.

And then he told him that

until

you change that, that me being disappointed, it might be best that I leave.

And the fans, of course, start singing Shanana Na.

Hey, hey, hey, goodbye

from the great group, Shanana.

And

did you hear as Jericho was leaving as he's going down the aisleway right at the entranceway?

You can clear as day here: some fan go, suck out a maple leaf, buddy.

What a goodbye.

So, yeah, so, but

that was that.

Comment on that.

And then, what are we hearing about this interview Jericho's doing where he's saying he's open to returning to the WWE?

I'm sure he is.

I'm sure he's very open to it.

We'll see where it goes.

You know, Jericho's been there a long time.

Jericho has had.

more opportunity to do more of his own stuff than most people.

Tony's a big Chris Jericho fan going going back to his teenage years.

You would think in some ways Chris Jericho may be set for life in AEW, even though the work is not there.

The angles, the promos, the ideas, the programs, everything from like A to Z

has been pretty shitty from him, including guys that he did not help who never really gained anything from working with Chris Jericho.

It just kept Chris Jericho in a prominent position on TV.

Come on, Action Andretti is the new sting.

Would WWE want him for any reason at this point right now other than to just take AEW's first world champion and someone who was such a big part of AEW?

Well, but hold on here because he did an interview, and this was with one of the wrestling entity publications or sites or whatever, right?

But he said he would be willing to go

back to the WWE or he'd be, you know, he'd be happy staying in AEW.

Basically, it's the, it's the cover all bases and answer everything.

He was giving the, I would evaluate any offer at any situation and do what's best for me.

That's why I've reinvented myself so much.

So he's basically saying,

I'll do anything that ends up the best thing for me to do.

But

didn't he just announce a couple of years ago, because we were talking about it and laughing about it, that he signed a 10-year contract.

And not only he, but Tony announced, signed a 10-year contract because we were laughing.

He'll be 62.

So,

unless Tony was to let him out of that contract, which at some point he may very well want to,

then he wouldn't be able to go back to the WWE.

When he's 62 years old, he might get inducted in the Hall of Fame.

That will come to a point somewhere down the road.

But right now,

I would have to to think that

there would probably be,

unless the personal aspect comes into it, all things being equal, I don't know how he left him or what

the relationship is.

But if I was the WWE, I'd say if we can get Chris Jericho to do five matches in the next

couple of years, it would be a pay-per-view, WrestleMania, whatever.

It might be worth

doing something

of a reasonable amount of money and merchandise and et cetera

and some television appearances where he wasn't wrestling.

But I think just for the nostalgia value, I don't know at this point,

you know, Punk is a nostalgia run almost at this point, and he's 10 years younger than Jericho.

So would they want to put Jericho in a position where the people would see through it because he's wrestling even once or twice a month.

I think it would have to be a limited thing if it was interest on their part.

They wouldn't start building a regular talent and regular now being once or twice a week.

They wouldn't start building Jericho at this age as a regular talent for a two or three year contract.

I can't see that.

Well, we'll follow this story and see what happens.

And if there's anything more to say, we'll say it on the drive-through, but it certainly didn't leave Big Bill Bill and Brian Keith looking like anything.

Oh, it left them looking like something.

I've seen a lot of what it left them looking like in the middle of the road after the parade goes by.

But speaking of the parade going by, do you know who the parade left, Brian?

The parade left the main event behind for us to enjoy.

The main event on this program,

where again, where bad promos and nonsensical bullshit and people injured and

chaos running rampant, the main event was Claudio Castignoli and our friend Wheeler Useless.

And it didn't even like him here, and he's from Philadelphia

against Samoa Joe and Hook.

And they've made it at this point where I don't even want to see Samoa Joe.

But this, again, they rang the bell at six minutes till 10, so you know they're going over, even though that the swerve and pack match was cut, I'm sure, fairly short from what it was going to be, they still managed to find a way to stretch this fucking fiasco out, right?

So

point is they go past the 10 o'clock hour into the overrun.

And then finally, Joe and Claudio are on the floor and Wheeler and Hook are in the ring.

And Moxley comes down

and grabs a chair.

He gets up on the apron of the ring and draws the referee.

Then he gets down and then he paces around for a little while.

Did you see?

It was like, did he come too early for something?

He was just there and he distracted people, but then he backed off.

Then he grabbed a chair.

Then Shapupi came down and grabbed Moxley in a sleeper.

