Episode 575: Jim Watches TNA

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

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

He never backs down from a fight.

He never wins the pony.

Cause his mama raised him right.

It's time

to rest

your mind.

Get the experience.

Get the experience.

Get the experience of Jim Cornette.

Hello again and welcome folks to the Jim Cornette Experience.

Fasten your seatbelts, kids, for a trip around the world of professional wrestling, the good, the bad, and the mostly ugly.

And then we're going to hop in the Wayback Machine for some Mid-South Wrestling 1984.

And joining me for all this fun and frivolity.

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

Co-host to you.

Say his name and his organ appears, the great Brian Last, everybody.

I messed that up.

Aloha, Jim.

A pleasure to be here once again.

The happy organ and myself here for an interesting show.

We did something that we had been threatening to do.

And,

you know, I don't know how I feel.

That was a good word for it.

I don't know how I feel about it now that we've done it.

Yeah, you know, is there some remorse over our dirty action that we took in the privacy of our own homes?

Now we feel, well, the shower just won't wash it away.

We watch TNA wrestling, folks, and we're going to talk about that

here today on the program.

But that,

ah,

ah.

Remember when

there used to be some variety in wrestling, Brian, when

the various territories had their own little styles and flavors of presentation, and

the talent that moved through them could either adapt and

work within that system and draw money, or maybe sometimes it just wasn't a right fit, but you could watch different wrestling programs.

And with varying levels of quality, they were all different at least.

And

now it's just

either outlaw indie wrestling with a budget or no budget, or

people trying to be fucking, as Bill Watts said to Nikolai Volkov at that promo session one day in Shreveport at Channel 3, 10,000 comedians out of work and you're telling jokes.

They either got to be funny.

Or they got to be daredevils, evil knievels,

jumping over the Snake River fucking canyon in a goddamn wrestling ring.

Or

it's open mic night, bitch.

It just depends on the size of the budget.

Are you there?

I don't know what to say now versus later, to be honest with you.

I haven't watched TNA in many years.

And

when I last saw it, I always had the same impression from like, whatever, like 2010 on.

It's like a bad version of Vince's Raw.

It's not exactly on USA Network, but they want to be.

And it's just that quality of stuff and watching it.

If we only had a network and watching it now again, I still feel that it's a copy of Vince's Raw.

It's just not a.

Well, I'll save it for when we were going to go.

Well, yeah, save it for the, but, but, I mean, that Tony Khan does a good show, I have to say, after watching it.

After

That Tony Khan is a masterful booker.

Hold on now.

There, cowboy.

Just pump the brakes a second.

I'll save it too for later on.

But in all of their own ways, everything that

we see presented to us these days fits some basic pattern of.

They're either they're that or they're trying to be that, whatever that is that they think.

I hope I've cleared things up.

I apologize if I'm a little croupy today.

You know, the weather in the Ohio Valley area,

which includes Louisville, Kentucky, is frightful this time of year.

Now,

it's going to be almost 80 today,

which is going to get us hot enough day and tomorrow.

We're going to have rain and severe thunderstorms come through, and then it's going to be almost freezing again.

Man, the pollen is coming out.

The pollen is pooping out everywhere.

they're starting to report that on the news

ah

and also

of course people know i have a well-known allergy to which i've been overexposed lately i'm allergic to

and i've been watching it from all sides um

i got an email brian from one of our recent emailers you remember

Elijah Odinade

from Norcross, Georgia.

Do you not?

Wasn't it just like last week?

Yeah.

Yes, because he heard the segment we did reading his email.

And guess what he sent me?

He cut and pasted it.

I can't credit a website,

but it is off the internet.

It's the results of an IWA event from July 8th, 1975 at Roosevelt Stadium.

In Jersey City, New Jersey.

That's where they had to go to try to fight Vince because the Vince Sr.,

because the garden was locked up and et cetera.

There was no Meadowlands at that point, I don't believe.

But now, so

let me read his email first.

Hi, Jim and Brian.

I was so excited when you responded on the experience to my question about Power Mike and the IWA reruns airing in Nigeria.

This led me to do some cursory research on what was the alleged history of Power Mike as a wrestler and promoter, which I attached, and he's got the history there, but this was

the cut and paste job here that I've got is more to the point.

I've also attached a match card of a July 8th, 1975 IWA card, Roosevelt Stadium, Jersey City.

And he said, I'm not sure if this would aired on their TV show or possibly just clips.

shown or whatever.

I bet none of it probably aired because they did

a studio taping at the time.

Yeah, but I never heard of any footage of it.

No, no.

But July 8th, 1975, this has got the results from the internet somewhere here.

And after the opening match in which Daisy May defeated Maria DeLeon, Deleon, De Leon?

What's the Dealio?

De Leon.

Deleon?

De Leon.

No, De Leon.

There's an N at the end, isn't there?

De Leon.

But anyway, after that match, it says Jerry Lawler defeats Danny Sharp.

Now, besides the fact that I've never heard of Danny Sharp,

I started looking in my Tennessee history books, and then I realized that July 1975

was the period of time where Lawler and Jarrett were somewhat on the outs

for the first six months or so of 75.

And he had sent Lawler to Georgia and Florida during that period of time to kind of maybe not get so much of a big head since he just said all in box office records.

And he brought him back in August of 1975.

But the point, when I looked in my reference books, July 8th, 1975 was a Tuesday night.

Tuesday night in Roosevelt Stadium?

It was Tuesday night, the wrestling night in Jersey City, Brian?

That's your neck of the woods.

I don't know if there was a wrestling night in Jersey City at that point.

Monday night was typically the garden.

Free beer night, I think, in Jersey City probably would have drawn.

But anyway, so I don't know where Lawler was on July the 8th, right off the top of my head, probably again somewhere in,

I think at that point in Georgia or Florida.

But have you, do you ever remember seeing him work or hearing of him work for the IWA?

I guarantee you, if you brought it up to him right now, he would remember it.

And that's not a joke because he's had a stroke 40 years ago.

He couldn't remember Evansville last Wednesday.

You know, I've talked to people who attended this card.

It was a big deal at the time.

You know, Mil Moscaris versus Ivan Koloff.

That was a big deal.

Well, no, hold on.

This, according to this card, because there was more than one Roosevelt Stadium card.

This one was where it was Moscaris and Ernie Ladd for the title.

Oh.

In the main event.

Because

the first one was a big one, but did they not.

But it was like July of 75.

I guess that's what's throwing me off.

Well, then, or is this some made-up results here?

Because I seem to remember that they ran the Roosevelt Stadium more than once.

Right.

Right.

A couple of times, a few times, whatever.

But that you are correct.

That was the main event on the first big show, but this has Moscaris and Ernie Ladd,

along with

Bulldog Brower and Mighty Igor,

Apollo and Luis Martinez against the Mongols, and

as was the habit with the IWA, 18 more matches, it seems like.

But why,

if Lawler was working

in Georgia or Florida, those were NWA offices.

And

they wouldn't have been

the IWA was running opposition at that time specifically to Vince and trying to do national TV syndication.

Had they gone to the Carolinas yet?

Johnny Powers was with them.

Were they afoul of some NWA office at that point?

But why would

just a random,

you know, preliminary match with Lawler, who was only a name in Tennessee and on no other television by that point?

I, this is odd.

Someone out there, if Big Andy Varga was still around, is he alive still?

I do.

That's why I just said if he was still around.

Well, that just means if he's going to the conventions, not if he's a.

No, I mean, if he's, if 30 years ago, he was an older man than me.

So I'm thinking he's, you know.

But Big Andy, we love you.

If you're still around, you'd know you probably were there.

But I used to get all kinds of, I got such an incredible amount of my prized late 50s wrestling collectibles from Big Andy.

But anyway, that's odd.

I wanted to bring that up.

That's really odd.

If anybody out there has-I didn't ever say anything about Jerry while we're working those shows.

I had Michael Harrow on 605

a few years back.

It's available at 605pod.com or anywhere else.

He went to the show.

He talked all about it and the circus-like atmosphere right outside of it because of the weather and the rain and everything else.

But that was the first show.

That was in July.

This is a month later.

Well, no, this is July.

This is July 8th, 1975.

Oh, wait a minute.

Hold on.

Or is it August 7th?

It's August 7th.

These daggum

Englanders, they put the...

It's from Georgia, the guy who sent it to you.

Well, no, but he cut and pasted it from a fucking website.

And they put the month after the day rather than the day of the, you know what I'm saying to you.

They do it backwards over there, along with having no ice machine.

So this was in 07, 08, 75 to them means August 7th.

Correct?

I believe so.

I believe that would be correct.

Well, that's why that we're fucking confused here.

You're confused, aren't you?

I've never heard of Jerry Lawler working at Roosevelt Stadium.

So yeah.

Well, that confused me at first, but now I got confused about the date.

I just want you to admit that I wasn't the only one that was confused.

I have the program.

I have a copy of the card listed in the program here.

In the program, it says Ricky Starr versus Pez Pronto.

Wait a minute.

Pez Wadley is down here

defeating Joe Turco, but Ricky Starr

was defeated Bull Johnson.

Oh, yeah, because this has Pronto.

This has Johnny Powers versus Joe Turco.

Rip Hawk.

He defeated Thomas Maron according to the results.

Rip Hawk and Beautiful Bruce versus Miguel Perez and Carlos Colon.

They nailed that one.

Colon and Perez beat Swayze and Hawk.

Louis Martinez and Argentine Apollo versus Hartford Love and Reginald Love, the Love Brothers, managed by Al Costello.

That is incorrect.

Argentino, Apollo, and Luis Martinez defeated the Mongols, Bolo and Guito, while Dino Bravo and Tex McKenzie defeated Reginald and Hartford Love.

Tex McKenzie versus Ivan Koloff.

No, you are incorrect, sir.

I'm thinking Ivan may not have made the plane.

Ivan Koloff not on the card.

Luthes versus Eric the Red.

And he beat Eric the Red by disqualification.

That's a weird match, you know.

Ladies and gentlemen, one of the all-time legends is here.

Multiple-time world champion.

You haven't seen him here in the Northeast in forever.

And his opponent, Eric LaRed.

And just like

cowboy Bob Ellison.

And also look at it this way.

Here is a man who was trained in

the various gyms in St.

Louis by the Ray Steeles and the Ed Santels and the great shooters of the day in the 30s and 20s.

And then here is a big fat guy with red hair from Florida at Roosevelt Stadium.

So basically, it's like, here's Luthez next week, the Grateful Dead return.

Let's go back here.

Cowboy Bob Ellis and Nelson Royal versus Lars Anderson and Kurt Von Hess.

Well,

as a matter of fact, Kurt Von Hess and Lars Anderson defeated Cowboy Bob Ellis and Nelson Royal, who are apparently they were the cowboy connection there.

Now, you already said this next one didn't happen.

The tag team champions, the Mongols, Guido and Bolo versus Dino Bravo and Gino Brito.

You didn't mention mention him before.

I'm guessing maybe Gino, you know, had a meeting.

I'm not seeing

Gino has left the building.

I'm not seeing Gino.

That's why they had to switch these important tag team contests around a little bit.

North American Championship, Dick the Bulldog Brower versus the Mighty Igor.

And Dick the Bulldog Brower retained

that championship by defeating the Mighty Igor.

And finally, for the international world title, Mill Moscaris versus the big cat, Ernie Ladd.

And Moscaris defeated Ernie Ladd two falls to one, which means somehow,

by fair means or foul,

whether he wanted to or not, Ernie pinned

the masked man at least once in that contest.

Well, we'll see what anyone in the Northeast remembers about Jerry Lawler being on that show.

You don't hear a lot about the second show.

You hear a lot about that first show because it was a big deal.

What was the last time anyone ran against Vince?

Was it Jim Crockett and Antonino Rocka?

Like, who was the last person to run against them in the Northeast?

It was a big deal.

It that, yeah, it would have been, and that was 60, the 63 to 64 timeframe.

So it had been 10 years

since it, I mean, there were always the local shows in, you know, at Gleason's Gym or whatever, but

on any kind of platform or mainstream basis or competition-wise, no,

it didn't happen very often.

But yeah,

it doesn't make sense.

Again, why would Georgia, Florida, or Tennessee offices send?

In Tennessee, he was a main event guy.

In Georgia and Florida, he was at least, you know, on the middle card.

They knew he was going to come back to Memphis.

And Barnett worked closely with Jerry Jared at at that point it does i don't i don't know how this got on the on the deal unless it can somebody provide photographic evidence i question if it's uh

i don't know never heard anything about it doesn't make too much sense

i mean in a lot of ways this is right after the georgia war and jerry lauber was clearly on the side with jerry jarrett and the nwa why would he all of a sudden well yeah that's right he had worked georgia when they jerry jarrett was one of the guys that sent talent from when they first split when gunkle first split off and took the talent because the territories again bordered tennessee and georgia

and uh

you know lawler jarrett everybody went for the established office and barnett and jarrett had a good relationship so it i

maybe it was that gary lawler yeah i'm calling bullshit i don't think it was jerry lawler yeah it just doesn't make sense i don't see why but but who would have put that there?

As Joe LaDuke said one time, who wouldn't have put that there?

And by the way, August 4th, 75,

Memphis, Mid-South Coliseum, Lawler and Don Green defeated.

Excuse me, Lawler and Don Greene went to a draw with Luke Graham and Bill Dundee.

Okay, well, and that because I thought it was July because of the,

I blame the British.

In August, yeah, Lawler was already back in Memphis.

And

in that case, I should check my

Louisville book again, but nevertheless,

it's a mystery.

One last thing, I got uh, I found a newspaper clipping from one of the local papers here.

This is from the website when it wascool.com.

Mil Moscara successfully defended his international wrestling title against Ernie Ladd.

Also, Bulldog Brower, TKO'd, the mighty Igor on cuts.

59-year-old Lou Thes flattened Derek the Red.

Other victors included Ricky Starr, Johnny Powers, and Pistol Pez Watley.

In tag team competition, Apollo and Martinez knocked off the Mongols in a non-title bout.

Miguel Perez and Carlos Colon took the measure of Rip Hawk and Beautiful Bruce.

TV color commentator Tex McKenzie teamed with Dino Bravo to defeat the Love Brothers, while Cowboy Bob Ells and Nelson Royal lost to Lars Anderson, who they called Larry Heineme on the show.

So I don't know why it says Lars Anderson, but, and Kurt Von Hess, a crowd of more than 8,100 paid more than $75,000 to witness the action.

And nobody said anything about the girls' match that was listed either

as opening the show.

Yeah.

Or, well, in addition to that, hold on here.

Wait a minute.

Oh, Jesus.

Yeah, we could solve this mystery.

We're asking other people to do it.

We could do it with just a little bit of effort.

Maybe a little bit of effort.

Well, that's why

I've made an effort to lean over and get this note that, yeah,

if anybody has done the Daisy May or Maria Deion

record books

and can, because all those other matches seem to be accounted for except those two.

Where did they come from?

They weren't Moolah girls, were they?

I guess they came from their

mother and father's, you know, undying love for each other.

I don't know where they were from.

It wasn't my week to book them.

Anyhow.

I just thought due to your love of female wrestling you would uh know the history of these two

well you know i was back when it was a shoot though just like roller derby

what'd you get you got a book what'd you look up what do you got uh well no i just i had because i dropped my one note there and i wanted to remind myself what those girls names were oh i thought you were

all i got no i'm i'm i'm covered up in notes and jottings and pads and things and such because of all the things that we've been watching here.

And I'm trying to sort through.

And one of the things that we've been watching, Brian, or have started to watch is the brand new season of Dark Side of the Ring has debuted

as of this past Tuesday.

Next week or this week, depending on how you look at these things,

what week, what day is it?

It's April 1st, it's April Fool's Day on Tuesday this week.

So that's perfect for Tony Hong,

Ludwig Aborga.

But the season debut was the Hell in a Cell match.

And

this is what I was trying to explain to you, Brian, when I was trying to explain to you that it was all about

a mixed viewpoint, mixed mindset.

Mick Foley is a person.

They interviewed his family and, you know, etc.

As to what the point was of the

of the broadcast and dissecting just that moment or that match or that night in his life and what his motivation was as Finkel would say and I just didn't do a good job explaining it to you but now you see what I was talking about

although and Francois was the star of the show as I figured he would be

was that a question yes

But you see what I was talking about now as to the slant of the program.

Because everybody was talking about poor, you know, Mick, Mick needs to and want, even Mick said that.

He was a kid that got teased and he always wanted to be loved.

Do you know what?

What were you going to say?

I was going to say Francois Petit, his neighbor in Santa Monica, I think across the street was Bob Barnett.

Because Bob used to see the rest of us coming in and out of Francois's house.

He's like, hey, something's going on over there.

Is that one of those houses that Barnett repossessed from his clients that couldn't pay him?

Maybe Lano, actually.

I'm not exactly sure.

I thought Lano would be the client that couldn't pay him.

But yeah, I think I had very low expectations for this one.

And we've seen so much about this is one of the most famous matches in history.

I think Darkseid did a better job than anyone's ever done telling the story of the match.

I think this is one of the best episodes they've ever done.

I was so excited.

Well, it's refreshing to hear you say that.

And I think part of the reason, too, was

they kind of had just about every voice they needed.

You know, I know Jim Ross didn't do anything with them for a few years after the fallout from the Plane Ride from Hell episode.

I'm glad he was a part of this.

He needed him.

Jimmy Corderis was great.

I know Terry's not here, but we were able to kind of feel Terry's presence because everyone was relaying how he was involved in all this.

I thought this was one of the best episodes they've ever done.

Well, especially with

the family's viewpoint of what he was doing and how Colette, you know, many times was not happy, as they say, over stuff that she had to see on TV.

