Episode 576: Ball Of Confusion

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

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 phony.

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony because his mama raised him right.

It's time

to prepare

your mind

to get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

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

I survived this week's natural disaster, but enough about AEW.

The tornadoes didn't get me either.

It's the ball of confusion episode, folks, because that's what the world is today.

Hey, hey.

And joining me.

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

Co-HostU, the man who never gives in to temptations, psychedelic soul brother, the great Brian Last, everybody.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

And I think we have a very interesting show.

A lot of stuff to talk about.

There's news.

AEW's got things happening.

WWE, are we talking about them today?

I guess some NXT stuff.

Good show today.

We'll see.

Actually, no problem.

Well, thank you for evaluating the program.

Meanwhile, while the world is in chaos, things are falling around our ears.

I'd give today's show three stars.

No, no, no.

with all the with all the furniture breaking and fire spots and everything that i'm about to tell you about you got to give it four or five stars especially just for all the

mayhem and chaos well maybe you're right i don't really like this kind of mayhem but i'll take your word for it five stars

all righty well you we were talking you and i And we included all the listeners, the people out there, the cult of Cornette, on the drive-through, your program, a couple of days ago, ago, that we had had severe weather here in the Louisville metropolitan area and greater suburban environs on Sunday, where there were tornadoes uncomfortably close to the castle, like within 10 miles and there's up in southern Indiana and just bad weather all over the place.

And we were talking about that.

And I said, well, now they're forecasting more shit.

Will they promote this for a couple of days?

I have, you know how how i watch the weather brian and i've talked about this on the on the show and for many years keeping an eye on this

impending doom right

and i've never seen a weather forecast for this town here like this this right here town here

i've never seen the amount of thunderstorms and tornadoes and of excessive rainfall and flood warnings and temperature fluctuations.

This is the most bizarre thing that we have seen.

So they're saying, well, yeah, the storm we get on Wednesday, well, now that's going to be even worse.

And the radar looked at the radar looked much worse, but that's going to be worse than

the conditions are going to be worse for bad storms and what we had Sunday.

And also, the wind energy is about double.

The fuck?

So Wednesday, it gets to 80-something degrees, and the sun's out, and it's that hot, humid air is coming in from the south.

But meanwhile, from the east, coming in hot, baby.

That's the low-pressure system.

Number 52 on the field, but number one in your hearts.

It's coming in to tackle that fucking hot humid because when the cold, dry air hits the hot, humid air, Brian, that's when his Gary Hart would say, the shit's on, brother.

and so this stuff starts firing off to the west of us right about dark away to the west of the viewing area and you know

i watch

my boy mark weinberg the weather the chief meteorologist and weather nerd over at wdrb brad this is fascinating to him and his team They take this shit seriously.

He knows all about this shit.

They've got the computerized weather radar and the different screens and the double boxes and the statistics.

We got a 75 mile an hour wind gust out at the airport or it's raining buckets now on Joe's yard up in Prospect.

They're pinpointing this shit.

It's fascinating.

I love, I would be sitting there watching this with popcorn and just hanging on every word with happiness.

Because I love to learn about it if it wasn't for the fact that they are calling, as I mentioned before, my impending fucking doom.

So they're on because

they've got the weather now coming into the market and they've southern indiana looked bad and i said well there's a fucking what they're identifying as a possible tornado that's about a mile from the feather bottoms residence

and apparently new albany got hit and all places in southern india but we're watching all that stuff right and we're Stace and I, we're in the

TV room with the flashlight in hand, waiting for anything.

But she's got her tablet.

You know, that little thing the kids carry around where you got a TV screen on just a normal little fucking everyday-looking box device.

Have you heard of that?

A tablet?

A box device?

I know what a tablet is.

Well, it's like it looks like it, it looks like an etchisketch.

You know, it's a flat rectangular thing.

They call it the kids call it a tablet, but you can see the TV on it.

It's more than just TV, obviously, but yes.

Well, she's got one of those snazzy little thing,

so she's got that ready to take down into our tornado safe space,

which, as I've mentioned before, is down

under the pool table in the bar where the walls are stone and half a foot thick or a foot thick, and we're half underground.

And,

you know, that's as low as we're going to get, right?

And so we're watching it while we're looking at southern Indiana.

All of a sudden, here comes this storm coming into, well, it's around, I think they said Pleasure Ridge Park at first, but then they're drawing the goddamn extrapolation,

the thing that showed the path of the storm and the cone out that way.

I said, that's, that's going to come right here.

And it's building intensity.

And then they go back up to southern Indiana telling us about that.

And all of a sudden,

they're back down there and they're like, there's a tornado on the ground.

It's lofting debris.

It's in Jaytown.

I'm like, fuck.

Here we go.

And we go down under the pool table.

And it's storming and raining and lightning and thundering outside,

right?

But as you remember, we told a story last summer, had that big storm hit here, toppled that giant fucking 100-foot tree in my backyard, tore some other stuff up, just all kinds of chaos.

I'm thinking, holy fuck,

they didn't even have a goddamn tornado.

that was ever even suspected for right here where I am at that point.

Shit, this thing's close.

And we're under the pool table watching the

tablet.

And, you know,

again, it's storming outside, but I'm thinking, oh, shit, what's going to happen?

And they're talking about, oh, and it's, it's right at Blankenbag.

Oh, wait, it's, it's crossing the highway.

I'm like, fuck, where they had this tornado crossing and where we come to find out it did indeed cross.

If I walked out my garage door and just walked southeastwards,

it's less than a mile

and went fucking right.

And

then it calmed down a bit and I peeked outside

and there's nothing, nothing in my yard, knocking on all kinds of wood, trees, sighting, anything disturbed in any way whatsoever.

But.

Guess what happened a mile southeast of me?

Brian, you know, if there's an industrial park, and I guess this is actually more just directly south, but right where it passed by, horizontally underneath my house, there's an industrial park over there.

It's less than two miles away.

You know, those big

two-story like warehouse and office space buildings, they have an industrial parks that cover like a half a football field of space, right?

You can visualize what I'm talking about.

Yeah, I've seen places like that.

Sure.

There's one.

They got the drone shot on the news.

It took the roof completely off of this fucking thing.

I'm talking a roof the size of half a football field.

The drone shot, you can look down and see the people inside with the shovels cleaning the shit out because it's destroyed.

There is asbestos, not asbestos, but insulation.

Might be asbestos.

No, this is a new park.

Insulation everywhere on the streets over there hanging from trees and fucking strewn everywhere so this giant massive structure has no roof there's an apartment complex brand new complex next to it a hundred apartments were damaged siding torn off roofs torn off of brick wall blown over at the lexis dealership it took a string of all of the goddamn streetlights and the

trees that were planted between the parking lot and the road just took them out in different directions.

Just every fucking where.

hammered the, and they're at the same time.

The one in southern Indiana, there were 15,000 people out of power

in southern Indiana.

That's a big number, right?

And I haven't seen all the footage of that, but there was one guy also,

apparently, that had a nice big wooden deck on the front of his house.

He's still got the deck, but it's on his roof.

And

that was,

but they said the fucking thing.

I can't remember, was it 100 yards wide or whatever?

That shows you the bizarre nature of these storms.

It's like just sitting in a pinball machine waiting for the ball to hit you because

the tornado is 100 yards wide.

If it's a mile away from you, like it was me,

if you didn't know it on the news, you wouldn't know what happened.

But there,

there's fucking witches on bicycles flying through the air

this

is what i say so

you're moving to jersey after

oh and it's not that bad

i mean there's you know sudden death there's some positives to it before new jersey but i got a nice place in patterson i'd like to rent you

Yeah, I bet Patterson might have liked a nice place in you.

Listen here is what I'm trying to tell you about the weather.

I blow hot and cold about it.

So this storm system passed through, and they can't even evaluate it because it's still raining.

And also because, of course, you may have heard in the news, they've cut employees from the National Weather Service, surface, National Weather Service, the people who survey this as well as forecast it and try to help.

people not be blown away.

But in the next few days, they're going to figure out how many tornadoes we had Wednesday night.

And then since then, it has mostly not stopped raining and or thunderstorming,

except for brief points when it still does, the sun doesn't come out and it starts storming again because this thing's parked on top of us.

We got another little severe chance tonight and then a bigger severe chance tomorrow.

And then Sunday, it finally quits raining.

And some places around here will have got a foot of rain, give or take a little bit.

And

just to make everybody even happier here in the derby city of Louisville, Kentucky, Brian, do you know what a Saturday, April 12th is this year?

Do I know what a Saturday, April 12th is?

Do you know

what's a Sunday this year?

Is it just crazy?

No, I'm saying, do you know what

takes place on Saturday, April 12th this year?

Is that when

the horses parade through the streets?

No, no, no.

Exciting the local people as they get ready for

That's on Pamploma Day.

We have the running of the thoroughbreds over the fucking homeless people.

No, Saturday, April 12th is Thunder Over Louisville, the kickoff of the Kentucky Derby Festival.

And then we have three weeks of local festivities.

And Thunder Over Louisville is the world's largest, or at least the country's largest ongoing annual fireworks display.

I've talked about it where they blow up the bridge downtown and the fucking local TV ratings.

It's like a 50 rating and a 70 share.

And half a million people, give or take, depending on the weather, some years the weather is a little inclement, go down

to the river, Brian, take me to the river, drop me in the water.

They go down to the river, the riverfront, where the great lawn is going to be a great lake, and where they're already putting up the flood walls against the Ohio.

So the people, the people, Brian, they're trying to go down to the river for the Thunder Over Louisville ceremony, are going to have to wear fucking scuba fins and goddamn

apparently take plenty of moisturizer because it's going to be cold and wet.

And

this is a big deal for the Louisville economy, and we need something right now.

And the river is scheduled to be at major flood stage at various points all around

the area here over the next week.

So

we'll continue to

monitor this on the weather desk, but I just wanted to let people know what was going on.

And apparently they got fucking blistered over in Memphis and Arkansas and a variety of places also.

They showed Clarksville, Tennessee on CBS News this morning, which I know because AEW was just there.

So we just talked about Clarksville.

And of course, we send our best to all the listeners within the storm path and hope everyone's okay.

Well, if they talked about Clarksville, then it's not far enough from Nashville that Nashville was all sunshine and lollipops either.

So, but yeah, this thing went from the storm

front or et cetera, went from apparently Michigan all the way down to Texas or whatever at one point, just coming across the country in an eastward direction, just blowing the fuck out of everybody.

Well, but you know, Brian, we do have some good news here today on the program.

The good news that now the people can be even

more demonstrative.

What is your stance on public displays of affection, the PDA?

On me or on someone else?

Well, no, just the concept of it, where people publicly display their affection.

Are you for it or again it?

You don't have to be involved in it.

That's okay when it's reasonable.

When all of a sudden it's dry humping in public, I think then it's gone too far.

Well, no, but would you say that if the people,

the people out there, the cult of Cornette, if they were, I don't know, wearing our brand new t-shirts to show support for me, Corny, as well as the Corny drive-through and all the other fine things that are in the pipeline, that would be a public display of affection for us, but it wouldn't cross the line into

gross.

I don't know if it'll be considered a public display of affection.

Now, of course, if you wear this shirt and are seen on a wrestling broadcast, Jim may kiss you.

That's the promise that we're making all the customers right now.

It depends on the broadcast.

That's right.

That may be false advertising.

Jim's not touching any of you, but you could touch these fine shirts.

ArcadianVangard.com.

At the shop app or in the shop app, just look for a Jim Cornette or Arcadian Vanguard.

And of of course, the easiest way, just go to the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel.

Any video will have a link to the store.

You'll see different shirts underneath it.

And click those and go right there.

Support the show.

And maybe if you're supporting the show and someone else is, you can meet up and make a new friend.

And back to you.

Well, and here's another thing.

I'm going to don't just make blanket statements and say you speak for me when you say, well, Jim's not going to kiss you.

He's not going to touch any of you.

Again, this could be on a case-by-case basis.

So I wish you wouldn't just, goddamn, you know, just rule everything out right.

Let's see what might happen.

You never know about these things.

The less a man makes declarative statements, the less likely he is to be proven a fool in retrospect, Brian.

Oh, no, I've learned about that.

I know this one fool that makes all sorts of reckless statements in his declarations to the court.

Well, we'll have more about that in the future.

Well,

I declare, I I declare, we can't declare anything about that because we're coming through customs.

Not yet, not yet.

But soon.

But anyway, but yes, the new shirts, they're right there.

And you click on that thing and

there they are.

That's right.

All righty.

Before we get into the actual wrestling action that took place or the things that occurred in the wrestling.

industry this past week.

You want to talk about the dark side of the ring?

Did you see the dark side of the ring episode on

Ludwig Borga, aka Tony Holm that was on this past Tuesday night?

I did see it.

And of course, in advance of it, they were nice enough to release the footage of you going off about his no exit or exit only tattoo.

I think it was.

Exit only.

That was the preview clip.

Jim Cornette talking about ass.

And you know, the thing is, he got.

The tattoos strategically placed where the only

way that the person, the person or person or persons unknown could see the fucking thing is if he was bent over in front of them with his ass unclosed.

And then that's when they would be able to read it.

So

why would he figure?

You know, he's a conversation starter.

Well, he's thinking, I end up in that position all the time where I'm naked and bent over to waist in front of somebody.

So I better just to avoid any misconscrewing of the facts.

But that was just a preview clip.

And I did see the full episode.

And of course, you were one of the stars of the episode.

And

oh, you do go on.

Interesting episode.

Luffy Borga.

Tony Holland.

Well, you know, and we had talked about this with when Evan Husty was on the program and

only part of it

was his time as a wrestler because his time as a wrestler was so.

brief and actually unmemorable, except for the, you know, insane shit that he was able to do later on in his life that proved to everybody that he was nuts.

And so even the wrestling fans,

you know, got to learn some shit that they may not have known.

I mean, this was

reported at various points on the internet.

If you are one of the people that keep up with that, you know, on a regular basis.

But otherwise, a lot of people probably thought, oh, there's that fucking stiff that was in Survivor Series 30 years ago.

What?

He got a fucking elected.

He was a politician by god he was deported he was had an uzi what the is going on here

uh but did you like the way that

that

jr summarily dismissed him as a fucking because they hired him before jr was

the head of talent relations as i recall and he seemed thoroughly disgusted by the whole thing or even on a on a on a JR scale,

he was still disgusted.