And Joe got Claudio in a choke

on the floor.

They were outside the ring.

And then Hook got Wheeler in the choke, the red rum,

and Wheeler tapped out

because that's his function in that group.

But then Marina Schaefer comes in

and

starts getting on everybody.

And the heels get back up and beat up the baby faces.

And at this point, and I didn't even see this, this went around on Twitter

the day after.

I didn't see it when it happened because they had a wide shot on the ring, but

if you're looking for it, you can see it.

If you're not looking for it, you can't see it.

But apparently, as they're getting heat on the heat on the babyfaces before Samoa Joe comes in with a chair and runs the heels off,

Hook was down selling

and he puked.

He threw up chunks in the ring

right before Claudio picked him up and did the spot where they picked him up and dropped him stomach first on the folding chair.

So

what was he?

Because they didn't go long enough for a kid like him to be blown up.

Did he take some kind of stomach blow or was there some reason for him to be vomiting

before they did that deal?

That's what I'm wondering.

Maybe he realized what the ratings would be being in a main event with Claudio.

Come on now.

I don't know.

I didn't see what caused it.

I didn't even notice it until after the fact and people on social media started sending it around.

I didn't see it happen.

But then that begs the question.

I wasn't even that, but that begs the question.

Claudio's right next to him.

He's about to pick him up and do the spot where he picks him up and drops him gut first on a folding chair on the edge of the chair.

So

did he say, Hey, can you hurry up and finish puking and come here so I can drop your stomach on the edge of a chair?

Did they have to do that thing

because they called it in the locker room?

Or could he have said, Well, you know, this guy's already throwing up.

Maybe I'll just fucking kick him in the head and let him take his own bunk.

What is the matter with all these people?

Maybe he didn't see the throw up.

He just smelled it.

And when he smelled it, he thought, oh, someone's wearing Moxley's cologne.

Amen.

amen no no that's not moxley's the the seed or the lap of moxley's pants that smells like that it was it was it was five feet away from claudio he had to look at it to pick the guy up

but it's like all of them have not been ever been talked to in any kind of meaningful way in training otherwise in a superficial

Mother Show must go on and, you know, gut through this stuff instead of, no, we can do something different because nobody knows what we're supposed to be doing to begin with till we do it.

But yeah, so

then Joe

ran everybody off with the chair and the fans are eh.

And Joe cut a promo like they're coming after the

and I mean, I can believe it from Joe, but he's got a skinny kid laying in his own puke and fucking shapoopy

as his backup.

And they're coming after the Death Riders.

And the only thing that Joe really got a pop for

was something he said that he got bleeped for.

So

that was that program.

AEW.

Another AEW Dynamite.

Of course, they're on a real hot string of

exciting action.

We could talk about the ratings.

I have them here.

AEW Dynamite on Wednesday, April 9th, 2025, from 8 to 10.08 p.m.

on average, watched by 659,000 viewers.

659,000.

Now that is firmly in their wheelhouse or their flywheel or whatever as they say these days.

They're in the sixes now usually six to 660 or so.

Well, for instance, last week was 540, not 540, excuse me, 594.

So this is up 11% from that, according to WrestleNomics.

The trailing four-week average, 636.

So 4% up on that.

Ah, so they're a little bit better than their weakest average ever.

Okay.

Let's go to the quarterly breakdown.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

It does not include Max.

And by the way, I've heard from multiple people who work in television who told me the streaming numbers of 500,000 being added to Dynamite is hogwash.

Not one of them thinks it could be anywhere near that.

And we would certainly know about it if it was.

But let's go to the quarterly breakdown.

Quarter one,

8 to 8.15 p.m.

The Jon Moxley backstage promo, the Moxley versus Shibata match, and the Young Bucks coming out for their promo, 767,000 viewers.

Okay,

so it looks like they may keep some people for most of this show with that starting point and their average.

Well, quarter two, 8.15 8.15 to 8.30 p.m., the Young Bucks Kenny Omega, Okada, Swerve Strickland, Pack Live Angle.

That's a way to put it.

An ad break and the start of PAC versus Swerve Strickland,

698,000 viewers.

Okay, I got to be honest with you.

That's exceptional because they only lost 69,000 people after 15 minutes of that opening dribble that we were subjected to.

That's a gift right there.

I applaud them for that accomplishment.

We go now to quarter three, 8:30 to 8:45 p.m.