And,

you know,

again,

we know the story, which they didn't spend a ton of time on,

that Cactus was not, Vince didn't see in Cactus Jack what everybody else saw as a wrestling talent.

And,

you know, he'd been doing the Japanese death matches with Terry and all that stuff.

And JR did make a big pitch, you know, give him a chance.

And I think, wasn't that the famous quote that Vince told JR?

Said, I'm going to do this just so I can see the look on your face when your talent fails or whatever, something to that effect.

You love hearing that from your boss.

Well, yeah, you know, but it just because he wouldn't leave it alone.

And of course, my comment was when they brought him in as mankind, because Vince had the

whatever he had in mind.

This, this bogus bullshit wouldn't have worked with anybody besides Mick Foley.

Because it was just,

again,

mankind who lived

secluded from normal society in a

cellar somewhere or whatever the fuck that had some horror movie oomph to it.

But Vince was going to cartoon it up and gimmick it up until

he got to realize after he'd been around Mick for a little while, he got to realize Mick was a talent, right?

We've told that story before, but

that was the thing.

He still had the gimmick, but he had to make something out of it, and he did.

And,

you know, again, Terry joking with him, well, Cactus, you ought to start on top of the thing and let him throw you off of it or whatever.

And so Mick thinks, well, maybe we could.

But I think the

what do you think anybody

that might stumble upon this program that's not a wrestling fan is just sitting there one night and sees this start and decides to give it a minute?

And

the story of the actual match, again, has been told, like you said, and highlights have been replayed, but not with just

this was like a

training school breakdown, along with a call of a car crash to where each thing that went wrong for Mick was studied in great detail.

the zip ties popping

and the bump off the top and then the bump through the thing and blah, blah, blah.

From everybody's viewpoint, and I think that's this was the ultimate match breakdown ever done on television, wasn't it, from that perspective?

I don't know because I got to think about what to compare it to.

I thought it was really good for that reason.

Again, you had all these different voices.

You never really hear Jimmy Corderis and Jim Ross and Jim Cornette and Mick Foley talking about the exact same thing.

And, you know, they had, I don't know if they talked to The Undertaker on the phone or they just got some bootleg tape of him.

I think, I think that's probably from some podcast somewhere.

Yeah, well, they got some audio of the Undertaker, so at least there was something there because there were a few holes he needed filled in.

You know, you're not going to get Vince for this kind of thing.

You got Francois.

I thought it was a great, and you know, again, it's all different perspectives.

You have office.

referee, doctor.

I mean, everyone had a different perspective of it.

And I thought specifically, the breakdown of him being thrown off the cage and everyone's reaction

and how he actually did take a flat back bump, although he immediately went flying off the table.

Well, yeah, there was an element of bouncing going on after that.

But I thought the breakdown of that was great.

Again, I was so impressed with the way they did this episode because it's a topic I was kind of a little sick of.

I wasn't really interested in seeing another thing about this.

And I think they nailed it.

Well, here's Colette

had the perfect sentence that explains

a lot about pro wrestling if if if you understand it it's so simple some people may not understand it but talking about the bump off the top of the cage and onto the table

collette said if he can see it he can do it

and see that's the thing

It applies to more than Mick, just that's an extreme example of it.

But the reason why a lot of the top guys in wrestling had their their own bump that they came to be known for or bumps or you know moves whatever

that was different that was unusual that was eye-catching that then people would imitate ad nauseum

they could see it in their head you can't do something unless you can see yourself doing it

physically

am i explaining that right you could you can try to do something that somebody else did

and

you're going to probably fuck it up and depend on how good athletically you are.

But the people that invent that shit, they can just see it and see themselves doing it.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

But I mean, still, there's the ability to somehow make it work even while it's happening.

I think it was you in the episode that pointed out how mid-air he kind of had to turn his body.

You know, he's watching.

Yeah.

He's watching where he's going, but he also, I mean, it's all really quick.

He says it took forever as it was happening, but it was so quick.

And,

you know, if he had made the wrong move, it would have been a different thing.

He would have landed a little differently.

Whatever.

He kind of did it perfectly.

If you're going to do it.

Yeah.

That was the best that it could be done.

And that's why I always told him it was his citizen cane bump.

I said, don't worry if you still have a long, successful career.

Just figure this the best thing you've ever done.

Don't try to top it.

Because the results could be, you know,

less than pleasant.

And the motivation for him to get back up

and getting back up is what made him.

Because again, you know, anybody, no matter who, where they were in the building watching that,

was

pretty convinced and on both sides, the office and us in the back and the people in the seats was pretty convinced that that was it

because we didn't think he could actually get back up.

And getting back up is what made him again with the, that elevated him to the next level in people's eyes.

And when it was replayed and talked about, et cetera, et cetera.

You know whose name I haven't mentioned, but he was great in here too.

You brought up the back.

I was thinking of the truck, Jerry Briscoe.

Yes.

Gerald is fucking, well, he's always great.

But just we never really hear his perspective of this match and the fact that he was there right in front of the monitors as everything was happening.

Yeah.

And, you know, again, the people back at the guerrilla position

have, we're on pay-per-view.

They're not just going to, you know, they don't know what's happening.

That's why they didn't cut it off.

They didn't rush right out.

It was, you know, because technically it was planned for him to do that.

It just wasn't planned for him to be, you know.

so incapacitated he couldn't continue and nobody was sure and they were taking their time

And then when they successfully restart the thing and he gets chokeslammed through the cage, and again, remember we've talked about this before, but Mick said he thought there would be some snapping and giving way of the

deal and he'd kind of have time to adjust.

And it just

instantly went out from under him and boom and down he goes with that fucking chair on his face.

And that's what fucked him up.

Well, the bump off the cage separated his shoulder and did some other things but he was fine mentally there

but then when he when he landed not only at 100 miles an hour back of his head first on that concrete ring but the chair caved his face in

at the other that's like being concertoed isn't it

For real.

And guess what?

He didn't fucking get up for a while.

And that was when Colette was fucking,

he didn't tell me about that one.

He didn't know about that one.

And then that's when Terry tried to come back and

kill or come out and kill some time and et cetera.

Yeah, and I want to ask you about that because obviously, you know, in a perfect world, once he's out, the thing would end.

But I remember watching it live, let alone, I could imagine what you guys were doing with being there.

It all was happening so quick.

It didn't seem like anyone knew where this was going or how it could end.

So we'll get back to the Terry thing, but in terms of Colette, she said she was calling the office and calling everyone she could.

How often did you guys in the office actually hear from wives of wrestlers about whether it was just forget about everyday issues, but specifically things they were seeing on TV or on pay-per-view?

Well, think about this, though.

She wasn't calling everybody in the office because there were no cell phones.

There was,

if you needed to, you could call, you had Vince's secretary's number or Ann Russo in talent relations or somebody, Finkel.

There could be a call placed to the office, not necessarily at 1241 East Main Street, but somebody working for the company.

And if you had,

you know, enough pool, you could find out the goddamn building number or somebody at the building to get through to Vince,

and they have to run down the hall.

And there was no texting.

And, you know, beepers,

we have beepers, so there could be some beeping going on.

So

a lot of that is,

Colette said she's calling, she might have been beeping Mick, or she might have been calling

a goddamn, you know, whoever the office person was to have you heard something or whatever, but you couldn't just get right through to the locker room or to the guerrilla position in,

you know, the late 90s, even.

Right as I left and came to Louisville, I think, is where Vince made everybody start getting the, what were the, what'd they call them?

The Blackberries?

Oh, yeah.

I used to have one.

Where you could type messages to people or whatever.

I just avoided that by like months.

So anyway, nevertheless.

And maybe there might have been early selfish.

He might have been, you know, Mick might have had a cell phone.

It was in his bag.

Maybe I'm not saying that, you know, the boys had disposable income, although Mick was noticeably cheap.

So

at some point,

I don't know.

But point being, we were never inundated by mad wives.

The secretaries at the office were on some occasions during normal business hours.

And that's one thing is, you know, after the match and the,

you know, the aftermath and the

attention that it got and everything.

And like I said, it did elevate Mick because people are like, what the fuck?

We've never seen anything like this.

And in a way, we've never seen anything like it again since.

People have tried to do bullshit to top it, but because they were trying to, that's why they couldn't.

But Mick in this episode, he credited that for his career renaissance.

I think really it was just, it wasn't a renaissance.

I think it was a whole nother nother level that he'd ever been at before rather than returning him to Glory Day.

He was always thinking that he wasn't over anymore, or he was, if the creative wasn't good for a particular period, it was like, oh, this is the end of every, they don't care anymore.

And that was kind of the mindset here.

But it wasn't a renaissance as much as an elevation.

And then he won the title

a few months later, or whatever it was.

And he credited for turning Vince's mind around about it, but it was was already turned.

Vince's mind was already turned at that point.

And what

we in the office credited for just making it easier to include mankind or Mick or

that person in anything

was when

Mick did the sit-down interviews with Jim Ross and just did his own shit and just,

you know, whether it was the stabbing with the fork or the pulling the hair or the voice or the material, the delivery,

that's what all of a sudden Vince started perking up about him after that.

Because

he saw a slovenly,

you know, fucking

eh instead of a creative genius.

But anyway,

that's the thing is

once Vince saw that part about him, he was willing to overlook

the

physique and

the visual presentation because he got into Mick as a person, and that's what you had to do.

Any of the guys,

he had to get into you,

what you were doing

as a character, whatever the word, the personality, the gimmick, whatever word you want to use for it, instead of what you looked like.

And then you had

a better chance.

But then you mentioned Colette earlier and the effect on the family.

They

closed up with the I quit match with Rock, which was his last,

you know, oh my God thing like to this level.

And my comment there was he got brain damage for a fucking wrestling angle on television.

Colette hated that.

And so did I.

And a lot of people did too.

They didn't even bring up the the fact that that's when Barry Blaustein was making his movie.

So there were cameras all over colletting the kids as it was happening.

Yeah.

Well,

and honestly, it looked like to the naked eye that there's colletting the kids there.

It looked like the company had planted them there

for this,

you know, horrible reaction when in actuality, they were being shot for a movie already and were there to get reactions, but they didn't know they were going to see Cactus get his head caved in.

And here's my problem, besides the fact that then the neurologist finally said, no, don't do this anymore.

Wonder why.

I love Cactus,

but this was bad for him personally, bad to show his kids and his wife, and also even bad for the business.

Because it, again, it went too far.

It went past, it even went past the point where if you want to make people uncomfortable, right, to create some element of buzz or feedback or what, it went past uncomfortable and oh, come on now.

Because they say it was 11 chair shots.

I think they'd originally said, well, five or six.

With his hands, handcuffed behind his back, you can't block it.

Okay.

Then, first of all, what is the line?

If If you're going to let somebody give you real chair shots with none of the art of professional wrestling involved, then what about just going, give him a ball peen hammer?

Right?

Where is the line between the art of

what we do and trying to make it look real and be real and make a point?

And then just, well, fuck, this is just kind of stupid.

If you, if a professional, and I've said this a million times, and people say, oh, he wants to do angles with chair shots in 20, whatever, in the year 25, 25.

If a man was still alive that knew how to fucking do one and knew how to take one, yes, that's something that's a lot safer.

I've saw chair shots on a regular,

if not nightly, weekly basis that I would have rather taken

than goddamn 16 different things in any match in an AEW television program.

There's an element of art to the thing and athletic talent as well.

And occasionally you want to whack a son of a bitch over the head one time

and he wants you to whack him.

You got to get mutual agreement on these things to make the point and do the angle and tell the the story.

And oh my God, and nobody could see through that one.

And that's going to make you money.

And then there's just

if you get up after 10, what the fuck, besides the fact that people now know everybody involved is kind of an idiot here,

then what the fuck can you do next time to make the point

except hit the son of a bitch 12 times?

So, and that's

that's what I've always

thought.

Mick is love him to death, and what a great talent.

But people wanting to imitate him and exceed him when he already, in too many cases, wanted to

outdo himself

has led to a lot of stupid shit taking place, a lot of bull the going on.

Well, that match specifically, I think, is the cause of how popular thumbtacks, unfortunately, became in wrestling.

there you go

you know and that's

again

everybody look close mick he's a one-of-a-kind guy and he's so clever he's so intelligent and he does the shows to keep his mind stimulated but he's a wrote a

best-selling book in longhand right he's he's at various points been a very

intelligent and successful person.

So if you can't imitate that too, when you get people to look at you because you got thumbtacks stuck in your fucking ass,

then just don't stick the thumbtacks in your ass,

right?

Just because you can cut your own ear off doesn't mean you're Vango, to quote myself from some time back.

You may be tied up in the ropes wrestling against Veda and Veda, Vader in Europe,

Veda, Veda.

I told him him that the guy they called Vada.

It was the guy they called Vader.

He tore his ear off.

I still remember a really bad joke from WCW magazine when I was 12.

If Ella Fitzgerald married Big Van Vader, she'd be Ella Vader.

You know what you'd get if an elephant fucked a rhino?

Yeah, I know.

Elephanto.

This is your show.

This is your show.

I just want to remind you, wherever we're going next is up to you.

All right.

Anyway, but the point of the program of Dark Side of the Ring was Mick said, I wanted to be loved.

And Colette said he needed to feel accepted.

And

so, kids, maybe there's an easier way, but we love Mick.

Next week, Tuesday nights at 10 o'clock Eastern, where all the civilized people live.

On Vice TV is Dark Side of the Ring for the next nine more weeks now, 10 shows in a season.

And it's Tony Holm, aka Ludwig Borga,

and the sordid tales that we talked to Evan Husty about a while back, about his

various dealings over there.

God damn, where is it now?

I've lost his Latvia, but Finland, Finland, we're Lot Latvia, we're Latvaria.

Where did Dr.

Doom reside?

That was Latveria, wasn't it?

Maybe.

See, you just said it ain't on the tip of your tongue.

It certainly is not.

Well, I'll tell you what is going to be on the tip of my tongue if I have to watch any more of the gall darn wrestling than what we have already done over the last week.

Naked wines going to be on the tip of my tongue.

It's going to be going down my gullet.

It's going to be sloshing around in my belly.

Get in my belly, you naked wines.

Because

I'm going to need to be crocked.

I'm going to need to be plastered, blistered, blitzed, schnookered

i'm going to need to be slightly buzzed to watch any more wrestling after this past week but that's they can help you with all of those things have you did you get the new bottle of the rosé schnookred i did not i don't know if that's an official uh brand that they carry but naked wines carries great wine great brands of well yeah yeah because the the white wine is slightly buzzed but the red is schnookered yeah again i'm not exactly sure if that's the official determination or uh designation classification well no it's a a food food food and drug administration actually oh it's a thing where they they give it designations depending on how many sips you can take before you can't operate heavy machinery but anyway folks if you're still still buying the wine like it's 1999 you're going into a store and you're dealing with people and then they're they're pushy They're pushy, these salesmen, because if you don't know anything about wine, they're just going to sell you the expensive stuff.

And it's really shit that their cousin Luke brewed in the bathtub.

But the people at Naked Wines have been around for over 15 years and they are dealing with and funding over 90 independent winemakers around the world from here all the way to Bolivia.

You know, they got that Bolivian wine.

I don't know that.

And we have no guarantees of that.

And you have some weird obsession with Bolivia.

I'm telling you, we're big in Bolivia.

I told you that the other day.

We've got a huge audience in Bolivia that loves to to be talked about.

And Carrollton, Carrollton, we're coming to Carrollton if I only had time.

But nevertheless, the naked wines folks, they find all these independent winemakers and then they corral all this wine together and you get to have it shipped directly to your door with no commitments or membership fees.

You can enjoy naked wines hassle-free and clothing-free.

That's part of the deal.

No.

You almost feel obligated to go ahead when the box gets here and take your clothes off, sit cross-legged in the middle of the floor, no, and guzzle some of the finest hooch that they have gathered from across the world, from all of these wineries and graperies, and no, and factories.

None of this is hooch, there is no obligation to be naked, it's not implied, it's not an obligation.

You could do what you want once you close the door and enjoy your wine on your own,

but it is not well.

You sound like a narc.

You're taking all the time out there.

I'm telling you,

what the hell?

I'm trying to get

people out of trouble.

I am too.

I want people to have fun and not be in trouble.

You're trying to get everyone to trouble.

No,

only 20% of naked wines as customers have welfare checks called into the police department on them after drinking naked.

No, no, no, no, no.

That is a made-up stat.

There is no study.

Who's funding that study?

There's no study.

There are no stats.

That is not a real thing.

And of course, what we're doing is having fun.

And what you would do is have fun when you drink naked wine.

Clothes are optional once the doors are closed, but you can enjoy the wine.

Doors open or doors closed from naked wines.

Jim, how can they do that?

Well,

and basically, if the wine is the clothes can be taken right off, if you whip the label off, then you're just looking at a naked bottle.

And some people find that erogenous.

But folks, what you can do is you can go to nakedwines.com

slash JCE and click enter voucher and put in the code JCE.

That's the code and the password.

And you're going to get six bottles of wine for just $39.99 with the shipping included.

And you not only get that, but you also get to obviously choose the kind of wines that you're interested in from this incredible array of fermented beverage that is

from vineyard to your door.

You will still, there's still grape peelings in some of the boxes and as a matter of fact did you hear that they got one of the you know the women that stomped the grapes they found a toe in a bottle of rosé

because apparently you know no i don't know well let's just know let's just there's no she there's no toe

well

they thought it was female this toe rose from the fine wines and naked wines

once again jim well the thing is they they couldn't tell for sure that it was female but most of the grape stompers are of the female gender.

You don't know this again.