JR has been one of the positives in the first two episodes because he's completely in the I don't give a fuck portion of his career now where he just says whatever the fuck and knows no one's gonna punch him.

Well, especially not Tony Holm.

Yeah, especially not Tony Holm.

And remember, they brought him in.

I remember as a fan being kind of pissed off because Marty Giannetti had a really good run in 93 when he came back and challenged Sean as a surprise.

And then he just had good matches on Raw.

And then they completely destroyed him.

Or ludvig borga did at summer slam and that was a sign of things to come the fan they pointed it out here correctly the fans did not care about him his promos didn't i don't even remember his promos but exactly nothing about him connected and that was where they went with luger after the yokozuna match at summer slam

but also and i honestly

He was the one, Lud Vig Borga was the one that ended Tatanka's winning streak, which truthfully I had to be reminded of by this episode because

I didn't remember.

And that was, I got in

July 1993 into the WWF, and I don't know whether this had just happened or was about to happen, whatever the fuck.

But I had not been watching, obviously, so I didn't know what was going on or what had happened beforehand.

But when you see if Tatanka had a two-year win streak, and then this guy comes in and just beats the shit out of him, pins him with one finger,

Vince's fascination.

And I kind of explained it at the top of this program for foreign menaces and these big foreign heels.

That

uh, and

you said

that, uh, that you didn't remember, you know, a great Ludwig Borga promos when they asked me what Evan and the dark side guy said, can you do something for the Ludwig Borga episode?

I said, Yes, I was in the locker room with him.

They said, no, you managed him.

And I said, I did.

I had forgotten he was on the fucking team at Survivor Series that year.

Oh, that's the foreign fanatics with

the foreign fanatics.

Canada, Finland, and fucking.

And see, that's the thing.

If they had brought him in, even though it was already the 90s, if they had brought him in as a German and given him a manager, just with that look.

It would have meant a whole lot more than coming in as a Finnish wrestler and doing his own promos.

well but see vince was still having to be good then because that was that they had hired people to make sure that their programming was acceptable to children and the public relations blah blah blah i don't think he wanted to reignite world war ii with a goddamn nazi heel

right

so he's trying to fly under the radar but i wasn't on the creative team at this time so i'm only I'm using supposition.

Turns out he was a Nazi heel and he just hid the tattoo.

Well, yeah, that's the thing.

I don't don't know what was in Vince's, because I can see, remember, I told you with Gunther, Vince would see either a Nazi, you know, German military general or a goddamn Russian U-boat captain or some kind of fucking thing.

And who knows what else?

But that's the, he was, that's what the preposterosity of it.

was Ludwig Borga from Finland.

Like, yes, and now we've been informed because they hate it on the interwebs, Brian, when you and I don't know geography.

But point is, Finland is a country that was near Germany, but that we probably

wouldn't have a fucking problem with standing on their own.

But anyway, that was the point: he comes and he gives this guy the push, and JR is like, you know, he slipped by us.

We made a mistake in hiring him.

See, you hear the thunder, Brian?

And feel the lightning?

Thunder over Louisville.

Appreciate it.

They won't even have to fire off the fireworks.

But

you can tell by this program, Tony Holm as a person

had issues that were going to manifest themselves.

As a child, he was a broken home.

His parents were alcoholics.

He was poor.

He gave himself a gimmick before wrestling, just when he went out as the Viking and he's the bodybuilder and try to get big so he can impose his will upon people.

He was impressed by taxi driver.

He wanted to move to the United States because of the movie Taxi Driver.

These are the kind of people that need to be on a goddamn list somewhere that the government should be keeping an eye on.

So what made you want to move to America, Rupert Pupton?

I said taxi driver?

That's just such a weird thing to influence you you to, you know, maybe I can go to America and make it on my own.

Taxi driver, did it?

I could do it.

Watch out, Harvey Keitel.

And, you know, Tarantino could do my life story.

But he wanted to be a movie star.

And he went to Gold's gym and started taking horse steroids and doing, he's searching for fame.

He's doing TV commercials.

So now you've got a giant 300-pound bodybuilder on horse steroids with a fucking

bad attitude or mindset.

It comes from a broken home and a bad childhood.

And then he gets in the wrestling business

and worked for Herb Abrams.

How fitting, how apropos.

Two different seasons of Darkseid colliding.

with each other.

That's the one thing I wish they would have gone a little deeper on, just how exactly he went went from Herb Abrams to New Japan to WWF.

Like, we didn't find out about how he got into WWF really, just that all of a sudden he was there.

You know, Jim Ross couldn't speak to it.

He wasn't in talent relations at that point.

Same thing with New Japan.

How the fuck did he end up there?

How did he end up on their radar when the only thing anyone knew him as was the Viking in the UWF on what one taping, a couple tapings in California?

I guarantee you because Herb Abrams was bringing in a variety of guys of different experience levels or whatever that somebody that he met there

possibly did something for.

Hey, you know, here's a number or I'll call, oh, you ought to go to whatever.

Because that period of time, New Japan was looking for

guys that looked like that, right?

That's before Inoki had

scandaled himself out of a lot of control and he loved that type of shit.

And then it wasn't: if you're in New Japan,

then somebody in the WWF is probably going to see you or hear about you.

And then, and what does Vince look for?

Is these fucking guys that look like that?

I got to seek out.

I don't remember that match, but the clips look great: him against Vader or Big Van Vader.

I gotta see that because that's around the time I first saw him.

It was, I think, the 1992

G1.

And

he was the first, I remember, I remember the clip vividly.

He pulled up a guy from getting pinned and he was just like, fuck the fuck, fuck, fuck.

I was like, holy shit, who's this guy?

I've never seen like a wrestler just yell fuck a bunch of times.

And it was him.

And he looked impressive.

You know, back then I wasn't paying attention to if he could work or not, but he looked impressive.

Yeah, to the 12-year-old eye, he was a.

And that's the thing is that that's how he got, because his career, that's how he got these opportunities.

His career career in pro wrestling lasted from what 1991 probably right before you saw him to

he was out of the wwf in 94 and did he do

really anything that maybe he might have had then he went to the ufc as they mentioned maybe he did another wrestling show or two somewhere who knows i don't know but so he had a three-year career

And during the, and remember, he was kicked out of Japan,

as they mentioned, before

he went to the WWF to begin with for getting in the fight with Scott Norton.

Yeah, where was he?

They should have interviewed him for this.

That's what I wanted to hear.

I wonder where he is.

He's still around, didn't he?

I always have to ask that these days without being disrespectful.

He wrote a book a few years ago, so he's definitely.

Well, a lot of dead people wrote a book a few years ago.

See, think about that.

But his book was titled, I am Still Alive by Scott Norton.

Oh, Oh, okay.

Well, all right.

Then he's got it covered then.

All right.

But

so he'd been kicked out of Japan.

Now he's been fired from the WWF.

So then

he, you know, he, by the way, his wife who was on here is that's when he decided I decided to divorce him because he was cheating on me.

And he was on painkillers and taking horse steroids.

And then

they talked about, you know, briefly his run in the WWF.

He didn't get over for the reasons that we mentioned.

He didn't connect with anybody.

He was,

because think about it.

From the look of him and what he did, like you said, if he was in a territory that had given him a manager and he was a guy that you could bring in for three to six months, depending on the size and frequency of the territory and get him over on TV and have him work a couple of deals with a couple of your baby faces and then he move move on, and you could have got

some use out of him because it would have taken people a while to see through him in the ring.

And it wouldn't matter if he wasn't talking.

In that environment, he could be one of the guys, right?

Top guys.

But in the WWF,

he was what Vince

looked for and liked the look of, but that's why everybody else there had it too.

And he couldn't talk as good as them.

Or

do you think now he's

with that thunderbrian and maybe Tony Holm is looking down on me trying to send a lightning bolt?

I also saw the movie Cape Fear.

But

he couldn't do the promo and he couldn't even do the promo like a fucking guy with an accent, Gunther.

Certainly English not his first language.

He just couldn't connect with people.

He wasn't a good actor.

He couldn't do a promo as good as Brackis.

Well, there you go.

I mean,

he was just playing a part.

He was trying to look at me.

I'm famous and big.

and

and then as they you know said he was not friendly in the locker room

you know he he didn't cause any big issues that i remember he was just sitting over there you're like i don't know if i want to go sit and talk to this fucking guy or not i was in interviews with him and besides

passing conversation potentially as the producer is telling us what we're talking about and whatever

i don't recall any interaction with him personally and i'm i'm fine with that.

Do you remember him sitting with anyone?

Like, who did he ride with?

Who did he talk to?

Well, no, not really.

I mean,

I didn't follow him out to watch him get in the car, but I don't, as, you know, there were a few comments from people.

The, the talking heads

were Tatanka and JR and myself, but also his ex-wife and the promoter from Finland and a very

weird-looking childhood friend.

Oh, come on.

Jesus Christ, he looked like he should star in a fucking horror movie with Need Makeup.

The promoter from Finland, he wrote a book too.

Was it a Scott T.

No, I'm not talking about him.

I'm talking about the childhood.

Oh, I know, I know.

Michael Mahaji or whatever his name was.

He wrote a book.

Well,

that's what I said when I saw him.

But nevertheless, I don't remember anybody particularly, you know, oh, that fucking Tony.

Boy, what a barrel of laughs he is when we travel together.

And once he was gone, he hurt hurt his ankle.

And I think his contract expired.

They, you know,

they either said he was fired or what, I don't think they fired him as much as, oh, thank God, you know, we don't have to renew this contract.

And off he went.

I mean, if you think about it, they started giving him the heavy push around SummerSlam through Survivor Series.

He was gone by Mania.

Was he gone by Royal Rumble?

I got to double check.

By WrestleMania, he wasn't even an afterthought.

Everything had moved on.

And

then he exhibited incredible timing and luck.

I didn't even know this factoid that his debut in the UFC, Tony Holm, as a fighter, was also against Randy Couture in his UFC debut.

That's right.

And Tony Holm lost in one fucking minute.

So.

Now he's been kicked out of Japanese wrestling.

He's been excommunicated from the WWF.

He's been

drubbed like a drum in the UFC in a minute.

And he's got married again, but the SWAT team raids his house for having whatever quantities of steroids and an Uzi.

And he went to jail, whereupon from jail, they deported him back to Finland.

So that apparently was why he wasn't working the independent circuit after that point

over here

but then the the shit really started happening because again

i get in finland i'm not trying to be derogatory toward the finnish people but one would assume that there are not as many

celebrities in finland as there are in some of the bigger countries that have celebrities in them So he gets on their American Gladiators and he's boxing and he's doing music videos because he's a big meathead.

He's in commercials.

Why is it at Finnish?

Why is it American Gladiators at Finland?

I saw the clip too, obviously.

Well, yeah, well,

did Finland have Finland didn't have gladiators, they had Vikings,

so they would have had to have been Greek gladiators, but he couldn't be a Greek gladiator because it's clearly marked on his ass: exit only.

So, no Greek for Tony.

The thunder won't stop.

The thunder from down under, baby.

What about the Finnish woman that was apparently also a Finnish gladiator?

I wonder if he was glad he ate her.

She was, was that Pippi Longstocking on crack?

Or was it fucking

Heidi in her MILF years?

What was happening with that woman?

That was the way she chose to appear on television.

It's God, God's going to get me for this.

That was my favorite Pippi Longstocking book, Pippi Longstocking on Crack.

What the, did you see?

All right.

So, so he becomes a celebrity in Finland and he

writes a made-up biography and he starts pumping the fucking crazy shit.

And one of a fringe political party props him up since apparently people people were blaming immigrants for their own problems in Finland at this time.

And so they got somebody that would say any batshit, crazy thing that he pulled out of his ass because it was exit only.

And they elected him to their parliament.

And the guy that wrote the book on him, his biographer, one of the talking heads, compared him to our current situation.

Feelings are more important than facts.

They didn't care whether what he said was true.

He tied the rise in crime to the immigrants.

It's them.

And the journalists were trying to decide: should we write about this fucking lunatic?

So we don't want to give this batshit stuff publicity, but people are talking about it.

And he gets elected to parliament.

Yeah, that's the crazy thing.

People heard him like, that guy knows what he's talking about.

He's clearly a success.

Brian, we have come to the reason why it takes millennia for the human race to make any progress because you can't fucking teach anybody anything.

But nevertheless,

this fucking elected official in 2003 in Finland goes full crazy And he starts even embarrassing his friends and backers.

And one of the guys, well, his stories changed weekly.

He couldn't keep up with what he'd said

because he was by then a drug addict and an alcoholic.

And apparently, after a

two-week drinking binge, his new wife wanted to split up with him.

So he took a bunch of pills, got a gun.

In the struggle with his wife, the gun went off.

Didn't shoot anybody, but the wife called 911.

They took him to the hospital in a coma,

and he suffered brain damage,

but recovered.

And because of the bad publicity, resigned from office.

So at that point, before he resigned, he was an alcoholic drug addict with brain damage that was still in office.

So imagine the United States is one

79-year-old man with a stroke away from having a babbling.

Nevertheless,

he resigned office because his image was ruined and he became a broke, drunk nobody.

Which apparently he that was the antithesis of what he had been working for his whole life, and he couldn't,

you know, pretty much stand that.

And

his friend and the police found him dead in what did they say?

It was 2010.

So,

you know,

if only his parents had loved him.

I'm talking about Tony Holm again, not the other guy.

If only his parents had loved him,

then things might have worked out a little bit better.

But I like this one because it's nice to see somebody who only had a peripheral involvement in the wrestling business and fucks up in more spectacular ways in other things for once.

What do you think?

I thought it was all right.

I didn't think it was as good as last week's.

I think it was so much of a focus on the non-wrestling stuff that after a while it wasn't even a wrestling show anymore.

It was just about this guy.

I thought it was all right.

I mean, not great.

Middle of the road.

Three stars.

In the middle of the road.

You know, Darkseid, you know who I would be interested in Darkseid doing an episode on if they had the guts?

Because this would be a gutsy thing.

Uh-oh, it sounds like a challenge to me.

Alberto Del Rio.

He just got in trouble again.

There was some incident in Mexico where all of a sudden I saw some footage from the crowd.