The dribble continues.

The continuation of PAC vs.

Strickland.

Ricochet and Crew and Beast Mordos and Will Ospreay and Mark Briscoe and Kevin Knight and Mike Bailey backstage angle.

An ad break.

The Billy Starks, Mercedes, Monet, Harley Cameron backstage angle.

I missed that.

And the Adam Page, Prince Nana, backstage angle, followed by an ad break.

629,000 viewers.

Ouch.

Okay, that shows the culmination of that first 30 minutes of abysmal misery.

Now they're down

138,000.

Well, we've got a quarter for 8.45 to 9 p.m.

Kevin Knight, Mark Briscoe, Mike Bailey, and Will Ospreay versus Crew and Ricochet and Beast Mortos with picture and picture,

604,000 viewers.

Wow.

And it keeps going.

Now they've got to

jump up here again to get to their average, I would think, here pretty soon.

So they're at the top of the hour.

Did they get a big pickup?

Well, we were at the big nine o'clock hour, quarter five, nine to nine: fifteen p.m.

The finish of the aforementioned eight-man tag match.

MJF and the Hurt Syndicate's live angle.

Megan Bain and Penelope, Penelope, Penelope,

Megan Bain and Penelope Ford's backstage promo, and an ad break,

688,000 viewers.

Holy shit, that is the biggest jump they've had at the top of the hour in my memory that I can recall since we've been doing this.

They never pick up 84,000 people.

We'll be going out at a quarter six, 9.15 to 9.30 p.m.

Thunder Rosa Rosa versus Chris Statlander with Picture and Picture.

You did not review that match.

Yeah.

692,000 viewers.

It picked up 4,000 people.

Okay, now something's happening here in hour two.

They're setting the world on fire.

We're going at a quarter seven, 9.30 to 9.45 p.m.

The finish of Rosa versus Statlander, Don Callis's backstage promo, the Paragon backstage promo.

What the fuck's the Paragon?

I don't know.

I was zoning out at that point.

The Learning Tree Live promo, and Anthony Bowens' promo,

670,000 viewers.

This is an odd show because they have now.

Except for their strong open, quarter two and three were 698 and 629.

Quarter six and seven are 692 and 670.

They never do better in the second hour than they do in the first.

It has never happened, yet here they are.

What a wonderful time to be alive.

Well, we go to quarter eight, and I remind you, we have an eight-minute overrun.

9.45 to 10 p.m.

The Hurt Syndicate MJF backstage angle.

That's when MJF walked into the room after they left.

Yeah.

An ad break.

The Chris Jericho learning triangle.

And the start of the Death Riders versus the ops.

Well, picture in picture.

576,000 viewers.

Eight-minute overrun, more ops versus death, 568,000 viewers.

Ouch.

Okay.

The people finally said at this point, we know what's going to be on the rest of the show.

So they lost 102,000 people from Porter 7 to the overrun.

But

bravo on them

for somehow getting people to watch the second hour of their show for the first time in history.

It's well over the 90-day trend line, as you've been pointing out here without seeing the graph.

It's well above it for that second hour.

So something happened.

Either that or MJF and the Hurt Syndicate stuff is getting some interest, which I could see.

And Thunder Rosa and Chris Statlander asked every relative they have to please watch the nine o'clock hour.

We'll be on at some point.

I really Stanlander brought the Alpha Centauri audience into it.

No, Andromeda.

No, that's a much bigger.

I thought she was from Alpha Centauri.

No, that's where they were going on Lost in Space.

Yeah, she's from the Andromeda Galaxy.

Yeah, well, that's an even bigger galaxy.

So there's a lot of people there.

I believe it's in Suffolk County.

But that was AEW Dynamite's ratings.

Well, and this was the Jim Cornette experience from a disaster area.

Did we get through it?

Apparently not.

The mute button didn't, but we did and we got through it.

And congratulations.

Once again, you survived another disaster.

I'm a disaster survivor and a COVID survivor.

And folks, now you are a Jim Cornette experience survivor.

And we're going to be back in a couple of days with the drive-through next week with the experience.

We're coming up on WrestleMania.

Dark side of the ring next week, all the wrestling programs.

You can't afford to miss a minute.

If you miss a minute, you miss a lot.

But in the meantime and in between time, thank you.

Fuck you, and bye-bye, everybody.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Connet

of Jim Cognet

of Jim Connet.