We're just assuming, but the tow rose is not included in the six bottles for $39.99.

It's much more expensive.

They can't do the deal on that.

Some might call it a toe rose.

Well, that's right.

The tozé,

it's a delicacy in some of the South American countries.

But again, folks, nakedwines.com slash JCE

and click enter voucher.

Put in JCE.

That's the code, the password for six bottles of wine, $39.99, shipping free.

And then the folks at Naked Wines, and then they'll have you hooked.

You won't be able to get,

you won't be able to, a day won't go by that you don't want a bottle of wine from Naked Wines and just whip off all your clothes in front of the television set.

Hopefully, the babysitter's gone home by then and just enjoy relaxing in this hurry-scurry world.

And actually, we'd like to hear from you we have the naked wine test drink some wine from naked wine and watch wrestling and see if it makes it better and let us know yes and well but then with your clothes on yeah you'd have to keep your clothes on because that'd feel really dirty watching wrestling naked well who's in the ring

well that's

well it anymore it doesn't really matter does it It'd just kind of be embarrassing.

You're doing two dirty things at the same time.

You're being naked and you're watching wrestling.

You don't want people to know you're doing either.

Those are dirty, but what's not dirty is the clean, fine wine.

I don't know if you talk about cleanliness and wine, but the fine wine you get from Naked Wines one more time, one last time.

Jim, how can the listeners get this wonderful deal on wonderful wine?

That's another thing about naked wines.

They strain their wine so it's all tow-free.

So you can get the tozé without any lumps in it.

Head to nakedwines.com.

Yes, yes.

Yes, that's what you, yes, we want them to.

Nakedwines.com slash JCE.

Click enter voucher.

JCE is your code, your password, everything you need to know, except where you live.

You need to know that and you need to tell them.

Then they'll come and find you.

$39.99, free shipping, six bottles of wine.

Boy, howdy, don't operate heavy machinery for at least two hours per bottle of wine.

Once again, Naked Wines.

Hey, fine wine, friends of ours.

Let them be friends of yours.

Naked Wines, promo code.

After six bottles of wine, you'll be friendly with almost anybody.

JCE.

All right, Brian.

I guess chronologically, we got to go with what happened on Wednesday before we can talk about what happened on Thursday.

That seems like that would be the way you should go, doesn't it?

Well, I think because you usually don't watch TNA,

It's more of a spectacle.

It's more of a special feature.

Every week we talk about dynamite and you hope there's something good.

And every now and then, I thought there was something really good this week.

But TNA, it's kind of like forbidden water.

What will Jim think?

Forbidden water.

I was going to say it's more like a creature feature, but I think, yeah, forbidden water.

Don't drink this water, it'll fuck you up.

Do not drink the poison water.

Um,

AEW for this week of March 26th was in

the fine city of St.

Paul, Minnesota, the Minneapolis, the Twin Cities.

They just,

they grew together, sort of like Dallas-Fort Worth, but even

more of a bond.

Because Dallas-Fort Worth is not called the Twin Cities.

Their whole identity is being the Twin Cities.

Minneapolis and St.

Paul.

That's right.

Because

they got the twins, right?

And everybody.

That was the name of the tag team of Norm Norm Keitser and Jim Melby.

Yes, the twins.

And everybody's legally obligated to have twins when they procreate.

But anyway, we got an email

that answers some things that I've been suspectifying

about this very

show that we're about to talk about

from Justin.

No other information given.

Apparently, he doesn't want the hounds of hell on him.

Hello, Jim and and Brian.

Part of AEW's tickets distribution in each city is a large donation of tickets to the Veterans Ticket Foundation.

The last three times, including this coming Wednesday, AEW has come through Minneapolis-St.

Paul.

They have distributed a large chunk of tickets.

The first time was 756 tickets.

The second was 1,500,

both in a 20,000-seat venue.

This time they will be at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium, a 5,000 seat venue, and we'll talk about this building.

I was going to ask.

And last I saw 500 plus tickets were given to Vet Ticks, V E T T I X dot org.

I assume.org, that means

they're a nonprofit, right?

Like AEW.

So we can plug them without fearing they'll sell you Bitcoin.

But anyway, justice, I understand giving away tickets to veterans, including myself, is a positive thing.

But when such large chunks are donated, it feels like they are padding their numbers.

You think?

Brian,

would they do something like that?

Remember,

the phrase is always,

how many people they haven't used?

Well, it's reported that it was so-and-so many tickets distributed.

Right.

And we've said a number of times, well, distributed doesn't exactly mean that people bought them or used them,

but they were distributed.

And now the veterans are fine, worthy organization,

but we need more information on the paid aspect of AEW's ticket business, don't we?

Yeah, I think both things could be true, though.

I think we definitely need more.

Well, we need more in terms of we want the information.

It's a private company.

They don't have to give us a fucking thing.

But we would love more information about the exact amount of paid ticket sales.

However,

I don't think there's anything wrong with giving, if you're not selling those tickets, yeah, give them to every group you can in town.

Give them as many as you got.

Fill it up with them.

Give them all she's got, Captain.

No, I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

I actually have no idea.

I don't know what Tony Conner AEW doing that.

And again, I'm not saying that there is either, especially if they ain't selling them and

have to fill the building.

But

that's the problem is that people have been overlooking

the fact that these guys in this combination ain't interesting even their most dedicated folks.

to actually go out and buy the tickets to the live event in major cities, more than 2,000 fucking people in a lot of cases.

Or if that, we don't know.

And

that goes back to to what i said the their business strategy was let's put on the greatest matches ever seen every fucking week

and i said that sounds great when they've only been to the town once or it's a new thing or it's a you know we're mad at the wwf or whatever the case may be as to why you want to support the other company and we rah-rah and tony's one of us Five years in, they've been everywhere, and it's kind of the same thing, only with a diminishing number of stars.

They have the same kind of matches with the same kind of rules.

You can't tell goddamn difference, but there's not as many stars as there were the first half a dozen times they went to town now.

So now is where they're suffering the effects of

they can't just love us because we're new when we ain't new anymore.

Do you see what I'm saying, Brian?

Am I imparting this?

halfway reasonably.

I think, you know, it's funny.

I was just reading the new Keith Elliott Greenberg book about WrestleMania 3.

I think it's bigger, bad, or better.

But it says the Keith Elliott Greenberg book about WrestleMania 3.

And he quotes Dave Meltzer from around that time.

And it's in a chapter about

the war between Jim Crockett promotions and WWF.

Everything from, you know, Toronto, switching sides, everything that was going on.

And it talked about.

Dave Meltzer said, and this is from like 85, 84.

I went to the show and Ric Flair had the most amazing match and everyone loved it.

And I also went when Hogan was in town and it was rather short.

People liked it, but he didn't go 25 minutes and give you just the greatest thing you've ever seen.

And when both came back, the WWF's crowds had not gone down, but the NWAs did.

And he said, that's when I realized it's not about match quality.

It's about stars.

Oh, my God.

And I think that's the thing.

You want good matches, although in a lot of ways, if you're building a card from preliminary to the top, you don't want everyone to outshine everyone, but you want good matches, but you need stars.

You need people that feel like stars, people who are not fans tune in to see stars.

You hear about them, and that's the big thing AEW is missing right now.

Well, and

the people

in that particular area

had been seeing the WWF and then the WWWF.

They'd been seeing that talent, that wrestling for years and years and years and on their television.

And to them,

they were the stars and they ran those towns and they did big business.

When Crockett got on TV,

you know, and it was the pro wrestling USA show at first, I think, because it was a mixture of the talent.

But the point is,

some of those people had been there in the WWF in the past, but a lot of people were new.

And, you know,

if you're on TV for three months and then, oh, here we're live.

And they drew big the first time

because it was not only people locally, the really rabid hardcore fan base, but also the cable watchers that drove in.

But then when it became a choice of monthly who to spend the money on and who to make the trip for,

usually people went with the incumbent.

And

this is kind of a longer-lasting version of that.

In that

any other company would have pulled out of running live events across the country a long time ago with the cost of AEWs versus the gate to begin with.

Tony doesn't have to worry about that.

But it's, you know,

I watched this TV March 26th,

and I'm like, are they even trying anymore?

Or do they think?

What do they think?

What do they think?

Brian, what are they thinking?

Who's they?

Tony?

Anybody else?

He's the one putting the show together.

He's the one putting the show together.

Many of the other people involved are enacting this show, though.

Yeah, but in terms of certain matchups where you're like, why are these two wrestling here on their main show for this long?

I have that thought like every single week, multiple times.

Well, they started out with that, they got a new star on the scene here at AEW, the vanilla baby Blake Christian,

who was announced at 180 pounds.

I assume that was a slight exaggeration.

And to make sure that people took him seriously, he had Lee Johnson in his corner because they, I guess, are together in ring of honor for whatever that's worth.

But Blake was in a single match against Kenny.

Kenny's back in the ring, baby.

And

I don't know.

Yes, sometimes you need a good old-fashioned squash match to get, you know, a star over, but this wasn't really a squash match.

They did even Steven choreography.

that the kids call the mat wrestling and then did some uneven parallel bars and high diving.

And they let the jobber flip the bird on TV before

Kenny just gave him three big moves and hit him with a knee lift and then hit him with the fucking one-winged fairy, one, two, three.

But to start a show off like this, Blake Christian is talk about vanilla.

He's as pale as a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

He's translucent.

There's no physique discernible.

He's got a job guy as a manager.

We've never seen him before.

But

they get in enough dives that they can sell the upcoming movie about what I assume is a video game, Minecraft, right?

Isn't that what the girls in my little clip at the movie premiere thought they were seeing?

That's right.

They thought you were the star of it.

Minecraft is a really big deal.

And my daughter can't wait to go see it.

When I brought her in the room to see the match, I said, look, look.

And she's like, oh my God, Minecraft.

I said, yeah.

She goes, what are they going to do with Minecraft?

I'm like, I think it may just be on the screen right now.

I don't know if anything else is going to happen.

So she watches with me.

And the thing that got her to be told to get out of the office was when Blake Christian, copying Omega, stuck his fingers in his pants and then brought them up in a gun and brought them to his lips and blew the gun.

And she said, why did he put his hands in his pants?

I said, you got to go.

I didn't realize this was going to be on wrestling tonight.

Okay, but it was a gun.

I thought.

I thought he thought that he had shit himself and he was checking and he was sniffing his finger.

No, no, it was Kenny Omega's gun from his,

oh, good night and Arivaderchi.

Wah, whatever he does.

Well, it was more like a ribbon of Gurgi.

Yeah, he stuck his hand down the front of his pants and wallered around underneath his balls for a while.

And then, as I said, I thought he was sniffing his finger, but maybe.

Maybe he was doing both.

That was the first.

You can't watch this, even though it's Minecraft theme.

The second one was Bitchamania breaking out later on during the fucking Hurt Syndicate segment where bitch got used a hundred times in a minute.

Well, they were trying to copy the South Park episode about shit.

Oh, I thought you were going to say about Kyle's mom being a bitch.

No, they had the shit counter on the episode where they counted how many times they said shit.

Bing.

Anyway, oh shit.

After the match, Kenny, I wrote, is going to talk.

And

his opening words were, what's going on

it just i just

the breathless sing song

if wishy washy blow it in the wind delivery that he's got the phone sex voice he actually said

heck i'll make it quick he said heck

What the

you know what?

I know a way they could bring the fucking crime rate down is if you you committed a dastardly crime, you got sentenced to sit in a room and have a fucking conversation 12 hours a day every day with this son of a bitch.

That would put people on a straight and narrow.

And he's talking about

ricochet and old Spitball.

And of course, wouldn't you know because it's wrestling rules?

Here comes Spitball.

So

now you've got an overly grinning,

tiny dork doing his stupid pose with his weird haircut, wearing a t-shirt and shiny vinyl pants,

coming to confront a rather muscular gentleman in the ring who has the demeanor of a fucking art student on a scholarship.

This is some captivating fucking.

And at that point, either something was happening with either Kenny's hair color or his spray tan

because he was starting to get the streaks melting on his forehead when they got him on the close-up there.

And then Spitball talked and he made Kenny sound like James Earl Jones.

I swear to I mean

I was like, I am not your father.

It's a whiny,

thin voice

with no diaphragm in that frail little fucking body of his to expel any air over his vocal cords to give him anything.

It sounds like he's not fucking

Whitey's fucking second cousin on Leave It to Beaver.

And

he said that Kenny was an inspiration to him.

He said, I admire you.

I admire you.

But come dynasty, I won't hold anything back.

While he was doing this old spitball he was standing in the ring with one foot on tiptoe like a model on a runway did you notice that the unnatural i didn't sideways standing while he was delivering this

it's like what the is i didn't notice that no

and he go back anybody that wants to that If the recordings of this are still available, they may be classified in the government archives by this point.

But he tried to bow up at Kenny and

I the intimidation level of a rat fart from speedball here.

And he's heelish because of that goofy personality.

I mean, the only way that this personality would not come off as

somebody

overacting like a fucking

goody-goody two-shoes fucking nerd,

I don't know anyway.

It wouldn't,

you see what I'm saying here?

How can anybody think this is a babyface-ish personality?

Because the person he's doing that to is the guy who says, gosh, gee, and heck, heck.

You know, someone posted in the Facebook group, Speedbulk's like, Hong Kong Fui meets Todd Pettingill.

But now, come on, Todd can talk.

So

they talked to each other, and then suddenly Ricochet popped up on the screen,

and he was dressed like a fucking Maitre D at Roos Chris,

because apparently it was his wedding day.

Does Samantha Urban know that he got married?

Have we heard of it?

It was her that he was marrying.

Oh, well, he dodged a bullet there, didn't he?

I saw a picture on social media.

It was him marrying her, and Carrion Cross and Scarlett were there.

Oh, I thought you said he married her and Carrion Cross.

I was going to say one of those newfangled trilogies they do.

It was in Utah.

Where they say, I do, and so do you.

Anyway, back to Ricochet's wedding promo.

All right.

Well, anyway,

so he cuts the promo.

I'm at my wedding, but fuck you guys, because yeah.

And then Kenny

tried to respond to both of them.

It's not about making friends.

I have a cat.

I don't need any more friends.

Right there, folk.

Boom.

We've been waiting for a clarification for years now.

People have wondered if there's any pussy in Kenny Omega's life.

And now we have it.

Could he be more like goddamn Wally Cox

acts like goddamn Dick the Bruiser next to this fucking dog?

Mr.

Peepers.

Mr.

Peepers.

Then the kids need to Google Wally Cox.

And that's COX, not the way you

perverts think.

And he told,

he actually said these words to Spitball: you're not my comrade.

And then he did the douchebaggy clothes thing where he sucks his finger and kisses his

nose and flies up the chimney with good night, noi, bang, pal.

See you, ma'am.

Thank you later, whatever the fuck he says.

And

in 15 minutes, everybody involved in this television show looks like and sounds like a bunch of fucking children.

That's the, this is,

this is wrestling for children by children

with the occasional star accidentally being signed before they realize what they've gotten into.

Your thoughts before we move on?

You know, Omega's one of the guys that they have that I always say he's a star.

And somehow he retains that with their audience despite these promos, which are never good in my eyes.

At least the match was quick.

They gave him a big win.

I guess wanted people to see him at the top of the show.

Him against Speedball, against Ricochet.

I'd rather see him against Ricochet one-on-one, to be honest with you.

That could be intriguing.

Yeah, this guy is, I mean, he may take over for Pockets if he don't get that fucking grin off my TV screen here pretty soon.

See, that's what I thought it was a mouth guard

at first because it was just so it was like one.

It was like one whitest teeth I've ever come across.

Well, I don't know what happened in Mid-South.

You'll have to answer that for yourself, but

I always say that they should have weight divisions there or something.

And we just talked about star power.

Omega has star power for their audience.

Can't be denied.

Ricochet's on the road to trying to do something, but he couldn't be here.

He was getting married.

He decided to get married the night of TV.

Everybody gets married on a Wednesday.

And

I don't know.

We'll see about Speedball.

It's not like people are going crazy for him, but it's only been a couple of weeks.

But

no, God, please.

Hopefully he'll.

At the end of the segment, too, he just like, it's almost like he remembered that the camera was on him and he just all of a sudden lifts his hand up and does the fist to the to the pump.

And it's like, how many times have you done this?

Why do you keep doing this?

Punch something.

Someone, anything.

Hopefully this is an action and ready thing where in two weeks he'll disappear and we we won't see him again for a year or so.

I doubt it.

But anyway, then came

what I believe you believe and I believe

and we both believe to be the only segment of the show that we believed.

You feel me?

I think so.

MJF and MVP,

everybody's got three initials now that we care about here.

Followed up on the

issue that they had raised last week on the program.

We're getting some episodic television here.

MJF came out at a core, insulted Prince.

And,

you know,

I don't know if he needs to try so hard

to insult the people at the top of every interview.

And I don't mean that he has to be nice to them,

but

can there be a double meaning every once in a while?

Or can you really roast them about something they should be ashamed of rather than just calling them names that

it's up to fucking

individual opinion as to whether they fit those names or not?

They might not all be fat or smelly or stupid or whatever, but you know what I'm saying, Brian?

More of something that the town as a whole should be ashamed of, a devastating sports loss or a political scandal or a goddamn pollution has killed Granny down the river, something.

No wonder you people are like this.

You drink the water from X River.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Instead of, he's trying too hard with just, yeah, fucking, I hate you all.

You're all are fat and stupid.

Do you think maybe at this point in time, it's just a little extra to make sure they don't cheer for him?

Well, I think Tony's doing a pretty good job.

Has he got a pop?

No, because when he came out, I mean, Omega had just been out there.

I was surprised.