He's in the crowd, throwing chairs at people or getting chairs thrown at him and chasing people.

There's so many different stories and incidents, and it's a live thing.

It's still happening.

You know what?

Let's start that fucking campaign.

This is an ongoing story here.

By the time they're shooting this coming next season, we could have more.

And yes.

He's been on WWF-TV.

He was, he was pushed for a long time.

You know, what, 15 years ago, 10 years ago?

So if they need someone who's more recent, who just seems to be trying out for the show every time we hear a story about him, that's the one I'd like to hear or see.

Because that's, it's, yeah, it's been 10 or 15 years now that you hear nothing but he's fucking crazy doing something in some way or another.

Okay, cult of Cornet listeners,

follow dark side of the ring, not follow dark, but tweet dark side of the ring or contact dark side of the ring or follow him.

Follow Evan Husty down the street.

I happen to know he carries a big wad of cash on him at all times.

Follow him down the street and make him nervous unless.

Hit him with a hammer.

Well, don't hit him with a hammer.

We need his body.

Kneecap him and fucking and make him nervous until they do an Alberto Del Rio episode so we can hear the story of what kind of fucking lunatic shit, what the real deal is behind what he's been doing.

Like, I forgot he was even around anymore.

And then I saw this clip.

I'm like, man, he's still getting booked in Mexico.

And there's still trouble every time he's around.

There was all the stuff with Paige.

There were the incidents with Mystico.

I was about to say he was the one that beat one of the boys up in a fucking locker room or in the back of the arena at some point.

But even that one, I'm not sure the whole story, because it was a match on Raw with Mystico when he had a, what was Sin Cara in WWF against Alberto Del Rio.

And I think Sin Cara broke his finger.

And the match either ended early or he just like walked out on the match, whatever it was.

Then there was some kind of incident, but I believe, and I could be wrong, I'm not a lucha expert.

There was something that happened previous to that in Mexico with like Mystigo and his friends pulling a gun on Alberto Del Rio.

I'm not exactly sure what my point is.

But hold on, this needs to be investigated, is my point.

Well, yes.

And see, what didn't I hear something about?

Wasn't he the one beat up just some random guy on the fucking card back there because he

bumped into paige or offended alberto on paige's behalf or whatever or something of that people send in the stories we'll read them we're we're not gonna

we're not gonna do any more supposition we send in the facts and we'll read it on the air so we've gone from we recommend this being the next episode to we'll just do it ourselves here on the show that's what you're saying

Well, I'm saying to get people excited for what all more stuff they can uncover, our dark side detectives over there.

And again, with Alberto, he has a wrestling background.

His father was Dos Karis.

His uncle is Mil Mosqueris.

It goes back to the beginning, and he had a look.

You would have thought, wow, that guy should be a star.

He could talk.

Did MMA.

And then it's just shithouse crazy stories.

That guy needs an episode.

Maybe a two-parter.

Maybe all righty, but you know, maybe a season.

Maybe, maybe a season.

The curious case of Alberto Del Rio

will be an ongoing series.

Yes,

when he became a patron, because he had to

watch the copyrights.

Anyway, so that next week, Dark Side, I should make mention of Vader,

the man they call Vader, Leon White, will be the

subject.

I was going to say the guest, the star, neither, the subject of next week's Dark Side of the Ring.

And I might make an appearance or two in that program also.

Yeah, it's very cornet heavy the first few weeks.

Usually they space your appearances out every episode.

Well, see, they want to start with a bang.

The competition is so stiff in TV these days.

They want to start with a bang and make sure that people realize they're going to get a heavy dose of cornet this season to bump the numbers up.

Since I, you know, became a star of the silver screen, that's like when the rock drops in.

You know, just make sure that everybody knows he's there.

Or Or maybe they just wanted to get it out of the way so people have a chance to recover.

I don't know.

One of those things.

Would you like to talk about what

our young friend, Ricky Starks, is up to?

Did you see this bit of business they did where it was like an AEW family reunion, but the fans in the audience didn't particularly feel like part of the AEW family?

Well, let me correct you.

First, it's Ricky Saints now, not Ricky Starks anymore.

And I did see this.

I've had NXT on one of the monitors in the office the last several weeks.

I always kind of get to see who's on it, although not every segment requires me to take it off mute or pay attention.

But I wanted to see this main event because you know, he just recently got there, maybe what, a month ago.

We all agree, despite a tag team title run or anything else, he was never used correctly in AEW.

I think everyone agrees with that.

So, this is his first real high-profile match here.

I was really curious to see this.

Well, and he's going for or was going, going, was going for the North American title there that NXT has.

And the champion, apparently, and he won this from what the announcers were saying like a month ago, Sean Spears,

who I suddenly realized, oh my God, he's still around.

And

they still ain't done anything to give him a good hairstyle.

But he's got an entourage and apparently they've put something together.

And the point is,

yeah, he's an okay mechanic.

He performs

just fine in a regular pro wrestling match.

I don't think he has a look or a presence that is going to threaten the upper echelon of the talent in the industry, Sean Spears.

But

at the same point, he always

either was made to look like a complete buffucking foon in AEW, or when he did have a couple of main event matches, they put him so far.

Did he have a deal with Cody at one point?

That's how they brought him in.

No, but yeah, you see, that was actually a chance because the fans accepted that.

That's where he hit Cody with the chair shot and he really busted Cody open.

Remember that?

And the fans are like, holy shit.

And then they kind of made him a jerk off pretty quickly.

And it was,

it was a mistake because it didn't do anything to help the rest of his run.

Yeah.

And, and, you know, he was just eh, and the, the, eh.

But point being,

in this

he was presented better looked better has people or if you if this was a vacuum and you hadn't seen him before you say okay he doesn't have

you know an incredible physique or any outlandish you know uh

look or

over-the-top ability in any one particular thing, but at least he doesn't have this ludicrous spotlight entrance with him in a chair on a revolving stage, and then he just looks like Ned, right?

The presentation is better, and they get

ridiculous.

Yes, the chairman, it was just ridiculous.

This week's got some people around him,

he looks okay, he can perform the fucking.

Apparently, he was a transitional champion because he won it about a month ago.

And then Starks Spears, Saint Stark Spears, and Saints

Saints

was marching in the challenge for it.

He's just got there.

And that's what the match was.

And

I know this is

a regular crowd at NXT, right?

This was their regular audience that comes every week.

It is kind of a friends and family plan kind of deal.

But when you see Stark standing, Saints standing there and Spears standing there,

the people start,

Tony fumbled.

tony fumbled

and it's obvious darks opened up look like somebody had taken a leash off of him

and he actually

he had the fire and the aggression and the you know the oomph to him where you can see that he realizes he has a real opportunity to do something now.

And he actually, in a couple of cases, he should be a little careful.

He doesn't get too excited and rushed too much.

But you can see he feels like there is a chance for upward momentum here where he was, you know,

dangling in obscurity and a malaise of mayonnaise

in the other place.

And so he was, again, he was really fucking aggressive.

And then at the one point,

Oh,

Sean Spears got on top of him and was trying to get some heat on him and Starks started trying to cover up.

And I said, Sean Spears pulled his hands apart so he had a target because he was trying to throw a decent looking punch to his head.

So bless you, Sean Spears, for that one.

And the fans were liking it.

Again, they're regulars, but they want

these people to succeed, but it helped.

The atmosphere, because that's another thing, Brian, think about it.

How many times was Starks out there having an excellent match technically, or Spears for that matter, where the people were just sitting there going, eh,

because it was, you know, they were lost in the booking C.

So they've got the fans into this here, they're regulars.

And finally, they have the match, boom, boom, boom.

One of the heel stooges outside distracts, and old Sean hits Saints with the title belt.

Boom, and gets a two count.

And he's, oh my God.

And fucking Ricky, ricky

starts coming up and boom he fucking

basically ran wild on everybody and i love the way they brought the people up this would have brought any room up for the last what 90 seconds of their finish

they set it up where he beat up all the stooges at ringside on the floor around bing bing bing each one of them speared spears

that's technically what he did hit spears with the spear

and then picked him up and hit his finish.

Boom, cover one, two, three.

New champion.

The last two minutes, especially, had the people up.

So it was exciting.

It made sense.

Everybody was in mostly the right place.

And, you know, again, both these guys produced here in a different environment.

Better than anything they ever did on AEW.

Did they not?

Or has it just been up so it's been so long since I've seen either one of them that I'm forgetting something?

Well, I think Ricky Starks is really up the fire.

And I can understand why he's now doing what he always wanted to do.

And he's being treated seriously right away, right out of the gate.

And the fans have really taken to him.

There is something to be said.

And I'm not even saying this in a negative way, like it doesn't have to be wrong.

But what NXT is doing with their curated audience, which is what it is, it's very similar to the kind of vibe, although a little different because the amount amount of people, like the AEW shows at Daly's place during the pandemic, where you're able to say, all right, these are our fans.

We want you to sit here.

We want you to sing the Chris Jericho song.

We want you to get into it.

We want you to yell at the heels.

It's not to that extent, but it's a curated crowd.

They pick.

What, didn't we get a letter once, someone saying, oh, yeah, we have to line up here and then we get on a bus and they take us here and then they let us go in.

Yes, and there's some element of taking a family member hostage just to make sure that, you know, the whole thing.

But the curated audience, you're kind of showing the rest of the audience that when NXT goes on the road, what they should react to, how they should react, as opposed to, like you said, if this match was exactly the same and it was on AEW-TV,

I don't know if the place would be totally into it.

I mean, they've been into more stuff lately, except like Edges matches.

Edges matches, it doesn't matter what happens.

They'll sing a song and then eventually they just stand there and stare at the ring.

It's going to disappear.

I think Ricky Stark's done good.

I think Sean Spears has been good at NXT.

The little bits I've seen of him and his stable, even the backstage stuff, him and Ricky Stark's backstage I saw,

it's better than anything he did in AEW.

And they don't treat him like a jerk-off.

You have more goofy shit that's booked to be goofy on shows like NXT, yet they don't treat it like it's, you know what I mean?

Like he's not treated like a jerk-off.

And

this is a promising start to Ricky Saints, and the fans have taken to him.

And if you really look at his style of match, it works with the WWE system, maybe a little better than AEW.

But now, not all is rosy on the horizon.

There's storm clouds brewing, Brian, because as

he was celebrating,

and, you know, he's won the North American title.

And again, a nice match, serious, nicely put together.

Not too long, not too hot, not too cold, just right.

It got over.

Boom, here's Ethan Page,

another alumni

and he

gloms old riggie saints from behind and hits his finish on him and grabs the title belt and holds it up and the people again start chanting tony fumbled tony fumbled

and here there's another guy

that uh

he was there

i i still don't know whether i'm sold on him or not but I bet you he'll probably look a little bit better in this environment than he did in

his previous home.

But it's getting embarrassing at this point

that

whenever Tony loses, no wonder he wants to extend guys' contracts or pay them just to stay home, because whenever

somebody leaves that television or leaves that environment and goes to the other side, they instantly

look better and there's something better about their presentation.

And

we haven't seen that in the obverse or the reverse or the

reverb or whatever the other phrase is for it.

Well, again, as I said at the beginning, I don't think anyone could argue that AEW blew with Ricky Starks.

They had opportunities.

The fans took to him as a heel and as a babyface.

And it was just never right.

We'll see about what happens in the future.

You know, some of the recent AEW moves like Megan Bain, when we hear that she's been signed for a couple years,

and

we'll see.

Again, AEW is going to have to change the way they do a lot of things because of WWE trying to lock down the industry away from Tony Khan and lock down future talent.

They're going to have to do something.

But when you see guys like Ricky Starks leave that show,

leave that show.

We didn't see him leave that show.

He left the show and then went home for a year.

Yeah.

Which is almost like a punishment.

Like, I don't want these guys to go to WWE right off my TV because then people will say all the things they're actively saying right now.

It doesn't change it.

Isn't that like being held hostage?

Isn't that like being confined and saying, you know, I'm going to pay you.

You're sitting home, but you can't do what you love for anybody else but me, but I don't want you to do it.

We've got a fractured relationship, so you just have to sit there.

Now, what are you allowed to do when you're on contract with Tony Khan, but you're sitting there in your home and are you allowed to leave?

Are you allowed to watch television?

Are you allowed to listen, Brian, listen to music or listen to people from the outside world?

Are you allowed to get on the telephone or listen to a podcast?

Or do you just have to sit there in solitary confinement day after day, day after day?

Brian, do you have any idea what the parameters are on Tony Khan's contract?

Could you maybe listen just to a pair of everyday earbuds from our friends at Raycon?

They're small.

They're unobtrusive.

Nobody's even going to know you got them in because they come in a variety of vibrant colors.

You can kind of find something to match your skin tone, put them right in.

Nobody will even know.

Of course, nobody's going to see you if you're sitting home waiting for Tony Khan to call you about your contract, bring you back into the fold.

You're in isolation.

You can turn on these earbuds and they will play.

They got a 32-hour battery life.

Now, if you're sitting up that long, uninterrupted, listening to something, maybe you need possibly to call a therapist.

But you've also got the quick charge function where let's just say you're sitting there and you can't take the silence and you can't take the solitude of this solitary confinement anymore.

You plug it in for 10 minutes.

It's going to get you 90 minutes of battery.

So you can listen to the entire Beatles White album or potentially the dark side of the moon twice through before it's going to die again and send you back into a chasm of black loneliness and hopelessness.

And

they also come with active noise cancellation, which is often difficult to find at such an accessible price point from what I am told.

And that way, Since you're already in what amounts to a sensory deprivation tank because Tony Khan has put you on ice and you can't leave your home to interact with other living beings, not even the goats that roam freely in the field behind your backyard and have somehow provided companionship during your darkest hours.

So instead,

you just cancel all the, you heard what I said, you just cancel all the noise.

And you just sit in silence.

Hello, darkness, my old friend.

You can listen to that too.

Because Simon and Garfunkel can't be taken away from you by a miserable dictator like tony khan

so again folks the raycon everyday earbuds no matter what kind of solitary confinement your boss has placed you in there's something to please you and he won't notice because i know

i know if tony khan notices those earbuds in your ear he's going to get the whip And he's going to tan your hide.

He's going to put all kinds of stripes on your backside.

So you want to K-Fabe it.

Nobody's going to know you because they're wireless.

And that way, nobody will see the wires.

And

if they do find out about it and beat you, that is Tony Khan or whoever your boss is.

If they beat you, then you call Ray Khan back and they got a 30-day happiness guarantee return policy.

You don't want to even have to.

Man, that has nothing to do with

this policy.

What are you doing?

No, let's

say that your boss comes and see your listening to earbuds.

Goddamn you.

I'm going to take the leather to your hand.

And he beats you unmercifully and says, take those Raycons and send them back.

Well, Raycon will give you your money back if you can prove with a Polaroid that you've been beaten.

First of all, there's not even a Polaroid anymore.

That's a bad example.

And of course, if your boss is beating you, go to the authorities, first of all.

Second of all, fight back.

Well, first of all, call Raycon.

No, Raycon's not going to do anything.

No, Raycon will supply you with great earbuds to hear the finest things with the finest sound.

And that's where it ends.

Then you're on your own.

Well, you mean to tell me that they're so heartless that they wouldn't help you out if you called them and said, My boss is beating me.

Please help me.

Think they're just going to hang up on you?

Our friends at Raycon?

They would say

you think they are.

They would say, Call 911, which is the exact thing you could have done before you called Raycon.

Why are you calling 991?

No, they'd say, Well, the guy I talked to said, Well, how big a boy is he?

He was going to come over here and fucking help me until he found out how big he was.

But, folks, you can go right now to buy Raycon, B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N, buyraycon.com slash J-C-E.

Right now, you're going to get 20%

off site-wide,

everything in the store, as they say.

20% off site-wide when you go to buyraycon.com slash JCE, buyraycon.com slash JCE

and make sure, and they'll have a place where you can report.

If you're, Tony Kahn is your boss and he's been beating you because you've listened to Raycons,

you can report that.

There's a box you can check.

No, there isn't, but you can get the finest earbuds, of course, from Raycon.

One more time, Jim.

What's that promo code?

BuyRaycon.com/slash JCE for 20% off site-wide.

So if you're sitting in solitude, at least program your own thoughts.

That's right.

With Raycon.

With Raycon.

They don't have to be Raycon's thoughts, though.

They can be your thoughts.

Raycon's accepting of all of your thoughts.

You just turn the switch to what you want to hear.

Every now and then I rinse it out.

And I need to be rinsed tonight.

Downy rinse fights stubborn odors in just one wash when impossible odors get stuck in

all right well before we start talking about any of the uh the actual happenings on the wrestling program the the the folks at aew there's been some discussion brian

apparently a report was put out

that

Dynamite, their flagship program on the Max streaming service, oh, it averages about 500,000 people a week.

That's the report that was put out, and people have been discussing it.

And

the AEW faithful are like, see, this proves, you know, we do a million people plus every and the

more calm and rational individuals are like,

wait a minute, where where does this come from?

And

where are we going with this?

And who put this out?

And is this possible?

And there's a ton of questions you can ask because we don't know.

And that's the whole thing.

We don't know.

We don't know because they don't release a lot of these numbers.

And we don't know where this fellow got them from.

Or we don't know.

If this is for the entire world, you know, Bolivia, Brian, it's an AEW hotbed over in Bolivia.

Maybe they've got.

You and Bolivia.

I don't know what this is.

Well, I'm just saying, wait, is this the whole world?

But even then, they've been available internationally.

And in the United Kingdom and the English-speaking countries of the

globe here,

they haven't set the world on fire with numbers.

And they're.

You know, is it in this country?

Well, maybe it's just all these new people that got the streaming service that didn't have cable before.

So suddenly, if that would be it, then

we're expected to believe that even though the numbers way before the streaming service were right about where they are now,

just almost as many people decided, oh shit, look at this brand new wrestling show we can watch now, even though the cable outlets have twice as many

people involved with them as viewers as the streaming does.

A lot of these things can be asked, but we don't know.

Brian, that's the thing.

We don't know and we admit here on the program when we don't know anything and that happens quite often well you know this is a unique story we could say we don't know but the only thing everyone can say is true is that nobody knows

and anything out there that's why you know anyone could say anything i could say aew is getting 10 viewers on max i could say they're getting 10 million

both have equal chance of being true i mean it's just no one knows anything Well, there's where you're wrong.

See, now you've, you've,

you've, that's the only thing you've said so far today, Brian.

It's wrong, it's incorrect.

I got to call you on it.

One man knows.

One man knows because one man,

as in his own fashion,

has done what he normally does when there's times of strife and chaos.

He cuts to the meat of the matter, he gets to the facts, and he presents a clear, concise,

easily understood explanation or

Dave's planation of the whole matter.

It's time for another segment of Dave's plaining here on the program.

Would you like to hear, Brian?

Now,

I'm not taking any, I want to put credit where it belongs.

This is the wrestling observer newsletter by our friend Uncle Dave Meltzer.

I don't want to take any credit for what you're about to hear.

I don't want any crowd.

I don't want to be involved with what you're about to hear.

These are the words of Dave Meltzer in the Observer Observer explaining

this situation for all to hear.

Brian, are you ready to take notes?

I'm interested to hear where this goes.

Yeah, I have not read this yet.

Well, this, and this, I was sent this from the home office in Lincoln, Nebraska.

We've got stringers all over the country on this case.

And it says, a report this past week by B.J.

Bethel

of seescoops.com

listed that dynamite on max averages about 500,000 viewers.

Now, let's stop here for a second.

Have we ever heard of BJ Bethel?

Is this kind of like one of those Boris K.

Fabian

type of nom de plumes, Brian?

Is there any Pfirism involved here?

I don't know.

I can't say that I'm too aware of him.

Well, nevertheless, apparently, he got the scoop.

So Dave goes on to say,

the story reported 60 million minutes watching within 24 hours of the ending of the show, which translated into a Nielsen rating would be about 480,000 if we're going by homes since viewers per home is unknown by streaming companies.

But if it's similar to television,

you know what this is?

I'm reading this exactly as he can see, you got to follow Brian.

But if it's similar to television, that would be roughly 624,000 to 672,000.

So the 60 million minutes number sounds way high.

Now, what is your question?

I just need some clarity on everything you just said.

So

I guess where I first jumped in, the streaming services don't know how many people watch the streaming services?

Well,

I'll say this again, Brian, since obviously you're not paying attention.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

The story reported 60 million minutes watching within 24 hours of the ending of the show, which translated into a Nielsen rating, would be about 480,000 if we're going by homes, since viewers per home is unknown by streaming companies.

But if it's similar to television, that would be roughly 624,000 to 672,000 viewers.

So the 60 million minutes number sounds way high.

I hope that cleared that up for you because there's a long way to go here.

In theory, that would be equivalent to a little more than a Nielsen number, first day number, in the sense it's 24 hours rather than five hours, but also with a streaming number, you don't know viewers per home.

Parenthetically, I estimated 1.30 to 1.40, the usual range.

And also, if you watch something twice in streaming, you count as two people.

And in Nielsen, you can watch over and over, and you only count as one person.

What we do know is very little.

We agree on that.

Max keeps its numbers to themselves.

Nobody at AEW knows the actual numbers.

Top execs at WBD, ad buyers, et cetera, don't know.

The NBA and NHL don't know either.

Sounds like maybe Home Depot and RaqqaCon don't know either.

How can he say WBD don't know if WBD owns Max?

How can Max keep it to themselves away from their owner?

Well, that's because fucking

Warner don't know what Max is doing.

And

they like to keep it that way because that whole thing with Marilyn Monroe.

The story stated the number is considered good, but claimed NBA games do 1.7 to 2 million in a number comparison with the 500,000.

Based on those numbers, I'm even more skeptical that this in any way compares to a Nielsen viewing number because many NBA games on TNT hover around 1 million viewers, and all of the media stories this year of the NBA's collapse or ratings decline, which were overblown because streaming numbers don't count, would have been countered if numbers were even remotely close to this.

Bethel himself noted to us that the 500,000 viewer number could be total viewers having tuned in even for a few minutes, equivalent to the two minutes of viewing a show individual viewing numbers that Nielsen also has, but are almost never talked about.

That is believable.

Can I jump in for a second?

I wish you would.

Because you can't think of streaming the same way as cable in terms of viewers per home.

Streaming is phones, or in your case, maybe tablets.

Streaming, sure, you could put it on your TV and have multiple people there,

but how many kids do that versus watch something on their phone, stop it, return to it?

It is a different experience, and especially with younger people who grow up without any knowledge of cable,

everything's about the phone.

Everything's about YouTube, TikTok.

That's how they consume stuff.

Streaming services are a plus where you go to your parents and you say, can I please have the password

the idea that you know he's saying 1.3 or 1.4 people per stream i don't think you could do that i think that's too high i just want to say that well he goes on to say tony khan responded to the report saying that it was very consistent to what we've been told and that they are one of the top sports streaming shows on the network.

He said that they were told in advance that they would not be getting the kind of data on streaming like they do on television, but that they've been told that they are doing great numbers

and that he doesn't know the actual numbers, only that they are one of the top streaming sports shows on the station.

And he thought those numbers were consistent with that.

And then based on nothing, because if he doesn't know his numbers, he doesn't know anyone else's numbers.

So there's no basis for that assumption.

But it sounds good.

And then there's a lot, a lot more, but my head is starting to hurt.

But you get the idea, ladies and gentlemen, that

a report of people don't know.

What date did the report come out?

Does it say?

It said, hold on.

You comics me with that.

The BJ report, well, that came right out report this past week is the way that it's.

Was it April Fool's?

I'm not even joking asking that question.

Was it April Fool's Day?

Well, apparently

later on, he says that he's been in contact with old BJ.

I bet that's the first time in years.

And

BJ is standing by

his story or his hard-on or whatever he's standing by.

You know, it's like that old move where you could say, I'm in the CIA, and then someone calls the CIA and they ask for comment.

They said, we don't comment on anyone who's in the CIA.

So it sounds plausible.

If you're saying no one knows the numbers and the few people that do know it won't tell anyone what they are, but this guy found out and he put it out on the fucking wrestling website.

And it's a flat 500.

You know, it's not like about 475.

You know, it's a flat 500,000 people.

Well, they're rounding.

Now, I can forgive that.

They're rounding.

Because, I mean, who would have believed him if he said it's 492,517?

Yeah, I mean, it's all about the rounding.

The idea that the max audience would be

what 80% of the cable audience is ridiculous at the same time.

We've seen the cable audience dwindle and

I don't care how big the universe is.

You can't use that as an argument.

Well, there's, you know, 200 million people have access to this.

That doesn't mean they're watching AEW.

Or it doesn't mean they can even find AEW on the home screen.

We hear that from a lot of people.

So I think this is a way for a story to get out that paints an incredibly rosy picture.

And there's no one to confirm nor deny it, including Tony Khan.

I don't know anything, but it's consistent with what I've heard from this other people who we were just told don't know anything.

And I would.

From all the people I've talked to that don't know what they're talking about, it sounds plausible.

Hey, listen.

Also, it's a streaming service.

It's part of a publicly traded company i think but it's a streaming service in a sea of streaming services if someone was getting a million viewers for the nba every game they'd be putting that out there and if someone was getting 500 000 for a wrestling show domestically that would be put out there worldwide it's still impressive but we haven't heard anything and

You know, I can understand the reason you don't want people to know how few viewers you have or streams you have.

I'm not talking about AEW.

I'm talking about any any of these streaming services.

No one releases their numbers.

They don't want to release their numbers.

Well, but here's the thing.

You mentioned it a second ago

that they

Netflix and WWE engaged in a major advertising campaign.

And if you get on Netflix from scratch, you see, you know, WWE prominently featured, whereas

we were trying for a while to find AEW.

And so other people have been too on Macs.

It wasn't like they beat people up with debuting such and such.

So,

how would suddenly an audience of half a million people find it on this streaming service over the last few months when they've been on television for five years and those people have already been leaving before the streaming was a thing?

Does it just add up?

Is what I'm asking you?

It doesn't add up.

It just doesn't add up.

I do think AEW is having a little bit of a run right now where they're seeing a small bump in interest,

but it's not that kind of bump.

If there were that many more people watching AEW, it would be a bigger thing right now.

And,

you know, you see less social media talk and buzz and interest in AEW right now than ever before.

It could get better,

but I don't think they're getting the, I think maybe worldwide,

you know, unless Tony has a fucking farm somewhere where people are just clicking on videos all day, I don't think there's any, there's no way they're getting that many.

It sounds ridiculous on its face.

And it sounds like Dave was doing his best to try to justify it as opposed to saying, well, first off, this sounds ridiculous.

Well, he did a wonderful job with words and phrases.

And there was some punctuation put in at various points also in that statement.

You should have seen it.

But if someone said this, a source said this to BJ,

what do you think that source's motivation would be?

Well, who would the

that's the thing is if the wrestling company doesn't even know, then who would be the source that was talking to the guy that was writing to the

Westling, writing to the Westling site, writing to the wrestling site, or writing for the wrestling site?

BJ, it's Jack Warner.

How are you?

Yeah, yeah.

That's what it is.

People are crank calling this guy, pretending they're executives.

I can't tell you who I am.

I work at Max.

They're getting 500,000.

You know what?

He talked to Mance Warner.

That's who he talked to.

All right, speaking of people with silly faces.

Or whatever we were talking about a second ago, should we talk about AEW this past week and get that

out of the way?

Well, there were definitely some interesting things on the show.

I will say I've enjoyed the show lately a little bit more than I have before because at least there's a couple of segments I dig.

The endings are still really awful, just it drives you away.

But there's a few things I really liked on here.

I'm

trying to figure out what a few would be.

But the start again, they were in Peoria, by the way.

Peoria, Illinois.

Fine, fine place.

If it plays in Peoria, it'll work anywhere.

And they started the show again with this, a mixed Tornado tag team match with Dick the Boozer and Marina Schaefer against Swerve Strickland and Will and Nightingale.

And

they tried to have their Kate and Edith too

because it was the guys fighting the guys and the girls fighting the girls.

But every once in a while, the girls could fight the guys.

And

then the guys could snatch a hold of the girls, but they couldn't hit them.

And then finally, by the end of it, as long as it was accidental and he didn't really mean to do it, you could, you know, drop the girl on her face.