MJF got a big pop, it seemed like when he came out, when the music hit, I should say.

Yeah, and he feels he needs to battle against the tide, but that's what I'm saying.

He knows a week ahead of time where he's going to be.

Make it more personal and less obvious.

I'm just insulting you so you will boo me.

Make more fun of them in a jocular way because you're better than they are and here's why and cite a specific real life example get under their skin that way

to me it would be more a more legitimate thing

but nevertheless he mentioned that mvp gave him the card and he wants to have a chit chat and he asked mvp to come on down

and mvp comes down and the fans chant mvp

and or we hurt people.

At one point, they were chatting both and then they got it together.

But

they still see MJF as somewhat of an AEW homegrown star and they see MVP and Shelton and Bobby as just stars in general because they haven't done the stupid shit and they look legitimate.

And so that's why that

they're naturally going to cheer for or chant for these people, even depending on their actions.

And that also, as we've said is

indicative also of the just the weak not even weak

couldn't pull a greasy string out of a cat's ass weak baby faces they've got in this company

and mjf told mvp hey i i said i'd never do friends again but you do business

and i'd like to be in the business of hurting people

And they start to do the handshake and the fucking,

the audio guy unfortunately went to sleep, nodded off because they had to hold it for a second before they got the music.

But the music plays.

And here comes Shelton Benjamin and Bobby Lashley.

And Bobby gets up face to face with MJF.

And the fans again are chant, we hurt people.

Or how do you, we hurt people?

How does, what's the emphasis on the, is the drama over the

key of E, we hurt people, or is it we hurt people?

We We hurt people.

That's what you say.

We hurt people.

That's the way they ought to do it.

We hurt people.

We hurt PayPal.

So Bobby holds out his hand and says, Give me the card.

Give me the card.

And it looked.

Everybody's playing this straight.

And it looked like, okay, here.

And he flummoxes and he gives him the card and Bobby rips it up.

And then they kind of crowd around MJF and Minnesota.

And MVP is like, hey, we're all, we're cool.

We're cool.

And MJF's like, okay, well, yeah, you guys, I'll talk to you later.

And he kind of gets out of there.

And then

you hear MVP talking to his guys, even though they're not on the microphone.

But he's just, he's settling it down, but without giving any information about where this is going to go.

Hey, we're all cool.

We're all cool.

Just settling it down.

So

something else is going to happen.

But first, let's comment on this.

This, again,

you want

to see what's going to go on here with MJF and MVP and the Hurt Syndicate.

And,

you know, they're going to freshen it up here a little bit later on on the show between MVP and Lashley and Benjamin.

So you understand that

they're not, you know, goddamn at odds with each other already, suddenly.

But this was probably the best done, most professional, and halfway intriguing thing on the show.

Your thoughts, Mr.

Last?

I enjoyed it.

I liked it.

And again, intriguing when Bobby Lashley went in there, first you think, oh, it's a handshake.

And then when he says, give me the card or the card, I don't even think he said, give me.

I think he just said the card.

It It creates an interesting dynamic when MJF has to turn and say, Montel, Montel.

And MVP has to step in.

There's an interesting dynamic there.

It didn't really have an ending, so we get to see where this goes again next week.

I liked it.

And the second part of this segment, which we're about to talk to.

So yeah, to conclude, best part of the AEW show by far.

Most intriguing thing on the AEW show in a while.

We'll see where this goes because I don't know.

I can't visualize how this is going to end up the second part of this

was it was

it may it may be in the running with is this open mic night bitch kind of i don't think it went the way all the people at valve thought it was going to go

well um

So MVP and Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin are still standing in the ring when suddenly out comes Brian Keith and Big Bill.

And

they have earlier in one of the break things, Jericho has told them they need to prove themselves to him, some of this business, whatever the fuck.

But now they come out and say, well,

well, what they were trying to say.

What the intention of this segment was to say was that they were going to try to put themselves over and make a challenge for a tag team title shot against the Hurt Syndicate.

But God damn it, as soon as Brian Keith was the first one to speak, and as soon as he had made like one declarative statement, MVP just balled up a giant wad of shit in his hand and flung it

at a high rate of speed like a fucking major league pitcher right right into Brian Key's face.

He just shit off.

He just

referred to him for the first of

many times as a little bitch.

And I don't even think he spoke directly at him.

I think he spoke to his handler, Big Bill, about get your little bitch back.

And then Big Bill

tried to start talking

and everything he said mvp again it was like a it was like one of those batting machine things where the guy just stands there with a fucking bat and every time one comes at him he bam and a bam he

he would interrupt what they were trying to say and insult them and sting them

They couldn't handle his material and then they're trying to go back to the fucking story.

And he's like, well, hurry up, you two little bitches.

I'm gonna have my guys come down here and just slap the shit out of me.

Just

in the most

dismissive, derogatory way possible.

He allowed them to speak long enough to tell him that they wanted a title shot.

That and he walked past them, showing absolutely no trepidation whatsoever, and said, Go out there and win a match, and you can get a title shot.

It

there's a guy i've never seen a smaller seven-foot guy than by the time they finished hacking down at redwood and brian keith

is a fucking midget anyway

and they just made him a little fucking mascot

this was like richard pryer cutting down a heckler i mean it was just yes every word he got out was like boom boom boom

and fucking big bill looks so good i mean he's obviously taking all the right vitamins.

He looks jacked and big and strong, maybe never look better than he does right now.

And he started with confidence and then he's like,

nevertheless, he knew there was nothing you could do.

MVP had a look at his eyes like, I'm going to cut these fucking guys down no matter what.

And he did, and it was amazing.

And I can't wait to see this match now because I really believe that his guys are going to kick the shit out of these two.

And he made me believe.

Yes,

that's the thing.

The suspension of disbelief is back in wrestling business.

I have a feeling that Big Bill and Brian Keith better go on a long losing streak.

Oh, crap.

Anyway, speaking of a long did Brian Keith walk into the wrong room?

What did Brian Keith Brian Keith had?

Oh, yeah, this has to be some type of personal issue.

This fucking guy has apparently overstepped his

boundaries in some fashion and got verbally bitch slapped back down to fucking

it was like someone played a practical joke on MVP, but like he wasn't going to go along with it.

He was just going to cut it down.

Like, who are these guys out here?

I don't know.

I think somebody was

pulling a practical joke on Brian Keith and Big Bill.

Send them out there to face the fucking gunnery.

I wonder what advice Jericho is going to give them now.

Don't come in here.

Get him on me.

Don't go on a cruise with him.

Don't get in the elevator.

So anyway, as I was saying before, the next thing they did was, I don't remember what simile I was going to

adhere to it, but it was long.

And it was there.

Brody King and Kyle Felcher.

And

almost 20 minutes, and it was what you would expect it to be.

Every indie wrestler was pleased as punch.

It's the thing that all of them would like to do.

And again, poor old Kyle, he's got the physique.

He's got the size.

He's very young.

If he could get in a program that we could

de-program him mentally from being in this

gene pool that he's in right now.

I think he's got a future.

But I'd ask, what is his gimmick, by the way?

What is Kyle Felcher's gimmick?

His gimmick is a guy who's getting into better shape to go to WWE in a few years.

No, I don't know, but I mean, he doesn't really have a gimmick.

His gimmick is that he was a wrestler who became upset with his hair and his friend, and now he's...

doing it with his bad guy manager and his old tag team partner has joined the fray and there really isn't a gimmick i guess now that i think about it anyway and he dresses like like a taller version of hong kong fui it's like a fucking

leather ninja outfit with dragons on it and shit but what does that have to do with

any from australia new zealand somewhere over there around the bend the pacific rim and for those who have wondered yes it's true jim bought the rights to hong kong fui

Well, no, I've just meant to bring somebody up that we've been talking about lately that has like the martial arts cartoony stuff on.

He's dressing up like he's the great Muda,

but he doesn't do anything moodish.

Anyway, after 20 minutes,

Brody King, a 300-pound guy, trusted this fucking greenhorn to get up on a top rope and give him a brainbuster on the top turnbuckle.

One, two, three.

It was

after Mark Davis came down and distracted with his giant drive-in movie screen of an ass.

Why the fuck does any, why would you say here for this random TV match?

Let's get up on a top rope and see if you can turn my fat ass around and give me a brain buster on a top turnbuckle where I'll then bounce into the ring without fucking sending me the other way out onto the floor.

Or potentially busting my brain or breaking my neck.

Did you see that?

I did see that.

I saw this match.

Fucking hell.

You know, there was like a moment there where Brody King and Buddy were getting repackaged, and then Buddy got hurt.

Now we just watch Brody lose matches on TV.

The hounds of hell have gone to hell.

Julia won't even go out with them anymore.

And they were friends.

The pups of purgatory.

So then the heels got some sloppy heat on Brodie King.

And then

Hobbs came out through the crowd to make the save.

And

that was in this building.

I said I was going to comment earlier on the building and our

emailer there said the Roy Wilkins auditorium.

Did Roy Wilkins approve this show, by the way?

What would his family think?

But it's a 5,000-seat building, but they were using half of it.

And you could tell because there were no ringside seats

on

one side of the ring.

It just, it was ring.

And then like 20 feet later was the goddamn big screen they were walking out of,

which gave it to me

an odd kind of game show appearance, didn't it?

You?

I hadn't thought of it in that context, but, you know, I see what you're saying.

It didn't look

odd to have nobody on that side.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Although, again, we watched another wrestling show the next day.

So I'm not going to complain as much as usual about the production or anything else.

Well, nevertheless, Hobbs came through the crowd so you could see some people and made the save.

And

here's another thing.

Has anybody on television said, well, you know, Brody King has a tag team partner, Buddy, but he's injured.

That's why he's not here to save Brody's bacon.

I don't remember them saying anything about Buddy and him being injured, or did we miss it?

Again, I try not to pay too close attention to the commentary because then I just get mad and do rants on the show about how much I hate the commentators.

I don't remember them mentioning Buddy.

People get hurt and they just disappear.

Then there's no...

He hurt his ankle and then went on an extended honeymoon.

He'll be back whenever he gets here.

He's on a boat somewhere.

But anyway, the reason why they did this finish

with Hobbes and Davis being involved was because when they came back from the break, we could have powerhouse Hobbs against Mark Davis

with his giant ass.

And this, no pun intended, was butt fucking ugly.

And

poor Hobbes, poor Hobbs.

It went across the nine o'clock hour.

I don't know intentionally or not, because at 9.01, they were going into the finish.

But Hobbs tried to spine buster him, but fat ass somehow didn't go up or the timing was off or whatever.

So they fell in a heap where the crowd went, oh.

And then Davis got up and gave him a kick and hit the ropes and ran back at him and ran into a spinebuster.

Same thing.

Actually, to be honest, I defend them with this because they fucked the first Spinebuster up so bad, you couldn't really tell it was going to be a Spinebuster,

not to the naked, untrained eye.

And but then they got the Spinebuster what again, Hobbes, my God, with

in a program

with some direction

and some training and producing and

developing of talent.

You got something there, but the longer it goes, the less you got.

Did you have heavy thoughts on the Hobbs-Davis controversy here?

I wouldn't say heavy thoughts.

You know, how many more times could we say that Hobbs is not being served well and never has in AEW?

And

it would be best for him if WWE was interested, he can go there.

And it's not really helping AEW

constantly botching anything they do with him.

He's not new.

He's been there for, what, four or five years, right?

Four of the five years he's been there.

On and off.

Use poorly.

He's been there the whole time, but we only see him on and off.

It's crazy.

When he first got there, it was like, okay, they're not really using him that great right now, but they're trying.

I can't wait to see where they go with this.

That was as good as it got.

It didn't get better than that.

It never got better.

No, it got better one time, I think, for about three weeks

when he came back as a fucking heel one time and he was walloping people.

But that didn't last.

And then he was a babyface because he was so unimportant that the manager forgot to renew his contract.

But he was

somehow foiled in that as well.

I just hope that one day we get a fan that's a billionaire who's willing to put up the money and start a company.

And a lot of these guys who are misused will get an opportunity to really show what they could do.

We can dream, I guess, but something that far-fetched would never happen, Brian.

Not in real life.

We can only dream about it.

I can dream about it.

You know what you want to do to have pleasant dreams, don't you, Brian?

Oh, no.

What's that?

Well, that's sleep on a helix mattress, of course, because that's how you have.

And as a matter of fact,

if they had been on a helix mattress instead of a wrestling ring then hobbs and davis could have executed that first fine buster and it'd have been fine and nobody'd get hurt you folks i invite anybody go ahead call your next door neighbor over show them your brand new helix sleep mattress while they're looking at it pick them up from behind give them a german suplex or Give them a power bomb or maybe a

fucking, what, a sidewalk slam

on the helix mattress.

They will not be hurt.

You'll bounce up in the air and everybody will laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh.

We are, of course, laughing and joking right now.

We do not want to advocate for you shoot suplexing your neighbors.

We don't know who these people are living next door to.

How do you get all the five?

What's wrong with you?

If they're smart, they may go ahead and go up with it.

It'd be a working suplex.

But son of a bitch, if they try to sandbag you, pop your hips on that motherfucker, how dare they come in your house and not go up for your suplex?

But boy, when you land on a helix sleep mattress, folks, it's like you're landing on a cloud.

You're landing in dreamland.

It's like you're in suspended animation.

As a matter of fact, you suplex that obnoxious loudmouthed woman next door hard enough, and she may be in a state of suspended animation where you get some peace and quiet.

Listen, let's talk about, let's not talk about that.

Let's talk about suplexing your old mattress out and bringing in a brand new Helix sleep mattress, a mattress.

just for you, however you want it, however you like it.

You take the survey, you get it.

It is a fine mattress.

We have them here at Last Last Manor.

You have them at Castle Cornette.

We could say we endorse them, we like them, and we could say we like them and we want them to like us.

So let's be friends, Jim.

Well, let's all be friends.

Remember, you can get close to somebody on a helix sleep mattress, too, and you can exchange a variety of opinions and fluids.

Just pop your hips and just pop your hips and boom, it's the same principle, folks, except you're taking them for a different kind of ride.

Okay, okay.

Anyway, the helix sleep principle is it's very simple.

You're going to go to helixleep.com.

That's H-E-L-I-X

helixleep.com, and you're going to take that quiz.

And they're going to ask you, how old is the next door neighbor you wish to suplex on this mattress?

Would you like it to stun them a little bit or you want them to land safe?

These will not be the questions on your sleep survey.

You do not.

Well, it's like how you like to sleep or what kind of bumps you like to take.

Let's say you,

well sometimes in the middle of the night if you sleepwalk and you dream you're randy savage you might drop the elbow off the dresser into the middle of the bed you want to make sure that you and potentially your wife or whoever you're sleeping with no judgment there

has the right kind of mattress for you to land on but nevertheless you take that quiz you figure out who's going to be bumping where And then they send it to you.

You don't have to suplex your old mattress out.

Because you're not going to hardly be able to move it.

You're going to have to drag it.

You're going to have to push it.

You're going to have to throw it out a window.

But then the new helix mattress comes in and it's in the box where one person can just maneuver it to where it needs to be and then open the box and watch it expand into its acquired space.

It's a very, it's a pleasant process, sort of like leaves blooming in the spring.

And then you can go outside on the old mattress in a backyard and let the dog shit on it tell it what you think of it because you got a new mattress and you're going to get a great night's sleep and you're going to get money off

because

if you go to helixleep.com

slash jce

then you're going to get 20 off and two of the free dream pillows with your mattress purchase.

So you buy the mattress, you get 20% off.

They're going to throw in two pillows and the dream pillows, of course, we've mentioned this it's they manufacture them out in the deserts of arizona where they dip them no in an old indian hallucinogenics no they do not dip it in any hallucinogenics at all that's why they call them dream pillows because as soon as you turn your head over stick your nose in that thing whoo boy heavy metal i'm telling you You know, a real quick aside here in the middle of Helix, because we love them so much that we want to talk more about them.

But you brought up the desert.

I just saw in video, it was like one one of these, you know, there's all these YouTube channels of people who get arrested.

Like there's all the dash cam footage and all the,

what, I always forget the name of it.

Yes.

The

body cam.

The body cam.

The body cam.

The body camera is what you're talking about.

They arrested some woman at Burning Man.

She didn't seem like a young woman.

They arrested her there and whatever she did there, she did.

And they asked her on camera, have you ever been arrested before?

She said, yes.

I beat up Jerry Lawrence's girlfriend.

I was involved with their bar on Beale Street.

and she thought i was trying to do stuff with jerry and i wasn't i was just friends with him and uh i kicked her ass

in the middle of this video one of the listeners i'm sorry i forgot your name sent it in they discovered it but uh that's the desert

that's the desert ah well don't with those people that go up to burning men

setting various people on fire.

What the fuck will they do to you?

Sleep function.

you don't need to burn your helix mattress no you you you're gonna if you like to be warm it'll make you warm if you like to be cool it'll make you cool but most importantly it'll make you save money 20 off and two of those free psychedelic pillows with a mattress purchase at helixleep.com slash jce

that's right helix sleep we love them i know that's right that's why i said it i wouldn't mislead people purposely i'm just trying to let people know how much we love them.

Helix Sleep.

Them.

The mattresses that we receive from Helix Sleep.

I'll skip ahead a little bit.

They're letting Nick Plain speak now.

What are you skipping?

I'm skipping Nick Plain.

Oh,

they're letting him speak now.

I'm skipping ahead.

Swerve and Hangnail Page.

We're arguing in the back.

More on some of them soon.

The sit-down with Tony Schavani

hosting Edge and FTR.

What the hell's going on now?

Last week, Dax wouldn't help Edge up and he walked out on Edge and Cash.

And now Dax is saying, I let my emotions get the better of me.

I apologize to everybody.

You know, it just, we took our time off from our goals to help.

our buddy Edge.

And,

you know,

he's basically, he's failed and we've been sidetracked now because we helped this loser he wasn't saying it everybody was being prickly to each other while still being friendly that type of deal

and well was it

was it really everybody or it was dax

well

that's what i'm saying yeah well edge was being a little prickly back because that's the thing

edge is you know is

Dax is being a whiny little bitch and Edge is sniping back at him and Cash is caught in the middle.

So, in the middle of that, he talks about: well, I remember when I was homeless living in my car,

and this guy, and I don't know which guy it was that helped him out, but has every wrestler of the past 20 years once been homeless and living in their car?

And it's way past a gimmick now.

How does that make any of them seem like bigger stars?

That,

yes, one or one per company, or one once in a while but everybody's just a bunch of homeless drifters

anyway so dax was saying that they'd been sidelined with their their goals

and he said it's time to go after the hurt syndicate for the tag team title

but then cash said hey but what now there's There's more mileage left here in

this little group we got here.

Let's go for the six-man title against the Death Riders.

I forgot the six-man tag team title was a fucking thing.

Have they defended that or did that in a while?

They just run out in Dick the Boozers title matches, don't they?

I don't remember them doing it when they mentioned it.

I forgot who the champions were.

Well, it is indeed

some various form of the Stooges that are Claudio and Pac and Wheeler.

I guess it's them.

But the point is, so then

Age said, Yeah, yeah, that sounds great.

And Dax, like, oh, yeah, yeah, that'll be it.

So,

I mean, they can't split up Dax and cash.

Will it be a situation where eventually FTR become heels again, which at this point couldn't hurt?

Because it's not like anything could hurt where they're at.

But I, I

awkward.

I guess any thoughts?

I mean, it could only I can't imagine they would turn FTR against each other because I don't know if that would really help either one of them right now.

A heel run's the only thing really there is to do, but it has to really mean something.

I guess if they tease Dax is going to turn on Edge and then Cash eventually takes Dax side and they both kick the shit out of Edge,

we've never seen him beat up before on this show.

I don't know.

But at least he's on a long winning streak.

What FPR need right now is a serious heel run.

I just don't know how it'll work because,

you know, I don't know.

We'll see how it works.

But that's what they need.

And maybe this is a way to get there.

We got a long way to go and a short time to get there.

So we will move on.

Swerve and Nana came to the ring.

And Swerve called out.

And Brian, with all due deference to Dick the Brook Boozer and the Boar Horseman, which I think is classic naming,

I saw a guy on Twitter.

You know what he's calling the plumber?

Johnny Moxville.

I like it.

I like it.

But whatever his swerve calls out.

Jesus Christ, they got no one ringside on one side of the ring.

The screen and the entrance is 20 feet away from the fucking ring.

And this hobo hobo has to walk in from the goddamn outer hallway,

past the sign that says auditorium this way.

And through, and that's how I recan this building seat

2,000 people.

And then we got the email that, you know, it's a 5,000-seater, and they cut it in fucking half and just had a blank wall there.

But this,

I don't know where to start or what to say.

Maybe they've finally broken me to where I just, I can't even get indignation anymore, but this was the most awkward, meandering,

ineffective, boring

exhibition.

I don't know what, and

I don't know how they thought that it was going to make Swerve look anything more than like shit, like they have for I don't know how long now, to have them do a face-to-face in the middle of the ring, Swerve and Moxley, and Moxley just stand there and stick his fucking goofy face out and make eyeballs at him, while Swerve

meandered around the ring.

He had no energy.

He was walking around, turning his back on Moxley while Moxley was making goofy faces.

Maybe it's just his face and chewing gum while Swerve was reciting

this material that he had prepared to really incisively get into Moxley's head that he, you know, what's happened to you?

You hide behind everybody.

But the fans were bored

while Swerve was meandering around

and it looked like Moxley,

like it was all

Swerve made it look fake because it sounded fake, because it was obviously some memorized shit that he was probably trying to look away from Moxley so it wouldn't break his train of thought, staring into that goofy fucking face.

And then Moxley made Swerve look like a goddamn idiot by just standing there, not at all

threatened or insulted or incensed or aggravated or nettled or harassed or

by anything he was saying.

And then suddenly,

this is where I was like, what the fuck is going on here?

Nana's on the floor watching these two in the ring face to face with each other.

And suddenly you get the camera shot.

Claudio is on the floor behind Nana.

And Moxley can see that, but Swerve can't.

And the crowd is yelling and screaming.

That's the first time that the crowd has made any noise through this whole thing.

They're yelling, hey, behind you.

But Swerve and Nana are apparently deaf because they don't turn around.

And then Swerve turns around and looks, but Nana doesn't.

But Swerve doesn't say to Nana, Nana, look out behind you.

Swerve just stares at Claudio behind Nana.

And then all four of them are mute and motionless.

And

the fans start chanting Swerve's house for no reason because there's nothing else going on.

And then Moxley started talking, mumbling, talking in the riddles

uh meandering around and again being boring again

but it's gonna swerve you're gonna say he puts swerve over but then he's you're gonna suffer

i don't give handouts how far you willing to go meanwhile nana still hasn't turned around and got away from goddamn claudio he's just standing there did you see that that he never turned around and just got away from claudio yeah i was waiting for the turn it never happened

And then after this long

dissertation from the plumber,

and by the way, again,

you don't know what the fuck he's saying.

He's delivering it in a rapid-fire fashion.

You wouldn't be able to really memorize this,

but it doesn't make any fucking sense.

So Marina Schaefer suddenly comes out and gets up on the apron of the ring with a crowbar.

But then Willow Nightingale comes out and gets up on the apron with a fake lead pipe.

And then everybody's immobile again.

The girls are standing each other off.

Nana and Claudio are down on the floor just with their arms folded.

And Swerve tells Moxley off more

and tells him he's going to win the world heavyweight title and Moxley can continue to play Jon Moxley on tv

and then they make mean faces how about that well that's a bit of a you know in another era that would almost cross a line what did you think of that line well i see i don't know

i don't know if they know exactly what they're doing or not but they are he is reinforcing

everybody's opinion of moxley

But at the same time,

that was the thing.

They made mean faces at each other and then they left.

But then suddenly Marina ran back and got on Willow and the guys,

the

guys said, well, we can stand out here with all these weapons and threaten people all we want.

But goddamn, when it comes to violence, we got to pull these women apart and keep them from fighting because the guys just pulled the girls apart and then they went to the break.

You know, but does Swerve know that Moxley has buried him like he's buried everybody else?

Is he tired of the tomfoolery?

Or is that something that Tony Khan fed him to be edgy with the internet fans?

You know, I just saw some clips.

Swerve did an interview with Vlad TV.

He does a lot of interviews on YouTube with usually a lot of hip-hop guys and just various people.

Swerve shows so much more charisma just talking regular, talking straight,

than trying to do a promo.

He seems like he gets lost

sometimes when he's doing these promos.

He says the wrong thing and he gets lost.

But when he's just talking straight,

you see it.

I see it more when he talks straight than when he's out there with Nana doing his promo.

If only he had a manager that could help do some of the promos with the dates and places and facts and figures and everything and just let him be a personality,

then that, oh, wait.

But Nana only gets to speak whenever somebody steals his clothing,

or he has to plug his coffee.

Skipping over some more stuff: Samoa Joe was in the back doing comedy skits with children and choked Max Caster out.

Did you watch that?

Because I just want to point out the fans started chanting Max Caster's chant.

I told you it was going to happen, and it happened.

More importantly, for

the viewing public, they are this thin in putting people in the ring that know what they're doing, and Samoa Joe's in the back doing comedy skits with the kids.

Yep.

And speaking of people that don't know what they're doing,

Top Flight wrestled

Arnold Finster and Tits McGee.

I don't know who they were, don't care.

It was a match that you would see in a wrestling school while the trainer is on the phone.

And one member of Top Flight almost broke his own leg doing a deal to somebody else.

That's their thing.

They bring the bugs.

That's their move.

God damn it.

Well, hey, got a large variety of things they can do to do that then.

Mark Briscoe, I will gloss over.

Unfortunately, I feel so bad for Mark Briscoe.

A singles match would take a shit.

We've said how big a babyface Mark could have been for this company a couple of years ago if they'd capitalized on events and just pushed him and let him be.

Now I feel bad for him every time I see him, but again,

I feel bad for our boy Take here.

but not as bad as I feel for Mark Briscoe.

Remember, we said, yes, when we first saw Take and he was new and he was fresh and you, oh, I could see this guy with a fucking sleek looking fucking

gimmick instead of a goof like some of the rest of these guys.

And with his athletic ability, boom, chicky boom, we get him in here and he's cheaper than all the rest of these broken down Japanese legends they brought in and he's younger.

And then We see him, we don't see him, that he's in the family, but he's got no person.

He can't do promos and Don's way past stale and there's been no coherent push.

So just taking this match in a vacuum, if you watch this, anybody in the history of the wrestling business would say Mark Briscoe is the guy of these two.

You need to be pushing.

He can work better than take.

He's a better worker.

He's been doing it for 20 years.

And I'm not talking about goddamn

tiger drivers or whatever.

Mark can probably do that too.

But in a professional sense, he's a much better worker.

He's obviously a way better promo.

He's got a better gimmick.

Read that personality, because it's not really a gimmick.

It's him.

He's more marketable as a pro wrestler in every way

than Tega Shit is.

At this point in time, especially when

we've seen nothing from what they've done with Tegashit.

And

Mark goes out and gets over with the crowd every time.

And his opponent was just kind of there because I think he realizes, ah, you know, it is what it is.

And then he wins with a suplex and Mark loses again.

Can you sit there and watch this, just this match and say

the right guy won, they're pushing the right fellow?

I don't think Tekesta should be losing and i think takesa is really good and worthy of no i'm saying i'm saying and i don't think mark briscoe should be beating him right now because he's been used like forever it would be the wrong thing to do no i'm saying in a vacuum if you were suddenly if if you were the the booker for the last wrestling federation and you were shown this match on tape from a foreign country like say bolivia

and you'd never heard of these two before and you didn't know who the who they were, what their history was, and you watched it, which one would you want to hire to draw money for your wrestling promotion?

I don't know if anyone's drawing money, but I would probably see Mark Briscoe as the person who showed more character.

That's what I'm talking about.

And he still gets over with the live crowd, and they've done nothing, and now it may be too late.

Should they turn him heel?

No,

because then, you know,

back who he is as a babyface.

That's that's why the only thing that's happening.

But he's a good.

Well, it's over now anyway, because they've seen what they've done with him as a babyface for two years.

If he'd have been a top babyface, yeah, you might want to say, well, let's turn him heel for a year and a half and freshen him up so we can switch him back.

He'll be new again.

But no, when you've completely made a guy meaningless, and it just switch him, that's just even worse.

Unless it is accompanied by a mega push, because it's early in a guy's career and now he's finally grown up and that doesn't fit Mark, who's been doing this for 20 years.

And that's

the thing: poor talent

picking, poor talent choices, it's what's got Tony in a lot of his issues because

his eye is drawn to the shiny little outlaw Indie Bauble instead of having a professional, an insider of the industry's knowledge of who is actually good and who's making the other people look good

and who could potentially draw you some money with any kind of mainstream regular fucking audience.

And I know people are that mainstream, people don't watch it.

I'm talking about the mainstream wrestling audience, the one that the WWE has.

And you get, you know, a fourth or a third of theirs, let me know.

Anyway,

the follow-up

to the Hurt Syndicate dealings was now with Alicia Atoot.

Apparently, it is indeed a toot.

I was, at one point, I was almost sold on a tout.

I thought it was a tout.

But it's a toot.

That's what she says.

You know what they say?

The more you toot, the better you feel.

Beans, beans, every meal.

So she's with the hurt syndicate, but MVP says, give us a second.

And she just leaves the

camera shot, but they're still talking with the camera right there and they're mic'd.

So

they just, they didn't mind the world hearing.

I'm sorry, I got to point this out.

They didn't mind the world hearing, but fuck Alicia too.

She needs to give them a fucking second.

They don't want her in on their plans.

Did you notice that little detail?

I did.

Of course.

Why couldn't they have been around the fucking corner or something?

But anyway,

the talent here did this

seriously,

like a real discussion, not like the cartoon.

Well, what do you do?

They were upset that MVP didn't consult them.

You gave us a day off, but then you go out.

Hey, I gave you guys the day off because you won, but I'm an ever, I'm always doing business.

That's our business, right?

It was reasonable and logical, but then they said, well, you can't trust MJF.

We don't trust him.

That's what everybody says.

Hey,

I think he could be good for our business.

Let's just settle down.

We'll discuss this.

So they're not like already the Keystone cops

pointing fingers at each other.

But there is still some element of

can the square peg fit into the round holes in the Hurt Syndicate.

So that's

they went back to intriguing a little bit.

Yeah, no, I like it.

I like all the stuff they're doing right now.

And then they went back to fucking outlaw bullshit.

Penelope Pitstop and Megan Brain versus Thunder Rosa and Tony Storm was the main event.

And I suddenly was called away to the toilet.

But Thunder Rosa and Tony Storm, by the way, are Thunderstorm.

Yeah.

Were you on the toilet while that match happened?

I wasn't on the toilet, but I did not watch that match.

And I feel bad because I like Megan Bain so far.

But I don't know.

I didn't have much hope for the match.

And this was the main event.

I'm sorry.

I just know.

I had other things to do.

I'm sorry.

I don't know who I'm apologizing to.

I'm sorry, Tony.

I had other things to do.

I couldn't watch your women's tag main event.

Well, the point is, though, not did you watch it, Brian, or not did I watch it, Brian, but did the people, did the people out there in the TV land did they watch the show this week?

Well, we will find out how many people watch.

We do, of course, have the numbers.

The AEW Dynamite for March 26th ratings on TBS

8 to 10:07 p.m.

on average,

watched by 663,000 viewers.

Good lord,

They're bulletproof at this point, I guess.

If they were going to lose any more people, they would be losing them now on these TV shows.

And

they've settled into their range again.

What's it going to take?

Another top star being fired or another backstage brawl to lose them another 100,000?

Or is there anybody they care about that much anymore?

Let me ask you this.

What do you think?

Because we don't know anything, nothing's public.

But in terms of the max numbers, I guess some of the people trying to paint a really rosy picture say that it could be as high as a couple hundred thousand people

watching on Max.

That seems ridiculous to you, doesn't it?

Why was there no discernible impact whatsoever in the regular TV ratings

when they went on Max?

If it was going to be a bunch of people,

nobody changed.

They were right in the same place, kind of sort of where they are now.

They lose or gain a few people in the 600,000s now.

But they were already in the 600,000s instead of the 800,000s they were a few years ago before Netflix came along.

There was no discernible difference.

And it's not like they're pushing it, but Netflix ain't beating it to death.

Right?

Right now, specifically with AEW, they're actually, from a television perspective, at a little bit of a high point.

This is up 1% from last week, which was 658.

621 is the four-week average.

This is up 7% on that.

Again, not giant gains,

but not driving off lots of people like we've seen happen.

And I will presume will happen again when the booking falls apart and there's no stars.

Let's go to the quarterly numbers, Jim.

Okay, Okay, Mr.

Rosie Outlook.

These were compiled by WrestleNomics.

Quarter one, eight to eight fifteen p.m.

Kenny Omega versus Blake Christian,

the post-match with speedball Mike Bailey and Ricochet on video location.

785,000 viewers.

Okay, and the lead-in is a bit up from what it's been also, so they're starting in a good place.

We go to quarter two, 8.15 to 8.30 p.m.

The Learning Tree Backstage promo and the MJF Hurts Syndicate and eventually the Learning Tree tag team live angle followed by an ad break.

753,000 viewers.

Wow, that tells something.

They only lost 35,000

in the first 15 minutes.

It's usually 100,000.

So something's going on here.

Well, again, Kenny Omega, whatever you want to say about him, to AEW's fans, he's always been a star.

MJF and the Hurt Syndicate, and even if you want to say Jericho, starting off the segment there,

those are all people who have been stars.

We go to quarter three,

8:30 to 8:45 p.m.

Brody King versus Kyle Fletcher with Picture and Picture for a long time.

655,000 viewers.

There we go.

There went 98,000, but 130 since the start of the program.

So, yeah,

they got something with

the people like Kenny, but they got something also that kept them hooked with hooked, kept them hook, not hook,

with the Hurt Syndicate.

No, that's right.

Hook didn't him,

they gave him the hook.

Well, Jim, let's go to quarter four:

8:45 to 9 p.m.

The continuation of Brody King versus Kyle Fletcher with picture and picture, and the post-match with Mark Davis and Powerhouse Hobbs, an ad break, and then Mark Davis versus Powerhouse Hobbs,

638,000 viewers.

Okay, they're down close enough to 150,000 from the start of the program, but it's the top of the 9 o'clock hour, Brian.

The big nine o'clock hour, 9 to 9.15 p.m.

quarter five, the Nick Wayne backstage promo, an ad break, the Swerve Strickland Adam Page backstage confrontation, the rated FTR sit-down interview, and the start

of the Swerve Strickland, Jon Moxley live confrontation,

649,000 viewers.

Well, they picked up 11,000, and that's kind of anemic, but at least they're not going any further in the wrong direction.

Well, the direction we're going is quarters 6, 9:15, and 9:30 p.m.

The Jon Moxley, Swerve Strickland, Marina Shafir, Willow Nightingale live angle.

Oh, here's the test.

The ops

and top flight and A.R.

Fox and Max Caster's backstage angle.

I think they just yelled at each other.