But

it's ridiculous.

And again, if Marina Schaefer is a real life badass, I'm sorry, I don't care.

But there's happy, fucking, smiling, hand-clapping Willow Nightingale out there with the world champion and his supposed top challenger that have been

trying to fucking murder each other.

And she's going through furniture just barely.

And

there's girls and what the fuck is

just visually.

And again, it's ridiculous when

they jump-started the thing and had the big fight on the floor.

And Swerve's shit

was faker than Moxley's.

They were, did you see the punches?

They were on the railing in front of the fans, one foot away.

And he's

not only is he not hitting him, it didn't look like he was trying to hit him.

He just waving his arms in the air.

And there's a close-up on camera.

And

they were on the floor with the four-way for minutes where the girls were fighting on one side, the guys were fighting on the other side.

And then they pulled a table out.

And the girls then did some shit in the ring while the guys did the shit on the desk.

And then the girls rolled out so the guys could get in and start doing running spots.

They've had a goddamn four-way brawl with a goddamn on the floor for minutes.

And they pulled a table out and they get in and start doing one-tackle drop-down hip toss.

What the fuck?

And

it's then Swerve gave Moxley a backbreaker, kind of.

It looked like he decided at the last minute to do it.

And then stood him up.

And Willow came off the turnbuckle with a drop kick, but she came up short.

And her feet barely touched him, but he was ready to take the big bump for the babyface girl.

And he did the exaggerated backflip up the feet up in the air like Curt Henning.

And then

the heels just cut the babyfaces off while the babyfaces were hot dogging and not paying attention.

Which you never do, but they did it.

And then Marina got heat on Willow while Moxley just had to stagger around.

And

it was just dying.

And then Moxley decided he was going to grab Willow and give her a double arm DDT, but suddenly swerved, jumped in and grabbed Marita Schaefer and picked her up for some big move.

And they stood there looking at each other in a stalemate.

So then they let each girl go.

Like, okay, I'll drop the gun if you drop the gun.

And then Willow pushed

Moxley into Swerve.

So they had a head bonk, and the guys just rolled out and disappeared, hiding so the girls could do their shit.

And they were gone for minutes while the girls fought on the apron and

Marina tried.

They had the idea that they wanted Marina to powerbomb poor Willow

off the apron of the ring through the table that they'd pulled out and set up.

But they couldn't even go into it.

They figured if Marina

squatted down

and Willow went like she was going to kick her

And Marina stood up underneath her that this would work.

Well, holy shit.

Did you see this particular spot?

I did see this.

I watched this entire match intently, waiting for your review.

Okay, well, Marina squatted down, and Willa's got one leg over her shoulder.

And Marina's trying to grab her legs and stand up under her, and Willow's trying to grab the top rope.

My God, it looked like a fucking,

I don't even have a cogent simile to where Marina tried once, twice, and finally three times to stand up under her, and Willow's trying to pull herself up on the top rope.

And on the third time, Marina just got up under her enough to fucking halfway or so and let her go.

And Willow almost missed the table, but she landed with the back of her head and her shoulders on a table and broke it.

But also,

her weight was continuing down through it.

She just landed right flat of her back on it fucking

ground.

So, and that was their break spot.

A woman has been powerbombed off the apron of the ring through a table onto the floor.

And,

but don't worry, the rest of the match is coming up and she's going to be involved in it.

She was up and just fucking kicking ass here shortly.

As a matter of fact, when they came back from the break three minutes later, we last saw Willow near death.

Moxley and Marino were trying to go for the double superplex on swerve, but Willow got up and got underneath them and did a goddamn

tower boom.

Tower of boom.

A tower of boom power bomb.

A tower of doom power bomb.

Whatever the fuck I said on all of them.

She got power bomb through the table and now she's just thrown three people 10 feet.

It's like, God damn it.

Put the belt on her.

Who's going to stop her?

No one.

And then Willow made a comeback on both of them.

And then they got in a four-way where Moxley threw Willow out

and she had neutralized Marina some way as so that the guys trade fake forearms.

And this went on so long and the thing and Moxley getting a sleeper on swerve.

The girls were over in the corner, lost, kind of trying to figure out what to do.

And then finally, when the guys got in the right place,

Willow powerbombed Marina onto Moxley to break the deal.

But now the girls look blown up and lost or blown up one or the other, possibly both.

The guys are trading slaps and forearms again.

And then finally, Swerve goes for the kick on Moxley, and Marina pushed Moxley Moxley out of the way.

So Swerve kicked Marina, just potatoed her right in the fucking head.

It was an accident.

Didn't mean to do it in this highly contrived spot.

And then suddenly after that happened,

there was a pop from the crowd and the camera cuts to Moxley laying on the floor outside the ring, laying in another broken table, but we never saw how it happened.

And then they missed it.

And then they went back and showed that Willow pushed him off the fucking and he goes through the tail.

And then Willow powerbombed Marino 123.

You didn't think I'd eat the pen, did you?

I wish he wouldn't eat the cosmic cookie when he comes up with these ideas.

So then

Moxley gets in

and is staggering around like he's, I don't know what he was trying to, I'm sure he's had plenty of practice staggering.

And he's obviously trying to back up toward Willow, whose back is to him.

And he backs up into Willow to where he instantly jumps and spins around

and grabs her and gives her the DDT

and then looks with the exaggerated, oh, oh my God, what did I do?

Like Julia Child when she went overboard on the cinnamon and the pastry.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

it's it's bleeding further now.

I'm starting to get faint.

That's for a small but dedicated audience there.

And then he rolled out and it was 20 minutes of this

drech.

It's just, and we're not done.

They're going to, they're going to.

They're going to try to run people off at the end of the program also are Dick the Boozer and the Boar Horseman.

But your thoughts on this thing here,

there.

I like that at some point when they were working on this match, it was, I got an idea.

We won't just hit one girl, we'll hit both the girls.

I mean,

you know, I remember when Jake Roberts DDT'd Dark Journey

because she threw like chocolate syrup in his eyes, whatever the fuck it was, and Dick Slater was there.

And they didn't even pull that off the right way.

Like they got the big pop, but like she went down too quickly.

Yeah, I don't know how I feel about like what was clearly the heel DDTing.

The crowd reacted very interestingly.

What did you think of the crowd reaction to Moxley hitting a woman?

Well, they popped for that because they knew that it, you know, that's one of the things that they know they're not supposed to do.

Oh, they did it.

I think they would have liked to have seen a live Tijuana donkey show, and they'd, you know, it'd be the same kind of pop, but

it's just this

show.

Can you remember Steve Austin and The Undertaker

days days before their pay-per-view main event for the world title deciding to pick two young ladies from the fucking Diva pool to have the mixed tornado tag with?

No, The Undertaker waited a few years for that.

Well, you know,

if Michelle McCool had been in this, I'd have liked it better.

Oh, come on.

That's a ridiculous statement.

That's a ridiculous statement.

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I'll admit that.

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But what's not ridiculous is what they did next.

It was just kind of sad.

Tony Storm and Penelope Pit Stop.

And by the way,

FTR did some stuff in the back where Dax and they're reading prepared statements.

Cash is pissed at him.

You didn't watch that?

I watched it.

I just, I don't care.

It's, I, you know what?

I actually think it may be the most interesting thing FTR has done in a long time.

Coming off that.

It's not a compliment now.

It's not, but

I'm not saying that in a bad way.

Like coming off that sit-down interview with Cope last week where Dax,

I feel like Dax's personality,

when he's acting like a heel, it comes out a lot better than when he's, you know, Mr.

Goody Two-Shoes.

Well, I'm not arguing with that, but I think he just came off as bothersome here.

I don't know.

I thought this was good.

I'm actually not looking forward to the match because I hate Cope's matches, but I'm looking forward to seeing how they're going to do an FTR heel turn.

Well, and Cassius says he's going to have to talk after this thing, so apparently they may not be doing it there.

I don't know what they're doing.

I don't care anymore.

But when I told you earlier that there were things on the show that I liked, this was one of them.

I actually thought this was...

You know, FTR, it's the one thing they've been lacking is anything outside the ring.

And again, I don't think they'll break them up because why in the world

but then the it's just the whininess okay dax does the insincere apology but he's trying to be sincere but it just came off as stagey but he apologizes to the referee and he gives him the ten thousand dollars take your wife out to dinner god damn i know the economy's bad but that's an expensive dinner the referee was happy

Certainly he was.

And then does the flowery thing?

It's not believable verbiage.

It doesn't sound like it's from the heart, which maybe if it was a sarcastic apology to the referee, it'd be one thing.

But then he sounds like he's talking to his partner, Cash, and it's not genuine that somebody, he's trying to be genuine, talking like somebody that would really say this to their friend, and it sounds fucking oaky.

And Cash is like, well, we'll win.

at the pay-per-view, but then after that, we're going to have to talk.

Like instead of like he, if if it was, if they were really boys, and he would just say, What the fuck are you doing?

You fucking, and we're not going to fucking talk about it here in front of the camera, but I'm going to slap you if you goddamn.

It's just, it's.

And by the way, you got too much money.

You're giving a referee $10,000.

What the fuck is the matter with you?

It's high school level shit that they've written for a skit between themselves.

That's why I don't like it.

And Tony Storm and Penelope Pit stop.

Yeah.

Because I wrote here, Tony Storm isn't a bad worker, but Penelope is.

And that's now here, you know, yes, Tony's over.

They're going to give her a win fine.

Penelope is

indie level.

As far as she doesn't look like she's actually in this, she's doing the moves by the numbers, and she looks like she's studying to try to remember in between or going to the next thing.

We talked about not not connecting on a major league level with Tony Holm, even when you might look good,

but if you don't connect, she's just there.

That's why she can't

swim in the big pool, but she's, you know, here putting Tony over.

And that's what happened.

And then Swerve,

who

he does a really over-scripted promo

faking concern over Willow's health.

And he swears that he's going to find Jon Moxley and get his hands on him by the end of the night.

That's their big cliffhanger.

Meanwhile, they've put a massage table in a fucking closet.

And there's a trainer, Willow's face down on the table.

And there's a trainer allegedly attending to her.

And there's, you know, they're standing there concerned.

But if you look

at the surroundings, the table is in front of a door in the back of this closet.

There's no way that door could be open

to get in this room with the table there.

And on this side, the door to that room is like within a foot from the edge of the fucking table.

So it would literally be just a table in a room the size of a fucking table.

but that dd

that ddt really her up a whole lot worse than that table spot did

well and that's another thing yeah she took the goddamn power bomb through the table and came back to throw everybody around and win the match and then she gets ddt'd by this

idiot and she's in a medically induced coma So what do you think about that?

Anyway, so go ahead.

With this segment with Swerve in the back,

you know, and they kind of reference it again later the whole idea renee's doing these interviews and it's her husband that's doing all these awful things

yeah that comes up again later on but at least she's concerned about the awful things her husband is doing

i wonder is she going to get a some kind of protective order or something

but anyway then came

The other segment, because when you said there was segments you liked, I could think of one.

I couldn't think of too many more but

the continuing evolution of the saga of mjf and mvp

and that's what they did uh

unfortunately shelton benjamin i guess this was probably a shoot they had no reason to lie because this is illinois was right where those storms were coming through and Shelton lives in Houston, and that was right where the storms were ending up.

So Shelton was not there due to the storms, they said, but MVP and Lashley came out to the ring.

And then as Bobby was about to speak,

MJF comes out.

And

there was one point right before he started where he reacted to something that one of the fans said or did, but we couldn't hear it.

And I don't know what the fuck it was.

Did you catch that or were you paying attention until he started speaking?

I caught the moment.

I don't know what was said.

Yeah, and caught the reaction, I guess is the better way to put it.

Well, yeah, and I wish he wouldn't do that because then it's distracting.

But anyway, but you, to be fair, he's used to where you can hear individual people speaking in AEW crowds.

But MJF, he does the big deal where he, in a weasly fashion, in his own way, introduces himself to Bobby Lashley

and put Bobby over in his own way.

But he told Bobby that

I know AEW.

I can help you and Shelton hold those tag team belts.

You could help me get back my AEW world title.

That's the whole pitch.

It's just good business.

You need MJF.

And that's his pitch.

And Bobby

says, out of respect for MVP, I'm not going to leave you laying right now.

Jesus Christ.

He doesn't like MJF.

He doesn't trust him.

They don't need him.

And basically, you need to get the hell out of my ring unless you can prove yourself to us.

So you mean there's a chance?

And MJF reacts to that qualifier.

Oh,

okay.

And he kind of snickers and he leaves the ring.

Okay, so we've got something now

where what is

what's MJF going to do to try to prove himself to Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin?

And

MVP still trying to

keep the peace amongst everybody that he likes, but at least

this was done professionally.

It didn't take a half an hour.

Everybody seemed serious with what they were doing.

And, you know, again,

the Hurt Syndicate.

is one of the only things that people are genuinely reacting to in a positive fashion as far as not just

chanting their catchphrase or doing the audience participation shit, but reacting to the matches as well.

They'll say we hurt people,

but they react to the matches and they pop to the personalities.

So

more MJF in with them and less of him playing with children is a positive at this point for MJF.

Is this the other thing you liked?

Yeah, I really like this.

I really like this whole storyline, wherever it's going, what it's been, the MVP, MJF stuff.

Last week was great.

This week I thought was really good.

I wish Shelton was there, but it works that he wasn't.

But yeah, I really like this.

Again, I said there's a couple of things in AEW they're doing right right now, and I really like it.

And nothing's too predictable with these two things.

So I like it.

Well, I'm glad you approve.

Because, you know, that's the thing, Brian, is that, you know, a lot of these, a lot of these wrestlers in AEW, they haven't been grateful for their push.

Yeah, they haven't been, you know, they just sit at home and don't want to say yes to creative, the old Miro

thing.

And I've, you know, I've wondered what they're doing sitting at home.

Sometimes Tony leaves them there when they want to leave, like we've talked about, but other times they just go home and you don't see them anymore.

And I'm wondering what they're doing with their time, Brian.

How are they occupying themselves?

And then I realized, Brian, you know why there's been so many people that have just gone home because of bad creative and stayed there and collected Tony Kahn's checks?

Do you know why?

No.

Because they are plotting and planning.

When that contract runs out, they're going to have a business on Shopify.

Oh.