An ad break.

The Jay White backstage promo and the start of Top Flight versus Alex Findlay and Devo Knight.

669,000 viewers.

Good God,

that

15 minutes of Drek gained 20,000 viewers.

All right, now wait looking at their average.

They got to have two quarters where apparently there was a major power outage west of the Mississippi.

We go now to quarter seven, 9:30 to 9:45 p.m.

Fucking hot rod in the back here, also in the background.

One down the road.

If you can hear damn kids and their fucking fancy dan hot rod cars.

Well, we go now to quarter, where were we quarter seven 9 30 10 45 p.m

top flight versus alex finley and divo knight continued the post match with leo rush

action and ready

and that's it and the start of mark briscoe versus konosuke takesa picture in picture ads 601 000 viewers

well that's down 68 000 but again

what happened in quarter eight

Well, we go now to quarter eight, and I remind you, we have a seven-minute overrun.

Quarter eight, nine: forty-five to ten p.m.

Mark Briscoe versus Konosuke Takesha continued.

The Death Riders backstage promo, an ad break, the Hurt Syndicate backstage angle, and the start of Megan Bain and Penelope Ford versus Thunderstorm

with picture and picture.

598,000 viewers, seven-minute overrun, continuation of tag match, 576,000 viewers.

You know, actually, that's not as bad as I thought because

to get to 663,000 average, when they had hung in pretty good through the middle part of the program, I was convinced they had to fall off a cliff.

But I guess that

math does work.

They were still 29,000 down from the start of the show by the end of it.

Well,

there it is.

There you go.

Dynamite ratings.

Well, you know, Brian, if you're going to appear on a program like this, a lot of people may want to look up into changing their appearance, kind of disguising themselves.

Making, you know, if you're on a show like this, maybe you want to go out and you don't want to be molested or interrupted in public by people going, you were on that shitty show.

show.

So you want to change the way you look.

You've often felt that.

Whenever,

maybe, let's say, for example, you've got to be in a police lineup.

Now, even though you might know that you haven't committed that particular offense, still you want to not look any remotely like the person that did as much as you can.

So you maybe you shave your beard off if you have one, or you might want to change your hair color, Brian.

I mean, many times before you've you've gone in for a lineup, didn't you think, you know, maybe I should have changed my hair color?

You never thought that?

I have not thought that.

And again, we're talking about simpler hair color, of course.

And when you look at the people in AEW and how some need a career change, a lot of that begins with a new hair color.

You know, gorgeous George wasn't always gorgeous.

Well, that's true, but I don't know if they have platinum blonde at simpler hair color, but they got colors that will fit you, folks.

And that's the thing.

If you want to change your appearance for the better,

if you don't want to be like the guys on AEW where they're standing there and their hair is literally melting on their face,

it's not like

the corrosive chemicals that they sell you at the local hair dyeing store.

You don't have to put on a hazmat suit and gloves

six inches thick in order to slather this stuff on and then take a garden hose to your head like you do with some of the other major products out there no because this was developed brian simpler hair color i'm talking about it was developed by people who wanted to appreciate

better dyeing options for hairs and beards

Snah Patel and Mitch Brown,

I think actually they're cousins.

They went through the problem of the mess of the home dye kits and the harsh ingredients.

Why, do you realize that poor old Mitch, he had four layers of his skin melted off by Dr.

Proctor's hair dye when he was a mere child?

We don't know that.

We shouldn't be making declarative statements about things we don't know.

Well, that's I talk when I talked to him on the phone.

He said, yeah, that fucking Dr.

Proctor's, I was only 16 years old.

Talk to me.

And it took me three years to get my pip

pigment back, The pigment of the stuff.

Anyway, I don't know if you talked to Mitch about his pip or anything else, but we're talking about simpler hair.

Hey, listen, you brought up Wahoo in the past.

Wahoo was doing what he was doing because at that time, that was the simplest way to do something.

Now he can get first-class hair color in a simpler way.

Well, he can't.

I got it right here.

Hear that?

I can't actually make the can make any noise.

I can pound it on the table here.

You get a can of the simpler and safer multi-use cream for your hair and beard in this kit.

You get a couple of these applicator brushes specifically tailored to this application.

You get the reusable gloves, the cleansing wipe, and an instruction book.

And as you can do

as many hairs and beards with one can of this as four boxes of drugstore stuff.

That's what it just fell and broke my glasses.

Now I can't see.

And it comes in a plain black wrapper, nice little box there.

People won't know what you got.

It's not any of their business if you're changing the color of your hair, except if they've seen you before, then they'll see you and they'll say, well, goddamn, he looks younger.

Wonder why.

Anyway, folks.

Simpler hair color and all-in-one product you can use on your hair and your beard.

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all righty should we talk about this program that you again brian you say you know it would be an idea we should watch the tna since they've made the shake-ups and the changes in the organization

and now i see why people were getting fired

If I had been behind the camera at this television taping, some heads would have rolled, I'm pretty sure, to begin with, too.

Can you now understand?

Maybe some more of these future endeavors are justified now after watching this pro.

It was March 27th

that they aired this thing.

Say what this thing is.

I don't think you've actually said the name of the show.

TNA Impact Wrestling.

What do they call themselves now?

I mean, I know that there's a level of,

they did a long opening recap video that I didn't really understand because I didn't know what the fuck had been going on because we hadn't been watching the show.

I'm not talking about being confused as to who people are or how they're interacting with each other.

I'm talking about being confused as to what the fuck.

that they think they're trying to pull here.

This was just,

again, as I said at the top of the program, either bad indie wrestling with a lower budget,

or the fucking comedians they think they're improv fucking performers.

They all are either auditioning to be the next hot thing at fucking

the laugh factory, or it's goddamn more indie wrestling, but not with the budget of AEW.

Can you deny that?

That as an overall statement is pretty on the mark after having watched this two-hour television program?

I thought it resembled developmental.

I don't know if it was just because of this taping, the camera angle or it was, but it reminded me of OVW in the second Davis Arena in terms of the length.

Oh, no, no, I'll fight you if you're not in terms of the link.

Okay, all right, all right.

The camera angle.

Well, no, this was, they had a big crowd.

They were in El Paso.

This is a big crowd for them.

And it seemed like a very hot crowd.

And, you know, they had Chavo on the show, and the crowd is really into him.

No, this wasn't good.

I didn't like this at all.

And people have been begging us to watch it.

Anything we don't watch, they say it's great.

We need to watch it, whether it's anything.

Did we just hit him on an off week?

I don't know because a lot of their big stars were on the show.

And it was.

They were.

I mean, that world title segment with Joe Hendry and Elias and and

Frankie Kazarian on bass was just dreadful.

And it's Ringo on the skin flute.

But I guess we'll get there.

There's a lot to go over.

Well,

the show opens with the personal concierge in the ring.

He's a clowny comedy manager.

He looks like if

If Luther in AEW wasn't as fat

and older.

who is this fucking guy?

Have you ever seen this fucking guy?

Who is this fucking guy?

I have no idea who he is.

I've never seen him.

It had to be a rib where he's one of the guys that works backstage or in the office somewhere and they've given him a role to play

because it's embarrassing.

It was obviously a guy who didn't really know what the fuck he was doing, but he's a mark and he's trying to play the bad guy manager manager role

and he's got ugly guys dressed as male strippers they're fucking horrible physiques and tattoos everywhere and snotty hair but they've got the bow ties on and no shirt

that's what i that's they gave me sour belches

and

they're going to have a celebration for i guess her her

His two girls that he's about to introduce have won the titles, so they're going to have a party and celebrate with the strippers and blah, blah, blah.

These the kind of strippers you would have tipped them to put more clothes on.

And then he introduced Miss Heather and Ash by Elegance.

Is by Elegance a last name or is it...

Is the first one named Miss Heather and the second one named Ash by Elegance?

Or are they the by Elegance twins, Heather and Ash?

Oh, I don't know.

What did you?

I know Ash is because I've seen that name before.

She's the woman named like a fragrance.

I don't know about Miss Heather.

Well,

the fragrance of this fucking match was

pond water.

It was them against from NXT, Gigi Dolan and Tatum Paxley.

So I said, I wrote, what the fuck?

I can't get away from that.

The first thing I see on this new adventure I'm taking in this different promotion I'm watching is a fucking girls match with girls from the fucking NXT.

And the first 30 seconds, it looked like the drunks playing Twister.

I'm not sure who the heels were supposed to be because they all looked fairly bitchy.

But Heather and Ash win, or what win?

Heather and Ash won.

But as they were at Ringside celebrating, there was a cake at Ringside.

So they got down and turned their backs on the people, the girls they had just beat.

And old Gigi and Tatum crawled over and grabbed one of the girls and smashed her face in the cake and then ate it off of her.

As a veteran of cakes, ladies and gentlemen, not only was this the phoniest and most unexciting performance of the cake smashing face business that has ever been done,

But I don't remember Ricky and Robert or the Fantastics or any of the other fucking people actually eating any of the cake off me.

But I mean, it was the facial expression when they grabbed her and you, oh, oh, there was no build to

anticipation because you knew what was going to happen so much longer before it happened because they milked it forever.

And it was just like they're.

They're performing an old bit.

And you can't perform old bits like you're performing an old bit because that's what you get.

You get an old bit

and it's shit.

What'd you think?

I didn't think much of this whole thing.

We're opening the show seeing a women's tag match featuring some character who I've never seen before in his male strippers.

And then they do the cake thing at the end.

This is my intro to this product because I haven't watched it in forever and everyone's like, oh, you got to see it.

It's good.

And it also felt, even though they lost, it just felt like an NXT feeder.

I don't know.

I mean, the NXT people appear here feel like big stars and they're made out to be big stars.

It almost feels like

a bizarro NXT.

You know what I mean?

Because not everyone's a developmental.

Some of these people have been in the ring for 20 years and they're here, but it felt like a weird developmental show to me, the whole thing.

Well, you say the people take to them like stars and they look like they may they may present them as stars, but I don't know if they look like stars.

No, I agree with that.

Well, and a good example of that was the next match was a six-man tag team match.

And they're in El Paso, and that's the home of the Guerreros.

And Chabo Guerrero Jr.

was there, and he was probably

one of the better-looking, more professional performers on the program.

His partners were the Aztec Warriors,

Octa Goncito and and

Salento Rodriguez.

I don't remember what their fucking names were,

but they wrestled Frankie Kazari.

And again,

my God, he was probably the most professional-looking, all-together athlete on this program as far as work and physique, and

at least in the ring.

Wait till he gets in the fucking promo later on.

And a guy, JP Navarro, that's what I heard.

And Flop Dollar.

Flop Dollar is there.

And

this went a while.

And it was kind of schizophrenic.

There was some nice wrestling when Kazarian and Chavo were involved.

There was a bunch of phony-looking lucha with the Aztec Warriors and JP

Purdle or whatever his fucking name is.

One of the lucha guys, the first thing he did was a head-palm shoot off at, if I could have shot my television screen.

Just here you go.

And then Flop got in.

And of course, I had to watch out of morbid curiosity.

And

he still gets natural heat because he's so rotten at everything, but he in the middle of it, he acts and poses like he's a star.

So they have him,

I assume purposely, do almost nothing but, you know, gloat about it.

And it works.

He gets heat, but then he tries to do something and it kind of ruins it.

Uh,

Chavo got a big pop for his hot tag and a comeback,

and then he beat old JP with a frog splash.

He got a big pop because he's from El Paso, the Guerrero family, and they knew who the fuck he was.

And,

you know, but this wasn't like

anything that you would want to see more of on a regular basis, was it?

it?

No,

not at all.

It was nice to see Chavo.

I haven't seen Chavo wrestle in quite a while.

I mean, they brought up he's been doing stuff in Hollywood.

He worked on Glow and a lot of other things.

He does a lot of, you know, the coordination of the wrestling scenes and or whatever for television production.

I still like the idea of a hometown guy in a hometown.

And he's not treated like a jerk off.

And if you looked at some of the people there, it didn't look like the people that are just going to any wrestling show.

Like, it it looked like old regulars or old

just older people i saw the crowd well no not older people but regular people yeah it seems and regular people that you could tell weren't like the normal wrestling fan crowd and they did because they had a good crowd in an old-time wrestling city but they obviously did some decent local promotion

to get that crowd in there.

And they weren't all just, you know, your regular jaded wrestling fan a good local promotion that's why they fired the guy that was doing the local promotion

all right so

we got to talk about the pre-tape

they're still doing the spooky music and they were doing that

when i was there

in the background of the pre-tape santino morea

is the authority figure.

I don't know they call him a commissioner, the general manager, the fucking gizmopper, whoever's running that place.

And he's still using the goofy accent.

And he's sitting there with Mance Warner and Sammy Callahan.

But they're both handcuffed, not each other.

They're just in handcuffs so that they can't get in a fight with each other.

Or as Santino said, You're both handcuffed so you don't leave in a death bag.

And they're standing there with four security guards consisting of outlaw wrestlers that you can tell a mile away, and some girl sitting with Mance Warner.

And by the way,

is Santino Morella being the general manager of a wrestling promotion kind of like Mo Howard getting out of the movies and becoming the head of Columbia Pictures?

Well, no, Mo had good ideas, but you know, he couldn't necessarily run the marketing department or anything.

You know, the sad thing is, I thought Santino was the best one in this whole thing.

He's committed to what he does.

It's like Ponystorm.

I think he's a good comedic performer, even though he didn't do it here.

This was kind of like, you know, Jerry Lewis when he made

this.

I can't compare him to Jerry Lewis.

What was the name of his serious movie?

God damn, I can't remember.

King of Comedy.

King of Comedy.

King of Comedy.

King of Comedy.

I lost my mind there for a second.

It's not like Jerry Lewis making the king of comedy.

It's not.

This is,

you know, and I've never really seen this Mance Warner.

I've seen his name before, and I've never seen it.

Well, I've seen Sandy Callahan, but I've seen his name before.

And

yeah.

Well, I saw both of them in the same place.

Mance Warner,

when I did the MLW tapings, Mance Warner was the Southern psychopath, and they were using him as a baby face.

And he was a good old boy, you know, from, can't remember where his fucking hometown, but he had, you know, the gimmick hometown and whatever the fuck.

And he, you know,

I saw

something there that he had personality.

He could work a little bit.

And he could talk a little bit and he was different.

Everybody else was trying to be the fucking

indie superstar, you know, mode wrestler.

And here was this guy.

And I tried to,

while I was there, they had me producing a lot of his promos and some of his matches, whatever.

And I was trying to bring that part out of him because I thought he's different.

He's unusual.

He has a gimmick.

He could, this could work somewhere, right?

You could draw money.

I swear to God, as soon as I said something good about somebody, a month later, after I'd finished the last show that I did with them, I saw him on Twitter having a match with the invisible man.

And then he's done the garbage championship wrestling matches where he gets different parts of himself stapled to the turnbuckle and shit.

So that's another guy that I tried to say something good about that I ended up having to be sorry for that.

And then Callahan

at the same MLW, he's the one.

that got fired that night for going into business for himself and fucking up shit in the building and blame me for it that's why i said it's a rib i do favors for people and ended up having to work with these outlaw goofs that i am smart to the business but he looked

as they were sitting at that table

like he's a hundred pounds heavier than he was then he looked like a meatball he's only like five seven oh really

Yes, he's a short.

He looked gigantic.

No, I've never really seen him before.

He was massive.

I didn't think he was 5'7.

That's what I'm saying.

I mean,

he came up to me, and I think the top of his head was somewhere around my upper lip.

You know, but he looked giant.

So I don't know what the fuck, but he was shaped like a warthog to begin with.

But anyway,

they were pissed at each other and cut a promo

to each other.

And as I said, Mance Warner can talk a little bit.

Callahan does the put-on growly voice.

He's kind of like a true value Moxley.

He does the same kind of shit.

He drinks bones and eats blood and all that shit.

And then the girl with Mance Warner threw coffee in Callahan's eyes.

And wait a minute.

Up till then, I realized I didn't know which one the babyface was.

I guess Callahan's the babyface because the girl with the other one threw, well,

the girl with Mance Warner.

threw coffee in Callahan's eyes and he's ah

so how are they the babyfaces was it coffee but then you've got because he was selling it like it was acid yeah somebody was swigging a bottle of bleach this ain't aew

she picked it up off the table they don't drink bleach and tna

but i mean you're so sure about that well

Somebody may be drinking some kind of goddamn huffing something here with it, but yes, but the fat fucking short guy with the growly put-on voice is apparently the babyface.

Either that or just who gives a shit?

I don't know.

What'd you think?

What were they building up to?

They're having a match of what's the stipulation?

What are they doing?

I don't remember because it was also...

With the music was throwing me off from trying, and everybody was growling.

The music sucks.

Everybody's growling and trying to be De Niro in a fucking scene from a Tarantino movie or some shit instead of being able to speak plainly and tell everybody who you are, and the music was distracting.

So I don't really know what they were.

They're mad at each other and they've done a lot to each other and they want to do more.

That's what I got out of it.

Would you like to go on to the women's title match?

Yes, we got another girls' match, ladies and gentlemen, with more NXT talent.

Jane Wayne Gacy,

the partner of Gig Dolan and Tatum O'Neal.

And they had another girl that was also spooky and named after some kind of serial killer.

I can't remember.

But she wrestled Marcia Slamovich.

And Tessa Blanchard was barred from ringside.

And I said, well, shit, because I'd like to see Tessa Blanchard to see

what the fuck her work looks like these days.

Well, hold on.

This took a while.

It went across the nine o'clock hour.

I guess they don't really have to worry about ratings because the network owns them.

And

does Access get ratings?

Are they far enough up yet to qualify for the ratings?