That's what they're doing.

They are setting up for life after Richie Rich when they can no longer have the

billionaire boy child financing their life, they're going to actually go out there and they're going to sell their products and services and goods and

furs and trappings.

You know,

it's fur season now in the Dakotas.

They're trapping raccoons for pelts.

And they're going to put all this stuff on Shopify, like we've done with our new show shirts.

They're going to be on the shop app.

They're going to be at shopify.com.

Shopify, the number one checkout on the planet, the number one selling platform is going to make these wrestlers rich in their future endeavors.

That's why they're all going home because they need time to prepare.

They need time to upgrade their business and get the same checkout that the big boys use and have a major commerce platform where they can convert money from rubles and rhinestones and anything that people want to spend around the world to give you good old-fashioned American cash.

That's right in your pocket with Shopify.

They need time, Brian, to sign up for the $1 a month trial period at shopify.com slash JCE,

where the people at Shopify can show.

these disgruntled future ex-wrestlers how they can still make money with their amazing ideas.

You know, Miro, for a while, he was going to sell bulgarian cinnabons

did you know that unfortunately it didn't quite work it didn't quite work out he said he was going to glaze them himself like he remember when he was going to glaze me okay well let's

let's not talk about former threats of assault on you let's talk about yes wonderful ways to assault the wallet of the consumers shopify

Yes, well,

you can assault people's wallets.

It's just like turning them upside down and shaking them for change, folks.

With Shopify on your side, when you walk down the street, people will just

stop in front of you, dig in their pockets, and throw money at your feet just so that the Shopify people don't have to deal with them.

That's the kind of reputation you're going to have around town.

People are going to give you money just so you won't look at them sideways because they know you got Shopify.com on your side.

And once again, a $1 a month trial period at shopify.com/slash JCE

to really rake in the dough and upgrade your selling today shopify.com slash jce

dollar a month trial period that's right just like us we're powered by shopify our new store you can be too shopify.com slash jce

and and you know what that power doesn't go out in the event of a power failure Shopify will actually come to your home and they'll hook up this little stationary bicycle thing.

And this guy, he runs it and that's like on gilligan's island it revs up this battery that they hook to it that'll power your whole house shopify will be during a no no during a power failure you don't have to worry about being down and offline and everything like that so you can't sell there's a lot not to worry about and you don't have to worry about your sales when you partner with shopify once again shopify.com slash jce back to you jim as we move on here on your show don't worry no reason to worry because that guy's been doing this for years.

He knows what he's doing.

Anyway, then we had Big Bill and Brian Keith beat the team of Tits and Tank McGee.

Did you see any finer points in that contest, Brian?

No.

Well, the confrontation with

MVP and Lashley and Big Bill and...

Brian Keith.

Well, it wasn't a confrontation.

They looked down their nose at each other on the way to the ring.

And at the pay-per-view,

they will be beating them in summary fashion.

Too many pronouns, pal.

I'm the hurt syndicate will beat the other fellows, whether they like it or not, probably from what we've seen last week.

And then, can you explain to me

what in the world was the reasoning

why they decided to put

their,

again, top baby face, as far as I can fucking see from

a combination of audience reaction and the fact that he's still young enough to be able to do some of this shit.

Will Osprey, along with Kevin Knight making his debut against Blake Christian and Lee Johnson,

they had to go 10 minutes against two job guys.

And if you throw in the fact that nobody in the fucking world knows who Kevin Knight is, then that makes three job guys, unknown people.

But because, again,

they do the cheerleading routines.

Does Tony think that this gets

somebody over when you

put them out there to do all these cartwheels and round offs just because they can do it?

And he doesn't understand that there's a pecking order of talent on his roster and Osprey should not have been in this?

I think Tony thinks, why put someone over if they can't have a good match?

And this is the first time I've seen Kevin Knight.

I got to say, he was impressive.

Well, then

bring him in and concentrate on him instead of making him.

Oh, but here's the thing.

The booking reason behind it was going to be because Osprey and Kevin Knight are going to wrestle each other Sunday on the pay-per-view in the Owen Hart tournament.

So that naturally meant they would be tag team partners tonight.

They're going to wrestle each other in a tournament on pay-per-view on Sunday.

And that means that Kevin Knight, who got the win here, will do a job in his second fucking match in the company.

That's what they

just assume that if you're a great wrestler, in their eyes, great, I'm sorry,

then you should be just moved right into this spot.

And it doesn't matter whether you win or lose because everybody already knows you're a great wrestler,

and then

people beat the shit out of you.

Samoa Joe

was still playing with children in the back.

There's that.

They had a match, Brian, between Brodie King and Lance Archer.

Even the losers get lucky sometimes.

Because all these guys have done on television is lose.

So naturally, they would have a fight.

And the ultimate loser was decided when, after plodding along for a while,

I don't know whether they fucked something up and just said, fuck it, or whether this was just what they had intended to do.

But

Brody King just clotheslined him and covered him one, two, three.

Did I miss anything there?

that needed to be brought to anyone's attention.

I missed it too.

This was one of two matches on the show.

I was just like, you know, I already know I'm not going to like this match.

I have no interest in seeing this match.

In this case, I didn't.

I didn't watch the match.

Sorry.

But even the losers

hit the key sometimes.

Well, now we were ready for the main event.

Notice I said not the last thing on the show, but the main event.

Edge versus Claudio Castignoli.

I didn't think I'd ever say this.

What, three years ago?

when i was still a fan of claudio's before he's done all the things he'd done over the last three years

but jesus christ i

they had 18 minutes left in the show so i figured this can't run over they can't be doing an overrun

but at the same time at this point with the with the weather and the

the frayed nerves and the amount of wrestling of not a good description that I had watched, I say, you know what?

I'm skipping ahead to the finish and I'll just see what happens and who's going to run in or whatever.

And I got till two minutes till 10 and they were still going.

I assume you didn't fast-forward this because you watch things while they're happening.

Was this as long

as it apparently must have been?

This was a combination of my two least favorite things: Cope and Claudio.

They both bore the hell out of me.

Their matches don't do it for me.

Claudio, I'm sorry.

Anyone who wants to tell me, oh, his European uppercut looks great, it looks like shit.

It looks like he's smacking his shoulder into your upper chest, and you just sit back and take it.

It doesn't look good, and he's non-stop doing it.

His matches are boring as fuck.

He's got no personality.

His whole personality is tied to Moxley, and that's death, quite literally.

And then Cope, who just has long matches that never fucking end.

The fans will be excited and he'll sing his music when he comes out and then they like go to sleep standing up.

It's like he has sleepwalking matches where he causes the fans to like go into a walking coma.

That's called somnambulism.

Yeah, I hated it.

I didn't didn't like this at all.

These guys are the most boring guys.

If you get past, like, again, you know, some guys have a cult of personality and some people want to remember Edge back in the day.

Point me to the last thing he did that was good.

Jesus.

I don't want to see him wrestle anymore.

And I don't want to see Claudio.

Claudio needs to go home.

Just, I'm sorry.

Get him off TV.

The Death Riders stuff.

Don't even send him the Ring of Honor.

You know what?

We've done all we can.

Go home.

I'm sorry.

We've done all we can.

We can't do it anymore.

I would like to remember that Edge retired after his employment in the WWE.

That's the way I'd like to remember him.

And I'd I'd like to remember Claudio as

Chris Hero's tag team partner when he was full of vim and vigor about 10 or 12 years ago.

Terrible.

Nevertheless,

so they went until two minutes till 10.

And finally, Claudio got a chair, got two chairs and put one under Edge, who couldn't just roll over away from it.

But then the referee took the other chair away.

And while he was throwing that out, Edge hit Claudio with a nut

and speared him one two three and right then

is when my dvr froze

but i know there's always got to be an overrun

so i had recorded modern family oh good

so

i go to that and

you know edge celebrates and he's defeated uh

Claudio.

And then

Renee Moxleygood was in the back trying to get a word with the guy that was looking for her husband to kill him, Swerve Strickland.

And Swerve has said, I'm sorry, Renee, can't talk to you right now.

I'm looking for your husband.

And then he just starts walking down the hall.

And the camera's following him.

And then suddenly, behind him at the end of the hall, he just came from through the curtain comes hangnail Adam Page.

And he's, yeah, hey, stop, hold on here.

And

as Paige comes up to swerve

and they start yelling at each other,

all of a sudden, like half a dozen security guys dressed in black run through the same curtain and it looked like eighth grade hall monitors.

I mean, yes, they're the indie outlaw boys that they get in every town, but they were exceptionally

unintimidating looking

that you would be concerned if they were working security amongst kindergarteners.

And

they got around, three of them got around Paige, three of them got around Swerve, and they all bent over so they wouldn't be blocking the guys or blocking the camera shot.

And they gave.

They gave them Tony Khan-like hugs around their waist and remained motionless,

looking up out of the corner of their eyes

with frozen hands.

This is the phoniest fucking thing.

I couldn't take my eyes off these guys in these unnatural positions.

It looked like one guy was doing the fucking pose for a goddamn, is he going to give him a blowjob or not?

And that pose.

That pose, you see it all the time.

And there's Swerve and Paige yelling at each other and pointing the fingers and then

paige says

uh well no no that's right

now who burned who paige yeah page i burned your house down

and swerve said i deserved it no that's no way it was how how was it how did the who did what to who Adam Page said, you came into my.

Swerve said he did what he did.

And then he said, you came into my family.

You deserved it.

And Swerve said, I know.

And that kind of stopped Adam Paige.

That's right.

You burned my house down.

And Paige said, you deserved it.

And

Swerve said, I know.

And then suddenly, when he said, I know, I deserved having, I did something to you that deserved you burning my house down.

But when he said, I know, then suddenly.

All the security instantly let go also, because that was their cue.

They instantly just let go and looked up like, oh, now they're not going to fight.

And then the sun came out and the clouds went away.

Oh, god damn it.

And it was that simple.

Who knew you could end it that simply?

And that's when

Paige said, What did you say?

And they looked at him.

And then Paige like ran off, like, oh my God.

And he ran off.

And the security guys leave.

And then

Dick the Boozer and the boar horseman all jump swerve.

Peekaboo.

And they start beating him up.

And I said, my God, now they're taking him to the ring.

The show's not over.

It's going to get worse.

Where's security?

They were probably making sure that Paige had everything he needed to get out of the building.

Because again, suddenly they just, they had five, six security guys there from these guys are yelling at each other.

And then when they stop yelling at each other, they just disappear.

And now there's five people actually gang fucking assaulting this one guy and there's nobody.

And Swerve has, where's Nana?

Where's Nana was with fucking Willow earlier, but he's there.

Does Swerve have any friends?

Is there any more security?

Is there any more referees?

They all five take Swerve to the ring

and nobody is trying to help.

And they get the boring heat that they always get, where they just hold the guy, and Moxley's just doing his fucking weird wiggle and trash-talking him.

And then they get a fucking bucket of what is

purported to be broken glass, and they pour the broken glass in the middle of the ring and power bombs swerve into it.

And And then Swerve as they get out and leave Swerve laying there.

Swerve sits up

so that they can see

the camera.

The idea is he gets up and he actually stands up and he starts laughing so they can see that they have not

injured him by power bombing him into broken glass.

But when he sits up and from then on,

all the bullshit glass is stuck to his back.

There's not a drop of blood.

Again, whatever

the substances were that the spikes in the bat were made out of,

they did stick in his fucking skin.

This had to be phony glass because there was not a drop of blood.

He was not cut.

He was not stuck, but it was all sticking to him.

But here's the problem.

Either

you've got two choices here.

People can think it's fake glass and look, it's sticking to him, but it didn't cut him.

It's all fake.

Or they can think it's real glass and look, he's a, what a stupid motherfucker that is.

He just let that guy powerbomb him into real broken glass.

Either you're a stupid, bad faker.

Or you're just a stupid moron that lets somebody do something like that to you in front of this audience and in front of of most audiences today.

One of those two things.

What about option three?

You think some guy said, this Moxley's a moron.

I'm going to sell him a bunch of sugar cane glass.

Now, that might be if you're in the fucking sugar glass industry,

but it's just, it's outlaw horseshit that appeals to freaks and idiots and people who want to laugh at the phoniness of this and these people.

And that's why

it has a limited audience and it always will.

And that's why they're where they are now with nobody over and the people

basically having a few people that they're interested in.

And the rest of it is just watching stupid people do stupid things to each other.

And this was another example of that.

What do you think should happen in the title match, Swervin Mott?

We just previewed it, I know, but now we just saw these hot things happening here on the show.

And of course, Renee still hasn't turned heels.

So there's always that.

It changes nothing about what we said because they still haven't paid.

This is,

they got a stadium.

And for better or for worse, nobody is ready in a position to take this fucking thing off of Moxley,

whether just by bad booking on purpose or bad booking by accident.

There's no, there's no.

For as much time and effort as they put in this thing, there's no huge blow-off on the horizon where you could, oh my God, it's the Rock and Austin.

They're finally going to collide.

Or

there's nothing of that.

And this is another one of the monthly pay-per-views where they're going to have

a bunch of monthly matches amongst people.

It look like they're on their monthlies.

Maybe they could do like a Cincinnati Jimmy Garvin Precious Sunshine thing

where all of a sudden Marina gets ditched for Moxley's actual wife.

Well, you know, I wish that Jerry Springer was still with us because he was the mayor of Cincinnati, you know.

Yeah.

Heck of a town.

You know why he had to leave politics in Cincinnati?

Was it a sex scandal?

Yes, but specifically they found out that he paid for a hooker with a check.

So he actually signed, basically signed a receipt to the fucking hooker.

while he was mayor of Cincinnati.

What did he put in the memo?

I don't know, but a lot of people got the memo.

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Anyway,

not a lot of people got this memo, but how many people watched this program, Brian, here this week

on the cable now, not on Macs?

We know that only Uncle Dave can Dave explain that.

Well, Jim, we do have the ratings.

And of course, AEW Dynamite Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025, from 8 to 10.06 p.m.

On average, watched by 594,000 viewers.

Ouch.

That's going back in the other direction.

Now, to be fair, that's not counting half a million people on Max.

So it's actually a 1,094,000 viewer Wednesday.

So

what you're saying is this program that used to get a million people a few years back.

for their major events now gets about 600,000 that those people stopped watching and they were just waiting until the show could get on a streaming service and then they all jumped back in all at the same time.