I don't think so.

So Masha won with a suplex.

Is it Masha or Marsha?

They were said that I think she's Russia.

They were saying Masha.

Yeah, I thought it was Marsha.

It turns out it was Masha.

Who knew?

Well, I like Marsha better, so I think it's going to be Marsha.

Oh, so you're going to be watching more of Marsha.

Well, maybe, maybe, maybe not because Mildred Burke's reputation is safe from these two young ladies.

But then Tessa jumped Marcia

and got on top of her.

And here we go.

And she beat the teetotal shit out of the mat and the air next to Marsha's head.

She looked like she meant it.

She was mad at that fucking oxygen.

And then some other girls came out and she ran off.

And I was like, well, that was a letdown.

See, I didn't know if it was just me.

It sounds like it was just me.

My DVR, because I watched it after the fact,

it cut when Masha had her hand raised, and then it cut to Tessa on the floor, and then it cut again to the other two girls standing there.

Oh, no, you missed all that stuff.

Yeah, apparently I missed all that.

I thought it was bad editing.

Maybe they fired the editor.

They're firing everyone else, but it may have just been my DVR.

Well, and then I'll again the next match, Eric Young and Ace Austin.

I remember Ace Austin from MLW.

He's gained some weight, looks a lot better physically.

This match did not grab me.

Eric Young won with a nice pile driver.

But then,

this is kind of what I was watching for until I saw it.

Here came Joe Hendry.

Say his name and he will appear.

The TNA champion.

We were talking about this a few weeks ago.

We've heard he gets all kinds of attention, publicity.

We've heard all kinds of stuff about him.

He's marketed himself in a wonderful way and got over to the point where they put the TNA title on him.

And he's gotten interest from NXT.

And the fans out of anybody on this show, the fans were waving.

They had the signs.

They had more reaction,

you know, to him than anybody on the show.

And they're chanting, we believe, we believe.

And I mentioned I hadn't seen any of him, heard any of him, whatever.

So he's doing a promo.

He's got the accent because he's British, but you can understand him.

He's got a grown-up male voice.

He doesn't.

scream at the top of his lungs like Jay White over and over, or he doesn't sound like,

you know, a British garbage disposal like Osprey,

or unintelligible.

You know, he's got an accent, but you can understand him.

He's got a grown-up voice.

The people seem to take to him.

He doesn't talk long.

He says he'll put the title up against anyone from any company.

And then the music interrupts, but it's not like recorded music.

It's a guitar.

And

who walks out?

It's fucking Elias.

and now his name is elijah

but he's not elijah from norcross georgia that keeps asking the good questions about nigerian wrestling he's elijah that used to be elijes before he was ezekiel before he was expelled

and he's still doing the same thing he's got the guitar

And he comes out and he says he believes in Joe Hendry, too.

And he tells Joe, you can trust me i'm your friend i want to sing you a song your favorite song

and he's saying i said you've got a friend in me

and i wrote this is

horrible like no come on and it was about to get worse that's a great randy newman song not the way he did it oh no

But just I will let you comment here because it's going to get worse if people can believe that that is possible.

But already, what the fuck is going on here, Brian?

They say that, well, I'll ask you that.

I heard Uncle Dave, you know, making a gripe at a bitch because they, oh, well, Tony shouldn't be hiring

these XA or the ex-WWE guys because it just looks like cast offs.

He got Lashley, a former world champion, and Shelton Benjamin, who hadn't been on a program in a while, and they're the biggest things in the company.

This is what WWE cast off looks like.

That's the question.

I don't know exactly what the question was, but now this is bad.

This is, you know, this is the kind of thing you would see on WWE for a long time that it seemed to entertain the person in charge more than it ever would the audience.

Maybe there's some of the audience that was along for the ride here.

But this did not make me want to see any more Joe Hendry.

I already felt that way about Elias.

I didn't even know he was there.

But yeah, I didn't want to.

I did not like this at all.

Well, and then Kazarian interrupts.

Because now I don't know whether Elias is a heel or not.

Maybe there's problems with Elias and Hendry.

But even though Elias said he was a friend, but Kazarian comes out and he hates both of them.

And he's got a bass guitar.

And he plays a little cucaracha so the fans can chant you suck.

And then he sings

the song El Paso with new words like as, as I saw the fat sweaty girls in El Paso or whatever the fuck.

And it just kept going.

And then

Joe Hendry said, well,

I'd like the fans' opinion on that boo.

And they tried to do some comedy.

And then Joe Hendry told Frankie to get out, but Frankie told Joe Hendry and Elias they should fight each other.

But then they started to beat him up together.

But then Frankie shoved Elias at Joe Hendry and they almost collided, which would have been certain doom and they would have fought.

But then fucking Frankie bailed and Elias and Joe Hendry stared at each other.

And then they turned around and cooperated in playing Shananana.

Hey, hey, hey, goodbye by that incredible group.

It's not Shananana.

It's Nana Nana.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, he's on the other show, too.

This was rotten and it went forever.

And it was like bad sports entertainment.

That's what I either developmental.

I told you to speak like Bizarro NXT, but with veterans.

They've all got to either go for the fucking, you know, the comedy club performance or the

roundoffs and cartwheels of the floor exercise.

Nothing's different in wrestling anymore.

Nothing is,

almost nothing, is serious and different and eye-catching and not the same old pretend drech because everybody's got their tongue stuck in their cheek or head up their ass, one or the other.

And then Nick Nimeth wrestled Leon Slater.

Leon Slater looks like one of the unknown rappers with mark belts in the crowd at a WWE show.

And approximately the same body weight.

And I think Nick Nemeth's work is great, but seriously, I don't know.

Ryan interfered.

Ryan's been blackballed from wrestling, so he has to work in TNA.

And Nemeth caught him with his finish, one, two, three.

And then the Hardy brothers limped to the ring.

And they apparently really are banged up because they had another one of these fucking matches.

Matt's head was all busted open.

They could barely walk.

The commentators had to say, they're banged up, but they're still here.

And they challenged both of the Nimas to a match at the next pay-per-view named Something at Sometime.

This was not as stupid as an AEW show and not as just egregiously self-indulgent.

The production, okay.

The creative is not wonderful at all, but there's no stars.

I mean, we haven't seen Henry work yet.

Haven't seen Tessa

in a match.

I don't see anybody else that's particularly fucking interesting to you at this point.

I thought it was a rotten show.

I didn't like it.

I didn't like the way it looked.

It didn't even look like it was an HD.

And I think it's an HD channel.

It used to be HDNet.

Yeah.

I thought it was a wrestling show.

They bought it and downgraded it.

I thought it was a bad wrestling show.

Even the commentary just felt forced.

And,

you know, they just fired

a ton of people.

I say just over the last several months, we just had the last round of them.

And they're bringing in lots of people who have no wrestling background.

If all of this is the result of people with wrestling backgrounds, maybe it's time for a switch.

Well, no, no, hold on now.

Maybe it's time for a change.

Hold on now.

They got rid of Ariel Schneerer,

and he didn't have any wrestling background.

They brought other people, but they've got Delirious in charge of the book, and they got Dreamer and Talent Relations.

So the other people in marketing or television production, we probably shouldn't expect to know who they are.

So

I guess what I'm saying is, yes, I would have fired almost almost anybody involved in this.

But since they did,

maybe it'll change.

I don't know what to say.

But that,

well, that's our report on TNA.

But, you know, they're just a big signing away.

Why?

And they could get one of these top free agents that's available, Brian.

And,

you know, somebody with a major name with a huge following, and they could just sign them up, and then it'd be sunshine, lollipops, rainbows, and waterfalls from there.

Well, look at the list of people that they could sign.

Well, it's just, it's,

it's endless, isn't it?

You know why it's endless?

Because it never gets started.

There's nobody they can fucking sign.

So it looks to me like they need to go in another line of work entirely.

Oh, okay.

I was going to say, it's too bad there isn't an online store that sells wrestlers who are stars.

Well, I was saying that they ought to just take and fire everybody else and just get into a goddamn business that they could have Shopify host their online store.

Like we did.

Shopify is powering our t-shirt business now.

If we plug that again, by the way, he said it's been so long since the top of the program.

Just check out the brand new drive-through t-shirts and other merchandise.

And that's powered by Shopify.

Brian, are we or are we not not on the coveted shop app?

We are right now.

We are indeed available, our merchandise available through the shop app.

Absolutely.

Well, you actually, somebody's, you, you told me that somebody can buy me specifically if they pay enough.

And, you know, and then, of course, tips are optional, but appreciated, ladies and gentlemen.

But no matter what you want to sell, or who you want to sell it to, or who you want to sell to what, Shopify can help you sell one thing to another and then bring it back again and turn around and sell it again.

Because Shopify is the number one checkout on the planet.

They boost conversions up to 50%.

Nobody does selling better than Shopify.

Carts will not be abandoned on their watch.

I'll tell you that.

No,

if you try to get out of that cart in Shopify's world, boom, an electric shock straight through the computer.

Your little nads will be fried if you try to get out without spending that money, pal.

And that's why Shopify

can make you more money than just these average

jacklegs hanging around the corner.

Now, let's say somebody on the corner says, I tell you what, I can go over there and I can muscle that guy into giving you $5.

And he goes over and he just gives you a little elbow to the side of the head and he takes $5 and brings it back to you.

Now, you may think, well, that was an easy transaction.

But Shopify wouldn't do that, Brian.

You know what Shopify would do?

Shopify would go over there and Shopify wouldn't, boom, give that guy an elbow upside the head.

Shopify would just lean over and say, Let me tell you something, pal.

You better give that guy over there in the corner $5 every day because we know where you live.

This is the implied.

No, it's nothing.

It's the implied insinuation that keeps those repeat customers coming back to give you $5 every day so nothing happens to them.

You have your products.

Your products are good.

People want to support them and purchase them.

There's no need for any sort of screw army.

That's what I'm saying.

You got some fine products there.

It'd be a shame if anything happened to them.

No, that is not what will be happening.

Shopify is corruption-free and there for you to sell your products directly to Mr.

and Mrs.

America.

Yes, they have no knowledge of any improprieties or activities that are below the boundaries of the law.

They can't remember any of that stuff, and they will take the Fifth Amendment whenever they're hauled into court.

But nevertheless, folks, again, Shopify, they can sell ice to an Eskimo.

They can sell feces to a monkey.

Certainly, they can sell your shit.

And you can upgrade your business and get the same checkout and platform that the big boys are using so you can be worldwide, nationwide, and three feet wide.

Sign up for a $1 a month trial period right now, $1 a month to show you what they can do for you

with that cash register.

$1 a month trial period at shopify.com slash JCE.

That's all lowercase now, shopify.com slash JCE

to upgrade your selling today and convince people around your neighborhood that they better pony up if they know what's good for them.

Shopify.

Shopify.

Sell your legitimate products in a legitimate way with a partner you can trust, Shopify.

One more time, Jim.

That promo code, that email, that

link.

That link for people to use.

Yes, JCE.

That's the missing link.

With a smile on your face, you're going to hand that money over.

All right, what are you doing over there smiling at the Arcadian Vanguard Network this week?

Another joyous week on the Arcadian Vanguard Podcast Network.

Get information about all the shows on Twitter, at Super Podcasts, or on Facebook.

Facebook.com/slash Arcadian Vanguard.

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Get it for free and get it from thewrestlingnews.com or wherever you find your favorite podcast.

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Get it today.

Want to make mention of

that bit?

Want to make mention of Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon?

Some really great episodes you should check out.

Keith Elliott Greenberg was recently on the show to talk about Bigger, Better, Batter is WrestleMania 3 book.

And just this past week, Barbara Goodish, the widow of Bruiser Brody.

Hear her today.

Hear all of these episodes, S-U-A-Wpod.com.

Or look for Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian Solomon, wherever you find your favorite podcast.

And of course, the 605 Super Podcast, the mothership

yeah my voice cracked there go through the archive i heard your sound machine just fine 605pod.com available wherever you find your favorite podcasts the mothership some stuff in the works stay tuned

all righty well we're going to finish this thing up we promised everybody last week a little classic wrestling and

Unfortunately, we got running long.

So we said we'd do it this week.

And that's what we will as a palate cleanser from what we've been dealing with.

Let's go back in the archives.

A lot of people know we were doing a project in 2024, Brian, where we went back and looked at my 1984 schedule day by day and the trials and tribulations of a young man in a wrestling business in mid-South Wrestling.

Except things started happening and it took us,

it's taken us longer.

to get through 1984 than it did for me actually to live it.

And it's 2025 and we're still only to April 1st.

So we thought we'd give the people the first week of April, 1984 in Mid-South Wrestling, which ends up with me in the Superdome for the first time.

And if the people would like to

catch up with where we are so far on the official Jim Cornette YouTube channel, we've got the 1983 clips we've done and 1984 a week or two at a time or the omnibuses out there for the first quarter so they can catch up with us and kind of get the feel of things.

But briefly, we had shot the angle with Bill Watts,

and the last stampede had been booked and advertised and

was just beginning.

And at the same time, the Rock and Roll Express had shoved my face in a cake, so we were mad at them.

And

Pork Chop Cash and the Dream Machine, the Bruise Brothers, had been brought in by Bill Dundee, the booker from Memphis to be another top babyface team.

And we had an issue with them.

But as we will recall, the dream machine, right before the biggest break of his career, broke his ankle in a match in Nashville.

And I believe it was Nashville, and had a drop out of the deal.

And they ixnade the Bruce Brothers.

And we're finishing that up at this point now also.

And otherwise, business-wise, $1 in 1984 equals $3 in today's money.

So it's a nice, easy just formula triple everything.

We're talking about the financial

figures in order to get a grip on where it stood.

Otherwise, are you ready to go, Brian?

First week of April, 1984.

And Monday, April 2nd, we were in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which was a fairly easy trip of 200 miles round trip.

And we were booked against the Bruce Brothers in the semifinal on the card.

But unfortunately, as I said, Dream had broken his ankle.

So Bill Dundee was taking his place and they were putting us over

in, you know, in the rest of the dates.

So we beat the Bruise Brothers.

We beat Pork Chop since Dundee was.

He knew he'd be back sometime or another, but poor Pork Chop was on the way out.

So we beat Pork Chop.

Boom, one, two, three.

The house was $8,600 in Baton Rouge that week, not replicating the success we'd been having in other places just yet.

So we made $100.

But it was Monday night and we had big things coming up because

the next day, Tuesday, April 3rd, the 10th anniversary of the April 3rd, 1974 tornadoes in Louisville, by the way.

So my butthole was puckering even then.

But we were in Shreveport, Louisiana at the old auditorium, the Memorial Auditorium.

And since we had shot the angle with Watts in Shreveport at the Irish McNeill Boys Club, where we did the TV tapings, Shreveport was right up to date with airing the TV show.

So the first last stampede match with Bill Watts and Stagger Lee, Junkyard Dog,

was in Shreveport.

So this was the first time we were going to get a

kind of of an idea of what this thing was going to be like and how it was going to go because

none of us had ever even seen Bill Watts work in person, right?

And we knew the shape the dog was in at that particular time.

But at the same time, you know, this was our big break, right?

So

not only did we see how the match was going to go, but we saw maybe we thought we'll see how this is going to draw because everybody thinks it's going to do good, but my God, you know.

So

it was kind of cool to have this match in the Memorial Auditorium in Shreveport, Brian, because it was one of the oldest wrestling buildings still in the Mid-South Territory.

I mean, Elvis had been on the stage for the Louisiana Hayride Radio broadcast in the mid-50s, and Sputnik Monroe had worked there.

They'd had wrestling in that building going back to, I think, the 20s and 30s.

And it was an old-fashioned kind of crowd and look and working with watts in that environment it really got us

got us broke into it but

the point is the house was twenty six thousand five hundred dollars in the shreveport memorial auditorium it was the record house that they had ever done in a building that they had been running longer than almost any other building in their town or in any of their towns.

And that's the equivalent, as we said, a $75,000 house in a town they ran every two weeks and TV every two weeks on the opposite week.

And we each made $400, which is equal to $1,200, but that was probably a close to record payoff out of Shreveport.

There was one of the smaller buildings and one of the, it was.

That was probably 2,500 people.

Maybe they jammed them in there because it was a sellout, but they raised the prices for all of the last stampede matches from what the normal ticket prices were for the normal shows.

So

I didn't write them down.

I didn't get started doing that until later.

But whereas Shreveport would probably be normally

$7 ringside, $5 general admission, $3 kids, 7, 5, and 3, they probably went to 10, 7, and 4.

So

they were building their grosses up on some of these buildings that were records because they had higher ticket prices than they had charged previously.

Anyway,

the match was

what it was.

It was the stipulation was: if we lost, I was going to get stripped down and dressed in my mother's pink dress.

And that's what they did.

Watts made the comeback.

Stagger Lee gave Bobby the power slam.

I threw the tennis racket to poor Bobby.

But at the same time, the referee was with Dennis and Watts, and Bobby and Stagger Lee had a double knockout where I put the powder in Bobby's hand.

So as he went to blind Watts, Watts kicked the powder, gave him the Oklahoma Stampede.

Boom, one, two, three.

And then I was stripped down and put in a dress to the folks' delight.

Was it a different stipulation or was it the same stipulation?

I know there were different variations.

It was the baby bottle, there was a diaper, there was your mother's dress.

Was it different?

It depended on the geography because in New Orleans, the superdome, it was a baby bottle and a diaper.

So, therefore, since Baton Rouge

may have been, you know, close, kind of in the same general TV area, they would do the dress.

Or in

Ranga, but goddammit, Hammond, Louisiana, because that was so close to where they'd done the dress in Baton Rouge and the diaper in New Orleans, they tarred and feathered me.

So it just happened.

But the main two were the diaper and the dress.

And

I liked the dress better because fucking dog,

every night he would take a big swallow of milk from this oversized baby bottle.

And then he'd give me a kiss and spit the milk in my mouth.

Ew.

Yeah.

But having said that, when they were diapering me, Watts would take the giant, they had a giant oversight.

What now?

That's just a sentence and transition you never hear before.

When they were diapering me,

they had an oversized safety pin.

It was like a

large adult, you know, costume safety pin or whatever.

And Watts would stick me in the stomach.

So I'd sell, ow, ow, ow.

So I like the dress better.

But anyway, so now we got an idea.

My God,

they sold out the building.

They did a record house in a place that they've been running for quite a while.

And

even though it was a $400 payoff for one of the small buildings, we're thinking, my God, with the bigger ones, yeah.

And besides, I was just,

as you will recall, my average per week.

My last, what, six weeks in the Tennessee territory was like $150.

So I, you know, we were more than pleased with this.

And Shrimpur was the 130-mile trip up the state highway.

You did the Tuesday night house show

at the auditorium, and then we did promos on Wednesday morning at Channel 3, as we did every week.

And then boom, we hit the road and went over to Jackson, Mississippi, which was 200 miles from there.

And there the TV was still behind.

We weren't with the last stampede yet.

We had the Bruce Brothers.

It was scheduled to be a title match, but we instead worked with pork chop and Dundee and did the same

finish as we did in Baton Rouge.

But this time, Jackson

was starting to come up with the rest of the territory and Jackson did $28,500

and we made a $300 payoff.

And that's what I'm talking about

is

We knew that if Jackson did the same basic house that Shreveport did, Shreveport set a record, but Jackson's a bigger building in a bigger town.

And we made almost the same money for working the main event on a kind of an okay house as we did a record house in Shreveport.

So we knew the bigger towns had room to grow, right?

And again, then we back to Alexandria, 200 miles.

So far, the trips haven't been that bad this week.

We're coming up on that.

When you know you're paying attention to the payment,

can I ask a question?

Go ahead.

When you know you're going to pay the wrestlers and the talent more money because there are big shows coming up that week or the next week, whatever it is, can you get away with paying them less right before it?

Well, I mean, it depends.

It depends on who's involved in drawing the money on the big shows and et cetera, and whether they're going to be happy.

And then the other guys that are just on the card, they're kind of taking whatever they get regardless.

So there was an, and I mean, everybody

at the end of the day was taking what they were given, but there were some people that were more

apt to be or in line to be upset about the payoffs when they were the ones drawing the money.

And because it ended up by the summertime

when the opening match guys in the territory were making $1,000 a week, which would be like three grand today.

And,

you know, they're thinking, geez, this is great.

We could main event some places and not make $1,000 a week.

Anyway, back to the suffering.

Thursday, April 5th was the spot show that week.

We were in Crossett, Arkansas,

and an outdoor show at the ball field on April 5th

against the Rock and Roll Express.

One of the early matches with them.

People wanted to see it on the spot shows.

And boom, and we did a nice, easy thing where it was the same thing we had done in Lafayette the previous week, a disqualification on on us for throwing powder in the eyes.

Nothing was settled.

But this was a $10,000 spot show.

And at spot show prices, that meant in Crossett, Arkansas,

we drew somewhere around 1,200 to 1,400 people

and picked up another couple of hundred dollars.

And it was a 300-mile round trip, but we were back home that night.

And then the weekend started.

And this was where the travel began and the money started.

And then we went on a pretty good run, which we won't complete today because it was for like the next six weeks.

But on Friday night, April 6th, we were in Houston.

And this was

the card the week before the last Stampede match.

The last Stampede match would be on a special Sunday night show on April 15th.

But

nine days, eight days beforehand, we were there for the regular Friday night show.

We had been booked in the main event for the tag team title against the Bruise Brothers.

And to give you an idea

of what the cards were like then, this is the whole card for Houston that night.

It was Tom Zink over John King in the opening match.

Jerry Gray beat Joe Savoldi, match number two.

Hector Guerrero beat Messiah Ito by disqualification.

And then the

feature matches started.

The Rock and Roll Express beat Butch Reed and Buddy Landell.

Magnum TA beat Mr.

Wrestling 2 by disqualification for the North American title.

Crusher Darso and Nikolai Volkov beat Hacksaw Duggan and Terry Taylor.

That was a grudge match.

And then we were booked to be the main event, but since it was a substitution, we went on before that, but we beat Bill Dundee and Pork Chop Cash.

And that house for that card was $54,000.

And we made $500 a piece for our match.

So the equivalent of $150,000 and $1,500.

And that was a 500-mile round trip for us, as usual.

But we then we saw we're coming back in nine days against Watts.

And again, we're already doing $50,000.

What the fuck are we going to do there?

This is why we were getting excited.

And of course,

that was the night before the Superdome.

So we went back 250 long miles to Houston, have the match, don't leave there till 10, 10.30,

get back at 2 o'clock in the morning or whatever.

And then, as I said, the next night being the New Orleans Superdome, we got to be there early.

And we've never gone to the building.

We want to make sure to get into the traffic.

Mama Cornette flew down, as a matter of fact, to New Orleans and I picked her up at the hotel and took her for that show.

They put her in the box because I didn't want

any of that, not in the box.

It sounded like they put her in a fucking hole.

Put her in the penalty box.

That's Mama Cornette.

We don't know what she'll do.

Put her in the hole so she can't interfere.

No, they put her in one of the sky boxes because the people might have been violent with her if they'd found out that she was my mother.

So we got there early and we snuck in the back through the parking garage and Jack Curtis escorted her up to the skybox so she could watch from there.

But she was freaking the fuck out

because think about this.

She knew the Tennessee wrestlers and wrestling business.

She'd been around it.

She knew the guys, friends with Teeny,

knew the buildings, but she comes to the Superdome and there is her son

being

abused by a bunch of people that she's never met before in front of 25,000 fucking people.

She didn't know what to think, right?

But anyway, that night, April 7th,

that was the last stampede night.

But again, a lot of people don't remember.

That was sort of a lights out match because

We still had the program going with the Bruise Brothers, and Dundee had booked a tag title match with the Bruise

underneath the last stampede match because he thought they would be huge in New Orleans and he wanted to keep the thing going.

And they'd arranged to fly Jimmy Hart down to be in the Bruises corner against

the midnight with me to, you know, because people in Louisiana, they didn't really know who Jimmy Hart was either, but it was just an extra bonus of something.

They'd read about him in the magazines and seen him on TV.

But he sent promos down and,

you know, it was a big deal, right?

And then he had to manage pork chop and Dundee.

And so that's the only time

there was that, and there was Houston a week later, the only time that Jimmy Hart ever managed Bill Dundee.

Think about that.

Nevertheless,

we get down to the meat of the matter.

We have the match with Pork Chop and Dundee, and

we beat them when me and Jimmy got in a falder-all and distracted the referee.

And then we had the main event with Watts and Stagger Lee.

The tape is out there.

I think it's on YouTube, but

Dog was, he was in his own world at that point, but the people went absolutely insane for everything that Bill Watts did.

And

I know a lot of people go, look at fucking Bobby Eaton when they watch these matches.

If Watts pointed a finger at Bobby, Bobby was flying over the top rope.

Because here, here we all came from Memphis, and they were making 400 bucks a week when I was making $150,000, right?

It wasn't like they were cleaning up.

And suddenly we've got this spot.

We've been making these checks so far, and now we're working with the boss.

And

we didn't know the house at the time we went in the ring, but it ended up $176,000, the second best superdome gate that they ever did behind Dog and Michael Hayes at $183,000.

It was the best one they'd ever done in April.

And we did 23,000 people.

So

the 176 with our formula would equal over half a million dollars in a town that they ran in some fashion or another every week at that point.

And our payoff that night was $2,000, which would be six grand a piece in today's money, or

literally what it would have taken me in Tennessee at the rate I was going three months of working five times a night to make.

I made it in the same night.

And they diapered me and baby bottled me and spit milk in my mouth and stuck me with the goddamn safety pin.

But Brian, you've seen the, obviously, you've seen the tape.

You may have one of the original copies of the tape.

Yeah.

The people went absolutely insane for everything bill watts did that was the mark of mid-south wrestling when you it was like austin stomping a mud hole in you even though he was older and immobile

they they couldn't see through it it was goddamn chaos

and he was slower and you know what it took him time to draw back and throw his punch but His face was selling though.

Like everything about him was into what he was doing.

And he didn't have to do do much and he couldn't do much and yeah i got the super dome he did what they wanted to see him do i got the super dome footage i know there's other footage that's publicly out there like houston and different places but

you know you brought up the road to get in there

did you hear anything from him just that you guys or specifically this angle based on this night had exceeded their expectations.

You said they expected big things.

They didn't expect this, did they?

No.

And well,

they may have expected, because again, they'd done better in the Superdome.

We'd drawn one record house.

We'd drawn a couple of record houses for Watts even got in the ring with us.

But I don't know.

They still didn't think it was going to be as big as it got.

And again, the Superdome is a big deal, but you expect it to be a big deal.

But not to jump ahead and we've got one more day in this week, But by the time it was over with,

they'd done 16 shows where Watts came back and they did the last stampede match.

Nine of them were sellouts, 11 of them were record gates.

As I said, we did the number two dome by $6,000.

But in a period of five weeks, besides the other shows, because they were running every night, but just those 16 shows sold 110,000 tickets and grossed over

$800,000,

which again

tripled that is $2.5 million.

And for the five-week period counting all the shows, Mid-South Wrestling grossed $1.2 million

in 1984.

And at the time,

It was, what was it?

Was it the fifth biggest wrestling territory in the United States?

The WWF, the AWA, Crockett.

help me out.

You talk about in terms of business or geography?

In terms of business.

Well, in terms of business, but geography probably also.

The AWA would gross more than Mid-South.

So would the WWF.

So would Crockett.

I think Mid-South, even though the Dallas world-class houses were bigger at the Reunion Arena as a territory, Mid-South outgrossed world-class.

So, but that was ridiculous numbers for the fourth largest territory in the country to be grossing over a million dollars in a little over a month

when there were another 20 fucking territories all running full time.

This was only in four fucking states.

So that when the

Watts was loving the matches because nobody had taken bumps like Dennis and Bobby did for him in 20 years.

And he loved working with them because it was a night off and the people went crazy over it.

But I think after

the entire run was over with, that's when he realized that, my God, we're only in May.

These guys are still hot and I'm drawing more money with them after we've done something like this.

That's when,

you know, we exceeded all of their expectations.

And

We exceeded the speed limit on the way out of New Orleans because I had to drop my mom off at the hotel and get back through Alexandria because the next day was an Oklahoma City show, but it was a rare deal where we didn't have a double shot on that Sunday.

So we got back to Alexandria

probably three o'clock in the morning and left to go to Oklahoma City, which was 530 more miles.

somewhere around nine in the morning.

And we went up there and did another match for the title with the Bruce Brothers that ended up, unfortunately, being Dundee.

But that night, and listen to this fucking card.

This is a card that drew 13,000 people.

It was a record for people in the city of Oklahoma City,

even though there was regular prices not raised because it wasn't the last stampede.

And they did $68,800.

And we each made $600 payoffs for our part in this.

But point being, Mid-South Wrestling with the Superdome, a regular show at Oak City, and a regular show in Houston

did

$300,000 gross in three days.

That's, again, almost a million bucks in today's money.

And this was just one of the wrestling territories.

And Oak City did

Oak City had

Dr.

Destee Williams beat Jerry Gray.

Messiah Ito beat Lanny Poffo.

Terry Taylor beat Butch Reed by disqualification.

The Rock and Roll Express beat Nikolai Volkoff and Crusher Darso, later Khrushchev.

Kerry von Erich beat Buddy Landell.

He was a guest from Dallas.

Magnum TA beat Wrestling 2.

The Midnights beat Dundee and Pork Shop.

And Sunshine beat Jimmy Garvin, who was blindfolded and had one arm tied behind his back, which was hot off the Dallas TV.

So we did, and if you want to look at it for people,

we did,

we sold 40,000 tickets in three days.

And we were thinking, what the fuck?

And of course, that Oak City trip, hell of a goddamn drive.

And then we had to go for the following Monday, which we'll pick up with next time, or the following day, which was Monday, we had to drive 330 miles straight east to get to Little Rock.

So

that week we drove 2,500 miles.

We worked every night of the week and did promos on Wednesday, but we each made $4,225 for that week, which is equal to almost $13,000 in today's money.

And was a long way from the $150 I was making back in November.

And that's when we realized that we had something.

Does it change the way you feel about everything when you leave these shows and you know you're having this kind of success?

I mean, you had success from the moment you got there and you got relatively good payoffs from the moment you got there when it was a show with a crowd.

But the energy, like leaving, knowing that you were in the main event, oh, yeah, that you set records.

I mean, you set records for like a week straight, two weeks straight.

You guys set records everywhere, whatever it was, two weeks, right?

You guys set well

actually, it depends, depending on the town, i think we set three records in lafayette and four shows or whatever but yeah that's

we were kind of like what the is going on here

because again

for me it was bizarre

but for bobby and dennis they'd been doing this again

for years dennis started in 1972 it had been 12 years he'd been in main event teams with Phil Hickerson or David Schultz or, you know, the original incarnation of the Midnight Express in smaller territories, but not only had, and Bobby had worked Georgia and worked for Nick, but they'd never made this kind of money.

They'd never had this kind of push in a major territory.

And nobody had ever just come to them and said, yes, you are the top fucking guys.

And we're operating under those assumptions, first and foremost.

So when it started working,

but we could,

it was a difference in style because

again we've talked about this the talent that was in mid-south a lot of it was great but some of it was stale or

it needed a new look and they needed the rock and roll express for the girls they needed terry taylor because he was good looking jim duggan was a great babyface but he wasn't a sex symbol you know and and new shit new finishes, new approaches, new ways to do things.

I was different than Akbar.

It was just a change that,

and Dundee was a great Finnish guy and had all the Tennessee stuff that didn't work there anymore because it had been done, but it hadn't been done in this territory.

And then people, and Watts had incredibly strong TVs and had

good deals with the buildings and had the infrastructure in place.

So you could go in and do something like that.

It wasn't like the territory was dead because people weren't watching the TV or they'd lost their buildings.

It was just

in the doldrums because it was kind of directionalist and people had seen these guys.

So, but we were more than fucking thrilled to be in the middle of the thing and be kind of responsible for it.

And

again,

I didn't know they made checks like that.

in wrestling at that point in time.

When I looked at it, I was like, God damn, I told you a story when I saw the check that Lawler had for $3,900

in the locker room in Louisville at night.

And I said, geez, Jerry, is that for last week?

He said, that's for last Monday night.

And he said, maybe if you're in a business long enough, you'll have a check like that.

I wanted to photocopy this one that was bigger and send it to him.

I said, well,

son of a bitch, you were right.

A year later.

Wouldn't you know who just bought the pony?

Although, was he being condescending when he said that to you?

Well, yes, he was because it was, well, he was handing out the paychecks, right?

But his was sitting there on,

as I took my check in an envelope, his was just sitting there on the table, and he saw me looking at it.

He said, Yeah, maybe if you're in the business long enough, you'll have a check like that.

Well, I fucking did.

And then later on, I got a check bigger than that for one night.

But that was the rib as we started this run, because Dennis and Bobby and I and the rock and roll to some extent, Terry Taylor, Dundee felt at that point unappreciated for what we had done in the Tennessee territory and were like, look at this down here now.

So we told Dundee to call Jared and tell him to send down some bigger buildings.

Anywho, so that was the, again, the first week of April 1984.

And when we get a chance to do this again,

whenever that may be, we will,

we will do the second week, which includes that show at the Sam Houston Coliseum where

again, that that one,

because we not only did the all-time.

That could be seen by people.

That's on video.

Yes.

We drew the all-time gate record, $102,000.

It was 12,284 people, which they, Paul Bosch said at the time was the most people they ever had in the Sam Houston Coliseum that had been running since the age of Christ.

And from what we were told by the police, because we couldn't peek outside to watch, but they turned away a couple thousand people.

Because when we pulled up

to the building

an hour, hour and a half before showtime, they were lined up two and four abreast, all the way from the front door, all the way around to the fucking back,

around a city block of this goddamn building.

And they'd already opened the fucking doors.

When did Paul Bosch start treating you differently?

That night.

Because before, remember when he would yell at us, you can't fight here at the back of the building, you'll start a riot, or you can't do this in the ring, you'll start a riot.

He saw that fucking house.

He came in and shook our hands first every week after that.

And how were you boys?

Well, Paul Bosch came to my wedding.

I told you that, remember?

That's right.

And his wife, Valerie, and son, Joey.

So, yeah, he remembered that

kid.

And that's another thing.

That was even a bigger deal to us than the Superdome because the Houston

Coliseum, Sam Houston Coliseum and the market of Houston, and they'd been running for fucking decades.

And we come in and in three months, we set the record fucking house.

That was a big deal.

You haven't eaten anything with a rock and roll yet.

So it's kind of a.

No, we ain't got started with that yet.

Yeah, we're just having cold matches because they put my face in the cake that's that was the best part about it we're like

this is this is swell

anyway we've gone on long enough have we not we have and i think that was a good palate cleanser for uh talking about tna which again made dynamite look like mid-south wrestling

but we'll do it all over again next week well maybe not all of it TNA is on the bubble now and rapidly popping.

But we will do something else here on the program next week.

Come back in a couple of days for the drive-through and then next week for the experience.

And until then, thank you and fuck you and bye-bye everyone.