That seems to be the only likely story, but let's go to the breakdown here.

According to WrestleNomics, among prime time telecasting cable for the Cube Demo 18 to 49, Dynamite ranked five or six,

depending on if you count the late NBA game on ESPN.

So that's that note.

This week.

Well, that's good to know.

10% down from last week at 663.

7% off the trailing four-week average of 637.

Again, they've had some good numbers for them the last few weeks.

Now, hey, somebody's going to bring it up.

A lot of us were under the pool table during the last part of this

telecast.

That could have affected things.

What time?

Approximately what time?

Approximately what time would that have been?

Well, come to think of it.

Let's see.

Did we get under the pool table?

It was after 10 o'clock we were under the pool table.

But there were storms going on.

Some people could have gone early.

Let's go to the quarterly numbers.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Quarter one,

8 to 8:15 p.m.

Swerve, Strickland, and Willow Nightingale versus the Death Riders with picture and picture

768,000 viewers.

Ouch.

Okay.

Starting that big and ending up with that average,

they're going to slalom again tonight.

We go to quarter two, 8.15, 8.30 p.m.

The continuation of Swerve and Willow versus John and Marina.

And the post-match with women going down.

The FTR

in injury.

FTR.

You are a pervert.

Will you let me say something?

FTR's backstage angle and an ad break.

Hey!

626,000 viewers.

Oh,

sweet Nelly.

So the

Dick the Boozer and his mixed tag team Tornado Extravaganza ran off 142,000 people in the first 15 minutes.

I'll have a shot of Sweet Nelly.

Let's go to quarter three, 8.30 to 8.45 p.m.

Tony Storm versus Penelope Ford with picture and picture.

The post-match with Megan Bain,

the Swerve Strickland, Willow Nightingale, women going down.

I don't know about that here, but Swerve Strickland and Willow Nightingale backstage in the

closet with the table.

In the closet, and Willow was face down.

And an ad break,

500

years,

597 000 viewers whoa going down down down i'm going down down there's another 26 29 000 more making a total of 171 000 in the first 45 minutes they have to come back up

at some point to make their average that's just what i said in opposite At the start, they got to go down to make their average.

Now they got to come back up to make their average.

Well, we go to quarter four,

8.45 to 9 p.m.

The MJF Hurts Syndicate angle and then the Learning Tree live angle, it says.

The Learning Tree versus CJ Esparza, Engage Noonan,

Noonan,

Noonan, the post-match with the Hurt Syndicate, Mercedes-Monet, and Harley Cameron's backstage angle, 571,000 viewers.

Well, maybe they've invented new math and they don't have to come back up.

now they've lost uh

hold on uh 197 000 people

and i don't have a direct source i could cite to you or any real proof or anything but i just want to let you know that from what i understand they held 500 000 throughout the entire show no up or down on uh max on max over there well they're proof there but but no one knows but but i don't know either well they have the technology if you get up from the TV screen, they send you an electric shock.

Well, let's see what kind of a shock we get here.

We go to the big 9 o'clock hour, quarter five, 9 to 9.15 p.m.

Blake Christian and Lee Johnson versus Kevin Knight and Will Ospreay with Picture and Picture,

566,000 viewers.

Good lord, and there's another 5,000 gone at the top of the hour.

This is looking very

odd in this pattern.

How are they going to get their average now?

We're going to go to quarter six, 9:15 to 9:30 p.m.

The continuation of, oh no, I guess the match is over.

The Kevin Knight Will Ospreay live angle,

the ops

backstage promo, an ad break, and the start of Lance Archer versus Brody King with picture and picture.

542,000 viewers.

Now they're officially down 226,000 people from the start of the program.

We go now to quarter seven, 9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

The continuation of Lance versus Brody, an ad break, and the start of Claudio versus Cope.

I couldn't cope with that match.

613,000 viewers.

Wow.

So

whether you can cope or not, that is

58, 60.

71,000 people came back, and

you can't tell me it was,

you know, for the fucking backstage pre-tapes or whatever.

Are they still somewhat interested in Edge as a former star?

I don't know about that.

We go to quarter eight, 9.45 to 10 p.m.

A reminder, we have a six-minute overrun.

Claudio versus Cope with pitcher and pitcher continued.

519,000 viewers.

Oh, okay.

Well, they were interested at the start.

They were interested in his song.

So

let me get this straight.

Suddenly.

Oh, by the way, wait, six-minute overrun.

Swerve, Adam Page, Death Riders Live Angle, 461.

Oh, my God.

that's the biggest loss ever for an overrun that's 30 49

almost 60 000 people

yeah

but but here's the thing

they suddenly add 71 000 people for the start of the

the match

and

for the end of the match they lose 94,000 of them.

They go to the lowest point

How does that correlate to?

Oh, we're really interested in seeing the first part of this, but goddamn it, we don't want to see any more.

They did

the third best quarter and the best one since the first 30 minutes of the program and followed that with the worst quarter of the entire show until the overrun.

Well, there you have it.

And the other thing, too, and I've criticized them in the past for not doing show-long things.

They did it here and it didn't connect.

The idea Swerve was going to get his hands on Moxley by the end of the show.

No one stayed around to see that.

That's the thing.

They thought, okay, we got rid of Moxley.

Oh, God, they're threatening us.

He's going to be back.

You know,

I don't know.

I don't know what to tell you.

Another stellar week of AEW Dynamite.

I'm sure.

We'll hear another spin this week about the rosy numbers on Max.

Well, and as the rain has begun to fall again over here, Brian, why don't you tell the people what's going on this week at the Arcadian Vanguard Network Studios?

Well, thank you very much and good luck with the rain.

Of course, every single day, get the wrestling news for free from thewrestlingnews.com or wherever you find your favorite podcast.

All the wrestling news, everything that happens, no matter where it happens, with no opinion, no conjecture, no star ratings, no paywall, just the wrestling news, wherever you find your favorite podcast, of course, want to make mention of Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam.

Last few episodes of a great looks back in 1985, 40 years ago.

I believe we just reviewed an episode of TBS Wrestling from right before when you got there.

Here at today, McAdamPod.com.

So it's got nowhere to go but up.

Or look, or look for Stick to Wrestling with John McAdam, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the membership!

Go through the archive605pod.com.

And of course, for Arcadian Vanguard, you get information every day on Twitter at superpodcasts or on Facebook, facebook.com slash Arcadian Vanguard.

And I'm on all the social media stuff.

And anyone who complains that, hey, I want to see some of the programs from Guest the Program or anything, I put them up.

I'm on Instagram, on Twitter.

They're there.

So that's that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Who are these troublemakers?

They are faceless, nameless people.

I think it may be bots.

Nattering nabobs of negativity.

You put these things up.

I retweet many of the things that you Twitter to begin with.

So together,

we've tweeted them all over the place.

It's their fault for not following us.

They bots.

Of course, if they do start following us, we might have to call the law enforcement.

All right.

Speaking of Guest the Program and all that other stuff, before we go today,

we did Guest the Program the other day,

and I got the place right

on

numerous of them but i missed every single year and i have asked you for a rematch i want to go two out of three here to see if today

i can i can get two out of three years correct on it on these things and i guess now you're to to further with me you're probably going to give me some kind of really exotic unheard of off-brand kind of stuff, but I'm going to try this here today.

I don't think today will be easy for you, my friend.

I think today is going to be a rough one.

Of course, guess the program?

I go through programs in my collection and I quiz Jim on them.

He guesses, to the best of his ability, the territory, the building, the location, the date, the timekeeper, and the ring announcer.

Jim, this is

Jim.

This first one here.

The opening about Dandy Donovan

versus pretty Pat Patterson.

Okay, that would be Dandy Jack Donovan and Pretty Pat Patterson.

An interesting opening match between

what I assume from the time period of this would be

two heels mostly, but we will see what happens.

Go ahead.

The second preliminary, and by the way, both matches in the preliminaries: one fall, 15-minute time limit.

Stan Stasiak versus Patty Barrett.

We have a special tag team event.

Two out of three falls, 45-minute time limit.

Bob Boyer and Chief White Wolf

versus Louis Tillet

and Gene Tillet or Tillet, depending on how you like to pronounce it.

Everyone has a different way.

Gene, Gene Tillet.

That's interesting.

A special event.

One fall to a finish.

No TV.

Baby Cheryl versus Dal Paige.

No TV on that one.

It's going to be too wild, folks.

All right, go ahead.

And finally, the main event: two out of three falls, 90-minute time limit for the World's Heavyweight Championship.

Louis Fez, the world's champion, versus Dr.

Big Bill Miller.

Boy, howdy.

Okay, where where do we start here?

Warned you, this is going to be a tough one.

Dandy Jack Donovan was a southern, bleached blonde, southern heel.

At one point, his wife, Vern Bottoms,

Roy, she had one, was his manager.

She wrestled too.

She wrestled too.

Dandy Jack Donovan was the one that got in the shoot fight with Tojo in Louisville, and they beat him up in the the uh Jerry Jarrett, Jackie Fargo and Tojo beat him up in the TV studio in Nashville the next day before they, well, they didn't have to fire him.

He left the territory.

But in the opening match against Pat Patterson,

Donovan was, you know, not always used as a major star, but this would be early in Pat's career.

And pretty Pat Patterson was one of his very early gimmicks.

Stan Stasiak

at this time would have been

an

early in his career, journeyman type of heel.

He would later on be the transitional champion for the WWWF

in between

Pedro and Bruno.

He's wrestling.

Patty Barrett is Irish Pat Barrett, who

had runs in a variety of places, was a tag team champion in the WWWF, but was big for Leroy McGurk as a single in the 70s.

Louis Tillette was obviously

behind the scenes.

He was known as a great booker for some of the southern territories.

He was a wrestler.

Also, Gene Tillet, is this one of those

Rocket Flash Monroe type of things?

Would that have been Gene Dundee?

There's a picture of him here, but I don't know, so I can't comment one way or the other.

I don't know who Gene Tillet would have been.

Chief White Wolf.

Or, you know,

this puts it in the 60s anyway, or

for reasons of the main event that we're going to talk about.

And Bob Boyer

would later on become Bobby Bold Eagle and have a

Indian gimmick, but he was Italian as Bob Boyer.

The no TV match.

Baby Cheryl and Doll Page, they're female midgets.

Baby Cheryl and

she honeygirl Page was her name in the 70s, but I think Doll Page

was her first working name.

And obviously,

two out of three falls, 90 minutes for the world heavyweight title, Thez versus Dr.

Big Bill Miller.

That puts this

in between 1963 and 1966 because of Thez's

last NWA world title reign.

And Bill Miller was

a big,

no pun intended, a big name in the Midwest, Ohio, Michigan,

sometimes toward the Northeast at that point in time, and was a world title contender.

And he was a doctor because he was a licensed veterinarian.

And he was from Columbus, Ohio.

And

God damn it.

At first, I was thinking, well, Pat Patterson early territories, where would he and Donovan have been?

The Indians, and the Indians, and Bill Miller makes me think it might be Ohio,

and it wouldn't be out of the way for Fez to be defending there.

But

at the same time, I don't remember Patterson or Donovan,

or is it it Pittsburgh?

Or am I way off?

Could it be?

It wouldn't be Indianapolis.

Oh, God damn it.

Columbus, Ohio, 1965.

The date?

Monday evening, October 14th.

1963

the Northside Coliseum, Fort Worth, Texas.

Fort Worth, Texas.

Son of a bitch, Pat Patterson in the opening match in the Texas territory in 1963.

I'll read you what it says about that match in a moment, but

considering what he thought of things, what do you think Luthez thought about having his match at Dr.

Big Bill Miller right after the one fall right after the O TV women's midget match?

Female midgets, yeah.

Um,

probably was not one of his uh uh nights he'd like to remember

that That

so honey girl Paige, I saw her

12 years later.

She looked like just a young thing.

But I'd love to know who Gene Tillet was at that point.

But yeah, okay.

So I

fucked the, I'm trying to get the years right.

And at least before I was getting the locations, I got both of these wrong.

All right.

Dandy Jack faces Pretty Patterson.

In the second of two preliminary bouts next Monday night at the Northside Coliseum, Dandy Jack Donovan will take a fling at Pretty Pat Patterson, and this one should be a dandy.

Pretty Pat is after prestige, and he figures that a good way to get it is to defeat the likes of Donovan.

The dainty Boston grappler with the mink jacket, the dark glasses, and the beret,

not to mention the long cigarette holder, is a lot tougher than he appears

to be when adorned with all the trappings of a, and then it says a question mark in parentheses, dandy.

But Pretty Pep may also find out that Dandy Jack is tougher than he expects.

The odds are he will find Donovan plenty rough.

So there we go, Texas.

This next one, Jim, should I be easy on you?

Oh, now

you don't have to, once again, you don't have to just torture me, but you don't have to give me a a gimme either.

The opening contest, one fall, 15-minute time limit.

Vic Christie versus George Hagen.

Lord.

The second contest, one fall, 15-minute time limit.

Pete Shu versus Glenn Wade.

And by the way,

there's an old timer.

I've been seeing his name

more often.

And

his last name was Atu.

So

his his nickname was Sneeze.

Walter Sneeze at you.

The next contest.

The next contest, one fall, 30-minute time limit.

Sammy Stein versus Teddy Tiny Roebuck.

The next contest, best two out of three falls, Gus Sonnenberg versus Al Rumberg.

And finally, the final contest, best two out of three falls, Jim Browning versus Ed Strangler-Lewis.

You son of a bitch.

All right.

Well, Vic Christie was brothers with Ted Christie, the Christie brothers.

And

their heyday was probably late 40s, 50s, but this was earlier than that.

I have no idea who the second match was.

Sam Stein and Tiny Roebuck, again, old-timers.

Gus Sonnenberg was the fucking world champion in what 1937?

No, it was before that.

He was involved in one of the double crosses.

I have no idea who his opponent was.

And Jim Browning

and Ed Lewis, again,

two of the top stars of the 30s.

Well, Strangler Lewis, one of the top stars of all time, but this

when you've said Vic Christie, my first thought was to go to California because they were

both brothers worked out there quite a bit and were over, but that was in the 40s, and this can't be that late with Browning, Sonnenberg, and Lewis on the card.

Again,

there's no way to determine

with any certainty a location here.

So I'm going to say

somewhere in the

and oh god damn it

could are you with me could this be one of the later new york shows before they

left the garden

or is this um

uh

1939 in in california

any place it's a big state any place in uh specific well it's it got it's not as, it wasn't as big back then.

The Olympic Auditorium

in Los Angeles.

All right.

Well, the location, the Olympic Auditorium.

Son of a bitch.

Lou Darrow presents wrestling, John J.

Doyle.

John J.

Doyle, Lee C.

And here is.

Yeah, this is from the Olympic.

And what's interesting, I just added this to my collection.

It came, it's a card that was folded up, and it was in an envelope.

It's a post-dated Beverly Hills, California, June 8th, 1933, 3 p.m.

Ah, to someone named Harry Heidel.

And it's a letter from his friend.

He does not attach a name.

But at the very end here, went to a wrestling show last night with a bunch.

You should see the crowd.

Over 10,000 people were there.

Show the enclosed program to Irvin.

so i i got the place again and i was still way off on the year but 10 000 people in the olympic auditorium in the middle of the great depression well again as reported by uh harry or harry's friend to tell to irving so i don't know well but god damn it that it wasn't 2 000.

all right you ready for this next one i guess you're doing good Yeah, you're doing good.

The first bout, Wayne Martin versus Billy Rayburn.

A special added attraction.

Tuffy Truesdale.

Oh, by the way, this is one fall, no time limit.

Tuffy Truesdale versus a 388-pound alligator.

A tag team bout,

Wild Bill Longson and Ali Pasha

versus Ray Eckert and Frank Taylor.

Two out of three falls, 90-minute time limit.

And finally, the other half of the double main event, two out of three falls, 90-minute time limit.

Angelo Savaldi versus Johnny Balbo.

All right.

Wayne Martin, I remember that name for some reason, and that's about it.

Tuffy Truesdale, wrestling the alligator.

That was his, Tuffy Truesdale was a wrestler that worked preliminaries in a variety of places for years, but he trained bears and alligators.

And he either at various points had a wrestling alligator or a wrestling bear.

Wild Bill Longshan and Ray Eckert being in the tag team match puts us definitely, I think, in the 1940s.

And did this come from the Ray Eckert estate collection?

I've got some programs that he had.

And then

A mutual friend of ours, I won't mention his name, sent me a couple of scrapbooks that he made of clippings and et cetera.

But there's a lot of stuff going around from Ray Eckert's collection, old Memphis programs, of which

I'm wondering if this might be one of them because they didn't have wrestling alligators in St.

Louis.

Ali Pasha doesn't tell me much.

And Angelo Savoli and Johnny Balbo.

Balbo should tell me something,

but I'm slipping in my old age.

God damn it.

Would this be in

1952, somewhere in Oklahoma or Missouri?

The date, Monday night, April 16th, 1951.

Memphis, Tennessee.

You had it.

Memphis, son of a bitch.

i should have known i should have known to go with my first thought but i'm like no it doesn't seem like a memphis card but this was early in the 50s before the nashville booking office took over and talent mostly came out of the st.

Louis office besides the alligators that's right

all right give me a moment

I didn't get two out of three but can I get one Well, I'll give you one more.

I'm trying to, I got a stack of programs here.

I'm trying to find the right one.

Trying to make me either look worse than I already do or not look as bad as I have been.

No, I'm trying to make you look good.

I want you to look good.

This is your show.

This is your show.

Don't forget that.

Yeah, yeah.

Put all the blame on me.

All right, hold on.

I think it may be over here.

There we go.

All right.

This is an interesting card.

This is a flyer for the card.

This is not the actual program.

All right.

The opening bout, Mr.

Wrestling 2 versus Les Thornton.

Ooh.

Bout 2: Tiger Conway Jr.

vs.

Playboy Buddy Rose.

Ivan Putsky vs.

Terry Gibbs.

In a ladies match, Wendy Richter vs.

Judy Martin.

For a title I won't name.

Greg Valentine vs.

Tito Santana.

In the main event, Andre the Giant and Black Jack Mulligan versus Big John studd and Ken Patera.

All righty.

So I guess I can't complain because this is not as obscure as the stuff from back in the Stone Age, but this is obviously

a WWF event.

And it's obviously right after the expansion started.

Wrestling 2 was

there briefly, as was Les Thornton when

events after Black Saturday, he absorbed the Georgia office.

They're two of the only guys that went.

Tiger Conway Jr.,

I didn't remember him being there and Buddy Rose, not at that period of time.

So I'm wondering if that has something to do with them potentially living in the area.

Putsky and Terry Gibbs.

Terry Gibbs was,

oh, goddamn, he had a thing going on with the, with, uh, at one point with, um, he was a military man.

What was the deal going on there?

I don't know.

Terry Gibbs was one of the privates for slaughter, wasn't he?

Terry Daniels.

You're not going to give me anything, huh?

Terry Daniels, what you're talking about.

Terry Daniels, not Terry Gibbs.

I'm sorry.

Okay, different guy.

Wendy Richter and Judy Martin, Greg Valentine and Tito would be for the Intercontinental title.

And Andre and Blackjack Studd and Patera.

So it's a WWF show.

It has to be either 1984 or 1985.

And with Andre and Blackjack Studd and Patera, could this

with Wrestling 2 and Thornton on the show, would it be in the Omni?

Because he was trying to appeal to some of those.

fans.

With Tiger Conway, I'm wondering, is it Dallas?

Or with Buddy Rose, is it Portland?

Let's go with the Omni in Atlanta,

and it's very late in 1984.

Ooh, I'm going to give you that one.

December 8th.

Excuse me, December, I can't even say it.

Friday, December 28th, 1984.

Aha!

The World Wrestling Federation makes its debut in the Big D

State Fair Coliseum, Dallas, Texas.

All right.

What do you think of this show being the WWF debut in Dallas?

Well, it appears to me that they just had to fill a place in betwixt and between and knew that they weren't going to do that well

because they didn't do that well in their initial forays into

the world-class territory, the Mid-South territory, or

Tennessee or the Carolinas.

They did do well in Louisville, surprisingly, but not in Memphis.

Well, I have here, this is part of the, this is almost like a split from the files.

This is part of the Eloise Mascara

file.

Is that how you pronounce her last name?

Mascoro.

Mascoro.

Excuse me.

She was going back to the, well, I don't know how long she went back with Dallas wrestling, but in the 70s, she was the biggest Von Erich fan in the world and was still a lady in her 60s at that point.

The WWF made it to Dallas finally last Friday, the 28th of December, holding their matches at the state fair of Texas Coliseum, where the horse shows are held.

In the write-up on Saturday, the 29th, the Dallas Morning News, it stated about 2,000 watched the WWF's first program.

Seven events were listed.

The main event, Andre the Giant Blackjack Mulligan defeated Ken Patera and Bobby Heenan.

In the TV announcements from WWF prior to the date, it was announced that John Studd and Patera would meet Andre and Mulligan.

Also, women's champion Wendy Richter would meet Judy Martin for the title.

But the paper listed fabulous Moolah pinned Judy Martin.

Greg Valentine won versus Tito Santana by DQ because Santana slugged the referee.

The write-up also mentioned Johnny Valentine attended to watch his son Greg.

I only know of one family that are regulars at the sportatorium who attended.

They They promised to bring me a program if they had them to sell.

The WWF show that I watched Saturday said they would be coming back to Dallas on Thursday, the 17th of January.

Wow!

Our crowd Friday night was near a full house, and the weather was far from good.

Excuse me.

She writes in a cursive here.

Not cold, but rainy and muddy.

do need some sunshine very badly.

There is no way I can manage going to watch wrestling cards from a financial standpoint.

There's no way, there's no, is that what she said?

There is no way I can manage going to watch wrestling cards from a financial standpoint.

I still miss going to Fort Worth.

Uh,

I don't know what the next word is.

I still miss going to Fort Worth Monday night for the card, but I must

have, I must have

within my income.

Again, I may be missing.

Yeah, and she's an older lady at this point, but what I think she always went to the matches in Fort Worth on Monday nights.

That was her regular thing.

And then she obviously would go to the sportatorium in the heyday.

But I think as she retired and got older, she had to watch out the money she was spending and the trips she was making.

But now, here's the thing.

This was December, what, 28th, 1984?

That's exactly right.

Do you know another reason why they only had 2,000 people?

That was three days after the Star Wars Christmas Night Reunion Arena Show.

I have that right here.

That was

our debut in Dallas.

We did $188,000 and 18,000 people.

I have right here the full-page newspaper, the Dallas Morning News, Wednesday, December 26, 1984.

On the front here is Star Wars, Flare Keeps World Title on DQ.

When is a winner not a winner?

Kerry Von Erich knows.

Tuesday night at Reunion Arena, in the Star Wars, Von Eric defeated world champion Ric Flair.

But Flair, the 33-year-old champion of the National Wrestling Alliance, is still the champion.

However, NWA officials in attendance said Flair has abused the disqualification rule and that Von Eric will get another shot at the title.

The match will take place in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the next two weeks, and the disqualification rule will be waived.

Flair has a move to counter any wrestling hold.

18 minutes and 20 seconds into the title match, he came up with a butte for the Iron Claw, a hold that has made the Von Eric Wrestling Clan successful.

Flair, his forehead bloodied, threw Von Eric over the top rope, while Von Eric had the claw on Flair's skull.

The result was a disqualification, which ensures the champion will remain the champion.

The World Belt cannot exchange hands on a disqualification.

Here's a quote from Kerry Von Eric.

I felt ready to go, and I was strong out there tonight.

When I took that spill over the ropes, it really hurt.

It was an uncoordinated type of fall that I couldn't break with my hands.

I'm just glad I'm going to get another shot at the title, that's for sure.

I've only known the NWA to waive the disqualification rule on two instances in a world match.

That's what it says in a world match.

The first was when I won the title, and this will be the second.

The outcome was an especially bitter pill for Von Eric to swallow.

Von Eric had

Von Eric had pinned Flair for the required three count,

but referee David Manning hadn't noticed Flair's leg on the top of the rope until after the count.

The match already 14 minutes long continued.

Here's more from Carrie.

There's a mental letdown after that occurs.

When you hear that three count on the mat, the first thing you do is check to see if everything is okay.

I didn't see his foot on the rope until after the third count.

I guess guess we'll find out on the videotape.

One minute later, Von Eric applied the claw for the first time.

Flair hurled von Eric into the turnbuckle.

However, three minutes later, Von Eric came back with the claw before Flair disqualified himself.

Von Eric dominated the first eight minutes of the match before Flair seized an opportunity on the ropes.

The battle went back and forth from there, with each wrestler gaining three two counts on pin attempts

this is amazing the way the newspaper is writing about this match yeah well they they gave them the details and they went with it because wrestling was so over at that point but think about this also what i popped when they said the wwf was coming back on january 17th

this is a town

Fritz was running Dallas at the sportatorium every Friday night, seated 5,000 people.

And in in that era, we were filling it up more often than not.

And then every Monday night in Fort Worth at the Will Rogers Coliseum, plus the Thanksgiving Star Wars at Reunion Arena, the Christmas Star Wars at Reunion Arena.

And the end of January 1985 was going to be the special show.

at the Tarrant County Convention Center in Fort Worth, which was another 10,000, 12,000 seat building.

And

the WWS trying to come in and run the Fair Park Coliseum and getting two.

No wonder they couldn't draw.

World class was still hot, and they were all over the fucking market.

Let me finish up.

So, yeah, go ahead.

There's an article here from the paper, by the way.

This is by Stan Hoviter Jr., photos by William Snyder.

In another main event, Kevin von Erich came off the mat twice,

once after a pile driver, defeating gentleman Chris Adams in a lumberjack match, in which other wrestlers on the car gathered around the ring, making sure neither wrestler left the ring.

Von Eric, who had split with Adams in two previous matches, was pinned twice for a two-count before bucking his way out of Adams' pin.

Following the pile driver, which had Adams turning Von Eric upside down and dropping him on his head, Adams paraded around the ring ring before going to the turnbuckle.

Adams' attempt to jump off the turnbuckle was thwarted when Vonera dashed off the mat, grabbed Adams, and threw him onto the rope.

Into the rope, excuse me.

Both men fell to the floor, and Vonera covered Adams for the pinfall at the five-minute mark.

Here's a quote from Kevin.

Hey, don't sell old Kev short.

I shouldn't do the voice.

Don't sell old Kev short.

It didn't hurt me that bad.

He held me in the air too long, and I shifted my weight to make the impact a glancing blow.

That's a hell of a way to describe not getting killed by a pile driver.

But man, that kind of coverage.

And by the way, I guess I'll read the results real quick because you're on it.

Jose Lithario defeated El Diablo.

Rip Oliver defeated Iceman King Parsons.

Kelly Kiniski defeated Buck Zumhoff.

Mike von Eric and Billy Jack defeated Gino Hernandez and Jake the Snake.

For the American Tag Team Championship, the Fantastics defeated the Midnight Express, 13 minutes, 10 seconds.

Lumberjack match, Kevin defeated Chris Adams, five minutes, five-minute lumberjack match.

And finally, for the NWA World title, Kerry Von Erich defeated Ric Flair via disqualification.

And there you have it.

And have you had enough yet?

Oh, I can, I mean, you're doing so well.

I have more programs here if you want to keep it.

That's all right.

I think I've been drubbed enough for one day.

I got one here with a lincoln in it i think well just make sure it was at ford's theater i know how that one came out i know the finish uh we are going to come back in a couple of days with your program the drive-thru where we're going to talk about more of the wwe wrestling and of course we also have The big AEW pay-per-view coming up, as well as Dark Side of the Ring.

And holy mackerel, WrestleMania is right around the corner.

So the people are just going to have to listen to every show we do from now on to make sure they don't get left out, right?

That's right.

There's a lot going on.

And of course, we have a lot of shows coming out.

You left off the fact that The Rock will probably pop off anytime soon.

He needs some attention.

But stay tuned.

A lot happening and we have a lot to talk about.

That sounds like a good name for a Russian wrestler, Rock Popov.

All right, I'm going to pop off of here right now.

If there's nothing else we need to do here, I'm done with you.

Thank you, folks.

Fuck you.

And bye-bye, everybody.